THE EQUATORIAL CLOUD-RING. 213 



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

 the whole heaven ; to make the iveight for the winds ; and he 

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

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

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



590. AVhen the pump-maker came to ask Galileo to explain 

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

 two feet, the philosopher thought, but was afraid to say, it was 

 owing to "weight of the w^inds;" and though the fact that the air 

 has weight is here so distinctly announced, philosophers never 

 recognized the fact until within comparatively a recent period, and 

 then it ^as proclaimed by them as a great discovery. Xeverthe- 

 less, the fact was set forth as distinctly in the book of nature as it 

 is in the book of revelation ; for the infant, in availing itself of at- 

 mos^jherical pressure to draw milk from its mother's breast, un- 

 consciously proclaimed it. 



591. Both the thermometer and the barometer (§ 585) stand 

 lower under this cloud-ring than they do on either side of it. After 

 having crossed it, and referred to the log-book to refresh his mind 

 as to the observations there entered with regard to it, the atten- 

 tive navigator may perceive how this belt of clouds, by screening 

 the parallels over which he may have found it to hang from the 

 sun's rays, not only promotes the precipitation which takes place 

 within these parallels at certain periods, but how, also, the rains 

 are made to change the places upon which they are to fall ; and 

 how, by traveling with the calm belt of the equator up and down 

 the earth, this cloud-ring shifts the surface from which the heat- 

 ing rays of the sun -are to be excluded ; and how, by this opera- 

 tion, tone is given to the atmospherical circulation of the world, 

 and vigor to its vegetation. 



592. Having traveled with the calm belt to the north or south, 

 the cloud-ring leaves the sky about the equator clear ; the rays of 

 the torrid sun pour down upon the crust of the earth there, and 

 raise its temperature to a scorching heat. The atmosphere dances 

 (§ 352), and the air is seen trembling in ascending and descend- 

 ing columns, with busy eagerness to conduct the heat off and de- 



* Job, chap, xxviii. 



