PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 
XV. The Bakerian Lecture. — On the Tides at the Port of London. 
By John William Lubbock, Esq. F.R.S. 
Received June 9, — Read June 16, 1836. 
The discussions of tide observations which I have had the honour to lay before the 
Society on different occasions, have been instituted with reference to the transit of 
the moon immediately preceding the time of high water. The Tables which I have 
thus prepared for London and Liverpool, in order to serve for predicting the phe- 
nomena, answer the purpose for which they were intended, and may also afford some 
notions with respect to the laws of the phenomena, and to the degree of accuracy of 
which the inquiry is susceptible, impeded by the rude manner in which the observa- 
tions are made, and by accidents. But when the discussion is instituted with refer- 
ence to the transit immediately preceding the time of high water, the law of the 
variations in the interval between the moon’s transit and the time of high water 
is obscured. 
The discussion of nineteen years’ observations of tides at the London Docks, which 
I now offer, has been made with reference to the moon’s transit two days previous, 
and will, I trust, be viewed with interest, for it proves that the laws to which the 
phenomena are subject accord generally with the views propounded long since by 
Bernoulli. 
Mr. Stratford states in the preface to the Nautical Almanac, that he employs 
manuscript tables for computing the time of high water at London Bridge, founded 
upon my principal Table III., given at page 401 of the Philosophical Transactions 
for 1831, and he states that this table has been reconstructed. But my table is 
founded upon so great a number of observations, and the law agrees with theory so 
remarkably, that Mr. Stratford’s alterations cannot be important. I have reason 
to think that Mr. Stratford employs my corrections for the variations of the moon’s 
parallax and declination, but that he deduced the calendar-month inequality in the in- 
terval by a process similar to that which I employed in the Philosophical Transactions 
MDCCCXXXVI. 2 F 
