Thou saw'st a field of rich anemones *Window or bull's-eye. + Veils. The gazelle is the perfumer of the desert, leaving on its track a substance whose smell resembles musk. OW interesting is the Ocean!—perhaps the most interesting of all the wonders of nature. The vast expanse of waters stretching far beyond the reach of vision, presents to our eyes a picture of immensity that awes the mind; and its unfathomable depths involve so much of mystery as to charm and overpower the imagination. Its mood and aspect, too, rouse curiosity and invite contemplation by ceaseless change: now rushing and roaring, as it does, in tremendous mountain billows, when the fierce hurricane careers over its surface; now dancing with crest of foam before a gladsome breeze, to fling itself on the shore with noisy playfulness; now lying still in a calm, as profoundly peaceful as though it had gone to sleep never more to waken. To the poet, the ocean offers an image of eternity, at once 'beautiful, sublime, and glorious,' inspiring deep emotions; the painter's eye never tires of No. 61. 1 watching its living hues and liquid movements, in the hope of reproducing them on his canvas; while the philosopher finds in the great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable, both small and great beasts,' an exhaustless object of study. It is this latter view we purpose to take in the following pages, and present a sketch of what has been done by science and philosophy towards revealing the mystery of the deep. In looking at a map of the globe, the great preponderance of water over land at once arrests the attention. This is not a matter of chance, for the liquid element plays an important part in the economy of our planet. It is the grand agent of change, of destruction, and renovation; and the facts brought to light by the researches of geologists, shew that it has been the same in all ages, if not to a greater degree than now. During the Silurian and Carboniferous Periods, the proportion of water was far greater than at present, and we may believe that the greatness of the ocean was in perfect accordance with the greatness of the developments yet to follow. The developments are still going on, though imperceptibly, before our eyes; for while the sea exists there can be no permanence for the land, Long as we have been familiar with the ocean, it is only about eighty years ago that any positive study was directed to its various interesting phenomena. Mariners, even in early ages, knew that there were currents which often baffled them in their navigation: certain regions were recognised as subject to calms, others to storms; and remarkable effects of tides were noticed on different coasts; but the causes of these phenomena, and the purposes they were intended to serve, still remained among the secrets of nature. But although, even now, the great controlling laws remain undiscovered, we can speak with fuller certainty of their effects, and push our investigations with such abundant resources as to widen and confirm our knowledge. We now know that the land and water react one on the other, that the vast preponderance of water is in reality a proof of a subsidiary function, for mass and number, as we see in all the kingdoms of nature, never belong to the superior being.' We know that by this reaction the life of the globe is sustained; that if the ocean destroys, it also renews; that it is the feeder of lakes, rivers, and springs, however far inland may be their source, and is a mighty agent in the constitution of climate. Heated every day by the sun, vapours rise from the surface of the water, and spreading themselves through the atmosphere, become condensed and transformed into mist and fog, and are carried by the winds across islands and continents, where the clouds pour down their contents, as the early and the latter rains, dropping fatness on the land, endowing it with life and fertility. No sooner has it fallen, than the superabundant moisture begins to flow back to the vast reservoir whence it was drawn, in a perpetual course; for 'seed-time and harvest shall never fail.' The general effect here described is subject to a variety of modifications, and these, which constitute an important branch of inquiry, are to some extent known and demonstrated, and are found to be parts of a system as fraught with beauty and beneficence as those works of nature which are better understood. To form a clear idea of the subject, we must first take a brief survey of the ocean, its extent, and divisions. Take a map, draw a line from the south pole to Cape Agulhas, and another from the same point to Cape Horn; all the water that lies between, and fills the great valley bounded by the continents of Europe, Africa, and America, on the east and west, is known as the Atlantic Ocean. Stretching away northwards, it meets the Arctic Sea, between Norway and Greenland, where the width is still so great that it may be considered as the same ocean, embracing the earth from pole to pole. How different from the idea of the ancient Greek geographers, who applied the term axiavos to what they believed to be a belt of water surrounding the land! Including the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, and Caribbean Seas, and Hudson's Bay, the Atlantic comprises 30 millions of square miles. These inland seas are one of its chief characteristics; no other ocean penetrates into the land as does the Atlantic. Looking at its grand outlines, Humboldt has suggested that it may have been formed by a rush of waters from the south, which continued their course northwards till they struck the mountainous coast of Brazil, when being turned aside, they swept across, and having hollowed out the Gulf of Guinea, the mighty torrent rushed again to the west, and formed the indentation now filled by the Caribbean Sea and Mexican Gulf. From thence it swept on to the north, and spent itself in the circumpolar seas. Draw a third line from the south pole to South-west Cape, Van Diemen's Land, and we have the western boundary of the Pacific, its eastern limit being the line already drawn from Cape Horn. This ocean comprehends 100 millions of square mileshalf the superficies of the globe! Enclosed by America on the east, and Asia and Australia on the west, it is the largest of the oceans; and owing to the distance between the continents in the south, it is there of extraordinary width-8000 miles-but grows narrower as it approaches the north, until, at Behring Strait, not more than thirty-six miles across, it meets the boundary of the Arctic Sea. Thus, though so much larger than the Atlantic, it cannot be considered as taking the same vast sweep from one pole to the other. Five minor seas are connected with it as offshoots: what are called the North and South China Sea, the seas of Japan, Okhotsk, and Behring-the latter cut off by the Aleutian Isles and the Aljaskan promontory. This is the ocean which so much excited the astonishment and admiration of the early Spanish conquerors of America, when they first beheld it from the highlands of the western coast and the mountains of the Isthmus; and which afforded so vast a field to the energies of Drake and his companions and successors - foremost in 93 90 71 establishing the fame of Britain's naval enterprise. Magellan, who was the first to cross it, found it so tranquil, that he named it the Pacific. はい Between the lines drawn from South-west Cape and Cape Agulhas lies the extensive watery region known as the Indian Ocean, bounded on the north by the continent of India, and containing that vast archipelago of islands, large and small, scattered between the Malayan peninsula and the northern shore of Australia, where marvellous fertility and lavish beauty combine to form the most glorious and exquisite of tropical scenery. Gulfs characterise the Indian Ocean the Arabia "Gulf or Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf we thus, see that each of the three great oceans has different characteristics. Its extent, including the gulfs and the Bay of Bengal, is 25 millions of miles. Last, there is the Arctic Ocean, or Polar Sea, which fills the basin, about 2000 miles in diameter, formed by the northern coasts of Asia, America, and Europe. Altogether, it comprises about 4,000,000 of square miles; but it is as yet imperfectly known, for there frost and ice conspire to hinder the most persevering of man's attempts at exploration. It is only inch by inch, and bidding defiance to peril, that we have gained our knowledge of the margin of the basin; all attempts to sail across it from one side to the other have hitherto failed. Dreary and terrific though it be, we shall presently see that the Polar Ocean serves no unimportant purpose in the economy of nature. Adding ocean to ocean and sea to sea, we find that more than three-fourths of the globe are water; the land, with its continents and islands, its empires, kingdoms, and states, the abode of hundreds of millions of human beings, forming but a comparatively small portion of the whole. This portion is so grouped that, as shewn by Ritter, the solid is all in one-half of the globe, the fluid in the other. For instance: a great circle drawn from the coast of Peru to the southern extremity of Asia embraces a hemisphere which contains so small a portion of land, that we may with but little violence to the truth describe it as the hemisphere of water, seeing that, besides the islands that dot the Pacific, it contains only Australia, the southern extremity of America, and the Indian Archipelago; while nearly all the land will be found in the opposite hemisphere. This is one of the facts lately brought to light by science, which open up, as it were, new views of the physical constitution of our planet. The philosopher reasoning from them arrives at more enlightened conclusions. 1 1 DIN Besides the distinctive features above mentioned, the great oceans are strikingly characterised by the conformation of their shores, as may be seen by reference to a map. This is a matter 9 which has much to do with commerce, and the social advancement of nations. The coast-line of Asia is 30,800 miles; of North America, 24,000; of South America, 13,600; of Africa, 14,000; of Australia, 7600; of Europe, 17,200. Here we see that Africa, |