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ing in Britain under the command of Auluntus Claudianus. This Caernarvon stone is valuable, as it and the tabula are the only extant memorials of the cohort. The Sunuci, or Sunici, were a Belgic people. They are mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny, but their position has not been exactly defined. It is probable, however, that they lived between Cologne and the Meuse, about the eastern part of the modern Belgic province of Limbourg.

25. In the Archæologia Eliana, vol. iv., a broken slab, which was found in Birdoswald (Ambloganna) during the excavations which were made under the direction of Mr. Potter in 1852, is figured; and that gentleman gives the following expansion of the inscription, which it bore:

"SVB MODIO IV
LIO LEG AVG PR

PR COH I AEL DC
CVI PRAEEST M
CL MENANDER

TRIB

Sub[limo] Dio Ju

-lio leg[ato] Aug[ustali] ProPrætori Coh[ors] i Æl[ia] D[a]c[orum] cui præest M[arcus]

Claudius] Menander
Trib[unus]."

Mr. Potter is of opinion, that "if this reading be correct, there is reason to suppose that the Julius here mentioned was Julius Severus, who, in the time of Hadrian, was proprætor of Great Britain ;" and after examination, rejects a different reading which had been suggested, viz. Sub Modio Julio.

I am unable to comprehend the grounds on which Mr. Potter adopted Sublimo Dio, a reading which is unprecedented and scarcely intelligible. I concur with Mr. Smith (Collectanea Antiqua, iii. p. 201), in preferring Sub Modio Julio, which (as Mr. Potter remarks) gives "the name of a proprætor of Britain not hitherto known." I am not satisfied, however, as to the correctness of Julio. The fracture of the slab seems to have so materially injured the letters, in the second line, given as LI, that it may reasonably be doubted whether that be the right reading. I am inclined to venture on the conjectures, that the injured letters are ST, and that the Modius Justus named here is the same, who, at a different time, was LEG AVG. PR. PR of Numidia. He is mentioned in the following inscription given by Renier (Inscriptions de l'Algérie, n. 44) :

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In Mommsen's Inscript. Neapolit. n. 5274, we also find the names Modius Justus.

REMARKS ON THE LAW OF STORMS, AS SET FORTH IN A TRACT PUPLISHED BY RICHARD BUDGEN, IN THE YEAR 1730.

BY THE REV. C. DADE, M.A.

Read before the Canadian Institute, March 26th, 1849.

Among the "Curiosities of Literature" may justly be reckoned the numerous family of Tracts, especially those of a bygone age. These "Sibylline leaves," as they may be called, take a wide range, for there is scarcely a branch of human learning which they leave untouched. The theologian, the physician, the lawyer, the historian, may find in them much valuable metal amidst a heap of dross and refuse. The philosopher may detect the rude germ and faint lineaments of many a theory confirmed and illustrated by the labours of a succeeding generation, and the practical operator may discover projects and inventions appropriated perhaps, without scruples, by those who have reaped where they never sowed. They rescue from oblivion remarkable persons and events, throw light upon the manners aud customs of our forefathers, relieve the generalization of history by presenting life-like pictures of a bygone age; and we have seen of what signal service they have been made to render in the hands of a consummate master, by elucidating many a dark passage of the annals of our country. The collection, therefore, and preservation of these "dis

From

jecta membra" is far from being an unprofitable service. their very nature they were fleeting and evanescent, and often doomed to an ephemeral existence, wanting those attributes of bulk and density to which many a huge folio and quarto owes its preservation.

The tract under consideration is worthy of notice on more than one account. It gives a minute and apparently trustworthy record of an extraordinary natural phenomenon. It exhibits the rude and imperfect outline of that which the youngest in the family of Sciences is rapidly ripening into just form and proportions. It points out to the meteorologist of the present day, richly furnished with all the means and appliances which the genius of the philosopher, aided by the skill of the mechanic, can supply, the way in which these phenomena were dealt with by those who were utterly without such helps. And in the particular case under consideration it will lead to the enquiry whether it has not anticipated a theory capable of great results and expansion, which has been claimed as the offspring of the present generation.

The title of this tract is as follows: "The Passage of the Hurricane from the seaside at Bexhill, in Sussex, to Newingden Level, the twentieth day of May, 1729, between nine and ten in the evening, containing :

(1) An account of the Weather and bearing of the Winds that preceded the Hurricane, with the celerity of its circular and progressive motion.

(2) A particular account of the Damage and Devastation of the Buildings, Timber, &c., that stood in the way of its course.

(3) Some observations on the way and manner of its course. (4) By way of enquiry, some account attempted of the causes of Tempests, Whirlwinds, and Hurricanes. By Richard Budgen.

The tract is dedicated to "Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., the President, and to the Council and Fellows of the Royal Society," and is accompanied by an "Exact Plan" describing the passage of the Tornado or Hurricane, which is represented by a spiral line, shewing its breadth, and likewise that the gyration was from E. to W. The divisions of the several Estates passed over by the Hurricane are carefully delineated, the whole being a well executed diagram.

Who or what the said R. B. was, we have no means of knowing. He was a dilligent observer of the weather in his way, and he alludes to his own and his friends' journals. He seems to have been a man

of an inquisitive and philosophical turn of mind, and a projector withal, for we have another production of his in which he describes a notable invention of his own, viz.: "An Engine to work by the Wind, that with a long time, and a close and intent application of thoughts, and a large expence in making and altering of models, I have now brought to answer the ends proposed." These ends were nowise trifling, and had they answered the anticipations of the worthy projector would doubtless, instead of having been consigned to the limbo of forgetfulness, have earned for him the expected immortality. However, as an observer of nature, he seems to have been most indefatigable. In his description of the hurricane and its effects, he does not omit the smallest particular from the "uprooting of over a thousand and five oaks on the demesne of Sir Thomas Webster, Bart.," to the damaging of a stack of chimneys, or the unroofing of a pig-stye. He opens his narrative by saying, "We had the surprising horror of seeing (at about twenty miles distance), such unintermitting coruscations, together with such dreadful darting and breaking forth of liquid fire at every flash of lightning in the way of the hurricane, as perhaps has not been seen in this climate for many ages. He proceeds to give "a careful collation of the weather for the nine days preceding the hurricane," as follows:

"May 11-Storm of hail in the evening, wind W. b. N., the wind for a long time before having been northerly.

12. White frost, warm and fair with moderate breeze S. b. W. 13.-Clear, light breeze from the S.

14.-Cloudy, light breeze from W.

15. Very clear, warm breeze from S. E.

16. Very serene air, with a sensible increase of heat; wind S. E. 17.-Very clear with a soft W. wind.

18. Very serene, and began to be exceeding hot and sultry. Wind S.

19. A somewhat thick air in the morning, but very clear and exceeding hot in the afternoon. Wind S. W. b. S.

20.-A slight flying tempest in the morning with a little scattering rain. The rest of the day very clear and extreme hot and sultry. Wind S. till about 5 P.M., when there began to appear a haziness in the S., which by degrees, with a vanishing edge, arrived at our zenith about 7 P.M., when there began to appear plain symptoms of a tempest. We distinctly heard the thunder at 8 P.M., and had a prospect

of two different tempests. It appeared like a prodigious smoke rolling from a limekiln. It landed about 9 P.M., its course being nearly from S. b. W. to N. b. E. Length of its track twelve miles, which it passed over in twenty minutes; and seventy rods may be taken for the mean diameter of its vertiginous motion.'

"The duration of the offensive wind could not exceed twenty seconds. The direct velocity of the storm is forty-two feet in a second, to which adding forty-three feet, for the increase by the vertiginous or spiral motion, makes eighty-five feet, which is the space run through in every second of time near the outward verge of the gyration, and the velocity by which all obstacles received the impulse of the wind."

Budgen alludes to the "storm's eye"-the El ojo of the Spanish mariners-often noticed since.* "At Ewhurst a brightness was observed in the clouds approaching about the breadth that afterwards appeared to have been taken in by the hurricane, and such a strong light during the time of the greatest violence of the storm, as far exceeded any of the preceding flashes of lightning."

Again, he observes :-"By passing thro' and between buildings, touching both sides, and by the circular lanes in some places, in woodlands that were full of timber, and by some particular buildings rent in divers parts by impulses of several directions, undeniably proves that the swift vertiginous motion of hurricanes is not owing to any force equally impressed upon the fluid in motion, according to, and as they are commonly compared to, liquid whirlpools, &c., but rather that the offensive part of the fluid, which moves with such violence as scarcely to be resisted, appears to have taken in not more than th orth of the diameter of the whirlwind or fluid in a vertiginous motion, for where it raged with the greatest violence in the thickets of timber some trees had not the least appearance of a storm, yet all the trees about them were torn up by the roots and shattered into splinters."

Again :- "That its motion was contra-solem, or from the right hand to the left, was plain from all bodies being drove down near the eastern verge towards the north, and near the western towards the south. By increasing in breadth as it ascended to the tops of the

'A very remarkable fact is that while all around the horizon was a thick dark bank of clouds, the sky above was so perfectly clear that the stars were seen."-Reid on the Law of Storms, p. 393, &c.

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