J86 ON THE INTEKACTION OF NATURAL FOKCES. 



light ; and hence we are all, in point of nobility, not 

 behind the race of the great monarch of China, who 

 heretofore alone called himself Son of the Sun. But it 

 must also be conceded, that our lower fellow-beings, the 

 frog and leech, share the same sethereal origin, as also the 

 whole vegetable world, and even the fuel which comes to 

 us from the ages past, as well as the youngest offspring 

 of the forest with which we heat our stoves and set our 

 machines in motion. 



You see, then, that the immense wealth of ever- 

 changing meteorological, climatic, geological, and organic 

 processes of our earth are almost wholly preserved in 

 action by the light- and heat-giving rays of the sun ; and 

 you see in this a remarkable example, how Proteus-like 

 the effects of a single cause, under altered external con- 

 ditions, may exhibit itself in nature. Besides these, the 

 earth experiences an action of another kind from its 

 central luminary, as well as from its satellite the moon, 

 which exhibits itself in the remarkable phenomenon of 

 the ebb and flow of the tide. 



Each of these bodies excites, by its attraction upon the 

 waters of the sea, two gigantic waves, which flow in the 

 same direction round the world, as the attracting bodies 

 themselves apparently do. The two waves of the moon, 

 on account of her greater nearness, are about 3J times 

 as large as those excited by the sun. One of these waves 

 has its crest on the quarter of the earth's surface which is 

 turned towards the moon, the other is at the opposite 

 side. Both these quarters possess the flow of the tide, 

 while the regions which lie between have the ebb. Al- 

 though in the open sea the height of the tide amounts to 

 only about three feet, and only in certain narrow channels, 

 where the moving water is squeezed together, rises to 

 thirty feet, the might of the phenomenon is nevertheless 

 manifest from the calculation of Bessel, according to 



