96 Facts from the Arcana of Nature. 



colly noted position upon the plane of her orbit. The records 

 of scientific exploration and discovery demonstrate that the 

 antarctic regions are less accessible to exploration from 

 accumulated ice, than similar latitudes in arctic regions ; 

 while the depth of ocean, tested by soundings (of which one 

 recorded by Captain Ringgold, obtained bottom at 8,000 

 fathoms, with the elevation of ocean level, displacing the 

 denser strata of the atmosphere), noted barometrically, are 

 greatly in excess of their mean rates, recorded by numerous 

 and careful observations in northern latitudes. 



From the position of the sun upon the ecliptic, the northern 

 hemisphere enjoys annually some seven-and-three-quarter 

 days longer solar influence than the southern hemisphere, 

 yielding an excess of the temperature productive of evapora- 

 tion from the sea surface — twenty-four hours of sun in polar 

 regions being estimated to yield as large a vaporizing effect 

 as twelve hours sun in the tropics, while the precipitation 

 is entirely local — and also tending to great increase of snow 

 storms rather than to intense congelation. Accumulation of 

 snow, and its alternate thaw and congelation, so as to fill up 

 intervening hollows in the mountain peaks, progressing 

 throughout thousands of years, must inevitably affect the 

 earth's centre of gravity, by prolongation of the polar radius. 



The vast and increasing height of the snowy pinnacles of 

 the Himalayas — in the mild latitude of 30° north, reaching 

 an altitude of 29,000 feet, or over five miles — induces the 

 belief that the accumulations within the regions of continual 

 precipitation and congelation, must attain a proportional 

 and vastly greater height. If a continuous series of changes 

 in the Earth's centre of gravity are indicated by the ever 

 progressing alterations of sea level over the whole Earth's 

 surface, what conclusions force themselves upon us in the effort 

 to account reasonably for these phenomena ? Is the idea of the 

 preponderating influence of Arctic glacial enlargements, con- 

 tinuously augmenting in volume and density, so as gradually 

 to equipoise and ultimately overcome the resistance offered 

 by the antarctic ice, and oceanic enlargement to a more nearly 

 diametric centre of gravitation, not more logical than 

 hypotheses of solar or planetary influences, as acting upon 

 an alleged uniform redundancy of matter, or oceanic enlarge- 

 ment, not yet ascertained to exist, within the tropics ? That 

 there are elevated surfaces of watery accumulation in the 

 tropics, is admitted by Arago, who states that so true is it 

 that the waters accumulate in the Gulf of Mexico, that it has 



