8 ACCOUNT OF A TORNADO, 



shown in diagram 6, and as described in his Meteorological Reports : " The manner 

 in which the trees are thrown down where the tornado passes through a forest, will 

 demonstrate the direction of the wind. The trees at the sides of the path of the 

 tornado, as it moves in this latitude to the east, or a little north of east, will he 

 thrown inivards towards the centre of the path, and those in the centre of the path 

 will be thrown right backwards contrary to the motion of the tornado, or right for- 

 wards, according as some of them will be thrown down by the front part of the 

 meteor, where the wind blows backwards, or by the rear, where the wind blows for- 

 ward ; and, as those which are thrown down by the front of the tornado must fall 

 first, they will, of course, be found, where there is any overlapping, unde7^ those 

 which fall forwards." 



On comparing this description with the track at New Harmony, Fig. 2, we find 

 the phenomena there represented totally at variance with it ; on the north side of 

 the path, adjoining the S. W. corner of Schnee's fence, there are numbers of trees 

 prostrated to the north, and directly outwards from the centre of the path ; the 

 same thing occurs in many places on both the north and south sides of the path. 

 In the centre of the path there are trees lying at right angles to the course of the 

 tornado; and those trees, which Mr. Espy describes as being thrown down by the 

 meteor where the wind blows backwards, in many cases lie over instead of imder 

 those that fall forwards ; this will be seen by examining the groups of crossed trees 

 where they are numbered, the lowest number indicating the undermost, and the 

 highest number the uppermost prostration. 



Seeing these discrepancies, we cannot wonder that Professor Loomis, when he 

 witnessed at Mayfield, phenomena similar to those of the New Harmony tornado, 

 should come to the conclusion that the wind in tornadoes blows round, and to the 

 same point at one and the same time, each motion " well nigh masking the other." 

 Yet I think if he had plotted those trees, of which he took the bearings, instead of 

 calculating their mean numerical values, he would hardly have come to the conclu- 

 sion that the Mayfield tornado was a whirlwind, rotating in the direction west, 

 north, east; for his examples show that the rotation could be neither in one direc- 

 tion nor the other. 



It is owing, I think, to the want of an accurate and sufficiently extensive descrip- 

 tion of the track of a tornado that the rotatory hypothesis prevails, for I believe 

 there is nothing in the phenomena at New Harmony that cannot be explained 

 by that of the ascending column. It does not appear to me to be inconsistent 

 with this theory to suppose a tree on the margin of the track to be as likely to 

 be prostrated outwards from, as inwards to, the centre of the path. Let K K, 

 and M M (Fig. I), represent the right and left margin, and L L, the axis, 



Fig. I. 



