Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/101

Rh would be equal if the sea had everywhere the same depth; I found further that in giving to this depth convenient values one was able to augment the height of the tides in a port conformably to the observations. But these investigations, in spite of their generality, did not satisfy at all the great differences which even adjacent ports present in this regard and which prove the influence of local circumstances. The impossibility of knowing these circumstances and the irregularity of the basin of the seas and that of integrating the equations of partial differences which are relative has compelled me to make up the deficiency by the method I have indicated above. I then endeavored to determine the greatest ratios possible among the forces which affect all the molecules of the sea, and their effects observable in our ports. For this I made use of the following principle, which may be applied to many other phenomena.

"The state of the system of a body in which the primitive conditions of the movement have disappeared by the resistances which this movement meets is periodic as the forces which animate it."

Combining this principle with that of the coexistence of very small oscillations, I have found an expression of the height of the tides whose arbitraries contain the effect of local circumstances of each port and are reduced to the smallest number possible; it is only necessary to compare it to a great number of observations.

Upon the invitation of the Academy of Sciences, observations were made at the beginning of the last century at Brest upon the tides, which were continued