THE TIDES 169 



mentioned above, when or where else can it be generated 

 with greater certainty and facility, or more promptly? 

 Again, if it arise not there until many hours after the 

 moon has passed, how can she drag thence against resis- 

 tance what she could not and did not, lift, unresisted, on 

 the spot? While, amazedly, we are pondering these con- 

 tradictions, our Newtonian cicerone pulls us by the sleeve 

 and learnedly says, ' ' The tide never forms where it is 

 created, save only in lofty scientific contemplation; but 

 look away off into the mid- Atlantic. There is the tide, ' ' 

 he explains, ' ' that the moon gave birth to yesterday while 

 here over the Pacific; but, in the meantime, she has 

 dragged it thence overnight around the curve of the globe. 

 Eight hours hence, when the moon, now in her zenith, has 

 descended 30 degrees below our western horizon and is 

 soaring over India ", he goes on, "the crest of the tide will 

 arrive here in the midst of the Pacific, and we shall speak 

 of it as this day's tide." Ask him at what meridian 

 yesterday's tide dies out and to-day's begins; whether 

 the tide of the Atlantic dissipates itself by contact with 

 the eastern shores of the American continent, or is 

 dragged around Cape Horn into the eastern Pacific; 

 whether, if it be thus dissipated, the Pacific tide is not 

 also dissipated upon the eastern shores of Asia, India and 

 Africa and never enters the Atlantic at all and he will 

 answer you somewhat as Darwin does, "It is interesting 

 to reflect that our tides to-day depend even more on what 

 occurred yesterday or the day before in the Southern 

 Pacific and Indian oceans than on the direct action of the 

 moon to-day the problem is one of insoluble mystery." 



Again, according to Newton, the terrestrial waters 

 located on the moonward side flow toward that body, 

 while the waters on the nether side tend toward the lunar 

 ant apex. Now, the crests of all the tides at all times are 

 invariably located below the moon's horizon, consequently 

 they belong to the nether hemisphere and, by premiss, 

 should seek the antapex. But observation shows other- 

 wise, for the main tide keeps coursing up the earth's side 

 incessantly, seemingly determined to rise into the moonlit 



