touched the filings of metal in the glass vessel. On examining the effects of the lightning in the Professor's chamber, the door-case was found split half through, and the door torn off, and thrown into the chamber. The lightning therefore seems to have continued its course along the chain conducted under the ceiling of the apartment.

In a Latin treatise, published by M. Lomonosow, member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburgh, several curious particulars are mentioned relative to this melancholy catastrophe. At the time of his death, Professor Richman had in his left coat-pocket seventy silver coins, called rubles, which were not in the least altered by the accident which befel him. His clock, which stood in the corner of the next room, between an open window and the door, was stopped; and the ashes from the hearth thrown about the apartment. Many persons without doors declared that they actually saw the lightning shoot from the cloud to the Professor's apparatus at the top of his house. The author in speaking of the phenomena of electricity, observes that he once saw during a storm of thunder and lightning, brushes of electrical fire, with a hissing noise, communicate between the iron rod of his apparatus and the side of his window, and that these were three feet in length, and a foot in breadth.

HAIL STORMS.

On the 17th of July, 1666, a violent storm of hail fell on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk. At North Yarmouth the hail-stones were comparitively small; but at Snapebridge one was taken up which measured a foot in circumference; at Seckford Hall, one which measured nine inches; and at Melton, one measuring eight inches. At Friston Hall, one of these hail-stones, being put into a balance, weighed two ounces and a half. At Aldborough, it was affirmed that several of them were as large as turkies' eggs. A carter had his head broken by them through a stiff felt hat: in some places it bled, and in others tumours arose: the horses were so pelted that they hurried away his cart beyond all command. The hail-stones were white, smooth without, and shining within.

On the 25th of May, 1686, the city of Lille, in Flanders, was visited by a tremendous hail storm. The hail-stones

weighed from a quarter of a pound to a pound weight, and even more. One among the rest was observed to contain in the centre a dark brown matter, and being thrown into the fire, gave a very loud report. Others were transparent, and melted instantly before the fire. This storm

passed over the city and citadel, leaving not a whole glass in the windows on the windward side. The trees were broken, and some beaten down, and partridges and hares killed in abundance.

In 1697, a horrid black cloud, attended with frequent lightnings and thunder, coming with a south-west wind out of Carnarvonshire, and passing near Snowdon, was the precursor of a most tremendous hail-storm. In the part of Denbigshire bordering on the sea, all the windows on the weather side were broken by the hail-stones discharged from this cloud, and the poultry and lambs, together with a large mastiff, killed. In the north part of Flintshire several persons had their heads broken, and were grievously bruised in their limbs. The main body of this hail storm fell on Lancashire, in a right line from Ormskirk to Blackburn, on the borders of Yorkshire. The breadth of the cloud was about two miles, within which compass it did incredible damage, killing all descriptions of fowl and small creatures, and scarcely leaving a whole pane of glass in any of the windows where it passed. What was still worse it ploughed up the earth, and cut off the blade of the green corn, so as utterly to destroy it, the hail-stones burying themselves in the ground. These hail-stones, some of which weighed five-ounces, were of different forms, some round, others semi-spherical; some smooth, others embossed and crenulated, like the foot of a drinking glass, the ice being very transparent and hard; but a snowy kernel was in the midst of most of them, if not of all. The force of their fall showed that they descended from a great height. What was thought to be most extraordinary in this phenomenon was, that the vapour which disposed the aqueous parts thus to congeal, should have continued undispersed for so long a tract as upwards of sixty miles, and should during this extensive passage, have occasioned so extraordinary a coagulation and congelation of the watery clouds, as to increase the hail-stones to so vast a bulk in so short a space as that of their fall.

On the 4th of May, 1767, at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, after a violent thunder-storm, a black cloud suddenly arose in the south-west, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the wind then blowing strongly in the east, and was almost instantly followed by a shower of hail, several of the hailstones which fell measuring from seven or eight to thirteen or fourteen inches in diameter. The extremity of the storm fell near Offley, where a young man was killed, and one of his eyes were beaten out of his head, his body being in every part covered with bruises. Another person, nearer to Offley, escaped with his life, but was much bruised. At a nobleman's seat in the vicinity, seven thousand squares of glass were broken, and great damage was done to all the neighbouring houses. The large hail stones fell in such immense quantities, that they tore up the ground, and split many large oaks and other trees, cutting down extensive fields of rye, and destroying several hundred acres of wheat, barley, &c. Their figures were various, some being oval, others round, others pointed, and others again flat.

HURRICANES.

THE ruin and desolation accompanying a hurricane can scarcely be described. Like fire, its resistless force rapidly consumes every thing in its track. It is generally preceded by an awful stillness of the elements, and a closeness and mistiness in the atmosphere, which make the sun appear red, and the stars of more than an ordinary magnitude. But a dreadful reverse succeeding, the sky is suddenly overcast and wild; the sea rises at once from a profound calm into mountains; the wind rages and roars like the noise of cannon; the rain descends in a deluge; a dismal obscurity envelopes the earth with darkness; and the superior regions appear rent with lightning and thunder. The earth, on these occasions, often does, and always seems to tremble, while terror and consternation distract all nature: birds are carried from the woods into the ocean; and those whose element is the sea, fly for refuge on land. The affrighted animals in the fields assemble together, and are almost suffocated by the impetuosity of the wind, in searching for shelter, which, when found, serves them only for destruc

tion. The roofs of houses are carried to vast distances from their walls, which are beaten to the ground, burying their inmates beneath them. Large trees are torn up by the roots, and huge branches shivered off, and driven through the air in every direction, with immense velocity. Every tree and shrub that withstands the shock, is stripped of its boughs and foilage. Plants and grass are laid flat to the earth. Luxuriant spring is in a moment changed to dreary winter. This direful tragedy ended, when it happens in a town, the devastation is surveyed with accumulated horror: the harbour is covered with wrecks of boats and vessels; and the shore has not a vestige of its former state remaining. Mounds of rubbish and rafters in one place; heaps of earth and trunks of trees in another; deep gullies from torrents of water; and the dead and dying bodies of men, women, and children, half buried, and scattered about, where streets but a few hours before were, present to the miserable survivors a shocking conclusion of a spectacle to be followed by famine, and, when accompanied by an earthquake, by mortal diseases.

Such is the true and terrific picture of a hurricane in the West Indies, as drawn by Doctor Mosely, in his treatise on tropical diseases!

On the Indian coast hurricanes are both frequent and disastrous. On the 2d of October, 1746, the French squadron, commanded by Le Bourdonnai, being at anchor in Madras roads, a hurricane came on which in a few hours destroyed nearly the whole of the fleet, together with twenty other ships belonging to different nations. One of the French ships foundered in an instant, and only six of the crew were saved. On the 30th of Dec. 1760, during the siege of Pondicherry, a tremendous hurricane drove on shore, and wrecked, three British ships belonging to the besieging squadron: the crews were saved. On the 20th of October of the following year, 1761, the British fleet, then lying in Madras roads, had to encounter a violent hurricane. The men of war put to sea, and were thus providentially saved; but all the vessels which still lay at anchor were lost, and scarcely a soul on board saved. On the 29th of October 1768, another hurricane was, on the coast of Coromandel, fatal to the Chatham Indiaman, which neglected to put to sea.

In the West Indies, the late tremendous hurricane of the 21st of October, 1817, was particularly severe at the Island of St. Lucie. All the vessels in the port were entirely lost. The Government-house was blown down, and all within its walls, comprising the Governor, his lady, and child, his staff, secretaries, servants, &c. amounting to about thirty persons buried in its ruins: not one survived the dreadful accident; and still more horrid to relate, the barracks of the officers and soldiers were demolished, and all within them (about two hundred persons) lost. All the estates on the island were reduced to a heap of ashes. At Dominica, nearly the whole of the town was inundated, with an immense destruction of property.

In Great Britain, a dreadful hurricane, commonly called the great storm, set in at ten at night, on the 26th of November, 1703, and raged violently until seven the next morning. It extended its ravages to every part of the kingdom. In the capital, upwards of two thousand stacks of chimnies were blown down. The lead on the tops of several churches was rolled up like skins of parchment. Many houses were levelled with the ground, and by the fall of the ruins, 21 persons were killed, and more than 200 wounded. The ships in the Thames broke from their moorings: four hundred wherries were lost, and many barges sunk, with a great loss of lives. Atsea the destruction was still greater: twelve ships of war, with upwards of eighteen hundred men on board, were totally lost, together with many merchantmen.

THE MONSOONS.

THE setting in of the Monsoon, or tropical sea wind, în the East Indies, is thus described by Forbes in his Oriental Memoirs. The scene was at Baroche, where the British army was encamped. "The shades of evening approached as we reached the ground, and just as the encampment was completed, the atmosphere grew suddenly dark, the heat became oppressive, and an unusual stillness presaged the immediate setting in of the monsoon. The whole appearance of nature resembled those solemn preludes to earthquakes and hurricanes in the West Indies, from which the east in general is providentially free. We are allowed very