214 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



But it seems almost certain that the diameter of the storm 

 was much longer from S. W. to N. E. than from S. E. to 

 N. W. The wind was only beginning to abate at noon, to 

 a ship 75 miles S. by E. from Cape Hatteras, and this was 

 the time the storm was commencing at Reedy Island, not 

 far below Philadelphia. The diameter of the storm, there- 

 fore, in this direction, was more than 300 miles, whilst its 

 diameter from N. W. to S. E. could hardly have been half 

 this quantity, for the storm was not felt at Wilmington, N. C. 

 nor at Baltimore. And two ships off our coast, one from 

 Charleston bound to the Chesapeake, and one from Boston 

 to Norfolk, in latitude 40 19', did not experience the gale. 

 And when the storm reached Connecticut, it certainly 

 was not more than about 100 miles broad in this direction, 

 for at Providence it was not of a violent character, and about 

 fifty miles N. W. of that city, the centre of the storm passed, 

 so that here its S. E. semi-diameter was only about fifty 

 miles. Between the Delaware Capes, also, the centre of 

 the storrn passed; for the wind changed round by E. at 

 Cape May, and by N. at Cape Henlopen and as the storm 

 did not reach Baltimore, its N. W. semi-diameter was not 

 more than fifty miles. 



The shape of the storm, then, not being round, as Mr. 

 Redfield believed, is unfavorable to the whirlwind theory, 

 and will satisfactorily explain the circumstance that the wind 

 did not blow exactly at times towards- one central point 

 there was no such point, the centre was a line of considera- 

 ble length. 



156. The hypothesis of a whirlwind in this storm is there- 

 fore not true in fact; and if it was true, it is totally incapa- 

 ble of explaining any of the phenomena. 



It does not explain the cause of the rain and hail. For, 

 if there was a whirlwind of such violence as to make the 

 wind in the borders of the storm move with a velocity of 

 75 or 100 miles an hour at the surface of the earth, the air 



