THE ATMOSPHERE. 73 



as obedient to order and as liarmonious as are tte planets in their 

 orbits. 



201. Any examination into the economy of the nniverse will be 

 The air and t!ie sufficient to satisfy tlio wcU-balanced minds of obser- 

 sSrefaws!"'' ^ vant men that the laws which govern the atmo- 

 sphere and the laws which govern the ocean (§ 164) are laws which 

 were put in force by the Creator when the foundations of the earth 

 were laid, and that therefore they are laws of order; else, why- 

 should the Gulf Stream, for instance, be always where it is, and 

 running from the Gulf of Mexico, and not somewhere else, and 

 sometimes running into it ? Why should there be a perpetual 

 drought in one part of the world, and continual showers in another ? 

 Or why should the conscious winds ever heed the voice of rebuke, 

 or the glad waves ever " clap their hands with joy ?" 



202, To one who looks abroad to contemplate the agents of 

 Importance of Ob- natiu-c, as ho sccs them at work upon our planet, no 



serving the works . , , ^ , ,, i i 1 1 • • 1 1 



of nature. cxprcssiou uttercQ OT act periormed by them is with- 



out meaning. By such a one, the wind and rain, the vapour and 

 the cloud, the tide, the cmTent, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, 

 and colour of the sea, the shade of the sky, the temperature of the 

 air, the tint and shape of the clouds, the height of the tree on the 

 shore, the size of its leaves, the brilliancy of its flowers — each and 

 aU may be regarded as the exponent of certain physical combi- 

 nations, and therefore as the expression in which Nature chooses to 

 annoimce her own doings, or, if we please, as the language in which 

 she wiites down or elects to make known her own laws. To under- 

 stand that language and to interpret aright those laws is the object 

 of the undertaking which we now have in hand. No fact gathered 

 from such a volume as the one before us can therefore come amiss 

 to those who tread the walks of inductive philosophy ; for, in the 

 handbook of natm^e, every such fact is a syllable ; and it is by 

 patiently collecting fact after fact, and by joining together syllable 

 after syllable, that we may finally seek to read aright from the great 

 volume which the mariner at sea. as well as the philosopher on the 

 mountain each sees spread out before him. 



203. There have been examined at the Observatory more than a 

 Materials for this milliou of obscrvations on the force and dii'ection of 

 chapter. ^^le wiuds at sea.* The discussion of such a mass 



of material has thrown much light upon the circulation of the 



* Nautical Monograph, No. 1, 1859. 



