British Association for the Adeancement of Science. ort | 
Statement of what seems agri should be farther done to “8 
vance our knowledge of the subje 
Col. Reid commenced by sisting that he had lohg Bie con- 
vinced that the operations of the Deity in the workings of his 
providential care over his creatures, were governed by fixed laws, 
designed by incomprehensible wisdom, arranged by supreme 
power, and tending to the most benevolént ends. However irreg- 
ular the tempest or the tornado might appear to the inobservant, 
yet our own day had seen some of the phenomena reduced to 
rule ; and he doubted not soon to convince the Section that we 
were on the eve of advancing some steps farther towards this 
most desirable end. His attention had been first’ directed to the 
subject in 1831. He arrived on military service, at Barbadoes, 
just after the desolating hurricane of that year, which, in the 
‘Short space of seven hours, destroyed 1477 persons on that island 
alone. He had been for two years and a half daily employed as 
an engineer officer amidst the ruined buildings, and was thus nat- 
urally led to the consideration of the phenomena of. hurricanes. 
The first explanation which to him seemed reasonable, he found 
in a pamphlet by William C. Redfield, of New York, extracted 
from the American Journal of Science; a work much less known 
in this country than its value and great merits deserved. The 
northeast storms on the coast of America had attracted the atten- 
_tion of Franklin. He had been prevented, by one of these 
storms, from observing an eclipse of the moon at Philadelphia, 
which he was soon after astonished to find had been seen in 
Boston, although that town lay to the northeast of Philadelphia. 
This ‘was a circumstance not to be lost on such an ‘inquiring | 
mind as Franklin’s: he ascertained, upon inquiry, that the same 
northeast storm had not reached Boston for some hours after it 
had blown at Philadelphia; and that, although the wind blew 
from the northeast, yet the progress of the entire storm was from 
the southwest. He died, however, before he had made any fur- 
ther progress in this investigation.* Col. Capper, of the Hast 
India Company’s service, after having studied meteorological sub- 
jects for twenty years, in the Madras territory, published a work, 
in 1801, upon winds and monsoons, giving brief statements of 
eer fatal effects, from Orme’s History of Hindustan. In this 
* Pranklin-died in 1790, forty six years after he sous discovery —Eps. 
