Dec. 23, ISSl.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



163 



Continued /rom page 160.J 

 ovolntion of tho rattlesnake to the desire — or endcavoar — of the 

 animal to frighten its enemies," and it is just here that he mis- 

 understands Darwin. The theory he attacks is Lamarck's, not 

 Danvin's. Darivin and Lamarck may agree in saying that the 

 rattlesnake uses his rattle with the desire (or in the endeavour) to 

 frighten its enemies; but whereas Lamarck attributed to such 

 desire or endeavour, and the resulting " habit," the development of 

 the rattlesnake, Dan\-in would do nothing of the sort (rather attri- 

 buting the habit to the development). If Mr. Crosland will read 

 Darwin's remarks on the views of Lamarck (preface to " Origin of 

 Species," and elsewhere), and remember that Lyell became a con- 

 ^e^t to the general theory of evolution only when the Danvinian 

 theory replaced Lamarck's, he will see that there is an important 

 difference between the two. J[r. Crosland's diatribe on Dr. Darwin 

 would only be permissible if he had been violently and personally 

 attacked by that eminent geologist, which, I take it, has not hap- 

 pened. May I venture to remark that if Mr. Crosland thonght me 

 really guilty of shuffling, he would not " expect to receive an apology 

 from me." He has quite wrongly accused me of shuffling, but I do 

 not want an apology, and certainly I do not expect one. 



" Tentative " thinks we do ^n•ong in excluding spiritualism. He 

 thinks it would bo *' a great gain if we would encourage a searching 

 inquiry into the causes, electric or other, of the singular mind 

 problems continually presented to us.'* We will do so, by publish- 

 ing the first scientitic results of such inquiries which may reach us. 

 A story he relates seems to illustrate only the effect of an excited 

 imagination. 



Ebenerer Kelby writes respecting my remarks about the Great 

 Pyramid, that if certain singular coincidences wei"e noted, and 

 tliose who had noted them were told it was mere accident, they 

 would say, with a sceptical sneer, " it is a very strange accident," 

 and many readers of KxowLEPGE say the same of my " opinion with 

 i-egard to Mr. Baxendell's wonderful calculations showing the won- 

 derful con-espondence of pyramid measures with astronomical data." 

 If Ebenezer Kclby will wait awhile, he may find I can give reasons 

 for my remark that the very closeness of some of the coincidences 

 noted by Mr. Baxendell, and of some other coincidences which he 

 has not mentioned, disproves the argument from coincidence. 



"0. K. B." asks why occultations of stars by planets, which 

 must be continually occurring, are not alluded to or tabulated ? 

 They occur far less often than he imagines. Very few are recorded, 

 aad still fewer have been properly observed. I know, indeed, of 

 only one really satisfactory case, viz., the occultation of a sixth 

 magnitude star in Aquarius by Jupiter, well observed by Ellery and 

 Turner with the great Melbourne reflector. The star disappeared 

 gradnally, and was visible (just before it disappeared) at a depth 

 of more than 500 miles below the apparent surface of Jupiter — 

 doubtless, therefore, through a great range of the planet's cloud- 

 laden atmosphere. " 0. E. B." is mistaken in supposing the size 

 of a star could be determined by noting how long it was in dis- 

 appearing behind the comparatively slow-moving planet. If a 

 planet's outline were sharply defined, the disappearance even of the 

 largest and nearest star would be to all intents and purposes in- 

 stantaneous. 



"Practical" sends an interesting letter on the use of flesh meat, 

 which shall appear as soon as we can find space for it. 



" 6. P." asks how it is that if the elasticity of the .fther is almost 

 infinite, vibrations set up in it by solar influence have such short 

 duration ? Why should darkness so soon follow sunset ? The 

 vibrations may be compared to those on the surface of water. 

 When a stone has been thrown into water, the vibrations travel all 

 aronnd, ceasing first at the place where they began, and thence all 

 ronnd as the wave circle expands. The elasticity of the water 

 shows itself in the wide expansion of the wave circle, not in tho 

 continuance of the oscillation at any point or points traversed by 

 the wave. So with the aether of space, its elasticity is shown by 

 the great distances to which light travels without appreciable ex- 

 tinction. The £Bther cannot at the same time cam- on the light 

 impulse from each point passed, and continue its %-ibrations there. 

 Another question by '' G. P." has not been answered, that respect- 

 ing the nse of vectors in Maxwell's little book on Matter and 

 Motion. I venture to express the opinion that in a work of that 

 tind, the use of vectors is as entirely out of place as the use of 

 Latin and Greek technical terms would be in a treatise on domestic 

 medicine. To the mathematician, vectors are of use to shorten 

 reasoning and simplify statements, precisely as technical terms are 

 of nse in science. But they should have no place in elementaiy 

 treatises. 



We have received many letters besides those published, relating 

 to the " Vestiges of Creation." Pressure on our space, and the 

 comparatively small importance of the subject, prevents our publish- 

 ing these. It is well knoivn that Robert Chambers was the author 

 of the work, but that he had excellent reasons when he wrote it. 



and during many years after, for not desiring to acknowledge that 

 it was his. Lyell, in his Antiquity of Man, says of the work, that 

 " written in a clear and attractive style, it made tho English public 

 familiar with the leading views of Lamarck in transmutation or 

 progression, but brought no new facts or original line of argument 

 to support those views, or to combat tho principal objections which 

 the scientific world entertained against them." Darwin says, 

 " from its powerful and brilliant style, tho work, though displaying 

 in its earlier editions little accurate knowledge, and a great want of 

 scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation ; in my 

 opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling atten- 

 tion to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing 

 the ground for the reception of analogous views." Lieut. -Col. Eoss 

 writes us that he has ovenvhelming evidence to show that Sir C. 

 Lyell must have written it; but Lyell opposed the Lamarckian 

 hypothesis ; also that Chambei's could not have written it, but in the 

 later years of his life Chambers acknowledged to many that he had 

 done so. A.T.C., Eclecticas, and others, have written very fully on 

 this subject. " Eclecticus" regards Darwin's work as a fit and com- 

 plimentary (query complementary) sequel to the " Vestiges," which 

 reads to me very much as though one should say that Xewton's 

 " Principia " was a fit sequel to Kei)ler's " Prodromos." The ques- 

 tion of scientific value, be it understood, is not as between the 

 work of Darwin and Chambers, but as between the theory of 

 Lamarck and that of Natural Selection. 



It is pointed out by a writer, who desires that his name may not 

 be published, that a newspaper paragraph recently commented upon 

 in our columns somewhat unfavourably, correctly represented the 

 statements of a French chemist in the Comptes Rendus, and that 

 newspaper science does not deserve all the vilification it receives. 

 As I have myself written a good deal about science in the news- 

 papers, I need hardly say that I am not disposed to regard all 

 newspaper science as nnsomid. Still, it remains true that newspaper 

 science cannot be regarded as trustworthy, simply because the 

 general reader cannot distinguish the sound from the unsound, and 

 has no means of ascertaining to whom particular statements are due, 

 while it is well known that some editors of leading daily papers have 

 themselves no knowledge whatever of science, and would as soon 

 insert a column of utter nonsense, if foisted on them as the work of 

 a known science student, as the most carefully-reasoned article by a 

 Darwin, a Tyndall, an Airy, or a Huxley. From my own experience 

 I know that many newspaper editors have no idea whatever of the 

 progressive nature of science. Articles which I have written, the 

 appearance of which has been delayed for one reason or another, 

 would have been inserted just as they were written, had I not insisted 

 on the proofs being sent to me for changes rendered necessary 

 by the lapse of time. In one case, an article which I wrote for 

 the Times immediately after the eclipse of June, 1878, was 

 recast by me in this way several times, at 'great cost of labom-, 

 until at last, when I left England for America in the autumn of 

 1879, I gave up further attempts to make the article fit for reading 

 at the time of publication. I had supposed my labour lost, but, to 

 my horror, I saw that vei-y paper quoted in an American newspaper 

 in December, 1879, and thus first learned that at last it had 

 appeared in the Times. Other papers were delayed with the 

 intention of eventually using them, until, at last, I gave up all 

 idea of their being patched into fitness for later dates. Some 

 articles I have seen in the daily papers suggest to me, by their 

 time-worn aspect and other evidence of decrepitude, that all 

 writers are not honest enough to remind the editor of the 

 deterioration a scientific article is undergoing as time passes (or 

 has already undergone), preferring that an article should appear 

 long after it has ceased to have any value than that they 

 should lose the money which is 'only paid after an article has 

 appeared. In America, the editors of leading papers adopt a plan 

 which is at once more sensible and — in my judgment — more 

 honest, making the question of payment (so my esteemed friend, 

 the editor of the Xeiu Yorl; Tnbvne, tells me) independent of tho 

 use of an article which has been accepted and sent in type to an 

 author for correction. This surely is better than the system of some 

 of our English leading papers (the Times amongst others), by which 

 an tmskilful editor, after inviting and accepting more contributions 

 than he can find room for, calmly suffers the loss to fall on the au- 

 thors, and selectively on those who may be honest enough to tell 

 him that their papers no longer have the value they originally 

 possessed. It is because all writers are not careful to do this that 

 we so often see old truths presented as novelties, and exploded 

 errors presented as accepted truths, in our daily papers. 



Mr. Baxendell has written a letter, in reply to Mr. Ranyard's 

 remarks, letter 85, p. 113. We would insert the letter, though it 

 does little more than express Mr. Baxendell's unchanged confidence 

 in his views, were it not for passages showing that Mr. Baxendell 

 has entirely misapprehended Mr. Ranyard's remarks respecting 

 fortune-telling, weather prediction, alchemical promises, and so 



