18 



♦ KNO\A^LEDGE ♦ 



[NOVEMBEK 1, 1886. 



bat as mauy, if not more, are cleirly baneful, so that arsenic 

 should never be administered in this way ; its use should be 

 exclusively regulated by the physician and chemist, and 

 when present in wall-papers they ought to be unhesitatingly 

 condemned. 



# Si 6 I p. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



The great earthquakes in Europe and America have 

 brought out the customary supply of prophets after the 

 event, and the customary amount of contradiction in regaid 

 to the future — immediate and remote. It need hardly be 

 said, however, that no true student of science, no one indeed 

 having any recognised standing in scientific circles, hivs joined 

 in the idle chatter by which the Wigginses, Tices, Grimmers, 

 Saxbys, et id yenus omne, endeavour on these occasions to 

 acquire notoriety since they cannot achieve fame. 



* * * 



In America Mr. Wiggins, of Ottawa, a half-educated but 

 wholly unscientific man, an emphiye in the Meteorological 

 Office, has been at the pains of announcing a yet more de- 

 structive earthquake (in latitude thirty degrees north, in 

 America) than the one by which Charleston suffered so 

 terribly. This might be regarded as mere folly and not 

 condemned as wicked, were it not that, as this man cixnnot 

 but know, the inhabitants of the distuibed district have 

 suffered from terrible anxieties and fears ever since the 

 earthquakes took place. INlany deaths must be attributed 

 to this cause alone, and there have been three (reported) 

 cases of insanity resulting from fright. For a man at such 

 a time to make predictions which he knows to be the merest 

 guesses, simply to gain notoriety, and with the certainty 

 that he must cause much serious mischief — for the weak and 

 foolish are always with us — is the meanest wickedness of 

 which the false-weather prophets and their kind have yet 

 been guilty. 



As I write, news is received from New Orleans that an 

 aeronaut advertises the sale of seats in the car of his balloon 

 on the day appointed by Mr. Wiggins for the destruction of 

 that city. 



* * * 



I AM asked by some correspondents why some scientific 

 matters which bear to some degree on theology are admitted 

 here, and especially the myths of ancient races on which 

 many of the leading religions of the world have been based, 

 and yet theological essays are not admitted. It would be 

 entirely to change the plan of Knowledge to do so. 

 Theology presents as knowable that which we can only treat 

 here as unknowable. To decide between the various 

 dogmas of the theologies of diverse religions would be to 

 pretend to determine what we regard as absolutely beyond 

 the range of human knowledge. If I touch here on 

 matters which many suppose to be associated with religion, 

 and especially to bear on the question whether such and 

 such books and teachings are inspired, I do so strictly 

 because of the scientific bearings of such mattere. I per- 

 sonally take no interest in the theological questions on 

 which some of these matters are supposed to bear. If any- 

 one objects to a scientific statement about facts because he 

 cannot reconcile it with his own ideas about mattei"s 

 theological, I may be at the pains to point out that the facts 

 alone concern us here. And such a reply can, of course, be 

 misinterpreted into an attack on some theological dogma. 

 But this is as far from the truth as, for example, the idea 



would be that Sir John Heischel in measuring the sun's 

 heat was, in point of fact, endeavouring to throw doubts on 

 the tenets of those who worship the sun as a god. 



* * * 



The small-minded folk who invent out of their own minds 

 a feeble-minded deity, the ignorant who treat as inspired the 

 ideas of men as ignorant in past ages as they (more dis- 

 creditably) are now, attract much less of the attention of 

 students of science than many fondly imagine. 



* * * 



I HAVE been long on the look-out for a cricket match in 

 which an innings of double figures should be i)layed ; but I 

 have looked in vain (though I know a few such innings are 

 on record) till the recent match between the Australians and an 

 All England eleven at Scarborough, when, as everyone knows, 

 the English eleven not only all reached double figui'es, but all 

 save one passed the score, while none reached treble figures, 

 and the extras i-eached double figures as well as the indi- 

 vidual scores. 



* * * 



A WRITER in the Times, commenting on my remark two 

 or three yeare ago that an innings of double figures is thus 

 unusual, seems to draw an erroneous distinction between a 

 case such as this and an ordinary problem in probabilities. 

 He .says : — 



Some two or three years ago Mr. Proctor, in IvNOWLEnoE. stated 

 that no cricket score marking douLjle figures all down the innings 

 had ever come under his observation. The England r. Australia 

 match of Friday last supplies the exceptional case. The Yarborough 

 hand at whist does not, I think, justify the traditional odds of 1,0(10 

 to 1. This is a matter of pure chance ; but that the double-figure 

 record should be unique among picked elevens suggests a curious 

 jiroblem in personal equations. The failure, where single or double 

 only, is never in extra.s. 



But in reality such a problem as this must be regarded as 

 simply a problem in probabilities. Though the chance that 

 an individual player will make a double-figure innings in 

 any given match depends on his skill and the skill of the 

 opposing eleven, yet it remains a chance — nay, in a sense it 

 may be said to be more thoroughly a matter of chance tlian 

 the tossing of head or tail — seeing that not only is it a 

 chance whether the irresistible ball will come early or late, 

 but it is a chance whether the player will be in his customary 

 form, and even whether previous matches, on which an 

 estimate of his skill has been formed, have really given 

 satisfactory and sufficient means of testing it. 



As a problem in chances one may deal with the case in 

 the following manner, though, of course, opinions will vary 

 as to the averages suggested, and in each match, considered 

 separately, the averages here indicated will be departed 

 from : — 



Suppose that, on the average, in every cricket match 

 (between elevens), two players out of an eleven may be 

 expected to reach double figures in 7 cases out of 10, two 

 othei-s in 5 cases out of 10, three others in 3 cases out of 10, 

 two others in 2 cases out of 10, and the remaining two once 

 only in 10 cases. Let us further suppose that the chance of 

 that one, whoever he may be, who is not out at the end of 

 the innings, is reduced one half by the possibility that the 

 failui-e of the player last ov,t may occur before the not out 

 has reached double figures. Further, let the chance of 

 double figures in "extras "be set at G in 10. Then the 

 chance that all the eleven players make double figures, 

 including the 7iot out, and that the " extnrs " run to double 

 figures too, is obtained by multiplying together the chances 

 of the several events, which amount, in all, to 13 — viz. 11 

 for the several players, 1 for the icot out's extra chance 



