THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIVERSE. 209 



If these observations, which are still made daily, continue to give 

 the same results, it may then be affirmed that forests constitute vast 

 condensing apparatus, and the conclusion will be inevitable that more 

 rain falls in wooded land than on bare and cultivated soil. Compte& 

 Mendus. 



THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIYEESE. 



Br JAMES MACKINTOSH, M. A. 



THE science of meteorology is but of yesterday, and yet it has 

 already developed results which throw light upon the genesis of 

 the universe. It has revealed to us the true nature of atmospheric 

 disturbances throughout time and space. The winds no longer blow 

 where they list, and we hear the sound of them and can tell whence 

 they come and whither they go. We know their producing causes, 

 and can foretell, with a considerable degree of accuracy, their force, 

 duration, and direction. Accordingly, the great majority of civilized 

 countries, including China, the oldest of them, have already established 

 weather bureaus, whose business it is to forewarn the mariner of com- 

 ing tempests, and to give us all a timely notice when we shall require 

 an umbrella or a great-coat. 



While these practical results are exceedingly worthy of attention, 

 and inspire us with the hope that the time shall come when perfected 

 instruments, improved methods, and increased knowledge, shall ena- 

 ble the meteorologist to predict with the utmost certainty every 

 atmospheric disturbance, they yet fall into the shade when compared 

 with the magnificent and luminous conceptions which meteorology has 

 added to cosmological science. It has opened to us visions of beauty 

 and order reaching through infinity and eternity. It has given us a 

 clearer glimpse into the workshop of the Almighty. 



The principal scientific result of meteorology is the theory of the 

 cyclone. This is its central idea, the point of reference from which 

 every thing is explained. So long as meteorologists tried to explain 

 storms by encountering currents of wind, as did Dove and his school, 

 60 long did the science remain merely a laborious, interminable, and 

 apparently useless collection of tabulated facts. It was then in its 

 empirico-historical stage, and could, at the best, only produce such 

 bare generalizations as isobaric and isothermal lines. Averages and 

 darkness ruled throughout. But, when once the light-giving idea of 

 the cyclone was fully grasped, a heavenly radiance dispelled the uncer- 

 tain gloom, and the science was at once taken out of the range of the 

 merely empirical, and established securely upon a deductive basis. 



What, then, is this light-bringing conception of the cyclone ? 

 Briefly, as follows : A cyclone consists essentially of a rapidly-ascend- 



VOL. VII. 14 



