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The hurricane is a remarkable storm wind, peculiar to certain portions of the world. It rarely takes its rise beyond the tropics, and it is the only storm to dread within the region of the trade-winds. In the temperate zone, hurricanes do now and then occur, which, crossing the Atlantic from America, strike our own coasts. We had one in 1836, and we had one last year. But, on our side of the equator, the home of the hurricane is about the region of the West Indies in the southern hemisphere, they favor Rodriguez and the Mauritius. Furthermore, they have their seasons. The West Indian occur from August to October. The Rodriguez, in the hot months of the other hemisphere. Furthermore, it is the nature of a hurricane to travel round and round, as well as forward, very much as a corkscrew travels through a cork, only the circles are all flat, and described by a rotatory wind upon the surface of the water. The rotatory wind blows the sea with it in a rotatory current; within the circle of the hurricane the air is calm, and its diminished pressure lifts the water up in a great storm wave, which, advancing with the hurricane, surrounded by its current, plays the deluge, if it strike upon a shore; but, otherwise, rolls on and on, while the wind dances round and round it; thus, twisting circles while it marches on its main path—that main path being itself a grander curve. Hurricanes always travel away from the equator. North of the equator, the great storm, revolving as it comes, rolls from the east towards the west; inclining from the equator, that is, northward. It always comes in that way; always describes in its main course the curve of an ellipse, which generally crosses the West India Islands, and presently, pursuing the ellipse, marches to the northeast from the coast of Florida, treading the waves of the Atlantic. In the southern hemisphere, hurricanes come from the northeast, and pursue a course away from the equator precisely

similar. No hurricane ever commenced its main course from the west; but, it is obvious that a ship, revolving in its circles, will find the wind in every quarter in turn; and that a hurricane's main course is from the west in the last

portion of its travels. Take an egg, and place it on an atlas map so that its small end shall be near the coast of Florida, and its lower edge rest on the Leeward Islands: take a pencil, and, beginning eastward of those islands, trace the outline of your egg towards the west, turning its corner, and still tracing on towards the northeast, as if travelling to Europe; leave off now, and you have sketched the ordinary path of a West Indian hurricane.

Thunder and lightning frequently attend a hurricane, and, more especially in the southern hemisphere, dense sheets of rain. Clearly, it is most important that a ship's captain, overtaken by a hurricane, should know the nature and exact course of the storm. A horn-book is now published, by the use of which he readily obtains this knowledge, which enables him to put his ship so as she can ride safely until the hurricane is gone. Without such knowledge, puzzled by the changing wind, he perhaps drives before it, and is whirled round, circle after circle, dragged through the very road of danger; or, he escapes into the middle of a circle, has a little breathing time, and presently the crash returns; or, he gets out of the main course, and, through ignorance, encounters it again. Shipwrecks innumerable have been caused in this way. In the present day, though we have not yet established a full theory concerning hurricanes, the sailor has been taught to step out of their path; and that is something practical, for which a naval country owes its thanks (perhaps something more) to Colonel Reid and Mr. Piddington.

The typhoon, a relation of the hurricane's, is of Chinese

extraction. It is met with only in the China seas, not so far south as the Island of Mindanao, nor so far north as Corea, except upon the eastern borders of Japan. A typhoon walks abroad not oftener than about once every three or four years; and that is quite often enough. You may believe any thing of a typhoon. Robert Fortune says, that when he was at sea in a typhoon, a fish weighing thirty or forty pounds was blown out of the water, and fell through the skylight into the cabin. That might be believed of a typhoon from a less trustworthy informant.

Of local storms and currents caused, inland or out at sea, by inequalities of temperature, as, for example, by the warm current of the gulf-stream, we need, not particularly speak. The storms and the rain-torrents of Cape Horn, where one hundred and fifty-three inches of rain have been measured in forty-one days, and where the whole year is a rainy season, we can only mention. To the simoom we give a nod of recognition; verily, that is a penetrating wind, which clogs with sand the works of a double-cased gold watch in the waistcoat, pocket of a traveller. We wave our hands likewise to the Italian sirocco, and the Egyptian khamsin, and the dry harmattan; and so our dry talk ends.

It is raining still. Raining on the just and on the unjust; on the trees, the corn, and the flowers; on the green fields and the river; on the lighthouse bluff and out at sea. It is raining on the graves of some whom we have loved. When it rains upon a mellow summer evening, it is beneficently natural to most of us to think of that, and to give those verdant places their quiet share in the hope and freshness of the morrow.

THE END.

HOME AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

WH

The Work of the World.

HO does the work of the world? We have a faint suspicion that the "decisive battles" which have had the strongest influence upon the character of nations or the fortunes of the human race, were not fought amid shouts, needed no swords, and never killed more than the few solitary stragglers who have wasted life and fortune in pursuit of knowledge. Often the truths, or facts, pursued, appear so small that the folks may say, "No wonder their discovery goes unrewarded." Of things, however, that concern the common mind of man, no truth can possibly be small. Setting aside the mere personal accidents which can interest only the individual or his immediate neighbors, every new fact is a battle won. And very small facts-small we are apt to call them-are the fruit of intellectual battles, as decisive in the history of man as Issus or Waterloo. The historic value of a single battle we are apt enormously to overrate, because it is too much the practice to consider the human race in history not as one whole, but as an assemblage of conflicting interests.

We have our favorite nations and our hated nations; our good and bad genii. When a battle occurs, the good genius must overcome, and we say, if things respond to our desire, "O, it is well for us that those bad folks were beaten, for had they been triumphant, where should we all have been?" We ask that question, feeling conscious of an answer; but it is one to which no answer can be given. Few races were more unpromising than the Ugrians, those wild and ugly Asiatic savages, whose deeds among the Scandinavian forests gained for them a nursery immortality. Where are the "Ogres" now? They won for themselves ground in Europe, and settling there, have become handsome in person, generous in mind, and are known to us in England as a kindred people, the Magyars of Hungary. Then, again, after all, the highest purpose of a battle is to preserve the predominance of an advanced over a backward civilization. If there be any apology for wars beyond the one just plea of self-defence, it is because the soldier preserves that which the scientific man produces. Now we have certainly a Koh-i-noor, but we are apt to see more of the cage than of the diamond.

An illustration lies close at our hand, which may be found enlarged upon in Liebig's Letters. Both soap and glass are absolutely necessaries in a civilized community; for the manufacturer of both, soda is necessary. On account of "both these articles, much capital has for a long time been invested. The wealth and refinement of a nation may be fairly tested by the extent to which it considers cleanliness a necessary duty; by the amount of the collective soap bill. Now, soda, once upon a time, was dear. It was imported into France from Spain, at an annual cost of twenty to thirty millions of francs. During the war with England, it was of course the duty of this country to impede the com

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