INFLUENCE OF THE TIDES. 23 



ever often he may have witnessed its charming recurrence, does 

 not reside in the bosom of the liquid element itself, but is to 

 be sought for far away, over the remote abysses of ether, in 

 the attractive power of the sun, and still more so of the moon, 

 who, as she rolls along, causes the obedient waters to follow in 

 her wake. 



Thus Science teaches us : and surely no accusation was ever 

 more unfounded than the frequent reproach that she has 

 banished poetry from Nature, and prosaically robbed her of the 

 enchanted garb with which she had been invested by the 

 creative fancy of past ages, for even the brilliant imagination 

 of a Shakespeare could not possibly have conceived a greater 

 image than that of the ever-restless tide-wave, which, following 

 the triumphant march of the sun and moon, began as soon as 

 the primeval ocean was formed, and is to last uninterruptedly 

 as long as our solar system exists ! 



The influence of the tides upon the marine plants and 

 animals is of the greatest importance. A vast number of polypes, 

 mollusks, and crustaceans thrive only within, or but a few 

 fathoms below, the littoral zone (as the belt of rock or shingle 

 extending from high-water to low-water mark is termed), and 

 many of the commonest algae best flourish when alternately 

 bathed with floods of water and of air. 



Many of these plants and lower animals could not possibly 

 live if the continual oscillations of the tides did not constantly 

 saturate the coast-waters with the oxygen which is necessary for 

 their existence; and, along with these, numbers of fishes, 

 sea-birds, and marine mammalians, such as seals, manatees, or 

 dugongs, that now feed upon the abundance of the shallow 

 waters, must also have been blotted from the book of life. 



Thus the beautiful shells, the grotesque crustaceans, the plant- 

 like polypes and corals which thrive best among the roaring 

 breakers, the gulls and divers, and many other birds that dwell in 

 the littoral zone, or hover about its skirts, are, if not all of them, 

 yet mostly indebted for their existence to the friendly moon who 

 sends down her rays upon them from the distance of so many , 

 thousand miles. She bears no sea on her arid volcanic surface ; 

 as far as we know, no atmospheric ocean rolls its billows over her 

 lofty mountain-peaks ; but although she herself is naked and 

 waste, she fosters life on the shores of the ocean of another 



