"Caesar, in his account of the invasion of Britain, (De Bella Gallico, lib. iv.) alludes to the nature of spring tides as perfectly well understood in connection with the moon’s age. Some of the peculiarities of river tides, however, were not published in scientific works till the beginning of the last century; and some of the properties of the tides in the English and other channels were not known till the end of that century. ...In the present century, the elaborate discussions of immense collections of accurate tide-observations by M. Laplace, Sir John W. Lubbock, and Professor Whewell, have brought to light and reduced to law many irregularities which were before that time unknown."