210 Mr. W. Brown on the Storms of Tropical Latitudes. 



have been obtained from a large portion of the track of a 

 storm, during which numerous revolutions of the wind would 

 be made, there ought to be some approach to equality. Co- 

 lonel Reid has inserted in his work charts of two storms, the 

 data of which are extracted from Redfield's writings; and 

 hence we may suppose them at least as well adapted as any 

 others to illustrate the opinions he is supporting. Below are 

 given the numbers of each wind for sixteen points of the com- 

 pass (the directions being taken from the data themselves) ; 

 their striking discordance with the equality required will be 

 seen, and also that it is very little diminished by adding the 

 results of each storm together, showing that there are certain 

 points of the compass almost entirely wanting to complete the 

 circuit. 



N. NNE. NE. ENE. E. ESE. SE. SSE. S. SSW. SW. WSW. W. WNW. NW. NNW. 



Chart 1st. 02 5125 8200 114 2 5 1 



Chart 2nd. 24 733043415 03 1 7 



Sum ... 2 6 12 4 5 5 12 5 4 1 6 1 7 3 12 1 



These storms were both moving from S.S.W. to N.N.E., 

 hence the deficiency of the north and south points and those ad- 

 jacent cannot result from the progressive motion. 



W. C. Red field has endeavoured to obtain evidence in fa- 

 vour of this theory from the tracks exhibited by vessels ex- 

 posed to hurricanes ; with what success will appear from the 

 following instance. He says (American Journal of Science, 

 vol. xxxi. p. 123), "It can but seldom happen however that 

 the track of a vessel which scuds through a gale will fully de- 

 velope the entire circle of the wind, the combination of cir- 

 cumstances necessary to this result being but rarely encoun- 

 tered ; still I have obtained notice of a few such cases. A 

 respectable ship-master not long since informed me, that he 

 once scudded for twenty-four hours under a typhoon in the 

 Chinese Sea, and on its departure found himself nearly in the 

 position where he first took the gale." 



Now supposing the progressive motion of the hurricane to 

 have been at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, in twenty-four 

 hours the storm would have moved 360 miles, a space the 

 utmost which has been assigned as the diameter of the storms 

 of these latitudes; hence the vessel must have entered the 

 storm precisely at one extremity of the diameter and emerged 

 at the other, and must have moved once and a half round 

 the whirl ; a series of coincidences so fortuitous, that a fact 

 requiring them to reconcile it with an hypothesis cannot surely 

 be regarded as affording any evidence in favour of the hy- 

 pothesis itself. The fact however is in perfect accordance with 

 the action of two opposite and consecutive rectilinear currents. 



