April 28, 1882.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



5U 



MAGAZINE OF SOENCE 



PLAINLY\f ORDED -£XACTi|DESCR1BED, 



LONDON: FRIDAY, APRIL 2S, 1882. 



Contents of No. 26. 



FAGB. 



To i*ur Readers 545 



Kewton and Darwin. Bv the Kditor .545 

 Con»umpli(>n. Bv Prof.'TTndall . 5»S 

 Pholojfraphv for Amateurs. By A. 



Brothers, 'F.E.A.S 5-J7 



Charles R. Darwin. Bv the Editor. 548 

 Our Ancestors. Bv Grant Allen .550 

 Crvatal Palace Electrical Eihiliition \ 



■jNinth Notice) 551 



' The Stan and the Earth.' 



552 



The Stars for Mav (Itluslraled) . 553 



The Sun in Mav llllutlruted) 



The Lamson Case 



Ancient Tablets from Sippara 



Weather Diagram 



CORRESPOXDKXCE 



Answers to Correspondenta 



Our Mathematical Column 



Our Whist Column 



Our Chesa Column 



TO OUR READERS. 



IN ouroiij;iiial Pro.spt-otus we explained what Knowledoe 

 was intended to be and to do. We come now before 

 our readers and the public to tell them the results of our 

 first half-year's experience, to renew our promises, and to 

 ■refer in some degi'ee to our performance. 



In our first numlier we announced our intention to 

 publish Original Articles, Serial Papers, Scientific News, a 

 Correspondence Section (including columns of Notes and 

 Queries), and Reviews of Scientific Treatises, suitable for 

 general reading. We indicated the tone which we desired 

 to attain — sound, yet clear, that all might understand, yet 

 none be offended by seeing the truths and discoveries of 

 science dealt with unworthily. We desired to avoid the 

 Scylla of pedantry on the one hand, and on the other with 

 •equal watchfulness the Charybdis of triviality. We pro- 

 mised in addition sections for Mathematics and the scientific 

 recreations. Whist and Chess. 



In future volumes we shall aim at the same objects, and 

 endeavour to attain them in the same way. The im- 

 provements wliich began witli No. 10 (the first number for 

 Januarj') will be continued, and, as occasion arises, will be 

 •extended. But while we wish to improve in matters of 

 •detail, we see no occasion to modify our general mode of 

 dealing with any sections in Knowledge, save two : — 

 First, we propose to enlarge and improve our Notes on 

 Art and Science, — in other words, our Scientific News ; 

 secondly, we must, perforce, limit the space we allot to 

 Correspondence, and especially to Queries and Replies. 

 These last have not only taxed our space unduly, but have 

 still more seriously trespassed on our time ; and with our 

 rapidly growing circulation, the difficulty threatens to 

 increase. We should be very glad to devote ten or twelve 

 pages to these sections, for the sake of the hundreds who 

 ask questions, if we could do so without unfairness to the 

 thousands who wish to see Knowledge devoted to wider 

 interests. But a paper large enough to do all that we feel 

 bound to do for these, and all that we should like to do for 

 those, would be in a pecuniary sense so mucli the greater 

 loss as it was more widely patronised ; and this is a point 

 which we are bound to take into consideration. We shall 

 still, however, keep our columns open for concisely-written 

 letters : we shall assign a certain space, which must not 

 He exceeded, to the correspondence section, considering 



letters received in the order of their merit, importance, 

 and conciseness. 



Comparing the first number xritli any of the later numbers, 

 or the first two with tlie last two monthly parts, we believe 

 we can claim to have decidedly done more than we pro- 

 mised — in so far as the earlier numbers were to be re- 

 garded as indicating our plan and scope. We hope that 

 this advance (which lias not been constantly seen in new 

 periodicals) will be a feature of Kxowledce for many 

 years to come — that in quality, as well as in circulation. 

 Knowledge the Magazine, like the Knowledge spoken of 

 by Tennyson, may "grow from more to more." Our readers 

 can help us in this, as many have already done, by making 

 our Magazine widely known to their friends. 



On a point which has been rather warmly discussed by 

 a small section of our readers, our decision is unwavering. 

 We shall continue to e.xclude from our columns with equal 

 rigour attacks on religion from the side of science, and 

 attacks on science from the side of religion. We believi; 

 that, as we said in our first number, the study of science 

 implies the surest belief that God's works are worth study- 

 ing, the fullest recognition that the Author of these works 

 is worthy of our reverence ; but the intermixture of scientific 

 research and dogmatic religion can only result, as Bacon 

 has well said, " in heretical religion and fantastical 

 philosophy." The Editor. 



NEWTON AND DARWIN. 



IN Charles Darwin science has lost one who has done 

 moi'C than any since Newton to extend men's re- 

 cognition of the wideness of the domain of law. When 

 Copernicus and Kepler and Newton removed the earth 

 from the central position in the universe, which had so 

 long been assigned to it, they taught men to appreciate 

 more justly than before the vast extension of the 

 universe in space. The earth, which had seemed to 

 surpass in importance every orb in existence, was seen 

 to be a mere point in the solar system, and in turn 

 the solar system was seen to be a mere point in the 

 universe of stars, the stellar system (though so vast, 

 that it appeared infinite by comparison with all that 

 men had heretofore imagined respecting space), to be 

 as nothing in the real universe. With the widening 

 of men's ideas respecting space should have come a 

 widening of their ideas respecting time, until from the few 

 thousands of years over which they had extended their 

 survey, they had learned to recognise the millions of years 

 belonging to the lifetime of a planet, the far longer 

 intervals measuring the duration of solar systems, and 

 finally the eternities in which these periods of time, vast 

 though they seem, are utterly lost. But with this widening 

 of men's conceptions as to space and time, should have come 

 also a widening of their ideas respecting the operation of 

 law. Within the petty domains of space which they had 

 surveyed, the growth of a plant or of an animal seemed 

 naturally to belong to the domain of development ; but 

 wider and grander processes of evolution seemed as 

 far outside men's thoughts as the infinite star depths in 

 which modern science believes, or the vast periods of time 

 during which modern science sees that planets and solar 

 systems have existed. Newton taught men how wide in 

 »pnci' is the domain of law, and rightly understood, what 

 Newton taught should have shown men how long also in 

 iinif last processes of development according to fixed 

 law. Yet precisely as men were far readier to accept the 

 doctrine of infinite (or practically infinite) space, than 

 that of inconceivably vast periods of time, so also were 



