AND OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 



27 



little a-head, and suddenly made a noise as if choking. " Run, Master, 

 a Cheetah has caught your Dog," said the natives. Lieutenant C. ad- 

 vanced cautiously, and saw a large heap just the colour of a Royal Tiger, 

 black and orange. In a few minutes he beheld the head and neck of an 

 enormous Boa Constrictor, slowly uncoiling itself and gliding towards 

 him. He waited until half of the Snake was out of its coil or lump, and 

 then fired both barrels. One ball entered immediately behind the eye ; 

 the other about four inches from the head. The whole coil immediately 

 fell, and revealed the poor Dog crushed to death within its folds. In the 

 meantime all Lieutenant C.'s followers fled, and he was forced to go to a 

 village for assistance. Having with some difficulty mustered a little band, 

 he returned and brought out the Snake, the Dog, and a Spotted Deer 

 that the Snake had killed. The Boa was twenty-three feet eight inches 

 Ion", and about six feet in circumference. There was a large cake of fat 

 inside, all the way from the head to the tail ; and of this the natives 

 showed great anxiety to obtain possession, declaring it was an infallible 

 cure of all diseases. — Thirty Years in India. By Major Bevan. 



The Swallows and Cat One evening last week, while the wind 



•was from the south, and blowing with sudden gusts, a Swallow's nest in 

 the corner of a window in Maybole (Ayrshire) was blown down, and the 

 scarcely fledged young, six in number, were thrown to the ground. Two 

 of them were secured by the humane gentleman, the corner of whose 

 windows the old ones had tenanted for many a year ; three others were 

 afterwards found on the street, and the five were lodged in a wooden dish 

 in a garret room, where, the window being left open, the old birds en- 

 tered, and converted the dish into a nest. The sixth, however, was still 

 missing, nor was it discovered till an hour afterwards, when it was seen 

 on the green sward, behind the house, in an imminently dangerous predi- 

 cament. A Cat had marked it for her prey, and would have devoured it 

 instanter, but that almost all the Swallows about Maybole had come to its 

 rescue, screeching their bitter war-cry, were swooping at her in dozens, and 

 whisking the hair out of her head at such a rate, that poor Grimalkin ran 

 a great chance of being pecked to death ! Fairly routed, Puss beat a 

 speedy retreat, when, unprecedented though the incident may appear, the 

 young Swallow was raised by about half a dozen of its brave defenders, 

 carried up, not without difficulty, to the garret window, and restored to 

 its place among the rest of the brood, all of which are now fully feathered, 

 and will be soon on wing {Newspaper Paragraph.) 



METEOROLOGY. 



Effects of the Hurricane of January 7, 1839, in Ireland Under 



the above title, in a valuable communication from William Thomson, 

 Esq., of Belfast, we find the following interesting particulars. In a letter 

 from Viscount Cole, dated Hazelwood, Jan. 14, 1839, is the following 

 passage : — " I mention underneath a curious fact hardly to be believed, but 

 which two decent men would testify by affidavit — that on the morning 

 after the hurricane a great quantity of Perch fry were found thrown up 

 high and dry two yards, and some more, on the grassy shore of Church 

 Island in Lough Gill or Hazelwood Lake, in the county of Sligo." In a 

 note with which I was subsequently favoured, Lord Cole remarked, that 

 he had " heard" of several Roach being thrown up on an island in Lough 

 Earn on the night of the great storm. On the 24th of January, Robert 

 Ball, Esq., wrote me from Dublin to the effect — that after the late hurri- 

 cane, the dead bodies of Rooks, to the amazing number of 33,000, (as a 

 matter of curiosity the number was reckoned by some boys,) were picked 

 up on the shores of a lake some miles in extent, and with extensive rook- 

 eries on its borders, in the county of Westmeath ; and that in the same 

 locality numbers of Perch were thrown to some distance into the fields. 

 The almost incredible mortality of Rooks induced me to make further in- 

 quiry, when I was informed that Dean Vignolles (on whose property the 

 circumstance occurred) states that the number of these birds above men- 

 tioned were certainly destroyed. This gentleman likewise submitted to 

 Mr Ball's inspection a more than ordinarily strong panel of a new window 

 shutter which was driven in and broken through by a Rook dashing, or 

 perhaps rather from being dashed against it on the night in question. He 

 further mentioned that some of the Perch were found as far as fifteen 

 yards from the edge of the lake Ann. of Nat. Hist., May 1 839. 



Meteoric Paper which tell from the Sky The celebrated Profes- 

 sor Ehrenberg has lately supplied the following information On the 



31st January 1687, a great mass of a paper-like black substance fell with 

 a violent snow-storm from the atmosphere near the village of Rauden in 

 Courland ; it was seen to fall, and after dinner was found at places where 

 the labourers at work had seen nothing similar before dinner. This me- 

 teoric substance, described completely and figured in 1686, was recently 

 again considered by M. v. Grotthus, after a chemical analysis, to be a me- 

 teoric mass ; but M. v. Berzelius, who also analysed it, could not discover 

 the nickel said to be contained in it j and Von Grotthus then revoked his 

 opinion. It is mentioned in Chladni's work on Meteors, and noticed as 

 an aerophyte in Nees von Esenbeck's valuable Appendix to R, Brown's 



" Botan. Schriften." I examined this substance, some of which is con- 

 tained in the Berlin Museum, (also in Chladni's collection,) microscopi- 

 cally. I found the whole to consist evidently of a compactly matted mass 

 of Conferva crispata, traces of a Nosloc, and about twenty-nine well-pre- 

 served species of Infusoria, of which three only are not mentioned in my 

 large work on Infusoria, although they have since occurred living near 

 Berlin. Moreover, of the case of Daphnia Pulex ? Of the twenty-nine 

 species of Infusoria, only eight have silicious shields, the others are soft 

 or with membraneous shields. Several of the most beautiful exceedingly 

 rare Baccillarice are frequent in it. These Infusoria have now been preserved 

 152 years. The mass may have been raised by a storm from a Courland 

 marsh, and merely carried away, but may also have come from a far dis- 

 tant district, as my brother Carl Ehrenberg has sent from Mexico forms 

 still existing near Berlin. Seeds, leaves of trees, and other things of the 

 kind scattered through the mass, were, on the examination of larger por- 

 tions, easily visible. The numerous native Infusoria and the shells of 

 the common Daphnia Pulex seem to speak thus much for the substance, 

 that its original locality was not the atmosphere nor America, but most 



probably either East Prussia or Courland Ann. of Nat. Hist., May 



1839. _ 



HYDROGRAPHY. 



SUDDEN DRYING UP OF SEVERAL OF THE PRINCIPAL RIVERS IN SCOTLAND. 



A valuable paper concerning the drying up of the Rivers Teviot, Clyde, 

 and Nith, and their tributaries, on the 27th of November 1838, was last 

 session read by David Milne, Esq., advocate, to the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh, of which we supply the following summary : — " It appears 

 that, betwixt 10 p.m. on the 26th November, and 6 a.m. on the 27th 

 November, the channels of the Teviot, Clyde, and Nith, became nearly 

 dry for a great part of their course, so that scarcely any current flowed in 

 them. All the mills on the Clyde, as far down as several miles below 

 New Lanark, were stopped from want of water. The Nith was nearly 

 dry as far down as Enterkinefoot ; and the mills on it, and on its tribu- 

 taries, were stopped. This was the case also on the Teviot. The phe- 

 nomenon was most strikingly manifested in the higher parts of the rivers, 

 near their sources. The small streams from which they derive their sup- 

 plies were in general completely dried up. The rivers, in the lower 

 parts of their course, were not entirely deprived of their current ; nor 

 were the rivulets, which there supplied them, nearly so much affected as 

 the rivulets in more elevated districts. 



" The desiccation continued all the morning, forenoon, and part of the 

 afternoon of the 27th November. When the current was restored, it 

 returned not with a sudden rush, but gradually ; nor, when the current 

 was restored, did the waters rise much above their ordinary level. 



" With reference to the cause of the phenomenon, some persons had 

 attributed it to the high wind obstructing the flowing of the current; others, 

 to the frost in forming barriers of ice on the caulds or dam-heads ; others, 

 again, had suggested that the phenomenon might be connected with an 

 earthquake. In support of this last theory, it was mentioned, that Pro- 

 fessor Phillips had, in a recent work on Geology, attributed to this cause 

 the drying up of the English Rivers Trent and Medvvay, in the 12th cen- 

 tury. 



" Mr Milne stated that he adopted none of these views, and that he 

 thought the phenomenon might be accounted for by the united action of 

 the frost and wind which prevailed during the night of the 26th Novem- 

 ber. After four o'clock that afternoon, the thermometer all over the south 

 of Scotland sunk to 26°, at which point it remained for several hours. 

 Accompanying this frost, there was a gale of wind from the east, which 

 had the effect of very rapidly reducing the temperature of exposed and 

 unsheltered spots. In this way the small and shallow streams flowing in 

 open drains and rivulets, or oozing through mosses and marshes in the 

 hills, were soon frozen and arrested. But, on the other hand, larger bodies 

 of water flowiug rapidly in the main channels, at a lower level, and shel- 

 tered by high or wooded banks, could not in the same space of time lose 

 enough of their temperature to be frozen. The waters thus ran off, with- 

 out the usual renewal of supplies from the sources, so that the channel 

 or bed of the river became speedily drained. 



" The reason of this phenomenon not happening more frequently appears 

 to be, that there is very seldom a gale of wind in this country accompanied 

 by a severe frost ; and even on this occasion, the frost was not equally 

 intense over the whole island. When a severe frost sets in, there is 

 usually but little wind, so that the water in the upper parts of the river 

 is not liable to be cooled more rapidly than in the lower and more shel- 

 tered parts of its course. Though the sources will, in that case, to a 

 certain degree, be frozen, and so, part of the usual supply cut off, the 

 main body of the stream is frozen likewise, whereby the velocity of its 

 current is diminished, by the obstruction of the ice at the bottom and at 

 the surface of the current. So that, if only half the usual supply is furnished 

 to the river from its partially frozen sources, there will be no diminution 



