ART. VIII.-LIEUT. MAURY'S SAILING DIRECTIONS.

Explanations and Sailing Directions to accompany the Wind and Current Charts. Approved by Commodore Charles Morris, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography; and published by authority of Hon. J. C. Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy. By M. F. Maury, LL.D., Lieut. U. S. N., Superintendent of the National Observatory. Sixth edition; enlarged and improved. Philadelphia: E. C. & J. Biddle: 1854. Pp. 772.

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THE sea is much the larger part of the physical empire of man. "In the present condition of the surface of our planet," says Baron Humboldt, "the area of the solid is to that of the fluid parts as 1 to 2 (according to Rigaud, as 100 to 270). The islands form scarcely of the continental masses, which are so unequally divided that they consist of three times more land in the northern than in the southern hemisphere; the latter, therefore, being pre-eminently oceanic. From 40° south latitude to the antarctic pole, the earth is almost entirely covered with water."

An innate consciousness that the sea was part of his original patrimony, has prompted man, from the earliest ages, to all sorts of perilous adventure in order to explore and "subdue it." Innumerable human lives have been lost in the attempt. But the victory is still on the side of man; and science is every day doing something to extend and secure it. The "mare dissociabile" of Horace, the "impassable ocean" of Pindar, is rapidly becoming the highway of nations. The earlier Homeric idea, which makes the sea the great avenue of mutual intercourse between distant races,* is proved to have been a juster conception of its original design and ultimate use.

The magnificent work before us is the practical application of the extensive researches and brilliant discoveries of Lieut. Maury to the purposes of navigation. As a contribution to science, its great merit has been acknowledged

* Od. ix. 129.

by distinguished men in both hemispheres. As a skilful application of science to its noblest ends, the preservation of human life, and the promotion of intercourse, and so of peace and brotherhood, among the races of mankind, it is entitled to still higher praise. Whatever tends to increase the speed and safety of navigation is not only a direct occasion of saving life, but an ultimate contribution to all the highest interests of humanity. Humboldt, while expressing his "hearty gratitude and esteem to the author of the beautiful charts of the winds and currents, prepared with so much care and learning," adds: "The shortening of the voyage from the United States to the equator is a beautiful result of this undertaking."

The extensive and minute system of observations of "the workings of those physical agents that are employed in the grand scheme of creation" for which a formula is furnished in "the Abstract Log," is in the highest degree original and striking. The carrying them out in the naval and merchant service cannot but result in most important discoveries.

"It is not," says Lieut. Maury, "for the benefit of navigation alone that seamen are invited to make observations and collect materials for the Wind and Current Charts; other great interests besides those of commerce have their origin in the ocean or the air; and without doubt, these interests are to be benefited by a better knowledge than we now have of the laws which govern the circulation of the atmosphere, and regulate the movements of the aqueous portions of our planet. The agricultural capacities of any place are as dependent upon the hygrometrical as upon the thermometrical condition of the atmosphere. Each kind of plant requires for its most perfect development a certain degree of moisture, and the winds which bring it that moisture can only get it from the sea or other evaporating surfaces. It is often argued because wine and olives, or other staples, are produced upon a given parallel of latitude, that therefore they should be produced upon the same parallel wherever the same soil is to be found. Whereas, the consideration as to the route which the winds from the ocean have to pursue in order to reach the situation of the supposed parallel, has much to do with the case. Virginia and California are between the same parallels, yet how different their agricultural resources, the character and the flavor of their fruits; all owing not so much to difference of soil as to the way the winds blow, the quantity of moisture they bring with them, the proportion of clouds

and sunshine allotted to each place. The system of researches embraced by the Wind and Current Charts, therefore, it would appear, concern the philosopher and the husbandınan, as well as the mariner, the merchant, and the statesman."

The theories of Lieut. Maury are far from being hypotheses based on conjecture, or even on conclusions à priori from acknowledged laws of nature. They are rigid deductions from facts. The very logic of the system is admirable. The multitude and minuteness of the observations elicited by his plan are scarcely less wonderful than the skill with which they are grouped and generalized. Some attempts, however, he has made at hypothesis and "theoretical deduction," and as several voyages made after his directions have proved, with remarkable success.

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There is something highly interesting in the idea of combining all the officers and men of the navy and merchant service, pilots, whalers, and all in fact who "go down to the sea in ships and do business in the great waters," into one vast corps or rather army of observers, noticing and recording the works of God and his wonders in the deep," and of bringing together, classifying, and generalizing these countless observations so as to deduce from them the laws by which the physical world is governed, and to perfect the methods of safe and speedy navigation. Nature has already yielded up some heretofore impenetrable secrets under this system of watchful and widely extended scrutiny. The course and duration of regular winds, the paths and periods of destructive storms and tornadoes, have been explored and laid down with surprising certainty and exactness. "Philosophy" has found out a good many things "in heaven and earth" which she had "not dreamed of" before, and turned them to practical use. And it is now no chimerical hope that the dangers of the sea will yet be diminished, and the safety and rapidity with which it is traversed increased by the progress of scientific discoveries to an extent which cannot be limited.

The voyage of the Sovereign of the Seas to and from California in the course of the last year afforded a remarkable example of the precision and certainty of the calculations of Lieut. Maury. "She made," says our author, "the

extraordinary run of one hundred and three days from New York to San Francisco, both crossing the equator in the Pacific and arriving in port on the day specifled."

"Returning from the Sandwich Islands to New York, in the remarkably short run of 83 days, she passed through a part of the Great South Sea which has been seldom traversed by traders. Little or nothing, except what conjectures suggested, was known as to the winds in this part of the ocean. The results of my investigations elsewhere, with regard to winds and the circulation of the atmosphere, had enabled me to announce as a theoretical deduction that the winds in the 'variables' of the South Pacific would probably be found to prevail from the westward with a trade-wind-like regularity. The Sovereign of the Seas has afforded the most beautiful illustration as to the correctness of these theoretical deduction. Having crossed the parallel of 48° S., she found herself fairly within the trade-like west winds of the Southern Ocean; and here commenced a succession of the most extraordinary days' runs that have ever been linked together across the ocean. From March 9 to March 31, from the parallel of 48° S. in the Pacific, to 35° S. in the Atlantic, during an interval of twenty-two days, . the wind is not recorded but once with easting in it; it was steady and fresh from the westward. In these twentytwo days, the ship made five thousand three hundred and ninety-one nautical miles. The predicted triumph of canvas under these west winds over steam elsewhere is already realized; for here is a ship under canvass, and with the winds alone as a propelling power, and with a crew too, so short, the captain informs me, that she was but half manned, accomplishing in twenty-two days the enormous run of six thousand two hundred and forty five statute miles (one fourth the distance round the earth), and making the daily average of two hundred and eighty-three statute miles and nine tenths (283.9.) During eleven of these days consecutively, her daily average was three hundred and fifty-four statute miles; and during four days, also consecutively, she averaged as high as three hundred and ninety-eight and three-quarters statute miles."

Navigators of all classes are not the only observers whom Lieut. Maury desires to enlist in these researches. "The plan," he remarks, "by no means overlooks the importance of that kind of co-operation and aid which is to be derived from the hearty good will of men, and from the voluntary co-operation of that powerful corps of meteorological observers . . . who labor in the private walks of life. 'Man is

a meteorologist by nature;' and every one who observes the wind and the weather, and who is in the habit of noting the thermometer and the barometer, is already an observer whose services it is desirable to secure, and whose labors in the field meteorological the plan in contemplation proposes to make available. That this immense corps of laborers, who are already in the field, should act in concert and 'pull together,' is the object of the present plan. Therefore, the men of science, the scientific societies, the shipowners and ship-masters, the directors of corporations, and the faculties of universities, and good men everywhere, are requested to lend this scheme their good-will, their influence, their aid, and their co-operation."

We hope the appeal will be cordially responded to. The very habit of observing nature is conducive not only to knowledge and thought, but to health and cheerfulness, to a devout and thankful recognition of Divine Providence, and to every pure and elevated feeling of the human heart. What an ardent meteorologist was David! How sublime, and how valuable, too, even in a historical and scientific point of view, the descriptions of natural phenomena in the book of Job! And when, to the careful notice and record of facts, is superadded the classification and generalization upon those facts proposed and assisted by this "plan," it is easy to see that the result of its general adoption must be a wide diffusion of useful knowledge and promotion of individual improvement, as well as a great addition to the completeness and certainty of scientific theories. It proposes to turn the whole world into a university, where nature is the general text-book, and every thoughtful man at once a teacher and a learner.

The unity of science, the intimate and wondrous relations which exist between all parts of the creation, and all regions of knowledge, is illustrated by this work in a very striking manner. Take, for a single instance of this, the chapter "on the Geological Agency of the Winds." It opens with this fine remark: "Nature is a whole, and all the departments thereof are intimately connected. If we attempt to study in one of them, we find ourselves tracing clues which lead us off insensibly into others, and before we are aware,