tion consequently takes place,--begetting a
drain from below, until the upper regions are loaded with a warm and
vapory atmosphere. If the action of the sun conspires at the same time
to increase the effect, the storm will be more violent. In twelve hours
after the meridian passage of the vortex, the storm is brought under the
parts of the ethereal atmosphere of the earth most remote from the axis;
a reaction now takes place; the cold ether of space rushes in, and, on
account of its great specific caloric, it abstracts from the warm
atmosphere more than pertains to the difference of temperature, and
there is a great condensation. Rain and hail may form in fearful
quantities; and when the equilibrium is restored, the temperature will
have fallen many degrees.

As it is important that we should have a clear view of the character of
the ether, we will revert to the principle we have advocated, viz.: that
in equal spaces there are equal momenta. What the ether wants in
inertia, is made up by its motion or specific heat, considering in this
case inertia to stand for weight when compared with ponderable matter;
so that to raise an equivalent amount of inertia of ether to the same
temperature as atmospheric air, will require as much more motion or
specific heat as its matter is less. And this we conceive to be a law of
space in relation to all free or gaseous matter. To apply it to solids
would require a knowledge of the amount of force constituting the
cohesion of the solid.

INFLUENCE OF DIMINISHED PRESSURE.

But there is another principle which modifies these effects. We have
already adverted to the action of the tangential current of the vortex
forcing the outer layers of the atmosphere into waves. These waves will
be interfered with by the different vortices, sometimes being increased
and sometimes diminished by them.[6] If these waves are supposed very
wide, (which would be the case in the attenuated outside layers of the
atmosphere,) the action of the vortex will be greater in its passage
over a place, which at the time corresponded to the depression point of
the wave, that is, to the line of low barometer; because here there
would be less resistance to overcome in the passage of the ether from
the surface of the earth into space; so that we may conceive each vortex
making a line of storms each day around the earth, separated by less
disturbed intervals. After the formation of the storm, it of course has
nothing to