PREFACE 



TO THE 



DE FLUXU ET KEFLUXU IAEIS. 

 BY ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS. 



IT was a natural result of the progress of maritime 

 discovery in the sixteenth century, that much was 

 thought and written on the subject of the tides. The 

 reports continually brought home touching the ebb and 

 flow of the sea on far distant shores, not only excited 

 curiosity, but also showed how little the philosophers 

 of antiquity had known of the phenomena which they 

 attempted to explain. Men who dwelt on the shores 

 of an inland sea, and whose range of observation 

 scarcely extended beyond the Pillars of Hercules, were 

 in truth not likely to recognise any of the general laws 

 by which these phenomena are governed. Their au 

 thority accordingly in this matter was of necessity set 

 aside ; and a number of hypotheses were proposed in 

 order to explain the newly discovered fai^s. Of these 

 speculations an interesting account is given in the 

 twenty-eighth book of the Pancosmia of Patricius. It 

 is not, however, complete ; no mention being made of 



