44 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



America. To dwellers in those countries or on their 

 borders, the wind is an all-absorbing consideration, 

 meaning, as it does, all the difference between life and 

 death in many cases, and in numberless others making 

 life worth living, or the reverse. 



But it is not with the winds of the land and their 

 countless local peculiarities and variations that we have 

 to deal. The winds of the ocean, or rather the watery 

 world that is to say, two-thirds of the surface of the 

 globe claim our attention as being one of the greatest 

 factors, if not the prime factor, in disseminating the 

 bounties of the sea over the land. And, first of all, it 

 is necessary to remember that mobile and volatile as 

 the winds of heaven are, and elusive as they have 

 hitherto proved themselves to be to the earnest and 

 painstaking prognosticates of weather, they, like 

 everything else connected with the physical charac- 

 teristics of our earth, are ruled by certain great laws of 

 which as yet we have only been permitted a glimpse. 

 The aerial ocean has its currents, its tides, its eddies, 

 as the watery one has, but with far more variations, as 

 might have been expected, considering the difference 

 between the two elements, air and water. Many of 

 these currents are fairly regular in direction and 

 average force ; others are irregular, according to season ; 

 others are permanently irregular, but in their average 

 direction and force are stable enough to leave their 

 effects, say, on the trees of the islands over which they 

 blow, which show by the direction in which they bend 

 how they have been coerced during the time of their 

 growth. These are of the main currents of air. Between 

 them there are eddies, whirlpools of air, so to speak, and 

 stagnant or nearly stagnant places where apparently 



