ON the 6th of last month, at night, happened a most violent hurricane, such an one, perhaps, as has not been known in these parts in any one’s memory. It lasted four hours at least, from about eleven till three. The damage it has done is very deplorable. The corn has sufferd prodigiously. Stacks of hay and corn have been intirely swept away: houses unroofed, and in several places driven down by its fury: trees without number torn up by the roots; others snapt off by the middles, and their fragments scattered over the adjoining fields. Some were twisted almost round, or split down to the very ground; and, in short, left in such a shattered, mangled condition, as scarce any description can give you an adequate idea of. The change in the face of the country was very surprising in one single night: for, to complete the dismally-desolate scene, the several tribes of vegetables (in all their verdure the day before), as if blasted with æthereal fire, hung down their drooping heads. Every herb, every plant, every flower, had its leaves withered, shrivelled up, and turned black. The leaves upon the trees, especially on the weather side, fared in the same manner. The evergreens alone seem to have escaped. The grass also, in a few days time, recovered itself in a great measure. I agreed at first with the generality of people in their opinion, that lightning had done all this mischief: but upon recollecting, that there had not been much seen any where, in many places none at all, but that the effect was general[118], as far as ever the wind had reached; I began to think, that some other cause might probably be assigned. Accordingly, I set myself immediately to examining the dew or rain, which had fallen on the grass, windows, _&c._ in hopes of being enabled, by its taste, to form some better judgment of the sulphureous or nitrous particles (or of whatever other quality they were), with which the air was so strongly impregnated that night, as to produce such strange effects. Nor was I deceived in my expectations: for, upon tasting it, I found it as brackish as any sea-water. The several vegetables also, which I tasted, were all salt, more or less, and continued so for five or six days after; the saline particles not being then washed off; from the corn and windows in particular; the latter of which, when the moisture on the outside was exhaled next day, sparkled and appeared exceeding brilliant in the sunshine. This saltness, I conceive, has done the principal damage: for common salt dissolved in water, I find, upon experiment on some fresh vegetables (when sprinkled two or three times upon them) has the very same effect, except that it does not turn them quite so black: but particles of a sulphureous, or [119]other quality, may have been mixed with it. That this salt water had been brought from the sea[120], every body, I think, will allow; but the manner how[121], is not so easy to conceive.