What is the height of this expansion? The moisture of evaporation ascends, ordinarily, but a few thousand feet. The atmosphere grows regularly cooler, from the earth to the trade, and _the increased warmth that is felt at the surface extends but little way_. Currents of warm air do not ascend. The strata maintain, substantially, their relative positions; and this is a most beneficent provision. In northern latitudes of the temperate zone, all the warmth derived from a few hours' sunshine is needed at the surface; and, deplorable, indeed, would be our condition, if the atmosphere, as fast as warmed by the rays of the sun, were to hasten up, and the frigid strata descend in its place. The earth would not be habitable. All the warm air on its surface would be rising as soon as it became warmed, and the cold air above be descending, and enveloping us with the chilling strata which are ever floating within two or three miles above us. No. Infinite wisdom has ordered it otherwise. The laws of magnetism and of static-electric induction and attraction keep the strata in their places, and preserve to us the warmth which the solar rays afford or produce. The inhabitant of the valley, in a high northern latitude, in summer, can plant, and sow, and reap, at the base of the mountain whose summit penetrates the stratum of continual congelation, and up its sides, almost to the line of perpetual snow; and, as he looks upon the fruits of his labor, and up to the snow-clad peak that towers above him, can thank his Maker for placing a warm equatorial current, a perpetual barrier, between the fertility and warmth which surround him, and the cold destructive strata above; and thank Him for not creating such a state of things, as certain meteorologists insist we shall believe He has created. Again, where are the _upper regions_, from which the lateral overflow takes place? The atmosphere is differently estimated, at from thirty to forty-five miles, or more, in height. Whatever its height may be, it is exceedingly attenuated in its "upper regions." Gay-Lussac marked the barometer at 12-95/100 inches at the height of 23,040 feet. Two thirds of the atmospheric density, then, is within five miles of the earth. Air, too, is _compressible_. Allowing for the latter and the attenuation, how many miles in vertical depth, of its "_upper regions_," must move from one portion to another, to depress the barometer two inches--its range sometimes in twenty-four hours--or even half an inch? Let the computation be made, and see how startling the proposition, how utterly impossible that the theory can be true. The distinguished Professor, in the paper referred to, introduces his theory of the formation of hurricanes, and we quote--