390 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



currents are to Lo regarded as the flues and regulators for dis- 

 tributing it at the right time, and at the right places, in the right 

 quantities. By March, when " the winter is past and gone," the 

 furnace which had been stai-ted by the rajs of the sun in the 

 previous summer, and which, by autumn, had heated up the 

 ocean in our hemisphere, has cooled down. The caldron of St. 

 Eoque, ceasing in activity, has failed in its supplies, and the 

 chambers of wannth upon the northern sea, having been exhausted 

 of their heated water (which has been expended in the manner 

 already explained), have contracted their limits. The surface of 

 heated water which, in September, was spread out over the 

 western half of the Atlantic, from the equator to the parallel of 

 40° north, and which raised this immense area to the temperature 

 of 80° and upward, is not to be found in early spring on this side 

 of the j)arallel of 8° north. The isotherm of 80° in March, after 

 quitting the Caribbean Sea, runs parallel with the South American 

 coast towards Cape St. Eoque, keeping some 8 or 10 degrees from 

 it. Therefore the heat dispensed over Europe from this caldron 

 falls oif in March. But at this season the sun comes forth with 

 fresh supplies ; he then crosses the line and passes over into the 

 northern hemisphere; observations show that the process of 

 heating the water in this great caldron for the next winter is 

 now about to commence. In the mean time, so benign is the 

 system of cosmical arrangements, another process of raising the 

 temperature of Europe commences. The land is more readily 

 impressed than the sea by the heat of the solar rays ; at this 

 season, then, the summer climate due these transatlantic latitudes 

 is modified by the action of the sun's raj^s directly upon the 

 land. The land receives heat from them, but, instead of having 

 the capacity of water for retaining it, it imparts it straightway 

 to the air ; and thus the proper climate, because it is the climate 

 which the Creator has, for his own wise purposes, allotted to this 

 portion of the earth, is maintained until the marine caldron of 

 Cape St. Eoque and the tropics is again heated and brought into 

 the state for supplying the vapour and the heat to maintain the 

 needful temperature in Europe during the absence of the sun in 

 the other hemisphere. Thus the equable climates of AVesteru 

 Europe are accounted for. 



729. The Gulf of Guinea and the climate of Patagonia. — In like 

 manner, the Gulf of Guinea forms a caldron and a furnace, and 

 spreads out over the South Atlantic an air-chamber for heating 



