the thunder-storm, rain and hail, is shrouded in impenetrable mystery; no man can "understand the spreadings of the clouds," no man hath "seen the treasures of the hail," but the terrible visitations of these agents of Divine power have been experienced by mankind from the earliest ages of the world; for it is recorded in the Sacred Writings as follows:

"The Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along the ground."

"He maketh lightnings with rain "

"He destroyed their vines with hail."

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He smote with hail in all the labours of harvest." "The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars, yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon."

As in the earliest ages, so at the present time, the countries of the East, and especially in the immediate vicinity of Mount Lebanon, which is nine thousand, six hundred feet in altitude, are yet subject to the foregoing tremendous visitations; and even in this country they occasionally occur in a scarcely inferior degree.

Regularly shaped hail-stones and shapeless masses of ice, three, six, and even nine inches in circumference or girt, suddenly shower down from the clouds, and devastate not only the corn-crops and orchards of open plains and vallies, but the exotic flowers and fruits, which are sedulously kept in conservatories, by the refinements of horticulture.

"The time of the continuance of hail is always very

short, generally only a few minutes, and very seldom so long as a quarter of an hour; the quantity of ice which falls from the clouds in so short a time is prodigious; the ground being sometimes covered with it to the depth of several inches.

“The clouds, from which hail is precipitated, appear to be of very considerable extent and depth; it has been remarked that they have a peculiar grey or reddish colour, and that their lower surfaces present enormous protuberances, whilst their edges exhibit deep and numerous indentations."

Fig. 48.

A mineral, beautifully transparent, colourless, and having the regular form of a six-sided prism, with a six-sided pointed summit, was well known to the ancients, and they imagined it to consist of water more intensely and compactly frozen than common ice, and therefore incapable of thawing by solar-heat-this substance they termed "Crystal;" the modern chemist discovers it to be the purest form of the earth Silica, and he employs the word "crystal" to denote any

solid substance, either native or artificial, that presents itself in a regular figure, however different such figure may be to that of ancient" crystal."

Upon examination of a hailstone received upon a soft yielding surface, and thus prevented from shattering by its violent collision with the hard solid earth, it exhibits the crystalline form of a short six-sided prism, having at each end a short six-sided pyramid, one being invariably truncated," or cut off as shown in the annexed engraving.

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Fig. 49.

The known phenomena attendant upon the ordinary transition of water to the state of ice will claim our attention hereafter; leaving therefore the unknown physical cause of hail and its crystalline form, let us proceed to investigate another phenomenon.

In addition to the various physical forms of rain, dew, mist, and hail, in which water most commonly descends upon the earth throughout the seasons of Spring, Summer, and Autumn, it sometimes pours down in one gigantic and unbroken liquid column, and then is popularly "the water-spout."

The electrician and the chemist, by observation, experiment, and analogy, are led to conclude that during certain states of the atmosphere, although a cloud may not be so powerfully charged with electricity as to seek a restoration of its equilibrium by emitting a disruptive flash of lightning to subjacent objects; it may be sufficiently charged when at a moderate elevation, that its own entire and mobile volume of aqueous particles, will yield downward in the form of a watery column, through which the inherent electricity seeks a rapid though silent discharge; the same,-to use a very homely simile for conveying an idea regarding the mere attraction and transit-as a large flock of cotton nearly saturated with water, when held in one hand, may have its filaments drawn out by the other, in an unbroken form through which by capillary attraction the water pass in a smooth and silent stream, until its excess has thus drained away.

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An electrical cloud, when thus yielding to the attractive or inductive power of the objects over which it hovers, is gradually drawn from its rounded form into that of a fringe, and this gradually accumulates into the form of a well-defined point; then as the distance between the cloud and subjacent bodies diminishes, this point becomes more and more elongated, until at length it forms an unbroken conductor, not only for the discharge of the electricity of the clouds, but likewise for a torrent of its waters; and these phenomena having ensued, the cloud is found either to have wholly

vanished, or to present but a minature semblance of its original form.

Generally speaking, the electricity of the "waterspout" is not so much to be dreaded as the vast aqueous torrent, that descends with impetuous force upon the dwellings of man and the labours of the field, which are all alike overthrown and prostrated, and swept away by this sudden and concentrated inundation.

The occurrence of this extraordinary natural phenomenon is by no means so common inland, as at sea, and there it displays itself in a yet more striking and remarkable form.

There, in place of the solid and fixed earth, the liquid and flowing water presents an attractive surface for the floating and mobile vapour of the electric clouds.

In such case, not only does the electric cloud emit an elongated portion of its volume as a precursor of the full descent, but the level surface of the water simultaneously gives rise to a mobile pointed wave, and thus by mutual attraction, the former continuing to descend and the latter to ascend, they at length suddenly coalesce, and form an aqueous conductor for the restoration of the electrical equilibrium; and having effected this, the waters of the cloud are ultimately received into the bosom of the ocean, from whence they were exalted by the imponderable agency of heat.

An idea of the form of this remarkable, and when minutely considered, important phenomenon, may be gained by reference to the engraving on the next page.

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