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ing each other, from their opposing forces might cause the phenomena of hurricanes or rotary storms.
Mr. Peddington says in his valuable work on storms entitled the “Sailor’s Hornbook,” page 22, par. 38, with reference to the cause or origin of typhoons:—“My own views are that cyclones (cyclone is the word which Mr. Peddington adopted to express the idea of a circular storm, and which is now generally accepted and used by nautical people) are purely electric phenomena, formed in the higher regions of the atmosphere, and descending in a flattened disk-like shape to the surface of the Ocean, where they progress more or less rapidly.” “I think that the whirling tornadoes, spouts, and duststorms, are certainly connected with them; i.e. that they are the same meteor in a concentrated form, but we cannot at present say where the law which regulates the motions of the larger kind, ceases to be an invariable one.”
Some writers advance the idea that Volcanoes—and even large fires—originate violent circular motions of the atmosphere; and that volcanic eruptions are often accompanied by violent storms and heavy falls of rain there is no doubt. Mr. Peddington says: “there is much to countenance the idea that cyclones in some parts of the world may originate at great volcanic centres,” and he is inclined to believe that their tracks are partly over the great internal chasms of our globe by which perhaps the volcanic centres and bands communicate with each other. He then goes on to say:—“if we produce at both ends the line of the track of the great Cuba cyclone in 1844, we shall find that it extends from the great and highly active Volcano of Cosseguina, on the Pacific shore of Central-America, to Hecla in Iceland.” In 1821 the breaking out of the great Volcano of Eyafjeld Yokul in Iceland which had been quite since 1612, was followed all over Europe by dreadful storms of wind, hail, and rain. In Iceland the baromemer fell from the day before the eruption and for several days after.
A well authenticated fact was published in the English newspapers in 1852, of an extraordinary marine convul-
