140 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 251. 



Extended to both, it can have no meaning but 

 well-prepared, whicli leaves us wliere we were. 



" I come to counsel learned in the law." 

 "Atramentum temperatum" would be translated 

 without hesitation, " ink to which water had been 

 added, to give it fluidity." Why should not 

 " tempera," standing in direct reference to writing- 

 quill, mean "add water to your ink ?" 



KUPICASTBBNSIS. 



PLURALITY OP WORLDS. 



Two persons, who know all the telescope has 

 told, are fighting the farther question, whether 

 the stars and planets are inhabited. Until the 

 matter is settled, I shall copy the answer given 

 by a young aspirant for his degree when he was 

 asked whether the sun moved round the earth, or 

 the earth round the sun : " Sometimes one and 

 sometimes the other," said he. In thej meanwhile 

 your correspondents may be allowed to pick up 

 matter for a Note or two. 



One of the opposed philosophers is an inha- 

 bitant of this earth, confessed ; the other is only 

 identified by reasoning and analogy, like the in- 

 habitant of a planet. But anything may be done 

 (or undone) by reasoning. Some months ago I 

 was startled by hearing that fourteen persons 

 were to dine, at the Crystal Palace, inside the 

 skull of one of the prc-adamite monsters. But 

 my composure was restored by hearing that this 

 wonderful dining-room was only built by deduc- 

 tion from some of the bones. "Oh!" said I, "that 

 may have altered the case : a hundred people may 

 dine inside an inference, if you draw it large 

 enough." Nevertheless it does lend a little force 

 to the reputed authorship of the anonymous 

 treatise, that the reputed author, twenty-one 

 years ago, spoke of the universal dissemination 

 of organised living beings as rather the idea of 

 others than his own. Witness the following ex- 

 tract (some words of which I have put in Italics) 

 from the first Bridgewater Treatise, p, 272. ; 



" If we take the whole range of created objects in our 

 own system, from the sun down to the smallest animalcule, 

 and suppose such a system, or something in some way 

 analogous to it, to be repeated for each of the millions of 

 stars thus revealed to us, we have a representation of the 

 material part of the universe, according to a view which 

 many minds receive as a probable one." 



It is very desirable that the question should be 

 argued from time to time, because, as the only 

 thing clear about it is that it will never be settled, 

 it may form a point of comparison for the minds, 

 the methods, and the states of opinion in dilFerent 

 ages. Not, however, that it is quite clear. The 

 telescope is getting on ; and it is not impossible 

 that millions of moving specks may some day be 

 found on the moon, the motions of which may be 

 utterly lawless, and may give strong suspicion of 



free will. Such a discovery, in the mere optical 

 point of view, would not be so great an advance 

 upon us, as our best maps of the moon are upon 

 those which could have been made in the six- 

 teenth century. They talk of spots already, of 

 not more than a few hundred yards in diameter. 

 If there should happen to be a few thousand mon- 

 sters, inside whose skulls the lunar philosopers are 

 to dine five thousand years hence — or fifty thou- 

 sand, as there is no occasion to be particular to a 

 cipher, — it would not be at all safe to take it for 

 granted that Lord Rosse will not get hold of 

 them. A lunar megalosaurus may figure on his 

 tomb yet, for anything we can undertake to say 

 to the contrary, with the tips of his claws duly 

 inferred by Professor Owen from the curve of his 

 back. 



The early Copernicans seem to have adopted 

 the theory of stellar and planetary organisations, 

 as almost a natural consequence of the new posi- 

 tion of the earth. Kepler, Avriting to Dr. Breng- 

 ger in 1607, gives his opinion as follows : 



" You take 'the globes of the stars to be perfectly un- 

 mixed and simjjle ; in my opinion they reseml)le our 

 earth. You, a philosopher, would remit the question to 

 a philosopher: if she could be interrogated, Experience 

 should speak [I here make a conjectural emendation of 

 the text]. But Experience is silent, as no one has been 

 there ; whence she neither afSrms nor denies. I myself 

 argue as you do, bj' induction from the moon, which has 

 many points of similarity with the earth [Dr. 15. had 

 probably argued from points of difference]. And I more- 

 over give moisture to the stars, and tracts which are 

 rained on by evaporation, and living creatures to whom 

 this is advantageous. For not only that unfortunate 

 Bruno, who was roasted on a wood fire at Rome, but my 

 friend Tycho Brahe as well, held this opinion, that the 

 stars have inhabitants. To this I the more readily agree^ 

 that I hold, with Aristarchus, the motion of the earth as 

 well as of the planets.' 



Bruno certainly held the opinion, as appears by 

 his work De Monade, &c. The curious letter of 

 Schoppius, written from Rome immediately after 

 the execution, puts this opinion at the head of the 

 list of horrenda prorsusque absurdissima with which 

 Bruno was charged, and winds up by saying that 

 he was gone to tell the people in the worlds he 

 had invented how blasphemers were treated at 

 Rome. M. 



CHURCH-BUILDING AND RESTORATION DURING 

 THE TEARS 1844 TO 1854. 



It may be as well to put on record in " N. & Q." 

 what has been done during the last few years in 

 the way of church-building and restoration. I 

 send you a list for this county (Lincoln) ; there 

 are, doubtless, others which a private layman 

 like myself would not hear of. If persons from 

 other counties would follow the example I have 

 ventured to set, we should soon have a goodly 

 list : I, for one, think it would be a good answer 



