Salviati states also that—contrary to general belief—a stone dropped from the masthead of a ship in motion falls at the foot of the mast, not behind it, but there is no reference to the experiment having been actually performed. This mechanical principle being once established, it becomes easy to deal with several common objections to the supposed motion of the earth. The case of a stone dropped from the top of a tower, which if the earth be in reality moving rapidly from west to east might be expected to fall to the west in its descent, is easily shewn to be exactly parallel to the case of a stone dropped from the masthead of a ship in motion. The motion towards the east, which the stone when resting on the tower shares with the tower and the earth, is not destroyed in its descent, and it is therefore entirely in accordance with the Coppernican theory that the stone should fall as it does at the foot of the tower.[76] Similarly, the fact that the clouds, the atmosphere in general, birds flying in it, and loose objects on the surface of the earth, shew no tendency to be left behind as the earth moves rapidly eastward, but are apparently unaffected by the motion of the earth, is shewn to be exactly parallel to the fact that the flies in a ship’s cabin and the loose objects there are in no way affected by the uniform onward motion of the ship (though the irregular motions of pitching and rolling do affect them). The stock objection that a cannon-ball shot westward should, on the Coppernican hypothesis, carry farther than one shot eastward under like conditions, is met in the same way; but it is further pointed out that, owing to the imperfection of gunnery practice, the experiment could not really be tried accurately enough to yield any decisive result. The most unsatisfactory part of the _Dialogue_ is the fourth day’s discussion, on the tides, of which Galilei suggests with great confidence an explanation based merely on the motion of the earth, while rejecting with scorn the suggestion of Kepler and others—correct as far as it went—that they were caused by some influence emanating from the moon. It is hardly to be wondered at that the rudimentary mechanical and mathematical knowledge at Galilei’s command should not have enabled him to deal correctly with a problem of which the vastly more powerful resources of modern science can only give an imperfect solution (cf. chapter XI., § 248, and chapter XIII., § 292).