of certain Winds and Storms. 291 



Moisture, p. 139.) If the two currents come from opposite 

 directions, the motion of both will be destroyed, or one will 

 drive the other back before it, along its former track. In either 

 case, there will be a mixture of the different portions of air only 

 at the plane where they meet ; and this will be altogether ina- 

 dequate to the production of a copious rain. If their altitude 

 be different, so that the one may glide past the other, but in 

 immediate contact with it, there will be a more considerable 

 mingling of the two, but still not such as is commensurate with 

 the effect observed. 



This hypothesis is besides encumbered with other difficulties. 

 Where shall we find the cause or causes that shall set two cur- 

 rents in motion, in opposite directions, and make them flow on 

 amicably together, and in contact with each other, for hundreds 

 of miles ? If they are of nearly equal coldness, no considerable 

 effect will follow from their mixture. If they differ greatly in 

 their temperature, their specific gravity will be so widely diffe- 

 rent that they will separate, the lighter flowing above, and the 

 heavier below. If we suppose that combination of circumstances 



fifteenth volume of this Journal, at p. 12, is an " Hypothesis on Volcanoes 

 and Earthquakes, by Joseph du Commun, of the Military Academy of VVest 

 Point." It has the stamp of originality, and no one who reads it over will 

 doubt that it is the result of the unaided operations of his own mind ; but if 

 the author of that paper will examine this article of Leslie's, in the Encyclo- 

 paedia, he will find that he has been anticipated in all the points of his hypo- 

 thesis. Indeed if the writer who has furnished an analysis, with critical re- 

 marks of Professor Leslie's speculations for Brande's Journal, is to be be- 

 lieved, it did not originate with him, but with an individual whom we should 

 hardly expect to find engaging in this kind of speculation,— Dr Southey, the 

 Poet-Laureate. 



" We think this the wildest conceit that has ever figured in a sober work 

 on philosophy. It throws Bishop AVilkin's schemes into the shade, and seems 

 to rival some of Mr Southey's oriental fictions, from one of which, the Doun. 

 dauiel Cavern, it is manifestly borrowed. We shall not consume our readers' 

 time with a serious refutation of this shower of atmospheric air-drops, pushing 

 themselves down the watery abyss, from five and a half miles beneath the 

 surface to the very bottom. Nor shall we alarm their fears for the respiration 

 of posterity, when this unceasing operation shall have smuggled the whole 

 atmosphere into its submarine vaults. We shall merely congratulate old 

 Ocean on the possession of this soft, elastic, and self-adjusting pillow. To 

 complete this 7iew Neptunian theory, Mr Leslie should have shewn how, when 

 this pillow becomes over-stufFed, the surplus air could be squeezed out, as 

 occasion required, through one of Plato's spiracles, to inflate the bellows of 

 the Cyclops. "_-7o!/)7ifl//or Oclol/cr 1822, p. 177-8. 



