IS THE GULF STREAM A MYTH? 133 



indeed, the phenomena of the trades and counter-trades 

 exhibited in water-currents instead of air-currents. 



(From the St. PauVs Magazine, September 1869.) l 



FLOODS IN SWITZERLAND. 



RECENTLY (see date of essay) we have witnessed a suc- 

 cession of remarkable evidences of Nature's destructive 

 powers. The fires of Vesuvius, the earth-throes of the 

 sub-equatorial Andes, and the submarine disturbance 

 which has shaken Hawaii, have presented to us the 

 various forms of destructive action which the earth's 

 subterranean forces can assume. In the disastrous 

 floods which have recently visited the Alpine cantons of 

 Switzerland, we have evidence of the fact that natural 

 forces which we are in the habit of regarding as bene- 

 ficent and restorative may exhibit themselves as agents 

 of the most widespread destruction. I have pointed 

 out elsewhere (see p. 226) how enormous is the amount 

 of power of which the rain-cloud is the representative ; 

 and in doing so I have endeavoured to exhibit the 

 contrast between the steady action of the falling shower 

 and the energy of the processes of which rain is in 

 reality the equivalent. But in the floods which have 

 lately ravaged Switzerland we see the same facts illus- 

 trated, not by numerical calculations or by the results 



1 See ' Light Science ' (second series) for a discussion of later 

 researches. 



