174 
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 
waters from the intense forces of evaporation. Having- performed 
these offices for one place, they are evaporated and given up to 
the sunbeam and the winds again, to be borne on their wings away 
to other places which stand in need of like offices. 
Famihar with clouds and sunshine, the storm and the calm, and 
all the phenomena which find expression in the physical geogra- 
phy of the sea, the right-minded mariner, as he contemplates 
"the cloud without rain," ceases to regard it as an empty thing; 
he perceives that it performs many important offices ; he regards 
it as a great moderator of heat and cold — as a *' compensation" in 
the atmospherical mechanism which makes the performance of 
the grand machine perfect. 
350. Marvelous are the offices and wonderful is the constitu- 
tion of the atmosphere. Indeed, I know of no subject more fit for 
profitable thought on the part of the truth-loving, knowledge- 
seeking student, be he seaman or landsman, than that afforded by 
the atmosphere and its offices. Of all parts of the physical ma- 
chinery, of all the contrivances in the mechanism of the universe, 
the atmosphere, with its offices audits adaptations, appears to me 
to be the most wonderful, sublime, and beautiful. In its construc- 
tion, the perfection of knowledge is involved. The perfect man 
of Uz, in a moment of inspiration, thus demands of his comfort- 
ers : "But where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place 
of understanding ? The depth saith, it is not in me ; and the sea 
saith, it is not with me. It can not be gotten for gold, neither shall 
silver be weighed for'the price thereof. No mention shall be made 
of coral or of pearls, for the price of wisdom is above rubies. 
"Whence, then, cometh wisdom, and where is the place of un- 
derstanding ? Destruction and Death say, we have heard the fame 
thereof with our ears. 
" God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place 
thereof ; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth un- 
der the whole heaven; to make the weight for the ivinds ; and he 
weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the 
rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder ; then did he 
see it, and declare it ; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out."* 
When the pump-maker came to ask Galileo to explain how it 
was that his pump would not lift water higher than thirty-two 
* Jobj chapter xxviii. 
