316 On the Evidence of Certain Phenomena, &c. 
I have now given the authorities and explanations to which the 
author of the notes seems entitled, and it may not be improper to 
state, for the satisfaction of those who may have read my articles on 
the storms of the American coast,* that the method pursued by me 
in investigating the physical character of those storms, has been to 
procure a number of copies of clean charts of the Atlantic, and to 
map out all the facts which I was able to collect in relation to any 
one of these storms, upon one of these charts, in their true time and 
location, so as to obtain a connected view of these facts, both as re- 
gards their consentaneous and consecutive relations. The results 
have been highly satisfactory—so much so, indeed, that I have not 
met with the statement of a single fact which is at variance with the 
explanation which I have given of the operation of these storms, ex- 
cept in two or three instances, which proved, on further inquiry, to have 
been erroneously stated. The historical records of more than a cen- 
tury past have been freely resorted to, and the inquiry has also been 
extended to other coasts and seas, and has shown the existence of an 
unvarying system, which I have not yet attempted to describe, except 
in the most summary manner. 
It may well be supposed that, in pursuing this inquiry by the me- 
thod of a simple induction of particulars, as here stated, I have not 
been able to preserve an unshaken confidence in some of those ‘‘re- 
ceived theories,” which appear to have been founded on vague gene- 
ralizations, or unproved and untenable hypotheses ; and I can hardly 
think that the reasonings which have at various times been adduced 
in support of these theories, from the time of Halley downards, can 
be deemed either conclusive or satisfactory by any unbiassed mind, 
that shall give them a strict and impartial examination. 
The grand error into which the whole school of meteorologists ap- 
pear to have fallen, consists in ascribing to heat and rarefaction the 
origin and support of the great atmospheric currents which are found 
to prevail over a great portion of the globe. Nor is it necessary to 
perceive, or point out, an adequate and undeniable physical cause for 
the production of these phenomena, before we can discover the in- 
consistency and fallacy of the reasonings by which the old system of 
meteorology has been supported. Such a cause, however, I consider 
as furnished in the rotative motion of the earth upon its axis, in which 
* American Journal of Science, vol. xx., p. 17-51; vol. xxi, p. 191-3; vol. 
xxv., p. 114-121. 
