Note 127 — Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for the year 1827. Part II. ◊ (continued 2)

The author has an opinion, that among the “agents of nature,” for equalising the temperature of the surface of the globe, is to be reckoned, not only the Northern and Southern Lights, but the entire Ocean; and that this agency is the immediate object aimed at in the existence of this last, as one body of water surrounding the entire globe. His evidence consists in geographical, hydrographical, meteorological, and physiological facts, as also in the apparent reason of the case. He supposes, in consequence, a perpetual circulation of the waters of the sea, longitudinally round the globe, or from North to South, and from South to North again; and the result of Captain Parry’s late attempt to reach the Arctic Pole, as also some of the facts which have transpired respecting Captain Franklin’s late land expedition, appear to confirm his theory, according to which the physical use, or final cause, of the existence of the Ocean has never previously been understood. His theory affects the question of the North-west Passage, which latter object he suspects to have never yet been pursued in the true direction; even the discoveries of Captain Parry appearing to him to have fallen short of ascertaining the communication with the Polar Sea by the channel of Davis’s Strait.—Some introductory observations upon this subject have been already made in an article in the New Monthly Magazine for October, 1826, (vol. xvii. p. 371.)