beyond anything experienced near the equator, yet, owing to the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, the clear nights are very cold, radiation being sometimes so rapid that water placed in shallow pans becomes frozen over. As the heated earth, and everything upon its surface, does not cool so fast when surrounded by moist as by dry air, it follows, that even if the quantity and intensity of the solar rays falling upon two given portions of the earth’s surface are exactly equal, yet the sensible and effective heat produced in the two localities may be very different according as the atmosphere contains much or little vapour. In the one case the heat is absorbed more rapidly than it can escape by radiation; in the other case it radiates away into space, and is lost, more rapidly than it is being absorbed. In both cases an equilibrium will be arrived at, but in the one case the resulting mean temperature will be much higher than in the other. _Influence of Winds on the Temperature of the Equator._--The distance from the northern to the southern tropics being considerably more than three thousand miles, and the area of the intertropical zone more than one-third the whole area of the globe, it becomes hardly possible for any currents of air to reach the equatorial belt without being previously warmed by contact with the earth or ocean, or by mixture with the heated surface-air which is found in all intertropical and subtropical lands. This warming of the air is rendered more certain and more effective by the circumstance, that all currents of air coming from the north or south have their direction changed owing to the increasing rapidity of the earth’s rotational velocity, so that they reach the equator as easterly winds, and thus pass obliquely over a great extent of the heated surface of the globe. The causes that produce the westerly monsoons act in a similar manner, so that on the equator direct north or south winds, except as local land and sea breezes, are almost unknown. The Batavia observations show, that for ten months in the year the average direction of the wind varies only between 5° and 30° from due east or west, and these are also the strongest winds. In the two months--March and October--when the winds are northerly, they are very light, and are probably in great part local sea-breezes, which, from the position of Batavia, must come from the north. As a rule, therefore, every current of air at or near the equator has passed obliquely over an immense extent of tropical surface and is thus necessarily a warm wind.