H. &. Whitfield on Tornadoes in the Southern States. 107 
would be the tornado season with us, for in these months moist 
ful 
top of the atmosphere sinks freely into the stream. The case 
is precisely that of a heavy body descending an inclined plane ; 
but the heavy body is here a great ocean of air superimposed 
upon another abnormally elevated in temperature, and there- 
fore abnormally rarefied. The tornado is a process by which the 
one seeks to settle beneath the other, and is not unlike what 
would occur should an opening be made through the bottom of 
some great reservoir of water. 
On the other hand, when the transposition begins in conse- 
quence of the movement of a definite column, ascending from 
elow, the earth’s surface presents a limit, and the tributaries 
cannot, as in the other case, flow obliquely in straight lines 
without leaving a vacuum beneath, and that is impossible. 
They must, therefore, though ever seeking to mount upward, 
still trail along the surface until they converge at the center. 
An impediment of this nature would find adjustment in many 
uprising columns of limited power, capped with cumuli and 
resulting in showers, but no one vast, absorbing vortex, could 
ot ad es whole movement, and shake the firmament 
1 t. 
the front and rear of the mm, 
gyrating at a right angle with the row, and every house must 
wer of resistance. Or, 
is is not so remarkable 
gyration is three hundred 
ond—and it may go far beyond that—which is greater 
On the track of 
Ww. 
ens county tornado a rafter of a house was found driven 
