174 *i^HE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



waters from the intense forces of evaporation. Having performed 

 these offices for one place, they are evaporated and given up to 

 the sunbeam and the winds again, to be borne on their wings away 

 to other places which stand in need of like offices. 



Familiar with clouds and sunshine, the storm and the calm, and 

 all the phenomena which find expression in the physical geogra- 

 phy of the sea, the right-minded mariner, as he contemplates 

 "the cloud without rain," ceases to regard it as an empty thing; 

 he perceives that it performs many important offices ; he regards 

 it as a great moderator of heat and cold — as a *' compensation" in 

 the atmospherical mechanism which makes the performance of 

 the grand machine perfect. 



350. Marvelous are the offices and wonderful is the constitu- 

 tion of the atmosphere. Indeed, I know of no subject more fit for 

 profitable thought on the part of the truth-loving, knowledge- 

 seeking student, be he seaman or landsman, than that afforded by 

 the atmosphere and its offices. Of all parts of the physical ma- 

 chinery, of all the contrivances in the mechanism of the universe, 

 the atmosphere, with its offices and its adaptations, appears to me 

 to be the most wonderful, sublime, and beautiful. In its construc- 

 tion, the perfection of knowledge is involved. The perfect man 

 of Uz, in a moment of inspiration, thus demands of his comfort- 

 ers : "But where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place 

 of understanding ? The depth saith, it is not in me ; and the sea 

 saith, it is not with me. It can not be gotten for gold, neither shall 

 silver be weighed for the price thereof. No mention shall be made 

 of coral or of pearls, for the price of wisdom is above rubies. 



" Whence, then, cometh wisdom, and where is the place of un- 

 derstanding ? Destruction and Death say, we have heard the fame 

 thereof with our ears. 



" God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place 

 thereof ; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth un- 

 der the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and he 

 weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the 

 rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder ; then did he 

 see it, and declare it ; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out."* 



When the pump-maker came to ask Galileo to explain how it 

 was that his pump would not lift water higher than thirty-two 



* Job, chapter xxviii. 



