Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/527

Rh theory of a westerly motion of the waters thus had its origin in the assumed motion of the primum mobile. The flood tide was associated with this westward motion by Scaliger and Bacon. Kepler also asserts that the flood has a westerly direction, although, as already stated, he attributes the tides to the attraction of the moon.

Descartes's vortex theory also gave a westward progression to the tidal wave because he assumed that low water would always occur when the moon crossed the local meridian.

Newton, Bernoulli and Laplace evidently contemplated tide waves progressing westward around the earth, completing the circuit in 24 lunar hours, or 24 hours and 50 minutes solar time, although they were aware that the land masses must produce many irregularities in this hypothetical motion.

In order to see how any tide wave progresses, it is necessary to reduce to a common time. This is generally taken as Greenwich lunar time. Consequently, if tides in a given locality are found to follow the meridian passage of the moon by a certain interval (expressed in lunar hours), this interval must be increased by the longitude, expressed in hours, if the place be in west longitude and decreased if in east longitude. Places having high water at the same tidal hour are said to lie upon the same cotidal line.

The first extensive charts of cotidal lines were constructed by Whewell about 75 years ago; and these charts, or these charts slightly modified, have been in common use in atlases and astronomies ever since.

The analogy between the tides and the oscillatory motion of water in a vase, or other vessel, had been noted by many even before the moon's attraction had been universally recognized as the principal and primary cause of the phenomenon. But in order that the water should oscillate, it must first be disturbed from its position of equilibrium. Galileo imagined that he had found this necessary disturbance in the non-uniform motion of different parts of the earth as it rotates upon its axis and revolves about the sun.

César d'Arcons (1667) supposes the solid earth to move a short distance back and forth along its axis, thus causing the flood in the northern hemisphere to appear to move from south to north and the ebb in the reverse direction. According to his views the entire Atlantic Ocean is a huge vessel of water, the surface rising and falling considerably at the two ends (i. e., in high latitudes), but having little vertical motion near the middle (i. e., in equatorial regions), where he logically infers the horizontal motion to be great.

John Bryanston (1683) supposes the moon to produce in the earth a small east-and-west libration, not detected by astronomers, and this