THE ATMOSPHERE. 
69 
92- An examination into the economy of the universe will be^ 
sufficient to satisfy the well-balanced minds of observant men 
that the laws which govern the atmosphere and the laws which 
govern the ocean 67) are laws which were put in force by the 
Creator when the foundations of the earth were laid, and that, 
therefore, they are laws of order; else, why should the Gulf 
Stream, for instance, be always where it is, and running from the 
Gulf of Mexico, and not somewhere else, and sometimes running 
into it ? Why should there be a perpetual drought in one part of 
the world, and continual showers in another ? Or why should the 
winds and sea obey the voice of rebuke ? 
93. To one who looks abroad to contemplate the agents of na- 
ture, as he sees them at work upon our planet, no expression ut- 
tered nor act performed by them is without meaning. By such an 
one, the wind and rain, the vapor and the cloud, the tide, the cur- 
rent, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, and color of the . sea, the 
shade of the sky, the temperature of the air, the tint and shape of 
the clouds, the height of the tree on the shore, the size of its 
leaves, the brilliancy of its flowers — each and all niay be regarded 
as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and therefore as 
the expression in which Nature chooses to announce her own do- 
ings, or, if we please, as the language in which she writes down 
or chooses to make known her own law^s. To understand that 
language and to interpret aright those laws is the object of the 
undertaking which we now have in hand. No fact gathered in 
such a field as the one before us can, therefore, come amiss to 
those who tread the walks of inductive philosophy ; for, in the 
hand-book of nature, every such fact is a syllable ; and it is by pa- 
tiently collecting fact after fact, and by joining together syllable 
after syllable, that we may finally seek to read aright from the 
great volume which the mariner at sea and the philosopher on the 
mountain see spread out before them. 
94. Or ITS Circulation. — We have seen (§ 31) that there are 
constant currents in the ocean ; we shall now see that there are 
also regular currents in the atmosphere. 
95. From the parallel of about 30° north and south, nearly to 
the equator, we have, extending entirely around the earth, two 
zones of perpetual winds, viz., the zone of northeast trades on this 
side, and of southeast on that. They blow perpetually, and are 
