any seer. = 
Fune 19, 1873] 
THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED* 
II. 
[t has been asserted lately that the Gulf Stream has no 
influence upon storms ; that they have no tendency to 
run toward it or to run upon it; and that what geogra- 
phers and seamen have always said about the Gulf Stream 
as a “weather-breeder” and “storm-king” is absurd. I 
think it can be demonstrated that this well-known popular 
belief is not absurd. 
It is an observation as old as Aristotle, that the storms 
of the middle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere 
advance from west to east. This is obviously partly due 
to the fact that the winds on their eastern sides are 
southerly, that they come from the equatorial regions, 
and hence are highly charged with aqueous vapour. This 
vapour is absolutely essential to the sustenance of the 
storm. Moreover, the law of storms requires that the 
NATURE 
147 
southerly winds should enter the storm-vortex on the 
eastern side, and as this is the side on which the greatest 
quantity of vapour is found, and the side of greatest 
condensation, of the greatest evolution of latent heat, 
hence of the greatest aérial rarefaction and barome- 
tric fall, to this side the heavier air from the west will 
push as into a great hollow. Thus do we actually find 
that all storms, formed west of the Gulf Stream, are actu- 
ally propagated toward it. It may be argued from the 
above facts that the anti-trade winds are thus maintained 
by storms incessantly making the circuit of the globe 
within the temperate zone. But in reality, instead of 
being the effect of storm influence, the anti-trades are 
originated by independent solar agency, as are the trades, 
and they are potential and causal in producing the east- 
ward progression of all cyclones. It must be conceded 
that the pressure of vast aérial currents does serve to 
force the meteor along with them as the river-eddy is car- 
Fic. 3.—The Atmospheric Movements. 
ried down stream with the water-current ; otherwise it is | 
impossible to explain the westward progression of tropical 
hurricanes. While yet in the band of easterly trade- 
winds the storm will invariably work its way or be propa- 
gated toward the most humid region, unless mechanically 
borne in another direction by the great atmospheric cur- 
rent in which it is often embedded as an eddy in a 
river. The cyclone-tracks over all the oceans lie in 
the central bands of the great ocean-currents of high 
temperature and great evaporation, and the band of 
cyclonic violence is often beautifully coterminous with 
the sharply-marked blue-tinted edge of the Gulf Stream. 
Thus, in the Pacific, the Loochoo Islands lie just in 
the path of the Kuro Siwo, the great Pacific Gulf 
Stream of the Japanese, and are visited by the most fear- 
ful typhoons ; but the Bonin Islands, in the same parallel, 
but on the extreme margin of the Kuro Siwo, have very 
* Continued from p. 124. 
mild and moderate storms.* “If a storm commences 
anywhere in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream, it naturally 
tends towards that stream, because,” as Loomis says, 
“here is the greatest amount of vapour to be precipitated, 
and when a storm has once encountered the Gulf Stream, 
it continues to follow that stream in its progress east- 
ward.” Vessels and Japanese junks, dismasted in gales off 
the Asiatic coast, have been drifted for many days in the 
current of the Kuro Siwo, to the coast of California, just 
as West-Indian beans, cocoa-nuts, and vegetables, have 
been drifted to Iceland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen, on 
the extension of the Gulf Stream. According to all 
meteorological observations of the tracks of storms, we 
are warranted in believing that cyclones and hurricanes 
do, asa matter of fact and of atmospheric law, run on 
the hot currents of the sea as naturally as the watercourse 
clings to its bed. Practical seamen, though unable to 
* See Redfield’s Report on Pacific Cyclones. 
