Sir, - I have always read your Weather Eye feature with great pleasure, I am surprised, however, that Mr McWilliams in "Ebbing Life and the Flowing Tides of History" (February 9th) did not mention the important contribution of Bede in De temporum ratione, edited by Jones in the series Corpus christianorum series latina, but most accessible in Bede, The Reckoning of Time translated by Faith Wallis in Liverpool University Press Translated Texts for Historians (pp. 82-85).
The sections title says it all The Harmony of the Moon and the Sea. Bede, drawing on and refining the work of classical and Irish cosmologists as well as what appears to be a series of organized observations of tides on the north-east coast of Britain, could be said to tremble on the edge of the theory of gravity. - Yours, etc.,
H. CONRAD-O'BRIAI,
Cypress Downs,
Dublin 6W.