are supposed to derive their heat from tracts of unknown deserts in the intertropical regions of that island-continent. "One might almost fancy," says Mrs. Meredith," the Ancient Mariner to have experienced one during his ghostly voyage, he so accurately describes their aspect:· All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, No bigger than the moon.'" The sirocco of that country always blows from the north-west. At Sydney, its oven-like temperature is moderated by the mid-day sea-breeze; but in the interior, it is severely felt, and is often fatal to the vegetation. Every green thing droops and dies, dried up like half-burnt paper. Large tracts of cultivated land, covered with luxuriant green crops of wheat or barley, just going into ear, are scorched, shrivelled, and absolutely blackened by the heat, and become fit for nothing but to be cut as litter; and of course the delicate plants and flowers of the gardens are not spared by the "burning breath of the fervid Air-king." 6. Mistral. Autun. Bise. These are local atmospheric currents prevalent in the southeast of France. Pliny mentions the first, under the name of Circius, as remarkable for its violence. The Mistral blows from the north-west, descending from the mountains of Central France, and sweeping over the ancient provinces of Provence and Languedoc, where it is supposed to contribute greatly to the salubrity of the air, by dispelling the exhalations from the marshes and stagnant waters common in that region of extensive levels. In the Gulf of Lyons it frequently occasions great damage to the shipping, and to the inhabitants upon the coast, owing to the opposition offered to the course of the wind by the Alps and the Pyrenees, causing it to rush through the opening between them with an increased momentum. Hence the name of the gulf, not derived, as commonly imagined, from the city of Lyons, but from the lion-like violence of its tempests. Malte Brun quotes from William of Nangis, a monk of the middle ages, a remark to this effect:—“ It is called the Lion's sea, because it is ever rough, tempestuous, and destructive." The Autun blows in an opposite direction, from the east and south-east, hot and unwholesome, producing morbid effects upon the human system, like the sirocco. It is experienced through the country extending from the coast about Narbonne to the neighbourhood of Toulouse, and frequently blows with great force in the more westerly parts of its track in the vicinity of Castelnaudary. The vent de Bise, or black wind, is a cold piercing current from the Alps and the mountains of Auvergne, which chiefly follows the course of the Rhone, in the valley through which it runs, from north to south, rendering the climate in winter very severe. The currents we are now noticing, confined within a comparatively narrow range, are uniform in their direction; and innumerable examples might be cited of localities where the same uniformity is found, caused by the irregularities of the surface, the position of mountains and valleys. In many cases, local winds are merely branches of a great atmospheric current, diverted from the main stream into an inverse course by the superficial inequalities. Thus, at Liverpool, the prevalent south-west wind of England is scarcely ever felt, owing to the situation of the town, while the predominating wind is the south-east, which is rarely experienced in the kingdom at large. The movements of the atmosphere over the Red Sea are plainly determined by its channel, for the wind never blows in any other direction than to one of its extremities. Captain Parry always found the wind either east or west in Lancaster Sound, and during the whole year, excepting about two months, it blows constantly up the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio. Saussure mentions a valley at the foot of the Pyrenees, wholly environed with mountains, except towards the north-west, and a few other very narrow openings, where a cold north-west wind blows regularly during the nights of summer, so that the inhabitants of the village of Bland can winnow their corn at no other time. 7. Hurricanes. Sudden and tremendous bursts of storm are common in mountainous districts, and in the plains which lie at the base of those vast piles of nature's building. Their peaks, exposed by elevation to intense cold, and covered with perpetual snow, cool and condense the warm air rising up from the regions below which descends with an impetus proportioned to its own gravity and the lighter condition of the air over the regions below, and a tempest ensues upon considerable condensation and rarefaction in adjoining regions of the atmosphere. This is the origin of the pamperos, or south-west winds, which rush from the snows of the Andes, and sweeping over the level pampas with unchecked violence, become hurricanes before their arrival at Buenos Ayres, and carry to the city clouds of dust collected from the plains, occasioning almost total darkness in the streets. So sudden is the operation of the pampero, that persons bathing in the river Plate have been drowned by the agitation of its waters through the tempest before they could possibly reach the shore. Captain Fitzroy relates, when in his ship upon the river, that a small boat had been hauled ashore above high-water mark, and fastened with a strong rope to a large stone, but the pampero set in, and afterwards the boat was found far from the beach, shattered to pieces, but still fast to the stone, which it had dragged along. But this violent movement of the atmosphere is remarkably beneficial in its general effect to the inhabitants of the pampas of Buenos Ayres and on the banks of the Plata. The prevailing winds through a great part of the year are northerly, and these passing over extensive marshy tracts bring with them a degree of humidity, which renders the land rife with fever and pestilence, till the pampero rushes down from the Andes and clears the atmosphere. A somewhat similar wind, is one of our own physical phenomena, hitherto unexplained, to the violence of which the tourist to the Cumberland lakes may occasionally be exposed in spring and autumn. This is the Helm-wind. Hutchinson, in the history of the county, and the Rev. J. Watson, in a report to the British Association, have given an account of its singular features. When not a breath of air is stirring, or a cloud is to be seen, a line of clouds will be suddenly formed over the summits of the lofty ridge of mountains at Hartside, extending several miles on the western side. To this collection of vapours the term Helm is applied from its shape. It exhibits an awful and solemn appearance, spreading a gloom over the regions below, like the shadows of night. Parallel to this, another line of clouds, called the Bar, begins to form. The two lines unite together at their extremities, and embrace between them an elliptical cloudless space, from half a mile to four or five miles in breadth, and from eight to thirty miles in length, the breadth being from east to west, and the length from north to south. Soon after the complete formation of the Helm-bar, a violent wind issues from the space between the clouds, generally blowing directly from the east, and with such power that trees have been dismantled of their foliage, stacks of grain dispersed, and heavy vehicles overturned. The helm-wind has continued for as much as nine days together, with a noise resembling that of a violent sea-storm, but it is seldom accompanied with any rain. It has been suggested, that the air from the coast of Northumberland, being cooled as it rises to the summit of the mountains, and there condensed, descends from thence with great force, by its gravity, into the district to the west of Hartside, the scene of the phenomenon: but obviously a variety of other causes must enter into its production. In several parts of the globe, an extensive vacuum being suddenly created by the rapid condensation of vapour, the surrounding air rushes in with immense impetuosity from all points of the compass, blowing in gusts of resistless power, destroying all the productions of the earth, levelling forests and the firmest buildings, and inundating whole tracts of country by the deluge of rain with which they are accompanied. These storms seldom occur far out in the open ocean, or beyond the tropics, or nearer the equator than nine or ten degrees. Their principal localities are the West India islands, those of Madagascar, Mauritius, and Bourbon, the north-west coast of Africa, the Bay of Bengal, and the Chinese Sea, where they are variously called hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons. A heavy swell upon the sea, a dusky redness of the sky, a close oppressive air, and a wild irregularity in the appearance of things, are the usual precursors of a tropical tempest. Though generally confined to the districts mentioned, where they are of frequent occurrence, the extratropical latitudes, at more distant intervals, experience the force of the hurricane. "When were the winds Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? This is the language of Cowper in the Task, respecting the year 1783, when, amid the other events of that portentous season, noticed upon a previous page, a succession of storms, accompanied with violent rains, visited the whole of Great Britain, and caused considerable damage. But what is known in our records as the "Great Storm," occurred on the night of the 26th and the morning of the 27th of November, 1703, and has been referred to by almost all the writers of that period. Derham, in the Philosophical Transactions for the year following, states: "Of the preceding parts of the year (1703), the months of April, May, June, and July were wet in the southern parts of England, particularly in May, when more rain fell than in any month of any year since 1690; June also was very wet; and though July had considerable intermissions, yet on the 28th and 29th there fell violent showers of rain, and the newspapers gave accounts of great rains that month from divers places of Europe. On Thursday, November 25th, the day before the tempest, in the morning there was a little rain, the winds high in the afternoon. In the evening there was lightning, and between nine and ten o'clock at night a violent but short storm of wind, and much rain. Next morning, November 26th, the wind was S. S. W., and high all day, and so continued till I was in bed and asleep. About twelve that night the storm awakened me, which gradually increased till near three that morning, and from thence till near seven it continued with the greatest violence; then it began to abate slowly and the mercury to rise swiftly." This tempest filled the whole kingdom with terror, and produced immense commercial loss, and many melancholy accidents. The country between the The Loire in France and the Trent in England was the chief scene of its ravages. historians of those times give an affecting account of the dismal appearance of the district. Houses unroofed-steeples blown down-stacks of corn scattered abroad-vessels dismasted or wrecked and upwards of eight thousand persons drowned. "The wind," says Oldmixon, " blew west-south-west, and grumbled like thunder, accompanied with flashes of lightning. It threw down several battlements and stacks of chimneys at St. James's Palace; tore to pieces tall trees in the Park; and killed a servant in the house. The Guard-house at Whitehall was much damaged, as was the Banqueting-house. A great deal of lead was blown off Westminster Abbey; and most of the lead on churches and houses either rolled up in sheets or loosened. The pious and learned prelate Dr. Richard Kidder, bishop of Bath and Wells, and his lady, were killed by the fall of part of the old episcopal palace at Wells. The bishop of London's sister, Lady Penelope Nicholas, was killed in like manner at Horsely in Sussex, and Sir John Nicholas, her husband, grievously hurt." Upwards of 800 houses, 400 windmills, and 250,000 timber trees were thrown down; 100 churches unroofed; 300 sail lost upon the coast; 900 wherries and barges destroyed on the Thames; the Eddystone lighthouse, built by Winstanley, was overthrown; 15,000 sheep, besides other cattle, were drowned by the overflowing of the Severn ; and Rear Admiral Beaumont, with the crews of several ships, perished on the Goodwin Sands. The West Indies and the vicinity of the Mauritius seem to be two principal foci of hurricanes, from their frequency and tremendous violence in those localities. Of thirteen hurricanes, described by Colonel Reid, in his interesting attempt to develop the law of storms, eleven took place in the neighbourhood of the Mauritius and Madagascar, which sanctions an opinion prevalent among seamen, that gales are commonly avoided by ships steering in a course so as to keep well to the eastward of the Mauritius. To give some idea of a tropical hurricane, the particulars gathered by Colonel Reid from various sources, respecting that which desolated several of the West India islands in the year 1831, are here introduced. It passed over Barbadoes, St. Lucia, St. Domingo, and Cuba, swept the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, raged simultaneously at Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, entered the adjoining states, and seems to have been disorganised by the opposition offered to its progress by the mountain region of the Alleghanies. The hurricane accomplished the distance of 2000 miles in 150 hours, at an average velocity of 13 miles an hour, but the rate of its progressive motion was insignificant in comparison with that of its rotatory movement, a feature hereafter to be adverted to. Before its arrival at St. Vincent, a cloud was observed to the north by a resident, so threatening in its aspect and peculiar in its colour, that of olive green, that, impressed with a sense of impending danger, he hastened home, and by nailing up his doors and windows saved his house from the general calamity. In this island, the most remarkable effect of the storm was the destruction of an extensive forest at its northern extremity, the trees of which were killed without being blown down. In 1832, these trees were frequently examined by Colonel Reid, and appeared not to have been killed by the wind, but by the immense quantity of electric matter rendered active during the storm. When at its height, two negroes at Barbadoes were greatly terrified by sparks of electricity passing off from one of them, as they were struggling in the darkness, in the garden of Coddrington College, to reach the main building, after the destruction of their hut. Such was the quantity of spray carried inland from the sea by the wind, that it rained salt water over the whole island, which killed the fresh-water fish in the ponds, and several ponds continued salt for some days after the storm. The afternoon that ushered in the hurricane, that of the 11th of August, was one of dismal gloom, but about four o'clock, there was an obscure circle of imperfect light towards the zenith subtending an angle of 35° or 40°. Variable squalls of wind and rain, with intervening calms, prevailed till midnight, when the lightning flashed fearfully, and a gale blew fiercely from the north and north-east. At one a. M. the wind increased, but suddenly shifted its quarter, blowing from north-west and intermediate points. Towards three o'clock, after a little intermission, the hurricane again burst from the western points, hurling before it thousands of missiles-the fragments of every unsheltered work of human art. The strongest houses vibrated to their foundations, and the surface of the earth trembled as the destroyer passed over it. There was no thunder at any time distinctly heard, but the horrible roar and yelling of the wind, the noise of the ocean, whose waves threatened the destruction of every thing in Barbadoes that the other elements might spare, the clattering of tiles, the falling of roofs and walls, and the combination of a thousand other sounds, formed a hideous and appalling din. As soon as the dawn rendered outward objects visible, and, the storm abating, permitted the inhabitants of Bridgetown to venture out, a grand but distressing picture of ruin presented itself. From the summit of the cathedral tower, the whole face of the country appeared the wreck of its former condition. No sign of vegetation could be observed, except here and there a few patches of sickly green. The surface of the ground exhibited the scorching and blackening effect of the lightning. A few remaining trees, stripped of their boughs and foliage, wore a cold and wintry aspect; and the numerous villas in the neighbourhood, formerly concealed amid thick groves, were exposed and in ruins. In the year 1837, three hurricanes occurred in the West Indies, and adjacent parts of the Atlantic, the narratives of which, as collected by Colonel Reid from different observers, present some singular features. The first passed over Barbadoes on the 26th of July. The sky assumed a blue-black appearance, with a red glare at the verge of the horizon. The flashes of lightning were accompanied with a whizzing noise, like that of a red-hot iron plunged in water. The barometer and sympiesometer fell rapidly and sunk to 28.45 inches. The Antigua hurricane, the second of that year, commenced in the Atlantic, on the night of the 31st of July, and was encountered by Captain Seymour, in the brigantine Judith and Esther of Cork. He observed near the zenith a white appearance of a round form, and while looking stedfastly at it, a sudden gust of wind carried away the topmast and lower scudding sails. During the hurricane the eyes of the crew were remarkably affected, their sight became dim, and every one of their fingernails turned quite black, and remained so nearly five weeks afterwards. The captain inferred, from the universality of the effect, that it could not have been produced by the firmness of the grasp with which they were holding by the rigging, but that the whole was caused by an electric body in the elements. On the 2nd of August, in another situation, the Water Witch was caught by the skirts of the same storm, the wind blowing in squalls from the W. and N. N. W. till the evening, when "a calm succeeded," states Captain Newby, "for about ten minutes; and then, in the most tremendous unearthly screech I ever heard, it recommenced from the south and south-west." The third hurricane of the year was met with by the Rawlins, about midnight of the 18th of August, when, after blowing violently for twelve hours from the north, in an instant a perfect calm ensued for an hour, and then, quick as thought, the wind sprung up with tremendous force from the south-west, no swell whatever preceding the convulsion. During this hurricane, an extraordinary phenomenon presented itself, resembling a solid black perpendicular wall about 15° or 20° above the horizon, which disappeared and became visible again several times, described by one of the observers, as "the most appalling sight he had ever seen during his life at sea." A similar spectacle is described by an officer on board the king's ship Tartarus, during a hurricane on the American coast in the year 1814:-"No horizon appeared, but only a something resembling an immense wall within ten yards of the ship." The power of the wind was remarkably exemplified during the great hurricane of 1780, |