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♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[January 1, 1887. 



beautifully than in our northern skies, where his light is 

 always affected with the colo\iring due to atmospheric 

 undulations. Next, high in the west, is the small Hare, 

 Lejius ; and in the verj- middle of the north-west quadrant 

 of the heavens we see Orion, which alone of all these familiar 

 constellations is easily recognised, seeing that, whereas the 

 Lion, Twins, and Bull, the Dog, the Hare, and the Sea 

 Monster (low down in the west) present forms quite unlike 

 those we know, Orion with his gleaming belt stars and the 

 bright Betelgeus, Eigel, and Bellatrix at once shows himself 

 for what he is — the noblest constellation in the heavens. 



ORIGIN OF COMETS AND METEORS. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



OBSERVE that at the last meeting of the 

 Astronomical Society, my friend Mr. Ranyard, 

 remarking on the ejection theory of comets, 

 shows that the wideuess of the radiant area of 

 the Andromede meteors can be explained with- 

 out that theory — with which (I had pointed 

 out) it accords well. I should not wonder if 

 the peculiarity can be explained in another way, or in half a 

 dozen other ways. I have, however, never found in my own 

 experience, or noted in the experience of others, that a new 

 general truth can be reached by nibbling at details in that 

 way. 



The theory of ejection was adopted as the only theory by 

 which the chemical, physical, and microscopic structure of 

 meteorites of all orders — from holosiderites to asiderites — 

 can be accounted for. They were certainly once exposed to 

 such conditions as exist only in the interiors of large orbs — 

 suns or planets. And as certainl}' they have somehow come 

 forth from such interiors. The expulsive force shown by 

 observation to reside in the only sun-like body we can 

 examine, indicates the only way in which such expulsion 

 can conceivably have been effected. Hence I infer (for my 

 own part I feel assured, knowing the weight of evidence) 

 that all orders of meteorites were expelled from some orbs 

 at some time when such orbs weie in the sunlike stage. 

 Generalising, I include in this theory all orders of meteors, 

 and find all their most characteiistic peculiarities explained, 

 and all ordere of meteor systems or comets, finding their 

 several orders thus and thus alone expli&ible (if we include 

 all suns now and in the past, all planets in all solar systems, 

 in their past sunlike state, among the sources of meteois 

 and comets). 



No other general theory seems to me possible. Certainly 

 no other has been advanced. (Schiaparelli's capture theory 

 explains nothing, besides being dynamically impossible.) 



This being so, to prove that some tiny little detail might 

 be reconciled with some imagined prior state of things, 

 which might or might not agi-ee with this general theory, 

 seems to me a waste of time, so far as the question of the 

 origin of comets and meteors is concerned. 



I find the same fault in nine-tenths of the reasoning 

 emploj-ed in the discussion of general theoiies. The idea 

 seems to prevail that a theory may be established or over- 

 thrown by proving some bare possibility about some exceed- 

 ingly small detail. It is as though one were to show that 

 the movement of a particular piece of iron towards the earth 

 might have been caused by a magnet placed in such and such 

 a position, and thereupon were to say, " Where is youi- theory 

 of terrestrial gravity now ? " 



Another wai/,'a,s the cookbooks have it — a method pecu- 

 liarly affected by some American astronomers I wot of — is 

 to show that one pai'ticular part of a theory will not explain 



a group of facts which belongs to another part of the theory 

 — as, for instance, that the expulsion of matter from the sun 

 cannot explain the closed orbits of the Leonids or the paths 

 of comets nowhere approaching within many millions of 

 miles of the sun. 



What has really to be considered in such a case is the 

 bearing of a general theory on the facts, many in number 

 and diverse in aspect, which suggested it, and which it is 

 intended to exjjlain ; not whether this or that fact can be 

 separately explained in some other way, or whether one 

 branch of the theory is able to explain the facts i-elating to 

 another. Why take up matters which can be explained in 

 a hundred ways, when we know that the really determinant 

 facts are those which Ciin only be explained in two or three 

 ways, or perhaps only in one l 



A YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR'S COURT. 



REPORT OF A DISCOURSE BY MARK TWAIN.* 



flR. CLEMENS said that that which he was 

 about to read was part of a still uncompleted 

 book, of which he would give the first chapter 

 by way of explanation, and follow it with se- 

 lected fragments, " or outline the rest of it 

 in bulk, so to speak ; do as the dying cow- 

 boy admonished his spiritual adviser to do, 

 'just leave out the details, and heave in the bottom facts.' " 

 Mr. Clemens' story is the autobiography of Sir Robert 

 Smith, of Camelot, one of King Arthur's knights, formerly 

 a manufacturer of Hartford, Conn. Robert Smith says of 

 himself : 



" I am a Yankee of the Yankees, a practical man, nearly 

 baiTen of sentiment or poetry — in other words, my father 

 wa.s a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was 

 both. Then I went over to the great arms factory and 

 learned my real trade— learned to make everything, guns, 

 revolvers, cannon, boilei-s, engines, electric machines, any- 

 thing, in short, that anybody wanted anywhere in the 

 world. ... I became a head boss and had a thousand men 

 under me. Well, a man like that is full of fight — that goes 

 ^vithout saying. With a thousand rough men under one, 

 one has plenty of that sort of amusement. 



"At last I met my match ; I got my do.se. It was 

 during a misunderstanding conducted with iron crowbars 

 with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out 

 with a ci'usher alongside the head that made every joint uf 

 my skull lap over on its neighbour, and then the world went 

 out in darkness and I felt nothing more, knew nothing more 

 for a while, and when I came to again I was standing under 

 an oak tree and the factory was gone. 



" Standing under an oak tree on the grass with a beau- 

 tiful broad country, a landscape spread out liefore me — all 

 to myself No, not quite, not entirely to myself. There 

 was a fellow on a horse looking at me — a fellow fresh out 

 of a pictui'e-book. He was in old-time armour from his 

 he;id to his heel. He had a helmet on like a cheese-box 

 with slits in it, and he carried a shield and sword and a 

 prodigious spear. And his horse had armour on, too, and 

 gorgeous silken trappings, red and green, that hung around 

 him like a bedgown to the ground. And this apparition 

 said to me : 



" ' Fair sir ! Will you joust i ' 



* Delivered at the last meeting of tlie Military Service Institu- 

 tion, Governor's Island, General J. B. Fry in the chair ; Generals 

 W. T. Sherman and Bchofield on the platform. 



