STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 415 



It seems almost incredible that at that time the great majority of naval 

 officers, even, utterly refused to believe in or even listen to any theories 

 regarding storms at sea or on land, and regarded a barometer as more or 

 less of a nuisance. As late as 1850, Admiral Jenkins, says a naval officer, 

 who afterwards became one of the most distinguished heroes of the war, 

 asked him if he put any faith in " that thing." "Why, when I was in the 

 Gulf and at Vera Cruz," said he, " that d d thing nearly set me crazy." 



The next, diagram shown upon the screen was one of Redfield's track 

 charts, with the path of various hurricanes, illustrating as graphically 

 as anything could well do the general limits of the great area already 

 defined as the Bay of North America, the tracks along which these terrific 

 cyclonic storms move in their majestic parabolic orbits from the tropics 

 into the temperate zone, and the essential unity of the entire area, so far 

 as any broad and rational scheme of telegraphic weather forecasts is con- 

 cerned. This latter fact, however, was referred to and emphasized still 

 more strongly later on, in connection with a full description of the physical 

 and meteorological features of the Bay of North America, and the existing 

 and proposed telegraph lines and cables, so it need not be referred to fur- 

 ther here. Attention was called to the fact that, while some of these 

 storms pursued a course about west by north across the Caribbean Sea and 

 Gulf of Mexico, reaching the coast of Texas before recurving, others recurve 

 in various latitudes, the greater number about the thirtieth parallel, follow- 

 ing a path very nearly coincident with the course of the Gulf Stream, and 

 approximately parallel to our Atlantic Coast line. Again, a careful study 

 of the dates of even the comparatively few storm tracks plotted on this 

 chart brings out the fact that the August hurricanes recurve well to the 

 northward, about the thirtieth or thirty-third parallel, while those of Octo- 

 ber recurve in about the latitude of Cuba. These important general laws, 

 dependent upon the change of the sun's declination, have been strongly 

 confirmed by subsequent investigation, and were discussed in greater detail 

 later in the evening. One other feature of this chart that was referred to 

 particularly, was the notable irregularity in the track of the hurricane of 

 August, 1887, which, after having already commenced to recurve in the 

 usual manner, was unexpectedly deflected to the westward, striking the 

 coast of Georgia at Darien. This circumstance the audience was requested 

 to bear in mind in connection with similar deflections of certain recent 

 hurricanes, when the principles governing such deflections would be fully 

 explained. 



The next diagram was a copy of the Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic 

 Ocean for August, 1888, on which were plotted the tracks of all the August 

 hurricanes on record, strikingly confirming the fact brought out by Red- 

 field's chart, that these tracks are remarkably uniform, both in their general 

 course and in the latitude where they recurve. 



Diagrams from Colonel Reid's well known book on storms served to illus- 

 trate the way in which able, practical, and scientific men took up Redfield's 

 ideas, and propagated his new and important theories among navigators, 

 for their guidance at sea in avoiding altogether, or maneuvering success- 

 fully in ocean storms. Colonel Reid was an officer of the Royal Engineers 

 of Great Britain, and his attention was first directed to this subject from 

 having been employed at Barbadoes in reestablishing the Government 

 buildings blown down in the hurricane of 1831, when one thousand four 

 hundred and forty-seven persons lost their lives in the short space of seven 

 hours, in that little island alone; a striking commentary, in itself, of the 

 destructive character of these gigantic tornado-like whirlwinds. The dia- 

 grams were especially graphic in clearly defining the broad belt or swath 



