108 Baron Alexander von Humboldt on the Physiognomy 



the first instance, a particular state of the atmosphere ; but 

 this condition of the atmosphere is dependent on the con- 

 tinual combined action of the sea, which is everywhere agi- 

 tated to a great depth, and is traversed by currents having 

 entirely different temperatures, and of the dry land, which 

 radiates heat, exhibits all varieties of horizontal configura- 

 tion, elevation, and colour, and is cither bare or covered with 

 woods and plants. 



In the present state of the surface of our planet, the area 

 of the solid land bears to that of the sea the proportion of 1 

 to 2| (according to Rigaud* of 100 to 270.) The islands 

 form scarcely i^ of the continental masses. The latter are 

 so unequally distributed, that they form three times as much 

 land in the noi-thern hemisphere as in the southern. The 

 southern hemisphere, therefore, is peculiarly and predomi- 

 nantly oceanic. From 40'' S. L. to the antarctic pole, the 

 crust of the earth is almost entirely covered with water. The 

 liquid element is just as predominant, and is only interrupted 

 by widely-scattered groups of islands, between the east coast 

 of the old and the west coast of the new world. The learned 

 hydrographer, Fleurieu, has very properly distinguished this 

 vast basin of the sea by the name of the yreat ocean. Within 

 the tropics, it includes a space of 145° of longitude. The 

 southern and western hemispheres (reckoning westward from 

 the meridian of Teneriife) are, therefore, the regions con- 

 taining the most water of the whole surface of the globe. 



These, then, are the principal facts regarding the relative 

 quantity of the solid land and the sea, a relation which so 

 powerfully influences the distribution of temperature, the vari- 

 ations in the pressure of the air, the direction of the winds, 

 and the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, — the last being 

 a feature which acts very essentially on vegetation. When we 

 reflect that an extent of nearly three-fourths of the surface t 



* Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. vi. P. 2, 

 1837, p. 297. According to other authorities the proportion is as 

 100 : 284. 



t During the middle ages an opinion prevailed that the sea covered only 

 the oue-sevenlh part of the surface of the earth ; an idea which Cardinal 



