442 Professor Elias Loomis. 



when this memoir was read and an abstract of it published in 

 Philadelphia. Franklin had noted the motion of storms from 

 southwest to northeast. He said :* " Our northeast storms 

 in North America begin first in point of time in the southwest 

 parts, that is to say, the air in Georgia, the farthest of our 

 colonies to the southwest, begins to move southwesterly before 

 the air of Carolina, which is the next colony northeastward ; 

 the air of Carolina has the same motion before the air of 

 Yirginia, which lies still more northeastward ; and so on north- 

 easterly through Pennsylvania, New York, New England, etc., 

 quite to Newfoundland." Redfield had traced several storms 

 along the West India Islands northwesterly until about in the 

 latitude of 30° their course was turned quite abruptly and 

 they swept off northeasterly along the Atlantic coast toward 

 and even past Newfoundland. Espy found some storms 

 moving easterly or south of east from the Mississippi to the 

 Atlantic. 



Brandes had announced as a law that the wind in storms 

 blows inward toward a center ; but his law was an induction 

 from* a small number of observations. Dove had contended 

 for a whirling motion ; Redfield advanced facts to show that 

 the winds blew in circles anti-clockwise around a center that 

 advanced in the direction of the prevalent winds, and with 

 him agreed Reid, Piddington and others. Espy, agreeing 

 with Brandes, claimed that the observations in the various 

 storms showed a centripetal motion of the winds, toward a 

 center if the region covered by the storm was round, and 

 toward a central line if the storm region was. longer in one 

 direction than in another. Espy's conclusions were intimately 

 connected with his theory that in the center of the storm there 

 was an upward motion of the air, and that the condensation of 

 vapor into rain furnished the energy needed for the continua- 

 tion of the storm. The rival theories of Redfield and Espy 

 were in sharp contest on several points, but the main conten- 

 tion was around this central question : Do the winds blow in 

 circular whirls, or do they blow in toward a center? New 

 York State was collecting observations from the Academies. 

 The American Philosophical Society and the Franklin Insti- 



* Letter to Alexander Small, May 12, 1760. 



