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 

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

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

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

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

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

 >ossible for great agitations to take place in the atmos- 

 >here along longitudinal lines, but they must move in 

 ddies more or less elliptical. Water-spouts and local 

 vhirlwinds, I believe to be electrical phenomena, particu- 

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

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

 esidence, at Nottingham, of which I published an account 



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

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

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

 ervations and reflection have, however, convinced me that 

 lie leading heads of my electrical theory were true. This 

 iccount of the water-spout was my first essay in print, 

 lave we any further information of the periodical appear- 

 ince of luminous meteors, of which the first account was 

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

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

 ao portrait to copy from. My features may be called reg- 

 ular and open. I have always preserved an appearance of 

 routh not corresponding with my years. My brother was 

 >nly seventeen months older than I, but when I lived with 

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



