72 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



and the lotus lilies have soaked up from the Nile, and exhaled as 

 vapor, snows that rested on the summits of the Alps." 



115. "The atmosphere," continues Maun, "which forms the 

 outer surface of the habitable world, is a vast reservoir, into which 

 the supply of food designed for living creatures is thrown ; or, in 

 one word, it is itself the food, in its simple form, of all living crea- 

 tures. The animal grinds down the fibre and the tissue of the 

 plant, or the nutritious store that has been laid up within its cells, 

 and converts these into the substance of which its own organs are 

 composed. The plant acquires the organs and nutritious store 

 thus yielded up as food to the animal, from the invulnerable air 

 surrounding it." 



116. "But animals are furnished with the means of locomotion 

 and of seizure — they can approach their food, and lay hold of and 

 swallow it ; plants must wait till their food comes to them. No 

 solid particles find access to their frames ; the restless ambient 

 air which rushes past them loaded with the carbon, the hydrogen, 

 the oxygen, tlie water — every thing they need in the shape of 

 supplies, is constantly at hand to minister to their wants, not only 

 to afford them food in due season, but in the shape and fashion in 

 which alone it can avail them." 



117. There is no employment more ennobling to man and his 

 intellect than to trace the evidences of design and purpose in the 

 Creator, which are visible in many parts of the creation. Hence, 

 to the right-minded mariner, and to him who studies the physical 

 relations of earth, sea, and air, the atmosphere is something more 

 than a shoreless ocean, at the bottom of which he creeps along. 

 It is an envelope or covering for the dispersion of light and heat 

 over the surface of the earth ; it is a sewer into which, with every 

 breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of dead animal matter ; 

 it is a laboratory for purification, in which that matter is recom- 

 pounded, and wrought again into wholesome and healthful shapes ; 

 it is a machine (§ 112) for pumping up all the rivers from the sea, 

 and conveying the waters for their fountains on the ocean to their 

 sources in the mountains ; it is an inexhaustible magazine, mar- 

 velously adapted for many benign and beneficent purposes. 



118. Upon the proper working of this machine depends the 



