Matthew Fontaine Maury, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ There is no more worthy or suitable employment of the human mind than to trace the evidences of design and purpose in the Creator, which are visible in many parts of the creation. Hence, to the right-minded mariner, and to him who studies the physical relations of earth, sea, and air, the atmosphere is something more than a shoreless ocean, at the bottom of which his bark is wafted or driven along. It is an envelope or covering for the dispersion of light and heat over the surface of the earth; it is a sewer into which, with every breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of dead animal matter ”

“ Therefore, in considering the general laws which govern the physical agents of the universe, and regulate them in the due performance of their offices, I have felt myself constrained to set out with the assumption that, if the atmosphere had had a greater or less capacity for moisture, or if the proportion of land and water had been different — if the earth, air, and water had not been in exact counterpoise — the whole arrangement of the animal and vegetable kingdoms would have varied from their present state. ”

“ 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 patiently 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. ”

“ Nay, philosophy teaches us, when the little snow-drop, which in our garden walks we see raising its beautiful head to remind us that spring is at hand, was created, that the whole mass of the earth, from pole to pole, and from circumference to centre, must have been taken into account and weighed, in order that the proper degree of strength might be given to the fibres of even this little plant. ”

“ No solid particles find access to their frames; the restless ambient air which rushes past them loaded with the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the water — everything they need in the shape of supplies is constantly at hand to minister to their wants, not only to afford them food in due season, but in the shape and fashion in which alone it can avail them. ”

“ The earth, we know, moves from west to east. Now if we imagine a particle of atmosphere at the north pole, where it is at rest, to be put in motion in a straight line toward the equator, we can easily see how this particle of air, coming from the very axis of the pole, where it did not partake of the diurnal motion of the earth, would, in consequence of its vis inertiae, find, as it travels south, the earth slipping from under it, as it were, and thus it would appear to be coming from the northeast and going toward the southwest ”

“ Our investigations show that the southeast trade-wind region is much larger than the northeast. I speak now of its extent over the Atlantic Ocean only; that the southeast trades are the fresher, and that they often push themselves up to 10o or 15o of north latitude; whereas the northeast trade-wind seldom gets south of [15] the equator. The peculiar clouds of the trade-winds are formed between the upper and lower currents of air. They are probably formed of vapor condensed from the upper current, and evaporated as it descends by the lower and dry current from the poles. ”

“ We see the light beginning to break upon us, for we now begin to perceive why it is that the proportions between the land and water were made as we find them in nature. If there had been more water and less land, we should have had more rain, and vice versa; and then climates would have been different from what they now are, and the inhabitants, animal or vegetable, would not have been as they are. ”

“ What a powerful engine is the atmosphere! and how nicely adjusted must be all the cogs, and wheels, and springs, and pinions of this exquisite piece of machinery, that it never wears out nor breaks down, nor fails to do its work at the right time and in the right way! ”

“ The oxygen we are breathing was distilled for us some short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon — the giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, and the forest older than the flood, buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the Mountains of the Moon. ”

“ When the east winds blow along the Atlantic coast for a little while, they bring us air saturated with moisture from the Gulf Stream, and we complain of the sultry, oppressive, heavy atmosphere; the invalid grows worse, and the well man feels ill, because, when he takes this atmosphere into his lungs, it is already so charged with moisture that it can not take up and carry off that which encumbers his lungs, and which nature has caused his blood to bring and leave there, that respiration may take up and carry off. ”

“ The Bible frequently makes allusions to the laws of nature, their operation and effects. But such allusions are often so wrapped in the folds of the peculiar and graceful drapery with which its language is occasionally clothed, that the meaning, though peeping out from its thin covering all the while, yet lies in some sense concealed, until the lights and revelations of science are thrown upon it; then it bursts out and strikes us with the more force and beauty. As our knowledge of Nature and her laws has increased, so has our understanding of many passages in the Bible been improved. ”

“ The southwest winds commence at this season to prevail as far down as the lower part of California. In winter and spring, the land in California is cooler than the sea air, and is quite cold enough to extract moisture from it. But in summer and autumn the land is the warmer, and can not condense the vapors of water held by the air. So the same cause which made it rain in Oregon now makes it rain in California. As the sun returns to the north, he brings the calm belt of Cancer and the northeast trades along with him ”

“ Reaching the summit of that range, they now tumble down as cool and dry winds on the Pacific slopes beyond. Meeting with no evaporating surface, and with no temperature colder than that to which they were subjected on the mountain-tops, they reach the ocean before they become charged with fresh vapor, and before, therefore, they have any which the Peruvian climate can extract. Thus we see how the top of the Andes becomes the reservoir from which are supplied the rivers of Chili and Peru. ”

“ In like manner, the southeast trade-winds take up the vapors which make our rivers, and as they prevail to a much greater extent at sea, and have exposed to their action about three times as much ocean as the northeast trade-winds have, we might expect, according to this hypothesis, more rains in the northern — and, consequently, more and larger rivers — than in the southern hemisphere. ”

“ The animal grinds down the fibre and the tissue of the plant, or the nutritious store that has been laid up within its cells, and converts these into the substance of which its own organs are composed. The plant acquires the organs and nutritious store thus yielded up as food to the animal, from the invulnerable air surrounding it.”
“But animals are furnished with the means of locomotion and of seizure — they can approach their food, and lay hold of and swallow it; plants must wait till their food comes to them. ”

“ The calm and trade-wind regions or belts move up and down the earth, annually, in latitude nearly a thousand miles. In July and August the zone of equatorial calms is found between 7o north and 12o north; sometimes higher; in March and April, between latitude 5o south and 2o north.
With this fact and these points of view before us, it is easy to perceive why it is that we have a rainy season in Oregon, a rainy and dry season in California, another at Panama, two at Bogota, none in Peru, and one in Chili. ”

“ It expands as it ascends, and becomes cooler; a portion of its vapor is thus condensed, and comes down in the shape of rain. Therefore it is that, under these calms, we have a region of constant precipitation. Old sailors tell us of such dead calms of long continuance here, of such heavy and constant rains, that they have scooped up fresh water from the surface of the sea.
116. The conditions to which this air is exposed here under the equator are probably not such as to cause it to precipitate all the moisture that it has taken up in its long sweep across the waters. ”

“ In Australia, they fringe this shore only with their vapor, and so stint that thirsty land with showers that the trees can not afford to spread their leaves out to the sun, for it evaporates all the moisture from them; their instincts, therefore, teach them to turn their edges to his rays. In America, they blow perpendicularly upon the shore, penetrating the very heart of the country with their moisture. Here the leaves — as the plantain, &c. — turn their broad sides up to the sun, and court his rays.
137. Why there is more rain on one side of a mountain than on the other. ”

“ Softer than the softest down — more impalpable than the finest gossamer — it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and scarcely stirs the lightest flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings around the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. ”

“ Whenever I turn to contemplate the works of nature, I am struck with the admirable system of compensation, with the beauty and nicety with which every department is poised by the others; things and principles are meted out in directions the most opposite, but in proportions so exactly balanced and nicely adjusted, that results the most harmonious are produced. ”

“ It affords the gas which vivifies and warms our frames, and receives into itself that which has been polluted by use, and is thrown off as noxious. It feeds the flame of life exactly as it does that of the fire — it is in both cases consumed, and affords the food of consumption — in both cases it becomes combined with charcoal, which requires it for combustion, and is removed by it when this is over. ”

“ In some parts of the earth the precipitation is greater than the evaporation; thus the amount of water borne down by every river that runs into the sea may be considered as the excess of the precipitation over the evaporation that takes place in the valley drained by that river. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is by the action of opposite and compensating forces that the earth is kept in its orbit, and the stars are held suspended in the azure vault of heaven; and these forces are so exquisitely adjusted, that, at the end of a thousand years, the earth, the sun, and moon, and every star in the firmament, is found to come to its proper place at the proper moment. ”

“ Those of the Amazon are supplied with rains from the equatorial calms and trade winds of the Atlantic. That river runs east, its branches come from the north and south; it is always the rainy season on one side or the other of it; consequently, it is a river without periodic stages of a very marked character. It is always near its highwater mark. ”

“ If we draw a circle about this pole on a common terrestrial globe, and intersect it by spirals to represent the direction of the wind, we shall see that the wind enters all parts of this circle from the southwest, and, consequently, that a whirl ought to be created thereby, in which the ascending column of air revolves from right to left, or against the hands of a watch. ”

“ That there is probably such a connection has been suggested by other facts and circumstances, and perhaps I shall be enabled to make myself clearer when we come to treat of these facts and circumstances, and to inquire farther, as at (§ 172) , into the relations between magnetism and the circulation of the atmosphere; for, although the theory of heat satisfies many conditions of the problem, and though heat, doubtless, is one of the chief agents in keeping up the circulation of the atmosphere, yet it can be made to appear that it is not the sole agent. ”

“ The investigations into the broad-spreading circle of phenomena connected with the winds of heaven and the waves of the sea are second to none for the good which they do and the lessons which they teach. The astronomer is said to see the hand of God in the sky ”

“ The carbonic acid with which to-day our breathing fills the air, to-morrow seeks its way round the world. The datetrees that grow round the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stature ”

“ In the sheets of water which we find distributed over that and every other inhabitable inland basin, we see reservoirs or evaporating surfaces just sufficient for the supply of that degree of moisture which is best adapted to the well-being of the plants and animals that people such basins. ”