AN ENGLISH BLIZZARD. 137 



displayed, but nothing like the destruction of the night of 

 Sunday, 25 December, has within any recent period been 

 witnessed in England. On that night many London streets 

 were rendered impassable by the wrecked wire, etc."* 



The most violent class of cyclones which are so 

 common in America, and destroy whole towns and 

 villages, levelling the houses, etc., as if the place had 

 sustained a bombardment from heavy artillery do not, 

 however, very fortunately for us, visit England; it is 

 hard to say what damage and loss of life might ensue, 

 if the track of one of these hurricanes, of the severest 

 type, swept across the city of London such, for 

 example, as that which on March 27, 1890, passed 

 up the Ohio valley, moved through Kansas, Missouri, 

 Illinois, and Indiana, and attacked the town of Louis- 

 ville, Kentucky. The destruction of the places along 

 the track of the storm was complete, for at Louisville 



"in an instant great stone warehouses, places of amuse- 

 ment, railway stations, private dwellings, were levelled with 

 the ground and on an area of about half a square mile 

 nothing was left but a mass of debris." "The tornado passed 

 diagonally through the city from S.W. to N.E. Its path was 

 two miles long and 500 yards wide."f 



Several hundreds of people were killed or injured 

 by the falling houses, etc. The hurricane, however, 

 quickly passed over, the clouds dispersed and the 

 moon shone out brightly over a scene which the Times 

 states "beggars description." 



Another very curious phenomenon, consisting of an 

 atmospheric disturbance of a different kind, is a " dust 



* Extract Times , Leading Article, in Paper of January 6, 1887. 

 j Extracts from " Latest Intelligence " column of London Times of 

 March 29, 1890. 



