Biographical Memoir of William C. Redjield. 439 



surprised to find things governed by fixed laws, than in the case 

 of the winds. It is now rendered in the highest degree probable? 

 that every breeze is a part of some great system of aerial circula- 

 tion and helps to fulfil some grand design. " Inconstant as the 

 winds" has long been a favorite expression to denote the absence 

 of all uniformity or approach to fixed rules ; but the researches of 

 the meteorologists of our times, force on us the conclusion that 

 the winds, even in the violent forms of hurricanes and tornadoes, 

 are governed by laws hardly less determinate than those which 

 control the movements of the planets. 



It has been often noticed in the history of science and the arts, 

 that great discoveries and inventions spring forth simultaneously 

 from diff'erent independent sources. Thus the discovery of oxy- 

 gen gas, the greatest single discovery in chemistry, was made 

 almost at the same moment by Priestley in England and Scheele 

 in Sweden ; and the method of fluxions, or the infinitesimal cal- 

 culus, was invented at nearly the same time by Newton and 

 Leibnitz. Such discoveries aud inventions are the true resultant 

 of innumerable forces, which at that moment, and never until 

 then since the origin of time, all conspired. It is remarkable 

 that the idea that great storms are progressive whirlwinds, was, 

 for the first time, embraced nearly at the same instant by Red- 

 field and Dove, although the conclusion was arrived at by totally 

 difiFerent methods of investigation. Mr. Redfield says in a note 

 to his paper on the Cuba hurricane, published in 1846, that it 

 was not until seven years after the publication of his theory of 

 the rotary and progressive character of storms, that he became 

 acquainted with the suggestions and opinions of Col. Capper, and 

 with the particular views and elucidations published by Professor 

 Dove in his paper on Barometric Minima found in Poggendorfi"'s 

 Annalen for 1828. To all who were personally acquainted with 

 Redfield, it would be quite unnecessary to adduce any other evi- 

 dence than his simple declaration, of the perfectly original and 

 independent character of his theory of the laws of storms. But 

 we might refer to the circumstances under which it was conceived, 

 when he was far removed from all libraries, and all intercourse 

 with the scientific world ; and as respects Dove, in particular, 

 whose essay was communicated to the public in 1828, it may be 

 said, that at that period there was scarcely a copy of Poggendorfi''s 

 Annalen, in which Dove's essay appeared, in the United States ; 

 and being in the German language, nothing could be 'more im- 



