206 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



The same paper of 29th of August, says, "brigOgle- 

 thorpe, on the 18th August, lat. 32 29', long. 78 55' had a 

 violent gale from N. W," 



If the reader will now turn to Col. Reid's account of this 

 storm, and mark with his pencil on the chart the direction 

 of the wind on the 18th of August, 1837, he will find that 

 the arrows of the following places all point inwards, to- 

 wards a space where the West Indian and the Duke of 

 Manchester were laboring in the centre of the storm at that 

 time. The Oglethorpe, the Ida, the Rawlins, the Cicero, 

 the Delaware, the Mary, the Westbrook. the Sophia, and 

 at Wilmington. He will moreover observe that the locali- 

 ties are all round the centre, several hundred miles apart, 

 as favorably situated as could be desired for ascertaining 

 the direction of the wind in this storm at a particular time. 



The reader will find but two arrows which do not point 

 towards this central space ; the Penelope, which seems to 

 indicate a rotation of the wind from right to left ; and the 

 Winchester, which seerns to indicate a rotation from left to 

 right. These anomalies I hope to explain satisfactorily, 

 and in such a manner as to add a strong link to the chain 

 of argument in favor of an inward motion of the air towards 

 the centre of the storm, if indeed any other evidence, than 

 that of the fact itself, is necessary. 



Now if the wind did blow inwards in all these storms, all 

 the phenomena can be accounted for, from the single fact 

 which I have demonstrated from experiment, as indicated 

 in a publication of mine in the Saturday Courier of March 

 18, 1837. 



For as the air must have moved upwards over a central 

 space of undefined magnitude in all these storms, I have 

 demonstrated by experiment that the cold due to diminish- 

 ed pressure, would condense one half its vapor when it 

 reached six thousand yards, a quantity sufficient in ordi- 

 nary states of the dew point to produce three inches of rain 



