Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 02:02:58 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Were seafarers living here 16,000 years ago?
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=34805893-6a53-46f5-a864-a96d53991051&k=39922
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Meteorology By Aristotle

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Meteorology By Aristotle  (Read 2792 times)
0 Members and 99 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bathos
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 141



« Reply #45 on: August 30, 2009, 11:48:45 pm »

This, too, is why the sea is warm. Everything that has been exposed
to fire contains heat potentially, as we see in the case of lye and
ashes and the dry and liquid excreta of animals. Indeed those animals
which are hottest in the belly have the hottest excreta.

The action of this cause is continually making the sea more salt,
but some part of its saltness is always being drawn up with the sweet
water. This is less than the sweet water in the same ratio in which
the salt and brackish element in rain is less than the sweet, and
so the saltness of the sea remains constant on the whole. Salt water
when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form
salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The
same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids
that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water.
They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of
which determines their flavour. But this subject must be considered
on another more suitable occasion.

For the present let us say this. The sea is there and some of it is
continually being drawn up and becoming sweet; this returns from above
with the rain. But it is now different from what it was when it was
drawn up, and its weight makes it sink below the sweet water. This
process prevents the sea, as it does rivers, from drying up except
from local causes (this must happen to sea and rivers alike). On the
other hand the parts neither of the earth nor of the sea remain constant
but only their whole bulk. For the same thing is true of the earth
as of the sea: some of it is carried up and some comes down with the
rain, and both that which remains on the surface and that which comes
down again change their situations.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy