280 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



to the Antarctic Pole, its surface is principally covered with 

 water. The liquid element predominates equally in the 

 space comprised between the eastern shores of the old, and 

 the western shores of the new continent, where it is only- 

 interrupted by a few widely-scattered groups of islands. The 

 learned hydrographer Meurieu has very justly given to this 

 great basin, which, under the tropics, extends over 145 

 degrees of longitude, the name of " the Great Ocean," to 

 distinguish it from all other seas. The southern hemisphere, 

 and the western (from the meridian of Teneriffe), are 

 therefore the most oceanic portions of the globe. 



Such are the leading points in the comparison of the re- 

 lative areas of land and sea, a relation which exercises a 

 powerful influence on the distribution of temperature, the 

 variations of atmospheric pressure, the direction of the winds, 

 and the hygrometric state of the air which materially in- 

 fluences the development of vegetation. When we consider 

 that nearly three-fourths of the entire surface of the globe 

 are covered by water, ( 336 ) we shall be less surprised at the 

 imperfect state of meteorology before the commen^ment of 

 the present century ; but since that epoch a considerable 

 mass of exact observations on the temperature of the sea 

 in different latitudes and at different seasons has been 

 obtained, and numerically compared. 



The philosophers of ancient Greece indulged in general 

 speculations with regard to the horizontal configuration of 

 the dry land ; they discussed its greatest extent from east 

 to west, which, according to the testimony of Agathemerus, 

 was placed by Dicearchus in the latitude of Rhodes, and in the 

 direction of a linepasing from the Pillars of Hercules to Thine. 



