produced by a Fluid in Motion. 211 



mountainous countries, where small streams of water with a con- 

 considerable fall abound. The trompe described by Mr. Stirling- 

 was used in a Scottish lead mine. 



I am not aware when the water-blowing machine was first 

 called a trompe ; in neither the account given by Francois, nor 

 in Dr. Pope's letter is the word employed, and nearly a hundred 

 years later Mr. Stirling gives no name to the machine ; but it 

 was called a trompe in France long before his paper was pub- 

 lished. 



Grignon* writes as follows : " Les trompes ont tire leurs noms 

 de ces meteores qui portent le meme nom, et dont il y a deux 

 sortes, l'une marine et 1' autre terrestre : celle qui se forme sur 

 Bier est une colonne d'eau immense, enlevee par la violence du 

 vent; et celle que l'on voit sur terre est formee par une tour- 

 billon de vent dont le mouvement est determine par les mon- 

 tagnes; ce tourbillon enveloppe un nuage, le comprime et en 

 forme une colonne composee d'air et d'eau qui se precipite sur 

 la surface de la terre ou se brise contre un rocher." 



The Italian tromba, French trombe, signifies a pump, an ele- 

 phant's trunk, and a trumpet, as well as a waterspout : the 

 Spanish trompa signifies a trumpet, an elephant's trunk, and a 

 large top. Prof. Max Miiller informs me that trompe is the old 

 French form of trombe, and that Dier, in his ' Lexicon Etymo- 

 logicum,' derives trombe in the sense of trumpet from the Latin 

 tuba, the insertion of the r being warranted by the analogy of 

 tronar instead of tonar. 



Landais, in his ' Dictionnaire des Dictionnaires/ derives trombe 

 in the sense of waterspout from arp6fij3o^. Now aTpo/iftos 

 means a top, a spindle, a round shell, and is derived from 

 arpecfxD, to turn, twist, revolve. I will not pretend to decide 

 whether (adopting Dier's derivation) a trumpet and a waterspout 

 were called by the same word on account of their being tubiform, 

 or whether the trumpet was so named from the fact of its being 

 the first musical instrument with a straight tubef, and the water- 

 spout afterward snamed from its trumpet-shape; or whether 

 (adopting Landais's derivation, and this seems to me the most 

 plausible) the waterspout was first called a trombe (from 

 arpeefxo) ; the trumpet and elephant's trunk from their bein"- 

 shaped like a waterspout; the top from its rotatory motion; and 

 the pump from the fact of water being apparently drawn up in 

 it, in the same way that it is drawn up in a waterspout. 



I conceive the water-blowing machine received the same name 

 as a waterspout, either because of the mixed column of air and 

 water produced in certain forms of the machine, or, more pro- 



* In the work cited above. 



t Tuba meant originally a straight tube, as opposed to comic. 



