224 Meteorological Phenomena in 



boar-master at Porto Rico announced to the captains of ships l)ing 

 at anchor, at ahout four o'clock p.m., that they must prepare for a 

 storm, as the barometer was falling rapidly. But all precautions were 

 in vain. Of the 33 ships lying' at anchor not one could be saved from 

 shipwreck, for so great was the violence of the wind that in St Bar- 

 tholomew alone 250 buildings were thrown down. The destruction 

 was still more fearful on the Island of St Thomas, where the wrecks 

 of 36 ships strewed the harbour ; the fort at the entrance of the port 

 was shattered as if by a battery, 24-pounders were carried away by 

 the wind ; a large well-built house was torn up from its foundations, 

 and set down upright in the middle of the street, whilst others were 

 turned right upside-down. That smiling tropical heaven plays also 

 tricks of its own. 



In so far as the history of the world mirrors itself in the events of 

 the most insignificant places, so also the history of the weather is 

 contained in the meteorological phenomena of every single station 

 of observation. The reports kept at these places form the chronicles 

 of a general history of the weather ; but as we cannot grasp all the 

 threads of the world's history by the consideration of any one isolated 

 event, so we cannot arrive at the understanding of all the manifold 

 and closely connected phenomena of the atmosphere by means of 

 observations made at any one place alone. Only out of the associa- 

 tion and comparison of separate reports can be determined what is 

 settled and what is variable, for the errors made by a single observer 

 often make a phenomenon appear enigmatical, which by taking the 

 total of observations respecting it would at once be rendered clear. 

 If from the consideration of the phenomena of our weather we have 

 arrived at the conclusion that they represent the continually renewed 

 strife of two opposing currents, it follows that what is revealed by the 

 regular succession of phenomena in one place must be revealed in a 

 clearer and more direct manner if we bring under our consideration 

 simultaneous and widely diffused observations. The power, the direc- 

 tion, and the strife of the two currents will in such a case be clearly 

 represented. If, for example, we desire to settle the usual charac- 

 teristics of the weather at any particular time, then by proceeding in 

 the direction of these currents', we shall find either the maximum or 

 the minimum of the normal temperature. If, on the contrary, we 

 proceed in a direction more or less at right angles to the currents, 

 then, somewhere or other where they meet and intersect each other, 

 we shall pass from the warm air of the Equatorial into the icy air of 

 the Polar current. If the currents meet one another, then this op- 

 position in their direction comes into play. Next, we shall perceive 

 that while the opposing currents flow simultaneously beside each other, 

 the same peculiarities of weather are scarcely ever common to the 

 whole hemisphere ; that the extremes in near and in distant coun- 

 tries arc always compensated for, and the equilibrium maintained ; 

 and that a mild European winter is made up for by a cold one in 



