We have hitherto spoken of the monsoons only in connection with the Indian Ocean. But, in truth, a monsoon, or season-wind--which is what the word monsoon means--is experienced upon a large portion of the West African coasts, and thence far out into the mid-Atlantic, within the proper region of the Atlantic trades. The evidence of this is one among the many valuable results due to the Wind and Current Charts of Maury, and the cause of it is precisely the same as that which occasions the monsoon of the Indian coasts. Between the equator and the parallel of 13° north, the intense heat of a vertical sun, acting upon the western coasts and adjacent interior of the African Continent, occasions a reversal of the ordinary wind of that region. The intensely heated atmosphere of the land, owing to superior rarity, ascends, and the cooler air of the neighboring sea sets in to fill its place. The monsoon thus generated lasts as long as the sun remains to the northward of the equator. Further to the south a like phenomenon accompanies, in those localities, the passage of the sun into south declination. The influence of these monsoons extends to a distance of a thousand miles or more from land, the entire space within which they prevail forming a cuneiform (or wedge-shaped) region in the midst of the Atlantic, the base of which rests upon the African Continent, while its apex is within ten or fifteen degrees of the mouth of the Amazon. A similar reversal of the trade-winds of the North Pacific occurs off the western shores of Central America, capable of explanation in precisely like manner--due, that is, to the excess of heat which the summer sun brings to the adjacent lands, and the consequent rarefaction and rising of the currents of air over those lands. This, and the like instance of the West African monsoons, show in the most striking manner how powerfully the land is affected by the sun’s heat, and to how wide a distance the atmospheric movements which are generated by such influences extend over the adjacent seas. Even such limited tracts of land as the Society and Sandwich Islands have a marked influence upon the winds experienced over the surrounding waters. They interfere, says Maury, with the trade-winds of the Pacific very often, and even turn them back, for westerly and equatorial winds are common at both groups, in their winter time. Upon the coasts of most countries that are within the warmer latitudes of the globe, there occur daily, at or shortly before the hour of early dawn, and toward the approach of sunset, breezes that blow respectively _off the shore_ or from _off the adjacent waters_. The former is known as the land-breeze; the latter as the sea-breeze.