386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cyclonic whirl developed on the periphery of the great North Atlantic 

 anti-cyclone. It is a tropical intruder, the only general storm dis- 

 turbance the tropical circulation gives us. It is no new type, but 

 simply one of the two great eddies known to the general atmospheric 

 circulation the world over. As it is a concentrated cyclone, the winds 

 blow in and about its central vortex with a velocity that may easily reach 

 100 miles an hour, while velocities of sixty and seventy miles an hour 

 are not uncommon at great distances — 500 miles or so — from the 

 center. It is the most violent tempest the newspapers are called upon 

 to chronicle, but its characteristics are so invariable, its paths so well 

 known — determined largely by the position of the North Atlantic anti- 

 cyclone in relation to the continental anti-cyclones — that it is surpris- 

 ing to witness the confusion that marks news and editorial comment 

 when one is at hand. Though every boy has seen a spinning top 

 meandering over the pavement, most newspapers find it difficult to 

 understand the slow forward progressive motion of the whole rotating 

 cyclonic mass on its track. And yet Franklin, over 100 years ago, 

 fathomed the secret of the apparent paradox that the storms that 

 condition our northeast gales actually have their center to the south- 

 west; and Eedfield, in 1830-50, taught the American public all about 

 these revolving storms of the Atlantic Ocean, while Piddington, a 

 Briton, in 1848, in his 'Sailor's Horn Book,' made the broad facts 

 plain to the simple-minded, unlearned, every-day navigator, and him- 

 self invented* the technical term 'cyclone' specifically to describe the 

 rotary storms, then believed to be peculiar to the tropical oceans. 

 (Chart No. 4). 



Hand in hand with misunderstanding and misapprehension of 

 weather phenomena has gone the booming of the weather quack. In 

 some ways this is the most discreditable feature of the newspaper 

 treatment of the weather, since ignorance plus the quack represents a 

 recrudescence of medievalism which would seem incredible, were it 

 not a persistent factor in the 'popular 5 weather article that is given 

 prominence by leading newspapers, while the waste of telegraphic tolls 

 in sending broadcast the views of some pseudo-scientific zany, whose 

 star for the moment is in the ascendant, is an extravagance which, if 

 spent in the right direction, might save the news-gathering organiza- 

 tion money and give it reputation. It is about time the newspapers 

 learned that there are only two classes of weather quacks and wonder- 

 mongers — those who are greater knaves than fools; those who are 

 greater fools than knaves.. The whole business belongs to the slimy 

 byways of astrology, or represents the fecklessness of those who peddle 

 a quack nostrum composed of one per cent, bogus science to ninety- 



* 'The Sailor's Horn Book for the Law of Storms,' by Henry Piddington, London, 1848, page 8. 



