] 
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7 
WOODWORTH: GEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO BRAZIL AND CHILE. 87 
nearly 16,000 feet high on the slope of Sincholagua on Feb. 23, 1869, a 
furious hailstorm took place followed after a lull by a fall of snow 
mixed with hail which gave way in turn to a thick fall of large flakes 
of snow. There was a glacier at this time on the mountain. Again 
in describing his ascent of Antisana on March 9, 1869, he states 
that at the height of 15,984 feet at the top of a moraine on the right 
bank of the glacier a fierce hailstorm occurred about 4 P. M. and snow 
fell heavily afterward. : 
Charles Darwin (1845, p. 115-116, or 1887, p. 115-116) describes 
a remarkable fall of hail in Argentina near the foot of the Sierra 
Tapalguem between Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires on the night of 
Sept. 15-16, 1833. The hailstones were said to have been as large 
as apples. The same distinguished naturalist cites the account of 
the Jesuit Brobritzhoffer who states that in the region much further 
north hail fell of an enormous size and killed vast numbers of cattle, 
hence on this account the Indians called the place Lalegraicavalca, 
meaning the “little white things.”’ Darwin also quotes Dr. Malcolm- 
son to the effect that this observer witnessed in India in 1831 a hail- 
storm which killed large birds and injured cattle. These stones were 
flat; one was ten inches in circumference, and another weighed two 
ounces. They ploughed up a gravel walk like musket balls, and passed 
through glass-windows, making round holes but not cracking them. 
Sir Joseph D. Hooker (1854, 1, p. 405) gives a personal account of 
a hailstorm which took place on the 20th of March, 1849, on the south 
slopes of the Himalayas. “A violent storm from the southwest 
occurred at noon, with hail half an inch across and upwards, formed 
of cones with truncated apices and convex bases; these cones were 
aggregated together with their bases outwards. ‘The large masses 
were followed by a shower of the separate conical pieces, and that by a 
heavy rain. On the mountain this storm was most severe, the stones 
lay at Darjiling for seven days, congealed into masses of ice several 
feet long and a foot thick in sheltered places; at Purneah, fifty miles 
south, stones one and a half inches across fell, probably as whole 
spheres.”’ | 
According to Lieut.- Commander Gorringe, U. S. N., (1873, p. 331) 
the city of Rio de Janeiro was visited by a storm with a heavy fall of 
rain and hailstones on October 10, 1864. The hailstones were as large 
as pigeon’s eggs. ‘“‘Branches of trees were broken and twisted off, 
and the foliage destroyed by the hail, which poured down in such 
quantities that piles of it remained at the corners of the streets until 
the afternoon of the following day.” 
