to be on all sides pervious. Their smoothness accounts for their sliding easily over the surfaces of one another. Their roundness keeps them from touching one another in more points than one. So great is their porosity, that there is at least forty -times as much space as matter in water. For water is nineteen times specifically lighter than gold; but gold will by pressure let water through its pores, and has doubtless more pores than solid parts.

Dr. Wainwright observes, the compounding particles of water are less than those of air; the former will pass through several bodies that the latter will not; it will force itself through the skins of animals, even after they are dried and converted into leather. Fasten a strong rope, of what length you please, to a hook; at the bottom of the cord hang any weight short of what will break it, though ever so great; you will find the weight will rise in moist weather, and sink in dry. You may also raise the weight, by moistening the sides of the cord with a wet sponge. Thus a few particles of water may overcome any finite resistance, if a cord will bear it. Now since there is but a little quantity of water in this experiment, and this is driven into the sides of the cord with a force no greater than the weight of a cylinder of air incumbent on the water, therefore the water must act by a property, whereby its force is greatly augmented; and this can be no other than that of the cuneus and the forces of wedges are to one an. other reciprocally proportional to the angles their edges do make. But in spheres the greater or lesser degree of curvity is to be considered as their angles, when spheres are considered as wedg

es, and the degrees of curvity in spheres are reciprocally as their radii. Now the particles of water being so inconceivably small, much less than those of air, they must, when acting as wedges, have their powers inconceivably increased, so as to overcome any finite resistance.

If such power is in a particle of water, what is thy power, O thou infinite Maker of that, and all things!

Dr. Cheyne observes, that the quantity of water on the outside of our globe doth daily decrease, part of it being every day turned into mineral, vegetable, and animal substances, which are not easily dissolved again into their component parts.

It is a curiosity demonstrated by Mariotte, in his du Movement des Eaux, that a Jet-d'eau never will rise as high as its reservatory, but always fall short of it by a space, which is the subduplicate ratio of that height.

In the congregations of water, and the distributions of it over our globe, we cannot but see the wonderful wisdom and goodness of our God. The great and wide sea, wherein are swimming things innumerable, it is full of thy riches, O our God! and the uses of it are marvellous. The waters are in the place which thou, O our God, hast prepared for them: Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over.

A fanciful and presumptuous gentleman having made his exceptions against the proportion of water to dry land on our globe, is well answered by Mr. Keil; that the objections proceed from a deep ignorance of natural philosophy. For if there were but half the sea that now is, there would be but half the vapours; and we should soon find Qur miserable want of these,

Mr. Ray assures us, that where the bottom of the sea is not rocky, but earth, ouze, or sand, which is incomparably the greatest part of it, it is by the motion of the waters, as far as the reciprocation of the sea extends to the bottom, every where brought to a level; that is to say, it has an equal and uniform descent from the shores to the deeps.

That the motion of the water descends to a good depth, is proved from the plants, that grow deepest in the sea; which all generally grow flat, in manner of a fan, and not with branches on all sides like trees; a thing that is contrived by the Divine Providence, for that the edges of them do in that posture with most ease, cut the water flowing to and fro. Probably in the greater depths of the sea there grow no plants at all; the bottom is probably too remote for the external air to pass in a sufficient quantity thither. Nay, we are told that in those deep seas there are no fish at all; their spawn would be lost there: being lighter than the water, it will not sink thither; and the climate there may be too coid for the quickening of it.

According to Mr. Halley's experiment, water as warm as the air in the summer, will in twelve hours exhale the tenth part of an inch. This quantity will be found abundantly sufficient for all the rains, and all the dews, and all the springs in the world and will account for the Caspian Sea, and our vast Canadian Lakes, being always at a stand; and for the current, said always to set in at the streights of Gibraltar, though the Mediterranean receive so many rivers. Every ten square inches of the surface of the water, yields

in vapour per diem (we allow it only for the time the sun is up) a cube inch of water. Every mile will yield 6914 tons. A square degree of sixtynine English miles will yield thirty-three millions of tons. If the Mediterranean Sea be estimated at forty degrees long, and four broad, which is the least, the whole Mediterranean must lose in vapours in a summer's-day at least 5280 millions of tons. And yet sometimes the winds lick up the surface of water faster than it exhales by the heat of the sun. The Mediterranean Sea receives nine considerable rivers. We will suppose each of them to bring down ten times as much water as the river Thames, which they do not; but this will allow for the small rivulets. The Thames, allowing the water to run after the rate of two miles an hour, may yield 20,300,000 tons per diem. Allow as before, and all the nine rivers bring down 1827 millions of tons in a day. This is but little more than a third of what is proved to be evaporated out of the Mediterranean in twelve hours time.

The astonishing flux and reflux of the sea, what benefits it affords to the world! If the ocean once were stagnated, first all the places towards the shore would be turned into a mephitis; and then by degrees it would yet further corrupt, till the whole became as poisonous as the lake of Sodom. The fishes would be first hereby destroyed, and by the poisonous steams, anon the plants and animals would share in the destruction. In the tide of the sea the waters are lifted up in an heap, and then let fall again. So the feared corruption is prevented: and how many conveniences afforded for our navigation! But what? Oh!

what the original of it? Where is the zaphnath paaneah who shall enlighten us?

On our globe all bodies have a tendency towards the centre of it. And such a gravitation there is towards the centre of the sun, and of the moon, and of all the planets. There is cause to suspect that the force of gravity is, in the celestial globes, proportional to the quantity of matter in each of them. The sun, for instance, being more than ten thousand times as big as the earth, its gravitation, and the attracting force of it, is ten thousand times as much as that of the earth, acting on bodies at the same distances.

If our globe were alone, or not affected by the actions of the sun and the moon, the ocean, equally pressed by the force of gravity towards the centre, would continue in a perfect stagnation, always at the same height, without ever ebbing or flowing. But it is demonstrated, that the sun and the moon have a like principle of gravitation towards their centres, and our globe is also within the activity of their attractions. Whence it will follow, that the equality of the pressure of gravity towards the centre will be thereby disturbed. And though the smallness of these forces, in respect of the gravitation towards the centre of the earth, render them imperceptible, yet the ocean being fluid, and yielding to the least force, by its rising shews where there is the least pressure upon it, and where it is most pressed, by sinking. Accordingly we shall find, that where the moon is perpendicularly either above or below the horizon, there the force of gravity is most of all diminished, and consequently that there the ocean must necessarily swell, by the coming in of the water from