THE WEATHER, AND WEATHER PROPHETS. 143 



(3.) An occurrence like this took place at one of our 

 southern watering-places not far from hence, a few days 

 ago ; and the gale which followed was one of the pre- 

 cursors of that far more fearful one which has just (appa- 

 rently) blown itself out ;* part and parcel, no doubt, of 

 that great periodical phenomenon whose recurrence 

 under the name of " the November atmospheric wave," 

 is beginning to be recognized as one of the features of 

 our European weather table a vast and considerably 

 well-defined atmospherical disturbance ; peculiar, it 

 would seem, to this portion of the globe, though origin- 

 ating, as we shall see reason to believe, in the opposite 

 hemisphere j and of which the gale of the Royal Charter 

 (October 25, 1859) ; the great Crimean hurricane of 

 disastrous memory (November 14, 1855); and the still 

 more awful storm of December 8, (N.S.) 1703, the 

 greatest which has ever swept this island, may be 

 considered as shadowing out the beginning, middle, and 

 end. 



(4.) The actual barometric fluctuation to which the 

 epithet has been affixed by Mr Birt, who first drew 

 attention to one of its most peculiar features, is, how- 

 ever, confined to narrower limits of time ; and refers to 

 one great billow or mountainous breaker (so to speak) of 

 air, which sweeps in November across the whole North 

 Atlantic and the European continent from N.W. to S.E. ; 

 preceded and followed by sudden and violent subor- 



* This was written on the morning of the 2d of November 1863, 

 after a niffht of most terrific storm. 



