312 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER LXVI. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



B are very seldom annoyed with thunder- 

 storms ; and it is no less remarkable than 

 true, that those which arise in the south have 

 hardly been known to reach this village ; for 

 before they get over us, they take a direction 

 to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide into two, 

 and go in part to one of those quarters, and in part to the 

 other, as was truly the case in the summer of 1783, when 

 though the country round was continually harassed with 

 tempests, and often from the south, yet we escaped them all ; 

 as appears by my journal of that summer. 1 The only way 

 that I can at all account for this fact for such it is is that, 

 on that quarter, between us and the sea, there are continual 

 mountains, hill behind hill, such as Nore Hill, the Barnet, 

 Butser Hill, and Portsdown, which somehow divert the 

 storms, and give them a different direction. High pro- 

 montories and elevated grounds have always been observed 

 to attract clouds, and disarm them of their mischievous 

 contents, which are discharged into the trees and summits 

 as soon as they come in contact with those turbulent 

 meteors ; while the humble vales escape, because they are 

 so far beneath them. 



But, when I say I do not remember a thunderstorm 

 from the south, I do not mean that we never have suffered 

 from thunderstorms at all; for on June 5th, 1784, the 

 thermometer in the morning being at 64, and at noon at 

 70, the barometer at 29 six tenths one-half, and the 

 wind north, I observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of 

 sulphur, hanging along our sloping woods, and seeming to 



1 To this awful summer of 1783, Cowper also alludes, in his Task, 

 book ii. p. 41. ED. 



