J54 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



pared with wind-storms, while the effects of a real 

 hurricane are scarcely less destructive than those of 

 the sharpest shocks of earthquakes. After ordinary 

 storms, long miles of the sea-coast are strewn with the 

 wrecks of many once gallant ships, and with the bodies 

 of their hapless crews. In the spring of 1866 there 

 might be seen at a single view from the heights near 

 Plymouth twenty-two shipwrecked vessels, and this 

 after a storm which, though severe, was but trifling 

 compared with the hurricanes which sweep over the 

 torrid zones, and thence scarcely diminished in force 

 as far north sometimes as our own latitudes. It was in 

 such a hurricane that the ' Royal Charter ' was wrecked, 

 and hundreds of stout ships with her. In the great 

 hurricane of 1780, which commenced at Barbadoes 

 and swept across the whole breadth of the North 

 Atlantic, fifty sails were driven ashore at the Bermudas, 

 two line-of-battle ships went down at sea, and upwards 

 of twenty thousand persons lost their lives on the 

 land. So tremendous was the force of this hurricane 

 (Captain Maury tells us) that * the bark was blown 

 from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed ; 

 the very bottom and depths of the sea were uprooted 

 forts and castles were washed away, and their great 

 guns carried in the air like chaff ; houses were razed ; 

 ships wrecked; and the bodies of men and beasts 

 lifted up in the air and dashed to pieces in the storm " 

 an account, however, which (though doubtless 

 faithfully rendered by Maury from the authorities he 

 consulted) must perhaps be accepted cum grano, and 



