The Hurricane of May 1862. 445 



looking in the direction from which the cattle came, he saw 

 the sky quite obscured by a strange dark wall of cloud, which 

 was approaching; then a large quantity of hay and straw, 

 which seemed to fill the air, followed by clouds of the blossom 

 of the horse-chesnut and small twigs ; then at once, with a 

 roar which is indescribable, came a furious blast, which seemed 

 as if it would sweep the land of all which stood on it. Great 

 trees went down before it torn up by the roots, levelled as if 

 by a sudden blow. The impression was that the house must 

 be swept away. This continued rather more than a minute, 

 and was accompanied by gleams of lightning so frequent as to 

 seem continuous. When it passed there was a torrent of rain, 

 with extremely vivid lightning. 



The gardener, who was out in this storm, says that he ob- 

 served it hurling down the trees to the south of him passing 

 by, and then throwing them down in the north; and that 

 from where he stood, he considered that in two minutes every 

 thing was destroyed within his view, which extended a mile 

 and a half. 



My brother, who was with his regiment about a mile 

 from Beaconfield, describes the storm-cloud seen from this 

 distance as tapering to a point like a waterspout, and exceed- 

 ingly black and dense. He measured many hail-stones an inch 

 and a half in diameter, and some few were larger. He says 

 the hail fell with great force, yet not with sufficient violence to 

 pass through glass without cracking it ; it was, therefore, the 

 force of the gale that propelled them like bullets shot from a 

 rifle. These bullet-like holes were drilled through the windows 

 both on the east and west side of the house, showing the circular 

 movement of the air. From the keeper's house I had several 

 of these panes of glass cut out of the windows, in order to pre- 

 serve them. I also procured the circular pieces of glass that 

 had been punched out. 



It is interesting to observe that, whilst at Highfield House 

 there was a gale from the W. of nine pounds pressure on the 

 square foot, at Beaconfield the hurricane was in a S.S.E. current, 

 and that whilst the hurricane was passing the wind changed to 

 this quarter, and then returned to W.N.W. Probably these 

 gales combined, and the southerly one being the most powerful, 

 .a rotation was caused moving in the direction of W. to S. 

 That this was the case was very readily proved on examination, 

 not only from the direction of the twist of the wood on the 

 snapped-off trees, but from an avenue of chesnuts situate on 

 the extreme eastern edge of the hurricane, all the torn-off 

 boughs lying on the S. or storm side, and carried back beyond 

 the level of these trees. Then, again, the dividing of the hurri- 

 cane at Mr. Thorpe's house was a further proof of the rotation 



