sly wrought. Out of the clouds will come occasional heavy
missiles and deluges of water. Then down goes the tornado again
crashing and scattering by its own force and adding to its destructive
power by a battery of timbers and other objects brought along from the
previous impact. Relieved of these masses, it again gathers up
miscellaneous movables and repeats its previous operation.

The force with which these objects strike is best seen when they fall
outside of the tornado's path, since the work done by the missile is
not then disturbed by the general destructive force of the storm.
Thus, near Racine, Wis., I have known an ordinary fence rail, slightly
sharpened on one end, to be driven against a young tree like a spear
and pierce it several feet. The velocity of the rail must have been
something enormous, or otherwise the rail would have glanced from such
a round and elastic object.

Many of the settlers in the tornado districts of Southern Minnesota,
Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska excavate a deep cellar beneath their houses
and cover it with heavy timbers as a place of refuge for their families
when a tornado threatens to strike them. While these dugouts are
usually effective, they are not always so. There have been instances
where families having only time to descend and not time enough to close
the trap door have been exposed to the storm's full fury by the tornado
getting into the opening and lifting off the whole roof after having
first swept away the house above. Another pathetic case resulted in
the death of a whole family by an extraordinary freak of the tornado.
The storm first struck a large pond and swept up all the water in it.
Its next plunge deposited this water on one of these dugouts, and the
family were drowned like chipmunks in a hole.

Some of the western tornadoes are accompanied by electrical
manifestations to an extent that has originated a belief in electricity
as their cause. These disturbances are very marked in some cases,
while in others they have not been noticed. In one tornado in Central
Illinois electricity played very peculiar antics not only in the
tornado's track, but also at some distance from it. In the ruined
houses all the iron work was found to have been strongly magnetized, so
that pokers, flatirons and other metal objects were found adhering to
each other. Just off the tornado's track the same effects were
noticed, and several persons experienced sharp electric shocks