710 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1702. 



The season was very dry, the weather extremely hot, the air very cloudy, 

 and the wind pretty strong, and what was remarkable, blowing out of several 

 quarters at the same time, and filling the air with thick, and black clouds, in 

 layers ; this blowing of the wind soon created a great vortex, gyration, and 

 whirling among the clouds, the centre of which now and then dropt down in 

 the shape of a thick long black tube, commonly called a spout; in which I 

 could distinctly see a motion, like that of a screw, continually drawing upwards, 

 and screwing up as it were whatever it touched. In its progress it moved slowly 

 over a hedge row and grove of young trees, which it made bend like haseU 

 wands, in a circular motion ; then advancing forward to a large barn, in a 

 moment it plucked off all the thatch, and filled the whole air with it. Coming 

 to a very large oak tree, it made it bend like the former, and broke off one 

 of its strongest branches, and twisting it about, flung it to a very considerable 

 distance off. Then coming near the place where I stood, within 300 yards of 

 me, I beheld with great satisfaction this extraordinary phenomenon, and found 

 that it proceeded from a gyration of the clouds, by contrary winds meeting in a 

 point or centre ; and where the greatest condensation and gravitation was, 

 falling down into a large i)ipe or tube, somewhat like the cochlea x^rchimedis ; 

 and which, in its working or whirling motion, either sucks up water, or de- 

 stroys ships, &c. Having proceeded about a quarter of a mile farther, it was 

 dissolved by the prevalency of the wind from the east. 



On the Mischief occasioned by swallojuing Fruit Stones, &c. By Mr. Henry 



Faughan. N° 281, p. 1244. 

 A gentleman had eaten above 1 pounds of common prunes, and some time 

 after, about a pound more : a fortnight before he died, he had some symptoms 

 of the stone. He had a violent pain in the neck of the vesica, and about 

 the urethra, with obstructions in his urine, Sec. I ordered him a terebinlhinate 

 clyster, which gave him ease ; but his pains afterwards increasing, a physician 

 was sent for, who prescribed clysters, with diuretics and narcotics, but all to no 

 purpose. After his death, I found on dissection the prune-stones passed into 

 the intestinum rectum, and had there made a perforation into the pelvis. We 

 tied one part of the gut, and cut out a piece, and emptying it there were taken 

 out 128 prune-stones, besides what were left behind in stercore, in the other 

 part of the intestinum rectum. There was also a large polypus taken out of 

 the left ventricle of the heart, &c. 



I attended a young man about 30 hours ; his case was the iliac passion, very 

 terrible for the time ; he was about 14 years of age, of a sanguine constitution. 

 About 3 or 4 hours before he died, I administered a terebinlhinate clyster. 



