Some curious speculations are hazarded by Dr. Maury, arising out of his investigations of winds and currents, facts being revealed which indicate the existence of a climate, mild by comparison, within the Antarctic Circle. These indications are a low barometer, a high degree of aerial rarefaction, and strong winds from the north. "The winds," he says, "were the first to whisper of this strange state of things, and to intimate to us that the Antarctic climates are in winter very unlike the Arctic for rigour and severity." The result of an immense mass of observation on the polar and equatorial winds reveals a marked difference in atmospherical movements north, as compared with the same movements south of the Equator; the equatorial winds of the northern hemisphere being only in excess between the tenth and thirteenth parallel, while those of the southern hemisphere are dominant over a zone of forty-five degrees, or from thirty-five degrees south to ten degrees north. "The fact that the influence of the polar indraught upon the winds should extend from the Antarctic to the parallel of forty degrees south, while that from the Arctic is so feeble as scarcely to be felt in fifty degrees north, is indicative enough as to the difference in degree of aerial rarefaction over the two regions. The significance of the fact is enhanced by the consideration that the 'brave west winds,' which are bound to the place of greatest rarefaction, rush more violently and constantly along to their destination than do the counter-trades of the northern hemisphere. Why should these polar-bound winds differ so much in strength and prevalence, unless there be a much more abundant supply of caloric, and, consequently, a higher degree of rarefaction, at one pole than at the other?" That this is the case is confirmed by all known barometrical observations, which are very much lower in the Antarctic than in the Arctic, and Dr. Maury thinks this is doubtless due to the excess in Antarctic regions of aqueous vapour and this latent heat. "There is rarefaction in the Arctic regions. The winds show it, the barometer attests it, and the fact is consistent with the Russian theory of a Polynia in polar waters. Within the Antarctic Circle, on the contrary, the winds bring air which has come over the water for the distance of hundreds of leagues all around; consequently, a large portion of atmospheric air is driven away from the austral regions by the force of vapour." CHAPTER III. LIFE IN THE OCEAN. "See what a lovely shell, small and pure as a pearl, Frail, but a work divine, made so fairly well, With delicate spore and whorl, a miracle of design." TENNYSON.