104 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Fbr 16, 1883. 



fog, since the electric light has been much used in towns, 

 knows how much fartlicr a strong electric light shows in a 

 fog than the best gas-light, and (still more) than any oil- 

 light. It is well-known, too, how much the use of any 

 coloured glass diminishes the range of distance through 

 which a light can be seen. Now, it may very well be that 

 the general use of the ('lectric light on board steamships 

 may not be possible at present. I should have thought the 

 owners of our best ocean steamships would long since have 

 decided to use only the electric light for their signal-lamps, 

 if not for illuminating purposes throughout those ships. 

 But supposing this not yet possible or convenient, it is yet 

 obvious that in every steamship, either slowed or brought 

 to rest during fog, there is available a store of energy 

 which might be well employed at those critical times to 

 drive a dynamo machine and maintain any desired number 

 of very strong electric lights in suitable positions. Such 

 lights would penetrate to a considerable distance through 

 any ordinary sea fog. If they had been burning on the 

 City of Brussels and the Kirbjj Ilall, or on the Cimhria&nA 

 Siiltaii, it is, to all intents and purposes, certain that the 

 late disastrous collisions would not have occurred. The 

 mere indication of the presence or approach of these several 

 ships would have sufficed to have averted the danger. 



But more than this might very readily be done. The 

 lights at present used are of very little service in indicating 

 the position in which a ship lies. A red light shoM's that 

 her port side would be in view were it day, but not hoin 

 that side is presented. It may be the broadside which is 

 towards another vessel, or she may be lying with her bows 

 only so far turned to starboard from being directly end 

 on that the slightest possible change in her course or bearing 

 will bring the green starboard light into view. (Precisely 

 such a change happened just before the Cimhria was run 

 down.) Now there is absolutely no reason whatever (save 

 the expense required for some eight or nine instead of 

 two or three lamps) why this uncertainty should exist. 

 Supposing only side lights can be used, instead of such 

 central lights as might, perhaps, be hidden by sails or 

 rigging, then what is to prevent such an arrangement as 

 the following from being used along the port and starboard 

 sides of every ship — especially of every steamship. 



W 



POET SIDE LIGHTS. 



STARBOARD SIDE LIGHTS. 



(W a powerful whito light at the bow, R .i powerful coloured 

 light at tlie stern, W only visible when the bow is nearer than the 

 stern to observer, U only visible when the stern is nearer to observer 

 than the bow ; ab c the midship port lights arranged in the form of 

 an equilateral triangle. 



A little consideration will show that, if such lights were 

 used, not only would the port side be distinguished as now 

 and from the starboard one much more quickly, because 

 white lights are seen much farther than coloured ones, but 

 the exact bearing of the ship's midships would be at once 

 shown by the foregoing shape of the triangle abc. — 

 Nnocasth Weekly Chronicle. 



THE ABUSE OF EVOLUTION. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



SINGULARLY enough, when the kindly and sensible 

 words of the American clergyman whose note on 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer we give elsewhere, were passing 

 through our hands for press, we were favoured, through 

 the courtesy of the Editor of the Christian Cmnmomrealth, 

 with a specimen of a different kind of comment on the 

 great philosopher of our century, and on his fellow- 

 workers, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, J. Stuart Mill, 

 and the rest. We do not propose in these pages to 

 discuss the sayings of Mr. De Witt Talmage, of 

 the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Knowledge would not be 

 advanced thereby. He represents a type more common 

 in America than in this country, though neither is 

 the type, unfortunately, wanting here, nor is he himself 

 personally unknown to us. His engagement to preach in 

 various English cities on rather costly terms, and the 

 energy with which he insisted on his bargain after it had 

 appeared that his eloquence was not appreciated here, 

 rankle still in the remembrance of many who engaged his 

 services. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer has recently paid a -^-isit to America 

 — a silent visit, till the earnestness of his friends there, 

 including all the profoundest and ablest thinkers in the 

 land, forced him at length to meet them and talk with 

 them as a friend unto friends. Whether it was the 

 contrast between this \-isit and Mr. De Witt Tal- 

 mage's \-isit to England which moved the latter to 

 speak, or only a happy accident, is a matter of small 

 moment. It suffices that the preacher of the Brooklyn 

 Tabernacle has delivered himself in terms which, while 

 they display his own nature, were adapted, we must 

 assume, to his hearers' tastes. It is difficult to say whether 

 they are more strikingly contrasted with the teaching and 

 methods of the writers he attacks, or with those of the intel- 

 ligent, well-trained, and well-educated clergymen who have, 

 indeed, dissented from some of the inferences which appear 

 to them to follow from modern scientific theories, but who 

 know well that they would but degrade their cause and 

 themselves (to say nothing of their calling) were they to 

 substitute reviling for rhetoric and railing for reasoning. 

 Fortunately, the chief teachers of science and the ablest 

 exponents of religion are alike, in our day, well-educated 

 and well-mannered gentlemen. 



After informing us that the doctrines of " Herbert 

 Spencer and Darwin are out-and-out infidelity," without 

 saying what he means by the word (the Christian is an 

 infidel in the eyes of the Turk, and belief in the Trinity 

 means infidelity towards Zeus and Aphrodite, towards 

 M umbo- Jumbo and Oa-Oa-Waramakoa), Mr. De Witt 

 Talmage favours us with the following evidence : — 



(1.) Of his knoirledg,', — "As to our race, we began with 

 men 10 ft. high, and now the average is 5 ft. 3in. ; the 

 ancients lived 300, 400, 600, 000 years, and the average 

 now of life is less than thirty." 



(2.) Of his fa miliariti/ vnlli modern ilieories of biological 

 I'rolution, — " First, there was vegetable stuff, perhaps a 

 mushroom. That mushroom developed into something like 

 a jelly-fish ; and the jelly-fish developed into a tadpole. 

 The tadpole developed into a snail. The snail developed 

 into a turtle. The turtle into a wolf ; the wolf into a 

 dog ; the dog into a baboon, and the baboon developed 

 into a man." 



(3.) Of his taste, — "Sing Sing" (a contact establishment in 

 New York state), " and The Tombs," (a New York prison), 

 " and Shoreditch, London, and Cowgate, Edinburgh, are only 



