436 Biographical Memoir oj William C. Redfield. 



appearing as an author before the scientific world, professing only 

 %o be a practical man little versed in scientific discussions, and 

 unaccustomed to write for the press. At length, however, he 

 said he would commit his thoughts to paper, and send them to 

 me, on condition that I would revise the manuscript and superin- 

 tend the press. Accordingly, I soon received the first of a long 

 series of articles on the laws of storms, and hastened to procure 

 its insertion in the Journal of Science. Some few of the state- 

 ments made in this earliest develo])ment of his theory, he after- 

 wards found reason for modifying ; but the great features of that 

 theory appear there in bold relief. Three years afterwards he 

 published, in the 25th volume of the same journal, an elaborate 

 article on the hurricanes of the West Indies, in the course of 

 which he gives a full synopsis of the leading poiiits of his doctrine 

 as matured by a more extended analysis of the phenomena of 

 storms than he had made when he published his first essay. 



Possibly some of those whom I have the pleasure to address, 

 may not have fidly acquainted themselves with Redfield's theory 

 of storms, and would desire to be informed of its leading principles. 

 I understand this theory to be substantially as follows : 



That all violent gales or hurricanes are great whirlwinds, in 

 which the wind blows in circuits around an axis either vertical or 

 inclined ; that the winds do not move in horizontal circles, as the 

 usual form of his diagrams would seem to indicate, but rather in 

 spirals towards th« axis, a descending spiral movement externally 

 and ascending internally. 



That the direction of o-evolution is always uniform, being from 

 right to left, or against the sun, on the north side of the equator, 

 and from left to right, or with the sun, on the south side. 



That the velocity of rotation increases from the margin towards 

 the center of the storm. 



That the whole body of air subjected to this spiral rotation is, 

 at the same time, moving forward in a path, at a variable late, 

 but always with a velocity much less than its velocity of rotation, 

 being at the minimum, hitherto observed, as low as four miles^ 

 and at the maximum forty-three miles, but more commonly about 

 thirty miles per hour, while the motion of rotation may be not 

 less than from one hundred to three hundred miles per hour. 



That in storms of a particular region, as the gales of the Atlan- 

 tic, or the typhoons of the China seas, great uniformity exists in 

 regard to the 2JC(th pursued, those of the Atlantic, for example 



