Not. 1, 1885.] 



KNOV^^LEDGE 



13 



THE SKIES OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, 



By Richakd A. Peoctor. 



HA.VE planned a work for the Southern 

 Hemisphere akin to my " Easy Star Lessons ' 

 (drawn up of course for the northern hemi- 

 sphere). But the small encouragement 

 which Australian booksellers give to the 

 idea, leads me to believe that for the present 

 I shall have to be content with a series 

 'imilar to my " Star Primer" now ju-st ready for publi- 

 cation, in which the stars are shown fortnight by fort- 

 night in the simplest possible way, at their true relative 

 height above the horizon and also in their true direction 

 with regard to the cardinal points. The series win com- 

 mence in January with the map for the southern skies in 

 March, so that there may be due time for each map to 

 reach the other hemisphere before the date for which it 

 is intended. 



I give this month the northern skies as seen from the 

 latitude of various southern places mentioned ou the m''p. 

 With the kind consent of Messrs. Chatto i Windus, I 

 also give for comparison the corresponding map of the 

 set of forty-eight given in my " Easy Star Lessons." It 

 will be seen that the greater part of the northern map is 

 included in the southern map too, only inverted. By the 

 northern map I mean the one for our northern hemi- 

 sphere, in which the southern sky is shown; in the 

 southern map the northern sky is given. It is singnlri- 

 to a northerner to see Orion upside down in the northern 

 skies, as the map shows the Giant Hunter, and as he will be 

 shown more fully in nest month's map, presenting him due 

 south. A John Himpden in the southern hetnis[ihere 

 would feel that if the stars are seen as in the northern 

 map from our hemisphere and as in the southern map in 

 the southern hemisphere, the starry heavens r.re in league 

 with the untruthful astronomers : or he might prefer to 

 close his eyes and decline to see the f irailiar northern 

 constellations as they ought never to be seen on the flat- 

 Birth theory. But to the student of astronomy the 

 ch2,nge of aspect r.s Orion, for example, passes from the 

 south, to the region overhecd (when the observer is at 

 the equator) to the north (when the observer hrs gone 

 south) — precisely as though the earth were a globe I 

 We shall have Hampden denouncing Orion now. 



A Message from JIahs.— One of those idiots who find it amusing 

 to invent lonar hoaxes, faLse sea-serpents (thereby silencing those 

 who have seen real, but as vet unclassed, sea-creatures) great goose- 

 berries, and so forth, has amused his leisure moments, which are 

 probably many, in devising an account of certain signalling which 

 appears to be going on in the planet Mars, and to which astronomers 

 on earth are preparing to make reply. The circumstance is interest- 

 ing as presenting in a new form the perplexing problem Whence had 

 this particular form of idiocy its origin, and how did it attain its 

 present development. The simple idiot we understand, the lunatic 

 we can even appreciate as akin— so we are told - to the genius : but 

 this particular kind of idiocy is not easily to be interpreted. 



The LtTTLE Naps of Little Fishes. — An experiment has 

 recently been tried at the Inventions Exhibition Aquarium by 

 Mr. W. August Carter, with a view to discover how far fish are prone 

 to sleep, .\fter a close examination, he found tliat amongst fresh- 

 water lishes the roach, dace, gudgeon, carp, tench, minnow, and cat- 

 fish sleep periodically, in common witli terrestrial animals. The 

 same instincts were found to actuate marine tish, o£ which the 

 following were observed to be equally influenced by somnolence. 

 \\z., the wrasse, conger eel, dory, dogfish, wrasse bass, and all species 

 of fiat fish. Mr. Carter states that, so far as he can discover, the 

 goldfish, pike, and angler fish never sleep, but rest periodically. 

 Desire for sleep amongst fish varies according to meteorological con- 

 ditions. Fish do not necessarily select night-rime for repose. 



THE STORY OF CREATION. 



a plain account of EVOLrilON. 



Br Edwakd Clodd. 

 INTRODUCTORY. 



Happy the man whose lot it is to know 



The secrets of the earth. He hastens not 



To work his fellows' hurt by unjust deeds; 



But with rapt admiration contemplates 



Immortal Nature's ageless harmony, 



.\nd how and when her order came to be. 



Such spirits have no place for thoughts of shame. 



ErBlPlDES. Fra/fment, !I02. 



lALF a centurj- ago the public mind • f 

 England was agitated by the Tracts rian 

 movement, the aim of which, broadly 

 stated, was to undo the work of the 

 Reformation in the Established Church. 



Rarely can any age take ti-ne measure 

 of its men, or true perspective of its 

 events, and they who watched the signs cf these stormy 

 times, deafened by the tumult, deemed that one of the 

 world's grer.t crises, fraught with influences and issues 

 reaching to a far-off future, was impending. 



But the Lord was not in that earthquake. Among 

 the leaders of Puseyism there was no maker cf an epoch ; 

 their movement was retrogressive, a vain endeavour to 

 satisfy the craving of men's better selves with nutriment 

 from musty records of a moribund past. 



About the same time Charles Darwin sailed as 

 volunteer naturalist on a five years' voyage in the Beagle, 

 a ten-gun brig, commissioned to survey the shores of 

 South America, and to circumnavigate the globe. 



Few heeded the departure of that ship, none could 

 foretell what memorable results would follow from her 

 vovEige, or know that she carried the man des'ined to 

 knock the bottom cut of all the creeds, and to esta- 

 blish morals and religion on foundations that are 

 independent of the shifting shibboleths of theology ; 

 in fine, to revolutionise or profoundly modify every 

 department of human thought, and every motive 

 to humau action. But so it was. The true epoch- 

 maker, never dreaming to what large and momen- 

 tous result his work would lead, passed unheeded, on 

 his return, to his Kentish home, there to consider the 

 significance of the facts gathered during his voyage. 

 The distribution of living things in South America, and 

 markedly in their relation to those in the Galapagos 

 Islands, a group lying five hundred miles off that con- 

 tinent, led Darwin to convictions regarding the muta- 

 bility of species, and to a solution of the problem of 

 their origin which, after the lapse of nearly a quarter of 

 a century spent in the weighing of every fact and argu- 

 ment telling for or against his theorj-, was published in 

 the famous " Origin of Species." 



" Tract XC."' is now remembered only for the part 

 which it plaj-s in Cardinal Xewman's fascinating 

 "Apologia," bi]t the "Origin of Species ' abides as the 

 imperishable record of the most momentous advance in 

 man's knowledge of the operations of nature since the 

 " Principia." 



The pens of many experts, ready writers withal, have 

 enriched our scientific literature with clear and chaxming 

 expositions of Darwin's theory for the benefit ( f a \ ublic 

 which runs so fast that it has little time to read. But that 

 theory, it must be borne in mind, deals only with organic 

 evolution, i.e., with the origin of the myriad species 

 of plants and animals, and the prominence given to it 

 makes us apt to overlook that it is cmly part of an all- 



