1854.] A Twenty-second Memoir on the Law of Storms. 35 



which would much strike the terrified members of a native or even 

 a European family, the head of which was absent while the house 

 was blowing to pieces in a hurricane ; and it is one which moreover 

 they were not at all likely to have invented. 



As Baojan, then, bears N. 42° East, distant thirteen miles from 

 the station of Chittagong, we must in the absence of any better 

 data take it that the Cyclone came down if not in this exact track, 

 yet on one not far removed from it, and was slowly passing over 

 Chittagong from 9 p. m. to daylight or say for 9 hours which for a 

 diameter of sixty miles would give 63 miles per hour for its rate of 

 travelling, and we have no reason to doubt, considering the gradual 

 though excessive fall and subsequent rise of the Barometer, and the 

 veering of the wind as in all cases of progressive Cyclones, that it 

 was slowly passing. The great discrepancies in the opinions of the 

 residents as to the direction of the wind, and even perhaps Capt. 

 Elson's impression of its having gone round more than once, may I 

 think be accounted for, partly by supposing that there were, espe- 

 cially in the severe gusts, excessive incurvings of the wind, and partly 

 by considering that the station of Chittagong is described for the 

 most part as a collection of bungalows and houses on small hills ; 

 and from the Eevenue Survey map it appears to occupy a space of 

 about a mile or a mile and a half in breadth, and about three miles 

 in length from N. N. W. to S. S. E. on a sort of ridge of hills in 

 that direction, so that a Cyclone crossing the station from the 

 E. N. E. would do so at right angles ; and thus the mere surface wind 

 would be subjected from the nature of the ground alone, apart from 

 its own incurvings, to infinite irregularities ; and the whole occurring 

 at night and the observers in houses apparently on the point of 

 being blown to pieces, would render it next to impossible that 

 we should have any other than discordant accounts of the actual 

 direction of the wind. 



3. — The Barometrical Observations. 

 These, though we have but one series of them, and this an imper- 

 fect one, are of very high importance, for they are a clear and distinct 

 instance of a very great diminution of pressure occurring in a brief 

 space of time, and over a very limited area. 



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