As wavelets dash upon a reef, they are lit by what the Arabs call the jewels of the deep,' and the superstition is, that these flashes of light are jewels made to adorn the necks and hair of the mermaids and mermen. When removed from their native elements, the gems fade and disappear. There are soine ideas similar to this among the Scotch and other northern people. The colour of the sea greatly varies in ,different parts of the globe. It is white in the Gulf of Guinea, black around the _Maldives, vermilion off California (caused by the red colour of the infusoria it contains), and green in the Persian Gulf encl. over all coral rocks. In the Arctic Sea it under goes rapid transitions front purity to opacity, from ultramarine to olive-green, the green colour being cztused by myriads of minute insects which prey on each other. The sea-shore residenth in trop ical countries wait every morning with impatience the comiug of the sea-breeze. It sets in about eleven o'clock. Then the sultry heat of the oppress ive morning is dissipated, and there is a delight ful freshness in the air, which seems to give DEW life to all in their daily labours. After sunset
there is again another calm. The sea-breeze is now done, and in a short time the land-breeze sets in. This alternation of the sea and land breeze, a wind from the sea by day and from the land by night, is so regular in intertropical countries, that it is looked for by the people with as much confidence as the rising and setting of the sun. The oppressive heat of the sun and the climate of the sea-shore is mitigated and made both refreshing and healthful by the alteination of those winds, which invariably come from the coolest place,—the seat, which is the cooler by day, and the land, which is the cooler by night. About ten in the morning, the heat of the sun has played upon the land with sufficient intensity to raise its temperature above that of the water. A portion of this heat being imparted to the superincumbeut air, causes it to rise, when the air, first froni the beach, then from the sea, to the distance of several mile.s, begins to flow in with a most delightful and invigorating freshness.