Oct. 20, 1 881] 



NATURE 



585 



of hi5 never having received any proper training in the 

 rudiments of s:ience. If the appearance of this article 

 serve lo call the attention of the managers of our public 

 schools, and ethers interested in education, to the painful 

 consequences which may result from the want of a pre- 

 liminary grounding in the fac.s of science and the principles 

 of scientific reasoning — then we tliink it will not have 

 been written in vain. 



IHE STORM OF FRIDA Y, OCTOBER 14 



'n^'HIS great storm, which-appeared so suddenly, sped 

 ^ its course over North-Western Europe so rapidly, 

 and involved so wide a region in its destructive violence, 

 will be long remembered for the well-nigh unparalleled 

 loss of human life which it has occasioned among our 

 fishing population between the Forth and the Tweed. 

 For some days previously atmospheric pressure had been 

 low to the north of the British Isles and high to the 

 south, the difference from north-west to Land's End 

 being about an inch, thus giving steep gradients, and 

 resulting strong west and north west wmds, and stormy 

 seas along the west coast ; and as the area of low press- 

 ure moved very slowly eastwards the weather conditions 

 continued with some persistence sub-tantially the same. 

 At lungth on Thursday morning the daily weather charts 

 showed that a change had just begun in the extreme 

 soulh-west of Ireland, at Valentia, where, and where 

 only, with a barometer beginning to fall, the wind had 

 changed to a southerly direction, but everywhere else in 

 the British Islands it remained north-westerly; whilst at 

 the same time the area of high pressure to the south was 

 adv.incing from France to Spain, indicating that the path 

 of the coming storm would take a more southerly course. 

 By 2 p m. the area of a fallmg barometer had spread 

 eastwards, ani the wind changed to souih-west as far as 

 Holyhead; and by 6 p.m. observations showed the con- 

 tinued rapid easterly advance of the storm, the wind being 

 now southerly or south-westerly at all the telegraphic 

 stations except Nairn, where it was we=t-north-west, 

 showing that Nairn was still within the influence of 

 the slow-moving depression to the north. 



High winds and very heavy rains occurred during t'le 

 night over the northern half of Great Britain, and on 

 Friday morning the weather charts showed that North- 

 Western Europe was involved in a storm of great 

 intensity, the centre of which had now advanced as far as 

 Midlothian. Gradients were steep all round the lo.v 

 centre of pressure, and consequently gales and storms of 

 wind prevailed in all parts and in all directi ms over the 

 British Islands, being west over F'rance and the south of 

 England, south-west and south over the north of Eng- 

 land and the North Sea, north-east in the northern half 

 of Scotland, and north-west in Ireland. From the baro- 

 metric readings published in the Times it is seen that the 

 lowest reading occurred in London about S a.m., and. in 

 accordance with the isoba's on the Weather Chart, the 

 lowest reading occurred in Edinburgh at the same hour. 

 In London, whi:h was some distance from the centre of 

 the storm, the lowest barometer was o:"ily 29'oS6 inches, 

 but in Edinburgh, over which the centre passed, pressure 

 fell to 28'425 inches, which was an inch lower than it was 

 twelve hours before. After 8 a.m. a rapid recovery of 

 pressure set in ; the most rapid rise of the barometer in 

 London was 0214 inch in the two hours from 4 to 6 p.m., 

 ando'i63in:h in the two hours immediately following. 

 In Edinburgh the increase proceeded at a mu;h more 

 rapid rate, beginning with o'oiS inch, from 8 tog a.m., and 

 increasing gradually to o"i66 inch from noon to I p.m., 

 and o'i5o inch from i to 2 p.m., after which it rose less 

 rapidly, and continued to do so at a steady, though greatly 

 diminished, rate for t vo days till Sunday at io'3o a.m., 

 when the barometer stood at 30-37o laches, having thus 



risen nearly two inches in little more than forty-eight 

 hours. 



On Saturday morning the centre of the storm had 

 advanced fully 600 miles to eastward, being at the high 

 daily average of 25 miles an hour, and was no.v near the 

 south-west angle of Lake Wener in Sweden. Here the 

 lowest barometer was about 28600 inches, whilst at the 

 same time to westward at Valentia pressure had risen 

 to 30"220 inches, thus giving for the southern shores of 

 the North Sea steep gradients for north-west winds, 

 which, with the high seas they raised, proved very de- 

 structive to those coasts. 



The anticyclone indicated by the high barometer fol- 

 lowing in the wa'<e of the storm was accompanied with 

 temperatures unusually low for the season during the 

 night of Saturday-Sunday, when temperature fell to 

 27°*o at Parsonstown and Nottingham ; 29°'o at Ard- 

 rossan ; and 32°o at Leith, Shields, Cambridge, Oxford, 

 and Mullaghmore. Snowfalls of soaie depth occurred in 

 many districts, do'.ng no little damage to green crops, and 

 in later districts to grain crops still standing in the fields. 



The lamentable destruction to fishing-vessels off the 

 coast of Berwickshire was doubtless to no inconsiderable 

 extent due to the deceptive character of the weather on 

 Friday morning in cases where the barometer either is 

 not consulted, or such a fall as an inch duri.ig the twelve 

 hours immediateiy preceding, is discredited as a precau- 

 tionary warning. In Midlothian, shortly after eight 

 o'clock, the clouds broke up and the sun slione in a sky 

 rapidly clearing of clouds. Soo.i, however, a charge 

 commenced, and within an hour, behind a low bank of 

 ddr<ish looking clouds in the northern horizon, a long 

 bank of ashy, leaden hued, ominous clouds began to 

 appear, and rose higher in the sky. In a brief space of 

 time the whole of the sky was overcast, and a darkness 

 quickly followed so great as to render gas necessary in 

 reading the morning newspaper. It was remarked at the 

 time that the darkness ladled three or four times longer 

 than is usually the case with the darkness which is ob- 

 served immediately to be followed by a complete change 

 of wind. When it passed awey, the wind bad changed 

 from south-west to n.jrth-north-east and the temperature 

 fallen, and there.ifter the wind gradually rose to a gale. 

 On the other hand, off the Berwickshire coast the dark- 

 ness was denser and more threatening, and almost 

 simultaneously with its approach a hurricane broke out 

 with a devouring energy which bore everything before 

 it, and, explosively as it were, instantly rose to a height 

 which, judging from actual facts related by the fishermen 

 who escaped and the spectators on the shore, can per- 

 haps onl) b; paralleled.in this country in recent years by 

 the Edinburgh hurricane of January 24, 1868. On land 

 many lives were lost in London and elsewhere, and in 

 all parts of the country chimney-stac'<s, roofs, and walls 

 were blown down, telegraph lines were wrecked, and tens 

 of thousands of the finest trees were snapped asunder 

 and levelled with the ground. When there has been time 

 t.j collect the records of this storm, it will be found to 

 have been one of the most destructive to life and pro- 

 perty in these islands in the memory of the present 

 generation. 



THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AND 



CONGRESS OF ELECTRICITY AT PARIS > 



IV. 



AS we believe our readers will be interested in a fuller 

 description of the arrangements for the telephonic 

 hearing of the Opera than we have yet given, we extract 

 the following from Nos. 50 and 51 of the, new and popular 

 French electrical journal. La Ljcmicre Elcch-iqiie, edited 

 by Count Du Moncel. It is from the pen of the Count 



' Continued from p. 564 



