British Association for the Advancement of Science. ^77 



Statement of what seems desirable should be farther done to ad- 

 vance our knowledge of the subject." 



Col. Reid commenced by stating that he had long been con- 

 vinced that the operations of the Deity in the workings of his 

 providential care over his creatures, were governed by fixed laws, 

 designed by incomprehensible wisdom, arranged by supreme 

 power, and tending to the most benevolent ends. However irreg- 

 ular the tempest or the tornado might appear to the inobservant, 

 yet our own day had seen some of the phenomena reduced to 

 rule ; and he doubted not soon to convince the Section that we 

 were on the eve of advancing some steps farther towards this 

 most desirable end. His attention had been first directed to the 

 subject in 1831. He arrived on military service, at Barbadoes, 

 just after the desolating hurricane of that year, which, in the 

 short space of seven hours, destroyed 1477 persons on that island 

 alone. He had been for two years and a half daily employed as 

 an engineer officer amidst the ruined buildings, and was thus nat- 

 urally led to the consideration of the phenomena of hurricanes. 

 The first explanation which to him seemed reasonable, he fomid 

 in a pamphlet by William C. Redfield, of New York, extracted 

 from the American Journal of Science, a work much less known 

 in this country than its value and great merits deserved. The 

 northeast storms on the coast of America had attracted the atten- 

 tion of Franklin. He had been prevented, by one of these 

 storms, from observing an eclipse of the moon at Philadelphia, 

 which he was soon after astonished to find had been seen in 

 Boston, although that town lay to the northeast of Philadelphia. 

 This was a circumstance not to be lost on such an inquiring 

 mind as Franklin's : he ascertained, upon inquiry, that the same 

 northeast storm had not reached Boston for some hours after it 

 had blown at Philadelphia ; and that, although the wind blew 

 from the northeast, yet the progress of the entire storm was from 

 the southwest. He died, however, before he had made any fur- 

 ther progress in this investigation.* Col. Capper, of the East 

 India Company's service, after having studied meteorological sub- 

 jects for twenty years, in the Madras territory, published a work, 

 in 1801, upon winds and monsoons, giving brief statements of 

 their fatal effects, from Orme's History of Hindustan. In this 



* Franklin died in 1790, forty six years after he madejhis discovery. — Eds. 



