472 Red and fallow Rain. [Book V. 



had the quill reached the water, but broken, and con- 

 fufedly mixed with the air which afcended with it. 

 The ufual phenomena of water-fpouts are exactly 

 agreeable to this theory. They appear at a diftance 

 like an inverted cone, or the point of a fword, which 

 is owing to the water rifing in large drops at the firft, 

 and being expanded as it afcends; and a cloud is ge- 

 nerally fufpended over the body of the phenomenon. 

 The water which is taken up is undoubtedly lalt at 

 the firft, but by the rarefaction in the fuperior regions, 

 it undergoes a kind of natural diftillation, and lofes all 

 the heavy faline particles with which it was charged. 

 Water-fpouts have been obferved at land, of which 

 two v~ry remarkable inftances are recorded in the 

 Philofophical T ran factions. Other phenomena have 

 been remarked, which can be explained upon thefe 

 principles only. Accounts have been given of red 

 and yellow rain, of frogs and tadpoles, and even fmall 

 times having been rained upon the tops of houfes. 

 The red and yellow rain was, I apprehend, compofed 

 of the blofibms of vegetables, or of infects, taken up 

 by one of thefe aerial tubes; and the frogs and fifhes 

 were probably part of the contents of lome pond, in 

 which the water-fpout originated, or over which it 

 might have paiTed in its perambulation. 



The point or cone of the water-fpout is generally 

 oblique, depending on the force and direction of the 

 wind which drives it along. 



Dr. Perkins, whom I had occafion to mention, when 

 treating of hurricanes, in a paper publiflied in the 

 fame volume of American Transactions, is difpofed to 

 adopt a different theory of water-fpouts. Captain 

 Melling informed him, that in a voyage from the 

 \Vcft India Iflands to Boflon, a water-fpout came 

 acrofs the Hern of the veflcl where he then was, a 



flood 



