We Have Here Considered The Cessation Of The Breezes As The Principal Cause Of The Equatorial Rains.

These rains in each hemisphere last only as long as the sun has its declination in that hemisphere.

It is necessary to observe, that the absence of the breeze is not always succeeded by a dead calm; but that the calm is often interrupted, particularly along the western coast of America, by bendavales, or south-west and south-east winds. This phenomenon seems to demonstrate that the columns of humid air which rise in the northern equatorial zone, sometimes flow off toward the south pole. In fact, the countries situated in the torrid zone, both north and south of the equator, furnish, during their summer, while the sun is passing through their zenith, the maximum of difference of temperature with the air of the opposite pole. The southern temperate zone has its winter, while it rains on the north of the equator; and while a mean heat prevails from 5 to 6 degrees greater than in the time of drought, when the sun is lower.* (* From the equator to 10 degrees of north latitude the mean temperatures of the summer and winter months scarcely differ 2 or 3 degrees; but at the limits of the torrid zone, toward the tropic of Cancer, the difference amounts to 8 or 9 degrees.) The continuation of the rains, while the bendavales blow, proves that the currents from the remoter pole do not act in the northern equinoctial zone like the currents of the nearer pole, on account of the greater humidity of the southern polar current.

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