But quite recently a storm far more destructive than these swept over the Bay of Bengal. Most of my readers doubtless remember the great gale of October 1864, in which all the ships in harbour at Calcutta were swept from their anchorage, and driven one upon another in inextricable confusion. Fearful as was the loss of life and property in Calcutta harbour, the destruction on land was greater. A vast wave swept for miles over the surrounding country, embankments were destroyed, and whole villages, with their inhabitants, were swept away. Fifty thousand souls, it is believed, perished in this fearful hurricane. The gale which has just ravaged the Gulf of Mexico adds another to the long list of disastrous hurricanes. As I write, the effects produced by this tornado are beginning to be made known. Already its destructiveness has become but too certainly evidenced. The laws which appear to regulate the generation and the progress of cyclonic storms are well worthy of careful study. The regions chiefly infested by hurricanes are the West Indies, the southern parts of the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the China Seas. Each region has its special hurricane season. In the West Indies, cyclones occur principally in August and September, when the south-east monsoons are at their height. At the same season the African south-westerly monsoons are blowing. Accordingly there are two sets of winds, both blowing heavily and steadily from the Atlantic, disturbing the atmospheric equilibrium, and thus in all probability generating the great West Indian hurricanes. The storms thus arising show their force first at a distance of about six or seven hundred miles from the equator, and far to the east of the region in which they attain their greatest fury. They sweep with a north-westerly course to the Gulf of Mexico, pass thence northwards, and so to the north-east, sweeping in a wide curve (resembling the letter ∪ placed thus ⊂) around the West Indian seas, and thence travelling across the Atlantic, generally expending their fury before they reach the shores of Western Europe. This course is the storm-track (or storm-⊂ as I shall call it). Of the behaviour of the winds as they traverse this track, I shall have to speak when I come to consider the peculiarity from which these storms derive their names of ‘cyclones’ and tornadoes. The hurricanes of the Indian Ocean occur at the ‘changing of the monsoons.’ ‘During the interregnum,‘ writes Maury, ‘the fiends of the storm hold their terrific sway.’ Becalmed often for a day or two, seamen hear moaning sounds in the air, forewarning them of the coming storm. Then, suddenly, the winds break loose from the forces which have for a while controlled them, and ‘seem to rage with a fury that would break up the fountains of the deep.’ In the North Indian seas hurricanes rage at the same season as in the West Indies.