368 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



gether in form of an inverted cone. It descended two thirds 

 of the space, and the portions of the cloud of which it was 

 composed were in the violent agitation of a smoke which 

 ascends a chimney of a fire which has just been filled with 

 a combustible. The spout did not preserve the length 

 which it had attained; it retired towards the cloud, and 

 took the form of a large short cone, terminated by an elon- 

 gated filament, varying in length and thickness, which 

 lasted six minutes. The meteor continued for half an hour, 

 when a considerable shower fell from the cloud to which it 

 was attached. 



Among the effects which it produced, we remarked a 

 loaded wagon which it took up and carried twenty 

 yards. 



The witnesses which saw it very near, use words which 

 do not indicate that the cone had a gyratory motion, which 

 it would have had if it had been produced by a whirlwind, 

 as Mr. Tilloch thinks; they describe it as a vast mass of 

 smoke, working about in great agitation. This cone fell 

 almost perpendicularly, a little inclined towards the north, 

 according to some, and a little towards the south, according 

 to others ; but all say it rose without rain, and that under 

 its extremity, all light bodies followed it. The witnesses 

 also said that in its lowering, it appeared to hesitate, and it 

 commenced at first by an udder, then descended a little : all 

 the portions were interwoven and united together till the 

 moment when it began to shorten itself, and then it drew 

 itself up into the cloud. 



Mr. Tilloch draws these theoretic conclusions from this 

 single observation. 



1. A spout is a collection of clouds of the -same nature as 

 the cloud from which it descends. 



2. Its descent is a mechanical effect of a whirlwind, which 

 creates a void in the centre, or a great rarefaction between 

 the clouds and the earth : the clouds descend then by their 



