30 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1684. 



but they being cut down, will spring again at the root. The vines have escaped, 

 and of the esculent plants and sallads most, except artichokes, which are uni- 

 versally lost; and my samphire is all rotted to the very root; how to repair my 

 loss I know not; for I could never make any of the seed which came from the 

 rock samphire to grow. 



The arborescent and other sedums, aloes, &c. though housed, perished with 

 me ; but the yucca and opuntia escaped ; tulips many are lost, and so the Con- 

 stantinople narcissus, and such tuberosae as were not kept in the chimney cor- 

 ner, where was continual fire: some anemonies appear, but I believe many are 

 rotted. 



My tortoise, which by his constant burying himself in the earth at approach 

 of winter, I reckon a kind of plant-animal ; happening to be obstructed by a 

 vine-root from mining to the depth he was usually wont to inter, is found quite 

 dead, after having many years escaped the severest winter. Of fish I have lost 

 very few ; and the nightingale, which being a short winged bird, and exceed- 

 ingly fat, at the time of the year we commonly suppose them to change the 

 climate, whereas indeed they are then hardly able to fly 100 yards, they are as 

 brisk as ever, nor do I think they alter their summer stations, whatever become 

 of them all winter. I know not yet of any body who has given tolerable sa- 

 tisfaction in this particular amongst our ornithologists. 



A Conjecture on under Currents at the Straits Mouth and other Places. By 

 The. Smith, D.D. F.R.S. N" 158, p. 564. 



In the Offing, between the North and South Foreland, it runs tide and half 

 tide, that is, it is either ebbing water or flood on the shore, in that part of the 

 Downs 3 hours, which is, grossly speaking, the time of half a tide, before it 

 is so off at sea. The reason of this diversity of tides I take to be from the 

 meeting of the 1 seas in that narrow strait. Often when the wind has blown 

 hard at N.E. or at W. or W. and by S. there has happened an alteration of the 

 tides in the Thames, which ignorant people have mistakingly reckoned a pro- 

 digv. And, it is a most certain observation, that where it flows tide and half 

 tide, though the tide of flood runs aloft, yet the tide of ebb runs under foot, 

 that is, close by the ground; and so at the tide of ebb, it will flow under 

 foot. 



Now, as to the Straits, there is a vast draught of water poured continually 

 out of the Atlantic into the Mediterranean ; the mouth or entrance of which 

 between Cape Spartel or Sprat, as the seamen call it, and Cape Trafalgar, may 

 be near 7 leagues wide, the current setting strong into it, and not losing its force 



