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 J^AKEWELL. 



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 clone to it. When I first 

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

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

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

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

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

 possible for great agitations to take place in the atmos- 

 phere along longitudinal lines, but they must move in 

 eddies more or less elliptical. Water-spouts and local 

 whirlwinds, I believe to be electrical phenomena, particu- 

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

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

 residence, at Nottingham, of which I published an account 

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

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

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

 servations and reflection have, however, convinced me that 

 the leading heads of my electrical theory were true. This 

 account of the water-spout was my first essay in print. 

 Have we any further information of the periodical appear- 

 ance of luminous meteors, of which the first account was 

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

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

 no portrait to copy from. My features may be called reg- 

 ular and open. I have always preserved an appearance of 

 youth not corresponding with my years. My brother was 

 only seventeen months older than I, but when I lived with 

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



