VOL. XL!.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 531 



coming from tlie south-west : it seemed not to be 30 yards high from the 

 ground, bringing along with it a mist, rolling along with such incredible swift- 

 ness, that it ran about a mile and half in half a minute. It began exactly at 

 12 o'clock, and lasted about 13 minutes, 8 minutes in full violence : it pre- 

 sently uncovered the house, and some of the tiles, falling down to windward, 

 were blown in at the sashes, and against the wainscot on the other side of the 

 room ; the broken glass was blown all over the room ; the chimneys all es- 

 caped ; but the statues on the top of the house, and the balustrades from one 

 end to the other, were all blown down. The stabling was all blown down, ex- 

 cept two little stalls. All the barns ill the parish, except those that were full 

 of corn quite up to the top, were blown fiat on the ground, to the number of 

 about 6o. The dwelling-houses escaped best ; there was not above 12 blown 

 down, out of near 100. If the storm had lasted 5 minutes longer, almost every 

 house in the town must have been down ; for they were all, in a manner, rocked 

 quite off from their underpinnings. The people all left their houses, and carried 

 their children out to the windward side, and laid them down on the ground, 

 and laid themselves down by them ; and by that means all escaped, except one 

 poor miller, who went into his mill to secure it against the storm, which was 

 blown over, and he was crushed to death between the stones and one of the 

 large beams. All the mills in the country are blown down. Hay-stacks and 

 corn-stacks are some quite blown away, some into the next corner of the field. 

 The poor pigeons that were caught in it, were blown down on the ground, and 

 dashed to pieces. Wherever it met with any boarded houses, it seemed to exert 

 more than ordinary violence on them, and scattered their wrecks above a quarter 

 of a mile to the north-east, in a line : Mr. F. followed one of these wrecks ; and 

 about 1 50 yards from the building, he found a piece of a rafter, many feet long, 

 and about 6 inches by 4, stuck upright 2 feet deep in the ground ; and at the 

 distance of 400 paces from the same building, was an inch board, Q inches 

 broad, 14 feet long : these boards were carried up into the air ; and some were 

 carried over a pond above 30 yards ; and a row of pales, as much as 2 men 

 could lift, were carried 2 rods from their places, and set upright against an apple- 

 tree. Pales, in general, were all blown down, some posts broke off short by 

 the ground, others torn up by the stumps. The whole air was full of straw : 

 gravel-stones, as large as the top of the little finger, were blown off^the ground 

 in at the windows ; and the very grass was blown quite flat on the ground. 

 After the storm was over, he went out into the town, and such a miserable 

 sight he never saw : the havoc above described ; the women and children cry- 

 ing, the farmers all dejected ; some blessing God for the narrowness of their 

 escape, others wondering how so much mischief could be done with one blast 



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