The Greeks would not have called the ocean ἀτρύγετος, or unfruitful, though it does not produce wheat, if they had viewed it by the light of modern science; for naturalists now assert that “the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat of life,”—though not of vegetable life. Darwin affirms that “our most thickly inhabited forests appear almost as deserts when we come to compare them with the corresponding regions of the ocean.” Agassiz and Gould tell us that “the sea teems with animals of all classes, far beyond the extreme point of flowering plants”; but they add that “experiments of dredging in very deep water have also taught us that the abyss of the ocean is nearly a desert”;—“so that modern investigations,” to quote the words of Desor, “merely go to confirm the great idea which was vaguely anticipated by the ancient poets and philosophers, that the Ocean is the origin of all things.” Yet marine animals and plants hold a lower rank in the scale of being than land animals and plants. “There is no instance known,” says Desor, “of an animal becoming aquatic in its perfect state, after having lived in its lower stage on dry land.” but as in the case of the tadpole, “the progress invariably points towards the dry land.” In short, the dry land itself came through and out of the water in its way to the heavens, for, “in going back through the geological ages, we come to an epoch when, according to all appearances, the dry land did not exist, and when the surface of our globe was entirely covered with water.” We looked on the sea, then, once more, not as ἀτρύγετος, or unfruitful, but as it has been more truly called, the “laboratory of continents.” Though we have indulged in some placid reflections of late, the reader must not forget that the dash and roar of the waves were incessant. Indeed, it would be well if he were to read with a large conch-shell at his ear. But notwithstanding that it was very cold and windy to-day, it was such a cold as we thought would not cause one to take cold who was exposed to it, owing to the saltness of the air and the dryness of the soil. Yet the author of the old Description of Wellfleet says: “The atmosphere is very much impregnated with saline particles, which, perhaps, with the great use of fish, and the neglect of cider and spruce-beer, may be a reason why the people are more subject to sore mouths and throats than in other places.” VII ACROSS THE CAPE