70 Eleventh Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. [No. 157. 



in their natural order to direct the attention of future observers to 

 them, and these are : 



Atmospheric signs indicating the approach of the storm. The most 

 remarkable of these is the warning noise noticed by Captain 

 Rundle p. 32, to which I have there appended a note refer- 

 ring also to Journal Vol. XI. p. 1000 for another instance where it 

 was carefully noted, and I have heard it also on other occasions ; though 

 not noting it on the spot I will not refer more particularly to them. 

 It is exactly that sort of noise which we hear, and read of, in old houses 

 in England, and with which most of us are acquainted ; but we there 

 attribute it to the noise of the wind in the chimneys, or amongst the 

 trees, or, on board a ship to the rigging : yet here there can be no 

 doubt of its being distinctly heard at sea as the " roaring and screaming" 

 of the wind in a tyfoon or hurricane certainly is. My present theory 

 to account for it is this. I suppose the storm to be really formed 

 and to be u roaring and screaming" at say 200 miles' distance, and 

 that the noise, if not conveyed directly by the wind, may be so re- 

 flectively from the clouds, as in the case of thunder claps. A noise 

 is known on some parts of the coast of England by the name of " the 

 calling of the sea" as occurring in fine weather and announcing a 

 storm, and also in mountainous countries. All these may be con- 

 nected, and seamen may render great service to science and to them- 

 selves by noting these curious phcenomena?. 



The sickly and dancing appearances of the stars, as noticed by 

 Captain Rundle is also remarkable but more easily explained, as we 

 may suppose the sickly (hazy) appearance to have arisen from the 

 atmosphere being loaded with vapour half condensed, and the 

 " dancing" to be occasioned by their appearing at times through 

 spaces and intervals somewhat less loaded with vapour wreaths. 

 If I am not mistaken the fixed light of a Light House has sometimes 

 this dancing motion, by the effect of small wreaths of vapour passing 

 before it, as at the breaking up of a fog ? The vibrating appearance 

 of distant objects seen through a telescope in the morning in tropi- 

 cal climates and owing to the different rarefactions of strata of air is 

 familiar to us all. 



Phosphoric flashes in the water, are common enough in fine wea- 

 ther, but are nevertheless well worth noting; we do not yet know 



