570 



WATER-SPOUTS AND WHIRLWINDS. 



Clouds coming from different directions and collecting over the plain, ulti- 

 mately formed a single cloud which covered the heavens : immediately after- 

 ward a cone descended from this cloud, presenting its vertex downward, and 

 having its base in the cloud. This meteor, driven by the wind, beat down a 

 barn, tore and carried away the tops of the largest trees, overturned twenty- 

 five to thirty of them, and strewed them in different directions, proving that 

 the meteor had a revolving motion. It carried away and crushed other trees 

 from sixty to seventy feet high. Globes of fire and sulphureous vapor were 

 seen from time to time to issue from its centre. This meteor, in its rapid 

 course, was attended with a sound like that of a heavy carriage rolling on a 

 paved road. 



It then penetrated into the valley of Wctternester and Lambre ; in the former 

 of these villages, only eight habitations of forty were uninjured : the meteor 

 left everywhere traces of its passage. 



On the 18th of June, 1839, the neighborhood of Chatenay, in the department 

 of Seine et Oise, was visited by a meteor, which happened to be witnessed by 

 MM. Peltier, Bouchard, and Becquerel. The following narrative of it is abridg- 

 ed from the account given of it by M. Peltier : 



In the morning, a storm was formed to the south of Chatenay, and about ten 

 o'clock it took the direction of the valley between the hills of Ecouen and Clia- 

 tenay. The clouds, which were high, after extending above the extremity of 

 the village, came to a stand, the thunder muttered, and the first cloud followed 

 the ordinary route, when, toward noon, a second storm coming also from the 

 south, advanced toward the same plain and the same hills. Arriving near the 

 extremity of the plain over Fontenay, in presence of the first storm which, by 

 its elevation, it overtopped, a pause took place, doubtless while the two storms 

 were presenting themselves to each other by means of their clouds charged with 

 the same electricity, and repelling each other. 



To this time, thunder which was heard proceeded from the second cloud, 

 when suddenly one of the inferior clouds descending, fell into communication 

 with the earth, and the thunder seemed to cease. A prodigious attraction was 

 manifested ; all light bodies and all the dust which cohered the surface of the 

 ground, was raised toward the point of the cloud : a continual rolling noise suc- 

 ceeded ; little clouds were fluttering and whirling round the inverted cone, and 

 rising and falling rapidly. Trees, placed to the southeast of the meteor, were 

 struck on their northwest side which faced it, the other side remaining in its 

 usual state. The sides which were struck exhibited strong marks of the 

 meteor, while the other parts preserved their sap and their vegetable life. The 

 meteor descended the valley to the extremity of Fontenay, toward a row of 

 trees planted along the bed of a stream which was then without water, though 

 still humid. After having broken and uprooted these, it traversed the valley, 

 and advanced toward other plantations which it also destroyed. There, having 

 arrived at the point vertically under the limits of the first cloud, it paused, and 

 the latter, which was hitherto stationary, began to be agitated and to retreat 

 toward the valley west of Chatenay, and, overthrowing all that it encountered in 

 its way, it passed to the park of the chateau of Chatenay, which it completely 

 desolated. The walls were overturned, and the roofs and chimneys of the 

 buildings carried away. Trees were transported several hundred yards ; win- 

 dows, rafters, tiles were thrown to a distance of upward of 500 yards. 



The meteor having ravaged that place, descended a mountain toward the 

 north, and paused over a fish pond, where it overthrew and parched the trees, 

 killed all the fish, and proceeded slowly along an alley of willows. Here it 

 lost a great portion of its extent and violence. It then proceeded still more 

 slowly over a neighboring plain, and after advancing three quarters of a mile, it 



