46 
ACCUMULATION OF NATURAL FORCES. 
slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable clothing, 
or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with earth, 
and planting upon them a forest growth. But among the 
mysteries which science is yet to reveal, there may be still 
undiscovered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders 
than these. Mechanical philosophers have suggested the pos¬ 
sibility of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some 
of the greater natural forces, which the action of the elements 
puts forth with such astonishing energy. Could we gather, 
and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power 
which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in 
one continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the 
waves, in a tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cher¬ 
bourg,* or the lifting power of the tide, for a month, at the 
head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure of a square mile of 
sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment 
of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age—which 
moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone 
—might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and 
Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vege¬ 
tation as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their 
wasting torrents into refreshing streams.f 
* In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a sea 
wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and Stevenson, 
in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to three tons per foot. 
The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface 
of about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against 
this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the 
height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive force 
than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force diminishes in 
geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases in arithmetical pro¬ 
portion. The shock of the waves is received several thousand times in the 
course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of impulse which the 
breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many thousands of 
millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial construction. 
If then man could accumulate and control the forces which he is able effect¬ 
ually to resist, he might be said to be, physically speaking, omnipotent. 
t Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to accu¬ 
mulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a temper- 
