Note 877 — Chapter VIII · THE WATERS

In the De imagine mundi, I, 40, there is extraordinary confusion regarding the entire subject of the tides. There are said to be two tides daily, corresponding to the rising and setting of the moon. When the moon waxes, the height of the tides becomes greater; when it wanes, the height diminishes. When the moon at the time of the equinoxes is nearest to the earth, the floods rise to their highest; at the time of the solstices they rise less high on account of the distance of the moon. There is also said to be a tidal cycle of nineteen years. So far, these ideas were drawn from Bede; but in the succeeding chapter (41) there comes an echo of Paul the Deacon’s description (Hist. gentis Langobard., I, 6, as cited by Almagià, La dottrina, 1905, p. 51) of the great whirlpool, which “in exortu lunae majori aestu fluctus involvit et revomit.”