Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/108

82 north (§ 207); they stop, descend, and flow out as surface currents (§ 210), the one with which the imagination is travelling, to the equatorial calm as the south-east trade-wind; here (§ 212) it ascends, travelling thence to the calm belt of Cancer as an upper current counter to the north-east trades. Here (§ 210 and 209) it ceases to be an upper current, but, descending (§ 210), travels on with the south-west passage-winds towards the pole.

215. Diagram of the winds.—Now the course we have imagined an atom of air to take, as illustrated by the "diagram of the winds" (Plate I.), is this: an ascent in a place of calms about the north pole, as at V P; an efflux thence as an upper current, A B C, until it meets R S (also an upper current) over the calms of Cancer. Here there is supposed to be a descent, as shown by the arrows, C D, S T. This current, A B C D, from the pole, now becomes the north-east trade-wind, D E, on the surface, until it meets the south-east trades, O Q, in the equatorial calms, where it ascends as E F, and travels as F G with the upper current to the calms of Capricorn, thence as H J K, with the prevailing north-west surface current to the south pole, thence up with the arrow P′, and around with the hands of a watch, and back, as indicated by the arrows along L M N O Q R S T U V.

216. As our knowledge of the laws of nature has increased, so have our readings of the Bible improved.—The Bible frequently makes illusion 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 exquisite 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 Psalmist called the earth "the round world;" yet for ages it was the most damnable heresy for Christian men to say the world is round; and, finally, sailors circumnavigated the globe, proved the Bible to be right, and saved Christian men of science from the stake. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" Astronomers of the present day, if they have not answered this question, have thrown so much light upon it as to