The genuine hurricane is a West Indian production. It is generally cradled in those islands south and east of Jamaica and Cuba. It is nursed by the trade-winds. The first notice of its birth is an alteration in these winds, which are among the most regular observances on our planet. An extensive formation of cirrus clouds spreads over the sky and the barometer, which has been stationary for some days, edges off and begins a long and gradual fall. Great rollers are noticed for a day or two before the winds rise. A hurricane moves slowly. This tropical organization is superior in depth to our shallow, disc-like, continental cyclone which is one and rarely over two miles thick. The hurricane rears its head three, four, and even five miles high. Instead, too, of dissipating its force over thousands of miles at once it is only a few hundred miles in diameter. Its center moves methodically along at the not very impressive speed of fifteen miles an hour, while our cyclones hurry along at thirty. But the hurricane is thorough. The wind about its center reaches a velocity of 120 miles an hour. This velocity has never yet been attained on the surface of the earth by our trans-continental cyclone. Our cyclone always has an eastward trend; the hurricane has a parabolic course. It begins by moving west on the trades, drifting and dealing destruction to the banana and sugar plantations of Jamaica. It enters the Gulf of Mexico, and since it is then pretty much out of the influence of the trades it curves to the right and begins to act like any other storm by heading directly for the St. Lawrence. If it passes out through the Florida straits it never reaches the St. Lawrence but speeds up the coast and out to sea, usually at Hatteras to follow the shipping routes across the North Atlantic. But if it has become so involved in the Gulf of Mexico that it cannot escape to sea again, it comes up through the Gulf States and on toward New England. Fortunately as it goes inland its intensity diminishes because it has not so much energy-giving moisture to draw from. Also its sphere of action widens, its embrace is less mighty, its characteristics more those of an ordinary continental cyclone. It manages, however, to deliver gales of 80 miles an hour along the coastal plain, increasing to 100 at the exposed places such as Hatteras and Block Island. The intensest hours of a hurricane are those when its course is changing from westward to eastward. Enormous rainfalls accompany these storms, amounting to six inches in some instances. Since one inch of rain amounts to 100 tons per acre, and 64,000 tons to a square mile one can imagine the great amount of evaporation that has taken place to so saturate the air as to drench vast territories to such an extent.