142 Strictures on Dove's Essay " On the Law of Storms." 



the fiercest raging of the storm from opposite directions, which is 

 shown in the register of observations at St. Thomas ; that dread- 

 ful pause which fills the heart of the bravest sailor with awe and 

 fearful expectation, receives a simple explanation on the rotary 

 theory, but appears irreconcilable with the supposition of a centri- 

 petal inblowing, because two winds bloioing towards each other 

 from opposite directions must gradually neutralize each other, 

 and thus their intensity must diminish more and more in ap- 

 proaching their place of tneeting. This takes place on a great 

 scale as respects the trade winds, and if the centripetal view of 

 hurricanes were a just one, the same effect would be necessarily 

 seen as the centre of the storm passed over the station of observa- 

 tion. But the phenomena shewn by observation are widely dif- 

 ferent. At St. Thomas, the violence of the tempest was constant- 

 ly increasing up to Ih. 30m. A. M., when a dead calm succeeded, 

 and 8h. 10m. the hurricane recommenced as suddenly as it had 

 intermitted. How can this be reconciled with the meeting of two 

 winds ?" 



117. I have made the preceding quotation from Prof. Dove's 

 essay, conceiving it to contain evidence which must be fatal to 

 the hypothesis which it is intended to prop. It establishes that 

 in hurricanes the wind is liable suddenly to subside from its ex- 

 treme violence to a calm, and then as suddenly to recommence 

 blowing with as great violence as ever in an opposite direction. 

 I am very much mistaken if I have not in my additional objec- 

 tions to Redfield's theory (67) demonstrated that, in extensive 

 whirlwinds, the "fiercest raging" cannot be suddenly interrupt- 

 ed so as to leave a dead calm during the interval which takes 

 place between two opposite winds ; since in such storms, where 

 they have a diameter not less than three hundred miles, for the 

 same station to be exposed successively on opposite sides of the 

 zone, where the wind is most violent, the storm must move at 

 least one hundred miles, which would require from three to four 

 hours. 



118. Referring the reader to the essay above mentioned, I will 

 urge, in reply to the query already quoted, that Prof. Dove's alle- 

 gation that "winds blowing from opposite quarters will neutral- 

 ize each other," arises from his forgetting that agreeably to the 

 hypothesis which he is striving to confute, they are caused by a 

 deficiency of pressure at the axis of the storm producing an up- 



