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G ATMOSPHERE.--If the air is full of moisture, as it may be at some places, while comparatively dry at other points, the reflection throughout the moist area is much greater than in the dry places, hence evaporation will take place and whenever a liquid vaporizes it means heat.
On the other hand, when the vapor is turning to a liquid, condensation takes place, and that means cooling. If the air should be of the same degree of saturation throughout,--that is, have the same amount of moisture everywhere, there would be few winds. These remarks apply to conditions which exist over low altitudes all over the earth.
But at high altitudes the conditions are entirely different. As we ascend the air becomes rarer. It has less moisture, because a wet atmosphere, being heavier, lies nearer the surface of the earth. Being rarer the action of sunlight on the particles is less intense. Reflection and refraction of the rays acting on the light atmosphere do not produce such a powerful effect as on the air near the ground.
All these conditions--the contour of the earth; the uneven character of the moisture in the air; the inequalities of the convection currents; and the unstable, tenuous, elastic nature of the atmosphere, make the trials of the aviator a hazardous one, and it has brought out numerous theories connected with bird flight. One of these assumes that the bird, by means of its finely organized sense, is able to detect rising air currents, and it selects them in its flight, and by that means is enabled to continue in flight indefinitely, by soaring, or by flapping its wings.
ASCENDING CURRENTS.--It has not been explained how it happens that these particular "ascending currents" always appear directly in the line of the bird flight; or why it is that when, for instance, a flock of wild geese which always fly through space in an A-shaped formation, are able to get ascending air currents over the wide scope of space they cover.
ASPIRATE CURRENTS.--Some years ago, in making experiments w
