756 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



questions are dealt with. The assertion 

 of principles and the advocacy of meas- 

 ures must continue to be indispensable, 

 and there cannot fail to be differences 

 of opinion ; but partisan ethics demands 

 denial as well as affirmation, and denial 

 as a matter of policy. It provides for 

 opposition, and of course dreads acqui- 

 escence and agreement. As a work 

 of dealing with serious questions, this 

 policy cannot continue to command 

 respect. Indeed, there is already a 

 growing disgust in the community at 

 the emptiness and futility and hum- 

 bug of political partisanship. Men of 

 honest purposes and fair discrimination 

 will not go to the polls to vote unless 

 overborne and swept along by a fac- 

 titious excitement. We are told that 

 good men should attend primary meet- 

 ings, so as to rescue politics from the 

 corrupt hands into Avhich it has fallen. 

 But it is a grave question whether it 

 has not fallen into such hands by the 

 necessary laws of partisanship. What 

 is the chance of a plain, honest man, ac- 

 customed to open dealing, in a caucus 

 or convention against the skilled in- 

 triguers, the practised wire-pullers, and 

 the disciplined managers, who fill the 

 air with their cries of "reform," and 

 outdo everybody in their zeal to purify 

 politics ? The stealthy, long-headed cal- 

 culator beats the man of inexperience 

 at every tack and turn ; and party poli- 

 tics is peculiarly tlie field where craft, 

 manoeuvre, and strategy, have their un- 

 hindered way. This is being increas- 

 ingly recognized, and there is coming 

 with it a deepening distrust of parti- 

 san agency. To get everything decent 

 out of politics as quickly as possible is 

 now the open demand. Courts, schools, 

 prisons all tbe important agencies of 

 society must, it is admitted, be taken 

 out of politics, if their purity and efl&- 

 ciency are to be maintained ; and even 

 the chief office-holder of the nation 

 heads a crusade to get all the office- 

 holders of the country out of politics. 



Citizens may be expected to imitate 

 this good example, and more and more 

 get out of politics themselves. 



FURTHER ASTRONOMICAL DISCO VJERIES. 



The luck of successful research seems 

 now with the astronomers. Last month 

 we announced the brilliant discovery 

 of oxygen in the atmosphere of the sun 

 by Prof. Henry Draper ; and we have 

 now to chronicle the equally brilliant 

 discovery of two satellites of Mars by 

 Prof. Asaph Hall, of the Naval Obser- 

 vatory at Washington ; aud also of a 

 third moon of Mars discovered ten days 

 later by Profs. Henry Draper and E. H. 

 Holden at the private observatory of the 

 Drapers, at .Hastings-on-the-Hudson. 

 We publish an interesting article, by 

 Prof. Daniel Kirkwood, on " Mars and 

 his Satellites," giving an account of the 

 growth of our knowledge of the planet 

 and the particulars of Prof. Hall's dis- 

 covery of his moons. 



As Prof. Kirkwood remarks, the 

 question whether Mars had a satellite, 

 which has now been so remarkably re- 

 solved, has long interested astronomers. 

 How they have regarded it may be il- 

 lustrated by the following passage from 

 the third edition of Mr. Chambers's ad- 

 mirable " Hand-book of Descriptive As- 

 tronomy," published this year : 



" As far as we know, Mars possesses no 

 satellite, though analogy does not forbid, 

 but rather, on the contrary, leads us to infer 

 the existence of one ; and its never having 

 been seen, in this case at least, proves noth- 

 ing. The second satellite of Jupiter is 

 only ^Jj of the diameter of the primary, and 

 a satellite -i, of the diameter of Mars would 

 be less than one hundred miles in diameter, 

 and therefore of a size barely within the 

 reach of our largest telescopes, allowing 

 nothing for its possibly close proximity to 

 the planet. The fact that one of the satel- 

 lites of Saturn was only discovered a few 

 years ago renders the discovery of a satellite 

 of Mars by no means so great an improbabil- 

 ity as might be imagined." 



