%S^ Objects and Uses of Meteorology, 



rectly, perhaps, three great divisions are presented to our 

 view. This department of creation embraces what is termed 

 the mineral kingdom, which includes the various rocks and 

 strata, and individual mineral substances composing the surface 

 of the earth ; and also what we may perhaps not improperly 

 call the Atmospheric kingdom of nature. For it seems obviously 

 improper to refer the various aeriform fluids constituent of the 

 atmosphere to the mineral kingdom, with which, however, 

 they must be associated, unless we thus constitute for them a 

 distinct province. And as the atmosphere extends its in- 

 fluence in an equal degree over the three kingdoms, the ani- 

 mal, the vegetable, and the mineral, though received by, and 

 operating upon each, after a distinct manner, it would appear 

 rather to be independent, and allied to all of them, than to be 

 rightly included within any one. 



But these two divisions of inorganic nature, — the mineral and 

 atmospheric kingdoms, — become amenable to each other's in- 

 fluence, principally by means of an intermediate agent ; — by 

 means of the ocean and the other repositories and sources of 

 water, in its ordinary inelastic state of fluidity, with which the 

 earth is replenished. This Aqueous kingdom of nature is the 

 grand source whence the atmosphere derives its watery contents, 

 which are poured down again to refresh and supply the ob- 

 jects on the solid surface, — partly enter into their composition 

 in various ways, and in part return to the ocean, to be again 

 raised into the atmosphere by the agency of the sun, and unr 

 dergo that perpetual circulation, which is as essential to the 

 aggregate well-being of the objects on the globe's surface, as is 

 the circulation of the blood to the life of the animal frame. 

 By the ocean, the rivers, and the lakes, also, as repositories of 

 temperature, the combined influence of the sun and the atmo- 

 sphere on the organic substances which the " mineral kingdom" 

 supports, is suitably modified for their reception and require^ 

 ments. 



Now it is the object of Meteorology to investigate and dis- 

 cover the modes of operation, and the causes, instrumental 

 as well as final, of the multitude of interesting phenomena, the 

 influence of which on the vegetable and animal kingdoms we 

 have briefly traced in the foregoing remarks. To this science 

 belongs the examination of the force of radiation from the sun, 

 or the temperature directly produced by his beams — the in- 

 quiry into the constitution, mechanical as well as chemical, of 

 that intimate mixture of gaseous bodies, which is the subject of 

 what are called atmospheric changes — the scrutiny of the laws 

 governing the variations of climate — that also of those which 

 regulate the diminution of heat in the atmosphere, in propor- 



