KNOWLEDGE <► 



[Sept. 4, 1885. 



pleasure to themselves, to their playMl(nv,«, and to 

 lookers-on. 



BtTT now hear what the otlier side says about it. A 

 " London Tradesman " who is himself a player of no 

 mean skill, after sayimj that he has sold more tennis- 

 balls already in 1885 than he did during the whole of 

 1884, and that lawn-tennis is the game of the future, 

 adds that women had better leave the game to the men. 

 " Women don't play well," he says. " They haven't got 

 the requisite amount of muscle, and they "won't spare 

 enough time to acquire it. Women dress themselves in 

 a way that makes a cripple of the best tennis-player in 

 Christendom. They allow no freedom for their bodies. 

 Until they do without corsets and skirts they must not 

 expect to play tennis well. The only good tennis-players 

 are men, and it is seldom you find an expert at the game 

 who will consent to play -with a woman. It spoils his 

 style ; it makes him lazy, and when a tennis-player loses 

 .style and becomes lazy ; he had better throw away his 



The bitterest part of this is that about experts not 

 playing tennis with women. Most -women fancy they 

 play on the average quite as well as men. But it is only 

 because the good players keep away from them. And 

 now probably even the bad players will cease to play 

 with the girls, because it is becoming a recognised thing 

 that only duffers do that, and no young fellow likes to 

 be thought a duffer. Old fellows even do not care to be 

 thought duffers. Very tender and sweet young curates, 

 with an eye to slippers and braces, may still be found 

 trying to play lawn-tennis with the young ladies of their 

 flocks ; sheep gambolling with lambs, so to speak. But 

 will the girls be content with easy victories over these 



There is hope only, it would seem, in the divided 

 skirt, rationally adopted so as to attract no notice, — nay, 

 my occasional observation of lawn-tennis as played by 

 ladies has suggested that under certain conditions which 

 occasionally arise, the rational dress is calculated to be 

 more seemly than the heavy .skirts which render corsets 

 necessary. But I am not an expert in the matter of 

 ladies' dresses, nor have I seen the " patterns of rational 

 dress" which are weekly advertised on page ii. of the 

 Knowledge advertising sheet. I only know how the 

 dress looks when complete, and how much it contributes 

 to grace and freedom of motion. 



In the following letter which appeared in the Times 

 for August 26, I have called attention to a point of great 

 importance to all who have occasion to communicate with 

 friends across the Atlantic— from either side : — 



Risks in Teassatlastic Telegraphy.— To the Editor of the 

 Times. — Sir,— Out of fifteen transatlantic telegrams which I have 

 had occasion to send, or to have sent to me, during the last sis 

 years, three have miscarried. This is too large a proportion of 

 failures, and the public ought to know how much or how little they 

 can trust transatlantic telegraphy as at present conducted. Here 

 are, in brief, the particulars of the three failures and of the com- 

 pensation— save the mark ! —made by the persons responsible. In 

 the summer of 1879 I depatched from the office near Burlington 

 House a telegram to my lecture agent in New York on important 

 business, telling him to wire reply. No reply coming, I wired again, 

 and was told no message had been received. For compensation I 

 received expressions of regret and the price of the original 

 message. Last June I wired from St. Joseph, Missouri, to my 

 lecture agent here, in reply to a telegram of his on important busi- 

 ness. Late in July I received a letter from him, saying that the 

 telegram referred to in my letters had not been received. I found 

 it had got as far as London, but had not been forwarded. For 



compensation 1 received very courteous expressions of regret from 

 the head post-office, with suggestion that I should write to St. 

 Joseph for return of the price paid for the telegram. On August 6, 

 at n.30 a.m., I wired from Liverpool (office under North-Western 

 Hotel) a message to St. Joseph, Missouri, in one word ; but that 

 word announced my safe arrival, and gave instructions on a busi- 

 ness matter of importance to ray wife. I have to-day received a 

 letter from her, dated August 8 (not a mistake, for she mentions 

 that guns were firing, &c., because it was the day of Oeneral Grant's 

 funeral), from which I learn that my telegram, "sent off at 5.30a.m., 

 St. Joseph time, on August 6, had not been received at mid-day on 

 August 8. I do not yet know what compensation, if any, will be 

 offered. Possibly the telegram may have been since delivered — on 

 August 16, for example, in which case no compensation need be 

 expected. — Faithfully yours, Eiohakd A. Proctor, Eastbourne, 

 Aug. 22. 



I would advise all transatlantic travellers, who do not 

 wish to cause their friends anxiety, to refrain from tele- 

 graphing their arrival. When their friends expect a 

 telegram, as they would be sure to do if they iinder.stood 

 it was the traveller's intention to telegraph, its non- 

 arrival would naturally be understood to show that some 

 serious mishap had taken place. Business communica- 

 tions Icnown to lie such (from their form, for example) 

 may possibly be exposed to less risk of failure. It is to 

 be hoped so. The two business communications referred 

 to above were not so worded that their business cha- 

 racter as such could be recognised. I shall bo glad to 

 receive and publish evidence bearing on the trustworthi- 

 ness of transatlantic telegraphy. 



Pkofessoe Stokes, in his lectures on light, inclines to 

 the belief that Sir F. Herschel's suggestion may be cor- 

 rect, according to which the development of a comet's 

 tail is due to electric repulsion; and Professor Stokes 

 suggests on his own part that the repulsion may be due 

 to an electric charge on the sun, resulting from the pro- 

 cess of condensation in the mist particles of the comet's 

 head. I wonder whether anj' direct evidence showing 

 that either suggestion is soruad will ever be obtained. 

 Professor Tait, of Edinburgh, commenting on Professor 

 Stokes's ideas, expresses his still lively love for the 

 "swarm of cosmical brickbats" theory-, which he mis- 

 takenly imagines to have been suggested by astronomers 

 in explanation of comets' tails. In reality, no astronomer 

 ever supposed the cosmical brickbats (that is only Pro- 

 fessor Tait's funny way of saying meteors) had anything 

 to do with comets' tails, near which they have never been 

 seen. 



Mr. J. Jolt, of the Engineering School, Trinity 

 College, Dublin, suggests as a novelty (I quote from my 

 " Popular Science Column " in the Newcastle Weehhj 

 Chronicle) the method for avoiding icebergs, which I 

 suggested in 1879, just after the Arizona had run into 

 an iceberg at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. " I 

 would like to ask," he says, "whether a thermal radia- 

 tion method might not serve to show the presence of a 

 large mass of ice in the neighbourhood of a ship." The 

 use of such an instrument as the bolometer of Professor 

 Langley, " or even of the thermopile, in conjunction 

 with a large reflector and an alarm circuit closed by 

 galvanometer deflection, might be worth trial by any one 

 possessing the opportunity." In every detail, the 

 opinion of Mr. J. Joly supports the view that I expressed 

 in the columns of the Newcastle Chronicle six years ago. 

 Collisions with icebergs occur seldom, but when they do 

 occur they are apt to be so terrible in their efl'ects, that 

 something might be done, in the case at any rate of our 

 ocean steamships, to warn the sailor of the proximity of 

 the great ice masses which float silently athwart the 

 oceanic roadways. 



