THE ATMOSPHERE. 73 



well-being of every plant and animal that inhabits the earth ; there- 

 fore the management of it, its movements, and the performance 

 of its offices, can not be left to chance. They are, we may rely 

 upon it, guided by laws that make all parts, functions, and move- 

 ments of the machinery as obedient to order and as harmonious 

 as are the planets in their orbits. 



119. An examination into the economy of the universe will be 

 sufficient to satisfy the w^ell-balanced minds of observant men 

 that the laws which govern the atmosphere and the laws which 

 govern the ocean (§ 76) are laws which were put in force by the 

 Creator when the foundations of the earth were laid, and that 

 therefore they are lavrs 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 winds and " waves of the sea ever clap their hands with joy,*' 

 or obey the voice of rebuke ? 



120. To one who looks abroad to contemplate the agents of na- 

 ture, as he sees them at work upon our planet, no expression ut- 

 tered nor act performed by them is without meaning. By such 

 an one, the wind and rain, the vapor and the cloud, the tide, the 

 current, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, and color 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 regard- 

 ed as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and therefore 

 as the expression in which ISTature chooses to announce her own 

 doings, or, if we please, as the language in which she writes down 

 or chooses to make known her own laws. To understand that 

 language and to interpret aright those laws is the object of the 

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

 such a field as the one before us can therefore come amiss to 

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

 hand-book 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 



