JusE 22, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



377 



always be a felt want of a check from the other side, to 

 put it so, in quests that cannot be called Utopian, but that 

 are particularly tit to take away the reproach of idleness 

 from men who may not have a forced field for their eflbrts." 

 The same review remarks that ilr. Proctor's "disciples 

 may not be tired by his prelections, but the public are 

 sometimes resentful of the assumption of too easy under- 

 standings even by great men." In a neighbouring review, 

 obviously from the same Miggsian mind, comes the remark 

 that " wits may jump together without damage to originali- 

 ties." In glancing over a series of reviews of legal, 

 scientific, and historic works, travel, poetry, fiction, and 

 so forth, by one unable to write respectable English, one 

 is disposed to suitgest, that " There is bound to be a little 

 too much outcry over evolutions out of moral conscious- 

 nesses, and there will always be a felt want of a check 

 from the other side (other, to put it so, than the cheque 

 calculated at half-a-crown per thirty lines), in decisions 

 which cannot be called judicial, but that are particularly 

 fit to suggest the reproach of impertinence in the case 

 of men who have emphatically forced fields for their 

 exertions." 



Says the Easthounie Chronicle : — " By his lectures on 

 astronomy, delivered in difi'ercnt cities and towns of the 

 kingdom, Mr. Richard A. Proctor has no doubt done much 

 to popularise this most interesting and elevating of sciences. 

 But, like many modem astronomers who have dived deep 

 into the mysteries of the heavens, Sir. Proctor lays himself 

 open to the grave charge of endeavouring to account for 

 the present aspect of the universe by the mere lapse of 

 time. The existing condition of our planet is put forward 

 as a momentary phase in a development which presupposes 

 thousands of centuries in the past and thousands yet to 

 come. The earth, we are told, was once a gaseous 

 mass, in time it condensed and cooled, and in 

 due course became the abode of life. Now, in 

 the stage of mid-life, Mr. Proctor points to the 

 period — I am afraid to say how many years hence — 

 when it shall pass, like the moon, into the fifth stage 

 of a planet's life — the stage of death — and turn on its 

 axis as slowly as does the ' pale orb of night.' The 

 ' birth and death of worlds ' is a sensational way of con- 

 veying the idea of commencement and end, but it is an 

 idea necessitating the dealing with ages, and myriads of 

 ages, in a way that is absolutely perplexing. One is dazzled, 

 almost dazed, by the endless heaping up of centuries, and 

 all to account for a condition of things which is far more 

 simply and satisfactorily explained by the plain Biblical 

 narrative of the creation of the world. To make ' time' a 

 universal factor in the economy of the universe is to underrate 

 and limit creative power. This searching after a crude and 

 ill-defined beginning for our earth and for the other planets 

 seems to smatter of the Darwinian theory of the origin of 

 man. Surely the globe we inliabit could as easily have 

 been called into existence in the ' developed ' form in 

 which we find it as in a condition less perfect and mature ; 

 and why must the moon needs have been at one time a 

 planet presenting the same conditions of life as our earth 1 

 All these are mere fanciful suggestions which would be 

 much better left out of lectures of this sort. I would not 

 wish to do Mr. Proctor an injustice, but his ideas respect- 

 ing the birth and death of worlds fit in very indiflferently 

 with Scriptural teaching as contained in the opening 

 chapters of Genesis." 



To this the wiser Easthouriie Gazette makes answer: 

 — "The Chronicle is troubled because Mr. Proctor, the 

 popular lecturer, asserts the earth' to be somewhat older 



than his primary education had led him to believe, and 

 'fits in very indifferently with Scriptural teaching as 

 contained in the opening chapters of Genesis,' and, 

 moreover, savours of Darwinism. !Mr. Proctor's theories 

 do not bear out the popular idea that the earth is only 

 some 6,000 years old. ' One is dazzled and da/ed,' says 

 the Chronicle, 'by the endless heaping of centuries,' «fec. 

 The immense distance of the heavenly bodies does not 

 seem to trouble the writer, it is the time that concerns 

 him, because that is not in accordance with Scripture, 

 and therefore he suggests a ready-made world 

 instead of a gradually ' developed ' one. All the 

 different strata with their fossiliferous remains, indicating 

 a regular order of growth and development, are to be ac- 

 counted for by 'miracle.' The coal-beds were always coal, 

 and not submerged forests, and the extinct animals, known 

 only by their fossil remains, never inhabited the earth, but 

 were created as fossils, and all the evidences of prehistoric 

 man are to be accounted for in the same way. If all these 

 proofs of the antiquity of the earth are to be explained as 

 suggested, a gigantic deception has been practised on man- 

 kind. But the facts of astronomy and geology cannot be 

 set aside to uphold a view of things that originated in a 

 barbaric age." 



From San Francisco the following telegram has been 

 received respecting the total solar eclipse of May 6th : — 

 " The solar eclipse on the 6th ult was very successfully 

 observed by the English, American, and Continental astro- 

 nomers stationed on Caroline Island, the sky being beauti- 

 fully clear at the time. The corona extended over a distance 

 of two diameters from the sun. The light during the 

 middle of totality was equal to that of the full moon. Suc- 

 cessful observations were made by Dr. Janssen as well as 

 by Professor Tacchini. The intra-Mercurial planet Vulcan 

 was not seen by M. Palisa. The D line of the spectrum 

 was seen dark in the corona by Dr. C. S. Hastings. Good 

 photographs of the corona were obtained by the English 

 observers as well as liy Dr. Janssen. The English observers 

 were also successful in obtaining photographs of the flash. 

 Good photographs w-ere taken of the coronal spectrum in 

 the blue end." From other sources we learn that few 

 prominences were seen. "We shall discuss the results next 

 week. 



The " flash " in the above means the spectrum of multi- 

 tudinous bright lines seen for a second or two just after 

 totality has begun and just before it ceases. The word 

 may do very well, coarsely prosaic though it is, for tele- 

 graphic purposes ; but we see it with regret used in an 

 article in the Times, as a fit word for describing one of the 

 most beautiful phenomena connected with a total solar 

 eclipse. 



TuE same article propounds the truly preposterous idea 

 that the absence of prominences may have indicated that 

 practically the lower part of the corona was itself made up 

 of them. 



I REGKET vei-y much that any amount of inuendo should 

 have induced Mr. Irving Bishop to have anything what- 

 ever to say to a wager connected with a matter which 

 should be dealt with only by the usual methods of scien- 

 tific inquiry. The Times, with customary Philistinism, 

 describes the wager as a test of the genuine English sort, — 

 implying that the Saxon way of dealing with scientific 

 questions is essentially horsey and vulgar. I have never yet 

 heard of any student of science who has offered to back 

 his opinion on a scientific question by a wager, or by the 

 proffer of a sum to any one who could prove the opinion 



