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[[October 1867]]

Spouting Wells and Flowing Springs.
  MESSRS. EDITORS:- The phenomena of running springs and spouting wells has been mainly attributed to hydrostatic pressure. This is rational enough for all such flows as have a head reservoir, but it will not account for the outflow of springs on the plateaus of high mountains, nor even in plains where there are no adjacent highlands. We must find a more philosophical solution. We find it in the centrifugal force of the earth's axial revolution, What else accounts for the strong outflowing springs on top of the Allegheny mountains where there is no higher land for hundreds of miles? the centrifugal force in the revolution of the earth causes a tidal wave to roll around it in the southern ocean ahead of the solid parts of the planet. A ship will sail upon this tidal wave at the rate of 24 knots an hour, as has been demonstrated by mariners who followed the directions as laid down under this theory of sailing from the Pacific to the Atlantic by doubling Cape Horn. On this tidal wave fact may yet be found a more rational theory of the tides than that of moon attraction. The tidal wave by regurgitation and regurgitation will account for the flowing and the ebbing of the tides by the water striking the Capes Horn and Good Hope, and it will moreover account for the absence of tides on the open ocean and on the lakes.
  But our subject now is spouting wells. How the water gets to these submundane basins may be accounted for in two ways. Rains percolate the earth to seek these basins, and centrifugal force will not prevent this. And as the earth is cavernous the oceans will also sap into these interior basins. Some of these basins may be fresh by the water giving up its salt in passing through substances having more affinity for salt than water. It may also become fresh by passing hot regions where it is evaporated and then passing in the form of vapor into cooling regions and there condensed into pure spring water. When we consider that land occupies only one fourth of the earth's surface it is not difficult to believe that water may find its way to any point under the dry land either plain or mountain. many springs reveal the phenomenon of rising and falling in accordance with the changes of weather. I know a spring (a sulphur spring), that rises always when a rain is pending, and falls when the weather clears off again. Why is this? Just before a rain the atmospheric pressure is diminished. Centrifugul force has at such time less supercumbent resistance, and the well rises. When the atmosphere in clear weather resumes its normal elasticity and weighs more heavily upon the surface of the earth and the well, the water resumes its normal level. Many years ago in passing over the tops of the Allegheny Mountains in a stage coach a fellow passenger asked me the question, "Do you know what makes the water run out of the top of this mountain?" This puzzling question made me think over the matter with much interest, and as hydrostatic pressure would not account for it I this case, as it does not in the cases of some of your intelligent correspondents, we are compelled to seek for a solution that will answer these extreme cases, and I am persuaded, after weighing the matter well in the balance of great natural laws, that centrifugal force is at the bottom of this singular phenomenon [[.]] Centrifugal force will not prevent the rains from percolating into these deep basins through the sinuous pores of the earth. If you take a sponge and saturate it with water to a degree that it will not run out without considerable pressure, and tie this sponge to a string and swing it around your hand it will not throw off the water by centrifugal force. Now take and fully saturate it and swing it around and the water will fly off. Take a sponge perfectly dry and whirl it around in like manner in a drizzling rain and it will absorb a quantity of water. I state this merely to show that centrifugal force will force out water in some cases and not in others. 
  Centrifugal force is the cause assigned for the bulging of [[rest cut off]]

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the death round its equator about 14 miles beyond the common surface of our planet. We know also that this centrifugal force throws out around the earth's equator a mass of vapor that forms a cloud belt around the world several hundred miles broad.
  If this solution of the question has any insurmountable scientific obstacles, I would like to have them stated by you or any of your philosophic correspondents. After a while I will demonstrate through your paper how this same law of nature will more rationally account for the tides. 
  Lancaster, Pa        JNO. WISE

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Scientific American 
Correspondence

Tides and Their Causes
  The Phenomenon of the daily tides of our seacoast and tidal rivers is attributed to the attraction of the moon upon the earth- that the moon draws the earth towards it, and that in drawing the earth towards it, it bulges up the water of the ocean on the side presented towards the moon, and drawing the earth and water thus on that side, also draws the earth away from the water on the opposite side of it, and thus leaves the water bulged up on that side, and in doing all this the effect comes after the cause some three hours, which is termed "the tide lagging behind." Now if we knew, per see, what attraction of gravitation was, and that it produced this anomaly of force, there would be nothing to question in the matter. But as we only know by attraction this it means drawing to, it is impossible to reconcile the theory of the tides as they run to the attraction of the moon. If the moon is so potent in drawing up, why does it not draw a bulge on the inland seas- our great lakes? I will not discuss the question of the moon's Apogee and Perigee- its different velocities in different pasts on its orbit, as laid down by the law of Kepler, or whether it turns once on its axis in a month, or not, as either theory will answer for its phases, as well as for the face of the "Man in the Moon," but I will endeavor to give a more rational theory for the phenomenon of the daily tides.
  The earth revolves on its axis and makes a revolution every twenty-four hours, and this moves its equatorial surface nearly a thousand miles per hour. Now the water on its surface, covering about three- fourths of it, and being more mobile than the solid earth, is, by centrifugal force, made to roll around the earth, the same as the water is made to move around the grindstone when in motion, a thing familiar to every body that uses that instrument. in the Southern Ocean this motion of he water is so well known to mariners who double Cape Horn in sailing from San Francisco to New York, that they now run considerably lower down in order to ride this tide eastward, than they did in former times. Here then we have on fact of water tide more comprehensive, at least, than the tractive theory of the moon. We have also the fact of two great promontories in Capes Horn and Good Hope, where this great tidal wave must strike against, and they produce constant oscillations of the water to and fro, and produce regurgitation and regurgitation in all the gulfs and rivers that line the coasts of the Northern, or more properly, the Land Hemisphere. These gurgitations swell the water highest in the places where the seas become the narrowest,

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[December 28, 1897.


as the more northern latitudes. In addition to these daily oscillations of the water, there are constant eddy currents, denominated "Gulf Streams," all agreeing in their courses and motion to this theory of the ocean tides.
  When our present received tide theory of moon attraction was first laid down, the fact of the water of the great Southern ocean rolling round faster than the solid parts of our planets was not known. Smith. in his Physical Geography, says, "The tidal wave flows from east to west, owing to the earth's daily rotation in a contrary direction." Here he is unintentionally correct, because the water striking these promontories of the two great capes, is hurled back, and not, as he assumes, that the great ocean wave is moving from east to west. The United States government sailing charts lay down the fact of this great ocean wave moving from west to east, south of the capes, and the ships coming from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean take advantage of this, and ride the sea at the rate of over twenty knots per hour, by following the routes laid down in Maury's charts.
  The old philosophy of the crystalline spheres was not more at variance with the correct motion of the stars and planets, than the moon theory of the tides. In their dilemma to account for the retrograde motions of the planets, they denominated them wanderers, stragglers, because they would not march with the "music of the spheres." In the moon theory of the tides the lunar satellite is made to pull and push at one and the same time, which is entirely at variance with the philosophy of force.
  There is nothing in the heavens, nor in the earth, that proves to us positively that the sun holds the planets, and the planets their satellites, by attraction, as we are taught that moon attracts the water of our world. We see that all terrestrial bodies tend toward the center of the earth, and we call this gravitation; but we cannot see how a body moves around the earth without falling on it, by this law. We say in dynamic philosophy, that bodies move in the direction of least resistance, and that we can positively understand; but what force per se is, we do not know. It is always better for us to explain phenomena by positive known laws and motion, than by any that rest merely upon conjecture.
  Lancaster, Pa      JNO. WISE