Additional objections to Redfield's theory of storms / by Robert Hare.

  • Hare, Robert, 1781-1858.
Date:
[1842?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Additional objections to Redfield's theory of storms / by Robert Hare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Additional Objections to Redfield's Theory of Storms; by Rob- ertTIare, M. D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. 33. In a communication to the American Journal of Science, for January, I endeavored to point out various errors and incon- sistencies, in the theory of storms proposed by Mr. Redfield, or in the reasoning and assumed scientific principles on which that theory had been advanced. Of these errors I will present a brief summary. 34. I conceive that Mr. Redfield has erred, in ascribing atmos- pheric currents, whether constituting trade winds or storms of any kind, solely to mechanical gravitation as connected with the rotatory and orbitual motion of the earth.* 35. In ascribing those atmospheric gyrations of which accord- ing to his hypothesis all storms consist to opposing and unequal forces, without specifying the nature or accounting for the exist- ence of these forces, although implying that they originate as above mentioned. 36. In assigning to all fluid matter a tendency to run into whirls and circuits, when subjected to opposing and unequal for- ces, when this allegation, if true at all, can only be so in some peculiar cases of such forces. 37. In alleging all storms to be whirlwinds, and yet representing a <: rotative movement in air as the only cause of destructive winds and tempests, so that a whirl is the only cause of a whirlwind.} 38. In averring, in reference to the alleged gyration and vor- tical force of tornadoes which are by him treated as hurricanes in miniature, that all narrow and violent vortices have a spiral involute motion quickening in its gyration as it approaches the cen- tre or axis of the whirl, whereas it must be evident that when gyration in a fluid does not result from a contemporaneous centrip- etal force, arising from an ascending or descending current at the * Sec paragraph 43 of this essay. t This Journal, Vol. xxi, p. 192: Storms and hurricanes consist in the regular gyratory motion or action of a progressive body of atmosphere, which action is the sole cause of the violence which they may exhibit. If we understand Mr. Redfield, he assigns the whirlwind as the cause of the « violence-not as the.causc of the <; whirlwind—the two words not being sy- nonymous,—Eds. \