126 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



and therefore coiild not have reproduced itself, and its creation 

 would have been a failure. Now, if we see such a perfect adapta- 

 tion, such exquisite adjustment in the case of one of the sraallest 

 flowers of the field, how much more may we not expect " com- 

 pensation" in the atmosphere and the ocean, upon the right 

 adjustment and due performance of which depends not only the 

 life of that plant, but the well-being of every individual that is 

 found in the entii^e vegetable and animal kingdoms of the world ? 

 When the east winds blow alorfg the Atlantic coast for a little 

 while, they bring us air saturated with moisture fi'om the Gulf 

 Stream, and we complain of the sultry, oppressive, heavy atmo- 

 sphere ; the invalid grows worse, and the well man feels ill, 

 because, when he takes this atmosphere into his lungs, it is already 

 so charged with moistiure that it cannot take up and carry off 

 that which encumbers his lungs, and which nature has caused his 

 blood to bring and leave there, that respiration may take up and 

 carry off. At other times the air is dry and hot ; he feels that it 

 is conveying off matter from the limgs too fast ; he realizes the 

 idea that it is consuming him, and he calls the sensation burning. 

 Therefore, in considering the general laws which govern the 

 physical agents of the universe, and which regulate them in the due 

 performance of their offices, I have felt myself constrained to set 

 out with the assumption that, if the atmosphere had had a greater 

 or less capacity for moisture, or if the proportion of land and water 

 had been different — if the earth, an-, and water had not been 

 in exact counterpoise — the whole arrangement of the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms would have varied from their j)"esent state. 

 But God, for reasons which man may never know, chose to make 

 those kingdoms what they are ; for this purpose it was necessary, 

 in his judgment, to establish the proportions between the land 

 and water, and the desert, just as they are, and to make the 

 capacity of the air to circulate heat and moisture just what it is, 

 -and to have it to do all its work in obedience to law and in 

 subservience to order. If it were not so, why was power given to 

 the mnds to lift up and transport moisture, and to feed the plants 

 with nourishment ? or why was the property given to the sea by 

 which its waters may become fii'st vapom*, and then fniitful showers 

 or gentle dews ? If the proportions and properties of land, sea, 

 and air were not adjusted according to the reciprocal capacities 

 of all to perform the fimctions required of each, why should 

 we be told that He " measured the waters in the hollow of his 



