The word climate has certainly
special reference to the character of the atmosphere, but this character is
itself dependent on the perpetually concurrent influences of the ocean,
which is universally and deeply agitated by currents having a totally
opposite temperature, and of radiation from the dry land, which varies
greatly in form, elevation, color, and fertility, whether we consider its
bare, rocky portions, or those that are covered with arborescent or
herbaceous vegetation.
In the present condition of the surface of our planet, the area of the solid
is to that of the fluid parts as 1:2 4/5ths (according to Rigaud, as
100:270).*
[footnote] *See 'Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society', vcl.
vi., Part ii., 1837, p. 297. Other writers have given the ratio as 100:284.
The islands form scarcely 1/22d 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 being, therefore, pre-eminently
oceanic. From 40 degrees south latitude to the Antarctic pole the earth is
almost entirely covered with water. The fluid element predominates in like
manner between the eastern shores of the Old and the western shores of the
New Continent, being only interspersed with some few insular groups.
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