
392 
sweep over the land, might be given sufficiently in advance 
to prevent shipwreck, with many other losses, disasters, 
and inconveniences to both man and beast” (page 6). 
The same journal states that the Meteorological Depart- 
ment of the London Board of Trade, under Admiral 
Fitz oy, was established to co-operate with the suggestion 
of Lieutenant Maury, which statement is confirmed by 
the report of the English Board for 1866 (page 17), and 
also by Admiral Fitzroy himself, in his Weather Book, 
where he tells (page 49), “ from personal knowledge, how 
cold Maury’s views and suggestions were received in this 
country (England) prior to 1853.” The great meteoro- 
logist, Alexander Buchan, Secretary of the Scottish Meteo- 
rological Society, in his recent work, strikingly states the 
indebtedness of Europe to the United States for this 
system: “ The estanlishment of meteorological societies 
during the last twenty years must be commemorated as 
contributing in a high degree to the advancement of the 
science. In this respect the United States stand pre- 
eminent.” 
Less than three years after the occurrence of the famous 
“ Black Sea storm,” just mentioned, there appeared for the 
first time, and in an American paper, a formal proposition 
for the establishment of a general system of daily weather 
reports by telegraph, and the utilisation of that great 
invention for the co. lection of meteorologic changes at a 
central office, and the transmission thence of storm warn- 
ings to the sea-ports of the American lakes and our 
Atlantic sea-board. 
“Since great storms,’ says Mr. Thomas B. Butler in 
his work on the ‘‘ Atmospheric System and Elements of 
Prognostication,” “have been found to observe pretty 
well-defined laws, both as respects the motions of the 
wind and the direction of their progress, we may often 
recognise such a storm in its progress, and anticipate 
changes which may succeed dunng the next few hours. 
When it is possible to obtain telegraphic reports of the 
weather from several places in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi and its tributaries, we may often predict the approach 
of a great storm twenty-four hours before its violence is 
felt at New York.” 
On the coasts of the kingdom of Italy mariners are 
forewarned that a storm threatens them by a red flag 
hoisted on all the towers and light-houses of the principal 
localities, ranging from Genoa to Palermo, and thence up 
along the Adriatic. On the most dangerous points of the 
coast of England, where the fishing-boats and small craft 
that perform the service of the coast are exposed to 
formidable gales even during the most promising season, 
barometers put up by the Meteorological Bureau are at 
hand to warn the seamen of bad weather. A striking 
illustration of the importance of storm weather signals 
was recently furnished (March 8), when a tornado swept 
over St. Louis, destroying several lives and 1,000,000 dols. 
worth of property. 
In former publications the writer has demonstrated at 
length the fire-sprinkled paths and tracks of these storms, 
some of which are generated in the torrid zone, and sweep 
over the Gulf of Mexico, and thence up the valley of the 
Mississippi ; or, shooting off from the bosom of the Gulf 
Streem, strike upon the Atlantic coast, and thence com- 
mence their march upon the sea-board and central States 
of the Union. In these published papers the view taken 
of these tropic-born cyclones is, with some modifications, 
that announced in 1831, and then substantially demon- 
strated by Mr. William C. Redfield, of New York, viz. 
that they rotate round a calm centre of low barometer, in 
a direction contrary to the hands of a watch in the 
northern hemisphere, and with the hands of a watch in 
the southern hemisphere. 
The writer was aware, when this view was first publicly 
sustained by himself, that it was not accepted by all 
meteorologists. 
The observations, of the most reliable and extended 
character, made within the last few years, go far to show 

NATURE 
[Sept 14, 1871 
that the storms which descend on low latitudes of the 
earth from high polar regions are, as the storms of the 
tropicai regions, likewise of a rotary or cyclonical 
character. : 
One of the most beautiful illustrations of the law which 
governs these atmospheric disturbances may be found in 
the gale which is so celebrated as that in which, on the 
25th of October, 1859, the noble steamship Royal Charter 
went down, and several hundred lives were lost, in sight 
of the island of Anglesea, on the coast of Wales. “The 
Royal Charter gale, so remarkable in its features, and so 
complete in its illustrations,” as Admiral Fitzroy has well 
remarked, “we may say (from the fact of its having been 
noted at so many parts of the English coast, and because 
ihe storm passed over the middle of the country), is one 
of the very best to examine which has occurred for some 
length of time.” 

The peculiarity of this gale which swept over the deck of — 
the Charter was its zutense coldness, being a polar current. 
The phenomena of the Royal Charter gale, as detailed 
in Fitzroy’s Weather Book and the publications of the day, 
are important because they furnish the reader with the — 
type to which most American storms, and, indeed, all 
storms, more or less strictly conform, as geographical or 
orographical circumstances permit or prevent. 
Storms similar in their conditions to that of the Raya/Z 
Charter not unfrequently occur in the United States, 
especially in the winter, when the conflict of the two 
currents, the polar and the equatorial, in high latitudes, is 
marked by sudden transitions in January from mild, 
moist, and balmy weather to a sudden and fearful cold, 
below zero. The great snow-storm which visited Chicago 
on Friday, the 13th of January last, was from the great 
polar current, and, as is the wont of westerly storms (from 
theforographic peculiarity of the country), made its way to 
the Atlantic along the lakes and through the valley of the 
St. Lawrence. 
“With daily telegrams from the Azores and Iceland,” 
Buchan says, “two and often three days’ intimation of 
almost every storm that visits Great Britain could be 
had.” The Iceland telegram would give tidings from the 
polar air current, and that from the Azores would adver- 
tise the movement of the tropical current. 
It is highly important that the United States should 
have telegrams from the Pacific, and from the valley of 
the Saskatchawan, or some point in British America on 
the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The im- 
portance of reports from the south-west was also fearfully 
demonstrated in March, during the already mentioned 
interruption of the Signal Service. 
It is due to the cyclone theory, or “Jaw of storms,” 
here and heretofore advanced by the writer, to say that 
many of the storms which seem to be deviations from 
the cyclonic law are modified by znterxiring cyclones. 
This view was formally adopted by the committee of the 
Meteorological Department of the London Board of 
Trade. Mr. Stevenson, of Berwickshire, England, as 
quoted by Fitzroy in the Board of Trade Report for 1862 
(p. 33), bas some striking observations, founded on his 
own invaluable labours : “The storms which pass over 
the British Isles are found generally to act in strict 
accordance with the cyclonic theory. In many cases, 
however, this accordance is not so obvious, and the phe- 
nomena become highly complicated. This is a result 
which often happens when two or more cyclones interfere 
—an event of very frequent occurrence. When inter- 
ferences of this description take place, we have squalls, 
calms (often accompanied by heavy rains), thunder-storms, 
great variations in the direction and force of the wind, 
and much irregularity in the barometric oscillations. 
These complex results are, however, completely explicable 
by the cyclonic theory, as I have tested in several instances. 
A very beautiful and striking example of a compound 
cyclonic disturbance of the atmosphere at this place was 
investigated by me in September 1840, and found to be 


