68 Royal Society. 



near Leeds, on the 7th of May, 1862." By Thomas Sutcliffe, Esq., 

 in a letter to Dr. Sharpey, Sec. R.S. 



Headingley, July 16th, 1862. 

 Dear Sir, — Allow me to offer you some memoranda, which I 

 made at Headingley, near Leeds, on the 7th of May last, respecting 

 a hailstorm which visited several parts of England on that day. It 

 appears that it arrived at Newark about 5 o'clock p.m., and was 

 succeeded by a tornado which did much damage ; then, pursuing a 

 N.N.Westerly direction it reached Wakefield at 6.41. The hail 

 continued to fall till about 6.58. The afternoon at Headingley had 

 been remarkably hot and close, and the atmosphere densely charged 

 with vapour; at 6.45 the sky had become so overspread with dark 

 clouds that it was impossible to see anything within doors without 

 artificial light. There were several peals of thunder and repeated 

 flashes of rose-coloured lightning. The storm visited the villages on 

 the west of Leeds with especial violence, the hailstones knocking 

 down several people, and breaking nearly all glass exposed to the 



w.s.w. 



The hailstones did not fall in a continuous shower, but in irregular 

 clusters ; sometimes a field would be thickly strewed with them, 

 whilst an adjoining one escaped with scarcely any ; one part of a 

 greenhouse would be much broken, and the remainder, similarly 

 exposed, escape uninjured. The district over which hail fell was very 

 narrow. 



To illustrate the force of the falling stones, I may mention that 

 circular holes were cut in glass without the sheet being otherwise 

 injured. I have the end of a pendulous branch of beech, 12 inches 

 long and f ths of an inch in circumference, which was cut from the 

 tree, also several larger branches from apple and lilac trees, which 

 appeared to have been split from the adjoining boughs. Some muslin 

 curtains spread on the grass to dry were torn by the hail with 

 numerous crucial rents. 



The hailstones were of different forms and sizes. I sketched about 

 forty varieties; but as many bear a certain resemblance to each other, 



1 select four of them for illustration. These were taken out of deep 

 grass nearly half an hour after they had fallen. Figures 1 to 4 

 represent them of the size and shape they had when I picked them 

 up. The heaviest I weighed was only 2 ozs., but other persons 

 assert that they weighed some upwards of 5 ozs. each. No. 1 had a 

 creamy white colour, with linear markings from the centre outwards ; 

 this variety appeared to constitute the nucleus of most of the larger 

 ones, around which transparent ice had accumulated in rounded con- 

 tinuous masses. From the outside of some of the masses protruded 

 icicles ; the remains of two may be seen attached to the side of 

 No. 2. When the stones first fell, some of these icicles were 1^ and 



2 inches long, and grotesquely shaped. It has been asserted that 

 all the hailstones had the white nucleus, but this was not the case 

 in our neighbourhood ; 35 per cent, of those I gathered were without 

 it, and assumed something of the shape of No. 3, which seemed an 

 aggregate of crystals of clear ice. I found one which was composed 



