puzzled, for example, here and there with
portions of a vein or counter-current not yet
properly accounted for—still we have laid
bare the main artery, and found the water's
heart in the great Southern Ocean. It is
there, not only because the intense cold of the
south polar continent determines action in
that direction; but because there is there
also a wide expanse of sea—the widest on the
globe—susceptible of all impressions. The
Pacific is full of natural breakwaters, reefs,
shoals, and islands. At the North Pole,
though there is indeed no continent, but
water, at the Pole itself, the lands of Europe,
Asia, and America, destroy the general
expanse. In the enormous reservoir of
water which surrounds the lofty continent
of the South Pole we find the heart of
the great circulating system; and not only
do the grandest ocean currents take their
rise in it, but in it, also, as we shall see
presently, commences the pulsation of the
tidal wave.

You observe that the great world of water
serves not only as a home for countless forms
of life, but that to us land creatures it serves
also as an apparatus for the regulation of
our climates. Cold currents come to limit
the sun's monarchy, and warm streams flow
to melt the icebergs where they travel out
of bounds, and to prevent Jack Frost from
annexation.

That is not all, nor nearly all. One
characteristic of the works of Nature is
continually to be recognised. Man makes a
beautiful machine, worthy of admiration, in
which many wheels and teeth combine,
perhaps to make a piece of lace; it will make
only lace, and nothing else. The works of
nature are, incomparably, more simple, and
yet there is nothing so minute as to be created
for one purpose only. The earth's axis is
inclined a little to one side;—our polar ice,
our long days and short days, spring, summer,
autumn, winter, with the myriad of phenomena
in their train, are the consequence—nor
is that all. But we shall have quite enough
to do if we confine, at present, our attention
to the world of water. It is enough to
say, that, in its way, a blade of grass, or
lump of dirt, no less than the great sea, heaps
use on use, and proof on proof of a Sublime
Intelligence.

We may regard the sea, if we like, as a
great burial-ground. Subterranean forces,
constantly at work, cause gradual, incessant,
change of level on the surface of our world.
We are ourselves born just in time to see the
departing peaks of a huge continent now
drowned in the Pacific Ocean; where its
highest mountain tops, not yet submerged,
rise as innumerable islands, around which the
coral polyps build. But subterranean forces
have a stout ally provided in the busy sea
itself. How ocean currents eat away the
land, we have already seen; but we have only
to look at the coast behind us, and we are
reminded that the mere action of the tide*
is constantly engaged in chewing away shore,
and taking it off, masticated into pulp, to feed
the sea's great belly. Rivers, too, wear away
the soil through which they rub, and carry
seaward a large quantity of land, in the form
of that dear pulp for which the great deep
hungers. Out of the world of water vapour
rises and forms clouds; they float above our
fields, and fall as rain, to bless the husband-
man, and give food to the mouths of men.
But they feed also the great sea; they wash
the soil down mountain sides; and, if they do
not rise again as vapour, to form new clouds,
they form streams and springs, that fertilise
the ground, and, at the same time, rub down
more soil for the hungry sea. Granite yields.
Rain, or the vapour of water, in its pores,
expanding and again contracting with the change
of temperature, very slightly wears its outer
crust; it is just so much loosened that a
lichen fastens. Then the lichen holds more
damp upon the stone; the water and the work
of vegetation loosen it a little more; so that
there presently is soil enough for mosses.
Moss invites more water, the stone decays
more, and is mingled with decaying vegetable
matter; the conversion into loose soil has
begun; man will reap profit from it; but, in
due time, it will come into the sea. The waste
of continents strewed thus over the bottom of
the ocean goes to build up, layer upon layer, land
that shall hereafter be. So layers under layers
tell us of the ages that are past, and yield to
our sight skeletons of creatures that have lived
a thousand, thousand years ago. Man came,
as you know, late into the world; we never
dig him up as a contemporary of the creatures
that are gone: his bones and his works are
being now deposited in the great burial-
ground. What fleets have gone down into
the deep we know; how many monuments of
man are being buried in the mud of our own
age, to be dug up as antiquities, perhaps, when
man shall be extinct. It is not easy to imagine
one's self a fossil; but the Megalotherium, no
doubt, never expected it. An English river
being crossed, some centuries ago, by one of
our armies, the great military chest, with all
its treasure, was upset and drowned; nor was
there time to fish it up again. Ten years ago
a piece of rock, which seemed to be hard
sandstone, found upon that spot, astonished
all beholders. In its substance was a store of
fossil coins; and, on examination, it turned
out that all the sand into which coins had
sunk, after the chest rotted, had been quite
converted into rock by the chemical action of
iron from the hoops with which the chest
had been originally bound. Coins thus
imbedded have been got up also from the Thames,
* The late Mr. Stephenson, the architect of Skerryvore,
stated, at the last meeting of the British Association, that
the force of waves is a ton and a half per square foot for
the German Ocean, and twice as great for the Atlantic.
This estimate was made with reference to the construction
of marine works, from results obtained at the Bell Rock
and Skerryvore.