THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 123 



on West India Hurricanes/ Mr. Page describes two storms, one of extreme 

 brevity and another of great duration and length of track. 



" On the morning of September 26, 1898, a hurricane of small area but of 

 great intensity was discovered, central to the west of Eleuthera. By the 27th it 

 had reached the coast of Great Abaco, recurving toward the northeast. On the 

 28th all traces of the storm had disappeared, nor was it again reported. At the 

 opposite extreme stands the Porto Rican hurricane of August, 1899, the path of 

 whose center was traced day after day from its position southwest of the Cape 

 Verde Islands, August 3, westward to the coast of Florida, northward to the Capes 

 of the Chesapeake, and eastward to the center of the Mediterranean sea, the whole 

 trajectory occupying 37 days." 



LAW OF HURRICANES. 



The Rev. Benito Vines, S. J., for many years Director of the observatory 

 at Havana, and a lifelong student of meteorology, devoted much time to the 

 study of West Indian hurricanes. Probably no one was better qualified than 

 he to write with authority concerning the origin and nature of these storms. 

 Father Vines died in the year 1893. An unpublished manuscript of his, 

 entitled " Investigation of the Cyclonic Circulation and Translatory Move- 

 ment of West Indian Hurricanes/' was translated by his friend, Dr. C. Finley, 

 of Havana, and was recently printed by the U. S. Weather Bureau and issued 

 as a special publication. 3 



This pamphlet probably contains the most satisfactory exposition of the 

 laws and phenomena of hurricanes that we have at present. A few of the 

 paragraphs which are appropriate to so brief a sketch are here quoted. One 

 of the most marked of the phenomena attending the progress of these storms, 

 and one of the most difficult to explain, is the parabolic path pursued, and the 

 form and geographical position of the recurving portion of the path. As 

 Father Vines's explanation of these features embodies also much general in- 

 formation on other interesting points connected with the nature and move- 

 ment of hurricanes, somewhat extended quotations are made from his 

 pamphlet. 



Theoretical Importance of the Law of Recurving. " Theoretically speaking 

 this law is so intimately connected with the changes in the sun's declination and 

 with the several positions occupied, according to seasons, by the equatorial zone of 

 calms and rains, by the zones lying on the limits of the trade winds and by the 

 anticyclone of the Atlantic, that, in my opinion, if this law had not been discovered 

 a posteriori we would have to suspect a priori that it existed. 



2 West India Hurricanes. By James Page. Hydrogr. Office, Bull. No. 86, 

 Wash., 1901. 



3 U. S. Weather Bureau, Publ. No. 168, Wash., 1898. 



