The Dawson journal., 1883-05-03
The Season of TOrnadOes.
Telegraph & Messenger.

| - mug iiOue hNe StdJeS, mas not yet
hlled out its report of dead and wounded
From points inaccessible to railroads and
telegraph lines we may expect to receive
fearful .tidings Of suffering for days to
come. The sufferings of the living have
been greater than those of the dead. the
horrors of one of these mighty convulsions
Oh nature being far more terrible than the
shock of battle.
AT this itime anything relating to the
subject will be read with interest. Pro
lessor lice, weather prophet. has re-
Gently advanced a theory upon the sub
Ject, which we find intelligently condensed
In the columns of the Philadelphia Record
as follows
ProfessorJ. H. Tice says of the phenom-
ena attending these storms that in the
growing season every tree, bush or shrub
involved in the vortex is denuded of every
Vestige of bark, and the twigs in some way
are reduced or exploded so as to be brushes
OF n0res as line as bristles In MANY in
stances the trees also are exploded into
silVers hne as wooden brooms, with sivers
nfteen to twenty feet long AT times, when
the vortex does not come down to the
surface, but spins like top in mid air. if
IL descends far enough to touch the tree
tops the limbs are cut off as though the
whirling clouds were armed with scvthes
Ii the twigs on the limbs cut off and those
lett ON the trees are examined thev are
found crushed into fi5res, as though they
had been passed between very close rollers.
lhese are not exceptional cases. but occur
IN every tornado, and the phenomenon is
especially conspicuous in the ricochet tor
nado, which often strikes only the tree tons
and then rebounds. The slivering of forests
the denudation of trees and shrubs of their
bark and the splntering of small limbs and
twlgs into fibres some times extend to
hundreds of acres at one point, and tn
thousands of acres in the track of one tor
nado alone. Prof. Tice says that no cleo
trlc current can pass through compound
substance without decomposing it, or, as it
is called, electrolyzing it. He cites the
action OF an electric current upon water a
fine illustration of this law. If an cleo
tric current is passed through wafer il
decomposes it into its constituent elements
oxygen and hydrogen gas. 1t has been
determined by the experiments of Faure
Regnault, :Subermann, Dulong Petit. Cav,
Lassac and Others, that one cubic inch of
water expands, or, as they call it, sweIls,
into l.696 cubic inches when vaporized at
a temperature of 212 degrees bat when
vaporized at temperature Of rs degrees
it expands to 56,S17 cubic inches of vapor.
In both cases the pressure is 30 inches of
mercury, or 2, l16 1 pounds per square foot.
No denudation Of the bark of green trees,
brush or Shrubs takes place unless they are
full of sap, nor are the trees slvered and
the twigs reduced to fibres except in the
season of rapid growth when the cells are
filled with sap, green twigs on branch viii
only lie exploded and reduced to fihres.
while dead twigS beside them are left in
tact. This Professor Tice regards as pos:
tive proof that the barking OF trees. the
shattering in many instancesof their trunks
and the reduction of twigs to .fibres are
caused by the expausionsof the say If the
trunks of slivered trees are examined it
will be found that the rifting has taken
place between the annular layers, which
are separated by cells. and, of course, in
the growing season, filled with sap. 'Sup-
pose" he says, 'for instance, that the sap
betw cen the bark and the stem would make
film of water no thicker than a sheet of
paper, by gasiication it expands in volume
to the thickness of 1887 sheets of paper
in all directions from the stem as a centre.
giving diameter to the exploding circle of
from forty to fifty feet" School children
have seen performed the experiment. of
Father Beccaria, which he discovered over
a century ago, proving and Illustrating the
explosiveness Of water He took a glass
ball % inches in diameter and drilled
hole through it. He then inserted in the
hole on one side wire in communication
with the inside of Leyden jar. On the
end of this wire he put drop of water
and then inserted in the hole on the other
side the wire that communicated with the
outside of the jar. The moment the end
of the wire touched the drop of water the
discharge passed and the ball was shattered
into dust and dispersed, because the electric
current meeting the drop of water in the
circuit gasifed it, instantly expanding it to
As, 877 times its original volume. The ex-
pansion was so great and the power ex-
erted by it 50 immense that it shattered the
solid ball into dust.
The central idea on which the explana-
ton by Professor Tice is based, of the
denudation of green trees of their bark, of
shattering trees and reducing twigs to
flbres by tornadoes, is that a tornado is the
result of electrical energy. The blue flames
seen flashing from everything in a building
when struck by a tornado spout, and the
fire seen flowing from the lower end Of
that spout as it trails near the surface of the
earth means nothing else, and cannot mean
anything else than, that an electric discharge
between the earth and the clouds is taking
place at the point where these flames from
opposite points meet each other.
L., = 1