"TIDES" ON LAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3166, 17 April 1909, Page 6

"TIDES" ON LAND.

It may be difficult for most of us, perhaps, to realise that the earth, like the sea, has its "tides," that if. periodically rises and falls, and is influenced in exactly the same way as the sea; yet this fact has now been established by scientists. The theory has been long held by scientific thinkers, and ,as early at 1837 experiments were made by a French savant, in order to test this idea; but owing to inadequate instruments. he failed to achieve any result. From then onwards scientists all over Europe have designed instruments with the idea of demonstrating the dual influence which sun and moon exerted on the earth, and the periodical movements rpsulting from this influence; our own Lord Kelvin, in particular, devising a very ingenious apparatus so sensitive that at five yards distance an observer could produce a deviation in the register by merely throwing the weight of his body from one leg to the other. The difficulties in the way, however, have been immense; and the researches proved unavailing until a professor of a Prussian scientific institute put a new complexion on the matter. This was Professor Heckler, who, by dint of extreme labour and exercising his mind on the question for over four years, at last produced than instrument which finally solved the problem. Calculations have now been made which give the wonderful information that twice a day the ground rises and falls to the extent of 7£in. The question naturally arises if this is so, how is it that we do not notice it? We have only to consider, however, that as this oscillation is effected on the whole surface of the globe, nothing varies to

the observer. Besides, as is pointed out by a French scientist, do we notice the annual movement of the earth, which carries us away into space at a speed of some eighteen miles per second? "We run, we fly on a celestial automobile at a fantastic rate: who realises it?" It is onlj, by our observation at the sea-shore that we can see the rising and falling of the tide; the sailor in mid-ocean knows nothing of it. It eem*, indeed, that our old ideas about the fixity of the earth are being gradually exploded. We are even told that, peering ahead for millions upon millions of years—that is a comfort, at all events—the world may come to a dead stop owing to the loss of speed in the earth's course. But before this happens the peoples of the world will probably be fighting for sheer existence against two pressing calamities—the giving out of air and water. Against a fate of this kind, according to Professor Lowell's theories, the inhabitants of Mars are now vainly struggling.