was plainly observed at the bursting of the last column.  The whole time, from their first appearance to the dissolution of the last, was about three quarters of an hour.  It was five o’clock when the latter happened, and the thermometer then stood at fifty-four degrees, or two and a half degrees lower, than when they began to make their appearance.  The depth of water we had under us was thirty-six fathom.”—­G.F.

The description which Mr F. has given, is very similar to the preceding.  Both these gentlemen seem to concur in opinion with Cook, in maintaining Dr Franklin’s theory.  Mr Jones, in his Philosophical Disquisitions, mentions a circumstance which is no less curious in itself, than strongly demonstrative that the tube, as it has been called, is formed from below, and ascends towards the clouds, and not the contrary, as the appearances would indicate.  “In the torrid zone, (says he,) the water-spout is sometimes attended with an effect which appears supernatural, and will scarcely find credit in this part of the world; for who will believe that fish should fall from the sky in a shower of rain?  A gentleman of veracity, who spent many years in the East Indies, declares to his friends that he has been witness to this several times; but speaks of it with caution, knowing that it will be thought incredible by those who are not acquainted with the cause.  I have a servant, a native of the West Indies, who assures me he was once a witness to this fact himself, when small fish, about two or three inches long, fell in great numbers during a storm of rain.  The spot where this happened was in the island of Jamaica, within about a mile of the sea.  When water is carried with violence from the sea up the column of a spout, small fish, which are too weak to escape when the column is forming, are conveyed up to the clouds, and fall from them afterwards on land, not far distant from the sea.”  He had before related an instance of one that passed over the town of Hatfield, in Yorkshire, filling the air with the thatch it plucked off from the houses, and rolling strangely together several sheets of lead on the corner of the church.—­E.

SECTION VII.

Captain Furneaux’s Narrative, from the Time the two Ships were separated, to their joining again in Queen Charlotte’s Sound, with some Account of Van Diemen’s Land.

On the 7th of February, 1773, in the morning, the Resolution being then about two miles a-head, the wind shifting then to the westward, brought on a very thick fog; so that we lost sight of her.  We soon after heard a gun, the report of which we imagined to be on the larboard beam; we then hauled up S.E., and kept firing a four-pounder every half hour, but had no answer, nor further sight of her; then we kept the course we steered on before the fog came on.  In the evening it began to blow hard, and was at intervals more clear, but could see nothing of her, which gave