236 PREFACE TO THE 



the hypothesis of Caesalpinus, which is in itself a 

 curious one, and which clearly suowested to Galileo his 



/ OO 



own explanation of the cause of the tides. Otto Cas- 

 mann, the preface to whose Problemata Marina is 

 dated in 1596, gives a good deal of information on 

 the same subject, some of which however seems to 

 be simply copied from Patricius ; but he mentions 

 Caesalpinus, whom, as I have said, Patricius omits. 

 Patricius, it may be remarked, is a scrupulously or 

 thodox philosopher, and dedicates his work to Greg 

 ory XIV. with many expressions of reverence and 

 submission. 



It is perhaps on this account that he has said nothing 

 of Caesalpinus, whose works w r ere &quot; improbatae lec- 

 tionis &quot; and who seeks to explain the tides, and also 

 certain astronomical phenomena, by denying the ortho 

 dox doctrine of the earth s immobility. 



The earliest modern writer whom Patricius men 

 tions is Frederick Chrysogonus, whose work on the tides 

 must have been published in 1527. To his account of 

 the phenomena little, according to Patricius, was added 

 by subsequent writers ; nor are his statements contra 

 dicted by- the reports of seafaring men, who however 

 mention certain matters of detail which he had omitted. 

 Of seamen Patricius particularly mentions Peter of 

 Medina and Nicolaus Sagrus, the latter with especial 

 commendation. From Sagrus (but probably through 

 Patricius) Bacon derived some of the statements of the 

 following tract ; those, namely, which relate to the 

 progress of the tide-wave from the Straits of Gibraltar 

 to Gravelines. On the day of new moon, according to 

 Sagrus, there is high water along the coast from Tarifa 

 to Rota at an hour and a half after midnight. After 



