98 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



where it rolls less than a quadrant ahead, and drag it 

 back to her, and so fulfill the major hypothesis? This 

 argument, in itself so reasonable, is made stronger by the 

 circumstance that, whereas the follow tide, in its effort 

 to reach the moon, is obstructed by the f rictional resis- 

 tances conjured up by Newton, the same sort of resis- 

 tances rising up in the path of the leader tide ought to 

 abet the moon's effort to catch up, and drive that tide 

 back into her corralling arms. My point, in brief, is this, 

 that if it be indeed true that the moon creates the tide by 

 uplifting the ocean waters in the manner conceived by 

 Newton, there is no valid physical reason or argument 

 why the effect should not run even with the cause, instead 

 of counter to it, as it so plainly does. 



It will scarcely be disputed that the tidal elevation is 

 necessarily subject to a continuous levelling or wasting 

 process, tending toward the general smoothing over of 

 the ocean surface, and that, in order that the tide may 

 persist, it must be continuously recuperated. Such res- 

 torations must, perforce, occur on the spot, not thou- 

 sands of miles away. Between the Cape Verdes and the 

 Hawaii Islands stretch about 120 degrees of longitude, so 

 that when the moon soars over the latter, the tide washes 

 the shores of the former. By what dark magic does the 

 moon thus ventriloquize her tidal mandate from where 

 she stands at work, back around the bow of the earth, to 

 the eastern Atlantic? A straight line drawn from the 

 moon at any time to the tidal crest would pierce the earth 

 hundreds of miles below the surface, and it is plainly to 

 be seen that the attraction of the moon, acting directly 

 along such a line, will attack the tide through the earth 

 from underneath, and should tend to level, not to aug- 

 ment its height. The Newtonians, however, in their 

 vaunted wisdom, picture the attraction of the satellite as 

 turning the curve of the earth, as round a pulley, and lay- 

 ing a prehensile hand upon the tide and hauling it for- 

 ward by main force. 



Newton's idea of how the tides are formed, namely, 

 by the drawing away of the nearer waters from the ker- 

 nel, and the latter in turn from the rearward waters, con- 



