Wherever we can discern a cyclical condition, there the law of which I am treating must hold good; and it certainly obtains in other things beside organisms. When the inorganic crust of the globe was first cleft to contain rivers, whence came the water that flowed through the fissures? A river is the produce of rivulets, which issue from mountain springs; these originate in the water that percolates through the soil; and this is derived from the rains, and snows, and dews, that are deposited from the atmosphere. But there would be no deposition from the atmosphere if the water had not first been carried up by evaporation; and the vaporable fluid is obtained from the moistened soil; from the lakes and rivers; and from the seas and oceans, whose loss is perpetually recruited from the flowing rivers. Here, then, we get a circle closely analogous to that of organic being. Was a given drop of water created as a component particle of a running stream? Its position and condition looked back to the mountain spring whence it must naturally have issued. Was it called into being in the spring? It looked up to the surface, whence it must have oozed. Was it formed on the surface? It looked to the clouds, whence it must have dropped. Was it created in the cloud? It looked down to the surface of the lake or sea, whence it must have been raised. Was it created in the lake? It looked to the river, whence it must have flowed. The chief pelagic currents, which have hitherto so often been the destruction of the navigator, but which may yet become his able and subject servants, flow in circular systems. There is such an one in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, known as the Hurricane Region; another immense one ever running round and round the North Pacific; and, above all, that wondrous river of hot water--a river whose well-marked banks are not solid earth, but cold water--the Gulf Stream. "The fruit of trees belonging to the torrid zone of America is annually cast ashore on the western coasts of Ireland and Norway. Pennant observes that the seeds of plants which grow in Jamaica, Cuba, and the adjacent countries, are collected on the shores of the Hebrides. Thither also barrels of French wine, the remains of vessels wrecked in the West Indian seas, have been carried. In 1809 His Majesty's ship _Little Belt_ was dismasted at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and her bowsprit was found, eighteen months after, in the Basque Roads. The mainmast of the _Tilbury_, buried off Hispaniola in the Seven Years' war, was brought to our shores."[105]