150 THE WEATHER, AND WEATHER PROPHETS. 



who believe that they can trace in nature the operation 

 of motive and design as distinct from a mere necessity 

 arising out of the nature of things and the so-called 

 conservation of vis viva. 



(12.) Let us take our globe as we find it revolving on 

 its axis in twenty-four hours ; and carried round the sun 

 in an orbit oblique to its equator in a year ; which is 

 divided into two somewhat unequal halves (if such an 

 expression may be pardoned) from equinox to equinox 

 by its unequal angular motion in a slightly elliptic orbit ; 

 thus giving rise to unequal summers and winters in the 

 two hemispheres : its surface very unequally divided 

 between land and sea the land mainly congregated 

 upon one half of it, and that half principally belonging 

 to the northern hemisphere ; and so distributed as effect- 

 ually to bar all free circulation of the ocean in the direc- 

 tion of the diurnal rotation (or round the equator), and 

 allow but a restricted one in that at right angles to it (or 

 across the poles) : thus compelling whatever circulation 

 does exist, to take place within three great basins or 

 semi-land-locked areas, and a vast southern expanse into 

 which all the three open ; and within each of which 

 a system of circulation is kept up by the action of the 

 winds ; its course being determined partly by the sinuosi- 

 ties of their shores, partly by the inequalities of their 

 bottoms, and partly by the rotation of the earth itself. 



(13.) We have, besides, to consider the globe as en- 

 tirely and deeply covered by an atmosphere of mixed 

 gases highly elastic, very dilatable by heat, and of 

 extreme mobility : expanding itself in virtue of its elas- 



