488 Mr. Redfield's Reply to Dr. Hare's 



ask, Is gyration disproved by this survey? I trow not; and 

 apprehend that I have sufficiently shown its results to have 

 been accordant with a general rotative action*. 



Still unwilling to admit rotation, he refers to the storm of 

 December 21, 1836, in the terms which follow. 



" In like manner great credit should be given to the obser- 

 vations collected by Professor Loomis respecting a remarkable 

 inland storm of December 1836. This storm commenced 

 blowing between south and east to the westward of the Mis- 

 sissippi, 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 violently 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 irreconcilable 

 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 Redfield to storms of this kind [!] . (Trans. 

 Am. Phil. Soc. vol. vii.)" 



We have it here asserted that ** this storm " . . . " travelled 

 from west or north-west to east or south-east:" and that 

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

 to that attributed by" me to other storms; while at the 

 same time we are told that the area, " throughout which the 

 barometric column stood at a minimum," . . . "extended from 

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

 Now, in all storms which I have noticed in this part of Ame- 

 rica, the course and progress of the barometric minimum ap- 

 pears coincident with that of the body or axis of the storm ; 

 and as the length of the track thus passed over is quite a di- 

 stinct thing from the length of the storm itself, or from the 

 "area" of the barometric minimum at any given moment of 

 time, it appears to follow from Dr. Hare's own statement, that 

 the course of the proper body or axis of the gale was north- 

 easterly ; coinciding with the course of other storms. More- 

 over, I have not yet seen any evidence which shows that even 

 one storm of magnitude in the United States has proceeded 

 in a south-easterly course; although such a conclusion has 

 been suddenly adopted, ere uowf? apparently with the hope 

 of escaping from a difficulty in which some favourite hypo- 

 thesis had become involved. 



• Article on the New Brunswick tornado, in this Journal, January 1841, 

 p. 20-29. 

 f Not, however, by Prof. Loomis. 



