169 
Australia, it is most probable that they might have been 
mined to a profit. 
MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SECTION. 
November 10th, 1859. 
Mr. T. Heelis read a Paper “ On Storms, with some 
attempt to ascertain their tracks in the neighbourhood of 
the British Islands, and their analogy to other Cosmical 
Phenomena.” 
After enumerating several of the points in which observation 
indicated an analogy between the phenomena of hurricanes 
and those presented by the gales of high latitudes, and al- 
luding to the barometric waves traced by Mr. Birt, taken 
in connexion with Professor Dove’s theory of parallel com- 
pensating surface currents, and the suggestion of Sir John 
Herschel that rotatory gales are due to the crossing of two 
atmospheric waves, the Author proceeded to give an extract 
from Mr. Pennington’s seventeenth Memoir, inserted in the 
seventeenth volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal, showing the action of the cyclone upon the com- 
passes of the bark Esaurain, in the China Sea, where the 
compasses swung round eight points at a time during the 
squalls. In connexion with this, the Author mentioned that 
the efiect of a gale, apparently cyclonic, upon the compasses 
of the screw steamer Victory, bound from Liverpool to 
Limerick, on the 30th August last, was to cause a deflection 
of the compasses. 
The Author then mentioned several instances of displays 
of the Aurora Borealis on the passing oft’ of a gale of wind. 
Three of these were taken from the Greenwich observations 
for 1847 ; one from the gale of the 30th August last, above 
alluded to ; and otlicrs from otlier sources — the object in view 
