THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 107 



they are only an adjunct to the hurricane, which, as 

 a whole, is such a great factor in the work of restoring 

 the sick atmosphere to health. 



And with this, I think, we must close this brief 

 review of the clouds of the sea, which, cursory as 

 its glance at these interesting and beautiful pheno- 

 mena has been, is, I fear, quite long enough to 

 exhaust the average reader's patience. It is a subject 

 which has been very voluminously dealt with scien- 

 tifically, and with good reason, for the clouds and 

 their work are full of importance to life on our planet. 

 But this is not, as I have often said, in any sense a 

 scientific treatise, and so we must here bid farewell to 

 the clouds, and, descending again to the ocean itself, 

 devote a little space to a consideration of the waves. 



Of late years the phenomena of waves have been 

 considered by scientific observers with the utmost 

 care, but their scrutiny has by no means been confined 

 to the waves of the sea ; indeed, these interesting 

 movements of the water surface are the least important 

 among waves. Sound waves, light waves, heat waves, 

 ether waves, afford a wonderful field for speculation 

 and minute research, and the result of this research 

 has been some of the most interesting, useful, and 

 beautiful discoveries of our time. But our only con- 

 cern at present is with the waves of the sea, which, 

 like the clouds, have long been beloved by the poet 

 and the painter for their wonderful beauty of form and 

 colour. Nor have we to consider what are popularly 

 known as tidal waves, because we are about to deal 

 with them in the chapter on Tides. We have to deal 

 with the waves whose causes are the winds, and whose 

 size and force and appearance are directly in proportion 



