152 
BE VIEWS. 
whence the wind was blowing strongly, and that the vast number of birds go to prove 
the smallness, and not the greatness, of the water at which they congregated; and, 
finally, that there is nothing remarkable in the discovery of a sheet of open water, in mid¬ 
summer, only ninety miles to northward of where a ship was sailing the preceding year. 
The picture in Dr. Kane’s work of the open sea, with Morton in the foreground, will not 
(says Dr. Rink) bear criticism. The sun is represented as half-bathed in the water, al¬ 
though, at that season of the year and latitude, it must be far above the horizon.”— 
Froc. Royal Geographical Soc. of London , vol. ii. 
The following description of the tides, although not very original, 
is well written, and conveys a tolerably correct idea of tidal phenomena 
on the large scale : it is chiefly borrowed from Keith Johnston’s “ Phy¬ 
sical Atlas— 
“ Had the globe been entirely covered with water, the greatest tides would have taken 
place when the action of the sun and moon was in the plane of the equator and in the 
same meridian, for then their action would have been most direct; but in that case there 
would have been very small tides in the high latitudes, and none at the Poles, because 
then the action of the luminaries would decrease as the square of the cosine of their de¬ 
clination. That, however, is by no means the state of the tides, for, since the action of 
the sun and moon is only sensible in a vast extent of deep water, the Antarctic Ocean is 
their source and birth-place. The greatest spring tides, therefore, take place when the 
luminaries, in conjunction or opposition, are at their greatest southern declination, and 
the moon in perigee, that is, in the point of her orbit nearest to the earth. 
“When the sun and moon, under these circumstances, pass over the ocean to the east 
of Tasmania, New Zealand, and the South Pole, they raise a vast ridge of water, or great 
tidal wave, which reaches to the very bottom of the sea, and tends to follow the luminaries 
to the north-west, and, having received that primitive impulse, it continues to move in 
that direction long after the sun and moon cease to act upon it. 
“ On entering the Pacific it flows along the western coast of South America, bringing 
high water to each place as it passes; but it is so much impeded by the numerous islands 
in that ocean, that it is scarcely perceptible in many places among them; whereas in the 
Indian Ocean it rushes with such violence and speed along the shores of the Indian Pen¬ 
insula, that it arrives at Cape Comorin before noon of the first day of its existence, 
nearly at the same time that it has brought high water to the coast of Tasmania. 
“ When this tidal wave enters the Atlantic in its north-westerly course, it brings 
high water later and later to each place; but its velocity is so very different on the two 
sides of that ocean, that it arrives at Cape Blanco, on the west coast of Africa, and at 
Newfoundland, on the east coast of North America, at the end of the first twenty-four 
hours of its existence. It is then deflected to the east by the Continent of America, and 
thus flowing at right angles to its former path, it comes to the most westerly points of 
Ireland and England on the morning of the second day. The great branch of this tidal 
wave then passes north-east through St. George’s Channel and the Irish Sea, and meet¬ 
ing a branch coming round the west coast of Ireland, the united wave, after having car¬ 
ried high water to the west coast of England, and all the coast of Ireland, turns round the 
most northern point of Scotland, and arrives at Aberdeen at noon on the second day, at 
the same time carrying high water to the opposite shores of Norway and Denmark. 
Now, this tidal wave flows to the east of south, a direction exactly contrary to that with 
which it began its transit through the Atlantic, and it continues this course, ruling the 
tides along the English shores and those of the opposite continental coasts till it arrives at 
the mouth of the Thames at midnight of the second day, and does not bring high water to 
London till the morning of the third day after leaving the Antarctic Ocean. 
“The tidal wave moves uniformly and with great velocity in deep water, variably 
and slow in shallow water. For example, it moves at the rate of 1000 miles an hour in 
the South Pacific, and scarcely less in the Atlantic, on account of the deep trough which 
runs through the middle of that ocean ; but the sea is so shallow on the British coasts, 
that the tide takes more time in coming from Aberdeen to London than to travel over 
an arc of 120°—that is, from 60° S. lat. to 60° N. lat. 
