§ 83G, 837. TUE WINDS OF THE S0UTHI-:RN HEMISPHERE. 449 



such physical aspects need it bo any longer considered paradoxi- 

 cal to ascribe the polar tendency of the "brave west winds" to rare- 

 faction by heat in the antarctic circle. This heat is relative, and 

 though it be imparted to air far below the freezing-point, raising 

 its temperature only a few degrees, its expansive power for that 

 change is as great when those few degrees are low down as it is 

 when they are high up on the scale. If such condensation of vapor 

 do take place, then liberation of heat and expansion of air must 

 follow, and consequently the oblateness of the atmosj^herical co\- 

 ering of our planet will be altered ; the flattening about the poles 

 will be relieved by the intumescence of the expanded and as- 

 cending air, which, protruding above the general level of the aerial 

 ocean, will receive an impulse equatorially, as well from the mere 

 derangement of equilibrium as from the centrifugal forces of the 

 revolving globe. And so this air, having parted with its moist- 

 ure, and having received the expansive force of all the latent heat 

 evolved in the process of vaporous condensation, will commence 

 its return toward the equator as an upper current of dry air. 



836. Arrived at this point of the investigation, we may con- 

 A perpetual cyclone, template the wholc systcm of these "brave west 



winds" in the light of an everlasting cyclone on a gigantic scale. 

 The antarctic continent is in its vortex, about which the wind, in 

 the great atmospherical ocean all around the world, from the pole 

 to the edge of the calm belt of Capricorn, is revolving in spiral 

 curves, continually going with the hands of a watch, and twisting 

 from left to right. 



837. In studying the workings of the various parts of the phys- 

 Discoveryofdesif-nin ical machinery that surrounds our planet, it is al- 



the meteorological ma- r t • i j?^i1xi\lx l, 



chinery. ways reireshmg and proHtable to detect, even by 



glimmerings never so faint, the slightest tracings of the purpose 

 which the Omnipotent Architect of the universe designed to ac- 

 complish by any particular arrangement among its various parts. 

 Thus it is in this instance : whether the train of reasoning which 

 we have been endeavoring to follow up, or whether the argu- 

 ments which we have been adducing to sustain it be entirely 

 correct or not, we may, from all the facts and circumstances 

 that we have passed in review, find reasons sufficient for regard- 

 ing in an instructive, if not in a new light, that vast waste of wa- 

 ters which surrounds the unexplored regions of the antarctic cir- 



F F 



