4 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



friends of the highest intellectual calibre (I dare not 

 particularize) in the suburbs of a northern city, and on 

 a Sunday morning my hostess invited me to come with 

 the family to their church to hear their minister, 

 whom she described as a perfect marvel of didactic 

 eloquence. I went, and for the first ten minutes of 

 the sermon was very pleased. But for the remaining 

 forty minutes I was intensely bored, because it was 

 abundantly evident that all the preacher had to say 

 he had said in the first ten minutes, after that all was 

 repetition ad nauseam. Upon leaving the church I 

 was pressed for my opinion of the preacher, and gave 

 it honestly. " Ah," said my hostess ; " but, you see, 

 most of us need that plain repetition in order to fix 

 the facts firmly in our minds, otherwise an average 

 shallow memory, such as mine, is unable to retain even 

 a modicum of the discourse." Which saying, although 

 to my mind savouring of rather sensitive modesty, 

 set me thinking, and left me with the conclusion 

 that the lady was not far from the truth of the 

 matter. 



So much by way of preliminary, now to the subject. 

 What does the sea do for us Britons in the matter of 

 health ? Well, in the first place, situated as these 

 islands are on the eastern verge of the North Atlantic 

 Ocean, we must receive the full force of the westerly 

 winds, the prevalent westerly movement of the whole 

 atmospheric mass over full three thousand miles of 

 open ocean. There is nothing to shield us from its 

 impact, no intervening land to filter away, so to speak, 

 some of its benefits from us. Throughout the greater 

 portion of the year this mild, moist wind flows steadily 

 towards us from the west, whatever asperity it may 



