DE FLUXU ET REFLUXU MARIS. 239 



swers, &quot; nimirum quia omnis motus fit in tempore,&quot; 

 and that there is no better reason for asking the ques 

 tion than for asking why certain other motions have 

 periods of seven or fourteen days, of six months or 

 twelve. 



Another theory, which was propounded by Sfon- 

 dratus, in a tract published in 1590, and entitled 

 Causa dEstus Marts, explains the reciprocating motion 

 of ebb and flow [as owing] to the effect produced by 

 the continent of America. The water under the in 

 fluence of the sun moves in accordance with the motion 

 of the heavens from east to west. But it is reflected 

 and made to regurgitate eastward by impinging on the 

 coast of America, which was supposed to extend in 

 definitely southward (Cape Horn was not discovered 

 until [1615]) and which permits only a portion of it 

 to pass through the Straits of Magellan. Between this 

 theory, of which Patricius speaks contemptuously and 

 without mentioning the name of its author, and that 

 which J. C. Scaliger had put forth in the Exercitationes 

 adversum Cardanum, 52., there is no essential differ 

 ence, though Scaliger ascribes the general westward 

 motion of the ocean to its sympathy with the moon. 

 But in both theories the change of direction of the 

 motion is ascribed to the action of the coast of Amer 

 ica ; and both were doubtless suggested by the current 

 which flows from east to west through the Straits of 

 Magellan. 



Bacon himself, as we perceive from the following 

 tract, was inclined to adopt the same view. He com 

 pares the Straits of Dover with those of Magellan, and 

 conceives that the German Ocean exhibits on a small 

 scale the same phenomena of a stream tending in one 



