By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



379 



sides bear marks of injury; and so the eastern no less than the 

 western sides of the corn stacks were hurled to the ground, the 

 wind appearing to have wrapped round them, and so scattered the 

 sheaves in all directions, and to an incredible distance: while the 

 trees throughout the whole distance lie facing every point of the 

 compass, 1 though the great majority of course fell eastwards, in the 

 general direction of the storm. Now these are very remarkable 

 circumstances, and well deserve careful attention, for there must 

 be a cause to account for the peculiarity, and for this manifest 

 tendency in many instances both in the trees and buildings at- 

 tacked to fall inwards towards a common centre and in a narrow 

 space. How then is such a phenomenon to be accounted for? There 

 are some who affirm that the storm came on with undulatory move- 

 ment, like the waves of the sea, and thus account for its selection 

 of certain houses and trees here and there, leaving others all around 

 them untouched, as occurred more especially in my own plantations ; 

 and in the case of a cottage occupied by one Anthony Edwards, 

 near Blacklands Park, which stands uninjured in the midst of de- 

 struction, not to mention the church at Yatesbury, which seems to 

 have been specialty protected. But this theory, however ingenious 

 and plausible as regards the single question of the eccentric parti- 

 ality shown to some, and the furious attack on other objects, utterly 

 fails to account for the reversed position of so many of them : but 

 certainly if a theory be correct, it ought to meet every case : this 

 therefore must at once be abandoned. Others again say that it had 

 a rotatory movement, spinning in circles, revolving very rapidly, 

 and drawing everything within reach into its vortex as it whirled 

 along ; and this is probably correct, so far as it goes ; for I appre- 

 hend that such teas the movement of the tornado, 2 but even this 



1 1 should explain here, that though there were occasional instances, (two at 

 Quemerford, one at Cherhill, and one at Yatesbury) of trees falling, as it were 

 backwards, with their heads turned towards the west, and many others in the 

 direction of south and south east, yet by far the more usual position of those 

 which were not prostrated in the line of the storm, was more or less northward, 

 at every inclination from right across, to the general direction of the storm. 



2 1 am bound to say that on this point Mr. Rowell entertains a different 

 opinion, though in this one particular I venture to differ from him ; his remarks 

 on this head are as follows, " Although the whirling of the storm would not tell 



