122 



KNOW^LEDGE 



[April 1, 1887. 



might set up special eddies which would wash away the 

 town foster than ever. The Corporation, thus advised, 

 dropped the breakwater, and preferred to leave themselves 

 in the hands of Nature. Indeed, on an open line of coast, 

 exposed to varying winds and diverse currents, it is almost 

 impossible to say beforehand what will be the effect vinder 

 all circumstances of any given change of contour in project- 

 ing portions. 



Look for a moment at another case familiar to everybody 

 who owns a garden. How infinite are the diversities of 

 soil and climate and situ.ation within a single little patch of 

 a quarter of an acre I 'Here, the snow lies long ; there, the 

 radiation from a wall melts it rapidly; yondei', again, the 

 drifting due to eddies caused by the neighbouring palings 

 ridges it up into a low mound, which resists for man}' days 

 together the melting effects of the sun and of the warm 

 westerly Ijreezes. liound this corner here the wind whistles 

 so fieixely that not even spruce firs will thrive and flourish ; 

 on the opposite side the house gives shelter from the cold 

 east winds, and sub-tropical annuals — like the castor-oil 

 plant — will grow vigorously from seed in a sunny exposure. 

 At one point the dripping from the roof waterlogs the 

 grass; at another, too rapid drainage through the sandstone 

 soil allows it to dry up and wither, unless constantly 

 moistened by the garden hose. The shade of the Portugal 

 laurels interferes with the free development of the scarlet 

 anemones ; the hyacinths, at this end of the bed, are later 

 by a week than their sisters at that end, because the .shadow 

 of a tall poplar wheels over them for three hours daily, 

 intercepting their due share of the morning sun. One's own 

 little garden, in l^xct, is a petty epitome of all the facts of 

 climate in the world, too complex for the most diligent 

 observer and reasoner ever fully to comprehend its minute 

 diversities. The mound of snow where the children made 

 the snow-man, which lasted unmelted after a fortnight's 

 thaw, represents in miniature the Alps and the Himalayas, 

 or the obstinate Polar ice-cap itself. There are windy 

 corners and sheltered nooks, inexplicable patches where the 

 grass will never grow on the lawn, spots where the wall- 

 flowers blossom in February, and spots where they linger till 

 late in June. When I look at the endless complexity of the 

 square mile that lies around my own house, at the diversity 

 of flora on the two sides of the road that runs through 

 Milton Heath, at the differences caused by the northern and 

 southern aspect of the round barrow on the hilltop, at the 

 climatic varieties of chalk and greensand and weald clay, 

 with their accompanying peculiarities of fauna and flora, I 

 am appalled at the temerity of men who will dogmatise 

 freely about the causes of mild arctic climates, or the effects 

 of drying up the Atlantic Ocean. Why, a complete account 

 of the causes which lead to the climate of a single house from 

 day to day would baffle the wisest meteorologist in Europe. 

 The thermometer just now in this very room stood at 56° 

 beside the bookcase when it was Gl° on the centre table. 

 A removal to a position two feet higher on the sideboard 

 sent it up a couple of degrees. Put your finger to the key- 

 hole when the door is shut, and feel the cool air rushing in, 

 in a jet, like water through the cracks in a floodgate, and 

 you can faintly realise the turmoil and commotion of the 

 atmosphere of the place in which you are now sitting. If 

 you could see it coloured, so as to make the movements 

 visible, you would find it a theatre of endless eddies and 

 currents, of actions and reactions marvellous and innumer- 

 able — hciited air flowing up the chimney; cold air to replace 

 it rushing in at the cracks of the doors and windows; 

 carbonic acid from your breath falling to the floor ; aqueous 

 vapour floating idly about in little dispersed clouds and 

 flocculi ; heated gases ascending to the ceiling ; everywhere 

 whirls and curls and rigmaroles, dancing and eddying in a 



perpetual vortex. Our human habit is to reduce every 

 problem too much to naked simplicity. The concrete world 

 in which we live consists, on the contrary, of infinitely 

 complex interactions of cause and effect, which it is well- 

 nigh impossiljle for us adequately to disentangle one from 

 the other. 



PRIZE COMPETITIONS. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



KNOW no more amusing development of 

 modern journalism than the system of Prize 

 Competitions, by which the time-wasting idiots 

 who formerly struggled for fame by solving the 

 imbecilities called acrostics are now invited to 

 decide who are the greatest statesmen, poets, 

 philosophers, painters, of such and such nations 

 or times, and which the greatest of their works. (I have 

 called the acrostic-solvers wasters of time ; but on second 

 thoughts I withdraw the remark : llieir time could hardly 

 be wasted.) Of course we know beforehand that, in 

 struggling for the prizes in the more recent competitions, 

 these folk carefully avoid any attempt to judge for them- 

 selves. What they try to do is to guess who are likely 

 to be generally selected as greatest in the several departments 

 dealt with, and by choosing those to secure the best chance 

 of the prizes doled out to them by the proprietors of papers 

 employing this clever dodge for checking loss of circulation. 

 Still, although for this reason the system is not really so 

 outrageously absurd as it seems to be on the face of it, yet 

 even the appearance of weighing the opinions of those who 

 necessarily have no judgment is an absurdity which cannot 

 but degrade journali.sm. 



Imagine, for example, a score of the foolish folk who had 

 been successful in solving acrostics according to their 

 " lights " (the acrostics' lights, I mean) attempting to decide, 

 from their own knowledge, on the twelve greatest poems in 

 the English language 1 Even the average opinion of the 

 community would decide wrong on such a subject as this ; and 

 these strange beings must be altogether below the average, 

 or they would never be found among the acrostic-solvers. 

 We know that to untrained minds, which is the same as 

 saying to the majority, a Tupper or a Robert Montgomery 

 seems a greater poet than a Shakespeare or a Milton — until 

 some one shows them the absurdity of what they have mis- 

 taken for sublimity. We only have to note what such 

 minds turn to naturally, and would continue to admire, were 

 they not corrected, to see that this is the case — though, 

 indeed, it is simply what might be expected. Con- 

 sider the sale which Tupper's " Proverbial Philosophy " 

 obtained during about a quarter of a century, despite its 

 utterly prosaic and commonplace character I Or recall the 

 way in which the bulk of the community accepted the 

 ruined plagiarisms and ungrammatical idiocies of Robert 

 Montgomery as poetry, equalling, if not surpassing, Milton's 

 best ! Even INlacaulay's crushing criticism in the Edinhurgh 

 lieview did not kill Robert Jlontgomery at once. (" Breaking 

 a butterfly on the wheel," some called Macaulay's criticism ; 

 but cru.shing a cockroach would be nearer the mark.) I 

 remember well how his pretentious absurdities were selected 

 for reading by enthusiastic admirers as late as a score of 

 years after Macaulay's review should have taught even the 

 silliest of Montgomery's admirers what tawdry tinsellings 

 they had mistaken for real poetry. 



Imagine folk compared with whom the admirers of Tupper 

 and Montgomery were excellent judges invited to jnonounce 

 on the merits of Chaucer and Spenser, Shake.speare and Milton, 

 Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, 



