104 Dr. Hare's Additional Objections to 



cending movement that we witness. This effect appears to be 

 owing to the spiral motion of the column which presses onward 

 in the direction of its axis, till it reaches a limit of elevation 

 yet unknown." (Silliman's Journal, vol. xxxvi. p. 56.) Would 

 it not be as reasonable to expect the spiral of iron usually 

 employed to open bottles, spontaneously to penetrate a cork 

 without being actuated by the operator's hand, as that the 

 aerial spiral, which agreeably to the description above given, 

 constitutes a tornado, should, " without any foreign aid," " or 

 any currents to meet each other," be endowed with the force 

 which he has described ? Admitting the storm-producing 

 efficacy of a collision between trade winds and islands, ad- 

 mitting that gravitation, and rotary and orbitual force are to 

 be substituted for all other agency, how are those causes to 

 extend influence to his aerial isolated spiral, so as to beget the 

 wonderful vortical force portrayed ? 



95. I do not deem it expedient to enter upon any discussion 

 as to the competency of the evidence by which the gyration 

 of storms has been considered as proved. By Mr. Espy that 

 has been ably contested. I have given some reasons for 

 doubting the accuracy or consistency of Mr. Redfield's repre- 

 sentations, though I have no doubt they have always been 

 made in perfect good faith. I have already alleged, that were 

 gyration sufficiently proved, I should consider it as an effect 

 of a conflux to supply an upward current at the axis. Yet 

 the survey of the New Brunswick tornado, made on terra firma 

 with the aid of a compass, by an observer so skilful and un- 

 biassed as Professor Bache, ought to outweigh maritime ob- 

 servations, made in many cases under circumstances of diffi- 

 culty and danger. In like manner great credit should be 

 given to the observations collected by Professor Loomis re- 

 specting a remarkable inland storm of December 1836. This 

 storm commenced blowing between south and east to the west- 

 ward of the Mississippi, and travelled from west or north-west 

 to east or south-east at a rate of between thirty and forty miles 

 per hour. There appears to have been within the sphere of 

 its violence an area, throughout which the barometric column 

 stood at a minimum, and towards which the wind blew vio- 

 lently on the one side only from between east and south, and 

 on the other only between north and west. This area extended 

 from south-west to north-east more than two thousand miles. 

 Its great length in proportion to its breadth seems irrecon- 

 cilable with its having formed the axis of a whirlwind. The 

 course of this storm, as above stated, was at right angles to 

 that attributed by Red field to storms of this kind. (Trans. 

 of the American Phil. Society, vol. vii.) 



