AVATEESPOUTS AT SEA. 801 



of salt water which are discharged far inland during hurricanes 

 prove that this phenomenon is not impossible, and that entire masses 

 of fluid, not merely vapours or scattered drops, can be drawn up into 

 the kind of chimney which the storm makes. It is said that ships 

 threatened by a waterspout have succeeded in destrojdng with cannon 

 this moving column of vapours and in re-establishing the equilibrium 

 of the atmosphere ; but when the waterspout is of considerable 

 dimensions, the passage of a bullet through the whirling vapours can 

 only have but very passing results. Besides, a waterspout is rarely an 

 isolated phenomenon ; a*lmost always it is connected with a tempest 

 that the vessel cannot escape. Generallj^, too, the influence of the 

 aerial eddies makes itself felt to a great distance from their apparent 

 limits. Thus the masts of a ship have been broken by the wind 

 when on the deck no violent movement of the atmosphere was per- 

 ceived, and the tempest still seemed to be distant. 



Unfortunately it must be said that the whirlwinds are of all 

 meteoric phenomena those which are least carefully studied. Never- 

 theless it is certain that a profound knowledge of the various phe- 

 nomena which occur in the formation of these slight aerial eddies, 

 would enable us better to understand the grander cyclones, the 

 entire system of the winds, and perhaps even the movements of the 

 heavenly bodies, and the rotation of nebulae. In the same way 

 as embryology has contributed more than any other study to the 

 development of anthropological science, so it is by following from 

 the origin of its movement the particle of air which whirls in 

 space, that we shall be able to explain in a clearer and more pre- 

 cise manner the great facts relative to the circulation of the air or 

 even to that of the celestial bodies. While the astronomer burns to 

 comprehend some prodigious cycle of the stars, too vast for his eye or 

 his intellect, perhaps there exists under his eyes a simple whirl of 

 leaves or dust, which he disdains even to look at, containing in its 

 spirals the solution of the grand problem. 



END OF SECTION I. 



