Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/102

76 left to chance. They are, we may rely upon it, guided by laws that make all parts, functions, and movements of this machinery as obedient to order and as harmonious as are the planets in their orbits.

201. The air and the ocean governed by stable laws.—Any 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 (§ 164) 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 conscious winds ever heed the voice of rebuke, or the glad waves ever "clap their hands with joy?"

202. Importance of observing the works of nature.—To one who looks abroad to contemplate the agents of nature, as he sees them at work upon our planet, no expression uttered or act performed by them is without meaning. By such a one, the wind and rain, the vapour and the cloud, the tide, the current, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, and colour 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 may be regarded as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and therefore as the expression in which Nature chooses to announce her own doings, or, if we please, as the language in which she writes down or elects to make known her own laws. 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 from such a volume as the one before us can therefore come amiss to those who tread the walks of inductive philosophy; for, in the handbook 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 as well as the philosopher on the mountain each sees spread out before him.

203. Materials for this chapter.—There have been examined at