196 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



THE OCEAN. 



temperature was 58.4, the average hottest day being 65.5, 

 and the coldest 46. The lowest point to which the thermom- 

 eter fell was 41.5, and occasionally in the middle of the day 

 it rose to 69 or 70. Yet with this high temperature, almost 

 every beetle, several genera of spiders, snails, and land-shells, 

 toads and lizards, were all lying torpid beneath stones. But 

 we have seen that at Bahia Blanca, which is four degrees 

 southward, and therefore has a climate only a very little 

 colder, this same temperature, with a rather less extreme 

 heat, was sufficient to awake all orders of animated beings. 

 This shows how nicely the arousing of hibernating animals 

 is governed by the usual climate of the district, and not by 

 the absolute heat. 



THE OCEAN. 



WHAT are the boasted glories of the illimitable ocean? 

 A tedious waste, a desert of water, as the Arabian calls it. 

 No doubt there are some delightful scenes: a moonlight 

 night, with the clear heavens and the dark glittering sea, 

 and the white sails filled by the soft air of a gently-blow- 

 ing trade-wind ; a dead calm, with the heaving surface pol- 

 ished like a mirror, and all still except the occasional flap- 

 ping of the canvas. It is well once to behold a squall with 

 its rising arch and coming fury, or the heavy gale of wind 

 and mountainous waves. I confess, however, my imagination 

 had painted something more grand, more terrific in the full- 

 grown storm. It is an incomparably finer spectacle when 

 beheld on shore, where the waving trees, the wild flight of 



