674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Copernicus, " by help of his false supposition, hath made truer demon- 

 strations of the motions and revolutions of the celestial sphere than 

 ever were made before." * 



Already, however, the Aristotelian dictatorship was being under- 

 mined, where it could not be overthrown. William Gilbert of Col- 

 chester, physician to Queen Elizabeth (whom he only survived a few 

 months), deserves to be called the founder of experimental science in 

 England. In his treatise " De Magnete," published in 1600, he brought 

 together a copious store of facts, the result of his own patient investi- 

 gations, and connected them by a consistent theory, thus starting the 

 science of electricity on a career still full of promise for the future. 

 He was not only a Copernican, but anticipated Galileo in an important 

 correction of the Copernican theory, pointing out the fallacy by which 

 a so-called " third movement " was considered necessary to account for 

 the parallelism of the earth's axis of rotation. f In his youth he had 

 studied on the Continent, and his works were there in great repute, 

 while his own countrymen probably shared the half -contemptuous esti- 

 mate of Bacon, who placed him but a degree higher than Paracelsus 

 and the alchemists in the school of " fantastic philosophy." 



With the opening of the new century, progress became more rapid. 

 Harriot, the friend of Raleigh, made notable advances in algebra, and 

 was among the earliest of telescopic observers ; Napier published in 

 1614 his "Marvellous Canon of Logarithms"; and Harvey, whose 

 theory of investigation was as sound as his practice was successful, 

 began his immortal lectures " On the Motion of the Heart and Blood " 

 in 1619. In the same year was born, at Toxteth, near Liverpool, a 

 man whose name would assuredly have been as illustrious as it is now 

 obscure, if a premature death had not cut short his labors before they 

 had well begun. J Jeremiah Horrocks belonged to a Lancashire family 

 of little pretension and less means. His puritanism was signified by 

 his entrance at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and his poverty by 

 his admission as a sizar, May 18, 1632. A passion for astronomy early 

 seized upon him, but his tastes met with neither encouragement nor 

 cultivation at Cambridge, which at that time afforded no form of 

 scientific training. Books were his sole instructors, and his slender 

 resources the limit of his choice. Indeed, his short life was one con- 

 tinued struggle against the tyranny of material difficulties. After a 

 residence of three years, he left the university, summoned home prob- 

 ably by domestic exigencies, and spent his remaining years in the 

 daily treadmill of tuition, or some equally harassing occupation. He 



* " Companion to the British Almanac for 1837," p. 43. 



j- "Dc Mundo nostro sublunari," lib. i., cap. xi., p. 165, published (posthumously) in 

 1651. 



% There is no positive evidence in support of the tradition that Horrocks was born in 

 1619. The fact that he was in orders and held a curacy in 1G39 throws a doubt upon his 

 age, as men are not ordained at twenty. 



