57 



and is still less so for the winter, the successive 

 strata of which seem to diminish in temperature 

 according to different laws at different degrees 

 of latitude. In the interesting experiments 

 made by Forster, Bladh, Wales, Ellis, and 

 Peron, on the rapidity of the decrement of heat 

 in the ocean, this decrement has been found so 

 unequal, that a degree of the centigrade ther- 

 mometer answers sometimes to twelve, at other 

 times to twenty-four toises, and even more. We 

 may in general admit, that the temperature 

 decreases six times as quick in the sea as in 

 the aerial ocean, and that it is on account of 

 this distribution of caloric in the two elements, 

 that plants and animals analogous to those of 

 the polar regions find under the torrid zone, on 

 the slope of mountains, and in the depths of the 

 ocean, the climate which is suitable to their or- 

 ganization. 



The same causes, to which we ought to attri- 

 bute the moderate heats we feel in sailing be- 

 tween the tropics, produce also a singular equa- 

 lity in the temperature of the day and the night. 

 This equality is still greater on sea than in the 

 interior of the continents. In the province of 



de Phys., t. Ixii, p. 447 ; and the decrement of heat, in a 

 vertical plane, follows most frequently, according to Oriani 

 and Lindenau, the law of harmonical progression. Tables 

 barom. p. 45. Mon. Cor. Juin. 1805. Ephem. Med. 1788. 

 p. 138. 



