able to conceive of any known form of
calorific or mechanical, or other power, acting from a comparatively small
center, which could hold such an immense irresistable mass of whirling air
in a circle, and _gather it_ in toward the center in gradually contracting
spirals. I confess that, to my mind, it seems little less than a mockery
of our intelligence for Mr. Redfield, or Professor Dove, or any other man,
how distinguished soever he may be, to tell us that all this is the result
of a "tendency to left-wise rotation" of ordinary winds, "coming into each
other," or "over-sliding," or "meeting," or "encountering," on this
"front," or that, down in Central America, or in the West Indies, or the
monsoon region; or to talk of "lateral overflows" from mere gravity; of
the ascent of warm air, or the descent of cold strata; of the _resistance
of adjacent passive air_, or other mere _atmospheric resistances_ in
connection with such _awful manifestations of power_. Their explanations
of these phenomena are not rational, nor can they be believed by any
rational man, who will bestow upon them half an hour of _comprehensive,
unbiased reflection_.

Waiving many minor points of great force, for this notice of Mr.
Redfield's theory is already too much extended for my limits, I am
constrained to take issue with him on the fact, and to assert,
unhesitatingly, that in a _majority of instances no such barometric curve
exists_.

Doubtless the depression beneath the storm is found, and exterior lateral
elevations may also be had by _extending the line into the usual fair
weather elevation on each side_, as Mr. Redfield is obliged to do, to get
his supposed circle of winds at all. Doubtless, too, the seamen sailing
out of a storm, on either _side_, and approaching fair weather, will have
a rising barometer. But from _front to rear, on the line of progression_,
in tropical storms, the curve does not exist on shore, in this latitude,
oftener than in two, or possibly three, cases in ten; and then only upon a
single state of facts--that is, when there is an interposition of N. W.
wind; and this, at some seasons, rarely occurs. An elevation usually
occurs before the storm, on its front, if it present an extensive easterly
front, as one of these classes does, and a _depression is left_ after it
has passed off, unless a considerable body of N. W. wind interposes, as
heretofore stated. But when there is not such interposition of N. W. wind
(for W.,