156 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
[Part II. 
Effect of sea 
breeze mecha¬ 
nical, not che¬ 
mical. 
only upward and to leeward; not from being 
bent by the wind that way, but from all other 
growth being destroyed while the shoots are 
tender, and from the wind having a much 
greater power to break twigs which meet it than 
those which grow down the wind. Plenty of ex¬ 
amples of this sort of growth may be seen in the 
neighbourhood of the sea. This is from the 
mechanical force acquired by the wind in passing 
over the uninterrupted surface of the sea. It is 
common to attribute the blasted vegetation of 
trees in the neighbourhood of the sea to the 
saline or chemical qualities of the sea breeze. 
If it were so, the growth would not be hurt 
more on one side of the tree than the other. If 
it were so, trees would grow as luxuriantly on 
the south-west side, and on the top of Mount 
Edgecombe, as they do on the sheltered north¬ 
east side, for the chemical qualities of the atmo¬ 
sphere must be the same in each place. If it 
were so, we should not find the same sort of 
scarecrow growth on our inland bare plains and 
heaths as we do along our coasts. In a bare, 
open country, we have only to see on which side 
of a tree is the lowest and shortest growth of its 
head, to know where the south-west is. And if 
the stem of such a tree is cut across, the largest 
