1 86 Voyage of the Novara. 



the weather improved, and the sky under the influence of 

 southerly winds once more cleared. 



Unfortunately it is not practicable with a single ship to 

 ascertain whether the veering of the wind follows an exact 

 curve, as we can only say what is the direction at the spot 

 where the observation has been made, and it is impossible to 

 determine what it may be at other points. But it is at all 

 events certain that the shifts of wind are amenable to the 

 same general laws as hurricanes. A number of ships sent out 

 for the special purpose of this branch of investigation, could 

 render immense services to science and navigation, and 

 achieve most interesting results. 



We availed ourselves of these general laws to traverse 

 the ocean as speedily as possible, in order to reach early 

 our next anchorage, and in so doing we experienced altogether 

 three well-marked cycles of wind at short intervals. We 

 cannot aiford space to prosecute all the interesting conse- 

 quences that result from these phenomena of nature, such in- 

 vestigations being more properly reserved for the meteorological 

 section of the scientific portion of this work. Here, however, 

 the facilities for observation of a sea-farinfj life have been 

 directed towards an object of inquiry, which must prove of 

 immense utility in navigation and commerce. And, perhaps, 

 even landsmen may not find it uninteresting, that even that 

 proverbially fickle element, air, obeys certain fixed laws, 

 a more accurate acquaintance with which must be of the 

 utmost importance to the denizen of terra Jirmciy as well as 



