Scientific Papers

Abstract

THE papers in this volume form a collection which is especially interesting for several reasons. They are in effect parts of a single investigation, they were all written within a period of about three years (1879–82), and they form the foundation for more than one of the views in regard to cosmogony which are now widely accepted among scientific men. The following papers are included in the volume:—(1) On the bodily tides of viscous and semi-elastic spheroids, and on the ocean tides upon a yielding nucleus, (2) Note on Thomson's theory of the tides of an elastic sphere, (3) On the precession of a viscous spheroid, and on the remote history ol the earth, (4) Problems connected with the tides of a viscous spheroid, (5) The determination of the secular effects of tidal friction by a graphical method, (6) On the secular changes in the elements of the orbit of a satellite revolving about a tidally distorted planet, (7) On the analytical expressions which give the history of a fluid planet of small viscosity, attended by a single satellite, (8) On the tidal friction of a planet attended by several satellites, and on the evolution of the solar system, (9) On the stresses caused in the interior of the earth by the weight of continents and mountains. These researches may be described as classical. In the reprint the papers have for the most part been left very much in the form in which they were published originally. It would have been possible, as the author points out, to re-write them as a compact treatise. On account of their great importance as original sources of information, and as pioneering work in a subject that is at once extremely fascinating and beset by unusual difficulties, it is likely that this carefully edited reprint will be more valuable than such a treatise.

Scientific Papers.

By Sir George Howard Darwin, Vol. ii., Tidal Friction and Cosmogony. Pp. xvi + 516. (Cambridge: University Press, 1908.) Price 15s. net.