228 Captain Anderson on the peculiarity of the tides 
This is evidently occasioned by the narrow passage between 
Hqrst Castle and the Island not having sufficient capacity to 
discharge the quantity of water brought by the ebb tide from 
the eastward through St. Helens ; which therefore meeting 
with a resistance at Hurst Castle, accumulates and rises within 
the Wight, at the same time filling up Portsmouth Harbour, 
Southampton River, &c. &c. when the tide is falling every 
where in the English channel. 
This circumstance arises from the same cause which 
occasions the tides to rise and fall in the Straits of Dover ; 
with this difference, that it is high water by the ground, at 
the last mentioned place when th e flood tide has run three hours 
and a quarter from the westward ; but it is high water by the 
ground at the former, when the ebb tide has run about the same 
time from the eastward. It might therefore as well be asserted 
that the tides meet at St. Helens, Portsmouth Harbour, or 
Hurst Castle, as at Dungeness ; but the fact is, that the phe- 
nomena which appear at these different places, are produced 
by the same cause producing similar effects, with only the dif- 
ference occasioned by local circumstances in the time and man- 
ner ; and this cause is the accumulation of the water brought 
forward by the tide ; an accumulation which is occasioned by 
there not being a sufficient space for its discharge, in conse- 
quence of the contraction of the channel at the particular 
places where these phaenomena are exhibited. 
There is in fact a meeting of the tides, on a small scale, 
within the Wight; for the tide of ebb from Southampton River 
meets the tide of flood from the Needles, at the sand called 
Bramble (which has probably been originally formed by 
their meeting) ; from this they flow to Spithead, and meet 
