§ 552. THE GEOLOGICAL AGENCY OF THE WINDS. 301 



Certain seas and des- travel the Toad suggested from the southern hemi- 



erts considered as . i i i i ^ i ^ i ^ 



counterpoises in the Sphere should, when they touch the earth on the 

 ery. poki sldc of the tropic of Cancer, be so thirsty, 



more thirsty, much more, than those which travel on either side 

 of their path, and which are supposed to have come from southern 

 seas, not from southern lands? The Mediterranean has to give 

 those winds three times as much vapor as it receives from them 

 (§ 547) ; the Ked Sea gives them as much as they can take, and 

 receives nothing back in return but a little dew (§ 376) ; the Per- 

 sian Gulf also gives more than it receives. What becomes of the 

 rest ? Doubtless it is given to the winds, that they may bear it ofi" 

 to distant regions, and make lands fruitful, that but for these sources 

 of supply would be almost rainless, if not entirely arid, waste, and 

 barren. These seas and arms of the ocean now present them- 

 selves to the mind as counterpoises in the great hygrometrical 

 machinery of our planet. — As sheets of water placed where they 

 are to balance the land in the trade- wind region of South Amer- 

 ica and South Africa, they now present themselves. When the 

 foundations of the earth were laid, we know who it was that 

 "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out 

 the heavens with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth 

 in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills 

 in a balance;" and licnce we know also that they are arranged 

 both according to proportion and to place. Here, then, we see 

 harmony in the winds, design in the mountains, order in the sea, 

 arrangement for the dust, and form for the desert. Here are 

 signs of beauty and works of grandeur ; and we may now fancy 

 that, in this exquisite system of adaptations and compensations, 

 we can almost behold, in the Eed and Mediterranean Seas, the 

 very waters that were held in the hollow of the Almighty hand 

 when he weighed the Andes and balanced the hills of Africa in 

 the comprehensive scales. In that great inland basin of Asia 

 which holds the Caspian Sea, and embraces an area of one million 

 and a half of geographical square miles, we see the water-surface 

 so exquisitely adjusted, that it is just sufiicient, and no more, to 

 return to the atmosphere as vapor exactly as much moisture as 

 the atmosphere lends in rain to the rivers of that basin — a beau- 

 tiful illustration of the fact that the span of the heavens was 

 meted out according to the measure of the waters. Thus we are 



