Aeolians

“ But is it probable that, throughout all the geological periods, during all the changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and water surface over the earth, the winds, which in the general channels of circulation pass over the Dead Sea, have alone been unchanged? Throughout all ages, periods, and formations, is it probable that the winds have brought us just as much moisture to that sea as they now bring, and have just taken up as much water from it as they now carry off? ”

“ Doubtless it is given to the winds, that they may bear it off to distant regions, and make lands fruitful, that but for these sources of supply would be almost rainless, if not entirely arid, waste, and barren. These seas and arms of the ocean now present themselves to the mind as counterpoises in the great hygrometrical machinery of our planet.—As sheets of water placed where they are to balance the land in the trade-wind region of South America and South Africa, they now present themselves. ”

“ Thus we behold sea-shells and animalcule in a new light. May we not now cease to regard them as beings which have little or nothing to do in maintaining the harmonies of creation? On the contrary, do we not see in them the principles of the most admirable compensation in the system of oceanic circulation? We may even regard them as regulators, to some extent, of climates in parts of the earth far removed from their presence. ”

“ When we travel out upon the ocean, and get beyond the influence of the land upon the winds, we find ourselves in a field particularly favorable for studying the general laws of atmospherical circulation. Here, beyond the reach of the great equatorial and polar currents of the sea, there are no unduly heated surfaces, no mountain ranges, or other obstructions to the circulation of the atmosphere — nothing to disturb it in its natural courses. The sea, therefore, is the field for observing the operations of the general laws which govern the movements of the great aerial ocean. ”

“ If the great aerial ocean which surrounds the earth be thus charged with the rudiments of life, floating continually amidst the atoms of dust we see twinkling in a sunbeam, and ever ready to return to life as soon as they find a matrix adapted to their development, we have in these conditions of the very air we breathe a system of provisions for the almost infinite dissemination of life throughout the fluids of the present Earth ”

“ Take, for instance, the early Devonian or Erian period, in which the magnificent flora of that age, the earliest certainly known to us, made its appearance. Imagine the whole interior plain of North America submerged, so that the continent is reduced to two strips on the east and west, connected by a belt of Laurentian land on the north. In the great mediterranean sea thus produced, the tepid water of the equatorial current was circulated, and it swarmed with corals, of which we know no less than 150 species, and with other forms of life appropriate to warm seas. ”

“ The arguments of the biotics.—As soon as the deep-sea specimens were mounted on the slides of the microscope, the two great masters of that instrument in Europe and America—Bailey of West Point, and Ehrenberg of Berlin—discovered the greater part of the small calcareous carapaces to be filled with a soft pulp, which both admitted to be fleshy matter. From this fact the German argued that there is life at the bottom of the deep sea; the American (§ 587) , that there is only death and repose there. ”

“ The Mediterranean current.—The rivers which discharge their waters into the Mediterranean are not sufficient to supply the waste of evaporation, and it is by a process similar to this that the salt which is carried in from the ocean is returned to the ocean again: were it not so, the bed of that sea would be a mass of solid salt. The unstable equilibrium of the seas is a physical necessity. ”

“ From the surface of this ocean of fire, jets and pointed spires of flaming hydrogen shoot up with amazing velocity, and attain an altitude of ten, twenty, fifty, and even one hundred thousand miles in a very short period of time. They are, however, of an evanescent nature, change rapidly in form and appearance, and often in the course of an hour or two die down so as not to be recognisable. ”

“ The fact that the Ægean Sea is empty of life in its greatest depths is due to local causes. The humblest life, in the farthest recesses of the ocean's bed, is, in some of its essential features, but a sluggish copy of the higher types on land. Food and air are alike necessary
Fig. 4.—Generative Buds of Tubularia indivisa. (From Female Colony.)
to both. The circulation of currents throughout the open seas bears nutriment and oxygen to the lowly forms of animal life which lie far below the level penetrated by light, or capable of supporting vegetation. ”

“ Thus, in the immediate vicinity of the vast expanse of country which can be proved to have been untouched by any catastrophe before, during, and since the "glacial epoch," lie the great areas of the AEgean and the Red Sea, in which, during or since the glacial epoch, changes of the relative positions of land and sea have taken place, in comparison with which the submergence of Moel Tryfaen, with all Wales and Scotland to boot, does not come to much. ”

“ Let millions of tons of water fly on the wings of the viewless air, hundreds of miles to the distant mountains, and pour there those millions of tons that shall refresh a whole continent, and shall gather in rivers fitted to bear the commerce and the navies of nations." Gravitation says, "I will hold every particle of this ocean as near the centre of the earth as I can." ”

“ Upon the sides of mountains, or on their summits, now thousands of feet above the level of the ocean, unquestionable traces of the action of the sea can be found. And the scientific observer of to-day sees all about him evidences that the immense work of the creation of continents, commenced by the sea in the earliest periods of time, is to-day continuing without relaxation or intermission, and with such energy that even during the short course of a single life great changes can be seen to have been produced. ”

“ We answer, the number of aerolites seen to fall in a country depends upon the number of its inhabitants. The ocean, deserts, and uninhabited portions of the earth's surface afford no instances of such phenomena, simply for the want of observers. In sparsely settled countries the fall of aerolites would not unfrequently escape observation; and as such bodies generally penetrate the earth to some depth, the chances of discovery, when the fall is not observed, must be exceedingly rare. ”

“ I frequently purified from twenty-six to forty gallons a day. The water thus distilled was perfectly pure, well tasted, and free from salt; and was used on various occasions on board the ship. On the 28th of June, being in lat. 78, we made Greenland, where I was surprised to see the sun did not set. The weather now became extremely cold; and as we sailed between north and east, which was our course, we saw many very high and curious mountains of ice; and also a great number of very large whales, which used to come close to our ship, and blow the water up to a very great height in the air. ”

“ These singular changes may be attributed to the refraction produced by the different layers of atmosphere through which the sun was viewed in its progress. The same cause made our ship in the bay look as if it had been lifted out of the water, and her bare masts seemed to be crowded with sail. A low rock also appeared to rise up like a vessel, and a projecting point of land to rest on no other foundation than the air. ”

“ The secondary and primary formations are, for the most part, marine,—not because the ocean was more universal in past times, but because the epochs which preceded the Eocene were so distant from our own, that entire continents have been since submerged. ”

“ At their death these fell to the bottom, and thus slowly through the ages the deposit was formed. The recent deep sea dredgings have shown the sea, at all depths, is full of animal life; and as the steady fall of snow-flakes in a winter's storm, piled up by currents of wind, form the drifts, or falling quietly, cover the ground uniformly, so the sea is full of the minute shells, which, carried by currents, form banks, or, falling evenly, prepare the plains which in the future will appear, in some upheaval, to form new continents. ”

“ That shows where Father Neptune is serving the little coral people with food and fresh air, as explained in the text.
We know also that the sea makes coal as well as stone in its rock mills; that the pressure of the overlying rock was in large part the source of the heat that changed the vegetation of the swamps, first into charcoal and then into coal.
The subject of what the sea has done and is doing for us is almost as endless as the seas themselves; and no doubt the reason the sea is never still is because it has so much to do. ”

“ What should make the waters of the Mexican Gulf and Caribbean Sea salter than the waters in those parts of the ocean through which the Gulf Stream flows? There are physical agents that are known to be at work in different parts of the ocean, the tendency of which is to make the waters in one part of the ocean Salter and heavier, and in another part lighter and less salt than the average of sea-water. These agents are those employed by sea-shells in secreting solid matter for their structures ”

“ That in this period our continents as far south as the latitude of 40° were overwhelmed with ice or ice-laden seas is rendered evident by the fact that the whole surface up to several thousands of feet above the sea-level has been bared of its accumulated débris and polished and grooved by ice, and laden with boulders and other glacial deposits, while in many places at heights of even 1,000 or 1,200 feet these deposits contain sea-shells of species now living in the colder parts of the ocean. ”

“ And between these two—the Ocean of Air and the Ocean of Water, both dragged earthward by the perpetual pull of gravitation—endless intercourse takes place. Each finds its way in small fragments into the other. There is always water present in the air. There is always air present in the water.
Perhaps the latter fact is not so widely recognised as the former; yet it is equally true. Sea-water contains large supplies of dissolved gases, absorbed by the ocean-surface from the atmosphere, and passed on into lower depths, for the use of creatures living there. ”

“ In deep places the pressure of the sea-water on them is very great, sufficient to force water through glass. Obviously most of these bottoms will leak, and leak at a rapid rate under the enormous pressure operating in the greatest depths of the sea. The bed of the ocean will not leak with equal rapidity in all places; but almost universal leakage will certainly develop, and the water will be driven back into the earth at various rates. ”

“ It may therefore be supposed that the arrangements in the economy of nature are such as to require that the various kinds of marine animals, whose secretions are calculated to alter the specific gravity of sea water, to destroy its equilibrium, to beget currents in the ocean, and to control its circulation, should be distributed according to order. ”

“ On a hundred mountain-peaks all round the great valley of Aeria enormous lights blazed out simultaneously, flinging long streams of radiance, dazzling and intense, for miles into the sky towards all points of the compass, and at the same moment fifty air-ships soared up from their stations all round the mountains, flashing their search-lights ahead and astern in all directions. ”

“ The oft-recurring variations in the nature of the strata that form our coal-measures, sandstones alternating with shales, these again with coals and fire-clays, together also with the terrestrial origin of the coal-seams, and the occasional presence of true marine organisms, make it evident that, to obtain any modern analogue to such a - 216 - condition of things, we must examine those localities where large bodies of fresh water, carrying sediment and vegetation from the land, mingle with the sea. ”

“ The warm equatorial waters have in all periods, as superficial oceanic currents, been main agents in the diffusion of heat over the surface of the earth, and their distribution to north and south must have been determined mainly by the extent and direction of land, though it may also have been modified by the changes in the astronomical relations and period of the earth, and the form of its orbit. ”

“ The fact that some eoliths were found in geological formations much older than man—so far as we know his history—was an argument against all of them, because the older and the more recent looked so much alike. Another cogent objection was that eoliths could have been made by natural forces, such as a landslide, the pressure of heavy strata, or one stone knocking against another. A heavy cart can make an eolith when it rolls over a smooth flint. ”

“ For as much as thereby happeneth yearly a great destruction of the Brood of Wild-fowle, and Moore-game, and by the multitude of grosse vapours, and Clouds arising from those great fires, the Aer is so distemper'd, and such unseasonable and unnatural storms are ingendred, as that the Corn, and the Fruites of the Earth are thereby in divers places blasted, and greatly hindered in their due course of ripening and reaping. ”