Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/325

Rh south, with regard to land in the trade-wind region of the north, should also be scantily supplied with rains.

550. Terrestrial adaptations.—Having thus remarked upon these dry coincidences, let us contemplate the beautiful harmony displayed in the arrangement of the land and water, as we find them along this conjectural "wind-road." (Plate VII.) Those who admit design in terrestrial adaptations, or who have studied the economy of cosmical arrangements, will not be loth to grant that by design the atmosphere keeps in circulation a certain amount of moisture; that the water of which this moisture is made is supplied by the aqueous surface of the earth, and that it is to be returned to the seas again through rivers and the process of precipitation; for were it not so, there would be a permanent increase or decrease of the quantity of water thus put and kept in circulation by the winds, which would be followed by a corresponding change of hygrometrical conditions, which, in turn, would draw after it permanent changes of climate; and permanent changes of climate would involve the ultimate well-being of myriads of organisms, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The quantity of moisture that the atmosphere keeps in circulation is, no doubt, just that quantity which is best suited to the well-being,'and most adapted to the proper development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms; and that quantity is dependent upon the arrangement and the proportions that we see in nature between the land and the water—between mountain and desert, river and sea. If the seas and evaporating surfaces were changed, and removed from the places they occupy to other places, the principal places of precipitation probably would also be changed: whole families of plants would wither and die for want of cloud and sunshine, dry and wet, in proper proportions and in due season: and, with the blight of plants, whole tribes of animals would also perish. Under such a chance arrangement, man would no longer be able to rely upon the early and the latter rain, or to count with certainty upon the rains being sent in due season for seed-time and harvest. And that the rain will be sent in due season we are assured from on high; and when we recollect who it is that "sendeth" it, we feel the conviction strong within us, that He who sendeth the rain has the winds for his messengers; and that they may do his bidding, the land and the sea were arranged, both as to position and relative proportions, where they are, and as they are.