Nov. 1, 1881.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



15 



ifttn'si to tt)t ©Jjitor, 



[2Tk* Editor doet not hold him$elf rerporttitU/br the opinion* of kit correspondents. 

 He cannot undertake to return manuscriptf or to correitpoiid tcilh their leritert. All 

 communicationa should be as short a* possible, co/ttistently vith full and clear state' 

 nents of the writer's meaning.'] 



Alt Editorial communications should be addrested to the Editor qf Ks'OWLKDGB; 

 all Business communiculions to the Putli^hert, at the OJice, 74, Great Queen- 

 ttreet, W.C. 



All Semittances, Cheques, and Post-Office Orders should he made payable to 

 Messrs. Wyman if Sons. 



•,* All letters to the Editor trill be Numbered. For convenience of reference^ 

 correspondents, when referring to any letter, kHI oblige by mentioning its number 

 and the page on which it appears. 



AU Letters or Queries to the Editor which require attt^ntion in the current issue of 

 KxoynsvGV, should reach the Publishing OJice not later than the Saturday preceding 

 (Atf day qf publication. ^^^_^ 



"In knowledge, that man only is to be contemned and despised who is not in a 



state of transition Xor is there anything more adverse to accuracy 



than fiiitT of opinion." — Faraday. 



** There' is no harm in making a mistake, bnt preat harm in making none. Show 

 me a man who makes no miitakes, and I will show yon a man who has done 

 BOthing." — Liebig. _ 



<!^ur Coirrsipontirnre Columns. 



I AM very anxious that Correspondence should become a distin- 

 gnUhing feature of this magazine. I wish all readers to feel that 

 in these columns, including the section for Queries and Replies, they 

 have a means of resolring doubts which may occur to them in 

 scientific study or investigation, when reading articles on science in 

 magazines and journals, and in studj-ing the pages of this magazine 

 itself. Our space will indeed be too limited to permit of our dealing 

 with all such questions as occur to students ; so that simple and 

 Basily-resolved questions cannot occupy space in these pages, which 

 could be better employed. Those who ask such questions must not 

 be angry if they find a rei)ly in our " Letter Box " couched in very 

 brief terms. Still the wish of myself and others, who will join with 

 me in conducting these columns, will be to leave, if possible, no 

 question unanswered. And as we shall in many cases leave reply 

 to readers who may have special means of information on particular 

 subjects, so also shall we often join the ranks of those who ask 

 questions. 



A valued correspondent, who will, I Iiope and believe, help 

 largely in dealing with difficulties which come into these columns 

 for discussion, advises (see letter 1) that paradoxers should be 

 rigidly excluded at the outset. He has had a very wide experience 

 in this matter ; but mine has been even wider, and I must confess 

 to still feeling some tenderness for paradoxers. So many of them 

 have originally been victims of ill-written text-books, dilficultios 

 left unexplained, and so forth, that hopeless though the attempt 

 may seem of putting them on the right track, I do not yet feel 

 disposed to give it up entirely in every case. In these pages the 

 honest paradoxer, at any rate, may at least state his difiiculties ; 

 but space will not be given to him to urge theories in defiance of 

 known facts or established doctrines.' I shall venture to ask that 

 even those who are surest of their ground in meeting paradoxers 

 will deal tenderly with these weaker brethren. The paradoxer finds 

 it hard enough to give up a theory which he has, perhaps, nursed 

 for years in the belief that it was legitimate, without being loudly 

 ridiculed or harshly rebuked. {Nescit vox missa rererti ; were it 

 otherwise there are few words of my utterance I would more wish 

 to recall than those in which I have exposed, with unnecessary 

 energy, mistakes which might equally well' have been corrected in a 

 gentler manner.) 



In more equal arguments, where, perhaps, each party to the 

 discussion has some truth on his side, a greater liveliness of tone 

 may, perhaps, be permissible. Yet, after all, it is neai-ly always 



seen that tho loudor-voiccd in a controversy is the one who ia in 

 error. 



One form of writing, and one alone, we purpose rigidly to czcludo 

 from these columns. No personalities will be permitted, whether in 

 tho form of attack, of adulation, or of self-seeking. 



HINTS TO CORRESPOXDENTS. 

 [1]— Believing as I do that tho scheme laid down in your pro- 

 spectus is a sound one, and that, if it bo carried out in its integrity, 

 Kxowi.EnGE cannot fail to have a great futm-o before it, I would, 

 with your permission, crave a little space to put on record certain 

 ideas of n\ine in connection with one department of your journal 

 — I mean the " Correspondence Column." I am moved to do this 

 from the consideration that tho perusal of tho similar portion of 

 such of your contemporaries and predecessors as have had anything 

 like a kindred aim with that which you profess, has led me to the 

 conclusion that of all parts of a scientific paper this is the most apt 

 to degenerate into the weakest, unless a tight hand is kept upon 

 those whose chief glorj- it is to see themselves in print. Amid 

 many earnest students and seekers after knowledge, whose legi- 

 timate thirst for information it should be at once the duty and tho 

 privilege of the man of science to gratify, are always to be found 

 men who, under pretence of seeking instruction, will obtrude their 

 own " fads " on the public, and unless restrained in tho outset, 

 speedily develop into paradoxers of the most aggravated tj-pe. Or 

 again, there are the people who put solemnly on records things 

 which are as " familiar in their (and other peoples') mouths as house- 

 hold words," and who will tell you that two and two make four, as 

 though it were a direct and immediate revelation from Heaven. 

 Furthermore, we have the gentlemen who conceive that anything in 

 the shape of the observation of a phenomenon, no matter in how 

 slipshod a style it is described, must necessarily be of tho highest 

 scientific interest. These are the people who write to the papers 

 and say that " while crossing Salisbury jilain on Friday night 

 between nine and eleven p.m., I noted a sudden illumination of the 

 sky, which, I have no doubt, proceeded from a falling meteorite ; 

 inasmuch as, on turning round, I observed a bright object as big as 

 a good-sized stone just disappearing on the horizon." Or "happen- 

 ing to look at the sun on Monday I could detect two spots on it." 

 I would appeal to any who has studied the quasi-scientific cor- 

 respondence which appears from time to time in different journals, 

 whether I am caricatming no inconsiderable part of the letters 

 which, in some occult way, their editors suffer to pass ? The people, 

 too, who take counsel on matters of almost purely personal inte- 

 rest, who " have built a greenhouse W ft. by -1, and will feel obliged 

 if any of your readers will tell me how to keep it stocked with 

 plants throughout the winter." The youths enteriug into competi- 

 tive examinations, who wish to be told how to simplify the fraction 



a 

 a + x + 3— and so forth. All these occupy space which should 



.T 



be devoted either to those who have something really to learn or 

 something to teach. The person, though, to bo rigidly excluded 

 and forcibly ejected from the pages of every scientific periodical 

 whatsoever is the paradoxer ; the man who has 8<iuared tho circle 

 with a two-foot rule and a bit of string ; who has been down into 

 the Essex marshes with a draining-level. and shown, eonclusively, 

 that the earth ia as flat as a pancake ; or he who, by dividing the 

 number of days in the year by the height of the Lord Hill Monu- 

 ment at Shrewsbury, finds tho number 31HG, and forthwith pro- 

 claims that Mr. ilaycock, the architect must have been " in- 

 spired."* There is a record, more or loss authentic, of a man, that 

 his servant ran up to him in great trepidation, exclaiming, "Oh, 

 sir, there is a bailiff down stairs ! " '• All right," was tho response 

 of the master of the house, " ask him to take a chair." " He has 

 taken six already, sir," replied the servant. Upon a cognate prin- 

 ciple I would, in litnine, try to deprecate tho offer of a chair in 

 these pages to any paradoxer whatswvcr. Depend upon it, should 

 such be made, it w-ill be found that he has taken his " six already." 

 I am. Sir, yours, &c.. 

 A Fellow of the Royal Astbo.nomical Society. 



IS THE SUN HOT.' 

 [2] — In your lecture on the Sun we are told that the sun is himself 

 hot, and the source of heat for this earth, just as a fire is the source 

 of heat for a room. Now, I would ask how this can possibly be tho 

 case, and I would take the very illustration you emjiloy to show 

 how entirely erroneous is the idea that tho sun can be the source of 

 the earth's heat, in the sonso, at least, in which you speak. If I 



• For an amusing travestie of such reasoning, see " Tho Tribune 

 Riddle " further on.— £((. K.nowlecce. 



