Wind waves are produced and perform their work in a manner which we shall now describe. When the air blows over any resisting surface, it tends, in a way which we can hardly afford here to describe, to produce motions. If the particle is free to move under the impulse which it communicates, it bears it along; if it is linked together in the manner of large masses, which the wind can not transport, it tends to set it in motion in an alternating way. The sounds of our musical instruments which act by wind are due to these alternating vibrations, such as all air currents tend to produce. An AEolian harp illustrates the action which we are considering. Moving over matter which has the qualities that we denote by the term fluid, the swayings which the air produces are of a peculiar sort, though they much resemble those of the fiddle string. The surface of the liquid rises and falls in what we term waves, the size of which is determined by the measure of fluidity, and by the energy of the wind. Thus, because fresh water is considerably lighter than salt, a given wind will produce in a given distance for the run of the waves heavier surges in a lake than it will in the sea. For this reason the surges in a great storm which roll on the ocean shore, because of the wide water over which they have gathered their impetus, are in size very much greater than those of the largest lakes, which do not afford room for the development of great undulations. To the eye, a wave in the water appears to indicate that the fluid is borne on before the wind. Examination, however, shows that the amount of motion in the direction in which the wind is blowing is very slight. We may say, indeed, that the essential feature of a wave is found in the transmission of impulse rather than in the movement of the fluid matter. A strip of carpet when shaken sends through its length undulations which are almost exactly like water waves. If we imagine ourselves placed in a particle of water, moving in the swayings of a wave in the open and deep sea, we may conceive ourselves carried around in an ellipse, in each revolution returning through nearly the same orbit. Now and then, when the particle came to the surface, it would experience the slight drift which the continual friction of the wind imposes on the water. If the wave in which the journey was made lay in the trade winds, where the long-continued, steadfast blowing had set the water in motion to great depths, the orbit traversed would be moving forward with some rapidity; where also the wind was strong enough to blow the tops of the waves over, forming white-caps, the advance of the particle very near the surface would be speedy. Notwithstanding these corrections, waves are to be regarded each as a store of energy, urging the water to sway much in the manner of a carpet strip, and by the swaying conveying the energy in the direction of the wave movement.