AraiL 1, 1901. J 



KNOWLEDGE. 



89 



parable to such a map. The comparison occurs in at 

 least two other phices in Shakespeare, «■.;/., Maria says 

 of Mavolio (,Acl III.. Sc. 2), " He doth smile his face 

 into more lines than are in the new map, with the 

 augmentation of the Indies'": the same idc^ being 

 presented in Henry IV., II., 5, 1, by "He shall laugh 

 till his face be like a wet clokc ill laid up. " Again, 

 in "' The Rape of Liicrece,'' 



"SW turus nwiiv 

 Tlio faoe, tlmt ump wliii'h doep iiiipressiim beai's 

 Of liard misfortuMO carved in it with tears." 



Also in Titus Audrouicus, it is said to the woc-begone 

 Lavinia, " Thou map of woe !' and in another play we 

 have '■ Thy face, the map of honour. " Shakespeare, 

 like other writers, uses the word " table " in the sense 

 of a surface on which something is painted or drawn, 

 «.</., "'I beheld myself Drawn in the flattering table 

 of her eye " ; and, again, " Who art the table, wherein 

 my thoughts Are visibly charactered and engraved. ' 

 He also speaks of the (second) table of the command- 

 ments. Byron has, rather incorrectly, " A moment o'er 

 his face A" tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced." 

 Dame Quickly, then, means that FalstaflF's erstwhile 

 " jolly red nose " had shrunk and become pointed and 

 wrinkled, H. Algar. 



TO THE EDITORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 



Sirs, — Attempts to explain Mrs. Quickly s " table of 

 green fields '' have not been so successful as to exclude 

 others. 



May I suggest the omission of the '' b " in " table,'' 

 leaving " tale." John James Coulton. 



Pentney, Xarborough, Norfolk, 

 February 22ud, 1901. 



A CUKIOUS ELECTROGRAPH. 



TO THE EDITORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 



Sirs, — The rather cm-ious negative of which I send a 

 print was obtained in this way. My laboratory was 

 converted for the occasion into a " dark room. " A 

 dry plate was laid on a stand without protection of any 

 sort. Thj gutta-percha covered wires from my Wims- 

 hurst machine were placed upon it alternately in 

 positions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, as the print shows. The 

 impressions shown in positions 2 and 4 were produced 



tirst puzzle, then, in connection with the perfornianco 

 is, — how comes it that the " head " shows at all? The 

 phalange round the edge of the coin was unquestionably 

 good. Next : how IS it that the face in profile is almost 

 equally illuminated in either position ! In position 2 

 it is turned towards the negative wire and receives two 

 sparks; in position 4 it faces the positive and gets 4 

 sparks. Without a doubt the general effect of illumina- 

 tion is better in 2 than it is in 4, but it is equally clear 

 that in the former case the wires are farther apart. 

 For some mysterious reason the back of the head 

 in position 4 fails to a])pear at all. 



The glow at the end of the gutta-percha covering of 

 the positive wire is also curious. Why should leakage 

 be more decided there than it is apparently along the 

 cour.se of the uncovered wire ? William Godden. 



38. Burrard Road, 



West Hampstcad, N.W., 



January 20th, 1901. 



by a shilling likewise laid upon the dry plate '' head " 

 downwards. Two sparks were sent through positions 

 1 and 2, foiu' through positions 3 and 4, and one spark 

 through position 5. I expected to get in the places 

 of the coin impressions of roughly circular blanks. The 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



TO THE EDITORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 



Sirs, — I gather from Sir Robert Ball in his " Great 

 Astronomers," that one of the factors which led La- 

 Place to propound his nebular hypothesis was the fact 

 that all the planets and their satellites (that were then 

 known), comprising some thirty circular movements, 

 travelled and rotated in the same direction in which 

 our earth is known to do, viz., from west to east. 



I should be extremely obliged if you could infciin me 

 through the medium of your valuable journal, which 1 

 have read with such pleasure for the past fifteen years, 

 whether the nebular hypothesis is in any way damaged 

 by the discovery that one or more of the satellites of 

 Uranus travel round it in the opposite direction, viz., 

 from east to west, and can such a diverse movement 

 be accounted for. As this question arose at a Literary 

 Society Meeting, when the nebiilar hypothesis was being 

 discussed, and remained unsolved of course, I decided 

 to seek information at the fountain head. 



H. Christophkh. 



[Necessarily, a theory like the nebular hypothesis can 

 deal only with the facts as we know them at the time, 

 and new facts as they arc brought to ouv know- 

 ledge have to be recognised, and it may be that 

 the theory has to be somewhat modified to include them. 

 M. Faye, for instance, in his form of the cosmogonic 

 theory, supposes that the solar system at an early period 

 consisted largely of separate meteorites, which arranged 

 themselves in process of time in flat and nearly circular 

 rings round a small central nucleus. Whilst the nucleus 

 — the future sun — was small, the rings moved a,s a rigid 

 whole, the outer meteorites of any ring moving absolutely 

 faster than the inner. Consequently when a planetary 

 mass was aggregated out of any ring at this period, the 

 tendency of the planet and its satellites was to assume a 

 direct rotation. As the sun grew the tendency in each 

 ring yet tincondensed was for the outer meteorites to 

 move less rapidly than the inner, and hence to form 

 planetary systems rotating retrogr.Klely. Therefore, 

 according to M. Faye, the earth and all the planets 

 up to Saturn are much older than the sun, but "Uranus 

 came into being when the two tendencies were about 

 balanced, and consequently its satellites revolve in a 

 plane almost perpendicular to that of the planet's orbit. 

 Neptune would seem to have come into existence later 

 still. It is, however, only fair to point out that there 



