“In great abundance. Our prairies are not more grassy than the bottom of the sea. Only, marine plants differ much from land ones. They never have blossoms, never anything that can be likened to leaves, never any roots. They attach themselves to rocks by a stickiness at their base, without being able to draw nourishment from them. They feed on water and not on the soil. Some resemble sticky thongs, folded ribbons, long manes; others take the form of little tufted buds, soft top-knots, wavy plumes; still others are slashed in strips, rolled in spirals, or shaped like coarse, slimy threads. Some are olive-green, or pale rose-color; others are honey-yellow, or bright red. These odd plants are called seaweeds.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER LXXV RUNNING WATERS “I HAVE been told,” said Emile, “that the Rhone empties its waters into the sea.” “The Rhone does run into the sea,” returned his uncle. “It pours into it every second five million liters of water.” “Receiving so much water continually, does not the sea end by overflowing, like a basin, when it is too full?” “You are out in your reckoning, my dear child. The Rhone is not the only river that goes to the sea. In France alone there are the Garonne, Loire, Seine, and many less important ones. And that is only a very small part of the streams that flow into the sea. All the rivers in the world join it, absolutely all. The Amazon, in South America, is 1400 leagues long, and ten leagues wide at its mouth. What an immense quantity of water it must furnish! “Imagine that all the streams in the world, small as well as large, the tiniest brooks no less than the enormous rivers, flow unceasingly into the sea. You know the little brook with the crabs. In certain places Emile can jump across it; scarcely anywhere is the water over his knees. Well, the brook goes to the sea exactly as the Amazon does; every second it casts its few liters of water into it; that is all it can do. But it does not dare, tiny little stream, to make the voyage alone and go and find the sea, the immense sea, all by itself. It meets company on the way, joins its thread of clear water to stronger streams which become rivers by joining their forces; the sea-going-river receives tributary streams, and the sea, in receiving the river, drinks the tiny brook.” “All running waters,” said Jules, “brooks, torrents, streams, rivers, run into the sea without a break, and that takes place all over the world, so that every second the sea receives incalculable volumes of water. So I come back to Emile’s question: How is it that, continually receiving so much water, the sea does not overflow?” “If, when full, a reservoir receives from a spring just as much as it lets out through some opening, can this reservoir overflow, even when water is always coming in?”