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am not furnished with facts sufficient to make any pertinent answer to them; and this paper has already a suffficient quantity of conjecture.

Your manner of accommodating the accounts to your hypothesis of descending spouts, is, I own, ingenious, and perhaps that hypothesis may be true. I will consider it farther, but, as yet, I am not satisfied with it, though hereafter I may be.

Here you have my method of accounting for the principal phenomena, which I submit to your candid examination.

And as I now seem to have almost written a book, instead of a letter, you will think it high time I should conclude; which I beg leave to do, with assuring you, that

I am, Sir, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

DOCTOR M

SIR,

*, TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

ESQ. AT PHILADELPHIA.

Description of a Water-Spout at Antigua.

Read at the Royal Society, June 24, 1756.

New-Brunswick, November 11, 1752.

I AM favoured with your letter of the 2d instant, and shall, with pleasure, comply with your request, in describing (as well as my memory serves me) the wa

* Dr. Mercer: Editor.

ter-spout

ter-spout I saw at Antigua; and shall think this, or any other service I can do, well repaid, if it contributes to your satisfaction in so curious a disquisition.

I had often seen water-spouts at a distance, and heard many strange stories of them, but never knew any thing satisfactory of their nature or cause, until that which I saw at Antigua; which convinced me that a water-spout is a whirlwind, which becomes visible in all its dimensions by the water it carries up with it.

There appeared, not far from the mouth of the harbour of St. John's, two or three water-spouts, one of which took its course up the harbour. Its progressive motion was slow and unequal, not in a strait line, but, as it were, by jerks or starts. When just by the wharf, I stood about one hundred yards from it. There appeared in the water a circle of about twenty yards diameter, which, to me, had a dreadful, though pleasing appearance. The water in this circle was violently agitated, being whisked about, and carried up into the air with great rapidity and noise, and reflected a lustre, as if the sun shined bright on that spot, which was more conspicuous, as, there appeared a dark circle around it. When it made the shore, it carried up with the same violence shingles, staves*, large pieces of the roofs of houses, &c. and one small wooden house it lifted entire from the foundation on which it stood, and carried it to the distance of fourteen feet, where it settled without breaking or oversetting; and, what is remarkable,

* I suppose shingles, staves, timber, and other lumber, might be lying in quantities on the wharf, for sale, as brought from the northern colonies. B. F.

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though the whirlwind moved from west to east, the house moved from east to west. Two or three negroes and a white woman, were killed by the fall of timber, which it carried up into the air and dropped again, After passing through the town, I believe it was soon dissipated; for, except tearing a large limb from a tree, and part of the cover of a sugar-work near the town, I do not remember any farther damage done by it. I conclude, wishing you success in your enquiry,

And am, &c.

W. M.

DOCTOR

OF BOSTON, TO BENJAMIN

FRANKLIN, ESQ. AT PHILADELPHIA.

Shooting Stars.

Read at the Royal Society, July 8, 1756.

Boston, May 14, 1753.

SIR, I RECEIVED your letter of April last, and thank you for it. Several things in it make me at a loss which side the truth lies on, and determine me to wait for farther evidence.

As to shooting-stars, as they are called, I know very little, and hardly know what to say. I imagine them to be passes of electric fire from place to place in the atmosphere, perhaps occasioned by accidental pressures of a non-electric circumambient fluid, and so by propulsion, or allicited by the circumstance of a distant quantity minus electrified, which it shoots to supply, and becomes apparent by its contracted passage through

* Dr. Perkins. Editor.

a non-electric

a non-electric medium. Electric fire in our globe is always in action, sometimes ascending, descending, or passing from region to region. I suppose it avoids too. dry air, and therefore we never see these shoots ascend. It always has freedom enough to pass down unobserved, but, I imagine, not always so, to pass to distant climes and meridians less stored with it.

The shoots are sometimes all one way, which, in the last case, they should be.

Possibly there may be collections of particles in our atmosphere, which gradually form, by attraction, either similar ones per se, or dissimilar particles, by the intervention of others. But then, whether they shoot or explode of themselves, or by the approach of some suitable foreign collection, accidentally brought near by the usual commotions and interchanges of our atmosphere, especially when the higher and lower regions intermix, before change of winds and weather, I leave.

I believe I have now said enough of what I know nothing about. If it should serve for your amusement, or any way oblige you, it is all I aim at, and shall, at your desire, be always ready to say what I think, as I am sure of

your

candour.

I

am, &c.

A subsequent Paper from the same.

Water-Spouts and Whirlwinds.

Read at the Royal Society, July 8, 1756.

SPOUTS have been generally believed ascents of water from below, to the region of the clouds, and whirlwinds

D 3

whirlwinds the means of conveyance. The world has been very well satisfied with these opinions, and prejudiced with respect to any observations about them. Men of learning and capacity have had many opportunities in passing those regions where these phenomena were most frequent, but seem industriously to have declined any notice of them, unless to escape danger, as a matter of mere impertinence in a case so clear and certain as their nature and manner of operation are taken to be. Hence it has been very difficult to get any tolerable accounts of them. None but those they fell near can inform us any thing to be depended on; three or four such instances follow, where the vessels were so near, that their crews could not avoid knowing something remarkable with respect to the matters in question,

Capt. John Wakefield, junior, passing the Straits of Gibraltar, had one fall by the side of his ship; it came down of a sudden, as they think, and all agree the de

scent was certain.

Captain Langstaff, on a voyage to the West Indies, had one come across the stern of his vessel, and passed away from him. The water came down in such quantity that the present Captain Melling, who was then a common sailor at helm, says it almost drowned him, running into his mouth, nose, ears, &c. and adds, thaț it tasted perfectly fresh.

One passed by the side of Captain Howland's ship, so near that it appeared pretty plain that the water descended from first to last.

Mr. Robert Spring was so near one in the Straits of Malacca, that he could perceive it to be a small very thick rain.

All

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