542 



we have just examined. From these consider- 

 ations it results, and above all, from the com- 

 parison of the New Continent with those parts 

 of the ancient which we know best, with Eu- 

 rope and Asia, that America thrown into the 

 aquatic hemisphere* of our planet, is still more 

 remarkable by the continuity and extent of the 

 depressions of its surface, than by the height 

 and continuity of its longitudinal ridge. The 

 mountains beyond and within the isthmus of 



* The southern hemisphere, on account of the unequal 

 distribution of seas and continents, has long been marked as 

 an hemisphere eminently aquatic $ but the same inequality is 

 found when we consider the globe as divided not accord- 

 ing to the equator but by meridians. The great masses 

 of land are joined together between the meridian of 10 o 

 west, and 150° east of Paris, while the hemisphere emi- 

 nently aquatic, begins on the west of the meridian of the 

 coast of Greenland, and ends on the east of the meri- 

 dian of the eastern coast of New Holland and the Kurile 

 Isles. This unequal distribution of land and water has the 

 greatest influence on the distribution of heat on the surface 

 of the globe, on the inflexions of the isotherm lines, and the 

 climateric phenomena in general. For the inhabitants of the 

 centre of Europe the aquatic hemisphere may be called 

 western, and the land hemisphere eastern ; because in going 

 to the west we reach the former sooner than the latter. 

 It is the division according to meridians, which is in- 

 tended in the text. Till the end of the 15th century, the 

 western hemisphere was as much unknown to the nations of 

 the eastern hemisphere, as one half of the lunar globe is to 

 us at present, and will probably always remain. 



