THE CLIMATES OF THE OCEAN. 
241 
at Cape St. Roque and the Gulf of Guinea, on opposite sides of the 
Atlantic ; but one of the purposes, at least, which this peculiar con- 
figuration was intended to subserve, is without doubt now revealed 
to us. 
519. We see that, by this configuration, two cisterns of hot 
water are formed in this ocean ; one of which distributes heat and 
warmth to western Europe ; the other, at the opposite season, 
tempers the climate of eastern Patagonia. 
Phlegmatic must be the mind that is not impressed with ideas 
of grandeur and simplicity as it contemplates that exquisite de- 
sign, those benign and beautiful arrangements, by which the cli- 
mate of one hemisphere is made to depend upon the curve of that 
line against which the sea is made to dash its waves in the other. 
Impressed with the perfection of terrestrial adaptations, he who 
studies the economy of the great cosmical arrangements is re- 
minded that not only is there design in giving shore-lines their 
profile, the land and the water their proportions, and in placing 
the desert and the pool where they are, but the conviction is 
forced upon him also, that every hill and valley, with the grass 
upon its sides, have each its office to perform in the grand design, 
520. March is, in the southern hemisphere, the first month of 
autumn, as September is with us ; consequently, we should ex- 
pect to find in the South Atlantic as large an area of water of 80° 
and upward in March, as we should find in the North Atlantic for 
September, But do we ? By no means. The area on this side 
of the equator is nearly double that on the other. 
521. Thus we have the sea as a witness to the fact that the 
winds 196) had proclaimed, viz., that summer in the northern 
hemisphere is hotter than summer in the southern, for the rays qf 
the sun raise on this side of the equator double the quantity of sea 
surface to a given temperature that they do on the other side ; at 
least this is the case in the Atlantic. Perhaps the breadth of the 
Pacific Ocean, the absence of large islands in the temperate re- 
gions north, the presence of New Holland, with Polynesia in the 
South Pacific, may make a difi?erence there. But of this I can 
not now speak, for thermal charts of that ocean have not yet been 
prepared. 
522. Pursuing the study of the climates of the sea, let us now 
turn to Plate VI. Here we see at a glance how the cold waters, 
Q 
