Jan. 12, 1883.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



25 



LECTURE NOTES. 

 By Richard A. Proctor. 



I HAD every reason to be gratified by the kindly con- 

 course which gathered to hear my lecture on the 

 " Star-Depths," at St ( ieorge's Hall, Langhaui-place, on 

 Sunday, Jan. 7. It was the Jirst lecture I had given there 

 since ruy return from my long American and Australian 

 tours. I could not but think, as I saw the audience 

 gathering, and remembered tlie long and successful career 

 of the Sunday Lecture Society — a success chiefly due to 

 the zeal and energy of Mr. W. H. DomvUle — liow con- 

 fidently Sir Henry Parkes had, in his ignorance, asserted 

 that the law of England, which he claimed to enforce, 

 allowed of no Sunday gatherings to hear lectures on 

 scientific subjects. Here is a society, including on its 

 list of officers the names of the most eminent men of 

 science of the day, which has for years continued the good 

 work of using science on Sundays to instruct and elevate 

 the people, — as Arago long since urged (addressing the 

 French Senate*) — that science should be used. 



There are not to be found better audiences anywhere 

 than those which gather at the invitation of the Sunday 

 Lecture Society. They have all the good qualities which 

 audiences can possess. During my lecture last Sunday 

 they showed that they possess qualities which a lecturer 

 does not usually care to tax — to wit, patience and good 

 temper. I have always been more than satisfied with the 

 way in which the lantern lias been worked at these lec- 

 tures ; and I had no anxiety, therefore, on that score. 

 But unfortunately it had been deemed well to change the 

 usual arrangement by wliich the lantern had been worked 

 from behind the screen, showing the views as transparen- 

 cies. Some unsatisfactory photographs, I suppose, had 

 failed in recent lectures to show well that way. So it was 

 decided to work from the front. The experiment (would 

 that it had been tried with any lecture but mine !) was not 

 a success. The views obstinately failed to focus, and 

 after sundry shiftings of the lantern, the attempt 

 was given up as hopeless. I thought at first there 

 was something wrong with the Society's lantern, or else 

 with the operator, but later I recognised the cause of the 

 trouble in the circumstance that the screen was vertical, 

 while the optical axis of the lantern was inclined some L'O 

 degrees to the horizon. Thus the more delicate views 

 failed to show what they were intended to show, and my 

 lecture had to be modified correspondingly. However, 

 the audience bore this most good-humouredly, and also the 

 pain (as I fear it must have been to many) of a glare of 

 limelight from the back of the instrument. Whatever 

 reasons the Society's lanternist may have had for departing 

 from his customary arrangement, I may assure him, on my 

 own behalf, that on all former occasions I have been well 

 pleased with the working of the instrument. Whenever a 

 change of the kind is proposed it should be rehearsed. If 

 there is one tliiiig more trying to a lecturer than another, 

 it is to find his promised illustrations failing him. But, 

 after all, worse mishaps have befallen me. I shall ever 

 remember the face of woe with which the Rev. Professor 

 Leonard, of Iowa City, announced to me (just as I had 

 told the audience that such and such pictures would be 

 sho'wn) that some one had " let out all the gas ! " 



Talking of lecture experiences, I may note that si/ire 

 Sunday, the strangest I have ever known has occurred to 

 me. I have given, I suppose, some 1,.500 lectures, if not 



* I may mention, as an odd coincidence, that this celebrated 

 address was delivered on March 23 (Slaunday Thursday), 1837, my 

 first day in this world. 



2,000, in the last thirteen years— 386 of them in America, 

 12-i in Australasia, but those in Great Britain not counted. 

 I have addressed audiences of almost every possible sort, 

 religious, mercantile, educational, college classes (male and 

 female), schools, members of special religious denominations 

 (from Roman Catholics, as at the Hanover square Rooms, 

 by special request of Fr. Christy, S. J., at one extremity of 

 the scale, to universalists at the other), besides such bodies 

 as the Royal Institution, the London Institution, the 

 Lowell Institute (2i lectures), the Stephens Institution, 

 and so forth. There have presided at my lectures such 

 men as Wm. Ciillen Bryant, the poet. Sir Henry Holland, 

 and Sir Wm. Armstrong, eminent in science. Dr. Goldwin 

 Smith, the Duke of Westminster, the Bishop of Exeter, 

 and many others belonging to the different classes of which 

 these are representative men. And though kindly feeling 

 may often dictate expressions of approval on such occasions, 

 I think it has been said as the simple truth by all of them, 

 that my lectures have tended, as I have wished they should 

 tend, to raise men's thoughts " from Nature up to Nature's 

 God." Be this as it may, it has certainly never yet happened 

 to me to find any person who had nat heard me lecture, so 

 unmannerly as to suggest the possibility that any lecture of 

 mine might have the reverse influence, might even produce- 

 effects antagonistic to moral and social welfare. Even the 

 rough but kindly working-men who have sometimes acted 

 as secretaries for lecture committees, have always had the 

 sense to see that to question a lecturer on this point 

 would be equivalent to asking him if he had common- 

 sense or decent manners, if he would refrain from foul 

 language on the platform, or would come sober to the 

 lecture-room. But I have just received from a neighbour- 

 hood, not supposed to be the abode of ill-bred persons 

 only, a request involving precisely such an offence against 

 propriety and common sense. 



I had consented to deliver a lecture at Streatham (it 

 happens that it was the very lecture of whose tone Dr. 

 Temple, Bishop of Exeter, spoke three years since in warm 

 and kindly approval). My consent to lecture obtained, 

 a ludicrous thing happens. A churchwarden, beadle, or 

 the like, asks that I be requested to assure the committee 

 that nothing shall, in the course of my lecture, " be advo- 

 cated, said, or sung (sic), antagonistic to the promotion of 

 Evangelical religion, temperance, and the moral and social 

 welfare of the neighbourhood " of Streatham, or " re- 

 pugnant to the salutary objects of the building " (the 

 Streatham Assembly Room) ! Truly the ways of Bumble- 

 dom are strange, and the manners of Little Pedlington 

 peculiar. 



The Telegraph in British Gui.ax.a Since the intro- 

 duction of the sixpenny rate, says the Colonies and India, 

 the number of telegraphic messages sent within this colony 

 has increased nearly fourfold. 



The total number of patents controlled by the Gramme 

 Electric Company of New York (says the Electrician), was, 

 on the 1st of November last, •ji'^'J, and included everything 

 relating to electric lighting and the distribution of elec- 

 tricity, as well as some miscellaneous patents. 



Some novel electrical experiments have been carried out 

 lately at the Trafalgar Collieries, Forest of Dean. This 

 has taken the form of using an electric motor to drive a 

 pump in the underground workings. The total vertical 

 lift of the electric pump is 11.5 ft. The electricity is gene- 

 rated by a dynamo machine at the surface of the colliery, 

 and the wires connecting this with the pump extend down 

 the shaft a distance of 500 yards. 



