n, was
nearly ruined on the 8th of July, and Pittston, in Massachusetts,
suffered terribly from a tornado on the same day. While these great
moving storm-clouds occur occasionally in some of the Southern States,
they generally move through sparsely settled districts, and the damage
inflicted excites but little attention elsewhere. In the West Indies,
and in other tropical regions, these tornadoes are of frequent
occurrence, and the damage is often fearful, whole towns being
completely swept away. In the East Indies, and on the coast of India,
these storms are known as Cyclones, because of their rotary
motion--the Greek word _Ruklos_, from which "Cyclone" is derived,
meaning "_a whirl_". A cyclone frequently extends across a great belt,
and is from fifty to five hundred miles in width. It may last for
hours, and if it occurs on the ocean it destroys most of the vessels
within its reach. In the dreadful hurricane that fell upon Coringa, in
India, in 1839, the town was destroyed and twenty thousand people lost
their lives.

Cyclones or hurricanes of this class, do not occur in our northern
States; tornadoes, however, do in rare instances. These extend in
width not more than a few hundred yards, or even feet, and come and go
within the space of one or two minutes. In power and violence,
however, they are as destructive as the cyclones. In tornadoes the
storm-cloud, in nearly all instances, has a rotary motion; the wind
also sweeping forward progressively at the rate of from five to twenty
miles an hour. Science has shown that in the latitude where these rare
visitors come, they nearly always proceed from south-west to
north-east. In the great Illinois hurricane in May, 1855, that passed
over Cook county, it is said that a family of nine persons was carried
up in the air in a frame house, four of the nine being killed outright
and the remainder severely injured. The house went to pieces amid the
fury of the storm. Generally these great storms are accompanied by
peculiar electrical phenomena, though not in all instances. Rain and
hail often go with them. The storm-cloud of a tornado is nearly always
funnel-shaped, the small end of the funnel extending downward. It
looks like an immense balloon, and revolves on its axis with fearful
rapidity. The air beyond the limits of this cloud is also in rapid
motion, but merely partakes of the character of a very high wind and
is not particularly destructive. The death-dealing and destr