392 THE PHYSICAL geography of the sea. 



feed m the fields all winter, there being plenty of vegetation and 

 no use of hay. On the Falkland Islands (latitude 51-2° south), 

 thousands of bullocks, sheep, and horses are running wild over 

 the country, gathering a living all through the winter." The 

 water in the equatorial caldron of Guinea overflows to the south, 

 as that of S'. Roque does to the north ; it carries to Patagonia and 

 the Falkland Islands warmth, which, uniting with the heat set 

 free by precipitation during the passage of the vapor-laden west 

 winds across the Southern Andes, carries beyond latitude 50° in 

 the other hemisphere the winter climate of South Carolina on one 

 side of the North Atlantic, or of the "Emerald Island" on the other. 

 730. All geographers have noticed, and philosophers have fre- 

 shore-iines. qucutly remarked upon the conformity as to the 

 shore-line profile of equatorial America and equatorial Africa. It 

 is true, we can not now tell the reason, though explanations found- 

 ed upon mere conjecture have been offered, why there should be 

 this sort of jutting in and jutting out of the shore-line, as at Cape 

 St. Roque and the Gulf of Guinea, on opposite sides of the Atlan- 

 tic ; but one of the purposes, at least, which this peculiar config- 

 uration was intended to subserve, is without doubt now revealed to 

 us. We see that, by this configuration, two cisterns of hot water 

 are formed in this ocean, one of which distributes heat and warmth 

 to western Europe ; the other, at the opposite season, tempers the 

 climate of eastern Patagonia. Phlegmatic must be the mind that 

 is not impressed with ideas of grandeur and simplicity as it con- 

 templates that exquisite design, those benign and beautiful ar- 

 rangements, by which the climate of one hemisphere is made to 

 depend upon the curve of that line against which the sea is made 

 to dash its waves in the other. Impressed with the perfection of 

 terrestrial adaptations, he who studies the economy of the great 

 cosmical arrangements is reminded that not only is there design 

 in giving shore-lines their profile, the land and the water their, 

 pi'oportions, and in placing the desert and the pool where they 

 are, but the conviction is forced upon him also that every hill 

 and valley, with the grass upon its sides, is a part of the wonder- 

 ful mechanism, each having its offices to perform in the grand de- 

 sign. March is, in the southern hemisphere, the first month of 

 autumn, as September is with us ; consequently, we should expect 

 to find in the South Atlantic as large an area of water at 80° and 

 upward in March, as we should find in the North Atlantic for Sep- 



