Notices of Tornadoes^ Sfc. 11 



" I also particularly observed that there was no perceptible in- 

 crease of temperature of the air adjacent to the edge of the whirl- 

 wind, which might have caused an ascending current by a rare- 

 faction of a portion of the atmosphere. After passing over the 

 sheet of water, and gaining the shore, I observed the shingles 

 and fragments of a barn to be elevated and dispersed high in the 

 air ; and the dark cloud continued to maintan the same appear- 

 ance which it at first presented, until it passed away beyond the 

 scope of a distinct vision of its misty outlines. 



" The above imperfect sketch can convey to your mind only a 

 feeble impression of this exciting scene, which in passing before 

 me excited just enough of terror to impart to the spectacle the 

 most awful sense of the power, sublimity and grandeur of the 

 Almighty, as described in the glowing words of the Psalmist. 

 ' He bowed the heavens also, and came down ; and darkness was 

 under his feet ; and he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He 

 made darkness his secret place ; his pavilion round about him 

 were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.' " 



n. At Chatenay, near Paris. 



To the Editors of the National Gazette. 



Messrs. Editors — You had published a memoir on tornadoes 

 by a distinguished foreigner, (Ersted. Conceiving the impression 

 conveyed by that article less worthy of consideration than those 

 which had been presented in a memoir which I had previously 

 published, I hope that I shall be considered as having had a suffi- 

 cient incentive for endeavoring through the same channel to cor- 

 rect the erroneous impressions which that memoir was in my 

 opinion of a nature to produce. 



In my letter to you of the 26th ult. it was stated that I con- 

 sidered tornadoes as the consequence of an electrical discharge 

 superseding the more ordinary medium of lightning. From an 

 article which has since met my attention in the Journal des Debats, 

 published on the 17th of July at Paris, it appears that a tremen- 

 dous tornado occurred about the last of the preceding June in the 

 vicinity of that metropolis. The losers applied for indemnity to 

 certain insurers, who objected to pay on the plea that the policies 

 were against thunder storms not against tornadoes. This led to 

 an application to the celebrated • Arago. who referred the case to 

 another savant, Peltier. 



