THE TIDES '''''"'*' 



would have reduced his tidal heights for sun and moon to 

 about 5% inches and 4 feet 4 inches, respectively, and, on 

 the like supposition, Flammar ion's estimates would fall 

 to 4.7 and 9.9 inches. 



Newton 's second blunder lay in assuming that the 

 entire equatorial ring, the whole 13.5 miles, is composed 

 exclusively of water, though he could not help but know 

 that not more than one-sixth of it is so constituted. A 

 strict regard for accuracy should have prompted him to 

 allow for the probability that the land masses and the 

 rocky bed of the ocean, which together make up the other 

 five-sixths, are upheld not by centrifugal force at all but 

 by their solid supports. As a matter of fact, however, he 

 made no such allowance, nor do his successors to this day, 

 nor has anyone in their behalf attempted to offer any 

 apology for the omission. The reason is plain enough, 

 for to do so would be to render their estimates too 

 ridiculously trivial for consideration, namely, Newton's, 

 1 inch and 9 inches, and Flammarion 's, .8 and 1.8 inches 

 respectively. To me, however, the most amazing thing 

 about the whole business is the cool nonchalence with 

 which the whole tribe of Newtonians help themselves to 

 this fund of "centrifugal force" without bothering them- 

 selves in the least as to whence it came, or how it is recu- 

 perated! They resemble the prodigal wife who could not 

 comprehend why her credit with the bank had run out, 

 because of the fact that she still had a plenty of blank 

 checks on hand. It is a wonder to me that, with all their 

 unrivaled genius for invention, astronomers have not yet 

 been able to invent a "persistent" bank account, and so 

 rendered themselves independent of the donations they 

 are continually soliciting from a generous public. 



Although astronomers, as a class, openly profess to 

 subscribe to every tit and tittle of Newton's tidal theory 

 down to the final deductions that non-rotating bodies can- 

 not bear tides and that the axial rotation of the earth 

 supplies the power for the terrestrial tides, yet such is the 

 saving power of common sense over abstract theory 

 that these same astronomers flirt with the heretical notion 

 of the possibility of the existence of a statical tide on non- 



