rly
progression, the wind will blow axially in the center, and obliquely at
the edges. Instances might be multiplied, but I refer to one of recent
date and striking character. All of us remember the drought of 1854. It
ended in drenching rain on the 9th of September. This rain fell from a
belt, half showery and half stormy in character, which had a S. E. lateral
extension.

The evening of the previous day there was some lightning visible at the
north, and the usual S. S. W. afternoon wind _continued fresh after
nightfall_. The next day we had a brisk wind from the same quarter, and,
after noon, the clouds appeared to pile up in the far north, seeming very
elevated. They continued to do so, extending southerly during the
afternoon, _with a high wind from S. S. W._, the cumulus clouds moving E.
N. E. At 5 P.M., gentlemen who left New York at 3 P.M., reported that a
dispatch had been received from Albany, dated 1 P.M., stating that it was
raining very heavily there. About 7 P.M., the belt reached us, and it
rained heavily from that time till morning. Not far from 8 P.M., and
during the heaviest rain, the wind shifted from the S. S. W. to N. E., and
blew fresh and cold from that quarter during the night, and till the belt
had passed south, and then from N. E. by N., cool, with heavy scud, during
the forenoon, veering gradually to the N. N. E., and dying away. After the
rain ceased, the northern edge of the belt was distinctly visible in the
S. and S. E., its stratus-cloud moving E. N. E., and its scud to the
westward.

The front of that storm did not pass over us. It was long and narrow. The
wind blew somewhat obliquely inward, along its southern border, to the
eastward, and, in like manner, to the westward, on its northern border,
but from the N. E. axially along its central portions.

In the last instance, the wind changed from S. W. to N. E. This, too, is
impossible, according to Mr. Redfield's theory. Similar instances, in
summer, and early autumn, are not uncommon. But I shall recur to this in
connection with the different _classes_ of storms.

Again, the manner in which these S. E. winds co-exist with the N. E., and
become the prevailing wind, toward the close of the storm, is instructive,
and inconsistent with the theory of Mr. Redfield. In the West Indies, the
first effect of the storm is to increase the N. E. trade; the wind then
becomes baffling, but settles in the N. W. or N. N. W., _in direct
opposition to t