$1,36 $5,32 3 244 22 Lowest No. of towns that have raised more than $3. per scholar Here we leave the subject. We think we have said enough to show that while in our New England system of education we have very much to be thankful for, it is yet capable of much improvement, and it is for us to seek to make what improvements we can, and thus increase its efficiency. Above all things, let us hold to the Bible, and never consent to any system which is not in accordance with the teachings of that book, nor allow it on any consideration whatever to be excluded from our schools. ART. VIII.—THE SEA AND ITS TEACHING.* The sea has always been an object of attention since the first wave of emigration broke upon its shore. Its vastness has made it the symbol of the Infinite; its ebb and flow have suggested to the poet the pulsations of the Living Universe; its billows have personified the terrors of Power; its products have made it to be blessed for its beneficence; while trade and luxury have grown rich and corpulent in the possessions it has granted. It separates and unites nations; distant peoples clasp hands in amity on its highway; ambitious and selfish princes select it as a theatre whereon to test their prowess; and Christian philanthropy crosses and re-crosses it on its Godlike errands, Misanthropes, sick of life, seek oblivion in its caverns; and invalids, dreading the grave, crowd around to *The Physical Geography of the Sea. By M. F. Maury, LL. D., Lieut. U. S. Navy. Third edition, enlarged and improved. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1855. 1 Vol. 800 pp. 287. The same wave woo the vigor which dwells in its breath. tosses up a fractured spar, the sight of which unmans the sternest seaman, and lays at the feet of a gentle woman a sprig of sea-moss, or a delicately-tinted shell, which ministers to the love of the beautiful deeper than the heart ever knew till now. Such is the sea. But its meaning and its mission are not yet wholly fathomed. Of its many, and great, and varied uses in the economy of nature, there is much yet to be learned. Of the broad and complex relations it sustains, few of its observ. ers have dreamed. Of the great laws which it is obeying even in its most fitful moods, and which it reveals in the most monotonous of its aspects, not many of those who have always dwelt by its side, have had any just apprehension. It is a department of study which few philosophers have explored. It is only recently that its phenomena have been classified, its movements comprehended, and its influence widely traced out. This volume of Lieutenant Maury's will seem to many like the opening of a new apartment of science. It appears almost unheralded; it is marked quite as much with modesty as with scientific enthusiasm and independent thought. It is not, to be sure, his first contribution to science and to navigation; he does not write a name on the title page hitherto entirely unknown; but the real ability of the author has never been generally understood as this work will render it. We know of no man in this country who has recently seemed to come forth quietly and take his place among the devoted and honored brotherhood of science, in a manner so similar to that of Hugh Miller in Scotland. We have no fear that his welcome in the New World will be any less cordial than was that which greeted the author of the "Old Red Sandstone." The style of Lieutenant Maury is picturesque enough to please a poet, and yet exact enough for the commendation of a metaphysician. His metaphors increase his clearness, and his illustrations simplify abstruse theories to the common understanding. He is never dogmatic; he always speaks with the spirit and air of a learner. In exploding an old theory you see no egotism, and look in vain for a sarcastic word. He states the case, classifies the evidence, and leaves his reader to render the verdict. He is forward to acknowledge his obligations to every previous explorer, and takes no pains to say that any idea presented is unique or original. He is evidently a sincere seeker after truth, and a reverential bestower of homage at the feet of HIM whose paths are in the deep waters. To reveal the ways and perfections of the Creator, and to save man by the opening of new avenues to joy and profit, is evidently in his estimation the great two-fold object of all scientific inquiry. It is not often that a book so well adapted to invigorate the understanding and stimulate all that is best and noblest in the heart, comes from the laboratory of science, or from the temple of philosophy. After a brief "Introduction," giving an account of the method of procedure in collecting the data on which the reasonings of the volume are founded, and some explanations of the plates which accompany the text, the author opens the work by devoting a chapter to the "Gulf Stream." As a specimen of his style, as well as for other obvious reasons, we insert a few paragraphs with which the volume opens. "There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is the Arctic Seas. It is the Gulf Stream. There is in the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon. Its waters, as far out from the Gulf as the Carolina coasts, are of an indigo blue. They are so distinctly marked, that their line of junction with the common sea-water may be traced by the eye. Often one half of the vessel may be perceived floating in Gulf Stream water, while the other half is in common water of the sea; so sharp is the line, and such the want of affinity between these waters, and the reluctance on the part of those of the Gulf Stream to mingle with the common water of the sea. What is the cause of the Gulf Stream has always puzzled philosophers. Modern investigations and examinations are beginning to throw some light upon the subject, though all is not yet clear. Early writers maintained that the Mississippi river was the father of the Gulf Stream. Its floods, they said, produce it; for its velocity, it was held, could be computed by the rate of the current of the river. Captain Livingston overturned this hypothesis by showing that the volnme of water which the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico is not equal to the one-thousandth part of that which escapes from it through the Gulf Stream. Moreover, the water of the Gulf Stream is salt-of the Mississippi, fresh ; and those philosophers forgot that just as much salt as escapes from the Gulf of Mexico through this stream, must enter the Gulf through some other channel from the main ocean; for, if it did not, the Gulf of Mexico. in process of time, unless it had a salt bed at the bottom, or was fed with salt springs below-neither of which is probable-would become a fresh water basin." Several other hypotheses are stated, and disposed of in the same quiet, modest, and conclusive way. The various influences operating to produce this current are then stated, and their individual and collective influence illustrated with great clearness and force. In the second chapter, "the influence of the Gulf Stream upon climates" is considered. After describing the apparatus for warming houses by means of hot water, he thus proceeds: "Now, to compare small things with great, we have, in the warm waters which are confined in the Gulf of Mexico, just such a heating apparatus for Great Britain, the North Atlantic, and Western Europe. The furnace is the torrid zone; the Mexican Gulf and the Carribean Sea are the chaldrons; the Gulf Stream is the conducting pipe. From the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the shores of Europe is the basement-the hot-air chamber-in which this pipe is flared out so as to present a large cooling surface. Here the circulation of the atmosphere is arranged by nature; and it is such that the warmth thus conveyed into this warm-air chamber of mid ocean is taken up by the genial west winds, and dispensed, in the most benign manner, throughout Great Britain and the west of Europe." It is this stream chiefly that renders the climate of western Europe so much milder than in the same latitudes on the eastern coasts of North America and Asia. And the same cause operates to prevent the West Indian Archipelago from being afflicted with the hottest and most pestilential climate in the world. A large number of facts are adduced to show that the relation of the Gulf Stream to storms is very intimate and important; and some most striking illustrations are given setting forth the importance of a knowledge of the movements of this current to commerce and navigation. Chapter III is devoted to "The Atmosphere;" and is one of the most interesting and valuable in the volume. No analysis could do it justice; and indeed, an analysis is nearly impossible. "Fickle as the winds," is a phrase that loses nearly all its force after becoming familiar with the laws, to which the air currents conform, as they are here exhibited. He shows that the Southern hemisphere is the place where evaporation chiefly takes place, while the Northern has the greatest fall of rain; explains the long dry and rainy seasons in specific localities; accounts for the perpetual drought in others; tells us why there is more rain on one side of a mountain than on the other; and closes the chapter by an exhibition of the adaptations of the air currents and the configuration of the earth's surface to each other. It is a chapter to be diligently studied, and is full of food for thought. Then comes a chapter on "Red Fogs and Sea Dust," in which direct proof is adduced in support of the views of the preceding chapter. The author says: "Were it possible to take a portion of this air as it travels down the southeast trades, representing the general cause of atmospherical circulation, and to put a tally upon it by which we could always recognize it again, then we might hope actually to prove, by evidence the most positive, the channels through which the air of the trade-winds, after ascending at the equator, returns whence it came. . . As difficult as this seems to be, it has actually been done. Ehrenberg, with his microscope, has established, almost beyond a doubt, that the air which the south-east trade-winds bring to the equator does rise up there and pass into the northern hemisphere." This is done by examining the Sirocco or African dust which is borne by the air over the northern portion of Africa; and it is found that the habitat of this dust is not Africa, but South America; and it must have been borne to the regions where it appears, by an upper current of air passing from the south-west to the north-cast, over the intervening ocean. The X chapter is devoted to a consideration of the "Geological Agency of the Winds," and is not inferior in the interest and ability which attach to it, to any other. Here is brought out the unity of nature, the mutual adaptations and dependencies of the various forces and phenomena about us; and not a little evidence is presented-to take a rather remarkable case -going to show that the lofty mountain ranges of South America have contributed to depress the level of the Dead Sea, and form the great deserts of the Eastern Continent. |