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for weeks and months, ay, and years together--not irregularly, not at haphazard, but steadily, perseveringly, in strict obedience to the undeviating laws which regulate the currents in the ocean and the air as truly and unchangeably as they do the circulation of the blood in the human frame. The bottle started from that part of the South Pacific which is known to mariners as the Desolate Region--so called from the circumstance of that part of the sea being almost entirely destitute of animal life. Here it floated slowly, calmly, but surely, to the eastward with the great oceanic current, which, flowing from the regions of the antarctic sea, in that part sweeps round the southern continent of America, and makes for the equator by way of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Now, reader, allow me to screw up a little philosophy here, and try to show you the why and the wherefore of the particular direction of our bottle's voyage. Man has been defined by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I think it would be more appropriate to call him a _learning animal_, for man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn--also to unlearn. One of the great errors which we have been called on, of recent years, to unlearn, is the supposed irregularity and uncertainty of the winds and waves. Nothing is more regular, nothing more certain--not even the rising and setting of the sun himself--than the circulation of the waters and the winds of earth. The apparent irregularity and uncertainty lies in our limited power and range of perception. The laws by which God regulates the winds and waves are as fixed as is the law of gravitation, and every atom of air, every drop of water, moves in its appointed course in strict obedience to those laws, just as surely as the apple, when severed from the bough, obeys the law of gravitation, and falls to the ground. One grand and important fact has been ascertained, namely, that all the waters of the sea flow from the equator to the poles and back again. Disturbed equilibrium is the great cause of oceanic currents. Heat and cold are the chief agents in creating this disturbance. It is obvious that when a portion of water in any vessel sinks, another portion must of necessity flow into the space which it has left, and if the cause which induced the sinking continue, so the flow to fill up will continue, and thus a current will be established. Heat at the equator warms the sea-wate
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