THE TIDES AND TIDAL ROTATION 87 



Perhaps the reader will here ask, "Then what be- 

 comes of the friction?" One very obvious answer to 

 this is that it magnetizes the earth, and so makes pos- 

 sible the mariner's compass. The second and more im- 

 portant reply is that without this friction the earth 

 would not rotate at all, but, like the planet Mercury, 

 would settle permanently with its center of gravity 

 pointed toward the sun. Referring now to the diagram 

 (Fig. III.) : Let AB represent an arc of the earth's 

 orbit, and E the earth. According to my previous ex- 

 planation, the earth's kernel keeps continually sinking 

 through and displacing the water that blocks its out- 

 look to the sun, thereby causing closer contact, and of 

 course stiffer friction, at the point X than elsewhere on 

 its circumference, and so, as it were, continually trip- 

 ping the kernel into rolling forward on its face. The 

 planet is not, however, thereby retarded, whether rota- 

 tionally or revolutionally, but is made to press onward, 



AT THE BEHEST OF THE PRIME RESULTANT, to Sustain 



her share in the systemal balancing act, never alight- 

 ing, and never by any chance rolling out of her en- 

 circling water-trough. A stately ship is our Earth, 

 driven by wireless power from the stars: herself the 

 compass; her oceans the trough; humanity her passen- 

 gers ; eternity her port. 



The Prime Resultant has a still further bearing on 

 this particular subject of the tides. As previously sug- 

 gested, it creates a permanent low tide at the north pole 

 and a correspondingly high one at the south pole; the 

 result being, I think, that at some particular paral- 

 lel of north latitude this permanent tide and the diur- 

 nal ones of the sun and moon clash and mutually can- 

 cel each other, thereby causing, on the one hand, a line 

 of high water along the parallel and, on the other, com- 

 paratively smooth water farther north. 



