332 Cyclones. 



beginning to be always later the further to the north- 

 eastward/'' 



In this manner Franklin was first led to observe that 

 the north-east' storms of America came from the south- 

 west. 



The same peculiarity of these north-east storms was 

 afterwards observed by Bedfield, at New York, on the 3rd of 

 September, 1821. Houses were unroofed at New York, and the 

 wharves of the town were flooded thirteen feet deep in water, 

 by a furious north-east storm, blowing from the quarter where 

 Boston again is situated at a distance of only 180 miles. Yet 

 the inhabitants of Boston, at this very time, were witnessing 

 a successful balloon ascent; and the wind was not felt at 

 Boston until five hours after the houses were dismantled at 

 New York. These, and other observations of the same kind, 

 led Bedfield to the somewhat surprising conclusion, that the 

 movement of the wind in these storms of the American coast 

 is like that of a wheel, or of a disc laid flat — in other words, 

 rotatory — revolving round a centre in a direction contrary to the 

 hands of a watch. The centre of this storm, Bedfield showed, 

 was locomotive, commencing in the West Indies on the 1st, 

 touching at New York on the 3rd, and disappearing off the 

 coast of Nova Scotia, in the Atlantic Ocean, on the 4th of 

 September. 



Nine rotating storms were aftei^wards investigated by 

 Bedfield, and a chart of their central tracks was published in 

 the American Journal of Science in the year 18d5. At least 

 twenty more, traced by Beid, Bedfield, Bidding-ton, and Milne, 

 were soon added to the list of revolving storms, which 

 happened in the North Atlantic Ocean in the first half of the 

 present century. A chart of their tracks is given by Biddington 

 in his Sailor's Horn-Booh, than which no more complete work 

 can be consulted on the " theory of cyclones." 



From this chart it appears that hurricanes of the West 

 Indies commence between 50° and 60° west longitude from 

 Greenwich, and between 10° and 20° north latitude, not far 

 from Barbadoes in the Windward Islands, to which the epithet 

 "still-vexed" applies far more truly than to " Berrnuthes," 

 the island oasis of the North Atlantic Ocean. Bound Bermudas 

 the storms sweep in a series of parabolic tracks, of which the 

 Island of Bermudas itself is about the focus. They accordingly 

 rarely traverse it, but their upper branches, more or less open 

 according to circumstances, recurve towards the east between 

 Bermudas and the mainland of America. 



Another group of West Indian hurricanes, commencing 

 about the same spot as the last, traverses the Caribbean Sea on 

 straight-line tracks, towards the Gulf of Mexico, which they 



