Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/305

Rh places which stand in need of like offices. Familiar with clouds and sunshine, the storm and the calm, and all the phenomena which find expression in the physical geography of the sea, the right-minded mariner, as he contemplates "the cloud without rain," ceases to regard it as an empty thing; he perceives that it performs many important offices; he regards it as a great moderator of heat and cold—as a "compensation" in the atmospherical mechanism which makes the performance perfect. Marvellous are the offices and wonderful is the constitution of the atmosphere. Indeed, I know of no subject more fit for profitable thought on the part of the truth-loving, knowledge-seeking student, be he seaman or landsman, than that afforded by the atmosphere and its offices. Of all parts of the physical machinery, of all the contrivances in the mechanism of the universe, the atmosphere, with its offices and its adaptations, appears to me to be the most wonderful, sublime, and beautiful. In its construction, the grandeur of knowledge is displayed. The perfect man of Uz, in a moment of inspiration, thus bursts forth in laudation of this part of God's handiwork, demanding of his comforters, "But where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls, for the price of wisdom is above rubies. Whence, then, cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? Destruction and Death say, we have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder, then did he see it and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out." When the pump-maker came to ask Galileo to explain how it was that his pump would not lift water higher than thirty-two feet, the philosopher thought, but was afraid to say, it was owing to "the weight of the winds;" and though the fact that the air has weight is here so distinctly announced, philosophers never recognized the fact until within comparatively a recent period, and then it was proclaimed by them as a great discovery.