300 Mr. Redfield's Reply to Dr. Hare. % 



Moreover, I have sometimes ventured to offer summary sketch- 

 es of other results or conclusions which seemed to follow from 

 the above mentioned and other developments, which came under 

 notice in pursuing my meteorological inquiries.* These sketches 

 or conclusions were given, partly as notifications and partly be- 

 cause I was not willing it should appear in after years, that such 

 results or conclusions as I have noticed had been overlooked in 

 conducting my examinations. These inceptive statements seem 

 to have occasioned many of the " strictures" and criticisms which 

 I am now to notice. 



Dr. Hare says that my " idea that tornadoes and hurricanes are 

 all whirlwinds, involves some improbabilities," and that it requires 

 that "during every hurricane, there should be blasts of a like de- 

 gree of strength coinciding with every tangent which can be ap- 

 phed to a circle," and that " thirty two ships equidistant from the 

 axis of gyration, and from each other, should each have the wind 

 from a different point of the compass with nearly equal force." 

 The only modification he admits, " is that resulting from the pro- 

 gressive motion which tends to accelerate the wind" on one side, 

 "and to retard it upon the other." 



I could never have imagined that any " idea" of mine necessa- 

 rily involved the conditions here specified; and if the fact be such, 

 Dr. Hare would have rendered some service by making it manifest. 

 The modification admitted by him, vitally important as it is, shows 

 only one of the conditions which would doubtless prevent any 

 such perfect symmetry of results as he demands ; to say nothing 

 of the practical error of supposing that the course of the wind in 

 a whirlwind must coincide with the tangents of a circle. He 

 alleges also, " that as respects any one station, the chances would 

 be extremely unfavorable that the same hurricane should twice 

 proceed from the same quarter." If by this is meant that the 

 changes of wind at any one station in the same gale, are not 

 likely to come back to the same point of the compass from which 

 it had before blown, except hy an extraneous force or influence, 

 we shall in this be able to agree. He states further, that "in the 

 course of time it would be felt, at any station, to proceed from 

 many different directions, if not from every point of the com- 



* See this Journal, 33: 50-65; also, various incidental remarks and statements 

 in other papers. 



