Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/500

474 off by radiation into the "emptiness of space." Thus the air with its actinometry presents itself in the light of a thermal adjustment, by which the land and sea are prevented from becoming seething hot; and by which they are enabled to perform their wonderful offices with certainty and regularity.

894. A reflection concerning heat.—It is curious to think that this heat which we have been contemplating, now as latent in the clouds above, now as sensible in the waters below, comes from the same source whence originally came the heat which has been packed away in scams of coal and stored in the bowels of the earth for ages and ages, to be called forth by man at will for his own comfort, pleasure, and convenience; that this protean thing is the agent which controls sea and winds, and they it; that it is it which has lifted up the mountains; which clothes the world with beauty, and keeps the stupendous fabric of the universe in motion; and that after all, this mighty agent is only that gentle thing that "warms in the sun!"

895. Probable relation between the actinism of the sea and its depth.—Pursing this subject, the philosophical mariner, as he sails along and records observations for these purposes, may fancy—and perhaps rightly—that he has traced to the actinometry of the sea one of the physical conditions which, when the depths of the ocean were laid, had its weight with the