THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 211 



Intending, as we have said, to confine our remarks chiefly 

 to that ocean on which Captain Maury himself best loves to 

 expatiate, we shall follow him more cursorily through the 

 other parts of his volume. Three chapters of his work relate 

 to the Atmosphere, in its various connection with the physical 

 geography of the sea; as expressed by the phenomena of 

 winds, of evaporation, of rains, of temperature, of fogs, and 

 of electrical changes; a vast subject, and not less complex 

 than vast. Multiplied though all its records have been of 

 late years, and made more minute and accurate as well as 

 numerous, Meteorology cannot yet take its place among the 

 exact sciences. We have just named some of the topics it 

 includes; but there are yet others, which mix with and 

 complicate all the results of observation. The weight of the 

 air is one of these ; an element involved as effect or cause in 

 almost all other atmospheric changes, and deeply concerned 

 in any theory of the winds. Again, we have those conditions 

 of Electricity, which are expressed by the wonderful pheno- 

 mena of magnetism acting through and upon all parts of the 

 globe, solid, fluid, and aerial ; and brought before us under a 

 new aspect by Professor Faraday's discovery of the magnetic 

 properties of oxygen as modified by heat. Even that other 

 subtle element of Light if indeed it be another and 

 separate element may in some sort affect the atmosphere, 

 through which its action is transmitted to the earth and 

 ocean below. As associated with, or, according to our recent 

 philosophy, converted into heat, there can be no doubt of this 

 influence. But the marvellous results which science has 

 obtained from the chemical actions of light, justify the 

 belief that other analogous effects may exist, though yet 

 hidden from human observation. If electric states of at- 

 mosphere are able to convert oxygen into Ozone, light, in its 

 different degrees of intensity, cannot well be supposed without 

 influence, even on the inorganic parts of the aerial medium 



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