STAR OBSERVATIONS.-Our space scarcely admits of any remarks on star-observing this month. We will content ourselves, therefore, with remarking, that, about the middle of the month, the sidereal time at six o'clock in the evening will be 3h. 40m.; and that, therefore, all objects of Right Ascension greater than that, and less than ten hours, will be readily observable in the evening throughout the month. The season is usually the most favourable one for observing double, triple, etc., stars, star-clusters, and nebulæ. Of these, very useful working lists will be found in Book VI. of Chambers's "Descriptive Astronomy."*

THE MOON.-February 1. First quarter at 6h. 15m. P.M. Plato near the north point. Nearer the centre, Eratosthenes and Stadius. Beyond these the remarkable formation, called Schröter, by its discoverer Gruithuisen. Near the south point, Tycho. To its north is the Mare Nubium.

February 2. This evening Copernicus (fifty-six miles in diameter), will be on the terminator. The region between this and Eratosthenes is remarkable for a very large number of minute. craters. To the north of Copernicus lies Mare Imbrium.

February 4. Kepler will be in view.

green Mare Humorum.

February 5. Aristarchus in view.

South of it the distinctly

Curious variations in the

light have been noticed: a subject quite recently again called atten

tion to by Herr Tempel.

February 8. 9h. 35m. A.M. Full Moon. The Mare Crisium, a conspicuous dark grey plain, with an occasional trace of green, A New Edition of Mr. Webb's excellent work is in the press.

may be profitably observed about this time for colours, tints, and visibility of its numerous objects.

February 25 and 26. The terminator will pass over the Marc Crisium and Mare Fœcunditatis.

February 27. Over the Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Nectaris. Beyond the latter, to the north-east, is the large and very deep crater Theophilus, with central peak 5200 feet high.

February 28. Posidonius, a remarkable walled plain, sixty-two miles across, bounding Mare Serenitatis on the west, will come into view late in the evening.

February 29. The terminator will pass over that M. Serenitatis, in the north-western quarter of the Moon. It contains, besides Bessel and Sulpicius Gallus, the remarkable little crater Linné, or Linnæus, about which there has been so much discussion during the past year. Beyond the Marc, is the magnificent range of the Lunar Apennines, some of the ridges and peaks of which will come into view during the night.

STORMS AND HURRICANES: THEIR MOTIONS AND

CAUSES.

BY HENRY WHITE, PH.D.

Ir is a common, and, we believe, very erroneous opinion, that the elemental catastrophes of recent years have been more severe and destructive than those of past times. The error is easily explained. By means of the electric telegraph, and our rapid steam communication, the news is conveyed so quickly to us, that we almost seem to be present at the scene of disaster, and therefore realize it more vividly. It is, as it were, almost next door to us. But a few years ago, the tidings of an earthquake or of a hurricane travelled slowly, and the general public regarded it "as a sorrowful tale long past." Severe as was the "Royal Charter" gale of 1859, it did not probably exceed in violence that of November, 1703, which fell under the observation of Derham, and was described by him in the twenty-fourth volume of the "Philosophical Transactions," and by Defoe, in his account of the Great Storm. The year had been remarkable for the excessive humidity of the spring and summer months, and particularly of May, when more rain fell than in any

month of any year since 1690; and, although the wetness of the season may have had nothing to do, immediately, with the storm, it must, in some degree, have affected the atmospherical conditions of the country. On the 25th of November the wind began to rise; on the 26th its fury augmented, "until at midnight," says Derham, "the storm awakened me. It gradually increased until near three in the morning, and continued until seven with the greatest violence." The storm swept over all England south of the Trent, marking its course by disasters rarely exceeded in tropical climates. Oldmixon describes its doings in London :-"The wind blew west-south-west, and grumbled like distant 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. A great deal of lead was blown off Westminster Abbey, and most of the lead on the churches and houses was either rolled up in sheets or loosened." Among the more distinguished victims of this elemental strife were "that pious and learned prelate, Dr. Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and his lady, who were killed by the fall of part of the old episcopal palace at Wells. The Bishop of London's sister, the Lady Penelope Nicholas, was killed in like manner at Horsely, in Sussex, and Sir John Nicholas, her husband, grievously hurt." The number of undistinguished victims who lost their lives, at sea and on shore, during this tempest, has been computed at more than eight thousand. Three hundred sail were wrecked upon the coast; nine hundred wherries and barges destroyed on the Thames; Rear-Admiral Beaumont, with the crews of several ships, perished on the Goodwin Sands; and the Lighthouse at Eddystone, built by Winstanley, was swept away, along with its builder, so that not a fragment was ever found again. One hundred churches were unroofed; four hundred windmills and eight hundred houses blown down; a quarter of a million of forest and fruit-trees levelled with the earth; and fifteen hundred sheep and cattle drowned by the overflowing of the Severn. The whole nation was for a moment prostrated with terror: many fanatics thought the last day had come-they even imagined that they had heard the trump of the archangel in the blast; and it was many a long year before people could speak of the Great Storm, or of Black Friday, without a shudder.

This visitation of November, 1703, was, in common language, a storm or a tempest-by which is loosely signified a fierce wind blowing in one direction without shifting (as here, from south-west

to north-east); but, from the few scattered observations we have been able to discover (such as the shifting of the wind from S.W. to N.W.), there seems reason to believe that this November storm was in reality part of a hurricane or cyclone. It had probably originated in the usual birth-place of the cyclones, and followed their customary direction until, in the middle of the Atlantic, the centrifugal force proved too strong: it flew asunder-as we have seen the tire of a fly-wheel separate, one portion going off we know not where, the other flying in a tangential line to its original course-to dash with unrestrainable violence upon our shores.

Turning to the more immediate subject of this paper, we shall begin with a description of two of the most tremendous visitations of physical power that have ever been let loose upon our globe. They both occurred in October, 1780, and are amply recorded by Colonel Reid in his "Attempt to develope the Law of Storms," published in 1838. The first happened on the 3rd October, when, after the fury of the tempest had abated, the waves rose to an amazing height, and rushing with indescribable impetuosity on the shore, swept away the town of Savannah-la-Mar, in Jamaica. At Montego Bay, prodigious flashes of lightning regularly succeeded each other, lighting up the midnight darkness which brooded over the general desolation. A still more furious hurricane burst forth on the 11th October. At Barbadoes, the inhabitants were driven from their houses, and forced to seek what shelter they could find in the fields during the night, exposed to all the fury of the elements. A ship was dashed on shore against one of the buildings of the Naval Hospital, and the bodies of men and cattle were lifted from the ground, and carried many yards. Trees were uprooted, all the fruits of the earth were ruined, and more than three thousand of the inhabitants destroyed. At St. Eustatia, seven ships were beaten to fragments on the rocks, and their crews lost. In the night of the 10th, every house to the northward or southward was blown down or washed into the sca, a few only escaping. In the afternoon of the 11th, the wind shifted suddenly to the eastward, and at night it blew with such fury as to sweep away every house. Six thousand people were destroyed, mostly by drowning. At Port Royal, one thousand four hundred houses, besides the churches and public buildings, were blown down; and about one thousand six hundred sick and wounded were almost all buried in the ruins of the hospital of Notre Dame. At the town of St. Pierre, in Martinique, every house was blown over, and more than one thousand people perished. At Barbadoes, though the walls of the Govern

།

ment-house were three feet thick, and the doors and windows had been barricaded, the wind forced its way into every part, and tore off a large portion of the roof. The governor and his family retreated to the cellar, which they were compelled to leave on account of the entrance of the water. They then fled for shelter to the ruins of the foundation of the flag-staff, and when these gave way also, the party dispersed. The governor and the few that remained were thrown down, and with difficulty reached the cannons, under the carriages of which they took shelter. Many of the guns were thrown down by the fury of the gale, and they dreaded every moment either that those over their heads would be dismounted, and crush them by their fall, or that some of the flying ruins would put an end to their existence.

The Barbadoes hurricane of 1831 was another peculiarly calamitous visitation, destroying the lives of one thousand four hundred and seventy-seven persons in the short space of seven hours. At St. Vincent's, one of the inhabitants noticed a cloud to the northward of so threatening an aspect, that he had never seen anything like it during his residence of forty years in the tropics: it was of an olive-green colour. He hastened home, and by nailing up his doors and windows, saved his house from the general calamity. The water of the sea was raised to such a height in Kingston Bay as to flood the streets. The waves broke continually over the cliffs at the north point, a height of seventy feet, and the spray was carried inland by the wind for many miles, and in such quantities that the fresh-water fishes in the ponds were killed. At Barbadoes, the storm was ushered in with. variable squalls of wind and rain, and intervening lulls. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th August, a dismal blackness gathered over everything, with the exception of an ominous circle of obscure light towards the zenith. Shortly after midnight, the paroxysm of the storm occurred, the wind shifting from the northcast to the north-west. Incessant flashes of lightning illuminated the upper regions; but, says an eye-witness, the editor of the "West Indian," "the quivering sheet of blaze was surpassed in brilliancy by the darts of electric fire which were exploded in every direction. A little after two, the astounding roar of the hurricane cannot be described by language. At intervals the lightning flashes ceased, when the blackness enveloping the town was inexpressibly awful. Fiery meteors rained from the heavens; one in particular, of globular form and deep red hue, fell sheer down, growing white hot (as it were) in its descent, and elongating as it neared the earth,