VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 517 



22, 1629, (Stow and Howes are my authors,) those spring tides must be the 

 higher, as proceeding from a double cause. But, 



3. There is another thing well known by all seamen to be a cause of high or 

 low tides, which I wonder the author has taken so little or no notice of in his 

 essay, namely the sitting of the wind at such or such a point of the compass, 

 and blowing hard. It is the constant saying of all seamen in Kent, that ever 

 I met with, that the north-west wind makes the highest tides in the Thames, 

 Medway, and all the coasts about the south and north Forelands ; and like- 

 wise on the coast of Holland and Flanders. And the reason they allege for 

 it is, because that wind with equal force blows in the tide of flood at both ends 

 of this island of Britain, that is, from the northward between the coasts of 

 Scotland, Norway, and Jutland ; and also from the westward by the coasts of 

 Cornwall, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, &c. up along the sleeve; and, for the 

 same probable reason, they say that a south-east wind deads and hinders the 

 tides in the places near the Forelands. And agreeably to this, I very well re- 

 member when I was a boy, and lived at home with my father at Rochester, 

 which is near enough to Chatham to observe how the tides run there, that 

 when the tides were unusually high, the wind was always north-west, and the 

 moon near the full or change. And so confident I am of my memory in this 

 point, that if inquiry be made about Chatham, the hundred of Hoo, and the 

 Isle of Graine, I believe the inhabitants will with one voice say, that they never 

 fear their low marshes being overflowed by the tide, but when the wind is at 

 north-west, or thereabout, upon the spring tides. Here at Weymouth those 

 able and ancient seamen I have talked with, tell me, that a S S E. wind 

 makes the greatest tides, and that, according to the degree of the wind, 

 aeteris paribus, the tides rise more or less notably; but that they never ob- 

 serve any extraordinary tides about Allhallondtide or Candlemas, unless the wind 

 be about S S E. And the reason they give for that wind's raising the tides 

 there is very convincing, if we consider the lying of the haven in the map. 

 And, for the same reason, I suppose the wind from the same point may make 

 the highest tides at Southampton ; a westerly wind at Bristol and the Severn ; an 

 easterly wind at Hull ; a north-east wind at Wisbeach and Lynn ; a southerly 

 wind upon the opposite coasts of England and Ireland, &c. It is true, March 

 is very often more stormy than February, though seldom so stormy as Octo- 

 ber and November, which possibly might occasion that opinion, which some 

 hold, (of which number Pliny is one,) that the highest tides are about the 

 equinoxes. And if the thing were found to hit pretty frequently in March, 

 men might not be careful to observe the other equinox ; though yet it cannot 

 be denied, that we have blustering weather many times before Michaelmas. 



