Ground in checking Currents of Wind. 95 
principle most deleterious to vegetation. To shew how 
this property of a sea breeze gets into the atmosphere, I 
had better first describe the formation of “ spoon-drift,;” a 
technical term applied by sailors to water raised into the air 
from the sea in a manner which gives it properties widely 
different from any other form of atmospheric moisture. 
‘Spoon-drift is formed by a stormy wind striking the tops 
of agitated waves, and taking from them particles of sea 
water. | 
- Inthe Mersey, during gales, I have on several occasions wit- ~ 
nessed the spoon-drift and some of its effects. Ihave stood on 
the Cheshire shore and looked towards Liverpool, and noticed 
along the dock-wall a belt of cloud which was raised by a 
Strong west wind striking the agitated tops of the waves 
formed in that locality at the time. This belt of cloud was 
in rapid motion, being carried forward by the force of the 
wind. In the town, the day after the storm, the windows of 
the houses had a soiled appearance, occasioned by the salt 
which had dried on them. In the country, on hedge-rows, I saw, 
pendant from the twigs, drops of water which tasted strongly 
of salt. Storms of this kind rarely occur during the season 
of verdant foliage, but when they do happen in that period, 
their effect’ on vegetation is most marked. On the 2d Octo- 
ber 1853, the Mersey was visited by a violent gale, which 
raised spoon-drift, and distributed it in the manner I have 
stated. In forty-eight hours after the storm the leaves of 
the trees, on the windward or exposed side, had a shrivelled, 
scorched aspect. A road near Birkenhead, lined with two 
thriving, hawthorn hedges, presented the singular appearance 
of two different colours, occasioned by the one side being a 
windward surface, the other side a leeward one. The lee- 
ward surface escaped the saline spray, and retained the dark- 
green colour natural to it at the end of summer ;—the wind- 
ward surface was changed to be quite brown, through the 
deadly action of salt on vegetation. The hard spine-like 
leaves of the gorse bushes and the evergreen pines are often, 
during the winter months, browned on the parts exposed to 
a saline atmosphere ; but, so far as I have been able to note, 
winters which do this to any extent do not occur oftener 
