312 
NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTER LXYL 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
E are very seldom annoyed witli thunder- 
storms ; and it is no less remarkable than 
true, that those which arise in the south have 
hardly been known to reach this village ; for 
before they get over us, they take a direction 
to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide into two, 
and go in part to one of those quarters, and in part to the 
other, as was truly the case in the summer of 1783, when 
though the country round was continually harassed with 
tempests, and often from the south, yet we escaped them all ; 
as appears by my journal of that summer/ The only way 
that I can at all account for this fact — for such it is — is that, 
on that quarter, between us and the sea, there are continual 
mountains, hill behind hill, such as Nore Hill, the Barnet, 
Butser Hill, and Portsdown, which somehow divert the 
storms, and give them a different direction. High pro- 
montories and elevated grounds have always been observed 
to attract clouds, and disarm them of their mischievous 
contents, which are discharged into the trees and summits 
as soon as they come in contact with those turbulent 
meteors ; while the humble vales escape, because they are 
so far beneath them. 
But, when I say I do not remember a thunderstorm 
from the south, I do not mean that we never have suffered 
from thunderstorms at all ; for on June 5th, 1784, the 
thermometer in the morning being at 64°, and at noon at 
70", the barometer at 29° — six tenths one-half, and the 
wind north, I observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of 
sulphur, hanging along our sloping woods, and seeming to 
^ To this awful summer of 1783, Cowper also alludes, in his Task, 
book ii. p. 41. — Ed. 
