THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED. 393 



mild and moderate storms. 1 "If a storm commences anywhere in the 

 vicinity of the Gulf Stream, it naturally tends toward that stream, 

 because," as Loomis says, " here is the greatest amount of vapor to be 

 precipitated, and, when a storm has once encountered the Gulf Stream, 

 it continues to follow that stream in its progress eastward." Vessels 

 and Japanese junks, dismasted in gales off the Asiatic coast, have 

 been drifted for many days in the current of the Kuro Siwo, to the 

 coast of California, just as West-India beans, cocoa-nuts, and vegetables, 

 have been drifted to Iceland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen, on the 

 extension of the Gulf Stream. According to all meteorological obser- 

 vations of the tracks of storms, we are warranted in believing that 

 cyclones and hurricanes do, as a matter of fact and of atmospheric law, 

 run on the hot currents of the sea as naturally as the water-course 

 clings to its bed. Practical seamen, though unable to explain the fact, 

 are always on the lookout for these furious gales when sailing on the 

 axial lines of the Gulf Stream, on the hot Mozambique current (the 

 Gulf Stream of the Indian Ocean), and on the dark superheated waters 

 of the Kuro Siwo of the Pacific. 



So dangerous and disastrous are the storms which course along the 

 Gulf Stream that sailors avoid it, and the American Sailing Directions 

 and those of the British Admiralty advise all vessels, sailing from the 

 West Indies to New York or Liverpool, to beware of taking advantage 

 of its current, although it would help them along from three to four 

 miles an hour. Close observation has traced these storms continuously 

 from the Florida coast to New York, through Redfield's labors, and 

 thence to England, through the record of the Cunard steamships, and 

 thousands of detached observations. 



We have now reached a point where we can properly and intelli- 

 gently consider a question that has always baffled meteorologists the 

 origin of cyclones. The diagnosis of the phenomenon necessarily pre- 

 cedes its explanation. This subject has engrossed many minds, and 

 various have been the ingenious devices for unravelling its mystery. 

 Mr. Redfield the father of storm physics in his modesty and diffi- 

 dence, so distrusted himself and in his day so keenly felt the need of a 

 more enlarged induction of facts, that he has scarcely left us his opin- 

 ion. The theories of other writers have all long since been abandoned 

 by themselves or suffered to drop from the notice of the scientific 

 world as evidently incapable of explaining the phenomena of cyclones. 

 This has been the fate of them all, unless possibly we except the 

 theory advanced by the great meteorologist, M. Dove, of Berlin. 

 Briefly stated, the latter hypothesis is this (at least in its application 

 to West-India hurricanes), viz., that "they owe their origin to the 

 intrusion of the upper counter trade-wind into the lower trade-wind 

 current" (Dove's "Law of Storms," p. 264). 



1 See Redfield's Report. 



