candle held over the plate, the contrary will happen.

From these remarks it is reasonable to conclude, that since so large a portion of the atmosphere as is over the torid zone, and parts about it, is in such continual agitation and alternate motion, those agitations in an elastic fluid (as the air is known to be) must extend every way to a great distance, and produce effects of the same kind in a various manner; by which means the air in all other latitudes and climates will be more or less disturbed, and have a perpetual tendency to motion in various directions, depending on the situation of countries, the degrees of heat and cold in the climate, the position of hills, vales, &c. besides what may be owing to the accension and explosion of meteors, the eruption of subterranean air, and many other causes. This may give us a general idea of the origin of those variable winds that we experience in our own island, which blow sometimes one way, sometimes another, are now boisterous, now hushed, without any regularity, either as to time or place.--Navigators do not find the winds variable in the great Pacific, Atlantic, and Ethiopic Oceans, till they are about thirty degrees distant from the equator.

Some parts of India are particularly subject to a furious whirlwind, which the Mahrattas universally distinguish by the appellation of devil, as supposing that none but the devil can have any concern in such unwelcome visitations.-Mr. Moor, lieutenant on the Bombay establishment, bas given the following account of one of these destructive winds: "They may be seen at a great distance in the form of an immense column,

moving irregularly, with considerable rapidity, and with a great noise; clouds of dust, and any thing light, such as pieces of paper, cloth, leaves, &c. are whirled up to a height beyond the reach of the eye, forming a column, at the base, of, perhaps, twenty or thirty feet diameter. Most of them are sufficiently violent to knock down a tent, unless well secured; and it was ludicrous to see what scenes of confusion would sometimes be occasioned when one got among the tents and huts of the Mahratta camp. It would often beat down a habitation, and carry away the only dress of the inhabitant, who would have to run more than half naked in pursuit of it. Sometimes, by dispersing fire, it would burn the huts and tents; and, as it prevailed most in the heat of the day, our kitchens and dinners often suffered from its intrusion. On the first appearance of this phenomenon, every body began to shout and abuse it; so that, with the noise of the devil itself, and that of its abuse, good warning was generally given of its approach."

The same gentleman informs us that he met with some springs of water near Baugoor, from which salt is made in the following manner. "There are three small wells, about four feet deep, and as much in diameter, out of which the water is taken, and put into receivers, like shallow pans, lined with chunam *, and about twelve feet square. The water, by the action of rarefaction, is exhaled, and the salt, being too gross and fixed to ascend, is left in the pans. This water has the nauseous taste and, apparently, all the properties of sea-water.

*Chunam is a sort of mortar prepared by calcining shells, &c. and used in India instead of plaster.

Another mode of making salt in some of the Indian provinces is thus described by Mr. Moor.

In particular spots the earth is strongly impregnated with nitrous particles, which earth is separated and well dried. A mound of common mould is raised, twelve or fifteen feet, in a conical form, with a considerable concavity at top, forming a kind of bason, from the bottom of which hollow pieces of bamboo lead into chunamed reservoirs, similar to the pans just mentioned. The impregnated earth is put into this bason, and sweet water poured upon it, which, soaking through, dissolves the salt, and carries it in a fluid state into the reservoirs. The water is distributed into proper pans, and exhaled as in the other process. The drained earth is removed to the place whence it was taken; and in ten or twelve days it will again produce salt, and undergoes the same process for extraction.

"The process for procuring salt in Salset, and all along the Malabar coast, is similar to the one first described, with the difference of using seawater. Just above high-water mark, at spring tides, extensive enclosures are levelled and divided into partitions of about twenty feet square, which, communicating with each other, are filled by the overflow of the sea, and contain six or eight inches of water: before the next spring tide the water is all exhaled by the power of the and the salt is gathered from the bottom of the enclosures. Another process is necessary for refining the salt before it can be used for culinary purposes: This is done by boiling it, and removing the scum as long as any rises, which is hastened, and the salt made whiter by an egg being boiled in about a peck,

sun,

A little salt of a very superior kind may be procured at the time of exhalation, by fixing a jagged piece of stick in the water, when first let into the reservoirs; to which, as the water is exhaled, the saline particles adhere, in a quantity of three or four ounces."

At Rainanghong, in the Burmha dominions, are a prodigious number of wells of petroleum, of which a most interesting description has been given, by Captain Hiram Cox, in the Asiatic researches.---In making a well, according to this account, the hill is cut down so as to form a square table of fourteen or twenty feet; and a road is formed, by scraping away an inclined plain, for the drawers to descend, in raising the excavated earth, and subsequently the soil. The shaft is sunk of a square form, and lined, as the miner proceeds, with staves of Cassia wood, rudely jointed, and forming a frame about four feet six inches in the clear for the uppermost ones, but more contracted below. When the miner has pierced about six feet of the shaft, several of these square frames are piled on each other, and regularly added to at top; the whole gradually sinking according to the progress of the workmen, and effectually securing him. against the falling in of the sides.

The strata to be pierced on these occasions is, first, a light sandy loam intermixed with fragments of silex, quartz, &c.; second, a friable sand-stone with thin horizontal strata of a concrete of martial ore, talc, and indurated argill ; and third, below the free-stone is a pale blue argillaceous earth, impregnated with the pe troleum: this terminates in shist or slate; and below the shist, at the depth of about a hundred

and thirty cubits is coal, intermixed with sulphur and pyrites.

To draw up the rubbish and afterwards the oil from these wells an axle is placed across the centre, resting on two forked staunchions, with a revolving barrel, like the nave of a wheel, in which is a score for receiving the draw rope: the bucket is of wicker work covered with dammer, and the labour of the drawers is greatly facilitated by the decent of the inclined plain.

To receive the oil, one man is stationed at the brink of the well, who empties the bucket into a channel leading to a sunk jar, from whence it is Jaded into smaller ones, and immediately carried down to the river.

The oil is drawn pure from the wells, in the liquid state as used; but in a cold season it congeals in the open air and loses something of its fluidity. It is of a dingy green colour and a fragrant smell. The natives use it as a lotion in cutaneous eruptions, and as an embrocation in bruises or rheumatic affections: it is also used in

lamps and (when mixed with a little dammer *) for paying the bottoms of boats, &c.

It appears that no water ever penetrates through the earth into these wells; for the rains in this part of the country are seldom heavy, and during the wet season a roof of thatch is thrown over the wells, and what water sinks into the earth is prevented from descending to any considerable depth by the increasing hardness of the strata.

When a well becomes dry, the miners deepen it, though the mephitic air sometimes proves fatal to the men who perform that operation. Captain

*A resin of the country.