Miscellanies. 179 
fent poured with all its fury ;—three houses alone remained éntire. 
The fruit trees, of this fertile valley, were destroyed. Of the bridge 
at the baths of Bubendorf, built of hewn stone, not a vestige remains: 
The farms were ravaged over the extent of five leagues. An idea of 
the prodigious velume of water which was condensed and precipitated 
on this occasion may be formed, from the fact; that at Basle, about 
two leagues below the embouchure of the Ergeltz, in less than an hour, 
the Rhine rose two feet. The smiling and fertile plain of Holstein 
was left a desert. ‘Twenty one persons perished in this disaster. 
The waters; in some places, appeared to have fallen in masses. 
Watt ascribes this, and other similar phenomena, to the great thick- 
hess of the strata of clouds, brought together in the first instance by 
Winds from different quarters. The drops formed on the upper sur- 
face in the higher regions of the atmosphere, are, by their descent 
through such a mass of vapor, enlarged by all the vesicles which 
they meet with. 'Fhis produces a great condensation. <A cloud is 
formed in the atmosphere by some particular refrigerating cause, and 
thus overshadowing a space below, deprives it of the sun’s rays, and 
thus occasioris a rarefaction of the air. The surrounding air, charg- 
ed with vapor is precipitated into this partial vacuum, and thus occa- 
sions such an accumulation of vapor as, when suddenly condensed, 
forms torrents of this frightful description.—Bib. Univ. Oct. 1830. 
4. Decomposition of water by atmospheric electricity —+M. Bonijol, 
turator of the Reading Society of Geneva, and a zealous friend of 
Science, having constructed a variety of delicate apparatus, by which 
Water is easily decomposed by common electricity, has succeeded in 
ecting it also by the electricity of the atmosphere. The atmos- 
Pheric electricity is drawn off from an insulated rod by a very fine 
Point, which communicates with the apparatus in which the decom- 
Position is effected, by a wire whose diameter does not exceed half a 
millimetre. Water is thus decomposed constantly and rapidly, even 
When the atmosphere is moderately electric. It is only necessary 
that the weather be stormy.— Ibid. ; 
very narrow, and passing sparks through them from a common ma~ 
chine, by the mere approach of two wires. When the sparks ea 
"apidly continued from five to ten minutes, reduced silver is found in 
rs tube filled with the chloride; and in that containing potash, the 
Potassium is seen to take fire as it is disengaged.—Ibid. 
