TOL. I.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 105 



been made by several persons to my hypothesis, and that in the same order 

 your paper presents them to me : I shall next give you some account of the 

 two books which you advised me to consult ; so far as seems necessary to this 

 business ; which upon your intimation I have since perused, though before 

 I had not. 



And first, as to that of Isaac Vossius, De motu Marium et Ventorum ; 

 though I do not concur with him in his hypothesis, that all the great motions 

 of the seas, &c. should arise only from so small a warming of the water as to 

 raise it (where most of all) not a foot in perpendicular, (as in his 12th chap- 

 ter,) or that there is no other connexion between the moon's motion and the 

 tide's menstrual period, than a casual synchronism, which seems to be the 

 doctrine of his l6th and 18th chapters ; beside many other things in his 

 philosophy which I cannot allow ; yet I am well enough pleased with what 

 is historical in it, of the matter of fact ; especially if I may be secure that he 

 is therein accurate and candid, not wresting the phaenomena to his own 

 purpose. But I find nothing in it which induces me to vary from my 

 hypothesis. For granting his historicals to be all true, the account of the 

 constant current of the sea westward, and of the constant eastern blasts, &c. 

 within the tropics, is much more plausibly, and I suppose truly rendered by 

 Galilaeo long since from the earth's diurnal motion ; (which near the equator 

 describing a greater circle than nearer the poles, makes the current to be there 

 more conspicuous and swift, and consequently the eddy or re-current motion 

 nearer the poles, where this is more remiss ;) than can easily be rendered by 

 so small a tumor as he supposes. Not to add that his account of the progres- 

 sive motion, which he fancieth to follow upon this tumefaction, and by acce- 

 leration to grow to so great a height near the shore (as in chap. 13 and 14) is 

 a notion which seems to me too extravagant to be solved by any laws of statics. 

 And that of the moon's motion only synchronizing with the tides casually, 

 without any physical connexion, I can very hardly assent to. For it can hardly 

 be imagined that any such constant synchronism should be in nature, but 

 where either the one is the cause of the other, or both depend upon some 

 common cause. And where we see so fair a foundation for a physical connec- 

 tion, I am not prone to ascribe it to an independent synchronism. In sum, 

 his history doth well enough agree with my hypothesis ; and I think the phaeno- 

 mena are much better solved by mine than his. 



And then as to Gassendus, in his discourse De ^stu Maris, I find him, af- 

 ter the relating of many other opinions concerning the cause of it, inclining to 

 that of Galilaeo, ascribing it to the acceleration and retardation of the earth's 

 motion, compounded of the annual and diurnal ; and moreover attempting to 



VOL. I. O 



