INTRODUCTION. 7 



We have endeavored to fill these pages, not with dry and 

 uninteresting facts compiled from the cyclopsBdia, but with 

 living, breathing thoughts, which, if rightly entertained, will 

 lessen some of the weariness of daily life, give a greater im- 

 pulse to right living, and cause us to revere and adore a 

 Creator who has multiplied, everywhere in nature, countless 

 objects for our present and future well-being. 



Of our fifty millions of people, many will live and die 

 without ever having heard the voice of the sea. All want 

 to see it; all are interested in its majestic power and the 

 life with wdiich it teems. To those who are denied the 

 privilege of witnessing it for themselves, as well as to the 

 dwellers on its border, do we send this pen picture. *' God 

 gave this beautiful world — the luliole of it — to subdue and 

 enjoy." We have denied ourselves a great boon and benefit 

 by heretofore confining our research too exclusively to the 

 narrow earth. We see the sun rise, approach its meridian, 

 and decline in the West ; we are interested in the changing 

 seasons, to know when to sow, to reap and to rest ; we are 

 interested in the beautiful flowers, growing shrub, fruitful 

 vine, and majestic forests ; we are interested in the animal 

 species, both wild and domestic ; and this is right and reason- 

 able, for such knowledge is enjoined and is necessary for our 

 well-being and prosperity. 



Moisture is as necessary to animal and vegetable life as 

 is the heat radiated from the sun. The rain and the dew 

 com© not by accident. Over the whole world the rain-fall is 

 about the same, year in and year out. So interesting and 

 wonderful is the machinery that pumps out of the ocean, day 

 by day, all the waters conveyed to it by the rivers, and 

 distributes it over the land back to the sources of the rivers 

 again, that the reader can but enjoy and be profited by a 

 contemplation of the causes that produce such marvellous 

 effects. This subject, together with the Gulf Stream, — that 



