Additional Objections to Redjield's Theory of Storms. 127 



wpon the trade, or to these causes co?nbi7ied." (This Journal, Vol. 

 XX, p. 48.) 



50. I trust it v/ill be sufficiently evident, that although great 

 and regularly moving masses of air, by encountering obstructions, 

 may undergo a transient deflection, and that a portion accidentally 

 caught in a strait with high clifls on either side might like the 

 tide in the Bay of Fundy, acquire a local and temporary accele- 

 ration, yet that it would be utterly impossible for a durable whirl- 

 wind to be thus excited. Obviously for the endurance of a whirl, 

 if not for its production, the continuous application of at least two 

 forces would be requisite, of which one must be endowed with 

 a centripetal efficacy in order to counteract the concomitant cen- 

 trifugal momentum. It will be evident that although a local ob- 

 struction may cause an eddy or whirl in its vicinity, the rotary 

 momentum thus created must soon be exhausted. But admit- 

 ting that a blast by being deflected by an island could become a 

 permanent whirlwind, obviously the resulting velocity could not 

 be so great as that of the generating current. The moderately 

 blowing trade wind could not, by contact with an inert body, ac- 

 quire an increase of velocity adequate to form a furious hurricane 

 capable, as represented, of travelling circuitously for more than 

 two thousand miles. 



51. The hurricane once created, agreeably to the imagination 

 of Mr. Redfield, its subsequent progress is described in the fol- 

 lowing language : " This progress still continues while the stormy 

 mass is revolving around its own moving axis ; and we can readily 

 comprehend the violent effects of its unresisted rotation, while this 

 velocity becomes accelerated by nearly all the oblique forces and 

 perhaps resistances of the circumjacent currents or masses of mo- 

 ving atmosphere. These storms cover, at the same Tnoment of 

 time, an extent of contiguous surface, the diameter of which may 

 vary from one to jive hundred miles, and in some cases have been 

 much more extensive. They act with diminished violence towards 

 the exterior, and with increased energy towards the interior of the 

 space which they occupy.'''' (This Journal, Yol. xxv, p. 114.) 



52. Thus it is assumed, that a mass of air from " one to jive hun- 

 dred miles in diametef^ being made to whirl with the velocity of a 

 most furious gale, is not only " unresisted" by the waves, forests, 

 hills, and mountains, which it may encounter, but is actually 

 " accelerated by nearly all the oblique forces and perhaps RESIS- 



