April 20, 1883.] 



KNOV/LEDGE 



229 



AN ILtUilRATED 



MAGAZINEOF^IENCE 



PLAINLT^RDED -EXACTLY DESCRIBED 



LONDON: FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1883. 



Contents of No. 77. 



PAGB. 



Sdenc« and Art Oosaip 229 



A X«iur»list'» Te«r. XI. Marsh 



M:, J Id. Bt Grant Allen 231 



. ,mer Olisfrvator)- (lUiu.) 



]:.■. \V. EUiotI, MA 232 



1! i .th and Growth of Myth. 



VI. Hv Edward Clodd 234 



'• Our Bodies." X. The Blood. 



Bv Dr. Andrew Wilson, 



F.R S.E., 4c 236 



PIGB. 

 San-Vicws of the Earth. (Tllua.) 



By R. A. Proctor 237 



The Amateur Electrician ; Electrical 



Mea.suremenl. X. (Illua.) 23S 



On the Formation of Comets' Tails. 



Bv A. S. Daris 239 



COBBESPONDEXCB : — A Ncw Para* 



doi-Corsits— Letters Received... 240 



Our Malheraalical Column 241 



Our Chess Column 242 



^titim anil art (gosfsfip. 



In Knowledge for December 2, 1881 (No. 5), there 

 appeared among our " Answers to Correspondents," the 

 following : — 



J. Norman Loceyer. — We regret that yon cannot at present 

 ■pare time. Professor Tonng has promised to write on the subject, 

 and your treatment of it, from another point of view, would doubt- 

 less have been interesting to our readers. I'crhaps at some future 

 time you can oblige us. 



We learn now for the first time (a railway train 

 toavelllng 500 miles a day would have covered more 

 than the moon's distance from us in the interval) 

 that Mr. Lockyer was offended at our answering in 

 this way what he regarded as a private communica- 

 ' tion— to wit his letter declining, rather curtly, our invi- 

 tation to him to contribute to these columns. We learn 

 this from a coarsely-worded post-card communication for- 

 warded to our publishers. A paragraph stating, truly, that 

 we had (with perhaps unwise generosity) invited one who 

 loves us not to write in these columns (at more than twice 

 the rate at which we had been paid before the fatal year 

 1869 of Mr. Lockyer's corona mistakes — u-hen eren accepted 

 articles, some already in type, were returned to us — for con- 

 tributions to Xaliire), Imt that he was not willing to accept 

 our invitation, would have V>een strictly en riffle. We cannot 

 see, then, that our less public reference to the matter 

 was open to e.xception. But if it was, exception should 

 have been taken then, not now. And even exception taken 

 at the right time might have been conveyed in better form 

 than on a postcard, unsigned, in a disguised hand, and full 

 of illbred vituperation. [We cannot be wrong in assigning 

 this communication to the one person living besides ourself 

 who could know and care anything about the matter to 

 which it makes indignant reference] Those who attended 

 our lecture on "The Sun," at St James's Hall, and heard 

 our pointedlj- complimentary reference to Mr. Lockyer's 

 work in 1868, will know how generously we have been 

 disposed to treat him. But — " the rest is silence." 



The course of lectures on astronomy, at St James's 

 Hall, came most pleasantly to a conclusion last Saturday. 



A kinder and more sympathetic audience I have never 

 addressed. I took occasion, when the lights were being: 

 turned down (though usually not very willing, even at that 

 time, to interrupt a lecture by the introduction of personal 

 matters), to thank my hearers for their kindly attention, 

 and pleasant ways generally. Then I made a few remarks 

 about the utter neglect with which the London press treats 

 all scientific lectures. Huxley, Tyndall, Owen, and others 

 lecture, either without a word of notice, or — if any notice 

 at all is accorded — some wretched paragraph, as wanting 

 in correctness as in appreciation. My own lectures had an 

 additional claim in being an experiment, made at the risk; 

 of considerable loss, and not the less deserving notice- 

 that they had been most remarkably successful. I am told 

 that a remark made by one of the audience, which .sounded 

 to me like " You're right, Mr. Proctor," ran really to the 

 effect, " No light, Mr. Proctor," and was intended to ex- 

 plain that the lectures, being partly given in the dark, 

 could not be properly reported. I was referring, however, 

 to the absence rather of notices than of reports, though a 

 report of the part of each lecture given before the light was 

 turned down would have made in effect a good abstract of 

 the whole lecture. As forty or fifty course tickets (sofa stalls) ■ 

 were given to the Press, and scarce half-a-dozen short 



notices appeared, I think I had some reason to ; but, 



there, I suppose the courtesy and kindness of the American, 

 and Australasian Press have spoiled me. 



I AM told that, after the lecture, prolonged efforts were 

 made to recall me. It was not from any want of recogni- 

 tion of the audience's kindness that 1 failed to return, 

 though I must admit to a strong repugnance to the obtru- 

 sion of a lecturer's small self before an audience just aftei-- 

 he has been endeavouring to take them along with him. 

 away from this earth, through infinities of space and time 

 to contemplate infinite power, all-present and everlasting 

 law. But, as a matter of fact, I was in Piccadilly before 

 any of the audience who had heard the closing words of 

 the lecture ; and I suppose (from all I learn) that I was 

 half way to Yictoi-ia wlien the audience were beginning to 

 wonder at my failing to reappear on the platform. 



My exit was not accomplished quite so quickly on this 

 occasion as once when I lectured at the Horticultural Hall, 

 in Boston, Mass., and "Dinorah" was performed at the Boston 

 Opera House. Immediately after my peroration, I ran 

 through a long hall under that which contained the audience, 

 seeing the first few as they came down the stairs leading 

 from the entrance to the lecture hall ; a moment later I 

 was in a carriage sent to meet me by a friend, and I believe 

 that all the audience were not well out of the hall when I 

 took my seat just as the second act of " Dinorah " was 

 beginning. Marimon in the "Shadow Song" was well worth 

 running to hear. It is a rather singular coincidence that the 

 only other time when I have been as quick to escape after 

 a lecture — to wit, when I had been lecturing in the summer 

 of 187'J for the National Temperance League (but on astro- 

 nomy) — I was just in time to hear Patti in the " Shadow 

 Song." 



The spire of the General Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, has 

 just been fitted up with a new lightning-conductor. Some 

 doubt having been expressed, says the local press, as to the 

 efficiency of the old conductor, it was resolved to subject 

 it to a strict test, and for this purpose a copper wire was 

 carried liy a " Steeple Jack " up one side of the spire and 

 attached to the conductor on the other side. When the 

 connection was effected, the electrical resistance is said to 



