*
[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Recherches sur les Causes des Inflexions des Lignes
Isothermes', in 'Asie Centr.', t. iii., p. 103-114, 118, 122, 188.
The simultaneous action of these disturbing causes, whether productive of an
increase or decrease of heat, determines, as the total effect, the
inflection of the isothermal lines, especially with relation to the
expansion and configuration of solid continental masses, as compared with
the liquid oceanic. These perturbations give rise to convex and concave
summits of the isothermal curves. There are, however, different orders of
disturbing causes, and each one must, therefore, be considered separately,
in order that their total effect may afterward be investigated with
reference to the motion (direction, local curvature) of the isothermal
lines, and the actions by which they are connected together, modified,
destroyed, or increased in intensity, as manifested in the contact and
intersection of small oscillatory movements. Such is the method by which, I
hope, it may some day be possible to connect together, by empirical and
numerically expressed laws, vast series of apparently isolated facts, and to
exhibit the mutual dependence which must necessarily exist among them.
The trade winds -- easterly winds blowing within the tropics -- give rise,
in both temperate zones, to the west, or west-southwest
p 321
sinds which prevail in those regions, and which are land winds to eastern
coasts, and sea winds to western coasts, estending over a space which, from
the great mass and the sinking of its cooled particles, is not capable of
any considerable degree of cooling, and hence it follows that the east winds
of the Continent must be cooler than the west winds, where their temperature
is not affected by the occurrence of oceanic currents near the shore.
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