244 PKKFACE TO THE 



servation that the hours of high water correspond, 

 speaking roughly, on the European and American 

 coasts, Bacon quotes in the De Fluxu et Refluxu Marls 

 no authority ; but in the Novum Organum he ascribes it 

 to Acosta and others. But it is very remarkable that 

 Acosta does not say what Bacon makes him say, name 

 ly that the times of high water are the same on the 

 coast of Florida and that of Europe, and that he does 

 say what Bacon admits would be fatal to his theory, 

 namely that there is high water at the same time in 

 the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In his Natural His 

 tory of the Indies, iii. 14., he speaks of the tides, and 

 of the two theories by which they had been explained. 

 There are some, he says, who affirm that the ebb and 

 flow of the sea resembles a caldron of water moved to 

 and fro, the water rising on one side when it falls on 



7 O 



the other, and reciprocally ; while others liken it to the 

 boiling over of a pot, which rises and falls on all sides 

 at once. The second view is in his judgment the true 

 one. He says that he had inquired from a certain 

 pilot, Hernandez Lamero, 1 who had sailed through 

 the Straits of Magellan about the year 1579, how he 

 had found the tides there, and particularly if the tide 

 of the South Sea or Pacific flowed when that of the 

 North Sea or Atlantic ebbed, and vice versa&quot;. Lamero 

 made answer that it was not so, that both tides ebb and 

 flow together, and that they meet about seventy leagues 

 from the Atlantic, and thirty from the South Sea. 

 With this statement Acosta is altogether satisfied ; and 

 so far from trying to compare the time of high water 

 on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, he remarks that 

 but for the Straits of Magellan it would be impossible 



1 See Acosta, iii. 11. 



