120 Meteors. 



It is impossible to give any adequate 

 account of irregular winds, especially of 

 those sudden and violent gusts which come 

 on at very irregular periods, and generally 

 continue for a short time. They some- 

 times spread over an extensive tract of 

 country, and at other times are confined 

 within a remarkably narrow space. Their 

 causes are by no means rightly understood 

 though they have been vaguely attributed 

 to peculiar rarefactions, to the combined 

 attractions of the sun and moon, to earth- 

 quakes, to electricity, ^c. They are 

 called in general hurricanes, or they are 

 the principal phenomenon of a hurricane, 

 that is, of a violent storm. 



Almost every one of those violent 

 winds is attended with particular pheno- 

 mena, such as droughts or heavy rains, or 

 hail, or snow, or thunder and lightning, 

 or several of those phenomena at once. 

 They frequently shift suddenly from one 

 quarter of the horizon to another, and 

 then come again to the former point. 

 In this case they are called tornadoes. 



Iu some parts of the Indian ocean 

 there are winds which blow one way du- 

 ring one half of the year, and then blow 

 the contrary way during the other half 



