158 Meteorological Phenomena in 



climate of Naples in the latitude of Morocco. Canada, which lies 

 south of Paris, has the temperature of Drontheim in Norway. Height 

 above the level of the sea occasions a diminution in the temperature, 

 and therefore Germany has in general a very equal temperature ; 

 the greater height of the land in southern Germany compensating 

 for the difference of latitude. Munich and Berlin shew a remark- 

 able harmony in the barren uniformity of the country which surrounds 

 them, as well as in the mean temperature which, without any detri- 

 ment to either, might be somewhat higher. 



But results such as these are not the final ones which we have to 

 seek. They may indeed suffice for Troglodytes who live in cellars 

 and caves, but not for us who breathe the pure fresh air. We must 

 find some means of getting back from this abstract uniformity to the 

 animated reality of atmospherical phenomena. We only arrive at 

 it, however, when we have attained to the consciousness, that in what 

 is apparently arbitrary, a law is concealed ; that the language in which 

 nature herself speaks to us though the thunder and the lightning is 

 a reasonable one ; and that even the flaming flash of the lightning 

 with which she writes in the night-season is capable of interpreta- 

 tion. 



We live on the bed of a sea whose waves roll over our heads with- 

 out our being able to rise above their surface. This aerial ocean 

 was named by the Greeks the atmosphere ; that is to say, a globe of 

 moisture. Whilst our perceptions take in all its constitutent ele- 

 ments, the Greeks thought of that one alone, the deficency of which 

 destroys all animal and vegetable life, and whose enlivening in- 

 fluence the Bedouin Arab recognises when he reaches the edge of 

 the desert, and though still far from the stream, perceives the air 

 becoming moist, and stretching out his hands towards it exclaims 

 with joy, " I taste the Nile." 



Steam has become of such essential importance to our life, that I 

 ought to presuppose every one to be acquainted with this miracu- 

 lous child of dissimilar parents, — this son of water and of fire. But 

 of those who so often use the word steam-engine how few there are 

 who really think of the oldest of them all, the atmosphere. All the 

 water which either falls in soft spring showers, or rushes down in 

 storms, has been raised by the atmosphere in the form of steam 

 generated by heat. The mill which is driven by the mountain 

 stream is also a steam-mill, only that the sun kindly undertakes to 

 produce the heat which continually guides anew the circulation of the 

 water. The steam of water is a perfectly transparent elastic fluid ; 

 clouds, mists, and vapours, are not steam, but condensed moisture, 

 which has returned from the aerial into the liquid form. If we 

 observe a locomotive, when conscious of its power it raises the valve, 

 and contemptuously casts off the superfluity, with which electro-mag- 

 netism might win its promised prize; at the place where the steam 

 issues forth it is perfectly transparent, the white cloud only appears 

 when it has risen to some little height. Air mixed with this transparent 



