of warm waters, and builds in the gulf 500 miles northward of its appropriate latitudes. This fact was I believe first stated by Sir Charles Darwin.

The Gulf Stream as it issues from the Straits of Florida, says Lieut. Maury, is of a dark indigo blue color, in strong contrast to the roily green waters of the Atlantic; its maximum velocity he assumes at five miles an hour; its course, corresponding to the general curvature of the American shore, lies at the distance of about 140 to 340 miles from the coast, a cold counter current of northern waters intervening. Capt. Livingston has determined that the mass of the waters of the gulf exceeds more than 3000 times the volume discharged by the Mississippi; its highest temperature, Lieut. Maury states at 86°, and that in flowing ten degrees of latitude north it loses but 2° of temperature. The line of distinction is plainly seen for hundreds of miles; and long after the stream has spread itself out for thousands of miles over the cold waters, when this line is lost to the eye, it is still strongly marked by the thermometer. In its course northward, the Gulf Stream, after passing the fortieth degree of north latitude, encounters a cold current, which originating within the Arctic circle, is incessantly pouring down along the coast of Labrador on the banks of Newfoundland. This northern current is studded in spring and early summer with a numerous fleet of enormous icebergs, some of which rise to the height of 200 feet out of the water. By this counteracting current the course of the Gulf Stream is bent to a direction nearly due east. It spreads over a wider surface and flowing more slowly towards the coasts of Europe, at length reaches the British Islands. By these it is divided, one portion of it eddying into the bay of Biscay, the other passing northward, covers the whole Eastern Atlantic with a mantle of warmth, mitigating in all Europe the rigors of winter,-drifting the cocoanuts, palm-leaves, and relics of tropical vegetation on the

coasts of England and Scotland and Norway, and pouring into the Arctic ocean renders that portion of the Polar seas penetrable even to Spitzbergen.

It is obvious that, even in a wash-basin, a current in one direction cannot exist without a counter current, and the already observed facts demonstrate a reciprocity of tropical and polar currents. While large portions of the tropical ocean are constantly rushing toward the poles, to moderate the climates of the higher latitudes, to maintain the fluidity of the Arctic ocean, and to limit the encroachments of the Polar ice-cliffs, other hyperborean currents, often picturesque with icebergs, are steadily hastening toward the tropics, to temper the intense heat, and impart a grateful coolness to all nature, panting under the fervid heat of the vertical sun;-midway of the Atlantic, in the centre of the scene we are contemplating, between the Azores, the Canaries, and Cape de Verd islands, is a triangular space equal in extent to the Mississippi Valley. This is called the Largasso sea. It is an immense pool, the focus of the various currents we have so hastily alluded to. Here are gathered in great quantities gulf weed, drift-wood, wrecks, and all the floating substances cast upon the Atlantic waters from the Indian ocean by the Lagullas current-from the frozen regions beyond Cape Horn, borne by the ice-bearing current from the Antarctic seas-and from the Arctic ocean by the Labrador current.

Here centre the moss and lichen of the extreme North, brought down to the Grand bank; the larch and the fir of the furthest South, conveyed also by the ice-bearing currents from Cape Horn; and the drift-wood of the upper waters of the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico, marked with the axe of the woodman of the Ohio, the Alleghany, or the furthest Missouri.

These counter currents are doubtless productive, in the economy of nature, of very important and very numerous

local effects. They are also obviously productive of general effects of the most indispensable utility. They modify the climates of the opposite shores of the Atlantic and Pacific, bending respectively the lines of equal temperature, which the Baron Humboldt has marked on his maps of isothermal parallels.

These variations, inconsiderable within the tropics, are greatest at those points where these contrasted currents of the Arctic and Equatorial ocean are invading the temperate zones. These currents are distributed in the ocean perhaps in a manner very slightly analogous to that of the arterial and venous system of the blood in animals, so as to affect the aggregate masses of the arctic and equatorial

waters.

The southern currents flowing to the north, constantly carry with them immense shoals of fishes, medusæ, and numberless marine animalcules, nurtured in the rich pastures of the tropical oceans, which are chilled in the colder waters, and thus furnish a rich supply of food to the fishes and seafowls of the north, while it is exceedingly probable that the regular influx of the cooler waters is indispensable to the healthfulness of the tropical oceans: without it they would probaby soon become putrid.

It is obvious that a comprehensive view of these currents is an important element in the consideration of the evaporations and meteorological phenomena of the ocean-and of every fact in the migratory habits of the fishes in the warmer or the cooler waters.. Thus the spermaceti whale is a tropical animal, and is found only in the warmer waters, while various other species are found exclusively in the cold waters of the north.

But we must despatch this interesting subject hastily. It is but a small item in our view of the earth.

The land you may now notice, at first sight so uninteresting, is the low sandy beaches and salt meadows of New

Jersey at the fortieth degree of latitude. A rather barren shore, inhabited by a few fishermen, herons, and water birds-the cornfields and humble cottages of the farmersa forest where the wood cutters and charcoal men are at Beyond them a rapid succession

work-glide swiftly by.

of agricultural scenery is beneath us.

Do you notice those spires in the distance? They ascend from the temples of the city of Philadelphia! The village below us is Camden, New Jersey, on the east side of the Delaware river.

Beyond the river is the broad front of the city. Yonder is the cupola of the Hall of Independence, whence we started.

I am very glad you are safe home-good-bye.

CHAPTER VII.

The Earth's Annual Motion in its orbit round the Sun, causing the Seasons.

The preceding chapter is an attempt to illustrate the actual daily revolution of our globe, in the progress of that unchangeable course which the great Regulator of the universe has allotted to it; a revolution which exposes to the sun's vivifying influence its whole surface, and affords the blessings of light and heat to the whole animal and vegetable creation, and to a thousand millions of rational beings.

Our earth, with its whole animal and vegetable creation, with its thousand millions of our fellow creatures, cotemporaneous sharers of this wonderful terrestrial existence, is really rolling under us, and light and shadow are chasing

each other on our revolving planet as they have done unceasingly, during the untold centuries of all previous time. On the one side where the dark hemisphere is turning to the sun, as it rolls into the sun's light, over a meridian extending from one icy pole across the entire temperate and tropical zones, to the other icy pole, the bright and roseate tints of dawn are at this instant advancing over the scenery, all blooming with flowers, and joyous with the song of early birds. The proud eagle is waking in the mountain forest; the snow-white swan on the estuaries of ocean perceives the dawn and awakes his fellows; the condor soars upward from the peaks of the Andes; the swallow twitters beneath the humble roof of the peasant and the architrave of the sleepy citizen. Man, too, the whole family of man, awakes to the consciousness, the cares, the happiness of existence; the laborious to their toil, the thoughtful to their reflections, the happy to gratitude and joy, the sorrowful to sadness and invocation.

man.

The husbandman, while all the plants are yet glittering with dew-drops, is resuming the first and best employment of The mariner awakes to the blue and boundless horizon of the ocean, and climbs the topmast shrouds, musing on the cherished recollections of his native village; the morning gun booms, and the soul-stirring reveille awakes the soldier to the excitements and privations of his profession, to the proud recollections and heart-wasting horrors of battle. All awake, the hermit to his solitude, the courtier to his intrigues, the hunter to the chase, the artisan to his labor.

The whole earth, teeming with all its inhabitants, rolls to-day into the broad sunlight, and again into the sunset scenery and into starlight. It did so yesterday, it has done so from time immemorial. One day, with all its occupations and all its events for good or for evil in the destinies of empires and of individuals, thus irrevocably passes. Even while we are observing, exhaustless nature, in accordance with the