TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION li 



Earth in its rotation, or the rotational effect of the Earth 

 apart altogether from the assumption here made that the 

 density of the Earth is the same as that of the water. Kant 

 does not disguise the incorrectness of this assumption ; but 

 the mean density of the Earth was not yet known, as it was 

 first determined by Cavendish in 1793. Moreover, Kant 

 consoles himself in connection with these and other 

 assumptions of his, by holding that they would in some 

 measure compensate for each other, because of their diverg- 

 ing on opposite sides from the truth. (It is hardly possible 

 to follow Kant's calculation, because he has not specified all 

 the numbers that are brought into it, and those stated can 

 hardly be all correct although they are quite the same in 

 two editions which I have compared. For Mathematical 

 readers the following statement may be given, as containing 

 in it all the data which Kant adduces. Kant aims primarily 

 at calculating the onset or rush of the ocean against a coast 

 extending from Pole to Pole, the east coast of America being 

 viewed as prolonged to both Poles, whereby the projecting 

 point of Africa, and the eastern coasts of Asia, are more than 

 compensated for. He does not say whether he has taken 

 as the length of coast 2,700 miles, or whether on account of 

 the sinuosity of the coasts, he has adopted a larger number. 

 The height of the surface which the land presents to the 

 onset of the water, he takes, reckoned in perpendicular 

 depth, as 600 Paris feet, or 100 fathoms; and, finally, the 

 velocity of the movement of the Sea from east to west under 

 the Equator at one foot in the second, and as diminishing 

 towards the Poles just as the movement of the parallel 

 circles (i.e., in every parallel circle, according to the propor- 

 tion of its magnitude to that of the Equator, as less in the 

 former than in the latter). Then the pressure of the Sea 

 upon the surface of the land opposite to it, will have to be 

 put as equal to the weight of a body of water whose basis is 



