Besides these, there are many other advantages we derive from the atmosphere. Were it not for the atmospheric air, which is the vehicle of light and sound, our eyes would be useless, and the pleasures which arise from the variegated prospects that now surround us, unknown. Sound would never strike our ears, nor convey the charms of language from one person to another; all the delights of mutual converse would be lost. The sense of smell would never be regaled with odoriferous sweets; nor annoyed with exhalations from putrid and morbid substances. In short, life would become extinct, and a chaos of darkness and emptiness ensue. It has been well remarked, that, if the Deity had intended only to give us existence, and had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, all the necessary purposes of hearing might have been answered without harmony; of smell, without fragrance; of vision without beauty. The consideration of the various _uses_ to which the different substances in nature may be applied, gives so satisfactory an assurance of the goodness of the Almighty, as is calculated to produce in us gratitude and obedience. With this view, an elegant French writer has said on this necessary fluid, “In the use of atmospheric air, _man_ is the only being who gives to it all the modulations of which it is susceptible. With his voice alone, he imitates the hissing, the cries, and the melody of all animals; while he enjoys the gift of speech denied to every other. To the air he also communicates sensibility; he makes it sigh in the pipe, lament in the flute, threaten in the trumpet, and animates to the tone of his passions even the solid brass, the box tree, and the reed. Sometimes he makes it his slave: he forces it to grind, to bruise, and to move for his advantage an endless variety of machines. In a word, he harnesses it to his ear, and obliges it to waft him over the stormy billows of the ocean.” _Wind_ is air in motion. As the air is a fluid, its natural state is that of rest, which it cannot have but by an universal equilibrium of all its parts. When, therefore, this natural equipoise of the atmosphere is destroyed in any part, the circumjacent air necessarily moves towards that part, to restore it; and this motion of the air is called _wind_. Hence, where the equilibrium of the air is disturbed, the wind may blow from every point of the compass at the same time: those who live northward of that point have a north wind; those who live southward have a south wind; and so on of the rest: but those who live on the spot, where all those winds meet and rush together, will have turbulent and boisterous weather, such as whirlwinds and hurricanes, accompanied with rain, lightning, and thunder. For sulphureous exhalations from the south, torrents of nitre from the north, and aqueous vapors from every part, are there violently blended together, and seldom fail to produce these phenomena.