HAIFA 



HAILKS 



501 



the forests of eastern Hungary. In 1605 Stephen 

 Bocskay, prince of Transylvania, established them 

 in ii district which he set apart for their occupa 

 ti'in, mi tin- left bank of tin; Theisn, gave them an 



independent constitution, ;i!l(l conferred upon them 



tin- privileges of hereditary nobility. This favoured 

 position they ret.-iined until the conclusion of the 

 >f 1849. The Iliiitluks are engaged alinosl 

 exclusively in agriculture. In 1876 their country 

 \\as Incorporated in the county of Hajdu, with 

 I>i Live/in .-is capital. The name was formerly 

 borne by the Hungarian infantry of the line ; and 

 iu the 18th century it was also applied to the 

 retainers of the Hungarian magnates. 



Haifa, a seaport of Syria, situated at the foot 

 MI Mount Carmet, a place of some 6000 inhabitants. 

 A little distance to the north-west a settlement 

 of the Wurtemberg 'Society of the Temple' was 

 founded in 1869, who now form a nourishing agri- 

 cultural colony of 300 persons, chiefly engaged in 

 cultivating the vine and growing fruits. Grain is 

 exported. Gordon Pasha paid visits to Haifa, and 

 here Laurence Oliphant settled in 1SS-2. See his 

 Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine ( 1887). A rail- 

 way from Haifa and Acre (on the other side of the 

 bay) to Damascus was begun in 1S<('2. 



llaik. the native name of Armenia (q.v.). 



Hail, Hailstorm. The word hail in English 

 is used to denote two phenomena of quite different 

 origin and formation. These have in recent years 

 been distinguished as hard hail, or true hail ; and 

 soft hail, winch denotes the fine, light grains, like 

 small shot, that frequently fall in winter, much 

 more rarely in summer, and are generally a precursor 

 of snow. Soft hail is the gresil of the French, and 

 the ifwtiifiel of the Germans. The theory of the 

 formation of soft hail has yet to be formulated. 

 True hail is round, hard, compact, and formed of 

 either clear or granular ice, the hailstones being 

 often found when broken across to be composed of 

 alternate layers of these two states of ice. It has 

 a well-marked diurnal period, 80 per cent, of the 

 whole number of hailstorms occurring in the six 

 hours from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., and only 8 per cent, 

 in the fourteen hours from 6 P.M. to 8 A.M. The 

 essential point to be noted in the diurnal period of 

 hail is that the maximum period of hailstorms is 

 two hours earlier than the maximum period of 

 thunderstorms. The maximum period for thunder- 

 storms is when the ascending current from the 

 heated surface of the earth is at its greatest strength 

 for the day ; but the maximum period for hail occurs 

 two hours before the ascending current of air 

 has fully established itself, or it occurs at the time 

 when atmospheric temperature and vapour diminish 

 with the height at a much greater rate than the 

 normal. In the higher latitudes the fall of hail 

 may be regarded as restricted to the warmer months 

 of the year ; in countries where the summer is prac- 

 tically rainless no hail falls ; and where the rainfall 

 is small and at rare intervals very few cases of hail 

 occur. 



Hail is connected with whirlwinds, more or less 

 developed ; and it is when the hailstorm is an 

 attendant on a tornado or on a great thunder- 

 storm that it assumes its most destructive form, 

 carrying devastation through a narrow belt of land 

 usually of considerable length. 



The theory of the formation of hail has been given 

 bv Ken el in his Meteorological Researches for the 

 Use of the Const Pilot, part ii. p. 85. The vapour 

 carried upwards by the vortical gyrations of the 

 tornado is, below a certain height, condensed into 

 cloud and rain ; but above that height into snow. 

 Now when the raindrops formed below are carried 

 higher up into the cold snow regions by the 

 powerful ascending currents of the tornado, and are 



kept suspended there a little while, they become 

 fio/en into clear hard hail. If these hailstones be 

 now thrown quite outside the gyration* of the 

 tornado, they fall to the earth as a shower of com- 

 pact homogeneous hailstone** of clear ice of ordinary 

 si/e. Hut should they h caught in the descent and 

 carried in towards the vortex by the inflowing 

 aerial current on all sides, they are again rapidly 

 carried aloft into the free/ing region. A number of 

 such revolutions of ascent and descent may be made 

 before they ultimately fall to the earth. While 

 high up in the snow region the hailstones receive a 

 coating of snow ; but while in the region lower down, 

 where rain, yet unfrozen, is carried up, they receive 

 a coating of solid ice. In this way alternate coat- 

 ings of ice and snow are received, and the number 

 of each sort indicates the number of ascents and 

 descents performed before the hailstone falls to the 

 ground. When the nucleus is compact snow, as it 

 usually is, the hailstone has its origin hi^h up in 

 the snow region as a small ball of snow or soft hail. 



From a well-known property of ice ( regelation ), 

 the impinging hailstones are frequently frozen 

 together not only in their course through the air, 

 but also at the surface of the earth, giving rise occa- 

 sionally to hailstones of larger dimensions. A curi- 

 ous instance of the fall of large hail, or rather 

 ice-masses, occurred on one of Her Majesty's ships 

 off the Cape in January 1860, when the stones were 

 the size or half-bricks, and beat several of the crew 

 off the rigging, doing serious injury. More than 

 once in the summer of 1889 hailstones proved un- 

 usually destructive on the continent of Europe ; 

 in Moravia, for instance, where many stones tell 

 as big as a man's fist, and weighing 3 ID., a niimlier 

 of people were killed in the fields, and many more 

 were injured. 



A description (taken from Mem. de FAcad. des 

 Sciences, 1790) of a most disastrous hailstorm may 

 be here added. This storm passed over parts of 

 Holland and France in July 1788. It travelled 

 simultaneously along two lines nearly parallel the 

 eastern one had a breadth of from half a league to 

 five leagues, the western of from three to five 

 leagues. The space between was visited only by 

 heavy rain ; its breadth varied from three to five and 

 a half leagues. At the outer border of each there 

 was also heavy rain, but we are not told how far it 

 extended. The general direction of the storm was 

 from south-west to north-east. The length was at 

 least a hundred leagues, probably two hundred. 

 It seems to have originated near the Pyrenees, and 

 to have travelled at a mean rate of about 16^ 

 leagues per hour towards the Baltic, where it was 

 lost sight of. The hail only fell for about seven 

 and a half minutes at any one place, and the 

 heaviest hailstones weighed about 9 ounces. 

 This storm devastated 1039 parishes in France 

 alone, doing damage to the extent of nearly a 

 million of English money. 



Hailcs* LORD, the judicial title of Sir David 

 Dalrvmple, a well-known historical antiquary, born 

 at Edinburgh, 28th Octolier 17*26. He was the 

 grandson of Sir David Dalrvmple, youngest and 

 reputedly the ablest son of the first Viscount Stair. 

 He was educated at Eton and Utrecht, whence he 

 returned to Scotland in 1746, to be called to the 

 Scottish bar two years later. Here his success 

 was highly respectable, but not astonishing, as his 

 extensive learning, sound judgment, and great 

 industry were marred by indifferent oratory. In 

 1766 he was appointed one of the judges of the 

 Court of Session, and assumed the title bv which 

 he is chiefly known to posterity. In this office 

 his accuracy, diligence, judicial impartiality, and 

 dignified demeanour secured him the highest 

 respect, and ten years later he was made a justi- 

 ciary lord. At his country-seat of New Hailes, five 



