232 Kansas Academy of Science. 



Evansville, Ind., who makes electricity the "Open Sesame" to 

 the universe. It causes gravitation, planetary motions, the 

 heat of the sun, glaciers, earthquakes, the rings of Saturn 

 (and of Jupiter also, according to his pamphlet), sun-spots, 

 etc. Many of his so-called facts are figments, and others are 

 badly garbled facts. A college education, including an ele- 

 mentary course in electricity and astronomy, would increase 

 his store of knowledge, and incidentally his respect for natural 

 phenomena. 



A few years ago I received postpaid a sample copy of a 

 cloth-bound book of some 200 pages of as rich, unconscious 

 humor as I ever read. As a sample, the author insisted that 

 the stratified rocks of the earth were wound upon our globe 

 as a revolving spindle, from the cometary visitants to the 

 solar system. A comet coming near the earth would get its 

 tail tangled on the rapidly revolving earth and be wound upon 

 it, forming a particular geological layer. A proof of this 

 theory is the regular geological formations of differing ma- 

 terials, that must have come from different comets — if not, 

 from what source could they come, pray tell me that? I sat 

 up to the wee hours one night to complete this book, and I 

 felt like Henry Ward Beecher after finishing Uncle Tom's 

 Cabin under similar circumstances — "If Harriet should write 

 another such book, it would be the death of me!" 



A similar publication, that comes geographically nearer 

 home, contains some interesting modifications of the above 

 theories, and some startling information to the humdrum 

 scientist. The author modestly promises to revolutionize 

 science and "place it on a higher plane." He begins by ex- 

 plaining that the original earth was a perfect sphere, but that 

 its present spheroidal shape is due to the loose "originary" 

 matter wound upon it in much the same way as explained 

 above. The original earth was made up of globular masses of 

 this same "originary" matter, the interspaces of which were 

 filled up with water, which was decomposed by the heat gen- 

 erated by pressure, and its elements, uniting with carbon, 

 formed petroleum and natural gas. Gravity, too, is due to 

 electricity, and like it may be reversed and become a force 

 of repulsion rather than attraction. He proves this by the 

 phenomena attending cyclonic disturbances, a theory that sim- 

 plifies the terrible lifting power of tornadoes. He forestalls 

 Nikola Tesla by announcing that the Martians have been bom- 



