THE WEATHER SPHYNX. 623 
its course which is indicated by the twist in the diagram but it was No. 8 (B) 
which is especially to be noticed. 
This one was near Santa Fe, N. M., on the 20th ; it was fifty miles south of 
Dodge City at midnight, and 300 miles north, between Deadwood and Yankton, 
the next morning; then it took a retrograde and southerly direction, passing 
westward, near W. Las Animas. Thence (by a curve to the eastward,) northerly 
into Dakota again on the 22d; on the 23d directly eastward to Dubuque, and 
southeasterly on the 24th. 
This was not an area of marked depression, which partly explains why its 
course was so variable. But to really understand the reasons for its wandering 
we must picture to ourselves an area of high barometer checking and preventing 
its eastward movement, just as a king, in the familiar game of checkers, drives 
or embarrasses the movements of a " man" in his attempts to get into the king- 
row, or the double (dodge) corner. 
It is so usual to speak of areas of low barometer and assign to them the 
cause of associated storms, to speak of their tracks and predict their courses, 
that it will at first strike the hearer as paradoxical to deny the actual existence of 
an area of low barometer at all. Yet why should this seem paradoxical? We 
do not deny the existence of the phenomenon. We merely ascribe it to a more 
remote and more completely satisfying and logical cause. We speak of cold as a 
positive condition in familiar enunciation, yet in scientific formulas it is accepted 
as a purely negative condition, the absence of heat. The magnetic n-eedle was once 
believed to point to an attracting pole, yet now it is known that it merely exhibits 
the quality of any balanced piece of steel to take up a position at right angles to 
currents of electricity flowing about it. The world has these currents moving 
from west to east. The needle consequently points north and south, and its 
variation is not the shifting of a pole but the shifting of equatorial lines of mag- 
netic movement. 
Suppose I should say that I think that the cause of the easterly direction of 
areas of low barometer arises from the slow undulation northward of areas of high 
barometer. 
Perhaps many here are familiar with the appearance of the ocean and have 
studied its motions along our coasts. The ground swell will illustrate my theory 
of high barometer. 
This swell has been not inaptly compared to the slow breathing of a huge 
marine monster. Sometimes its presence is almost imperceptible to the eye and 
to those upon its bosom. But one standing upon the shore will see a rock be- 
come slowly submerged and then as slowly be made to appear, while the swell, 
reaching the land will send one long encroaching wave far up the beach. Sup- 
pose this swell from the southeast. A practiced eye looking off upon the sea 
might be able to see that a fleet of vessels would successively betray a trough run- 
ning toward the northeast. The deflection depends upon the character of the 
shore, the result no doubt of a partial retardation of the shore end of the swell so 
that the long waves do not continue parallel to each other. 
