VOL. XXin.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 647 



then up stairs, then down again, &c. But on the 3d day of his confinement 

 within doors, he became perfectly mad, would start, leap, and twist his hands 

 and arms together, point at people, and laugh and talk any thing that came in 

 his mind. In some of his fits he was so strong, that four young men 

 could hardly hold him down in the chair where he sat : but as soon as they 

 were over, he was lightsome, laughed, and talked ; but all his discourse was 

 of fighting, and that if they would but let him alone, he would leap upon 

 them, and bite, and tear them to pieces. About an hour after, his fit came 

 again, which soon made him speechless, seized wholly on his brain, and then 

 he died. 



Concerning some JVater Spouts observed in the Mediterranean. By Mr. Alexander 

 Stuart, a Physician. 'N°277, p- 1077. 



August 27, 1701, being on the coast of Barbary, to the northward of the 

 town of Bona, upwards of 10 leagues distance at sea, about 7 o'clock at night, 

 soon after sun-set, there appeared in the N. E. which was directly up the Gulf 

 of Lyons from us, great and continued flashes of lightning, one after another, 

 with hardly any intermission, and this, without thunder, it continued till the 

 next morning ; the flashes of lightning sometimes representing the sudden 

 appearance of a star, and at other times of a flaming sword, and again of a 

 silver cord stretched along the clouds, or as the irregular rents of a phial from 

 top to bottom. About 8 next morning we had thundering, with a continua- 

 tion of lightning of the kind and appearance as before, all from the N. E. or 

 nearly so. 



About 9 the same morning, there fell down from the clouds, which looked 

 black, lowering, and as it were heavy with rain, in the N. E. three water spouts; 

 that in the middle, being the greatest, seemed as large as the mast of a ship, 

 and I judged it to be at least a league and a half distant from us ; so that in 

 itself it was doubtless larger than three masts. The other two were not half 

 the size. All of them were black, like the cloud from whence they fell ; and 

 smooth, without any knot or irregularity ; only at first falling, some fell per- 

 pendicularly down, and some obliquely, and all of them smaller at the lower 

 end than above, representing a sword ; sometimes also one of them would 

 bend, and become straight again, and also sometimes became smaller, and again 

 increase its bulk ; sometimes it would disappear, and immediately fall down again ; 

 at other times it became extenuated to the smallness of a rope, and again be- 

 came gross as before. 



There was always a great boiling and flying up of the sea, as in a jet 

 d'eau, or water-work ; or this rising of the water had the appearance of a 



