The Comic Almanack, Volume 2 / An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities

by William Makepeace Thackeray; Gilbert Abbott À Beckett; Henry Mayhew; Horace Mayhew; Albert Smith

A SHORT TREATISE ON TIDES.

The tides have baffled the ingenuity of some of our greatest philosophers, though Halley was more successful than any one else in his attempts to get to the bottom of them.

If we were disposed to go deeply into the tides, we should require the reader to follow us through a variety of mysterious hieroglyphics, which we are sure would be unintelligible to the majority. Dashes, crosses, circles, and triangles would be scattered over the perplexing page in profusion, while the only result might be, that as 0 is to a hyphen, so would be a couple of asterisks.

We, therefore, prefer leaving the study of the tides to those whose taste for the subject would lead them to a practical acquaintance with it, which may be picked up anywhere up or down the river.