Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/475

Rh the oblateness of the atmospherical covering of our planet will be altered; the flattening about the poles will be  relieved by the intumescence of the expanded and ascending air, which, protruding above the general level of the aerial ocean, will receive an impulse equatorially, as well from the mere derangement of equilibrium as from the centrifugal forces of tho revolving globe. And so this air, having parted with its moisture, and having received the expansive force of all the latent heat evolved in the process of vaporous condensation, will commence its return towards the equator as an upper current of dry air.

836. A perpetual cyclone.—Arrived at this point of the investigation, we may contemplate the whole system of these "brave west winds" in the light of an everlasting cyclone on a gigantic scale. The antarctic continent is in its vortex, about which the wind, in the great atmospherical ocean all around the world, from the pole to the edge of the calm belt of Capricorn, is revolving in spiral curves, continually going with the hands of a watch, and twisting from left to right.

837. Discovery of design in the meteorological machinery.—In studying the workings of the various parts of the physical machinery that surrounds our planet, it is always refreshing and profitable to detect, even by glimmerings never so faint, the slightest tracings of the purpose which the Omnipotent Architect of the universe designed to accomplish by any particular arrangement among its various parts. Thus it is in this instance: whether the train of reasoning which we have been endeavouring to follow up, or whether the arguments which we have been adducing to sustain it be entirely correct or not, we may, from all the facts and circumstances that we have passed in review, find reasons sufficient for regarding in an instructive, if not in a new light, that vast waste of waters which surrounds the unexplored regions of the antarctic circle. It is a reservoir of dynamical force for the winds—a regulator in the grand meteorological machinery of the earth. The heat which is transported by the vapours with which that sea loads its superincumbent air is the chief source of the motive power which gives to the winds of the southern hemisphere, as they move through their channels of circulation, their high speed, great regularity, and consistency of volume. And this insight into the workings of the wonderful machinery of sea and air we