KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



Jerciiis Pastor. 



The wife also fries to brazen it out : — 



A pratty child is he 

 As syttes on a woman's kne ; 

 A ilylly dovvne, perde, 

 To gar a man laghe. 

 I know him by the eere marke : 



that is a good tokyn. 

 I telle you, syrs, hark, 



his noys was broken. 

 Sythen told me a clerk that he was forspokyn 

 (bewitched). 

 Primus Pastor. This is a false wark. I wold fayn be wrokyn 

 (revenged) 

 Get wepyn. 

 Wife. He was takyn with an elfe ; 



I saw it myself 

 When the clok stroke twelf 

 Was he forshapyu (transformed.*) 



At last Mak gets tlirashed for tlio theft, and the weary- 

 shepherd's rest is broken by the " Gloria in Excelsis " of 

 the angels, of whose singing they make fun. The play 

 concludes with the visit to Bethlehem, and the presen- 

 tation to the infant Jesus of " a bob of cherys," a " byrd," 

 and a "balle" wherewith to play "tenys." 



Among- the skilful imitations of Mystery Plays the 

 Nativity, in Longfellow's Golden Legend, and the I'rologue 

 ■en Heavia in Faust may be mentioned. In this last- 

 named drama Goethe has reproduced with truth and 

 vigour the ancient conceptions of the relations between 

 God and the archfiend, of which both the Mysteries and 

 Moralities give so vivid a picture. 



THE GREAT RED SPOT ON JUPITER. 

 Br Richard A. Proctoe. 



(Continued from p. 200.) 



LESS simple, but not less decisive is the mathematical 

 evidence adduced by Professor Geo. H. Darwin 

 {son of Charles Darwin), who has shown that the move- 

 ments of Jupiter's satellites would be other than they 

 are if the mass of Jupiter were distributed uniformly, or 

 with any approach to uniformity, throughout the globe 

 we measure as Jupiter's. Either there must be great 

 compression towards the centre of Jupiter's globe, or the 

 outer parts of the region within the cloud surface we 

 measure must be of very small density, the real globe 

 beginning thoasands of miles inside that envelope. 



I pass over for the moment the powerful argument 

 derivable from the behaviour of Jupiter's satellites. 

 But I must say that, in my opinion, wlicn observers of 

 great skill, like the late Admiral Smyth, Sir Thomas 

 Maclear, Professor Pearson, Mr. Todd of Adeh.idc, Mr. 

 Ellery of Melbourne, and the a.ssistants nf ihcs,- last- 

 named observers, rL-coi-d obser vat in„s,surl, as 1 1,.- n,,|.| u-ar- 

 ance of a satellite after its transit aemss .1 ii pil n-'s disc 

 had already U'^^uu, and the visiliilit v cf a satellite xslien 

 behind the planel au.l well within llie clise, an.l the 

 visibility of a faiut star thi-nii-li the (.uter eiivelei^es ef 



Jupiter, it seems to me idle to advance optical-illusion 

 interpretations such as would barely avail to explain such 

 phenomena recorded by the merest beginuers with the 

 telescope. Thus Mr. Todd, Government Observer at Ade- 

 laide, who has had more experience than any man living in 

 observing transits and occultations of Jupiter's satellites 

 (having specially devoted himself to the work, in response 

 to an appeal of Sir George Airy's), records that on four occa- 

 sions he saw a satellite pass behind the well-defined edge 

 of the planet, the form of the satellite continuing visible, 

 without distortion, until at last the whole satellite was 

 thus seen through the outer parts of the jjhanet, and 

 that on each occasion his assistant, a very cautious and 

 well - practised observer, saw the same phenomenon. 

 Reply is made that possibly Jupiter was a little out of 

 focus, or his outline for some other reason indistinct, and 

 the satellite not really seen within it, or possibly the 

 observers (both of them !) mistook a false image of the 

 satellite, the result of wearied eye, for the satellite itself. 

 Surely we may say that such an explanation is incon- 

 sistent with all reasonable probabilities. A mere beginner 

 in observation may have the edge of the planet out of 

 focus, and suppose the blurred extension so produced to 

 represent the real dimensions of the planet. But Mr. 

 Todd is no mere beginner; he is an "old hand," and an 

 old hand at this particular work. His assistant, again, is 

 no beginner, but a practised observer. In hazy weather, 

 again, even a practised observer might form an unsatis- 

 factory estimate of the position of Jupiter's edge (though 

 he would by no means see a clearly-defined outline to the 

 satellite) ; but the weather was not hazy ; the sky was 

 exceptionally clear and still (so Mr. Todd told me when 

 I had the pleasure of meeting him at Adelaide in 1880). 

 The wearied-eye theory would be quite out of the 

 question in the case of a single observer of any skill ; 

 but when Mr. Todd, seeing the outline of the satellite 

 through the outskirts of the planet, called his assistant to 

 take his place at the telescope, there was no wearied eye 

 with a false image of the satellite on it, at work, but a 

 fresh eye, which had not been looking at a satellite of 

 Jupiter's for some time ; and when Mr. Todd resumed his 

 place at the telescope, his eye too was practically a fresh 

 one. So with other recorded cases, where skilful and 

 well-practised eyes have observed phenomena which can 

 only be explained by recognising great tenuity in the 

 outer cloud-laden regions of Jupiter, and a great ex- 

 tension of his gaseous surroundings in depth. 



We seem to have travelled a long way from the great 

 red spot, but in reality all that we have been inquiring 

 into since we left the spot bears iinin.i-iaiii ly en uur in- 

 terpretation of that remarkable pheiLnM le n -. 



When we see so many independent line > .f evidence all 

 pointing to tlie conclusion that thai state eif things 

 prevails to which the only valid explanation of the shape 

 of the great red spot had already led us, all reasonable 

 doubt seems removed. We may rest assured, I think, 

 that the red sjiet reallv owed its syinnetry . .f f„rm to the 

 central nature ef the ferees at we.-k it, rniinu- it, audits 

 elongated shape t,. the eii-einn>Ianer lh:i r, _■„ ms at very 

 different distanees fro, u tli- , lanrt 's en ! re i . . .k part in 



sibile surface of Jujiiter, but in 



