CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCIENTIFIC MEN. 61 



him that I find writing a fatigue. Believe me, with every 

 kind wish for your long enjoyment of health and usefulness, 

 Yours, very sincerely, 



ROBERT BAKEWELL. 



P. S., January 9. The important paper on the law of 

 storms, first published in your Journal, has not been entirely 

 overlooked in the late discussion on that subject in Eng 

 land ; but it has not had justice done to it. When I first 

 read it, I told a gentleman who was about writing on the 

 subject, that I was well persuaded the writer of that article 

 had discovered a most important fact, and directed, but in 

 vain, his attention to the subject. It appeared to me, as 

 soon as I reflected upon the article, that it was scarcely 

 possible for great agitations to take place in the atmos 

 phere along longitudinal lines, but they must move in 

 eddies more or less elliptical. Water-spouts and local 

 whirlwinds, I believe to be electrical phenomena, particu 

 larly the former. When a boy, my attention was turned to 

 the subject by a remarkable water-spout, near my mother's 

 residence, at Nottingham, of which I published an account 

 in the " Gentleman's Magazine," about 1782. I was then 

 fifteen years of age, and I sent a long theory with my nar 

 rative, which they (properly I have no doubt) omitted. Ob 

 servations and reflection have, however, convinced me that 

 the leading heads of my electrical theory were true. This 

 account of the water-spout was my first essay in print. 

 Have we any further information of the periodical appear 

 ance of luminous meteors, of which the first account was 

 given in your Journal ? My dear sir, you do me too much 

 honor in wishing to have a copy of my portrait, but I have 

 no portrait to copy from. My features may be called reg 

 ular and open. I have always preserved an appearance of 

 youth not corresponding with my years. My brother was 

 only seventeen months older than I, but when I lived with 

 my mother, and was then twenty-one years old, my brother 





