CHAPTER III. 



WAVES - SYSTEM IN ALL THINGS VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 

 ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTE HEIGHT OF WAVES DR. SCORESBY 

 - SIZE, VELOCITY, AND AWFUL POWER OF WAVES ANECDOTES 

 REGARDING THEM TIDES. 



a man stands on the deck of some 

 tight-built ship, holding on to the weather 

 bulwarks, and gazing with unphilosophic 

 eye through the blinding spray at the fury of the 

 tempest by which the billows are made to roll 

 around him like liquid mountains, and the ship is 

 tossed beneath him like a mere chip, the sport and 

 plaything of the raging waters he is apt to think, 

 should his thoughts turn in that direction at all, 

 that all is unmitigated confusion ; that the winds, 

 which blew west yesterday and blow east to-day, 

 shifting, it may be, with gusty squalls, now here, 

 now there, in chaotic fury, are actuated by no 

 laws, governed by no directing power. 



Yet no thought could be more unphilosophical 

 than this. Apart altogether from divine revelation, 

 by which we are informed that " all deeps, fire, and 

 hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are 



