Now although this hypothesis explains the phenomena, it has still
met with great opposition. The motions which Lieut. Maury supposes
can hardly be accounted for without resorting, as is usual in such
cases, to electricity or magnetism,--to some occult cause, or some
occult operation of a known cause. Moreover, it has been difficult
for the mechanical philosopher to understand how the winds manage to
cross each other, as Lieut. Maury supposes them to do, at the
equator and the tropics, without getting into "entangling alliances."
If this hypothesis were advanced, not as a physical explanation of
the phenomena, but, like the epicycles and eccentrics of Ptolemy,
"to save the appearances," its ingenuity would be greatly to its
author's credit; but, like the epicycles and eccentrics, though it
represents the phenomena well enough, it contradicts laws of motion,
now well known, which ought to be familiar to every physical
philosopher. But these speculations of Lieut. Maury will now be
superseded by a new theory of atmospheric movements, an account of
which was presented by its author, Mr. J. Thompson, at the recent
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. [1]
[Footnote 1: A fuller discussion of this theory the author
reserved for the Royal Society. The _London Athenaeum_ gives a brief
abstract of his paper, in its report of the proceedings of the
Association.
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