334 Cyclones. 



peninsula more often near Calcutta than Ceylon. A few of 

 these cyclones enter the Arabian Sea, and a few occur in the 

 Sea of Andaman. 



Typhoons, as the cyclones of the China Sea are called, are 

 chiefly confined to the northern part of that sea, where they 

 occur from July to November. They rise near the northern 

 extremity of the Philippine Islands, and proceed westwards 

 to the coast of Asia, between the Island of Hainan, and the 

 latitude of Macao or Hong Kong. Their progressive speed is 

 from seven to twenty-four miles an hour — nearly as rapid as 

 that of the West Indian hurricanes ; which travel from ten to 

 forty-three miles an hour — the greatest progressive speed of 

 all the intertropical cyclones. 



At the centre of every true cyclone there is a calm spot, or 



" storm's-eye/" as it is called, eight to ten miles wide, in 



which the air is calm, the sky, at times, is clear, and the sun 



by day, or the stars by night, are visible. About this part of 



the storm, the greatest depression of the barometer is always 



observed. A sudden rise of the mercury from this condition 



foretells, almost for certain, a violent return of the wind from 



the opposite direction. 



" First rise after low 

 Foretells a stronger blow." 



Around the focal calm to a distance of fifty to a hundred miles 

 from the centre, according to the magnitude of the cyclone, 

 the tempest is terrific. An able navigator once assured me 

 that, being involved in a cyclone, and standing not far from one 

 of the masts of his own ship, the mast was carried overboard 

 without a sound of the falling timber being heard, to give him 

 the least warning of the occurrence, amidst the uproar of the 

 storm. The height or thickness of the revolving- disc of air, 

 Eedfield informs us, is not greater than one mile, above which 

 the clouds and the wind follow their ordinary course. The 

 diameter of the storm disc, on the other hand, varies con- 

 siderably, depending in many cases upon the locality of the 

 storm. 



The hurricanes of the West Indies vary from 100 miles at 

 their commencement, to 1000 miles in diameter where they 

 spread themselves out over the Atlantic Ocean. The Mauritius 

 cyclones have a width of 150 to 600 miles, in the whole of 

 which the wind blows an excessively severe gale. Those in the 

 Bay of Bengal are 300 to 350 miles in diameter, contracting, 

 however, occasionally to 150 miles, or even dividing themselves 

 into two or more smaller cyclones, pursuing different paths. 



The cyclones of the Arabian Sea, and the typhoons of the 

 China Sea, are the smallest of the intertropical hurricanes, 

 being from 60 to 240 miles across, but they are by no means 



