THEORY DEDUCED FROM PHYSICAL LAWS. 17 



had their tops thrown towards the house. The walls of 

 the upper story, both on the north and south side, were 

 cracked, and in one crack was thrust a lady's handkerchief, 

 and in the other a sheet, which had been taken up from a 

 bed in the room, and the cracks closed when they were 

 carried partly through. 



These facts leave no doubt that there is an upward mo- 

 tion of the air in the spout, and an inward motion below. 

 And the fact that the hail and the shingles fell together, 

 makes it equally certain that this hail had been formed from 

 drops of rain carried up by the spout, above the region of 

 congelation, and then thrown down along with the shingles 

 carried up at the same time. The wind had been south west 

 all day, which, no doubt, was the reason why all the shin- 

 gles and hail fell to the north east of the track of the spout. 

 There are many other highly interesting particulars con- 

 nected with these spouts, which will be detailed in subse- 

 quent pages. I will only add, that the evidence which I 

 collected was conclusive, that, at the time of the falling of 

 the hail, the wind on the northern border of the shower 

 was strong from the south, and on the southern border 

 of the shower, strong from the north. This is a fact which 

 will of itself explain why, in many showers, the wind at 

 the surface of the earth blows in all directions from the 

 centre of the shower, and yet, a few thousand feet high, it 

 may be blowing in the under part of the cloud on all sides 

 towards the middle of the cloud. This phenomenon I have 

 more than once seen. (See article 22.) 



34. Spouts at sea are manifestly the same in principle as 

 spouts on land. They are always seen to descend from a 

 a black cloud, sometimes with a velocity of half a mile in 

 two seconds. Now this velocity precludes the possibility of 

 this visible spout having fallen by gravity, for, in that time, 

 if its specific gravity were ten thousand times greater than 

 it is, it could not fall more than sixty-four feet in two se- 

 3 



