"THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE."— By Mr. A. LANDEH. 



There was a wcli-atteuded meeting on the- 

 lltli December, when a lecture on 

 "The Evolution of the Universe" 

 was given by Mr. A. Lander, F.R.Met.Soc. 

 Mr. Lander dealt with this en- 

 grossing and all important subject in a 

 masterly manner, and rendered it addi- 

 tionally interesting by a series of wonderful 

 photographic slides of the heavens, micro- 

 scopic revelations, charts, diagrams, etc. 

 An interesting discussion followed at the 

 end of the lecture. 



Mr. Lander said he proposed to enlarge 

 their vision of the Universe, and first of 

 all they would take a telescope and look at 

 the stars, noticing the infinite space around 

 them, and the infinitely great — in distance, 

 size, and wonder. Then they would take 

 the microscope and probe for a few minutes 

 into the infinitely small. The same laws 

 that held in the great sphere of the heavens 

 also held in the infinitely small spheres of 

 the dust under our feet. Several wonderful 

 elides of the heavens were then thrown on 

 to the screen, giving some idea of the infi- 

 nite number of worlds in space. Mr. Lander 

 went on to demonstrate how these worlds 

 were formed, saying that when two dead 

 worlds came into grazing collision with each 

 other a great amount of heat and gas was 

 generated, and as the spheres passed each 

 other large pieces of the blazing mass were 

 torn off, and thus a new revolving nebulous 

 body was formed. Many new stars had thus 

 suddenly blazed forth in the heavens during 

 the past few years. It had been calculated 

 that some of these nebulae were 

 3,600,000,000,000,000.000 miles distant from 

 this earth, so that even the light from them, 

 travelling at the enormous sjjeed of 186,000 

 miles per second had taken 600,000 years to 

 reach us. Nest photographs taken by the 

 aid of the microscope were shown, many of 

 which were a revelation to several present. 

 Mr. Lander said that if a tiny speck of dust 

 was looked at through a microscope multi- 

 tudes of tiny objects would be revealed. He 

 showed photos of wonderful beauty of the 

 flinty skeletons found in the slirae of an 

 ordinary pond, so small that eight million 

 of then! went to the inch. Microbes of an- 

 thrax, typhoid fever, etc., wore thrown on 

 the screen, while there were microbes that 

 were so small that the microscope would not 

 reveal them. But there were things even 

 smaller than the smallest microbes, which 

 chemists had knowledge of by the study of 

 X-Ray tubes, and they were called molecules 

 and electrons. These molecules were so 

 small that if a tiny drop of water could be 

 magnified to the size of the earth they would 

 be about the size of an ordinary marble. If 

 one of these tiny molecules was still further 

 magnified to the size of the Nave of the 



Cathedral then it would be found that in 

 each molecule there would be about 2,000 

 little particles, like specks of dust in a 

 sunbeam, called electrons, and these would 

 all be rapidly revolving around the centre 

 of the molecule in exactly the same way as 

 the planets revolved round the Sun. These 

 tiny electrons obeyed the well-known laws 

 of Kepler in the same way as the huge 

 bodies in the heavens, thus proving that the 

 infinitely great and the infinitely small were 

 both made on the same plan and designed 

 by the same Intelligence. 



A short but animated discussion followed 

 the lecture. 



Dr. Wills said that Mr. Lander had done 

 them good service that night. They had 

 had a lecture; there was no mistake about 

 that. {H*ear, hear.) Under the present 

 conditions of Science they were getting more 

 facts crowded upon them than they could 

 digest, and he thought that to get to work 

 discussing the absolutely removed questions 

 of Science was only a thing that should be 

 done by people who had gone very deeply 

 into the question. 



Mr. T. B. Rosseter, F.R.M.S., said 

 that they would find the same specific 

 law as Mr. Lander had pointed out 

 existing in plant life as it existed in 

 the atmosphere. If they placed a small 

 quantity of soap suds under the microscope 

 they would find the same thing, and ther© 

 was the same rhythmic law going on in the 

 vitalisatiou of an egg. 



Mr. Lander said that there were various 

 theories as to the origin of life. Professor 

 Schafer thought it originated in protoplasm, 

 but Professor Minchin thought life origi- 

 nated in a simpler substance called Chro- 

 matin. Lord Kelvin suggested life was 

 brought to this planet on a meteorite, whilst 

 Arrhenius and others believed that life like 

 the ether of space, matter, and energy, was 

 created in the beginning. In this 

 world we had three substances : the 

 ether of space the great spirit that 

 pervaded everything, matter, that was to 

 say. chemical elements formed from the 

 ctiier by means of the electrons; then there 

 was energy such as light, which was the 

 vibration in the ether caused by the rota- 

 tion of the electrons in the molecule; and a 

 fourth thing was life, the origin of which, 

 notwithstanding' recent discussion, was as 

 much a mystery as the origin of ether, 

 energy, etc. Mr. Lauder went on to say 

 that the fluid or serum of the blood was pure 

 sea wat-er. Dr. Wills would bear him out 

 when he said that when a person was ill for 

 want of blood, sea water was injected into^ 

 the veins, to replace the natural eerum, 

 which was another indication that life 

 originated in sea er. 



