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There writers insist much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface-currents, by absorption and infiltration an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface-earth were either impermeable to water or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation.

That which started from the north pole meets in the air at about the parallel of 30 degrees; the mass which started from the equator meeting with equal force, they balance each other, and produce a calm and an accumulation of atmosphere pressing downward, and ejecting from below two surface-currents one towards the equator, which are the north-east trade-winds; the other towards the pole, called the south-west passage-winds.

Its bottom goes deep down into the under-current which flows south, and so it is being carried south not north at all, against the variable surface-currents, and it would go even against the wind if there was any. Do you understand?" "Huk!" exclaimed the Eskimo, though he still looked perplexed.

The previous winter had been unusually severe, and the ice showed little or no sign of breaking up, except at a great distance from land, where the heaving of the waves had cracked it up into large fields. These were gradually parting from the main body, and drifting away with surface-currents to southern waters, there to be liquefied and re-united to their parent sea.