68 



The maximum of the temperature of the seas, 

 which is from 28 to 29 degrees, proves more than 

 any other consideration, that the ocean is in 

 general warmer than the atmosphere with which 

 it is immediately in contact, and of which the 

 mean temperature, near the equator, is from 26 

 to 27 degrees. An equilibrium between the two 

 elements cannot be established ; not only on ac- 

 count of the winds, which carry the air near the 

 poles toward the equator, but also in consequence 

 of the absorption of caloric, the effect of evapo- 

 ration. It is so much the more extraordinary 

 to see the mean temperature rise, in a part of the 

 equatorial ocean, beyond 29° (23*2° R.) ; as even 

 on the continents, amidst the most arid sands, 

 we scarcely know a place, where the mean heat 

 of the year reaches to 31°. 



It remains to be examined, whether in the low 

 latitudes, in the same parallels, we find, in dif- 

 ferent seasons^ nearly the same temperatures. 

 The following table will facilitate this kind of 

 research. 



centesimal division. The variations observed in the tempera- 

 lure of the sea at it's surface seemed to extend, under the 

 temperate zone, between the 35th and 45th degrees of lati- 

 tude, to three degrees above and below it's mean temperature ; 

 and I was wrong in saying, in a general manner, in the in- 

 troduction to Thomson's Chemistry (French translation, t. i, 

 p. 100), that the ocean every where directly indicates the 

 mean temperatures of the air, corresponding to the different 

 latitudes. 



