Aug. 8, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



121 



etiitorial (gosfsJtp. 



There is no problem in Social Science more nearly 

 affecting the individual citizen than that of assuring the 

 security of his pei-son and the preservation of his liberty. 

 Two cases which have recently been prominently reported 

 in the newspapers seem to point to the fact that the 

 existing law fails very conspicuously to protect either 

 personal liberty, or to alTord immunity from wanton and 

 murderous attack. 



The first one is that of Mrs. Weldon, which discloses a 

 condition of things that are a simple scandal to our legisla- 

 tion. From what has been brought to light in t\w High 

 Court of Justice during the past few weeks, it would seem 

 that there is nothing to prevent any person from going to 

 the jtroprictor of a private lunatic asylum and intimating 

 that he has reason to suspect that the reader of these lines 

 is out of his, or her, mind ; nor such proprietor from 

 proceeding with a relation of his own, obtaining access to 

 the said reader under a false pretence, and putting fishing 

 questions for the purpose of establishing that he, or she, 

 is insane. Further, that, having done so, this mad-house 

 keeper may, under the existing law, send two private 

 friends from his own table to certify to the lunacy of the 

 unfortunate reader aforesaid, and upon their certificate lock 

 him, or her, up in his asylum as long as ever it pays him 

 to do so ! Surely this discloses a state of things so terrible 

 as to call for searching and immediate reform. No more 

 righteous verdict than that in the case of Weldon v. 

 Semple was probably ever delivered ; and common-sense 

 Englishmen will only deplore that a decision so con- 

 spicuously come to solely on the merits of the case, should 

 stand in the slightest danger of reversal from any of those 

 technical legal quibbles which find their sole defenders in 

 the lawyers who batten on them. The remedy for the 

 iniquitous state of things revealed would seem to be the 

 immediate abolition by statute of all private lunatic 

 asylums whatsoever in the United Kingdom. 



And if Mrs. Weldon's case illustrates the very pre- 

 carious tenure upon which we all hold our personal 

 liberty, the shooting by burglars of those two most gallant 

 policemen. Garner and Snell, at Hoxton, equally serves to 

 indicate how the security of the person is sacrificed to 

 sickly and maudlin sentimentality. After the attempted 

 murder of the police constable Chamberlain in the same 

 neighbourhood in June, common sense would have dictated 

 that policemen on night duty there should have been armed. 

 But, oh dear no ! They might conceivably under such cir- 

 cumstances have sent a bullet through one of those idols of 

 the Home Ofiice, a ticket-of-leave man, before he had time 

 to fire upon and, perchance, kill them — and that would 

 have been so very shocking ! The bull-dog courage, the 

 splendid British pluck which prompted P.C.'s 429 G and 

 462 G — defenceless, liut for a wretched IS-in. ash stick 

 each — to face two murderous ruffians armed with deadly 

 weapons, which they used wdthoTit hesitation, may well 

 cause a pang of grief and shame to strike everyone who 

 reflects upon the cant and ineptitude which leaves such 

 brave men helpless. A suggestion has been made that 

 armed burglars, when convicted, should have flogging 

 added to their sentences ; but, meantime, the death of half- 

 a-dozen of these vermin at the bands of the defenders of 

 the law would do more to stop their nefarious profession 

 than a hundred sentences of a hundred lashes each. Depend 

 upon it, when an armed attack upon the police meant 

 a ^oo bullet through the assailant, " the enterprising 

 burglar" would " cease to burgle " forthwith. 



(Buv ^3aiatiov Column. 



As an example of the pseudo-science with which the nnfortnnate 

 readers of the Christian Qloie are fed, we extract the follow- 

 ing two paragraphs : — 



*' So, after all, the * Man in the moon * is not fiction, but a real 

 flesh-aud-blood reality like ourselves. Our little folks, at any rate, 

 will learn the fact with a sense of delight, for all of us in otir child- 

 hood's days felt a sort of sympathy for the poor old gentleman, 

 condemned, according to the tradition implicitely believed in, to 

 wander about from one year's end to another with his bundle of 

 fagots on liis back for gathering firewood on the Sabboth. ' At the 

 astronomical observatory of Berlin,' says a translation from Nya 

 Pressen Helsingfor, ' a discovery has lately been made which, 

 without doubt, will cause the greatest sensation, not only amongst 

 the adepts in science, but even amongst the most learned. Pro- 

 fessor Blendmann, in that city, has found, beyond a doubt, that onr 

 old friend, the moon, is not a more lantern which kindly furnishes 

 light for the loving youth and gas companies of our planet, but the 

 abode of living, intelligent beings, for which he is prepared to 

 furnish proofs most convincing. The question has agitated humanity 

 from time immemorial, and has been the object of the greatest 

 interest. But the opinions have always differed very widely, and 

 no two minds held one and the same.' " 



" During the last few decades, however, the idea of life on the 

 moon has been held up to ridicule, and totally scorned by men of 

 learning. But, nevertheless, it has now been proved to be correct. 

 By pure accident. Dr. Blendmann found that the observations of the 

 moon gave but very unsatisfactory results, owing to the intensity 

 of the light power of the moon's atmosphere, which is so strong 

 that it affects the correctness of the observations in a very high 

 degree. He then conceived the idea to make the object-glass of 

 the refractor less sensitive to the rays of b'ght, and for this ptirpose 

 he darkened it with the smoke of camphor. It took months of 

 experimenting before he succeeded in finding his right degree of 

 obscurity of the glass, and when finally found he then with the 

 refractor took a very accurate photo of the moon's surface. This 

 he placed in a sun microscope, which gave the picture a diameter 

 of 55^ feet. The revelation was most startling. It perfectly over- 

 turned all hitherto entertained ideas of the moon's surface. Those 

 level plains which formerly were held to be oceans of water proved 

 to be verdant fields, and what formerly were considered mountains 

 turned out as deserts of sand and oceans of water. Towns and 

 habitations of all kinds were plainly discernible, as well — mirabile 

 dictu — as signs of industry and traffic. The learned professor's 

 study and observations of old Luna will be repeated every full 

 moon when the sky is clear." 



We have heard of Auwers, Forster, Knorre, and Tietjen as astro- 

 nomers at Berlin, but strongly suspect that " Professor Blendmann " 

 isa species of astronomical " Mrs. Harris." The whole thing reads 

 like a veiy clumsy reproduction of the famous lunar hoax of which 

 the details will be found in " Myths and Marvels of Astronomy." 



iHis'rrllnnra. 



The Eucalyptus and Water Scpplt. — Baron Von Mueller has, 

 it is stated, sent to the Victorian Water-supply Department a long 

 report as to the powers of the eucalyptus tree to absorb water, and 

 to condense into water the moisture in the air. He speaks highly 

 of the remarkable powers of these trees in this direction as well 

 established, and urges judicious tree-planting as an auxiliary 

 measure for maintaining and augmenting the water-supply. 



At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an 

 account was read of a deposit of saltpetre in the neighbourhood of 

 Cochabamba, Bolivia, by M, Sacc. An analysis of this vast 

 deposit, which is large enough to supply the whole of the world 

 with nitrate of potash, yields the following results : — Nitrate of 

 potash, 60" 70; borax, with traces of salt and water, 30*70; organic 

 substances, 860 ; total, 10000. The author concludes that the 

 saltpetre is the result of the. decomposition of an enormous deposit 

 of fossil animal remains. 



0\-ERHEAD Wires ix Loxdox. — According to Sir H. Tyler, no 

 less than 230 overhead wires may be counted beween the Royal 

 Exchange and St. Michael's Church, Comhill, and 200, more or less, 

 between the Mansion House and Queen-street, the latter being 

 stretched across Queen Victoria-street. A few days since he called 

 the attention of the Secretary of the Local Government Board to 

 these figures. In his reply, this gentleman pointed out, that out of 

 the 230 only six belonged to the Post-office, and of the 200, only 

 foTU-. 



