of the United States and the West Indies. 121 
It is the mere rising and falling of the mercury, which chiefly de- 
serves attention, and not its conformity to a particular point in the 
scale of elevation. 
9. These practical inferences apply in terms, chiefly to storms 
which have passed tothe northward of the 30th degree of latitude on 
the American coast, but with the necessary modification as to the 
point of the compass, which results from the westerly course pursued 
by the storm while in the lower latitudes, are for the most part equal- 
ly applicable to the storms and hurricanes which occur in the West 
Indies, and south of the parallel of 30°. As the marked occurrence 
of tempestuous weather is here less frequent, it may be sufficient to 
notice that the point of direction, in cases which are otherwise analo- 
gous, is in the West Indian seas, about ten or twelve points of the 
compass more to the left than on the coast of the United States in the 
latitude of New-York : 
Vicissitudes of winds and weather’on this coast which do not con- 
form to the foregoing specifications, are more frequent in April, May, 
and June, than in other months. Easterly or southerly winds under 
which the barometer rises, or ‘maintains its elevation, are not of a By- 
ratory or stormy character; but such winds frequently terminate in 
the falling of the barometer and the usual phenomena of an easterly 
storm. 
The typhoons and storms of the China sea and eastern coast of 
Asia, appear to be similar in character to the hurricanes of the West 
Indies and the storms of this coast, when prevailing in the same lati- 
tudes. There is reason to believe that the great circuits of wind, of 
which the trade winds form an.integral part, are nearly uniform in all 
the great oceanic basins; and that the course of these circuits and of 
= stormy gyrations which they may contain, is, in the southern 
emisphere, in a counter-direction to those north of the equator, pro- 
pi a corresponding difference in the general pa of storms 
ae winds in the two ee es 
I 
XXV.—No. 1 
