The prosecutor, on being asked, admitted, after a little hesitation, that he had pushed and pulled the prisoner too. {392} In the altercation which followed, it was found very difficult to make out which began:--and the worthy magistrate seemed to think they must have begun together. _M. Arago._--Prisoner, have you any family? The prisoner declined answering that question at present. He said he thought the police might as well reckon it out whether he had or not. _M. Arago_ said he didn't much differ from that opinion.--He then addressed both prosecutor and prisoner; and told them that if they couldn't settle their differences without quarreling in the streets, he should certainly commit them both next time. In the meantime, he called upon both to enter into their own recognizances; and directed the police to have an eye upon both,--observing that the prisoner would be likely to want it a long time, and the prosecutor would be not a hair the worse for it." This quib was written by a person who was among the astronomers: and it illustrates the fact that Le Verrier had sole possession of the field until Mr. Challis's letter appeared. Sir John Herschel's previous communication should have paved the way: but the wonder of the discovery drove it out of many heads. There is an excellent account of the whole matter in Professor Grant's[805] _History of Physical Astronomy_. The squib scandalized some grave people, who wrote severe admonitions to the editor. There are formalists who spend much time in writing propriety to journals, to which they serve as foolometers. In a letter to the _Athenaeum_, speaking of the way in which people hawk fine terms for common things, I said that these people ought to have a new translation of the Bible, which should contain the verse "gentleman and lady, created He them." The editor was handsomely fired and brimstoned! {393} A NEW THEORY OF TIDES. A new theory of the tides: in which the errors of the usual theory are demonstrated; and proof shewn that the full moon is not the cause of a concomitant spring tide, but actually the cause of the neaps.... By Comm^r. Debenham,[806] R.N. London, 1846, 8vo. The author replied to a criticism in the _Athenaeum_, and I remember how, in a very few words, he showed that he had read nothing on the subject. The reviewer spoke of the forces of the planets (i.e., the Sun and Moon) on the ocean, on which the author remarks, "But N.B. the Sun is no planet, Mr. Critic." Had he read any of the actual investigations on the usual theory, he would have known that to this day the sun and moon continue to be called _planets_--though the phrase is disappearing--in speaking of the tides; the sense, of course, being the old one, wandering bodies.