By the Deep Sea

CHAPTER I.. The Sea and Its Shores.

THE SEA AND ITS SHORES.

The sea is the very fountain and reservoir of the life of this globe. As the heart is to man and his fellow vertebrates, so is the ocean to the world. It is the centre of the circulatory system; and that system means the life, the health, the sustenance of the body through which it sends its fluids. With the destruction of the heart the human life must cease; and with the annihilation of the sea, could such a thing be possible, all life on the globe must come to an end. We know it is the source of all our vitalizing showers, of every fertilizing stream, of every commerce-laden river. The sun and the winds distil its waters, and carry the sponge-like clouds over the lands, to drop their moisture in rain and mist and snow, making vegetation possible, and giving man two-thirds of his entire substance; for there are ninety-eight pounds of water in the man of ten stone!

The ocean does almost everything for man. Consider this statement well, and you will be astounded at the way in which we are everywhere dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the sea as the great reservoir of the world’s water, and as the manufacturer, by means of its myriads of living contents, of new and useful material from the old and worn-out rubbish, the very refuse and filth, that we daily pour into it. In fact, one of the principal occupations of civilised man may be said to consist in making clean water dirty; and one of the greatest operations of Nature is to make the dirty water clean and pure again. Like the man in the fairy story, the sea gives us new lamps for our old battered and bruised ones; and it is mainly enabled to do this by reason of its immensity and the enormous variety of its population, each able to turn some portion of our rubbish to account. According to the most recent estimates, the cubical contents of the ocean is fourteen times greater than the bulk of the land, and this means that the whole of the land could be lost in the oceans. Not only so, but if all the continents and all the islands were dumped down into the Atlantic, there would still be two-thirds of that great ocean quite clear, and the whole of the other oceans would be undisturbed. It is calculated that the entire surface of the globe is 188 millions of square miles, and of this, the small portion of 51 millions of square miles represents the land surface, whilst the Pacific Ocean alone has a surface area of 67 millions of square miles.

It is no wonder that the immensity and mystery of the sea have always exercised a fascination over man. Emerson declares that “the Scandinavians in our race still hear in every age the murmurs of their mother, the ocean;” but he need not thus have limited the thought--in this respect, at least, we are all Vikings, and the murmurs of our mother still draw us to her side. Whether we be Scandinavians or Celts, the sea has power to bring us to her to-day as strong as ever it had over our forefathers, who found in the seas that lap our little isles the secret of national liberty, wealth, and power, such as no other country has ever enjoyed. What a part the sea has played in the making of the great Anglo-Saxon race! It is but meet that we should try to understand something of that great heart of Nature; and for years we have been sending expeditions here and there to sound its depths, and collect facts that shall one day enable us to know it thoroughly. We cannot all undertake, or accompany, such expeditions, and must, therefore, be content to read with delight of their results; but great numbers of us make our annual pilgrimage to the sea-shore, and, if we will, may learn much of its wonders and beauties without running into danger, experiencing the discomfort of sea-sickness, or risking more than the wetting of a foot.

In the present volume it is the author’s desire to act as a friendly go-between, introducing the unscientific seaside visitor to a large number of the wonderful and interesting creatures of the rocks, the sands, and the shingle beach. Some may think this a work of supererogation, for already many volumes have been issued with a similar object. It is true that there are a number of manuals upon the wonders and the common objects of the shore, but the best are out-of-date or out-of-print, and the recent ones are such shocking examples of bookmaking without much knowledge of the subject in hand, that the practical ’long-shore naturalist smiles and writhes alternately as he turns their pages. Whatever else the present effort may lack, I claim for it this merit, that it has been written in close contact with the things it describes--not only of cabinet specimens, but of the living creatures under natural conditions. There is not a line in the whole volume that has not been written within a few yards of, and in full view of the rocks where the waves forever break, sometimes gently with a low murmuring, almost a whisper; at other times rearing their white crests a mile away, then sweeping across the bay, flinging their malachite curves upon the rocks with giant force and thunderous roar, whilst the foam flakes flying high tap softly at my window.

As far as possible I have dealt with the fauna of the rocky shore separately from that of the sands or the shingly beach, but it must be understood that in Nature there is a good deal of overlapping. It will also be no surprise to the reader that the rocky shore bulks more largely in these pages than sand or shingle; the rocks with their cracks and caves and pools affording protection to many delicate organisms against the fury of the waves. Naturalists have marked off the sea-bed into a series of zones, an arrangement which may seem somewhat arbitrary, but which is found very useful in practice. The first or highest of these zones is known as the Littoral zone (Latin, litoralis, the shore), and includes all the shore, be it rocks, sand, shingle, or mud, that lies between the highest and the lowest of spring-tide marks. Next to this comes the Laminarian zone, so-called because between very low tide and a depth of about fifteen fathoms of water, the Laminaria digitata, or Oar-weed, grows profusely over the rocky ground, and forms a splendid cover for the luxuriant animal life that haunts it. Our district is the Littoral zone, and the Laminarian zone forms our seaward boundary, which we cannot cross, for its exploration needs the use of boat and dredge. It is a very tempting province to enter, for it contains the oyster-banks, and many interesting forms of life.

He who would see the most that the shore has to exhibit to him, must consult the local tide-table, and the table of the moon’s changes. If his stay at the seaside is to be brief, he must endeavour to let the date of his start be governed by lunar considerations. Many business men cannot get away for more than a fortnight, and if any such should wish to make the best use of his time in connection with natural history, we should advise him to begin his holiday at the period of the moon’s first or third quarter. He will thus arrive at the time of neap-tides; that is, when high-water is low, and low-water not much lower--when, in a word, there is the least difference between high and low water. The local weekly newspaper will in all probability contain the times of high-water for every day in the coming week. If not, he must find out on his first day at what hour low-water is reached, and for at least an hour before that time he must be on the shore with basket of wide-mouthed bottles--glass jam-jars are the best, for they are easily obtained everywhere, and should an accident happen to one through collision with a rock, no great harm is done. Now bear in mind that the time of low- or high-water will be about forty-five minutes later to-morrow than it was to-day, and the same number of minutes must be added on each day to give the correct time for your visit to the shore. Arrived there, it is best to keep close to the ebbing tide, and as it goes further and further back, to turn over the stones and weeds that have just been left by it. In this way you will get acquainted with the best manner of proceeding, according to the peculiarities of the special bit of coast you are on, so that when, a week after your arrival, there comes the spring-tides, you will be able to make far better use of your opportunities than if you had arrived in the locality just at the period of spring-tides.

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