THE QUARTERLY 
POU k NAD Or sClean € i: 
OCTOBER, 1872. 
i THE ORIGIN OF THE GREAT CYCLONES. 
By Professor THompson B. Maury, 
United States Naval Observatory. 
sILN his sketch of the early triumphs of science in England, 
a Macaulay tells us, “‘One after another, phantoms 
=> which had haunted the world through ages of darkness 
fled before the light.” It was no wonder that men, taught 
by Bacon to investigate instead of to imagine, should 
have learned more in a day than all their fathers for a 
thousand years before them. It was not strange that 
unscientific prelates and courtiers and literary gentlemen 
should have made brilliant discoveries in chemistry and 
physics, where, for centuries, professional alchemists and 
schoolmen had floundered in their own muddled dreams. 
But it seems passing strange that the phenomenon of 
storms and tempests should have escaped the eye of 
true science till quite recently, and remained so long one 
of those “‘ phantoms” of which the historian spoke. The 
time has certainly arrived for a vigorous invasion of 
the vast and splendid, but yet unsubdued, domain of 
meteorology. The key to success in this aggressive move- 
ment, I conceive, lies in the determination of the cause of 
cyclones and the generation of the storms which perpetually 
travel over their ordained and fire-sprinkled paths. As 
Professor Buys Ballot, the eminent chief of the Royal 
Dutch Meteorological Institute, in announcing the scheme 
of inquiry for the General Congress of Meteorologists to be 
held this year, has so well expressed it, “‘ the origin of de- 
pression systems is the great problem to be solved.” ‘Vhis solution 
I have attempted here. I am not unconscious of its im- 
portance and difficulty. But no scientific inquiry conducted, 
as I shall stri¢tly conduct this, upon the exciusive principle 
of a sufficient induction of observed facts, can be justly 
regarded as presumptuous. It is the glory of such a method 
of inquiry that while it risks nothing it has the best 
opportunities for solid and splendid acquisitions, and may 
not inaptly be compared, as some one has suggested, to 
VOL. (f (N.S.) 3H 
