212 



♦ KNOVS^LEDGE ♦ 



[May 1, 1886. 



the water ran out into the mouth, which would be, to say 

 the least, an inelegant and unseemly way of drinking. 



In passing we may notice that, were it not for the un- 

 pleasant deficiencies here mentioned, creatui'es much larger 

 than any on the earth might exist on the moon. A Brob- 

 dingnag on the earth would be by no means the terrible 

 monster imagined by the inventive Captain Gulhver. Trom 

 what is now known about the relation between the strength 

 and the size of muscles, a Brobdingnag ten times as tall (and 

 also ten times as broad and as thick) as a man, would be one 

 hundred times as strong; but he would be one thousand 

 times as heavy. Thus lie would be ten times as heavy as he 

 ought to be, and would be just about as active as a man 

 among ourselves who, weighing HO lbs. (10 stone), had his 

 weight increased by overloading to 1,400 lbs. The extra 

 1,260 lbs., or rather more than lialf a ton, would certainly 

 not conduce to activity, insomuch that, when Gulliver first 

 saw a Brobdingnag, he might have been sure that the creature's 

 show of giant size must be hollow, or else its weight so great 

 that movement would be impossible. Now on the moon 

 such a Brobdingnag would weigh only 233^ lbs., and, so far 

 as power of movement is concerned, would be like a man of 

 140 lbs. weighted down with only 94| lbs. Even this would 

 be an awkward extra weight. But a lunar man six times 

 as tall as one of ourselves would be all right, for he would be 

 thirty-six times as strong, and also thirty-six times as heavy, 

 so that he would be just as active as one of us. He would 

 be no such contemptible giant as Jack the killer of giants 

 dealt with so easily. He would stride six yards as easily as 

 a man on earth strides one yard ; he could leap over a height 

 of 24 feet as easily as an active youth leaps over a four- 

 feet stile. The work he could do as a lunar engineer or 

 road-maker would be something stupendous. With as much 

 ease as a man on earth can raise a block of stone six inches 

 in length, height, and breadth, our lunar man could raise a 

 cubical block one yard in the side, for such a block which 

 on the earth would be 216 times as heavy, would on the 

 moon be but thirty-six times as heavy, and the lunar 

 man would be thirty-six times as strong. A lunar Great 

 Pyramid, representing the same amount of work as the 

 Great Pyramid of Egypt, would be 1,500 yards in the side 

 and 970 yards high. It would remain in the dry, thin air 

 of the moon for as many hundreds of thousands of years as 

 our Great Pyramid has lasted thousands ; and as it would 

 be quite easily discernible with our telescopes, even with 

 those of moderate power, there might, after all, be notliing 

 very stupendously absurd in old Gruithuysen's idea that 

 some of the features on the moon were the work of former 

 lunar inhabitants. But unfortunately, these Large lunar 

 men would have wanted plenty of air and plenty of water, 

 especially when at work on great lunar edifices ; and if our 

 estimate of the moon's past condition is sound, there 

 would have been but very little water for them and still 

 less air. 



Perhaps all this may seem very little worth considering. 

 Of such speculations there is no end, said Sir John Her- 

 schel — after indulging in them to his heart's content. And 

 certainly it seems somewliat idle to discuss the ways of 

 lunar men, when we have every reason to think that, in a 

 world whose various stages of life lasted so short a time 

 as the moon's, no such creature as man could possibly have 

 been developed, even if there had been the requisite supply 

 of air and water. Let us rather consider, therefore, whether 

 what is actually seen on the moon may not find its explana- 

 tion in the circumstances we have been examining. 



{To he continued.) 



EXAMPLE OF RECENT CELESTIAL 

 PHOTOGRAPHY. 



E give this month a process engraving from 

 a photograph by MM. Paul and Prosper 

 Henry, of a rich region of the constellation 

 Oygnus. It maj- be said to have been 

 engraved by the stars themselves, the 

 original photograph being the du-ect woik 

 of the stars, and the present reproduction 

 derived from that photograph without the intervention of 

 any human handiwork. 



Next month we shall give process copies of the photo- 

 graphs of the Pleiades by the same astronomical photo- 

 graphers, showing the nebulous masses around Merope and 

 Maia, accompanied by drawings of the siime regions as 

 ob.served by 'Tempel and \\'o\(. 



HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US. 



By a Stidext of Divinity. 



T would be interesting to learn the average 

 opinion of Bible readers about the nahtre of 

 the Bible. Even in these days we take it that 

 ninety-nine out of a hundred — nay, the full 

 hundred out of nine hundreds in ten — regard 

 the Bible as a book whose two parts, the Old 

 Testament and the New Testament, form 

 complete records, one given as a revelation to the Jewish 

 people, the other as a revelation to the Gentiles. Fully as 

 large a proportion of Bible readers, if further asked wh;/ 

 they regard the Old Testament and the New as ahke God's 

 Word, would have no answer ready, except that it would be 

 sinful to doubt it. 



The real facts — -let the interpretation of them be what it 

 may — are somewhat difl'erent from what those imagine who 

 are most earnest in talking about the Bible, but care least 

 to learn what it really is. 



Up to the time of Josiah, thirteenth in descent from 

 David, there was no recognised collection of sacred scrip- 

 tures other than what was called the Testimony, described in 

 Deuteronomy xxxi. 12 as "the Book of the Law, put in the 

 side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord." Probabl}^ the 

 Testimony was simply the Decalogue, and those warnings 

 and exhortations Moses had been enjoined at sundry times 

 (see Exodus xvii. 18) "to write for a memorial in a book, 

 and rehearse in the ears of Joshua." This Testimony, what- ' 

 ever it included, was given to each king at his crowning, 

 and doubtless, before the kings' days, to each ruler at his 

 appointment. And as, in our times, each monarch at hia 

 coronation hearkens to a certain more or less solemn state- 

 ment of his duties, and as solemnly undertakes to fulfil 

 them, so the judge, and later the king of the Jewish people, 

 accepted the Testimony in token that he meant to obey its 

 injunctions. It is not recorded that most of the kings 

 fulfilled their promise in this I'espect, — rather the reverse. 



In the days of Josiah the Book of the Law was found in 

 the Temple by a certain priest, Hilkiah, who delivered it to 

 a scribe, Shaphan, who, in turn, read it to the king, who 

 was very much troubled to find that the things enjoined in 

 this Book of the Law had been very much neglected — the 

 cause, he at once saw, of the troubles which had fallen on 

 the Jews for a long time past. (In those days they always 

 knew how " bad times " were brought about. ) So the king 

 sent Hilkiah and Shaphan, with others, to Huldah, a pro- 

 phetess, or " wdse woman," of the sibylline type. This lady 

 oracularly interpreted the whole matter. At hei' suggestion 



