the Theory of Hail. 183 



fig. 7. Fig. 8 seems to be a happy example of regelation. 

 It broke through the studio window of the artist Georgy, 

 who immediately made a sketch of it. It was of bright 

 transparent ice, very hard and strong, with a cavity at the 

 top large enough to admit the little finger. It was described 

 as a perforated hailstone ; but the nucleus which occupied the 

 cavity seems to have fallen out before the artist sketched it. 



Some of the stones weighed 5 oz., and the damage to trees, 

 crops, and fruit, glass windows and roofs was considerable ; 

 curtains and blinds were torn into tatters ; the furniture of 

 rooms, including pictures and mirrors, w r as also injured, and 

 in the fields large numbers of hares and rabbits were killed. 

 A curious example of the force of the icy bullets was shown 

 in the destruction of the new cane-bottom of a chair. It 

 would be supposed that so elastic a material would cause the 

 hailstones to rebound. Zinc water-pipes were shot through, 

 and in one case a pipe was flattened. 



The extent of this hailstorm was about 25 miles in length 

 by 5 miles in width, and the damage was very unequally 

 distributed. The whirlwind character of the storm was 

 noticed by many observers. The hail was preceded by rain- 

 drops of large size, after which the rain and hail became 

 mingled in one grey white fog, in which the leaves and twigs 

 of trees, brought apparently from a distance, were seen whirl- 

 ing round. Other proofs of this whirling motion were shown 

 in the unequal action of the storm in different parts of its 

 comparatively narrow limits, and the various angles at which 

 hail fell in different parts of Leipzig. 



The storm of hail was over in about ten minutes, and the 

 temperature fell from 81^° F. to 45^° F. 



Figs. 9 and 10 represent in front and in section a beautiful 

 example of the structure, so often referred to in this article^ 

 of alternate coats of opaque and transparent ice round a 

 nucleus 35 . 



The four figures, 11 to 14, are from drawings made by my 

 King's College colleague, Mr. H. Hatcher. The stones fell 

 during a thunderstorm on the 22nd May, 1865. Fig. 11 

 shows layers of clear and opaque ice. Fig. 12 is apparently 

 the end of a stone broken in the fall. Fig. 13 is a smaller 

 stone of similar structure, and fig. 14 represents a stone show- 

 ing a mammillated termination. Such was the general struc- 

 ture, but some of the smallest stones were nearly spherical, 

 and entirely of clear glass-like ice. The largest stone observed 



35 These figures are from Buehan's Meteorology, 2nd edition, 1868, 



P2 



