403 Miscellanies. 



" His hypothesis was I conceive, unsatisfactory, because it did not 

 assign any cause for the concentration of the wind, or for the hiatus 

 presumed to he the cause. This deficiency is supplied, if my sugges- 

 tions be correct.^'' 



On reading this passage, after previously hearing or reading the al- 

 legation above quoted, that Dr. Hare's hypothesis was defective in not 

 appealing to a gyratory movement, it was presumed that it would be 

 perfectly evident to every one, that, from ignorance of English, or 

 inattention, Mr. Peltier's statement was the reverse of the reality. 



In proof of a gyratory force having been exercised during the New 

 Brunswick tornado. Dr. Hare referred to his having, in his Memoir, 

 cited the case of a chimney, of which the upper portion had been so 

 twisted upon the lower portion, as to have its corners projecting over 

 the sides of the latter ; but he had now taken a different view of that 

 fact, which had since struck him as being of much higher importance 

 than he had formerly considered it. 



During an examination of the track of the tornado which lately rav- 

 aged the suburbs of New Haven, Conn., Dr. Hare had been led to in- 

 fer that the electrical discharge is concentrated upon particular bodies, 

 according to their character, or the conducting nature of the soil ; so 

 that the vertical force arising from electrical reaction, and the elasti- 

 city of the air, acts upon them with peculiar force. Hence, while some 

 trees were borne aloft, others, which were situated very near them on 

 either side, remained rooted in the soil. In two instances at New Ha- 

 ven, wagons were especially the victims of the electro-aerial conflict. 

 In the case of one of these, the axletree was broken, and while one 

 wheel was carried into an adjoining field, the other was driven with 

 so much force against the weather-boarding of a barn, as to leave both 

 a mark of the projecting hub, and of the greater portion of the periph- 

 ery. The plates of the elliptical springs were separated from each 

 other. During the tornado at New Brunswick, the injury done to some 

 wagons in the shop of a coach-maker, appeared at the time inexplica- 

 ble. It was now inferred, that the four iron wheel-tires, caused by 

 their immense conducting power, a confluence of the electric fluid, 

 producing a transient explosive rarefaction, and a subsequent afllux of 

 air with a local gyration of extreme violence. 



It may be reasonably surmised, that the excessive injury done to 

 trees results, not from the general whirl, but from a local gyration to 

 which they are subjected, in consequence of the multiplicity of points 

 which their twigs and leaves furnish for the emission of the electrical 

 fluid. The fact that the leaves of trees thus injured, appear after- 

 wards as if they had been partially scorched, seems to countenance 

 this idea. The twisting of the chimney at New Brunswick, as above 



