♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Aug. 



moon. That is very strong against me ; but I do not see how there 

 could be water without rivers. 



There is nothing to show that planets die, so long as they have 

 their sun. Our latent heat is evidently of no use to us, since our 

 poles are, in spite of it, inaccssible. (We might have immense pro- 

 jections there, for all we know, — were it not that we have seen their 

 shadow on our satellite.) 



Mr. Mackie urges that the Great Pyramid has lost 1/22 of its 

 height in forty centuries. That is not much, and it has been by 

 human destruction j which now will probably cease if we keep hold 

 of the country. 



I cannot agree with Mr. Mackie (1831) that there is any proof of 

 lunar tides in the past history of the earth ; because the heaving of 

 her surface has subjected all parts in turn to the action of the solar 

 tides, which I take it would be considerable — i.e., the difference be- 

 tween a spring and a neap tide. 



It is {pace Mr. M.) a positive fact that in this country no land- 

 scape ever looks blue like a Scotch, Irish, or even English one. 

 How it can be that " the warmer the climate the more water will 

 its atmosphere hold in suspension," is beyond me. I live south of 

 England because the perpetual damp of my native land prevents 

 me from living in the open air half the day, as I do here even in 

 winter. The people here just now are crying out against " the 

 intense heat." In point of fact, the heat is not great at all; at 

 this moment 77° in the shade ; but the dryness is something rare, 

 even for France, and especially for the seaside ; and they confound 

 it with heat. Rolls delivered in the morning are, even in a cellar, 

 like ship-biscuit in the afternoon. This I never knew here before : 

 it is therefore the dryest season for the last ten years. Where in 

 G. B. would bread harden like this ? If there is more water here, 

 it must be a very long way aloft ; so long as to become " un 

 quantite ne'gligeable," especially as regards the blueness of the 

 landscape, which may be supposed to be nearer. 



Mr. M. says " from a chemical standpoint, oxygen and nitrogen 

 cannot be 'frozen'" — yet in this very no. of A'., at p. 80, it is 

 stated that " Nitrogen is solidified at-214'." Perhaps Mr. M. in 

 his next letter will demonstrate that " solidified" and "frozen" 

 are two different things ; as also that the parched Soudan has 

 really more water (somewhere) than " the storm-swept Orcades." 



" It was the fine blue of eastern skies which gave birth to the 

 ' waters above the earth ' theory." If Mr. M. states this of his own 

 knowledge, he must have been present, one would say as "our 

 correspondent," on that great occasion '■ when the morning stars 

 sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." I had 

 supposed that rain was a mere obvious origin of the belief. 



METEORS. 



[1849]— While observing the moon at 9h. -ISm. on the 22nd ult. 

 with a 4-inch, by Cooke, power G5, I saw a dark object glide across 

 the face of the moon from west to east, which appeared two inches 

 long and one and a half inch wide. It occupied only five seconds 

 in transit. It was evidently not a bird, there being no movement 

 of wings. It occurred to me that it was possibly a meteor passing 

 beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere. Perhaps " P.R.A.S." 

 may be able to state whether meteors have been seen in this way. 

 On the following evening, at lOh. 35m., I saw a great fire-ball, or 

 meteor, gliding across the sky in the same direction and near the same 

 spot. The apparition did not occupy more than three seconds, and 

 it was rather of a startling nature. The ball itself was apparently 

 about half the size of the moon ; the front part of it was of a white 

 colour, and the tail itself was composed of red flame about two 

 degrees long. It disappeared instantly, without any explosion. As 

 regards its distance from the earth, it really appeared to be about 

 three hundred yards from me. J. Webb. 



[The first apparition spoken of by Mr. Webb was almost certainly 

 that of a distant bird, or of an insect (a cockchafer, or the like) 

 much nearer. Many slowly-flying birds flap their wings lass fre- 

 quently than once in five seconds. There is no recorded instance 

 of a meteorite having been seen dark on the brighter background 

 of the moon or sky.— Ed.] 



EVOLUTION AND NATURAL SELECTION. 



[1850]— " Commentator " reminds us, in his original and effec- 

 tive manner, that " it took five hundred years for Christianity to 

 establish itself." Will it be unfair or ungenerous if I add that 

 Darwinism has only taken five-and-twenty, and has yet to win its 

 credentials from Time, as well as from enthusiastic professors, 

 before it can, without question, be accepted as an explanation of 

 everything ? It has, aa victor, too, recently come away from con- 

 flict with '■ special creation ; " it has to dwell too emphatically upon 

 certain truths to be perfectly reliable. There is more than a 



suggests the swing of a pendulum, or the recoil of a spring, rather 

 than tho balance of a true science ; and a day may yet come when, 

 over some of it most popular axioms, we shall have to say : — 

 " Our little systems have their day ; 

 They have their day, and cease to be," &c. 



" Commentator," so far as I can gather, does not object to 

 " natural selection " being accepted as a part of nature's scheme. 

 He objects to it as a tmiversal law. And that is exactly my posi- 

 tion. He and I are in perfect sympathy upon that subject, I fancy. 

 Unfortunately, too, man}' evolutionists are very arbitrary upon this 

 point. They will have>othing but "natural selection"; and they will 

 evolve you a race or an individual from their cut-and-dried formulas, 

 as though the thing possessed no more difficulty than developing a 

 photographic picture. 



This is a great mistake : " natural selection " does account for a 

 great deal, and is worthy of profound study ; but alo7ie it does not 

 account for the existence of any one single thing. It is a guiding 

 influence, not a creative one. It is present wherever there is a 

 conflict, and gives victory to the strongest ; but it does not impart 

 life and energy to such. The motive power, the creative impulse, 

 lies far deeper — aye, infinitely deeper — and of that we as yet know 

 nothing. " Natural selection," however, is not everywhere a 

 directing and guiding influence. There are peaceable realms in 

 life (such need not be the lotus-eater's paradise) where nature, 

 far away from the border-lines of strife, can freely make the world 

 the gift of a Plato's mind or a beautiful orchid, a race of musical 

 Bachs or an A neon sheep. 



But, after all, for what is the evolutionist — I mean the recent 

 conventional evolutionist — contending ? Is he anxious to prove 

 that nature abhors a leap— that species and races slide imper- 

 ceptibly into one another K If so, he totally fails. Variation 

 supposes leaps, and Darwin himself recognised the fact. If a bird 

 is born with one feather more than his fellows, it comes into pos- 

 session of that feather suddenly, and not by imperceptible grada- 

 tions. So, too, with the six-fingered men, Niata cattle, Ac. It thus 

 becomes a question as to the size of the leaps we imagine nature is 

 capable of taking ; and it seems to me, in our total ignorance of the 

 prime moving energy underlying phenomena, that it is presumption 

 on the part of Darwinians to assume that those leaps, those steps, 

 can only be of the minutest character. Are we to be told that 

 nature abhors a leap beyond a certain point, as certain philosophers 

 said once concerning a vacuum ? If, as Mivart says, there is " an 

 internal force or tendency " in life to produce all we see indepen- 

 dently of natural selection, then there is no reason why such a 

 "tendency" should be tied down to infinitesimal gradations. It is 

 a neccssitv which has grown out of a theory, and that theory is 

 Darwinist. 



" Commentator " has often imparted vitality to his views with 

 illustrations drawn from music. It is an art to which, I think, we 

 may more frequently appeal in our speculations with considerable 

 profit. The world is born again in music. It comes to us in new 

 raiment ; unfolds its meaning, as it were, in a new set of terms, 

 say as 1, 2, 3, 4, instead of a, b, c, d. The same relations are there, 

 and the same laws. You are strangely conscious of familiar 

 simple ideas, such as softness, hardness, sweetness, richness ; and 

 once more you recognise the centripetal and centrifugal forces at 

 work in tonic and dominant. 



But can it teach us anything concerning Darwinism ? Certainly. 

 In the Tartini tones there is correlation. In the old Greek genera 

 and modem chromatic scale you can observe the small steps upon 

 which the evolutionist now lays such emphasis ; nay, in the porta- 

 mento, if yen like, you can point to one thing gliding into another. 

 But there are Ireals also. There is no bridge to carry yon from the 

 chord to the chord of the 7th ; nor in the arithmetical 

 of our diatonic scale is there any link between C and 8. 

 ame thing holds good with musical instruments. You may 

 the violin back to the crwth by any number of intermediate 

 but from the harpsichord to the piano you must make 

 a leap. I can only throw these things out as suggestions now ; but 

 I daresay most of your musical readers will understand their appli- 



PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHING. 



[1851] — Garters are not necessary where drawers or pantaloons 

 are worn, or with knickerbockers, provided they are ribbed the 

 whole way up. I always wear stockings during the winter, but 

 never garters. 



Suffering from the heat, 1 had a special thin coat made for me, 

 lined with the ordinary silk lining stuff. Although very thin, it is 

 warm, being black and tight-fitting. So I had another made, a 

 thicker coat, and lined with a special flannel. It is also black; 

 though heavier, it is far cooler. I always wear flam A when walk- 

 ing or tricycling for coolness, and find that v wintt -coat so lined 



