858 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Feb. 24, 1882. 



that Swift'i mind was iM-f^nning to be affected wticn he 

 mndc suoli fcchli- jokrn, any morn than hi- would douht 

 tliot n i^rt'ni stntf'SMiaii or a pnivc prelate who should wolk 

 oUui^ a I>i>n(loii stre<-t in nif{ht attire wax, for the tinx- 

 l>oiiig, at any rate, jniiane. 



I*rol>al>ly, few ]HT8ong who havn had occasion to tax 

 thi'ir iiientiil [mwers at times to the iitninst, hav<' failed to 

 notice this tendency tt> \Aay idly with words, anionj^ other 

 symptoms of want of rest. When noticed under such 

 eircumstaiiees, the peculiarity need not ho r('{;arded as 

 alarming. If, however, it remains aft4-r rest has iteen 

 olitiiined, it indicat<>8 the nucussity for relaxation of a more 

 i'llective kind. 



And here we feel called on to object strongly to a remedy 

 su;;;,'est«'d in a little Imok on "Common Mind TrouMes,' 

 for the errors in speech characteristic of impaired mental 

 vigour, namely, " readin;; aloud in one langua-je from a 

 work writU'n in another, for example, a French hook to an 

 English audience." It would he o-s rcasonahle to recom- 

 mend persons who showed symptoms of bodily weariness to 

 try the efl'ect of an hour's exercise with Indian clubs or 

 heavy dumb-hells. The proper course is to take rest as 

 soon as possible, and alnDve all things to avoid the mistake 

 of seeking in distraction of the thouglits (which is only 

 another form of " worry ") for the good ctiects which can 

 only be expected from relaxation. Some of the most 

 melancholy cases of mental break-down have been caused 

 far more by social worries sought as remedies, than by the 

 excessive brain work to which they have been too hastily 

 attributed. 



lUbictue. 



CELESTIAL OBJECTS FOR COMMON 

 TELESCOPES.* 



THE first edition of this work seemed to us one of the 

 most charming little books on astronbmy ever 

 written ; the second scarce less so : the third still endeared 

 to us by recollections of its simpler predecessors ; the 

 fourth is the firet which seems overweighted by details and 

 minutia'. Perhaps, if we had seen the fourth lirst, we 

 should have liked it as well as we did the first ; yet it 

 cannot be denied that many pages of the work before us 

 are calculated to alarm, rather than attract, the young 

 student of astronomy, for whom the book is specially 

 intended. 



The charm of the earlier edition lay, perhaps, a good deal 

 in a certain insoucifinri- of style, a neglect of nouns sub- 

 stantive, and of too strict rules of syntax, which was 

 suggestive of enthusiasm. The subject seemed to run 

 away with the writer. Take, for instance, the opening 

 sentences of the chapter on Venus. " The most beautiful 

 of heavenly bodies to the unaided eye is often a source of 

 disappointment in the telescope." (We know somehow — we 

 cannot tell how — that this is not a general proposition.) 

 " for the most part it resists all questioning beyond that 

 of Cialileo, to whom its phases revealed the confirmation 

 of the Copemican theory — an important discoverj' " (not 

 the theory, nor the confirmation) "which he involved 

 for a season in the following ingenious Latin trans- 

 position," itc, the well-known anagram aliout the 

 phases of Venus. Then the work much bi-tter deserves 

 to !« called Astronomy without ilathematics — and, there- 

 fore, to lie widely popular— than Sir Edmund Beckett's 

 really profound and mosU-rly treatise, so-called. Take, for 



• CtUntial Objects for Common Teleseopes. By Kev. T. W. Webb. 

 Fourth Edition. (LongtnanH. Cimn. A Co., London.) Price lOs. 



instance, the following recipe for drawing the disc of 

 Jupiter:- " Make a niotangle 15 high, 16 wide, on any 

 convenient scale of eipial parts ; find its centre by inter- 

 secting diagonals : from this descrilx- a circle touching the 

 top and l>ottom, and then pitlf out, as it were, the sides of 

 the circle to touch the ends of the rectangle, altering the 

 curves liy eye and hand till a tolerable ellipsis is protluced." 

 Could anything be less formal or less trammelled by mathe- 

 matical phraseology than this ? The absence of those 

 provoking attempts at explanation to be found in some 

 astronomical books is another charming feature of the work 

 before us. We liave, in.stf^ad, such expressions as, — " Here 

 explanation is set at defiance ! " " What could it have 

 been 1 " and so forth ; nothing to weary the learner, or 

 unduly tox his reflective faculties. 



If Afr. Webb is unwilling to weary his readers, he has 

 evidently not spared his own labours. The book is crowded 

 with information, notes, references, por-s^onal e.xperience, 

 strange out-of-the-way facts : it is, in fact, a storehouse of 

 astronomic lore. There is nothing like it in its own line ; 

 and though the fourth edition goes far to establish old 

 Hesiod's saying, that the half may be better than the 

 whole, it is a work without which no astronomical library 

 (not possessing an earlier edition) would be complete. We 

 could have wished Green's Map of Mars had been repro- 

 duced here, instead of the one Mr. Webb has given, which 

 is unlike anything in the heavens above, or elsewhere. But 

 such faults are few. 



A Hoese's Pastime. — A few years ago, wliilc in North Stafford- 

 shire, I saw a horse amusing himself in a ratlior original manner. 

 On one of the trees at the side of his field, next the road, wtis a 

 branch about a yard from the ground. The horse stood on this 

 branch with liis hind legs, and, planting his fore-feet firmly on the 

 ground, as a fHlcrum, gravely see-sawed up and down by swaying- 

 the bough, getting on again when he slipped oft. He appeared to 

 derive a sort of solemn pleasure from the'procecding. — Titteswoeth. 



A Generous Bulldog. — My children went out for a walk — girl 

 12, boy 10 years — taking my dog, a cress-bred bull and terrier, 

 also a retriever dog, belonging to a relative. This latter entered a 

 large reseiToir, on being told to do so, and paddled about for some 

 time, amusing the children. By-and-bye he swam amongst some 

 rnslie.s, and they appeared too strong for him to fight his way out. 

 He was called, but seemed exhausting himself and unable to obey. 

 The children called louder, and were, in fact, gc^iting frightened, 

 when our dog, who was on the bank, jumped into the water, swam 

 up to the retriever, seized him by one ear, and, being a strong, 

 muscular animal, he dragged the retriever to land. On getting « 

 oat, instead of fighting on account of the punishment the retriever * 

 had received, they fell to licking each other in a most affectionate 

 manner. Was this instinct ? — J. DA\^DSON. 



CoD-SoCNn.— The meaning of this word "sound" for the aorta, 

 or chief blood-vessel, of the cod-fish goes deeper than sotidre, to 

 sever, or sunder, suggested by Mr. W. SI. Williams (p. 295). The . 

 root-word is common to several of the chief groups of languages, f 

 .S'on, or .«oiia, in Sanskrit, is rod, blood-coloured ; snnita is blood. 

 In the Dravidian dialects, sen is red, or blood. Sen is blood in 

 Egyptian, whence the derivation senn.t denotes that foundation which 

 in biology is blood. So, in Chinese nen is foundation; the heart 

 itself, as well as heart figturatively, the inward and essential basis of 

 being. The .Assyrian siina also denotes fulcrum and foundation. 

 Tliese meanings all meet in the fish-sound, as that which contains 

 the blood, the basis of life, and the name shows how much signifi- 

 caHCo may be concentrated in a single word. — Gerald Masset. 



Fox Story. — I can hardly distinguish the action of the foi in the 

 following case from reason. It happened in <o. Roscommon, at 

 Kilronan Castle, where T once lived. The foxes this particular time 

 were doing great damage to the pheasants, so the preserves were 

 poisoned. When, in some instances, the keepers went to see if the 

 meat had been taken, they found filth placed on the top by the fox. 

 I have also known of a case where a fox was caught in the evening 

 and put into a bam for the night. When, in the morning, one of 

 the family went out to see if he was safe, he found him on the ground, 

 as he thought, quite dead. He caught him by the tail, the fox 

 not relaxing a muscle, but keeping quite stiff and stark. He rushed 

 into the house to tell the news, when, coming out, he saw reynard 

 running away as fast as he could, — Con.stans, 



