150 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



indeed, the phenomena of the trades and counter-trades 

 exhibited in water-currents instead of air-currents. 



(From S(. Paul's, September, 1869.)* 



FLOODS IN SWITZERLAND. 



the past few weeks 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 beneficent and restorative may exhibit themselves 

 as agents of the most wide-spread destruction. "We 

 have pointed out elsewhere (see p. 249) how enormous 

 is the amount of power of which the rain-cloud is the 

 representative; and in doing so we have endeavored 

 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 illustrated, not by numerical calcula- 

 tions or by the results of philosophical experiments, 



* See also The Student for July, 1868. 



