In EXPLANATION OF TKL PLATES. 



them refill the clearefl evidence, and to reje£l, for a long 

 feries of ages, the experience which every year is accumu- 

 lating. 



I have colle6led from a muhitude of Sea Voyages, and 

 principally from thofe which Captain Cool performed round 

 the World, with equal fagacity and intelligence, a great 

 variety of nautical obfervations, which demonftrate, that 

 the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean are alternate and half- 

 yearly, like thofe of the Indian Ocean. Notwithftanding, 

 the very perfons who made and who relate thefe obfervations, 

 milled by the prejudice, that the action of the Moon be- 

 tween the Tropics alone communicates motion to the Seas, 

 and unable to reconcile their Currents with the courfe of 

 that Luminary, deduced only this conclufion, that they 

 were naturally irregular, and their caufe inexplicable. 



Hade they adhered to their own experience, which af- 

 fured them that thefe Currents changed twice every year ; 

 that, in the Indian Ocean, they run for fix months in the 

 fame diredion with the courfe of the Moon, and fix months 

 direélly oppofite to it ; and, in the Atlantic Ocean, in di- 

 reélions which have no relation whatever to the courfe of 

 that Star \ that they are much more rapid as you approach 

 the Poles, than between the Tropics, under the very gravi- 

 tation of the Moon \ and, finally, that they diverge from 

 the Pole that is heated by the Sun, toward that which he has 

 deferted \ they would then have referred the caufes of thefe 

 variations to the Summer and Winter of each Hemifphere ; 

 and they would have diflipated, in part, that cloud of error, 

 with which our pretended Sciences have veiled the opera- 

 tions of Nature. 



e 



Though 



