222 THE ATMOSPHERE AND METEOEOLOGY. 



an immense reservoir into which all that dies pours its last breath. 

 Under the action of the atmosphere all the scattered organisms are 

 born and perish. Life and death are equally in the air which we 

 breathe, and perpetually succeed one another by the exchange of 

 gaseous particles. The same elements wliich are exhaled from the 

 leaves of the tree are carried by the wind to the infant that is just 

 born ; the last breath of a dying man goes to form tlie brilliant corolla 

 of the flower, and compose its penetrating perfume. The breeze 

 which gently caresses the stems of the j^lants is further on trans- 

 formed into a tempest, uproots large trees, and destroys ships, with 

 all their crews. It is thus, by an infinite series of minor catastrophes, 

 that the atmosphere sustains the universal life of the globe. 



Comparable to the ocean, as to the incessant circuit of its waves, 

 the great atmospheric sea is not however enclosed in a basin bounded 

 on all sides. The atmosphere travels without cessation, bearing away 

 on its wings all the light objects which are exposed to its currents. 

 It takes up the ashes from a crater in eruption, and lets them fall in 

 places often hundreds of miles distant ; it raises in its eddies myriads 

 of animalcula or clouds of pollen, which are wafted by it across 

 seas to fall again in impalpable dust. It carries the sea itself in the 

 form of clouds, and distributes it as rain and dews over the continents ; 

 it becomes liighly charged with electricity, and discharges itself by 

 the rays of the Aurora Borealis, or by vivid lightnings. It is the 

 great vehicle by means of which the universal interchange of the 

 elements which compose the solid crust, the mass of waters, and of 

 organic beings, is accomplished. 



*' The world is small ! " said Columbus ; but it is principally owing 

 to the air which disregards distances that the earth is diminished. 

 Whatever be the number of yards or miles traversed by a seed, the 

 point where it falls is not distant from the mother-plant. The 

 northern coasts of the Mediterranean are brought nearer the great 

 deserts of x\frica, dust of which is brought by the sirocro ; and in 

 the same way we may say that the shores of Brazil, towards which 

 the trade-winds blow, are contiguous to the distant archipelagos of 

 the Azores and the Canaries. All those parts of the world united by 

 atmospheric currents become thereby neighbours to each other, if not 

 for the creatures who walk on the ground, at least for those which 

 are carried by the movements of the air. By the incessant mixture 

 of the aerial masses all the regions of the solid kernel of the earth are 

 brought nearer, contrasts are blended, and harmony is established 



