146 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The tides. 
The flood- 
tide. 
the deposits of the Brenta; and the original 
bar that caused the choking of the river and 
made the lagoons is now called the Lido. 
The tides in their rise and fall have some 
effect upon the shores, and they wear more or 
less upon the harbors and narrow inlets; but 
their usual comings and goings are too pacific 
to cause much injury. On the coast of Florida, 
where the tide rises only about a foot, there is 
no appreciable effect, but it is quite different in 
the Bay of Fundy, where it rises sometimes fifty 
feet, and with great rapidity. Its wear in that 
arrow-pointed bay is almost as severe as that of 
storm waves. Along the shore the rocks are 
worn horizontally, and show in jagged ledges 
like strata of slate. 
But the Bay of Fundy is rather an excep- 
tional case. Usually the flooding of the tide is 
a noiseless stealing upward and inward of great 
bodies of water. It backs up the river, rises 
through the marshes and meadows, covers the 
reefs, bars, and beaches, and hides from view 
the sea-weeds, the barnacled rocks, and the 
shattered hulks of sand-sunk ships along the 
shore. It is well called a ‘flood-tide,” for it 
is little more than an inundation of the sea. 
It is interesting to watch as it creeps and 
