7 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the planets from the sun, and the magnitude of the heavenly bodies. 

 No person now living ever saw the transit, nor will any of the 

 present inhabitants of the earth, who see the wonderful visions of 

 1874 and 18S2, ever behold them again. 



The transits of Venus occur alternately at intervals of eight, one 

 hundred and five and a half, and one hundred and twenty-one and a 

 half years. The last transit took place in 1769, 2 before the American 

 Republic had an existence, the next will occur in 1874, and the last 

 that we shall ever see, in 18S2. Nearly a century and a quarter will 

 then pass away, to that strange-looking date 2004, ere the beautiful 

 planet will impart her revelation to the astronomer on the sun's re- 

 flected imao-e. 



About the year 1635 there might have been found, in an obscure 

 village near Liverpool, a young enthusiast of science, who, like Fer- 

 guson, turned away from the ordinary pastimes of youth to study the 

 sublimities of the celestial scenery. He was beloved by all for his 

 amiable disposition and his stainless life. Before he reached the age 

 of eighteen he had mastered all the known problems of astronomical 

 knowledge. 



His name was Jeremiah Horrox. His father was a man of mod- 

 erate means, but sympathized with his son's studious turn of mind, 

 and, before the year 1633, placed him at Emanuel College, Cambridge. 



The stormy times of the English Revolution were approaching. 

 During the period in which the court and Parliament were occupied 

 in the disputes that lost the first Charles his throne, four men (three of 

 them were youths, and all of them intimately acquainted with each 

 other) were employed in advancing the theory and practice of astron- 

 omy. They were, William Wilbon, "William Gascoygne, James Crab- 

 tree, and Jeremiah Horrox, the subject of this sketch. 



Possessing a sensitive, responsive nature, and always happier in 

 loving companionship, the boy-astronomer Horrox made of James 

 Crabtree, a youth in years but a sage in knowledge, a bosom-friend. 



Horrox had but scarcely passed into his teens, before he became 

 interested in the fact that the tables of Kepler indicated the near 

 approach of the transit of Venus across the disk of the sun. It was a 

 sight that no human eye had ever seen, and one which, if any human 



apparent place in the heavens, the true place of any celestial object being that in which 

 it would appear if seen from the centre of the earth. 



2 The year 1769, the birth-year of Humboldt, Cuvier, and Napoleon, is marked in the 

 calendar of science by unusual achievements in the infant branches of experimental in- 

 vestigation. Chemistry had emerged from the mystical stage of alchemy, and was 

 planted upon its firm inductive basis. Bergmann had just made the first analysis ever 

 made of mineral waters. Black, Cavendish, and Priestley, had commenced investigations 

 into the nature of different kinds of air; and, in 1769, Scheele first discovered the exist- 

 ence of phosphate of lime in bones. The experiments of Bakewell in sheep-breeding, 

 the first step in the art of improving stock, which has been carried to such perfection 

 during the last hundred years, also date their success from 1739. Ed. 



