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Memoir of William C. Redfield. 367 



Thorn, and otiier well known writers, lies a more profound in- 

 quiry, How are these laws themselves to be accounted for? 

 What sets the storm in motion, and gives it the whirlwind char- 

 acter, and at tlie same time carries it forward, and in so definite 

 a path? What makes it revolve always from right to left on 

 the north side of the equator, and from left to right on the south 

 side? Why does its violence increase towards the centre of the 

 storm, and why is its force there so tremendous? Laws, it 

 must be remembered are facts, and merely express the modes in 

 which nature acts: they are themselves phenomena to be ac- 

 counted for. To which of the ultimate causes of physical phe- 

 nomena is their origin, in the present case, to be traced? Is it 

 teat ? Is it electricity ? Is it gravity ? Is it connected in some 

 way with the grand system of planetary motion ? Questions of 

 this kind were pressed on Mr. Bedfield from various sources by 

 those who assailed his theory. At first he declined any attempts 

 at their solution. He claimed that the whirlwind character of 

 storms, and the laws which he had assigned to them, are matters 

 of fact, as established not only by himself, but also by Keid, 

 Milne, Dove, and Piddington; that never having attempted to 

 establish a theory of winds, nor the origin or first cause of storms, 

 he had no occasion to go into these inquiries, but had long held 

 the proper inquiry to be, What are storms? not How are sto7*ms 

 produced f He however incidentally, at different times, indicated 

 tis opinions on the ultimate causes of storms. Electricity, Red- 

 field entirely rejected as an agent in the production of winds and 

 storms, considering its presence and development rather as a 

 consecjuence than as a cause of atmospheric changes. To heat 

 lie assigned only a limited and local effect, denying its agency in 

 producing either the great and established movements of the at- 

 mosphere, or the extraordinary commotions which constituted 

 the chief objects of his study, hurricanes and tempests. But he 

 considered what he called the *' dynamics of the atmosphere," as 

 connected with and resulting from the diurnal and annual mo- 

 tions of the earth. While, from the first, I have heartily em- 

 braced Redfield's doctrine that ocean gales are progressive whirl- 

 "^inds, and have further fully believed that he had established 

 these law^s or modes of action on an impregnable basis, a regard 

 to truth and candor obliges me to say, that I have never been 

 a convert to his views respecting the ultimate causes of storms, 

 especially so fiir as he assigned for these causes what he denomi- 

 nates the "diurnal and orbitual motions of the earth," but his 

 ^lotions on this point have always appeared to me vague and un- 

 satisfactory. Nor, while I have been impressed with the belief 

 that heat is, in general, by far the most influential of all natural 

 agents in destroying the equilibrium of the atmosphere, and of 



causing its motions, both in established cuixents, as the trade 



