152 THE STORMS OF THE WINTER 1865-6. 



vast Avorld of waters from season to season, see in its thousand change- 

 ful moods of storm and calm, ebb and flow, brightness and gloom ; see the 

 mighty swell of the tidal wave as it heaves its silent mass beneath the 

 moon ; see the onward march of the great gulf stream as it cleaves its way 

 through the trackless waters of the Atlantic, — that our sense of wonder 

 assumes a definite shape and at once impels us to ask for the causes of such 

 marvellous phenomena. 



But there is another ocean with its mountain waves and billowy 

 surges, its grand tidal currents attending upon the sun, its ebb and flow, 

 storm and calm ; and when Ave consider it in the light of systematic 

 observation we may not find it difficult to believe that it is an ocean whose 

 phenomena are even more majestic, more terrible, and more interesting 

 than those of the great deep. We speak of the ocean of air at tlie bottom 

 of which we live and move. 



We propose, on this occasion, to describe this ocean in some of its 

 aspects as manifested to us in the winter of 18G5-6, a winter which will 

 long be remembered as iinusally stormy and wet. 



Now we are far from thinking that the destructive tempests which 

 annually sweep over the western Atlantic, are of all meteorological 

 phenomena the most interesting and instructive. The vast amount of 

 human suffering alone wliicli they cause is enough to lead us to study the 

 laws by the knowledge of which wtj may be enabled to forewarn our ports 

 of their approach. It is, however, by the methodical study of the weather 

 durinw its ordinary state, that the simple laws which govern its proverbial 

 uncertainty are to be discovered. Inasmuch as hurricanes which we every 

 year experience, even at this distance from the sea, have an interest for all 

 and in the hope that the study of them may lead many to become careful 

 observers of the weather, we shall proceed at once to make a fe^v remarks 

 on atmospheric waves and then to examine in detail one of the great storms 

 above referred to. 



As the ocean has its daily ebb and flow, so the air above and around us 

 rises and falls every day under the powerfid influence of the sun, 

 risin<T as his rays become more intense and falling again as the night 

 approaches. The whole mass of air above us heaves and swells and 

 assumes the form of vast waves ever flowing forwards, and from side to 

 side as they are influenced by heat and cold. But this huge heat-tide is 

 not the only disturbance to which our atmosphere is suliject. There are 

 other great waves moving across whole continents, thousands of miles in 



