THE BRITISH ISLANDS IN NOVEMBER 1838. 4g5 



If any weight be attached to the remarks above made, that the direction of 

 the strongest wind in the storm will, generally speaking, coincide with the path 

 of the storm, this table would indicate that, in the latitude of Paris, the path lay 

 in a N.NE. direction, and that, as it advanced northwards, it moved more directly 

 N., and even ultimately towards the N.NW. This inference is corroborated by the 

 circumstance to be immediately noticed, that, though the storm was most severe- 

 ly felt in the south of England, it was less felt on the north-east coast of England, 

 and scarcely at all experienced on the east coast of Scotland. There was far 

 more damage done in the Irish than in the English Channel. 



On comparing the above table, shewing the period of the strongest wind, with 

 the one on page 475, which states the period when the barometer reached its 

 greatest depression, it will be observed that these periods are not the same ; 

 and, according to the theory of rotation, they should not be the same. The 

 strongest wind at Adare Abbey being the SE. wind, preceded the centre of the 

 storm, and consequently preceded also the greatest depression of the barometer. 

 In like manner, at London and at Paris, the strongest wind having been from 

 SW. and S.SW. (which followed the centre of the storm), was felt more than half 

 a day after the time of lowest barometrical depression. 



I may add, that this storm, or rather the eastern segment of it which tra- 

 versed the British islands, became much mitigated in violence, as it proceeded 

 northwards. There was not half the damage done by it in Scotland, which it ef- 

 fected in the southern and midland counties of England and Ireland. One cause 

 of this may be, its having overtaken in Scotland and the north of Ireland, the 

 storm which preceded it ; and as the van-guard circles of the second storm 

 were, of course, rotating in a direction opposite to that of the rear-guard circles 

 of the first, the two would interfere where they impinged, and thus, to a cer- 

 tain extent, neutralize each other. The second storm being the more violent 

 and extensive, would of course obtain the mastery ; a circumstance which ex- 

 plains why, in Scotland and the north of Ireland, the first storm hardly ex- 

 hibited any westerly or north-westerly blasts, before it ceased. It must have 

 been owing to this interference of the two storms, causing an annihilation of the 

 first, and a diminution of the second, that whilst, on the west coast of Scotland, 

 the meteorological registers shew pretty distinctly the several features of the 

 second storm, viz. its commencement, its veering, and its cessation, the registers 

 on the north and north-east coast contain no such information, and do not even 

 indicate the occurrence of a storm, but merely the continuance of the previous 

 gale, interrupted, however, by frequent gusts between E. and S. At Dunnet 

 Head, Sumburgh Head, Pentland Skerries, and the Starting Point, the wind 

 never veered to the west of south. 



At Inverness, as I learn from the very accurate register kept by Mr Adam. 

 Rector of the Inverness Academy, there were, on the whole of the 28th November, 



