A History of Science — Volume 3Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 3
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
"The supposition now formed must appear extremely unfit for making this
globe a habitable world in every part; but having thus seen the effect
of night and day in temperating the effects of heat and cold in every
place, we are now prepared to contemplate the effects of supposing this
globe to revolve around the sun with a certain inclination of its axis.
By this beautiful contrivance, that comparatively uninhabited globe is
now divided into two hemispheres, each of which is thus provided with
a summer and a winter season. But our present view is limited to the
evaporation and condensation of humidity; and, in this contrivance of
the seasons, there must appear an ample provision for those alternate
operations in every part; for as the place of the vertical sun is moved
alternately from one tropic to the other, heat and cold, the original
causes of evaporation and condensation, must be carried over all the
globe, producing either annual seasons of rain or diurnal seasons of
condensation and evaporation, or both these seasons, more or less--that
is, in some degree.
"The original cause of motion in the atmosphere is the influence of the
sun heating the surface of the earth exposed to that luminary. We have
not supposed that surface to have been of one uniform shape and similar
substance; from whence it has followed that the annual propers of
the sun, perhaps also the diurnal propers, would produce a regular
condensation of rain in certain regions, and the evaporation of humidity
in others; and this would have a regular progress in certain determined
seasons, and would not vary. But nothing can be more distant from this
supposition, that is the natural constitution of the earth; for the
globe is composed of sea and land, in no regular shape or mixture, while
the surface of the land is also irregular with respect to its elevations
and depressions, and various with regard to the humidity and dryness of
that part which is exposed to heat as the cause of evaporation. Hence a
source of the most valuable motions in the fluid atmosphere with aqueous
vapor, more or less, so far as other natural operations will admit; and
hence a source of the most irregular commixture of the several parts of
this elastic fluid, whether saturated or not with aqueous vapor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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