the centre-point of the earth, or in other words, parallel with dm. A lateral motion towards d is thereby imparted to a liquid body resting over c. In the second case a solid and a liquid e move in the direction cm, but with different degrees of velocity. The fluid is raised, but accepts no lateral motion. In the third, b moves towards m, a liquid e in the direction cm, a solid, in that parallel to bm. Again we have a lateral motion, but opposed to that in the first case, namely towards b. This also holds good for that half of the earth turned from us. We see, therefore, that on both sides of the meridian over which stands the celestial body to which we are indebted for the flood, the water flows towards it; consequently, two ebbs bound laterally the two flood masses; and so, on either side, the water makes a lateral oscillating movement.

Were the surface of the earth everywhere covered with an equally deep sea, a very broad double-wave would go round the earth from east to west within twenty-five hours, it being highest at the equator, and sloping quite away at the poles. Something resembling this is to be seen in the South Seas, where the land retreats almost wholly. The phenomenon, however, shows an essentially different aspect in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans. In each of those waters, a new tidal wave always arises at the east coast, which is reflected on the west coast before a second primary wave has time to form. If you pass a violin bow over the sounding board, the bow, sweeping down, calls forth on the margin of this elastic board inflections which progress over it like waves, and return reflected from the margin. The more equal the intervals are which are set in motion by the bow, the more regular will be the meeting of the wavelets in their passage hither and thither; the progressive vibrations are soon changed into standing ones, when all the parts of the sounding-board vibrate simultaneously round their centre of gravity. Let us now compare the sun and moon, the bodies which influence our tides, with the light bow, and those vast ocean hollows or basins with the elastic sounding-board. Now it is not improbable that a broad arm of the sea be made to oscillate like the water in a glass, when pushed rapidly backwards and forwards on the table, with your hand. Just as this oscillating water rises and falls most at the edges, and changes its

position least in the centre, just so will the ebb and flood be stronger at the coasts than at an island in the middle of the sea. After having long asked how it would be with the ebb and flood in an ocean equally deep everywhere, and surrounding the whole earth, in the answer, of course only a theoretic one, a new step forwards has recently been made, by seeking to determine by experimental observations, what aspect the phenomenon exhibits on the actual oceans of the earth. The result there has confirmed the fact, that the flood in America indeed comes from the east, but in Africa and Europe from the west. If the tidal wave enters a narrowing bay, it is heaved higher, but if it flows round a larger island, it may possibly be delayed so long on its way, as to come rolling in when the ner part of the wave is already on the turn. Just as on a sounding board, when a water mountain and a water valley meet, there occur lines of rest. In the German ocean there is a spot where the waves pressing through the Channel, meeting that branch of the great Atlantic tidal wave coming down from Scotland, completely absorbs the flood. The grandest accumulation is to be seen in America, in the Bay of Fundy, in the rear of which there is sometimes a difference of a hundred feet in the level. If the Baltic had such flood, Berlin would at certain times be a maritime town, for the pavement of Dorotheen street, near the old observatory, lies exactly a hundred feet above the zero of the water-mark in Swinemünde. But the Baltic is so perfectly enclosed by Denmark, that not till a few years ago did the Mecklenburgers succeed in proving that it has a flood, though to be sure but of a few inches. How grand, on the other hand, are the appearances on the west coasts of Europe. We can scarcely believe the testimony of our eyes, when we behold. children in Ostend playing at the Digue on the dry strand, building their fortresses of sand, where but six hours later the bathers are disporting in the waters; or when, from the cliff's at Bristol, at the ebb, you see a dog running through the stream at that place where the omnibuses are already stopping to pick up the passengers from the steamers; when, on the line from Chester to Anglesea, the wide bay of the Dee is drained, where six hours later, returning from the Britannia Bridge, you see proud vessels afloat; or where, at the ebb, you can walk round

Heligoland dry shod, where at high tide the surge breaks on the rocks with the din of thunder. The Scandinavian coast dips so abruptly into the sea, that its cross-valleys, filling with its waters, form the fiords. The water that the high tide has carried up, rushes back at low tide with such violence that it has been said, though with much exaggeration, that Norway is a country where the ocean forms cataracts. If they are not cataracts, they are at least dangerous whirlpools, of which the maelstrom is the best known.

And what is the final result of this ceaseless, restless tossing? The effect is the most visible in the polar sea, in the unceasing breaking up of the masses of ice, the enormous pressure of which the strongest vessels are often unable to withstand; the beneficial result, however, is that passages are opened up into territories which would otherwise be locked in by an impenetrable wall of ice. The result of this thousand years' friction on our own coasts, is likewise visible in our sandy sea beach. If we try to calculate the value of the labor requisite to grind down solid blocks of rock to such minute grains, what company of shareholders would undertake to produce even the moderate quantity of sand on which Berlin is built? The reason of the great mechanical power lies herein, that the waves raised by the wind being only superficial, penetrate but little below the surface, while the force which produces the flood acts on the whole body of water. A tidal wave which rises three feet at the equator, and slopes away regularly towards the poles, bears two hundred cubic miles of water from one quarter of the earth to the other, and in six hours. If this volume seems trifling to the aggregate body of water on the earth, which Herschel computed at the 1786th part of the bulk of the earth, still the force necessary to move such a volume over such a space is not despicable, when we remember that one cubic foot of water weighs sixty-six lbs. Prussian (half a kilogram.) But how high must the tides have been when the whole earth was in a liquid state! If the first clods which solidified united to form a connected crust, then the tides must have beat them more wildly together than now in the polar seas. Is it to be wondered at, if there are everywhere traces to be found in the crystalline primitive rocks, of vast havoc and destruction, even there where they have not pushed

their way into the shattered covering which holds the strata bound together? Such traces must be most distinctly visible in the equatorial regions, because there the vertical action of the heavenly bodies must have been much greater on the flood of a still quite liquid earth.

The knowledge whether the internal liquid ocean of fire is fluid, or whether, moreover, viscous, is hidden from us. Like the visible wave on the shore, perhaps it works its way, pushing and destroying at the firm crust, on which we can often clearly trace the marks of those progressive waves which we call earthquakes. This crust is certainly plastic and pliable. Does not Sweden rise before our eyes out of the sea, which incessantly retreats from its coasts, while on the Pomeranian shores no such change is visible? In other places does not the land sink, as for instance in Istria, where Roman pavements are to be found below the present level of the ocean? Have we not, through Darwin, almost attained the certainty that the report of a sunk Atlantis is realized in the main idea, in the Pacific Ocean; where the great Australian coral reef, that no doubt once touched the coast, though now cut off from it by many a mile between, repeats the line of the coast in a great curve of some five hundred miles in extent; and where hundreds of coral rings-a lagoon in the middle-still mark out the expanse covered by the islands long ago engulfed; while the corallines are laboring unweariedly on the yielding bottom, to keep up a connection with the surface of the ocean? Their activity will not come to an end, nor the whole colony become a dead rocky mass, till the bottom of the sea rises up high and dry as so many of our mountain ranges, which, under the names of Mount Jura and the Rauhe Alp, stretch like a wall of fortification, from the southwest frontier of Switzerland, away into the region of Bayreuth.

[For the California Teacher.]

CRUMBS OF LITERATURE.

II.

There is a very familiar little anecdote, no doubt most of our boys and girls have read it in the funny columns of the news

papers, which gives us a glimpse of two great men-Pope; "the little crooked thing that asks questions ;" and Johnson, "the bear," who gave the definition.

Rasselas is not read in this generation, but no doubt our pupils have heard of the "Dictionary man," and would be interested to have the anecdote tacked on to him, so that they could feel acquainted. And if they could get some little glimpses of his good life, how honored they would feel with his acquaintance. That heart of his was as large, as Pope's was small; his life was full of struggles with poverty and sickness, yet free from stain or reproach; self-abnegation was to him no virtue, only a simple duty; as soon as he possessed a home, he filled it with the halt, the blind, the sick-those poor weary ones who had "nowhere to go"-and he was glad to be able to bear the burden of their support for years, until death showed them a better refuge. He bore his many trials with a perfect resignation, which is as far above the stoicism of Heathen philosophy as the perfect statue of Phidias is above the dull stone from which it is wrought, His was a life-time battle; surely History has no greater hero. Rough, domineering, awkward, impatient; ponderous and unwieldy of mind and body; he yet had charity, "which vaunteth not itself," dignity without affectation, and genius without vanity.

We could tell of the boy who was growing to manhood among the "bonnie braes" of Scotland, while Johnson was growing old and slowly dying in England. The boy who was possessed of so true a heaven-born genius, that even to their young minds the literature of Du Chaillu, and Southworth, and Hentz would seem poor and tasteless beside it. This peasant boy, this poetploughman, this Robert Burns, was a mosaic of humor and pathos, fire and tenderness, all vivified and blended by that mysterious something, without which all is naught. Alas! that all worldly prudence was left out of his composition; that his delicate frame should have been burned and ruined by intemperance, his fine mind been inert, his tender heart ceased to beat at the age of thirty-five. He had true pride and true dignity; both energy and application, and a warmth and benevolence of heart, which endear his poems to us beyond all others. If it did not hurt us to do so, we could hold him up as a warn