Storms have, however, certain habits and peculiarities, more or less regular and distinct, which depend upon locality and season. And this is what ought to be expected; for, though the storms themselves are essentially anomalous, yet many of the causes which cooperate to induce them are constant or periodic, while others are subject to but slight perturbations. It is obvious that no more moisture can be precipitated than has been evaporated, and that the winds only gain suddenly by the fall of rain the forces which they have lost at their leisure in the absorption of moisture. Thus the rage of the storm is kept within bounds, and though the exact period at which the winds are set free cannot be determined, yet their force and frequency must be subject to certain limitations. The study of the habits and peculiarities of storms is of the greatest importance to navigation and agriculture, and these arts have already been benefited by the labors of the meteorologist.
The lawlessness of the weather, within certain limitations, though discouraging to the physical philosopher, has yet its bright side for the student of final causes. The uses of the weather and its adaptation to organic life are subjects of untiring interest. The progression of the seasons, varied by differences of latitude, is also diversified and adapted to a fuller development of organic variety by irregularities of climate.
The regular alternations of day and night, summer and winter, dry seasons and wet, are adapted to those alternations of organic functions which belong to the economy of life. The vital forces of plants and of the lower orders of animals have not that self-determining capacity of change which is necessary to the complete development of life; but they persist in their present mode of action, and, when they are not modified by outward changes, reduce life to its simplest phases. Changes of growth are effected by those apparent hardships to which life is subject; and progression in new directions is effected by retrogression in previous modes of growth. The old leaves and branches must fall, the wood must be frost-bitten or dried, the substance of seeds must wither and then decay, the action of leaves must every night be reversed, vines and branches must be shaken by the winds, that the energies and the materials of new forms of life may be rendered active and available.
Some of the outward changes of nature are regular and periodic, while others, without law or method, are apparently adapted by their diversity to draw out the unlimited capacities and varieties of life; so that as inorganic nature approaches a regulated confusion, the more it tends to bring forth that perfect order, of which fragments appear in the incomplete system of actual organic life.
The classification of organic forms presents to the naturalist, not the structure of a regular though incomplete development, but the broken and fragmentary form of a ruin. We may suppose, then, with a recent physiological writer, that the creation of those organic forms which constitute this fragmentary system was effected in the midst of an elemental storm, a regulated confusion, uniting all the external conditions which the highest capacities and the greatest varieties of organized life require for their fullest development; and that as the storm subsided into a simpler, but less genial diversity,—into the weather,—whole orders and genera and species sank with it from the ranks of possible organic forms. The weather, fallen from its high estate, no longer able to develope, much less to create new forms, can only sustain those that are left to its care.
Man finds himself everywhere mirrored in nature. Wayward, inconstant, always seeking rest, always impelled by new evils, the greatest of which he himself creates,—protecting and cherishing or blighting and destroying the fragmentary life of a fallen nature,—incapable himself of creating new capacities, but nourishing in prosperity and quickening in adversity those that are left,—he sees the workings of his own life in the strife of the elements. His powers and activities are related to his spiritual capacities, as inorganic movements are related to an organizing life. The resurrection of his higher nature is like a new creation, secret, sudden, inconsequent. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
* * * * *
AKIN BY MARRIAGE [Continued]
CHAPTER IV.
The designs of Mr. Elam Hunt upon the hand of Laura Stebbins have already been mentioned, in a former chapter of this history, as well as the fact that his hopes were encouraged by Mrs. Jaynes who (to make no secret of the matter) had pledged her word to the enamored Elam, that when he should be settled in a parish of his own, Laura should be added to complete the sum of his felicity.