50 COURSE OF A TIDE-WAVE. 



man's Land, and at about the same time that it has 

 brought high water along the east coast of Africa to 

 the southern point of the peninsula of India, and to 

 the islands of Samatra and Java. The portion of this 

 wave which enters the Atlantic, moving obliquely, 

 strikes the coast of Newfoundland and of Cape Blanco, 

 in Africa, at the same time, namely, in twelve hours 

 after it has left the Cape of Good Hope. In four 

 hours more it reaches the mouth of the British 

 Channel, and is there parted into three branches, 

 which, by the trending of the coasts, are forced in dif- 

 ferent directions. One portion flows up channel, but, 

 owing to the shallowness, at so slow a pace, that it 

 takes twice as long to reach the port of London from 

 the Land's End as the unbroken wave took to accom- 

 plish the distance from Cape Blanco. Another por- 

 tion flows into St. George's Channel with slackening 

 speed ; but the large residue of the wave moves with 

 great rapidity round the west of Ireland, Scotland, 

 and the Orkneys, and then more slowly traverses the 

 German Ocean, bringing high water to the eastern 

 shores of Scotland and England, until it meets the 

 Channel tide about twenty hours after it had parted 

 company off Cape Clear. 



Such is the course of the tide-wave in whose history 

 we are more particularly interested, and this must 

 suffice for our present slight sketch of oceanic phe- 

 nomena. In the following chapters we shall speak of 

 the natural productions of the sea, taking them not in 

 the order of their scientific classification, but rather 

 according to the localities or habitats in which they 



