684 
When the flash has passed, and the frigorific influence 
of a vacuum exists no longer, rain takes the place of 
hail, and continues until a repetition of the previous 
phenomena, when it becomes frozen and reaches the earth 
as hail. 
Possibly also the upward currents established by the heat- 
ing effects of the electricity may tend towards a precipitation 
of rain. The thunder clouds appear always to contain an 
abnormal quantity of water, owing to their strong electric 
charge. Supposing that charge to be positive, the upward 
current which meets the clouds will be strongly negative, and 
hence a restoration of electric equilibrium must take place 
upon their meeting. The result of this appears to be a 
copious rainfall, the size of the drops depending upon the 
rapidity with which equilibrium is established ; or, in other 
w r ords, upon the quantity of negative atmosphere from below 
which mingles with the positive clouds. Ultimately a colder 
current takes the place of that which has been set up, and 
according to common observation a north wind generally 
succeeds a thunder storm. 
The cause I have indicated is sufficient to produce those 
more terrific results of electric action which ought rather to 
be called ice-storms than hailstorms, which do such enormous 
damage on the continent, and are not unknown in our own 
country. To this class belong the hail-plague of Egypt, 
(Exodus ix. 22 — 33) ; the storm which smote the Amorites, 
(Josh. x. 11); that which killed 6,000 of Edward Third's 
horses and 1,000 of his men near Paris, (Rapin. vol. i. 4, 
31), or that which devastated Glocester and the neighbour- 
ing counties, in 1808, (Howard, Climate of London, ii. 50). 
Without analyzing the accounts of these and of many 
similar occurrences, it may suffice to take Howard's narrative, 
which he regarded as utterly inexplicable on received doc- 
trines, and to show the applicability to it of the theory of 
