104 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



have been obtained. There can be no question about opti- 

 cal illusion in these; they are original affidavits made by 

 the corona itself, signed, sealed, and delivered as its own 

 act and deed. 



METEORIC ASTRONOMY. 



THI number of the Quarterly Journal of Science for 

 May, 1872, contains some articles of considerable interest. 

 The first is by the indefatigable Mr. Proctor, on " Meteoric 

 Astronomy," in which he embodies a clear and popular 

 summary of the researches which have earned for Sign or 

 Schiaparelli this year's gold medal of the Astronomical 

 Society. Like all who venture upon a broad, bold effort 

 of scientific thought, extending at all into the regions of 

 philosophical theory, Schiaparelli has had to wait for recog- 

 nition. A simple and merely mechanical observation of a 

 bare fact, barely and mechanically recorded without the 

 exercise of any other of the intellectual faculties than the 

 external senses and observing powers, is at once received 

 and duly honored by the scientific world; but any higher 

 effort is received at first indifferently, or sceptically, and is 

 only accepted after a period of probation, directly propor- 

 tionate to its philosophical magnitude and importance, and 

 inversely proportionate to the scientific status of the daring 

 theorist. 



At first sight this appears unjust, it looks like honoring 

 the laborers who merely make the bricks, and despising the 

 architect who constructs the edifice of philosophy from the 

 materials they provide. Many a disappointed dreamer, 

 finding that his theory of the universe has not been ac- 

 cepted, and that the expected honors have not been show- 

 ered upon him, has violently attacked the whole scientific 

 community as a contemptible gang of low-minded mechani- 

 cal plodders, void of imagination, blind to all poetic aspira- 

 tions, and incapable of any grand and comprehensive flight 

 of intellect. 



