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BIGELOW. 
There is perhaps no branch of modern science which has 
suffered more severely than meteorology by the misapplica¬ 
tion of good mathematics to good observational data. Of 
course in this case, as in other instances, the observations, 
while good so far as they went, did not sufficiently cover the 
field of research, so that it was possible to propagate theories 
which apparently harmonized with the observations then at 
hand. Thus, for more than half a century the atmospheric 
observations were confined to the surface of the earth or to 
the very lowest layers of the air. It is only within ten years 
that the upper-air observations have been made in sufficient 
numbers to fix our attention upon the true circulation of the 
great currents of air in the general cyclone, and in the local 
cyclones and anticyclones. The data obtained by the cloud 
computations, or by the balloon and kite ascensions, have 
made it possible to examine critically the existing theories, 
with the unfortunate result that nearly the entire range of 
general theory of the circulation of the atmosphere must be 
pronounced a misfit. Had the modem observations been in 
the hands of Professor Ferrel or Professor Oberbeck, it is 
hardly possible that they would have written as they did. 
Indeed, there are probably very few scientific theories which 
have had a wide acceptance, against which such grave and 
intractable objections exist as against the vertical convection 
theory of the origin of storms by Espy, which derives the 
source of the energy expended in cyclones from the local 
condensation of aqueous vapor and the setting free of the 
equivalent latent heat. It is not my purpose to review this 
subject in detail, as that has been done elsewhere, but I 
wish to summarize the mathematical state of the problem in 
a few words, and to indicate the direction in which the great 
theories of meteorology will probably be reconstructed. 
LOCAL CYCLONES AND ANTICYCLONES. 
(1) Speaking generally, the problem of cyclones has been 
treated as independent of that of the general circulation. 
Local sources of heat to form an ascending central column 
