HOPKINS'S OBJECTIONS. 471 



your theory which most readily suggest themselves to the 

 mind of an impartial reader. If your theory be true, you 

 will be thereby enabled to know what points require further 

 elucidation, and also what objections ought to have been 

 anticipated and answered, an object which, in advancing 

 a new theory that has to contend with preexisting opinions, 

 ought never to be lost sight of. 



I am, dear sir, your most obedient servant, 



GRAHAM HUTCHISON. 

 Glasgow, Scotland, llth October, 1S38. 



Objections by Mr. Hopkins, of Manchester, England. 



A converzatione was held on the 4th inst., at which the 

 subject was, " Meteorological facts relating to the great 

 storm of January, 1839," by Mr. Hopkins. In the discourse 

 delivered by that gentleman, it was stated, that little was 

 at present known respecting those local movements of the 

 atmosphere which constitute our storms. Notwithstanding 

 the advance that has been made in other branches of know- 

 ledge, and the high degree of interest that has always been 

 felt by mankind in those sublime and often destructive phe- 

 nomena of nature, our knowledge of the particular local 

 causes which produce storms is not much greater than that 

 possessed by man thousands of years ago. It is, indeed, 

 only when storms do great damage, and thus excite public 

 interest, that we can at all collect facts from a sufficient 

 number of places, to enable us to take any general view of 

 what has been going on in the atmosphere at the time. 



duced in temperature by a given diminution of pressure, and if he finds, at 

 ordinary summer temperatures, the moist air reduced only about one half that 

 of dry air, as I have found it, he will, by careful examination, be able to per- 

 ceive, that all the doctrines which I teach on this subject, follow as corolla- 

 ries from this single fact, in connection with other facts heretofore estab- 

 lished. 



