HALF AN HOUR WITH THE WAVES. 



Quite as suggestive is the fact that ever since the 

 water of the sea was formed it has possibly never 

 been altered. It has acted as the great reservoir 

 from which solar force has lifted just the quantity 

 of moisture necessary to fertilise the dry land, and 

 so to support terrestrial animal and vegetable life. 

 The meteorological action of this moisture, whether 

 as rain, rivers, currents of the sea, tides, &c., during 

 countless myriads of ages, has worn down and 

 dissolved many a pre-adamite continent, and strewn 

 their debris along old sea-bottoms. There could, 

 therefore, have been no solid dry land such as we 

 have it, if there had been no seas. Certainly, if the 

 formation and perpetuation of an agency so vast 

 and important be not an act of design, we must 

 confess we never considered anything which better 

 deserved the name. 



What latent force lies in this great aqueous 

 reservoir ! Professor Tyndall tells us there is more 

 electricity enclosed in a single drop of water than 

 is exhibited during an ordinary thunderstorm. 

 What a fearfully latent power, therefore, must be 

 locked up in the mighty volume of water which 

 composes our oceans and seas ! Enough, if liberated, 

 instantly to reduce the solid globe to cosmical dust ! 

 Is it here that the force which held matter apart 

 when the earth was part of an Extended nebula 

 has been condensed ? If so, combined with the 

 remainder, which even more potentially keeps the 

 attenuated particles forming our atmosphere apart, 



