Miscellanies. 179 



tent poured with all its fury ; — three houses alone remained entire. 

 The fruit trees, of this fertile valley, were destroyed. Of the bridge 

 at the baths of Bubendorf, built of hewn stone, not a vestige remains. 

 The farms were ravaged over the extent of five leagues. An idea of 

 the prodigious volume of water which was condensed and precipitated 

 on this occasion may be formed, from the fact, that at Basle, about 

 two leagues below the embouchure of the Ergeltz, in less than an hour, 

 the Rhine rose two feet. The smiling and fertile plain of Hollstein 

 was left a desert. Twenty one persons perished in this disaster. 



The waters, in some places, appeared to have fallen in masses. M. 

 Watt ascribes this, and other similar phenomena, to the great thick- 

 ness of the strata of clouds, brought together in the first instance by 

 winds from difi'erent quarters. The drops formed on the upper sur- 

 face in the higher regions of the atmosphere, are, by their descent 

 through such a mass of vapor, enlarged by all the vesicles which 

 they meet with. This produces a great condensation. A cloud is 

 formed in the atmosphere by some particular refrigerating cause, and 

 thus overshadowing a space below, deprives it of the sun's rays, and 

 thus occasions a rarefaction of the air. The surrounding air, charg- 

 ed with vapor is precipitated into this partial vacuum, and thus occa- 

 sions such an accumulation of vapor as, when suddenly condensed, 

 forms torrents of this frightful description. — Bib. Univ. Oct. 1830,' 



4. Decomposition of water by atmospheric electricity. — M. Bonijol, 

 curator of the Reading Society of Geneva, and a zealous friend of 

 science, having constructed a variety of delicate apparatus, by which 

 water is easily decomposed by common electricity, has succeeded in 

 effecting it also by the electricity of the atmosphere. The atmos- 

 pheric electricity is drawn oft" from an insulated rod by a very fine 

 point, which communicates with the apparatus in which the decom- 

 position is effected, by a wire whose diameter does not exceed half a 

 millimetre. Water is thus decomposed constantly and rapidly, even 

 when the atmosphere is moderately electric. It is only necessary 

 that the weather be stormy.— /6z(7. 



5. Decompositions by common electricity. -^M. Bonijol has decom- 

 posed potash and chloride of silver by placing them in tubes of glass 

 very narrow, and passing sparks through them from a common ma- 

 chine, by the mere approach of two wires. When the sparks are 

 rapidly continued from five to ten minutes, reduced silver is found in 

 the tube filled with the chloride ; and in that containing potash, the 

 potassium is seen to take fire as it is disengaged. — Ibid. 



