iads of animals it contains no pen can number. Neither can it enumerate the shells and plants, which grow to us invisible: some floating with the wind, others at the mercy of the waves; some secured to rocks and stones at the bottom, others rising to the surface; all receiving nourishment from its saline particles, and giving sustenance, in turn, to innumerable fishes, insects, vermes, and animalculæ. Thales was, therefore, not far from the truth, perhaps, when he said that the Deity formed all things out of water; nor Proclus, when he taught that the ocean was the cause of secondary natures of every description. The influence of the sea on the poet Burns is thus described by Lockhart: "The magnificent scenery of Edinburgh filled him with extraordinary delight. In the spring mornings he walked very often to the top of Arthur's Seat, and, lying prostrate on the turf, surveyed the rising of the sun out of the sea in silent admiration." Crabbe, too, was no less charmed with the view of the ocean; and we are told by his son, that in the summer of 1787 he was seized one fine morning with so intense a longing to gaze upon the sea, that he mounted his horse, rode alone to the coast, 60 miles from his house, dipped in the waves, and then returned home. With what delight did Victor Alfieri first behold the Mediterranean at Genoa and Leghorn! "The view of it," said he, "so much excited my wonder and admiration, that I was never weary of contemplating it;" and with equal pleasure did Euripides ascend the promontories of Greece, to look abroad on the liquid element, slumbering beneath the canopy of that matchless sky. The Indian gymnosophists believed water to have been the primitive element; and Homer styles the ocean "father of all." The Chewyan Indians of North America. believe that the globe was originally one great mass of wa ter, with no inhabitants. A bird, however, they say, soon appeared above the waves, whose wings clapped thunder, and the flame of whose eye made lightning. Upon her touching the waters, the earth sprang up from them like an exhalation. After the earth appeared, she called every species of animals out of it: they came at her bidding; and this they believe to have been the original creation of the world. This fable reminds us of a passage in Newton, where he says that all beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, trees and vegetables, grow out of water and watery tinctures; and that, by putrefaction, they return to watery substances again. Lister, too, imagined water to have been the original element, out of which all bodies, animate and inanimate, have emanated. Still Nature's birth, enclosed in egg or seed, Thales, as we have before remarked, thought that all things originally proceeded from the sea; and does not Moses imply the same, when he says that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and that "out of the waters came forth the earth and all living creatures?" Philosophy of course rejects the fable of the Indians; but it inclines to the belief that the ocean is the eldest of terrestial matter. Dampier remarked in his various voyages, that where there were high shores there were deep seas; and that where the shores were low the seas were shallow. To corroborate this assertion, he instances the coasts of Gallicia, Portugal, Norway, and Newfoundland, and those of Chili and Peru, all of which rise in rocks or mountains; and the seas are consequently deep. On the other hand, the coasts of Panama, Campeachy, and the Bay of Honduras are low; as those of China, Siam, Bengal, Coromandel, the north side of Malacca, Borneo, Celebes, and Gilolo; and the seas there are shallow. Exceptions may occasionally be found to these rules, but they are just when generally applied. In the Pacific, extending for thirty degrees each side of the equator, no tornadoes, typhons, hurricanes, or monsoons are known. In the equinoctial seas great variety has been observed in the colour of the water, and that, too, when no change could be observed in the atmosphere; sometimes varying from gray to indigo, blue, and the deepest scarlet. The relative depths in some seas have been found unfathomable; in others they vary in a most astonishing manner. In some parts of Baffin's Bay the depth is only 100 fathoms, whereas towards the shore the line sinks to 455. In Lancaster Sound, Captain Ross found a depth of 674 fathoms; in Possession Bay, 1000; off Cape Cargenholm, 1005; and off Cape Coutts, 1050. Between Greenland and Spitzbergen the depth is unfathomable; but La Place asserts that the greatest depth of the sea does not exceed eleven miles. Here we may remark that the frigid zone of the north is occupied by land, ice, and water, while that of the south is almost entirely covered with water and ice; and that, as the temperate zone of the north is chiefly occupied by land, that of the south is almost totally deluged with water. South of the tropic of Capricorn all is water, if we except NewHolland and its neighbouring islands, a small part of America, a still smaller part of Africa, and NewShetland. In regard to the relative temperatures of the ocean, Dr. Davy found the sea-water on the coast of England and that off the Cape of Good Hope nearly of the same specific gravity. Water taken up in the English Channel, of which a part must have been river-water, was 1077: that under the line no more than 1087. The common opinion that the sea is more salt at the tropics, is found not to be true. Franklin noticed that the water on the North American coast was different in and out of soundings; and subsequent observation leaves little room to doubt that the sea becomes colder in all countries the nearer it approaches the land. It is the same with rivers. The water in the middle of a river, except where it runs in a current, is always warmer than it is near the banks, and the part near the bottom colder than that at the surface. Rivers sometimes even freeze at the bottom, when at the top there is no appearance of ice. I purposely abstain from the subject of the tides, as I am by no means convinced that our opinions on that subject are anything better than theories. The coincidences of the tides with the motions of the moon appear to me to be merely coincidences. The theory of lunar attraction is not sufficient, I think, to account for the varied phenomena presented; and I am the more confirmed in this opinion by the recent discovery of M. Daussey, that the height of the tides varies with the atmospheric pressure, they being highest when the barometer is lowest. Professor Oersted seems to entertain similar doubts, inclining to the opinion that the tides rise from some unexplained principle of circulation. Marine Deities.-The Greeks and Romans had the greatest possible horror of dying by shipwreck. They dreaded being dashed against rocks; of being devoured by fishes; and, above all, of being without the rites of sepulture. Hence the terror of Eneas, when he was in fear of his fleet being wrecked; hence Horace represents the spirit of Archytas addressing itself to a mariner, earnestly entreating him to strew sand over his body, which lay unburied on the beach; and hence the Romans were accustomed, when they were saved from ship wreck, to hang up their wet clothes in the temple of Neptune, with an inscription, written on a tablet, commemorating their escape. 66 The The Mauritanian deities were chiefly divinities of the sea; and Dagon was worshipped in Syria under the shape of a sea-monster, upward man and downward fish." The Carthaginians, and, indeed, the whole maritime pagan world, worshipped marine gods; and the Romans sacrificed to them horses and bullocks, by throwing them into the sea. Persians, however, had a great dread of the ocean. This feeling, continuing to the present time, has deterred them from all maritime enterprise. The profession of a sailor among them is looked upon with utter contempt; and Sadi carried his aversion to the sea so far as to exclaim, "I would rather give one hundred tomauns than pass over a single wave!" Several tribes on the slave-coast of Guinea worship the sea as a deity; the natives of Great Benin believe it to be the seat of future bliss; and the Maldivians place a quantity of spices, flowers, gums, and odoriferous woods, in a boat every year and set it adrift on the waves, as an offering sometimes to the god of the sea, and at others to the spirit of the wind. Marine Associations.-When the sea rises in mountains, "Ye carry Cæsar and his fortunes" naturally rushes into the mind. Then, too, is remembered Virgil's admirable description of a storm, excelled only by that of Falconer; St. Paul's shipwreck on the island of Malta; and Telemachus cast upon the island of Calypso. Then, the type of Jonah; or the Christian Messiah stilling the storm, and walking on the waves. Then, by the power of association, we recall that passage in Seneca where he says that, in the progress of life, childhood, youth, manhood, and age follow in succession, as objects pass before our eyes during a voyage; or we meditate on the truth of those similes which compare the instability of |