392 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Nov. 7, 1884. 



" Nights with a 3-inch Telescope," you will find all the leading 

 double stars and nebulfc, which are well within the power of such 

 an instrument, are described and a large proportion of them illus- 

 trated. — " F.R.A.S." writes that he is only waiting until the in- 

 explicable haze which has surrounded the sun for so many months 

 disappears, to complete his series of papers with a drawing and 

 description of Mercury. — Jonx Sewell. In these columns. — H. D. 

 I have never heard of the publication of any work on the arrange- 

 ment of facts. Why do you not get a shilling memorandum-book, and 

 divide it into sections headed. Philosophy, History, Politics, Theology, 

 Literature, Science, &c. ; subdividing the latter into Mathematics, 

 astronomy, physics, natural history, and soon; and enter your facts 

 under their appropriate headings. I regret that your former 

 letter was overlooked, as it very well may have been, among the 

 hundreds received. — Wm. J. Davies. I cannot understand how 

 brilliance, however intense, could convert the visible portion of the 

 moon's limb into a seemingly parabolic curve. I should rather 

 refer this illusion to the intersection of the two arcs of different 

 curvature, those, I mean, of the moon's limb and of the periphery 

 of the earth's shadow. See Knowledge, Vol. I., p. 70. — A Country 

 Lad. I have never even heard of the book you mention, which is 

 assuredly «oi a "standard " one. The second person you mention 

 is a mere ranter, and is not the very slightest authority on any 

 scientific question whatever. — Musafie. See reply to " The 

 Ghost of a Little Boy," on p. 373. The latter half of your 

 letter has been anticipated in a hundred cases, as you 

 will ere this have learned. — Jos. W. Alexander. Very 

 much too long for insertion : a thing to be regretted, 

 inasmuch as you advance something worthy of serions attention, 

 conld you only compress it into about a tenth of the space. — 

 ENQriREE. Probably your "Man-frog" did swallow some water 

 with his cake. The performance is quite genuine. Beckwith, of 

 London, Reddish, of Liverpool, and others continue to do the same 

 thing. — W. H. S. M.\EK. The subject has been sufficiently discussed. 

 — John Bell. They will be re-published in abook-form, upon their 

 completion here. — Ignorance. From the most elementary proper- 

 ties of numbers. See any book on the higher arithmetic. The date 

 of the submersion of oak in bogs varies. In Denmark, the fir-tree 

 seems to have flourished in immediate succession to the last Glacial 

 Period. This was succeeded by the oak, which was coeval with the 

 " bronze age " of anthropologists, as that was in turn by the 

 beech. Sir Charles Lyell ("Antiquity of Man," p. 17) says that 

 there is nothing in the growth of peat opposed to the conclu- 

 sion that the Danish bogs may be 16,000 years old. I know 

 nothing specifically of the Xewmarket " Devil's Dyke ; " but it is a 

 name applied all over the country to Roman and other fortification 

 hnes. — Thoma.s Willcocks and R. Coupland Thomas. You will 

 see from the announcement on p. 329, that the " Life after Death " 

 controversy is now closed. Yours are both letters which cause me 

 to regret that they did not reach me sooner. Quires of corre- 

 spondence on this subject found their way into the waste-paper- 

 basket. — A. G. There is nothing to wonder at when we remember 

 that refraction raises an object really on the horizon nearly 3'5 (or 

 more than the diameter of the sun or moon) above it. Had our 

 atmosphere been removed, the eclipsed moon would have set before 

 sunrise. — George R. Saundees. Visible occultations of planets by 

 the moon are not very common, but are by no means the rare 

 phenomena you imagine. For example, A'enus was occulted on Feb. 

 29th of the present year (see Vol. V. of Knowledge, p. 131) ; Mars 

 was occulted on June 3, 1878, &c. For the dates of such occultations 

 I can only recommend a hunt through back volumes of the Nautical 

 Almanac. — Z. If by "names of the Stars" you mean their Arabic 

 names, you will find these appended to the maps published in our 

 earlier volumes, and reproduced in " The Stars in their Seasons." 

 It would crowd the projected maps to an extent rendering them 

 scarcely intelligible were the name of each individual star printed 

 against it. — Lancashire. No reward has ever been offered for 

 the trisection of an angle or arc. Besides, if there had been, 

 yours is not a solution. The problem is an impossible one, if you 

 are confined to the straight line and the circle. For approximate 

 mechanical methods, see Vol. I. pp. 117 and 166. — G. H. Dann 

 sends me a copy of the Port Elizabeth Telegraph (South Africa), 

 with carefully- writ ten local " Astronomical Notes " for October. — 

 De. Groth. I have read your pamphlet entirely through. Forgive 

 me for saying it is full of fallacies from beginning to end. (1) 

 Gravitation cannot possibly be identical with electrical action. The 

 latter takes a perfectly measurable time to travel ; the action of 

 gravity must be instantaneous. If not, you, with your mathe- 

 matical attainments, must see at once how the motion of the earth 

 in her orbit would be affected. (2) Orbital motion, per sc, could 

 never cause axial rotation. (3) 'The idea of the sudden recession 

 of the earth from the sun at the epoch of the flirting off of each 

 successive interior planet is wild in the extreme. The mass of 

 Venus is toIoTs^^i a°d ^^^^ o^ Mercury ^sdaia^ th, that of the sun! 



What sensible or appreciable difference conld the abstraction of 

 these infinitesimal fractions of the sun's mass have upon hia 

 attractive power at the earth's distance? (4) Your assumption of 

 the snn'B fluidity, when he was even hotter than he is now, is per- 

 fectly unwarranted. See " The Sun a Bubble," in " Science 

 Byways." (5) Your dynamics are not as the dynamics taught 

 at Cambridge in yoor view of the formation of the planetoids. 

 Your alleged cause is wholly inadequate to produce any such 

 effect. (6) Your " Glacial Period " theory postulates the creation 

 or projection of Mercury from the sun within the human period on 

 the earth ! (7) " Phosphorescence " is not seen on Venus " near 

 the time of the planet's greatest elongation," but when she is in 

 inferior conjunction. (8) — But need I proceed ? Ex uno disce 

 omnes. — Some Anontmois Correspondent sends me " La Petite 

 Republique Francjaiee," with a pretty severe historical retrospect 

 of the niartjTdom of jStienne Dolet. Men consigned their theo- 

 logical opponents to material fires in those days. Now, they con- 

 demn them to an immaterial conflagration ; but the old spirit 

 survives. — A. H. Somerscale.s forwEirds a cutting from a Hul) 

 paper of the most remarkable tides which have been observed at 

 Hull during the week ending Nov. 1, and what seems in some way 

 to have been referable to the very heavy N.W. gale which blew on 

 October 26. On that day it was high water at lOh. 40m. a.m. and 

 8h. 40m. p.m. Moreover, after flowing for Ih. 20m. after its 

 theoretic time, it held up for three-quarters of an hour. A 

 similarly anomalous condition of things appears to have 

 prevailed up to October 29. — Dr. Davev sends me a 

 small volume of his own " On the Nature and Proximate Cause 

 of Insanity," published in 1853, in which reference is made to a 

 paper by the author in the Lancet for 1844. Forty years ago we 

 find Dr. Davey insisting on the duality of the brain, and pointing 

 out that the doctrine is as old as Boerhaave, and possibly even as 

 Hippocrates 1 I intimated on p. 2S7 that a packet of re-directed 

 letters had somehow gone astray. This was written at the end of 

 September. This morning (Nov. 3) the packet has turned up ! 

 having been delayed by carelessness so utterly scandalous as would 

 have ensured the dismissal at once of any one in private employ- 

 ment, but which is simply " regretted " by the Post Oflice. Luckily, 

 beyond a Post Office-order sent by J. Kennedy Esdaile, it contains 

 nothing of great importance. Had Mr. E. only addressed his letter 

 to the Publishers, this would have reached them some five weeks 

 sooner. — W. B. writes on " Brain and Mind." — Albert Willan, 

 Thos. J. Hogg, Protea, H. D.4vey, and E. H. Trower all send 

 solutions of Mr. Sidder's figure puzzle. — An Ano.ntiiocs Wrfter 

 who wants a book reviewed, is informed that it only does mischief 

 to give wide publicity to rubbish. — N. S. gives an account of a meteor 

 seen in Guernsey on Sept. 18th ; and John E. Stewaet of another 

 observed at Dundrum on Sept. 22nd. Thanks to Mr. Fawcett's 

 subordinates, these communications are a little out of date now. — 



PrZZLEHEAD, FRANKLIN J. SoNNENSCHEIN, T. B. S., JAS. SmITH, 



Chas. G. Dewberry, G. Woodcock, Hen'ey Peters, Fred. D. Hen- 

 derson, F. G. S., J. C., and C. L. Dodgsox, one and aU point out 

 that the " problem " contained in Letter No. 1490 (p. 372) is 

 nothing but our venerable friend, the Magic Square. No one, how- 

 ever, attempts to show the connection between the figtires, and the 

 power they are alleged to possess " over demons, fairies, and en- 

 chanters." — Edward Irving. I regret that you should be so 

 severely exercised by the expression " undoubtedly." Be this as 

 it may, there can be very little question that the existing date is 

 wrong. Thanks for the kindly conclusion of your letter. — W. Cave 

 Thomas. If it be the fact, as you allege, that you " have killed 

 long since " the theory of three primary colours, I would suggest 

 that you should forthwith communicate with Lord Eayleigh, the 

 Professor of Experimental Physics at Trinity College, Cambridge, 

 in order that he, Mr. Glazebrook, and a few others tisually accepted 

 as leading authorities on physical optics, may hold an inquest on 

 the remains of the deceased hypothesis. Have yon ever read 

 Nood's " Modem Chromatics," in the " International Scientific 

 Series " ? — A. M. D. Thanks for your very friendly letter. — H. N. 

 Smith. I am wholly ignorant of the extent to which the late Mr. 

 David Urquhart cooked himself in the Turkish bath, or what was 

 the maximum heat he there endured. Chabert, the " Fire King," 

 remained in an oven while meat was cooked, but, of course, he 

 stood upon felt or some other non-conducting material, while the 

 meat lay upon heated metal. A surreptitious test of his oven, 

 though, showed the temperature to be 220° Fahr., and the steak 

 was grilled on concealed charcoal embers. — J. R. Smith. I accorded 

 yon all the space at my disposal on pp. 348 and 349, and can 

 assuredly spare you no more, merely to reiterate, without one 

 fragment or atom of proof, that brass was a " primordially formu- 

 lated metal " — and so on. You entirely ignore the offence (not to 

 say disgust) given to a large mass of readers who really possess 

 some knowledge of the rudiments of science, by the insertion of 

 such utterly wild and fonndationless guessing as yours. 



