410 OCEANOGRAPHY. 



of its currents, its flora and its fauna. Thus, having for foundation 

 only a single grain of sand observed beneath the microscope and which, 

 through oceanography, shall have recounted all the events at which it 

 has assisted, after centuries upon centuries the edifice will appear firm, 

 solid, in its complete magnificence. Do not think that this is a scien- 

 tific dream, as full of uncertainty as of charm. These deductions have 

 the absolute and unquestionable precision of mathematics. After so 

 many unexpected discoveries, our epoch leaves it no longer in doubt 

 that the greatest poets are sometimes the scientists. 



The laws of meteorology present an important practical interest 

 because they lead up to the forecasting of the weather. Tliere is no 

 need to dwell upon the profit humanity may derive from such a dis- 

 covery. How many misfortunes will be averted for the agriculturist! 

 Navigation will feel no less benefit if it can know in advance the regions 

 of calm, of contrary or favorable winds. How many voyages will be 

 shortened, how many lives saved ! We can judge of this from cyclones. 

 Formerly the terror of sailors, since their laws have been known they 

 have been utilized to expedite voyages. The subjugated hurricane 

 works for the sailor, and when ordered to bring the ship more quickly 

 iuto port the docile tempest obeys and thus averts the dangers of the 

 route. Who among our forefathers would have dared to formulate such 

 a dream, realized, nevertheless, through the work of Bridet"? Now the 

 laws of the aerial ocean and of the liquid ocean are the same, although 

 more complicated for the first than for the second. They should con- 

 sequently be studied synthetically on the sea and applied afterward to 

 the atmosphere, with such modifications as are made necessary by the 

 great difference in the mobility of the two fluids. The rational intro- 

 duction to meteorology is oceanography. Steam has greatly modified 

 and simplified the former conditions of navigation, and to-day steamers 

 progress almost in a straight line despite wind and sea. However, the 

 sailing vessel is not as dead as some may believe. As a result of the 

 mutual interactions, so delicate, so changeable, of economic conditions, 

 of the high price of coal, of the large space occupied by the machinery 

 and the store of fuel, of the higher salary of mechanics, and for still 

 other causes, many nations are returning to sailing vessels. Americans 

 in particular possess clippers of great speed, which carry freight at less 

 charges than do steamships. The study of the phenomena of the ocean 

 has lost none of its practical utility to navigation and it has become 

 indispensable for the elucidation of a multitude of points. Marine 

 currents are elucidated by meteorology, because of the influence which 

 regular winds have upon the flow of the waters. They control the 

 course of floating ice fields. The dangers to boats off the banks of 

 Newfoundland are well known. To this place come the icebergs which 

 have broken off from the glaciers of Greenland, and have been carried 

 down Baffin's Bay by the Labrador current to melt away at contact with 



