§ 370-372. CUliRENTS OF THE SEA. I75 



CHAPTER yni. 



§ 870^09. — CURRENTS OF THE SEA. 



§ 870. We here set out with, the postulate that the sea, as well 

 Obedient to order, as the air, has its system of circulation, and that this 

 sj^stem, whatever it be, and wherever its channels lie, whether in 

 the waters at or below the surface, is in obedience to physical 

 laws. The sea, by the circulation of its waters, doubtless has its 

 offices to perform in the terrestrial economy ; and when we sec 

 the currents in the ocean running hither and thither, we feel that 

 they were not put in motion without a cause. On the contrary, 

 we know they move in obedience to some law of Nature, be it 

 recorded down in the depths below, never so far beyond the reach 

 of human ken ; and being a law of Nature, we know who gave it, 

 and that neither chance nor accident had any thing to do with its 

 enactment. Nature grants us all that this postulate demands, re- 

 peating it to us in many forms of expression ; she utters it in the 

 blade of green grass which she causes to grow in climates and 

 soils made kind and genial by warmth and moisture that some 

 current of the sea or air has conveyed far away from under a 

 tropical sun. She murmurs it out in the cooling current of the 

 north ; the whales of the sea tell of it (§ 158) ; and all its inhabit- 

 ants proclaim it. 



371. The fauna and the flora of the sea are as much the crea- 

 The fauna and flora turcs of cllmatc (§ 164), aud arc as dependent for 

 of the sea. their wcll-bcing upon temperature as are the fauna 

 and the flora of the dry land. Were it not so, we should find 

 the fish and the algae, the marine insect and the coral, distributed 

 equally and alike in all parts of the ocean. The arctic whale 

 would delight in the torrid zone, and the habitat of the pearl oys- 

 ter would be also under the iceberg, or in the frigid waters of 

 polar seas. 



372. Nevertheless, though the constituents of sea water be the 

 Those of southern samc iu kind, wc must not infer that they are the 



unlike those of north- .., ^ ,, , „, p,i 



ernseas. samc lu degree for all parts 01 the ocean, lor there 



