The World's Encyclopedia of Wonders and Curiosities

Everything a Victorian found astonishing, gathered into one enormous volume — burning springs and buried cities, freaks of storm and flood, the habits of bees and the manners of nations, filed under headings like “Curiosities Respecting Man.”

Curiosities Respecting Winds

17 pages in this part of Wonders and Curiosities.

Whirlwinds of Egypt

mouths on the sand, to avoid drawing in this pernicious blast with their breath. On his calling out that the simoon was coming, Mr. Bruce…

Curiosities Respecting Winds

raises the sands to a great height, forming a general cloud, so thick that it is impossible to keep the eyes open, if not under cover. It…

Harmattan. -Hurricane

HARMATTAN. This is a name given to a singular wind, which blows periodically from the interior parts of Africa, towards the Atlantic ocean…

Curiosities Respecting W Nds

of its toughs and foliage; plants and grass are laid flat on the earth; and luxuriant spring is changed in a moment to dreary winter. This…

Monsoon in India

particularly stormy ones, are attended with a cloudy sky; to this it may be added, that we have more winds than usually occur in rather…

Velocity of the Wind

The following Table, which gives some particulars respecting the VELOCITY OF THE WIND, was calculated by Mr. John Smeaton, the celebrated…

Curiosities Respecting Showers. Etc

Surprising Showers of Hail-Singular Effects of a Storm-The Mirage-Sand Floods-Showers of Gossamers-Winter in Russia.

Surprising Showers of Hail

NATURAL historians record various instances of surprising showers of hail, in which the hailstones were of extraordinary magnitude…

Singular Effects of a Storm

rence, were of various figures; some round, others half round; some smooth, others embossed and crenated; the icy sub stance of them was…

Curiosities Respecting Showers, Etc (Blacked by the smoke)

blacked by the smoke of a candle, which pointed downwards towards another place on the same wall, where a like breach was made, partly…

The Mirage-Sand Floods

"It was further remarkable, that the wall, both above and below a little window in the same gable-end, was so shattered, that the tight…

Curiosities Respecting Showers

the world. In that vast expanse of desert from west to northwest of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different…

Sand Floods.-Shower of Gossamers

covered with sands, unstable as those of the deserts of Arabia. The parish of Fyrie, in the county of Aberdeen, is now re duced to two…

Curiosities Respecting Showers, Etc (Thick coat of cobweb)

thick coat of cobweb, in the meshes of which a copious and heavy dew hung so plentifully, that the whole face of the country seemed, as it…

The Greenland, or Polar Ice (Much amusement here having)

much amusement here, having been more formed for Arcadian tranquillity than the bustle and magnificence of courts. I am pleased with the…

Curiosities Respecting Ice (Greenland or Polar Ice-On) (II)

On the Greenland, or Polar Ice-On the Tremendous Concussion of Fields of Ice-Icebergs-Magnitude of Icebergs-The Glaciers-Shower of…

The Greenland, or Polar Ice

THE following account of the Greenland, or Polar Ice, is abridged by the Editor of this work from a paper, by W.

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