Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... the waves usually exert at that spot An arrangement somewhat like the buffer of a railway carriage is so fixed that the waves will beat against it and tend to drive it in against the force of a spring. As it is driven back it makes a mark, so that an inspection after a storm can tell how far the buffer has been driven in. And from that the hardest blow given by the waves can be calculated. For example, suppose that the area of the buffer be a square foot, and the strength of the spring be such that it takes a ton to drive it in 8 inches. Then, if on inspection it be found that the buffer has been driven in 8 inches, it is seen at once that the heaviest blow from the waves was one ton per square foot. It is on record that at Peterhead in Scotland a mass of masonry weighing 3300 tons was moved bodily by the waves, which must have exerted a force equal to two tons on every square foot of the area exposed to their action. At the same place blocks weighing 41 tons were moved although they were 37 feet below low water. Indeed it seems as if the depth to which the action of the waves extends must have been somewhat underestimated in the past, for, besides the above and several similar incidents, at the Bishop Rock lighthouse, in the Scilly Isles, sand was found after a storm which could only have come from the bottom of the sea, at that point 150 feet below the surface. And not only did the waves thus fetch up sand from such a depth, but they threw it on to the gallery of the lighthouse, 120 feet above the surface of the water. So the waves have their effect 150 feet down and 120 feet up in the air, at least. It may be more. The fact that the waves can thus move small particles of sand, however, at these great distances from the surface, does...
