ABOUT THE ATMOSPHERE AND ITS PHENOMENA. 723 



But the important fact is that these magnetic poles are poles of cold. 

 All the isothermal lines of our hemisphere are affected by these poles, or 

 area of no variation and greatest intensity. Take a globe, with the iso- 

 thermal lines drawn upon it, and looking down from above the north pole, 

 and this fact strikes the observer with startling force. That seas and ele- 

 vations have their effect upon these lines of temperature, is undoubted, but 

 that they are intimately connected with the magnetism of the earth, or 

 that its temperature is affected by these poles, is too apparent to be 

 rejected. 



But this topic can be followed no farther — for a paper of this scope 

 must have a limit — it, however, indicates the way for the completion of the 

 law. 



In this vast field, it was necessary to be discursive, and that is the view 

 presented. I have not pretended to have a theory, or to account for the 

 phenomena of the atmosphere. That much of what has been said is of course 

 crude and undigested, is too true. The only object has been to set forth 

 some facts, which have from time to time forced upon the mind the convic- 

 tion that the old and generally accepted theory of the atmosphere and its 

 phenomena was not the true one. That at best it was but a partial presen- 

 tation of the causes underlying these phenomena — and as a law utterly 

 without the authority of facts to sustain it, and that we must look elsewhere 

 for light, which after nearly two centuries of following this theory has ended 

 in deeper darkness. 



If, then, the solar system had a common origin — which the common law 

 it obeys declares — its matter is the same; that its constitution as to its 

 members varies only in degree ; that the law of the atom is but the law of 

 a world, and the force that travels with the sun, the same that abides with 

 the sun itself, and in all its family of worlds. That life is the law of mat- 

 ter, and that the planets have their life, as we that live on them have ours 

 — that one is the result of the same law, or power, as we may call it, as the 

 other, — the one world differing from the other only in degree. 



That if the solar system was the result of force, acting on nebulous mat- 

 ter, our atmosphere is as much a part of that nebulous matter as the rocks 

 — that both are the result of the same force which we call radiation, or 

 cooling — and that it is composed, mainly, of those elements immutable to 

 the forces that formed the solid globe or liquid waters. That at a period in 

 this process, life as we know it was impossible, and that life came when the 

 conditions made it possible. That the process is still going on, or, that the 

 forces which once operated on the primal nebula have in the long ages of their 

 operation produced such an equilibrium of matter, so adjusted its functions 

 as to make the elements as a whole, self compensating, self-conserving, and 

 thus self-perpetuating and eternal — for the purposes of this paper not 

 requisite to know or to inquire. 



That the air and earth, thus of the same origin, are for planetary pur 

 poses identical, and controlled by forces which impart the properties or 



