76 THYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



left to chance. They are, we may rely upon it, guided by laws 

 that make all parts, functions, and movements of this machinery 

 as obedient to order and as harmonious as are the planets in their 

 orbits. 



201. The air and the ocean governed hy stable laws. — Any exami- 

 nation into the economy of the universe will be sufficient to 

 satisty the well-balanced minds of observant men that the laws 

 which govern the atmosphere and the laws which govern the 

 ocean (§ 1 G4) 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. Importance of ohserving the worhs of nature. — To one who 

 looks abroad to contemplate the agents of nature, as he sees 

 them at work upon our planet, no expression uttered or act 

 j)erformed by them is without meaning. By such a one, the 

 wind and rain, the vapour and the cloud, the tide, the current, 

 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 all may be re- 

 garded as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and 

 therefore as the expression in which Nature chooses to announce 

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

 writes 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 nature, 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. Materials for this chapter. — The.rc have been examined at 



