166 
ABSORPTION OF MOISTURE BY TREES. 
flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the 
distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltra¬ 
tion, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, 
too, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the water 
along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, 
and thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the 
moisture out of the reach of evaporation. 
b. The Forest as Organic. 
These are the principal modes in which the humidity of 
the atmosphere is affected by the forest regarded as lifeless 
matter. Let us inquire how its organic processes act upon 
this meteorological element. 
The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark 
of living trees are always more or less pervaded with watery 
and other fluids, one of which, the sap, is very abundant in 
trees of deciduous foliage when the buds begin to swell and 
the leaves to develop themselves in the spring. The outer 
bark of most trees is of a corky character, not admitting the 
absorption of much moisture from the atmosphere through its 
pores, and we can hardly suppose that the buds are able to 
from that point. "We continued beating up northward, and between sun¬ 
rise and twelve o’clock meridian of the 28th, we had made twelve miles 
northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to seventy-eight sea 
miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly that we were able to 
count the number. On the 29th we came up with the fleet, and learned 
from an officer who came on hoard that a royal salute had been fired at 
noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the anniversary of the Queen of 
England’s coronation. The report at sunrise was evidently the morning 
gun, those at noon the salute. 
Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the kv^gtoov 
dvripi^ixov yeXacrfia rarely silent, over so great a space as ninety or even 
seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet silent to y eXao-pa advi¬ 
sedly. I am convinced that iEschylus meant the audible laugh of the 
waves, which is indeed of countless multiplicity, not the visible smile of 
the sea, which, belonging to the great expanse-as one impersonation, is sin¬ 
gle, though, like the human smile, made up of the play of many features. 
