When the sunbeams fall upon the sea the water is warmed, though not so much as the land.  The warmed water expands, becomes thereby lighter, and therefore continues to float upon the top.  This upper layer of water warms to some extent the air in contact with it, but it also sends up a quantity of aqueous vapor, which being far lighter than air, helps the latter to rise.  Thus both from the land and from the sea we have ascending currents established by the action of the sun.

When they reach a certain elevation in the atmosphere, these currents divide and flow, part towards the north and part towards the south; while from the north and the south a flow of heavier and colder air sets in to supply the place of the ascending warm air.

Incessant circulation is thus established in the atmosphere.  The equatorial air and vapor flow above towards the north and south poles, while the polar air flows below towards the equator.  The two currents of air thus established are called the upper and the lower trade winds.

But before the air returns from the poles great changes have occurred.  For the air as it quitted the equatorial regions was laden with aqueous vapor, which could not subsist in the cold polar regions.  It is there precipitated, falling sometimes as rain, or more commonly as snow.  The land near the pole is covered with this snow, which gives birth to vast glaciers.

It is necessary that you should have a perfectly clear view of this process, for great mistakes have been made regarding the manner in which glaciers are related to the heat of the sun.

It was supposed that if the sun’s heat were diminished, greater glaciers than those now existing would be produced.  But the lessening of the sun’s heat would infallibly diminish the quantity of aqueous vapor, and thus cut off the glaciers at their source.  A brief illustration will complete your knowledge here.

In the process of ordinary distillation, the liquid to be distilled is heated and converted into vapor in one vessel, and chilled and reconverted into liquid in another.  What has just been stated renders it plain that the earth and its atmosphere constitute a vast distilling apparatus in which the equatorial ocean plays the part of the boiler, and the chill regions of the poles the part of the condenser.  In this process of distillation heat plays quite as necessary a part as cold, and before Bishop Heber could speak of “Greenland’s icy mountains,” the equatorial ocean had to be warmed by the sun.  We shall have more to say upon this question afterwards.

The heating of the tropical air by the sun is indirect.  The solar beams have scarcely any power to heat the air through which they pass; but they heat the land and ocean, and these communicate their heat to the air in contact with them.  The air and vapor start upwards charged with the heat thus communicated.

Tropical Rains.