July 27, £888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



77 



danger. We have, in former years, superintended the 

 conversion of tons of tin into mordants, and their em- 

 ployment in dyeing, tissue printing, and colour-making, 

 but we never witnessed any injurious effects from close 

 and frequent contact with the solution of this metal. In- 

 deed, in the manufacturing districts we have heard the 

 saying that a dead dyer is as great a rarity as a dead 

 donkey. (To be continued.) 



WHIRLWINDS AND WATERSPOUTS.— I. 



ALTHOUGH we have on two or three occasions 

 referred to these strange incidents, we do not 

 believe that our readers will object to a further notice of 

 this momentous subject. Momentous, we may venture 

 to call it, since from the trifling eddy of dust which we 



Fig. i. — Observer within a Whirlwind, experiencing 

 the Sensation of a Vertical Movement. 



see before us on the highway, up to the waterspout which 

 may overwhelm a vessel or ravage a plot of land, the 

 revolving sand-pillars in the desert which have been 

 known to bury a passing caravan, and even to the tornado 

 and the hurricane, there is evidently one continuous 

 chain of phenomena, differing in magnitude, but essen- 

 tially alike in their laws and their causes. 



It is doubtless too much to hope that mankind will 

 ever be able to prevent these catastrophes, but very much 

 would be gained if we could obtain a few days' warning 

 of their approaching outbreak. The aborigines of the 

 West Indies, whom the earliest European settlers extir- 

 pated are said to have been able to foretell the advent of 

 a hurricane for a week or more. That we, with our 

 instruments of precision, cannot do as much is not to our 

 credit. 



We here reproduce from La Nature representations 

 ofwhirlwinds or dust-storms witnessed by M. H. Duhamel, 

 of Gieres, Vice-President of the Isere section of the French 



Alpine Club. This gentleman, referring to the pheno- 

 mena, described and depicted (Scientific News, p. 561) 

 writes: — "I have been present at the formation, the 

 transference, and the ultimate disappearance of at least 

 fifteen whirlwinds or spouts of dust and of snow exactly 

 resembling in height and shape that at Vincennes 

 described by M. Gibert, but I have never seen the bodies 

 raised collect in an opaque globular cloud as in the whirl- 

 wind observed on May 13th last. In my observations 

 the top always lost itself, forming a sort of 

 streamer. All the whirlwinds which I have seen 

 showed a movement of translation more or less 

 regular, but the rotatory movement has always seemed 

 to me to be from the right to the left. I have placed 

 myself inside (fig. 1) whirlwinds of different sizes, and 

 have always felt very distinctly both at the margin and 

 in the middle an unquestionable sensation of upward 



^wpf£f?m * 



Fig. 



-Tricyclist riding through a Whirlwind with- 

 out stopping its Formation. 



motion. I am certain that the matters carried up are 

 distributed through the entire mass of the whirlwind. 

 This I have not seen, but smelt in case of dust, and in 

 case of snow or storm I have felt its contact with my 

 person. 



Another point to be noted is that on placing myself in 

 the centre of a whirlwind it has never vanished. Its 

 action has not been in any way disturbed by my presence. 

 On three or four occasions I have amused myself, 

 among other places, on a road crossing the plain of 

 Gfiaisivaudan between Gieres and Grenoble, by passing 

 at a great speed through a whirlwind (exactly of the 

 shape and size of that at Vincennes), but in spite of the 

 current of air caused by my transit upon a broad and 

 high tricycle (fig. 2) the little whirlwind was not in the 

 least disturbed by this trial. 



I must add that during the fifteen years for which I 

 have been in the habit of travelling on this road I have 

 always seen the whirlwinds formed at the same spot, 



