use it gives out
more smoke and is probably more obtainable on short notice. The
experiment of the doorway, moreover, does not require that there should
lie two rooms with a door between. We have found that the door of our
study, which opens into a cold passage, serves the purpose admirably.

Were we treating chiefly of the atmosphere in this work, it would be
necessary that we should enlarge on all the varieties of winds, with
their causes, effects, and numerous modifications. But our main subject
is the Ocean. The atmosphere, although it could not with justice have
been altogether passed over, must hold a secondary place here; therefore
we will conclude our remarks on it with a brief reference to hurricanes.

It has been ascertained that most of the great storms that sweep with
devastating fury over the land and sea are not, as was supposed,
rectilinear in their motion, but circular. They are, in fact, enormous
whirlwinds, sometimes upwards of one hundred and fifty miles in
diameter; and they not only whirl round their own centres, but advance
steadily forward through space.

In the year 1831, a memorable and dreadful series of storms passed over
some of the India Islands, and caused terrible havoc, especially in the
island of Barbadoes. The peculiarity of these hurricanes was that they
ravaged the different islands at different dates, and were therefore
supposed to be different storms. Such, however, was not the case. It
was one mighty cyclone, or circular storm,--a gigantic whirlwind,--which
traversed that region at the rate of about sixteen miles an hour. It
was not its progressive, but its rotatory motion, that constituted its
terrible power. On the 10th of August it reached Barbadoes; on the
11th, the islands of Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia; on the 12th it
touched the southern coast of Porto Rico; on the 13th it swept over part
of Cuba; on the 14th it encountered Havanna; on the 17th it reached the
northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico and travelled on to New Orleans,
where it raged till the 18th. It thus, in six days, passed, as a
whirlwind of destruction, over two thousand three hundred miles of land
and sea. It was finally dissipated amid heavy rains.

The effect of a hurricane is well described by Washington Irving.
"About mid-day," he says, "a furious gale sprang up from the east,
driving before it dense volumes of cloud and vapour. Encountering
another tempest from the west, it appeared as