from each other. In these cases I suppose the defect of the fluidity to be supplied by the smoothness or softness of the parts, or some other condition; otherwise the matter where it is less fluid will cohere more, and be more sluggish, and therefore will receive the motion more slowly, and propagate it farther than agrees with the ratio above assigned. If the vessel be not spherical, the particles will move in lines not circular, but answering to the figure of the vessel; and the periodic times will be nearly as the squares of the mean distances from the centre. In the parts between the centre and the circumference the motions will be slower where the spaces are wide, and swifter where narrow; but yet the particles will not tend to the circumference at all the more for their greater swiftness; for they then describe arcs of less curvity, and the conatus of receding from the centre is as much diminished by the diminution of this curvature as it is augmented by the increase of the velocity. As they go out of narrow into wide spaces, they recede a little farther from the centre, but in doing so are retarded; and when they come out of wide into narrow spaces, they are again accelerated; and so each particle is retarded and accelerated by turns for ever. These things will come to pass in a rigid vessel; for the state of vortices in an infinite fluid is known by Cor. 6 of this Proposition.
I have endeavoured in this Proposition to investigate the properties of vortices, that I might find whether the celestial phænomena can be explained by them; for the phænomenon is this, that the periodic times of the planets revolving about Jupiter are in the sesquiplicate ratio of their distances from Jupiter's centre; and the same rule obtains also among the planets that revolve about the sun. And these rules obtain also with the greatest accuracy, as far as has been yet discovered by astronomical observation. Therefore if those planets are carried round in vortices revolving about Jupiter and the sun, the vortices must revolve according to that law. But here we found the periodic times of the parts of the vortex to be in the duplicate ratio of the distances from the centre of motion; and this ratio cannot be diminished and reduced to the sesquiplicate, unless either the matter of the vortex be more fluid the farther it is from the centre, or the resistance arising from the want of lubricity in the parts of the fluid should, as the velocity with which the parts of the fluid are separated goes on increasing, be augmented with it in a greater ratio than that in which the velocity increases. But neither of these suppositions seem reasonable. The more gross and less fluid parts will tend to the circumference, unless they are heavy towards the centre. And though, for the sake of demonstration, I proposed, at the beginning of this Section, an Hypothesis that the resistance is proportional to the velocity, nevertheless, it is in truth probable that the resistance is in a less ratio than that of the velocity; which granted, the periodic times of the parts of the vortex will be in a greater than the duplicate ratio of the distances from its centre. If, as some think, the vortices move more swiftly near the centre, then slower
