Meteorology from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ... in circumference, had a beautiful radiated structure (fig. 6), marking it as a single stone, formed in passing through two distinct regions of condensation. Dr. Buist stated to the Bombay Geographical Society, that in India the hail-stones are from five to twenty times larger than those in England, often weighing from six ounces to a pound, seldom less than walnuts, often that of oranges These storms are almost always accompanied by violent wind and rain, thunder and lightning, and are frequent in the delta of the Ganges, especially in the low country within fifty miles of the Bay of Bengal. (119.) Great hailstorms are often preceded by a loud clattering and clashing sound, indicating the hurtling together of masses of ice in the air. The recent experiments of Professor Tyndall on the reuniting of broken ice by "regelation," or a sort of welding, fully explains the formation, under such circumstances, of large masses of ice of irregular forms in this aerial conflict. Such are recorded to have fallen of almost fabulous magnitude. In Candeish, in 1826, in a hailstorm which perforated the roofs of houses like small cannon shot, a mass fell which took some days to melt, and must have weighed more than a hundred-weight.--(Malet.) On May 8,1832, a mass fell in Hungary a yard in length and nearly two feet in thickness.--(Thomson.) And if it be true, as stated in the Bossshire Advertiser in 1849, that a block "of irregular shape, nearly twenty feet in circumference," fell in August of that year on the estate of Mr. Moffat of Ord, immediately after an extraordinarily loud peal of thunder, Heyne's relation of a hail-stone as large as an elephant, at Seringapatam, in the reign of Tippoo Sultan, may perhaps find believers. The Eoss-shire mass is stated to...