24 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



world, and thousands upon thousands of our marine animals 

 enjoy the light of the sun through her alone. Can chance or 

 blind physical laws have possibly caused this wonderful depen- 

 dence, or is it a divine power which has thus linked the desti- 

 nies of our globe to the influence of another world ? 



As the atmosphere is constantly wandering from the equator 

 to the poles, and from the regions of perpetual ice to the sultry 

 tropics, thus also the waters of the ocean are hurried along in 

 perpetual migrations. From the deep abysses of the seas, im- 

 penetrable to the rays of the sun, they rise to the sunny surface, 

 or, after having revelled in the bounding wave, they again 

 descend into the silent darkness of the submarine regions. From 

 the coral gardens of the Pacific they are carried away to the 

 bleak coasts where the walrus heaves his ponderous mass upon 

 the ice, and from the desolate shores where the Esquimau 

 harpoons the wily seal, to the delightful bay where Naples smiles 

 upon the azure wave* 



The causes which force the waters of the sea to wander thus 

 restlessly from place to place are identically the same as those 

 which forbid the floods of the atmospheric ocean ever to know 

 rest ; for the impulse of their migrations does not proceed from 

 their own bosom, but from the distant sun. Absorbing the 

 heat of his vertical beams, the expanding tropical waters are 

 constantly rising to the surface, whence they flow onwards to 

 the higher latitudes, where the opposite tendency takes place ; 

 for, chilled by the icy blasts of the Arctic regions and conse- 

 quently increasing in weight, the surface-waters are here carried 

 down to the bottom, and ultimately find their way to the equa- 

 torial regions. 



Thus the repose of the seas is constantly disturbed by tropical 

 heat and polar frost, but the ocean has the same tendency to 

 restore the equilibrium of its temperature as the atmosphere, 

 and thus those numerous warm and cold currents are produced, 

 which, furrowing the bosom of the seas in opposite directions, 

 are constantly exchanging the waters of the different zones. 



In its lowest depths, the influence of the sun is felt ; he con- 

 stantly covers the bottom of the tropical seas with frigid waters 

 and causes the warm equatorial floods to wander to the poles, 

 a magnificent system based upon the simple physical law of the 

 expansion of bodies through heat and their condensation through 



