Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/225

Rh centre, and the lighter toward the summit, there would necessarily be a vast amount of confused intermingling. Hence a cyclone of those times could not be attended by the fall of only one kind of rain, as of molten iron, but by that of many different kinds. Doubtless while some substances, such as granite, fell as snow or hail, others, such as iron, would foil as rain.

Moreover, since the strata would be, in the main, according to their specific gravity, and since some of the gases would evaporate and condense at different temperatures from others, showers of different kinds of metals and stones would tend to form at different altitudes. This would be counteracted, at least in part, by the tendency of the cyclone to reach clear up from the lowest depths to the circumference. That the disturbances in our own atmosphere extend to an immensely greater height than is generally supposed, and probably almost to the extreme limit of the atmosphere, is now certain. In my report on the tornado of May 22, 1873 (Chief Signal-Officer's "Annual Report, 1873"), I showed that in all likelihood it reached, at least, to an altitude of sixteen miles. The cyclones in the sun also appear to extend almost to the summit of his atmosphere, otherwise we could not see them so clearly as we do. Judging also from the nature of the case, we should conclude that the cyclone, amid such a vast assemblage of vapors, arranged in layers, would be likely to extend its dimensions almost from the centre to the circumference; for a disturbance and precipitation in one layer would tend to produce a disturbance and precipitation in the stratum above it, as well as in that beneath it. We have thus presented to our imaginations a Vast cyclonic column thousands of millions of miles in height, up which vapors of great variety, and collected at very various altitudes, are rushing with terrific force, and condensing as they go. Those, like granite, that solidify at a high temperature, would freeze in huge blocks which, generating sufficient centrifugal force by the whirling motion, would fly out from the ascending current and rush downward. Substances congealing at different temperatures would thus be likely to be thrown out at different elevations. Much the larger mass of substances, however, would probably be carried up to where the cyclone spread itself out laterally in a huge nimbus-cloud. From that cloud would rush down a fierce deluge of half the substances of the solar system in solid or liquid form. The violence and confusion of the descending hail and rain would be of surpassing grandeur—far more terrible and sublime than that scene described by Milton, where the Satanic host was hurled from the battlements of heaven "with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition." All kinds of igneous rocks, mingled with molten metal, chased each other millions of miles down through the fiery gloom. The temperature increased as they descended. Each substance melted and evaporated as it reached the proper temperature, while the substances