THE BRITISH ISLANDS IN NOVEMBER 1838. 471 



farther south, I find there was a storm at Gibraltar on the 21st, which veered 

 to due W. at night, and by which several vessels were wrecked. 



It is extremely probable, that it was one and the same storm which was felt 

 at all these places, — being at Gibraltar on the 21st, travelling northwards on the 

 22d through Portugal, traversing the Bay of Biscay on the 23 d and 24th, and ar- 

 riving at the British Islands on the 26th. This inference rests not merely on the 

 circumstance of its having the track, which its progress in our own country would 

 lead us to expect, but of its having also travelled at very nearly the same rate 

 which belonged to the storm that passed through the British Islands. For, reckon- 

 ing the distance betwixt Gibraltar and Great Britain 1000 miles, we find that it 

 travelled northwards at a rate of about nine miles an hour, whilst, as previously 

 shewn, the storm in this country moved progressively northwards, at the rate of 

 about ten or eleven miles an hour. 



As to the question whether this storm had a rotatory motion, I confess that 

 the facts which have come within my reach have not enabled me to form a very 

 decided opinion ; but, on the whole, I am inclined to think that it was rotatory, 

 and that the rotatory movement was from right to left, or, to use Colonel Reid's 

 simile, contrary to the hands of a watch. I have already alluded to one circum- 

 stance which supports this view, viz. the veering of the wind from SB. to NW. 

 This occurred at Penzance, and I may now add, that the same thing was observed 

 in the Scilly isles on the 27th November. In the morning of that day, the wind 

 there was SE., in the evening it was blowing NW. According to the rotatory 

 theory, the inference from these facts would be, that the centre of the storm passed 

 in its course northwards near the Scilly Islands. If the wind was rotating from 

 B. to W. in the north semicircle, then it is obvious that all the places situated to the 

 east of the centre, and within the range of the storm, would have the wind suc- 

 cessively SE., S., and SW., — whilst all the places west of the centre, would find the 

 wind veering round in the opposite direction, viz. NE., N., and NW. This corol- 

 lary was to a certain extent confirmed ; for, at Penzance, Truro, and other places 

 in the south of England, the wind veered with the sun, according to the seamen's 

 phrase. But, at Limerick, and other places on the west of Ireland, it veered in 

 the opposite way. On the evening of the 26th, it there came round from the 

 eastward to north, and afterwards to NW. 



But the argument which chiefly influences me to adopt the rotatory theory, 

 is the slow progressive motion of the storm, compared with the velocity of the 

 wind. The progressive motion of the storm was, we have seen, something be- 

 tween nine and eleven miles an hour. Now the motion of the wind in the storm, 

 could not have been less than fifty or sixty miles an hour. The wind in the 

 storm had therefore a velocity and a direction independent of, and different from, 

 the velocity and direction of the storm itself. 



VOL. XIV. PART II. 4 F 



