84 A DUST-FALL IN THE SOUTH-WEST OF ENGLAND 
wise than by the dust-floats it carries in its current is 
not without interest, and there is at least some possibility 
that a more delicate test may be found. Dr. Mill adds : 
“ Whatever may have been the meteorological agency by 
which the dust-rain of January 22, 1902, reached Northern 
Europe, it seems perfectly sure it was not the same as that 
by which the dust- cloud of March 12, 1901, pursued its 
roughly parallel course. There is no room in the weather- 
charts of January 20 to 23 for a cyclonic centre travelling 
directly northward across Europe ; but we cannot yet tell 
what the distribution of pressure and wind was in the 
Atlantic at the time, and whether a centre of low pressure 
may not have turned the flank of the anti- cyclonic area 
and whisked the dust northward with it. I incline to think 
that the evidence points to transportation in the upper air, 
the larger amount of dust carried causing a general descent 
over Portugal through the opposite surface current, and 
a mere vestige (some 100,000 tons or so) being caught in 
its fall and carried on to the shores of the Channel. The 
farmers of the West of England have this spring ploughed 
many tons of the sands of the Sahara into their furrows.” 
From these brief notes on the dust-falls of 1901 and 1902 
we must proceed to give a few details of the one recorded 
by many observers in February, 1903. 
The May pilot chart for 1903 published by the Meteoro- 
logical Office records that prior to the dust-storm reaching 
Europe sand-storms had interfered with the progress of the 
British Commission in Nigeria, south of the Sahara, and had 
also been experienced on the northern edge of the Sahara. 
Ships which were off the coast of Africa were hampered in 
their movements by the obscuration due to vast quantities 
of sand in the air from the Gulf of Guinea to 30° W. and 
up to the Azores. This chart shows clearly that the wind 
about the Canaries, becoming easterly or south-easterly in 
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