The physical geography of the sea, and its meteorology / by M. F. Maury.

  • Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 1806-1873.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physical geography of the sea, and its meteorology / by M. F. Maury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    The results that are embodied in Plate I. alone of this edition would, had the data for it been ccllected by a force specially employed for the purpose, have demanded constant occupation from a fleet of ten sail for more than one hundred years. The co- ordinating of these observations after they were made, and the bringing of them to the present condensed form, has involved a vast amount of additional labour. Officers here have been engaged upon the work for many years. This patient industry has been rewarded with the discovery of laws and the develop- ment of truths of great value in navigation and very precious to science. It would be presumptuous to claim freedom from error for a work like this: true progress consists in the discovery of error as well as of trutli. But I may be pardoned for saying that the present edition of this work will be found to contain more of truth and less of error than any of its predecessors, simply because it is founded on wider research, and based on the results of more abundant observations than they. Indeed, it could not, or, rather, it should not be otherwise ; for, as long as we are making progress in any field of physical research, so long must the results continue to increase in value; and just so long must what at first was conjecture grow and gain as truth, or fade and fall as error. The fact seems now to be clearly established that the atmo- sphere is very unequally divided on opposite sides of the equator, and that there is a mild climate in the unknown regions of the antarctic circle. Over the extra-tropical regions of our planet, the atmosphere on the polar side of 40° N. and 40° S. is so unequally divided as to produce an average pressure, according to the parallel, of from 10 to 50 lbs. less upon the square foot of sea surface in southern than upon the square foot of sea surface in northern latitudes. These, and many other developments not Mr. Trembley^ to conclude that there are, at the bottom of the water, mountains, plains, valleys, and caverns, just as upon the land. But by far the most interesting and valuable book touching the physical geography of the Mediterranean is Admiral Smyth's last work, entitled The Mediterranean ; a Memoir, Physical, Historical, and Nal-tioal. By Rear-Admiral William Henry Smyth, K.S.F., D.C.L., &c. London ; John W. Parker and Son. 1854 - Philosophical Transactions.