June 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOW^LKDGE ♦ 



173 



some sort of right (based on special knowledge) to propose 

 changes in the language of science. 



My protest has been urged in the interests of the class 

 of writers for whom I my.-elf have striven to cater, and for 

 whom Mr. Grant Allen and Mr. Clodd have catered most 

 successfully. The former in particular (I know my friend 

 Mr. Clodd will not be angry with me for putting the matter 

 thus) is, to my mind, simply unequalled by all our English 

 writers on popular science for grace and elegance of style 

 and versatility of treatment. (It grieves one to the heart 

 to think that powers such as his should for want of the due 

 appreciation of science in our day be increasingly wasted on 

 those who appreciate only sensational fiction.) But it is 

 because I feel deeply interested in the spread of Found 

 information about scientific matters among the general public, 

 that I protest earnestly against changes which, by separating 

 the language of scientific literature from the language of 

 exact science, would tend if accepted to make " confusion 

 ■worse confounded " — bj' replacing mere ditficulty of appre- 

 hension (such as all exact scientific studies involve) by sheer 

 bewilderment. Carelessness in the use of scientific terms is 

 doubtless unfortunate ; but studied inaccuracy would be a 

 disastrous remedv. 



THE STAR STORY OF THE FLOOD. 



[Continued from j/aye 147.) 



jMONG the constellations which have thus 

 been deprived of their ancient character, 

 none equalled in interest the great ship 

 Argo. It is difficult for any one who 

 studies a modern map of this constellation 

 to imagine that it was ever like a ship. Nay, 

 the resemblance cannot now be well traced 

 even in the heavens, for a reason presently to be con-idered. 

 Yet the configuration of an immense ship, with lofty, well- 

 rounded poop, with masts and sails, and deck and keel, is 

 singularly striking, when the original extent of the con- 

 stellation (reduced by modern astronomers) and its original 

 position (changed by that slow precessional reeling of the 

 earth which has for its period 29,000 years) are taken into 

 account. 



As to the original extent of the gi-eat ship Argo, astro- 

 nomers of two distinct ages have been at work cutting ofl^ 

 parts of the ship piecemeal. Originally, as the heavens still 

 tell us, the ship had a noble prow as well as that lofty stern 

 of which I have spoken. But the astronomers of some 

 2,500 years ago, in altering the figure of a man standing at 

 the prow into a Centaur, removed to make the horse part of 

 the Centaur the stars which had originally formed the prow 

 of the great ship. (I have no authority for this last state- 

 ment except the prow-like form which the stars of the 

 Centaur's body picture ; but for the former there is the 

 evidence of ancient astronomers that the constellation which 

 later represented the centaur Cheiron — identified by some 

 with Noah — originally represented a man, not a man-horse.) 

 In the time of Eudoxus (about four centuries before Christ), 

 ■whose ideas about the constellations the poet Aratus pre- 

 sented two centuries later, Argo represented the stern half 

 of a ship, drawn backwards into harbour. I find that, as 

 might be expected, thus corresponds with the aspect and 

 position which the constellation then had. "When at its 

 full height in the southern skies of Greece, or Egypt, or 

 Persia, Argo's keel was aslant, the stem end being consider- 

 ably higher than the fore part, so that as the diurnal 

 motion carried Argo along stern first, the motion was like 

 that of a ship drawn stern first up a slant shore. At 



present this idea is no longer suggested, the slant being now 

 so great that nothing but hauling a ship stern first up a cliflf 

 would correspond with the celestial position and motion of 

 Argo ; and ships are not so commonly hauled up cliffs in 

 that manner, that even the most imaginative mind would 

 find such an idea absolutely forced upon it. 



In the time of Eudoxus also, the poop of the ship had 

 been to some degree interfered with as -nell as the prow, 

 for some of the stars of the stern are wanted to complete the 

 figure of the Greater Dog. But probably in Eudoxus's time 

 there was not the least difficulty in regarding these stars as 

 doing double duty. The fore-half of the ship had been 

 bodily removed, but the outline of the stern was not pro- 

 babh- impaired at all to make room for Canis Major. In 

 our time, of course, this has happened. The outline remains 

 still somewliat like that of an ancient poop, but it is not 

 nearly such a fine poop as the old ship had. Not only the 

 stare marking the dog's hind quarters have been removed, 

 but as the outline of the poop is thus contracted, another 

 group of stars formerly belonging to Argo can no longer be 

 included within the outline. Out of the stars of this group 

 Hevelius formed the constellation Noah's Dove, apparently 

 judging that it was a rather ingenious device to represent 

 the dove as flying from what was originally the rudder (or 

 stern oar) of the ark. But the moderns have done worse 

 even than this, clipping off one part of the keel of the ark 

 to make, or help in making, a Chameleon, and another part 

 to help in making a Flying Fish. This was Lacaille's work. 

 On the other side — that is, in the ship's upper works — he 

 was equally absurd, setting in the ship's masts — or perhaps 

 on the roof of the ark — an Air Pump, of all unlikely objects 

 to occupy such a position. Another modern constellation, 

 the Southern Cross, though really part of the original ship, 

 was taken from it long before modern times, to form the 

 hind feet of the Centaur. The modern astronomer, there- 

 fore, has not constructed the Cross out of the ark, in which 

 there might have been found a world of suggestive meaning, 

 but has abstracted it from what was already an abstraction, 

 the hinder portion of the centaur Cheiron. 



So soon as we picture the stars of this region as they were 

 in the time of the Great Pyramid, and (practically) for 

 three or four centuries before and afterwards, we find such 

 a ship as the modern stellar skies no longer present— a 

 constellation so striking that even the least observant must 

 have recognised its ship-like form. 



In the first place, Argo fills in the most remarkable part 

 of the whole heavens. Covering the richest region of the 

 stellar skies, it is bordered by a broad tract which is abso- 

 lutely the darkest part of the star-sphere. Between the 

 thinly strewn region -nhich marks the sails and mast of the 

 ship as at present pictured, and the long winding stream 

 of stars marking the sea-serpent Hydra, over a tract ex- 

 tending from the head and shoulders of the Centaur to the 

 constertation of the Little Dog — a range of nearly ninety 

 degrees ! — there is not a single star of the first, second, or 

 third magnitude, whUe there are only three stars of the 

 fourth, and very few of the fifth magnitude. The rich tract 

 formerly occupied by the Great Ark, and now occupied by 

 the Centaur, Cross, Southern Fly, Argo, the Dove, and 

 the CJreater Dog, though less in extent than this poverty- 

 stricken region, contains six first-magnitude stars, twelve 

 of the second magnitude, thirty-two of the third — that is, 

 no fewer than fifty stars of the first three magnitudes alone, 

 besides an amazing waalth of stars of the fourth, fifth, and 

 sixth magnitudes, and widely spreading masses of the Milky 

 Wav. Ihe region thus richly crowded with stars of all 

 orders, and distinguished from the sun-ounding heavens not 

 only by the poverty of the region just described but also by 

 another but narrower poverty-stricken region on the other 



