HURRICANES IN THE BAY OF NORTH AMERICA. 
BY 
Everett Hayden. 
[Read before the Society, October 12, 1889.] 
The Bay of North America embraces the entire western 
part of the North Atlantic between Newfoundland and 
Venezuela, including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mex¬ 
ico. The term was first used, I believe, by Prof. Alexander 
Agassiz, and it is so expressive that it should come into 
more general use. In its general outlines this great body of 
water bears a certain analogy to the corresponding indenta¬ 
tion of the North Pacific into the continent of Asia, and the 
hurricanes of the Bay of North America are very similar, in 
all their essential features, to the typhoons of the China 
seas. The tracks along which they move, however, seem to 
be far more uniform and regular in character, due, perhaps, 
to the greater simplicity in the general configuration of land 
and water and to the fact that the Gulf Stream, a famous 
breeder of ocean storms, is greater as to temperature, veloc¬ 
ity, and volume than the Kuro Siwo, or Black Stream of 
Japan. 
The w r ord “ hurricane ” comes from a Carib word, mean¬ 
ing simply a violent wind. As used at present it has a 
double meaning: first, an entire storm system or cyclone, in 
which the highest force of wind is as high as 12 (Beaufort’s 
scale); secondly, a wind as high as 12. Thus a sailor might 
say that on a voyage from Havana to New York he encoun¬ 
tered a hurricane; here the word would mean a “ revolving 
storm,” or a very severe cyclone. Again, in describing the 
20—Ball. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 11. ( 173 ) 
