SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. RED FIELD. 115 



ing toward the northwest, and in another part in the opposite 

 direction or toward the southeast, and to learn that while the 

 wind had been blowing violently from the southeast at Middle- 

 town, it had been blowing just as violently less than seventy miles 

 away from the northwest. These facts and his reflections upon 

 them led him to certain conclusions which business engagements 

 prevented his developing at the time, but which he published, 

 fortified by the citation of numerous observations and with illus- 

 trations drawn from other storms, in an article in the American 

 Journal of Science for January, 1832, on The Prevailing Storms 

 of the Atlantic Coast. His conclusions were, in short, that the 

 storm was a great advancing whirlwind, and that tornadoes gen- 

 erally revolve on an axis of rotation and move with the main cur- 

 rents, exhibiting, consequently, retrograde motion on one side of 

 the axis and progressive motion on the other side. In a subse- 

 quent article in the same journal he discussed the hurricane of 

 August, 1831, as illustrating the position that storms and hurri- 

 canes are gyratory in action, and move with the general current 

 of the region in which they occur. These views are now in the 

 main accepted facts in meteorology. 



Prof. Olmsted gives, in his memorial address, a very interesting 

 account of the way the first article came to be published. In it 

 we have a picture of the man Redfield. " I chanced at this period,^' 

 he says, " to meet him for the first time on board a steamboat on 

 the way from New York to New Haven. A stranger accosted me, 

 and modestly asked leave to make a few inquiries respecting some 

 observations I had recently published in the American Journal of 

 Science on the subject of hailstorms. I was soon made sensible 

 that the humble inquirer was himself a proficient in meteorology. 

 In the course of the conversation he incidentally brought out his 

 theory of the laws of our Atlantic gales, at the same time stating 

 the facts on which his conclusions were founded. This doctrine 

 was quite new to me, but it impressed me so favorably that I urged 

 him to communicate it to the world through the medium of the 

 American Journal of Science. He manifested much diffidence at 

 appearing as an author before the scientific world, professing to 

 be only a practical man, little versed in scientific discussions, and 

 unaccustomed to write for the press. At length, however, he said 

 he would commit his thoughts to paper and send them to me on 

 condition that I would revise the manuscript and superintend the 

 press. Accordingly, I received the first of a long series of articles 

 on the law of storms and hastened to procure its insertion in the 

 Journal of Science. Some few of the statements made in the 

 earliest development of his theory he afterward found reason for 

 modifying, but the great features of that theory appear there in 

 bold relief." 



