174 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



trial diameter would be uniformly 7912.5 miles. To de- 

 form the earth, then, into its present shape required the 

 centrifugalizing to the equatorial belt of 13% miles of 

 thickness from the polar axis. But we must not overlook 

 the circumstance that this excess matter is evenly dis- 

 tributed all around the equator, consequently the thick- 

 ness of the ring at any given point exactly on the equator 

 though 13% miles, the part centrifugalized is just 6% 

 miles, or only 35,640 feet as compared with the 85,472 feet 

 adopted by Newton. Had Newton done what rightly he 

 should have done, and divided his quantity by two, he 

 would have reduced his tidal heights for sun and moon to 

 about 5% inches and 4 feet 4 inches, respectively, and, on 

 the like supposition, Flammarion's estimates would fall 

 to 4.7 and 9.9 inches. 



Newton 's second blunder lay in assuming that the 

 entire equatorial ring, the whole 13.5 miles, is composed 

 exclusively of water, though he could not help but know 

 that not more than one-sixth of it is so constituted. A 

 strict regard for accuracy should have prompted him to 

 allow for the probability that the land masses and the 

 rocky bed of the ocean, which together make up the other 

 five-sixths, are upheld not by centrifugal force at all but 

 by their solid supports. As a matter of fact, however, he 

 made no such allowance, nor do his successors to this day, 

 nor has anyone in their behalf attempted to offer any 

 apology for the omission. The reason is plain enough, 

 for to do so would be to render their estimates too 

 ridiculously trivial for consideration, namely, Newton 's, 

 1 inch and 9 inches, and Flammarion's, .8 and 1.8 inches 

 respectively. 



Although astronomers, as a class, openly profess to 

 subscribe to every jot and tittle of Newton's tidal theory 

 down to the final deductions that non-rotating bodies can- 

 not bear tides and that the axial rotation of the earth 

 supplies the power for the terrestrial tides, yet such is the 

 saving power of common sense over abstract theory 

 that these same astronomers flirt with the heretical notion 

 of the possibility of the existence of a statical tide on non- 



