of its currents, its flora and its fauna. Thus, having for foundation only a single grain of sand observed beneath the microscope and which, through oceanography, shall have recounted all the events at which it has assisted, after centuries upon centuries the edifice will appear firm, solid, in its complete magnificence. Do not think that this is a scientific dream, as full of uncertainty as of charm. These deductions have the absolute and unquestionable precision of mathematics. After so many unexpected discoveries, our epoch leaves it no longer in doubt that the greatest poets are sometimes the scientists.
The laws of meteorology present an important practical interest because they lead up to the forecasting of the weather. There is no need to dwell upon the profit humanity may derive from such a discovery. How many misfortunes will be averted for the agriculturist! Navigation will feel no less benefit if it can know in advance the regions of calm, of contrary or favorable winds. How many voyages will be shortened, how many lives saved! We can judge of this from cyclones. Formerly the terror of sailors, since their laws have been known they have been utilized to expedite voyages. The subjugated hurricane works for the sailor, and when ordered to bring the ship more quickly into port the docile tempest obeys and thus averts the dangers of the route. Who among our forefathers would have dared to formulate such a dream, realized, nevertheless, through the work of Bridet? Now the laws of the aerial ocean and of the liquid ocean are the same, although more complicated for the first than for the second. They should consequently be studied synthetically on the sea and applied afterward to the atmosphere, with such modifications as are made necessary by the great difference in the mobility of the two fluids. The rational introduction to meteorology is oceanography. Steam has greatly modified and simplified the former conditions of navigation, and to-day steamers progress almost in a straight line despite wind and sea. However, the sailing vessel is not as dead as some may believe. As a result of the mutual interactions, so delicate, so changeable, of economic conditions, of the high price of coal, of the large space occupied by the machinery and the store of fuel, of the higher salary of mechanics, and for still other causes, many nations are returning to sailing vessels. Americans in particular possess clippers of great speed, which carry freight at less charges than do steamships. The study of the phenomena of the ocean has lost none of its practical utility to navigation and it has become indispensable for the elucidation of a multitude of points. Marine currents are elucidated by meteorology, because of the influence which regular winds have upon the flow of the waters. They control the course of floating ice fields. The dangers to boats off the banks of Newfoundland are well known. To this place come the icebergs which have broken off from the glaciers of Greenland, and have been carried down Baffin's Bay by the Labrador current to melt away at contact with
