146 



NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



The tides. 



The Jlood- 

 lidc. 



the deposits of the Brenta ; and the original 

 bar that caused the choking of the river and 

 made the lagoons is now called the Lido. 



The tides in their rise and fall have some 

 effect upon the shores, and they wear more or 

 less upon the harbors and narrow inlets ; but 

 their usual comings and goings are too pacific 

 to cause much injury. On the coast of Florida, 

 where the tide rises only about a foot, there is 

 no appreciable effect, but it is quite different in 

 the Bay of Fundy, where it rises sometimes fifty 

 feet, and with great rapidity. Its wear in that 

 arrow-pointed bay is almost as severe as that of 

 storm waves, Along the shore the rocks are 

 worn horizontally, and show in jagged ledges 

 like strata of slate. 



But the Bay of Fundy is rather an excep- 

 tional case. Usually the flooding of the tide is 

 a noiseless stealing upward and inward of great 

 bodies of water. It backs up the river, rises 

 through the marshes and meadows, covers the 

 reefs, bars, and beaches, and hides from view 

 the sea- weeds, the barnacled rocks, and the 

 shattered hulks of sand-sunk ships along the 

 shore. It is well called a "flood-tide/' for it 

 is little more than an inundation of the sea. 

 It is interesting to watch as it creeps and 



