Studies of nature (Volume 1).

  • Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 1737-1814.
Date:
1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies of nature (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    many retreatings and projections along the coafts of thtf Continent, we have been induced to imagine, that thefc irregularities muft have been occafioned by violent Cur- rents of the Sea. It has juft been demonflrated, that this effecl: was not thus produced ; I now proceed to fhew, that it could not pojfibly have been the cafe. The Englifh Dampier, who is not the fir ft Navigator that failed round the Globe, but who is, in my opinion, the beft of the travellers who have made obfervations on it, fays, in his excellent treatife on winds, and tides : * Bays fcarcely have any currents, or if there be fuch a thing, they are only counter currents running from one point to another. He quotes many obfervations, in proof of this, and many others, of a fimilar nature, are found fcattered over the journals of other Navigators. Though he has treated only of the Currents between the Tropics, and even that with fome degree of obfeurity, we fhall proceed to generalize this principle, and to apply it to the principal bays of Continents. I reduce to two general Currents, thofe of the Ocean. Both of thefe proceed from the Poles, and are produced, in my opinion, by the alternate fufion of their ices. Though this be not the place to examine the caufe of it, to me it appears fo natural, fo new, and of fuch curious inveftigation, that the Reader, I flatter myfelf, will not be angry with me, if I give him an idea of it, on my way. The Poles appear to me the fources of the Sea, as the icy mountains are the fources of the principal rivers. It is, if I am not mifhken, the fnow and the ice which cover our Pole, that annually renovate the waters of the Sea, comprehended between our Continent and that of Ameri- ca, the projecting and retreating parts of which have, be- (ides, a mutual correfpondence, like the banks of a river. * Vol. ii. page 385,