The practical importance of the foregoing facts must be obvious: to use the expression of Sir John Herschel, “they will teach seamen how to steer their ships, and save thousands of lives.” They will thus learn on which side to lay-to a ship in a storm, for, by watching the veering of the wind, they will ascertain the direction in which it is falling; if violent, and the changes sudden, the ship will probably be near the centre of the vortex; whereas, if the wind blows a great length of time from the same point, and the changes are gradual, it may reasonably be supposed the ship is near the extremity of it. The barometer also becomes a very important instrument upon these occasions; the rapid rotatory motion of a column of the atmosphere necessarily occasions its fall, and this fall is always greatest at the centre of the storm. When it begins to rise, the centre has passed, and when the wind has sufficiently abated to enable a ship to make sail, she may then bear away with safety; but near the middle of the hurricane, before the barometer begins to rise, all square-sails must be dangerous.
Note 43, p. [250].--Ancient archery.
We are reminded, upon this occasion, of part of a stanza in the well-known ballad of Chevy Chace, where an English archer aimed his arrow at Sir Hugh Montgomery:--
“The grey goose wing that was thereon,
In his hearte’s blood was wett.”
The more ancient ballad, however, reads swane-feathers. In the “Geste of Robyn Hode,” among Mr. Garrick’s old plays, in the Museum, the arrows of the outlaw and his companions are particularly described:--
“With them they had an hundred bowes,
The strings were well ydight;
An hundred shefe of arrows good,
With hedes burnish’d full bryght;