100 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



is going on from them all the year round, we shall have reason to 

 consider the estimate of sixteen feet annually for the trade-wind 

 surface of the ocean not too high. 



211. We see the light beginning to break upon us, for we now 

 begin to perceive why it is that the proportions between the land 

 and water were made as we find them in nature. If there had 

 been more water and less land, we should have had more rain, 

 and vice versa; and then climates would have been different from 

 what they now are, and the inhabitants, animal or vegetable, would 

 not have been as they are. And as they are, that wise Being 

 who, in his kind providence, so watches over and regards the things 

 of this world that he takes notice of the sparrow's fall, and num- 

 bers the very hairs of our head, doubtless designed them to be. 



212. The mind is delighted, and the imagination charmed, by 

 contemplating the physical arrangements of the earth from such 

 points of view as this is which we now have before us ; from it 

 the sea, and the air, and the land, appear each as a part of that 

 grand machinery upon which the well-being of all the inhabitants 

 of earth, sea, and air depends ; and which, in the beautiful adap- 

 tations that we are pointing out, affords new and striking evidence 

 that they all have their origin in one omniscient idea, just as the 

 different parts of a watch may be considered to have been con- 

 structed and arranged according to one human design. 



213. In some parts of the earth, the precipitation is greater than 

 the evaporation ; thus the amount of water borne down by every 

 river that runs into the sea may be considered as the excess of 

 the precipitation over the evaporation that takes place in the val- 

 ley drained by that river. 



214. This excess comes from the sea ; the winds convey it to 

 the interior ; and the forces of gravity, dashing it along in mount- 

 ain torrents or gentle streams, hurry it back to the sea again. 



215. In other parts of the earth, the evaporation and precipita- 

 tion are exactly equal, as in those inland basins such as that in 

 which the city of Mexico, Lake Titicaca, the Caspian Sea, etc., 

 etc., are situated, which basins have no ocean drainage. 



216. If more rain fell in the valley of the Caspian Sea than is 

 evaporated from it, that sea would finally get full and overflow 

 the whole of that great basin. If less fell than is evaporated fi:om 



