The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-28 00:00:00

. The year 1859 was a sad year- -rawaicinaiir
of England who guard our native seas.", 'The el
wrecks and the loss of life on the coasts
United Kingdom daring those twelve months were
greatly in excess of the numbers recorded in any
previous year. As compared with the preceding
year, there were more than 1,500 casualties against
rather more than 1,100, and more than 1,500 lives
lost against 340. The violent gales at the end of
last October and at the beginning of November
were the chief agents in this excessive destruction
of life and property. In•the storm or hurricane of
October 25 and 26 there were more than 130 wrecks
and 90 casualties resulting in serious damage, and
800 lives (minus two) were lost, the wreck of the
Royal Charter alone causing nearly 450 deaths.
The losses in November were also far above the
average, and as many as 480 souls perished in two
vessels alone—in the Pomona at the end of April, and
in the Blervie Castle in the middle of December
Such are some of the details of the reports of wrecks
and casualties lately published by the Board of
Trade. This report contains a new feature, in the
shape of a memorandum on the gales of October
and November, from the pen of Rear-Admiral Fitz-
roy, the chief of the Meteorological Department.
Unfortunately, this memorandum is not. itheom-
panied by any diagrams, which would have made
it more intelligible to the reader than it now is. It
appears from the observations made at lighthouses
and various other observatories that the storm of
October. 23 and 26 was a complete barium tal cy-
clone. The area of its sweep was scarcely Mort!
than 300 miles in diameter, and as it travelled
northwards, it affected onlVthe'eoast of Rtanoo
and the breadth of our owifistadirlixcinaive of
the west of Ireland. The central portion of the
storm advanced at an average rate of about 20
miles an hour, from the south-western part of Eng-
land northward and eastward to the North Sea.
Thus, when the Royal Charter was wrecked, Aber-
deen and Banffshire were not disturbed 'by the
wind ; but when it blew hardest on those exposed
Scotch coasts, the storm had abated or almost
ceased in the Channel and on the south coast of
Ireland. So much for the general movement of
the storm. The actual velocity of the wind, circling
as it were against the motion of watch-hands about
a small central "lull," varied from 40 to 80 miles
an hour. North-west of the centre the wind
" backed," shifting round from south-east, through
north-east and north to north-west; and, in a cor-
responding manner, eastward of the centre, the
veering was from east, through south-east, south,
and south-west, to west. The storm of November 1
was of a similar character, except that its central
portion passed just to the vied of Ireland's south-
west coast, and thence northwards. From these
observations, and from scientific considerations
respecting equatorial and polar streams of air, some
plain and practical conclusions are drawn by Rear-
Admiral Fitzroy. The first and most important
is, that in a gale which seems likely to be near
the central part of a storm, which should of
course be avoided, a seaman facing the wind knows
that the centre is on his right hand in the
northern hemisphere, and on his left in the south-
ern, and he is, therefore, informed how to steer
to avoid danger. The next valuable result is, that
telegraphic communication can give notice of a
storm's approach, and vessels in ports hundreds of
miles distant from the part in which it is raging
at a certain moment may be forewarned sooner
than by the alterations in the barometer and ther-
mometer. The third deduction is that all high
winds move in directions more or less curvilinear,
not in permanently straight lines. Further, very
strong gales are not only very much curved in their
progress, but they are more violent as the circles
diminish in diameter towards a central lull or sud-
den shift, and weaker as they increase in diameter
and recede from it. These conclusions may be of
great practical use to seamen. It is true that they
scarcely merit the title of laws, in the scientific
sense of the word, but even as contributions of
science they are of the utmost importance. In a
subject like meteorology, in which so many causes
are at work, co-operating and conflicting with one
another—causes, too, that depend not merely on
the phenomena of this earth itself, but on general
cosmical arrangements--in such a subject it is only
by the slow and laborious collection of numerous
observations, by the tedious path of accurate, and
painstaking, and long-continued induction, that
we can hope to arrive at any large body of scientific
truth. In the physical sciences, at least, it seeing
to be the rule that empirical generalisations shall
come first, to be afterwards confirmed and explained
deductively. In meteorology, as formerly in astro-
nomy, we must have inquirers performing the
functions of a Kepler, inferring general Yaks by
induction from the observation of particular pheno-
mena, before a Newton comes to give their infe-
rences a new value and a scientific character by
deducing them from higher and more universal
laws.—Post.