 is it credible, that

from the eastern and southern ocean, round Good-Hope and Cape-Horn, it should as soon overflow our coasts, as when it is vertical to the shores of Guinea? — If the moon (in conjunction with the sun) by pression and attraction, was the principal cause of flux and reflux, why is there no established tide on the Mediterranean-Sea, though of a vast breadth, and two thousand miles in length from the Streights of Gibraltar to the coasts of Syria and Palestine; but only some irregular and unaccountable swellings and falls in a few places of this sea, to wit, at Tunis, Messina, Venice, and Negropont; and these swellings, as I have seen, flowing sometimes 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 times in 24 hours; in the most irregular manner; against the fixed laws of pression and attraction, ascribed to the moon and sun, on a supposition of their causing the tides? — If pression, and the strong attractive power of the moon, and the weaker influence of the sun, forces the immense ocean twice a day from its natural quietus, and rolls it in tides, why has the Caspian Sea no Tide; no swelling or flow, reregular or irregular, excepting that sometimes, in the space of 16 years, and never sooner, it rises many fathoms, and drowns the adjacent country; to the almostruin, sometimes, of Astracan in Asiatick Russia; as happened when I was there to embark for Persia? — If it be said, that this is properly a lake, having

no communication with the ocean; yet, I answer, that it is in every quality of saltness, etc. as much a sea as any other sea; and large enough for the luminaries attraction and pression; being 500 miles from north to south, and near 400 miles in breadth from east to west: I say, large enough to avoid continuing necessarily in equilibrio, as Dr. Rutherforth says must be the case, on account of the small extent of this sea. 500 by 400 miles of sea does not require that such a sea should press equally, or that the gravity of its water should be equally diminished in every part of it, and so out of the powers, addititious and ablatitious, of the luminary; that is, the force, with which the moon encreases the waters gravity, and the force, with which the moon diminishes the waters gravity. If the moon in zenith or nadir did the work, the equilibrium of the the Caspian might be destroyed, as well
