1848.] Remarkable Hot Wind in Purneah. 149 



return them. I am sorry I did not pay more particular attention to the 

 phenomenon of the hot blast, which I noticed only as far as it was con- 

 nected with my own business, and which otherwise I should not perhaps 

 have observed. The other set of questions is in circulation among my 

 friends in the neighbourhood, and I will return it in due time. 



I would call your particular attention to the answer to the last ques- 

 tion, viz. No 23 ; — I incline strongly to believe the report of the Morung 

 carpenters, that fire fell from heaven. Their account is so exactly in 

 accordance with scientific research that I cannot doubt the truth of it. 

 They say that the seven men who were destroyed, became like stones, 

 and that their friends could not take them up to perform the usual 

 rites. They also say that the fire remained visible and hot for many 

 hours after it fell in masses like large stones or blocks of coal." 



And he inclines to believe that the bodies of the men may have been 

 vitrified! as in the case of burnt stacks of straw and of Lot's wife! 

 but he forgets that, to this the objection is, that in the stacks the alkalj 

 and silex to form the glass are present in the material of the stack in 

 large quantities, while human bodies would afford but a small portion 

 of alkali, and this again in a way not likely to form any petrous mass 

 by fusion with the earth of the bones. The fact however, of the 

 appearance of a hot blast of great extent and violence at a high temper- 

 ature, with the peculiar inflamed appearance of the atmosphere said to 

 accompany the simoon, is of great interest, whether connected or not 

 with the meteor said to have occasioned the death of the seven men in 

 the Morung, probably at a considerable distance from Delowry. I 

 have read somewhere, but I cannot now refer to the passage, of hot 

 blasts being in some seasons experienced in Bundlecund, which often 

 occasion death to those who are exposed to them. They are said to 

 occur only in the height of the hot season, and the writer, I think, tries 

 to account for them by some theory of excessive reverberation of heat in 

 rocky defiles. 



I trust that in future, members and residents in the country, who 

 may be able to assist us in tracing these remarkable meteors, will not 

 fail to do so : there seems to be something more than remote glimpses 

 of a connection between intense electric action, such as this probably 

 was, and the effects of whirlwinds and waterspouts. H. P. 



