§517. THE CLOUD REGION, ETC. 279 



liandiwork, demanding of his comforters, "But where shall wis- 

 dom 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 understanding? 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 under 

 the whole heaven ; to make the lueight for the ivinds ; 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 feet, the phi- 

 losopher thought, but was afraid to say, it was owing to " the weight 

 of the winds ;" and though the fact that the air has weight is here 

 so distinctly announced, philosophers never recognized the fact un- 

 til within comparatively a recent period, and then it was proclaim- 

 ed by them as a great discovery. Nevertheless, the fact was set 

 forth as distinctly in the book of nature as it is in the book of rev- 

 elation ; for the infant, in availing itself of atmospherical pressure 

 to draw milk from its mother's breast, unconsciously proclaimed it. 

 517. The barometerf stands lower under this cloud-ring than 

 The barometer un- ^"^ clthcr sidc of it (§ 362). Aftcr having crossed 

 der the cloud-ring. -^^ ^j^^ attcutivc uavlgator 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 pre- 

 cipitation which takes place within these parallels at certain pe- 

 riods, 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 heating rays of the sun are to be excluded ; 

 and how, by this operation, tone is given to the atmospherical 

 circulation of the world, and vigor to its vegetation. 



* Job, chap, xxriii. 



+ Observations now show that the thermometer stands highest vnder the cloud- 

 ring. InJeed, the indications aro that it coincides with the thermal equator. 



