260 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[September 1, 1888. 



Newcomb'3 book in which the same theory appeared. I 

 seem to be wrong in more directions than one lately ; but if 

 those with knowledge" (with a small k) "do not distribute 

 it to tho-;e without, how can the circulation of Knowledge " 

 (with a very large K) '• be maintained 2 " (Very neat, Mr. 

 Fraser.) 



The trouble is that both the fallacy and the correction 

 are so exceedingly old that readers of Knowledge might 

 justly complain if any considerable amount of space were 

 given to it. The oldest edition of Lord Grimthorpe's 

 '•Astronomy without Mathematics," which I possess, is the 

 fifth, dated 187-1, and in that work the fallacy is presented 

 and the proper correction pointed out. Doubtless in earlier 

 editions the same matter (in substance) will be found ; and 

 as the paradoxists are always with us, I doubt not the 

 matter will continue to bs dealt with in later editions, or, as 

 it were, indefinitely. Precisely the same fallacy is advanced 

 with regard to the sun by Mr. W. Mattieu Williams, old 

 Sol being pictured in " The Fuel of the Sun " as constantly 

 stirred up by centrifugal forces, which have no existence, and 

 in variations of such forces, which are purely mythical. 

 That book came out in 1869. Mr. Henry Perigal, however, 

 had been earlier yet caught by the mistake, in the moon's 

 case, as had Bentley more than a century ago, so that 

 Mr. Fraser in 1881 need only have been astonished at 

 Newcomb's making the mistake, for the same reason that 

 all mathematicians were astonished. (Professor Newcomb 

 long since recognised the mistake he had made and corrected 

 it like a man.) 



* * * 



I can only find space to state here that the earth's rota- 

 tion round her axis results in equal centrifugal tendency all 

 round, producing the earth's oblateness of figure, while her 

 monthly revolution around the common centre of gravity of 

 the earth and moon would by itself cause every particle of 

 the earth to traverse an orbit of exactly the same size. 

 (Combining with it the rotation, all whose ettects have been 

 accounted for, cannot atlect this.) The centrifug.al ten- 

 dencies resulting from the movement of the several particles 

 in these equal orbits are balanced by the moon's attraction, 

 with only such diflferences as the old statical explanation of 

 the tides indicates in the moon's .action on parts of tlie 

 earth at different distances from the moon. These diflerences 

 are small, and taking them into .account as balancing the 

 lunar attractions is merely repeating in a disguised form 

 the old-fashioned explanation, which is altogether correct so 

 far as it goes, and has never needed to be displaced, only 

 added to — precisely as an explanation of the reeling of a 

 top, which began by saying that the slanted top is solicited 

 by gravity to topple over, would not have to be displaced 

 (since so far it is right), but extended in such sort as to 

 explain why the top thus solicited by gravity does 7iot 

 fall over (while its rotation Lasts). The other idea of a 

 centrifugal force, as if the e.arth revolved round the centre 

 of gravity of earth and moon with the parts farthest from 

 that centre travelling round the wider paths, would cor- 

 respond to a st.ate of things in which tides thirty times 

 higher than the actiial tidal wave would sweep over all 

 terrestrial shores — precisely as the motion Mr. H. Perigal 

 imagined for the moon would have effects far beyond any 

 actually taking place, and as the kind of centrifug.al stirring 

 up imagined by Mr. "Williams would be many times more 

 than sufficient for the stoking work which Mr. Williams 

 wants it to do. 



Nature's Hi/giene. By C. T. Kingzett, F.I.C., F.C.S. 

 Third Edition. (London: Eaillicre, Tindall, & Cox. 

 1888.) — Every one is now familiar with the type of adver- 

 tisement which begins, " At the time of the exile of the 

 Due de Choiseul on account of the notorious Madame du 

 Barry " ; or, " Among the many witty sayings of Sydney 

 Smith which have been recorded " ; on reading which to 

 learn what happened anent the mistress of Louis XV., or 

 what the famous Canon of St. Paul's really did say, we sud- 

 denly find that we have been entrapped into the perusal of 

 an invitation to rub our aching joints with St. Vitus's 

 Vinegar, or to scrub ourselves, our sons and daughters, our 

 menservants and maidservants, our cattle and the stranger 

 that is within our gates, with Appel's Sapolica, and so on. 

 Now Mr. Kingzett's book is modelled on this form of 

 advertisement, and it says but little for our critical acumen 

 that we had got something like half-w.ay through the 

 volume before making this discovery. We must do its 

 author the justice, however, of admitting that the interest 

 of his ostensible subject, and his manner of treating it, 

 irresistibly carried us into the middle of what we may call 

 the business part of his book before we detected this. In 

 short, he winds up a most interesting account of the nature 

 of malaria, of the germ and graft theories of disease, of the 

 treatment of sewage, and of the general sanitary conditions 

 indispensable to the preservation of health, with a puff pure 

 and simple of " Sanita*," a disinfectant of his own inven- 

 tion produced by the oxidisation of turpentine. His work 

 might be divided into two parts with advantage. 



Nature's Fainj-Land. By H. W. S. Worsley-Benison, 

 F.L.S. (London : Elliot Stock. 1888.)— In a series of 

 picturesque essays, Mr. Benison leads us through woodlands, 

 over heaths, by hedge, copse, and stream, and takes us for a 

 ramble on the seashore. In the course of our wanderings 

 we are taught a good deal of botany, some physics (in the 

 shape of a description of the formation of rainand of the action 

 of waves), and have something of the manners and customs of 

 fishes and molluscs, spiders and flies, explained to us. This 

 pi'etty little book may well be put into the h.ands of young 

 people in whom it is desired to create or foster a taste for an 

 innocent and engrossing means of recreation. Some of Mr. 

 Benison's teleological I'emarks miglit perhaps be omitted 

 with advantage, as there is, to us, something ofTensive in the 

 assumption that finite man can penetrate the motives of the 

 Almighty. 



Early Prose aiul Poetical Works of John Taylor, the 

 Water Poet. (London : Hamilton, Adams, & Co. 1888.)^ 

 In the year 1580 there was born in the city of Gloucester, 

 of humble parentage, John Taylor, subsequently self- dubbed 

 " The King's Majesty's Water Poet," whose earlier works 

 have been collected by the anonymous editor of the volume 

 before us. Of limited education, he was apprenticed to a 

 Thames waterman. During a part of his life he served in 

 the navy, and he also seems to have held some sort of post 

 in the Tower of London, winding up his career as landlord 

 of the " Poet's Head "in Phoenix Alley, Long Acre. He 

 was essentially of .a nomadic temperament, having during 

 his career travelled from London to Edinburgh on foot, a 

 journey described in his " Penniless Pilgrim.age " in the 

 volume before us ; from London to Hamburg, of which we 

 have also his account here ; from London to Salisbury in a 

 wherry, whereof he tells here, too, under the title of "A 

 New Discovery by Sea," and so on. His " poetry " is of the 

 school of the poet Close, being but of a doggerel character. 

 It is largely interspersed with prose. He seems to have 

 been a comparatively illiterate man, with .strong though 



