86 Mr. P. J. Martin 07i a remarkable Fall of Hail. 



western extremity, and its ravages did not extend more than 

 about a mile and a quarter wide, whilst in length they reached 

 about twenty miles, viz. from Arundel to the vicinity of 

 Horsham. Hail fell, I believe, further on, quite into Surrey, 

 but the fall of large stones was limited to the space above 

 mentioned. We had been watching the rise, and dissolution 

 into the expanding body of the nimbus of many heavy cumuli 

 from the south and south-west, with some grand explosions 

 of thunder and lightning, when we observed a dense mass 

 approach us in that direction from the Arundel quarter, ac- 

 companied by a rushing or rather roaring sound, clearly to 

 be distinguished from the thunder, and attended with a pretty 

 sharp blast of wind. In a few moments hail of the ordinary kind 

 began to fall copiously, and this in a few moments more was 

 intermixed with stones of an enormous size, the slapping of 

 which could be clearly distinguished from the roaring of the 

 mass of other hail on the slated roof of the summer-house in 

 which I and my family had taken shelter. Very little rain fell, 

 and the duration of the hail-storm was about ten minutes, only 

 five of which was occupied by the fall of the largest hail-stones. 

 On its clearing off, the ground was observed to be whitened 

 by the hail, amongst which the large stones lay like tennis-balls 

 amongst marbles; and on measuring some of them, after they 

 had lain several minutes melting on the ground, we found 

 many five, six, and seven inches in circumference. These 

 large stones were more compact in their structure than the 

 smaller ones, and were all of the flattened spheroidal form, 

 and likened by many of the common people in size and shape 

 to their thick old-fashioned watches. A dead calm succeeded 

 to the passage of the storm, and the atmosphere continued to 

 be encumbered with dark clouds, but without any more rain 

 during the night. 



The congelation of large drops of rain at the moment of 

 aggregation, and the formation of ordinary hail, and even 

 a considerable accretion of more ice to the original globule 

 in its passage downwards, do not seem to be very difficult of 

 comprehension and explanation. But there is only one way in 

 which I can suppose such masses of ice as these can be sus- 

 pended long enough in the atmosphere to grow to such 

 enormous sizes, and that is by the assistance of a nubilar 

 whirlwind or water-spout {Trombe aerienne) with sufficient 

 power to keep them in its whorl, and to resist the earth's at- 

 traction, whilst the concretive action is going on, till their 

 momentum overcomes the suspending power, or till they are 

 thrown beyond the range of its intensity. That such operations 



