DISCOVERY 



63 



•white nebulous objects are actually spiral nebula;. 

 He drew attention to the existence among them of 

 small round nebula; ' ' which are to be numbered by 

 the thousand and probably actually form the majority 

 of the known nebulae." Confirmatory evidence of 

 Mr. Reynolds's contention has recently been obtained 

 at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Indeed, in the 

 recent Annual Report it is stated that " the non- 

 galactic objects which have been designated as globular 

 nebula; are more numerous than those of any other 

 class. The brightest and largest of them, such as 

 M43, 60, and 87, show no trace of spiral structure, 

 although their spectra and radial velocities are of the 

 same character as those of the spirals." Mr. Flasket t, 

 of Ottawa, has suggested that from these nebulae the 

 giant stars develop in accordance with Professor 

 Russell's hypothesis. 



At the present time, current theories and opinions 

 as to the nebulae are in the melting-pot. The advances 

 •of the last few years have enormously added to our 

 knowledge, but have made the task of co-ordinating 

 the known facts in a general evolutionary concept 

 much more formidable than it was believed to be 

 twenty, or even ten, years ago. On the other hand 

 we have the fact that Professor Russell's hypothesis 

 of stellar evolution fits the known data much better 

 than any other cosmogonic theory and, further, this 

 hypothesis points to the great dark nebulae, of which 

 the bright irregular nebulas are merely particular 

 examples, as the progenitors of the red giant stars. 

 On the other hand, we have the fact that the evidence 

 also favours the evolution of stars from spiral nebula?, 

 and further that the planetary nebulas would also 

 appear to be the parents of stars. At the present 

 time, therefore, the evidence seems to point to the 

 likelihood of there being two or three possible paths of 

 evolution, a fact which would add meaning to the 

 proved existence of widely different forms of nebulae. 

 The intensive work now being carried on at the great 

 American observatories may be expected to throw 

 further light upon the question within the next few 

 years ; and the apparently contradictory facts of to-day 

 may be merged in a higher synthesis in the near future. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Curtis, " The Nebulsc," Adolfo Stahl Lectures in Astronomy. 

 Shapley, " Studies based on the Colours and Magnitudes in 



Stellar Clusters," 14th Paper {Mount Wilson Contribution 



No. 160). 

 Shapley, " On the Existence of External Galaxies," Pub. 



Astr. Soc. Pacific, October 19 19. 

 Russell, " Dark Nebulae " {Mount Wilson Contribution, No- 



77)- 

 Jeans, " The Present Position of the Nebular Hypothesis," 



Scientia, October 19 18. 

 Reynolds, Observatory, vol. xliii. No. 558. 

 Annual Report of the Director of Mount Wilson Observatory, 



1921. 



A Test of Relationship 



By R. J. V. Pulvertaft, B.A. 



In 1871 a certain Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping 

 butcher, underwent trial for more than a hundred days 

 on a charge of posing as the rightful heir to the Tich- 

 borne estate. A succession of witnesses were formd 

 ready to swear to his identity. Even the mother of 

 the real heir, drowned at sea, recognised him as her 

 son. Although Orton was fair and Tichborne dark, 

 although Tichborne 's accent was French and that of 

 Orton very reminiscent of Wapping, there was very 

 great difficulty in establishing the truth. 



Such claims as Orton 's are by no means rare 

 in courts of law. The question of the relationship 

 of a child to its supposed parents very often arises, 

 as, for instance, in the Meade Divorce case settled a 

 few weeks ago, and, again, especially when large sums 

 of money depend on the birth of a child. And that 

 relationship is notoriously difficult to establish. 

 Famous artists are called upon to swear to resemblances 

 between the shape of the parent's ear and that of the 

 child ; arguments are based on the colour of the eye 

 and hair. But everyone realises that such arguments 

 carry little weight ; mere resemblance in feature is not 

 convincing. 



There is, however, one test which may prove reliable 

 in questions of this sort. It was shown many years 

 ago by Mendel, an Austrian priest, that certain 

 peculiarities of sweet-peas were handed down in a 

 definite manner to their descendants. In other words, 

 a knowledge of the characteristics of the parent plants 

 of a packet of sweet-pea seeds enables a gardener to 

 prophesy all the possible varieties of sweet-pea which 

 he can grow from that packet. And if those sweet- 

 pea seeds are very crinkled, he knows that at least 

 one of the parent sweet-peas grew also from crinkled 

 seeds. 



If we could find a single peculiarity of human 

 beings which is handed down without any possibility 

 of an exception, we could prove, in many cases, 

 whether a child was or was not related to its supposed 

 parents. We know, however, what unexpected chil- 

 dren occur — ^red-haired from dark-haired parents, tall 

 from short, and clever from foolish. Therefore none 

 of these characteristics can fairly influence a decision 

 — they are not " dominant " charcteristics in Mendel's 

 phrase ; they are characteristics which arise from the 

 fact that human beings, as a recent writer' in 

 Discovery has said, are " mosaics of inheritance." 



As a matter of fact, there are several characteristics 

 which are handed down from parent to child as 



1 Prof. H. J. Fleure, Menial Characters and Physical Char- 

 acters in Race Study, in the February issue. 



