Facts About the Tide.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7706, 7 January 1905, Page 2

Facts About the Tide.

To the ordinary landsman the tides along the coast are most puzzling. He has been taught tfiat tho tides rise and (all twice inj the twentyr four hours, and that this depends in some mysterious way upon the moon. Hut when it occurs that in his travels he sees a spot along the shore where there is no tide at all he is at a loss to explain this .phenomenon,:

To be quite exact, there is only one pcean in the worid where tides follow the moon with absolute regularity. This is in the great Antarctic basli), and there only, is to be found the sweep of water which is entirely uninterrupted by land. The enormous wave raised by tho moon's attraction courses round the world south of Cape Horn and uho Cape of (/bod Hope with ' absolutely nothing to break it. In the northern hemisphere great masses of land interrupt tho tidal waves and, combined with the shallowness of the inland seas,, cause them to ]>errorm antaca which seem most strange. Tho depth of tho water has much to do with tidal irregularities. Out in th'o open ocean, where the tide is abysmal—that is, about live thousand fathoms—the speed of the wives is amassing. Where the depth decreases to five fathoms the tide cannot trawl more than fifteen miles an *our. In Kngland, for example Winch is surrounded by narrow, land-broken scus, the result is that they got some of the most terrible and dangerous tidal races and currents to be found anywhere in the world, Ihe most formidable of these | is. the whbUpool between the islands ol Java and Scarba, on tho west as The Cauldron of the Spotted beas. - Hero is a race running at a speed to bo matched only by a mountain torrent. The force of a heavy tidal current pushing up a, wide-mouthed river caused what is termed a 'bore." The most:. striking example of this tiflul feature is seen on the Amazon, a moving wall of water thirty feet in height, and reaching from bank to burnt, rushing inland from the ocean.