Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/41

Rh to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it; and the palms and bananas of Japan will change it into flowers. The oxygen we are breathing was distilled for us some short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna and the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon; the giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, and the forest, older than the flood, that lies buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the Mountains of the Moon, gave it out. The rain we see descending was thawed for us out of the icebergs which have watched the Polar Star for ages, or it came from snows that rested on the summits of the Alps, but which the lotus lilies have soaked up from the Nile, and exhaled as vapour again into the ever-present air."

40. The operations of water.—There are processes no less interesting going on in other parts of this magnificent field of research. Water is nature's carrier. With its currents it conveys heat away from the torrid zone and ice from the frigid; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicles of its vapour, it first makes it impalpable, and then conveys it, by unknown paths, to the most distant parts of the earth. The materials of which the coral builds the island, and the sea-conch its shell, are gathered by this restless leveller from mountains, rocks, and valleys in all latitudes. Some it washes down from the Mountains of the Moon, or out of the gold-fields of Australia, or from the mines of Potosi, others from the battle-fields of Europe, or from the marble quarries of ancient Greece and Rome. These materials, thus, collected and carried over falls or down rapids, are transported from river to sea, and delivered by the obedient waters to each insect and to every plant in the ocean at the right time and temperature, in proper form, and in due quantity.

41. Its marvellous powers.—Treating the rocks less gently, it grinds them into dust, or pounds them into sand, or rolls and rubs them until they are fashioned into pebbles, rubble, or boulders: the sand and shingle on the sea-shore are monuments of the abrading, triturating power of water. By water the soil has been brought down from the hills and spread out into valleys, plains, and fields for man's use. Saving the rocks on which the everlasting hills are established, everything on the surface of our planet seems to have been removed from its original foundation and lodged in its present place by water. Protean in shape, benignant