SIZE AND VELOCITY OF WAVES. 39 



driving spray in the cabin, one eccentric old gentle- 

 man was seen skipping about the deck with un- 

 wonted activity now on the bulwarks, now on the 

 quarter-deck, and anon in the rigging; utterly 

 regardless of the drenching sea and the howling 

 wind, and seeming as though he were a species of 

 human stormy petrel. This was the celebrated Dr. 

 Scoresby; a man who had spent his youth and 

 manhood in the whale-fishing; who, late in life, 

 entered the Church, and, until the day of his death, 

 took a special delight in directing the attention of 

 sailors to Him whose word stilled the tempest and 

 bade the angry waves be calm. Being an enthusiast 

 in scientific research, Dr. Scoresby was availing 

 himself of the opportunity afforded by this storm to 

 measure the waves! Others have made similar 

 measurements, and the result goes to prove that 

 waves seldom or never rise much more than ten feet 

 above the sea-level. The corresponding depression 

 sinks to the same depth, thus giving the entire 

 height of the largest waves an elevation of some- 

 where between twenty and thirty feet. When it is 

 considered that sometimes the waves of the sea 

 (especially those off the Cape of Good Hope) are so 

 broad that only a few of them occupy the space of a 

 mile, and that they travel at the rate of about forty 

 miles an hour, we may have some slight idea of the 

 grandeur as well as the power of the ocean billows. 

 The forms represented in our illustration are only 

 wavelets on the backs of these monster waves. 



