Dec. 12, ISSi.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



491 



with a soul. Without tlie acceptance of an atom-soul, the com- 

 monest, the most general phenomena of chemistry are inexplicable. 

 Pleasure and displeasure, desire and loathing, attraction and repul- 

 sion, must be common to all masses of atoms; for the movements 

 of atoms which must occur in the formation and decomposition of 

 every chemical compound, are only explicable if we impute to them 

 sensation and will," Ac. 



Mr. Alexander will see that materialism needs not an "outside" 

 power; it places " force " within the atom as its innate property. 

 Besides, matter is nowhere "isolated." Atoms exert force on 

 one another incessantly. F. TV. H. 



FOSSIL AXD MODERN EYES. 



[1335] — Your correspondent, E. L. Garbett, probably never saw 

 a mole which lives underground in darkness. Its eyes are so small 

 that they are scarcely perceptible. That would prove that creatures 

 living — if such a thing could be thought possible — before there was 

 a sun, light, and warmth, should have had no eyes, or at least very 

 small, diminutive ones. F. W. H. 



[1536] — In suggesting that big eyes in animals of the earlier 

 times might imply them to have lived in the days before there was 

 a sun, I should have said this was on the assumption of their optic 

 nerves having somewhat our own relative sensitiveness to the 

 variously refrangible rays. We must bear in mind that rays which 

 are Hyht, and rays which are not Ught, are a distinction pui-ely 

 human, or having reference to human physiology. There may be 

 animal eyes ever so near us, even the dog's, to which the yellow 

 maybe obscme, and those we call "obscure heat," or "obscure 

 actinism," be the brightest. We cannot tell, of any eyes but our own, 

 that a boiling kettle is less luminous than a candle to them. There 

 may be eyes to which the kettle's rays are light, and the candle's 

 no more so than the ultra-violet actinic rays are to us. To them 

 also the Andromeda nebula may be brighter than Sirius, and things 

 in the starry heavens that are the brightest to them may be for 

 ever invisible to us, though, perhaps, to be photographed on some 

 chemical yet unknown. Far more, then, may there have been, 

 when the sun was a nebula, ner%-es to which rays that we should 

 call dark heat served as light, and the co-existence of small eyes 

 with the abnormally large ones can prove nothing. Trilobites' 

 eyes appear to have resembled in structure those of modern insects, 

 but in scale they greatly exceeded those of their present equals in 

 bulk, whether as near them in class as shrimps and crayfish, or as 

 distant as birds or mice. E. L. Garbett. 



Nov. 30, 1884. 



[Save in the case of the ichthyosaurus, it cannot be said that 

 any fossil type of animal was distinguished by abnormally large 

 eyes. I had two beautifnl specimens of trilobites before me as I 

 wrote, and assuredly their eyes were not so big relatively as those 

 of the modern dragon-fly. Xo physiological warrant whatever 

 exists for Mr. Garbett's ideas of what " may be." They are as 

 pure and absolute guesses as the speculation of the negro meta- 

 physician : — 



*' 'Spose that I was you, and 'spose that you was me. 

 And 'spose we all was somebody else — I wonder who we should be ? " 

 ^__J_ —Ed.] 



LETTERS RECEIVED AXD SHORT ANSWERS. 



IsiDOEE. Unfortunately for your hypothesis, the phenomenon 

 has been just as striking when the sun has been in apogee. — 

 G. W. M. The difficult}' of reproducing the lectures in a book-form 

 arises from the fact that they were extemporaneous. Your com- 

 plaint that subjects are commenced in these columns and not 

 finished is not wholly without foundation. On the other hand, 

 correspondents complain of the length of some of the vei"y series 

 whose non-completion you resent. "Almanack Lessons" and 

 "Star-Mapping" will be resumed, and "Papers on Spectrum 

 Analysis" commenced, all in good time. Your reference is an 

 erroneous one. — Charles Bloomiield. Surely in asking for hints 

 for a " small" observatory "50 feet high (!) and 12 diameter" there 

 must be a lapsus calami ? — F. Y'elwoc. If you wish my candid 

 opinion, I should say that it is impossibfe. — Hawthoexs. Assuming 

 the coin to be a genuine and unweighted one, the first four tosses 

 in no sense whatever affect the probability that of the remaining 

 eight four will be beads and four tails. — J. S. B. Address the 

 Secretary, 11, Deau's-yard, Westminster, S.W. — J. W. Howell. 

 Many thanks for the trouble you have kindly taken, but the ques- 

 tion has been already answered {vide column two, page Hi). — 

 C. F. N. Your mental experience in connection with a neuralgic 

 attack unfortunately only too common a one. — W. H. Stoxe 

 writes, concerning the paragraph on " Non-poisonous Water 



Pipes" (column one, page 453), that he is the original 

 inventor of tin-lined lead piping ; that he pointed out the 

 advantage of it to Messrs. Davidson & Armstrong, of Man- 

 chester, thirty or forty years ago, and that, between the years 1848 

 and 1852, that firm laid down pipes so tin-lined for the Manchester 

 Corporation. — F.W. Eidlee. Received with thanks. — J.E. Fcit (?). 

 Delayed through your addressing the Editor instead of the 

 Publishers. — W. St. C. Bosc.<.wex. Letter received, but no tickets 

 enclosed. — Mr. Wallace. " Richmond of " was apparently a mis- 

 print for " of Richmond." A letter addressed to Mr. Wright, 

 Richmond, Yorkshire, would probably elicit the required infor- 

 mation. See concluding paragraph, in capital letters, which heads 

 the Correspondence Column. — Oakley. There is not the very 

 slightest grotind for the belief that the Star of Bethlehem will 

 reappear in 1887. No temporary star of the appearance of which 

 any authentic record whatever exists, could in the least fulfil 

 the conditions of the phenomenon to which Matthew ii., w. 2, 9, 

 and 10 refer. Ideler long ago suggested that a conjunction of 

 Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred B.C. 7, would do so ; but this 

 view was speedily shown to be untenable. As for " total eclipse of 

 Sun and Moon said to take place about the same time," this is 

 much too vague ; as eclipses of the sun total over certain parts of 

 the earth's surface, and total eclipses of the Moon, visible wherever 

 she is above the horizon, are common enough. There was an 

 eclipse of the Moon 3 ex., March 13. The position of a star or 

 planet in the day-time can only be found by setting the circles of 

 an equatorially - mounted telescope. Two things will prevent 

 Wolf's Comet being seen from Kimberley : the strength of 

 the present summer twilight, and the comet's recession from 

 the earth. — Coxstaxt Reader. No explanation has ever yet 

 been given of the modus operandi of Maskelyne & Cooke's 

 automata ; nor can I personally make any guess that would be 

 worth listening to. — Rev. C. H. Cope. Thanks. Your tracing is 

 from a sketch of contorted strata of the "Millstone Grit" (a 

 group in the Carboniferous formation). These strata, originally 

 deposited horizontally, have been crumpled by lateral pressure in a 

 way which you may understand if you put pieces of coloured cloth 

 one on another with a book on the top of them, and then press 

 them strongly at the sides. Such convolutions are by no means 

 tmcommon. I heartily agree with you, though, as to the 

 utilitarian spirit of the age. The finest view, the most 

 precious archaeological relic, the most interesting geological 

 section — nothing is sacred to a "board" or a jobbing builder. 

 — T. L. Crawford. Much too long for insertion. — H. Han- 

 cock writes, in connection with the effect of the moon's rays, 

 that while in India in 1857-3S, a shipmate who slept by hia side on 

 deck had a moonstroke; his head swelling so fearfully that the 

 locality of his eyes was only discernible by his eyebrows ; while the 

 left side of his mouth was drawn nearly up to his ear. Medical 

 men subsequently informed our correspondent that blindness, 

 epilepsy, paralysis, and idiocy often supervened on such an attack. 

 Mr. Hancock himself has had sunstroke, and earnestly cautions 

 everyone who may have been affected either by the solar or lunar 

 rays to abstain from subsequently drinking spirits. — H. A. (if I 

 understand him, which is, to say the least, questionable) thinks 

 that, just as mustard-seed or an acorn extracts its proper nutriment 

 from the soil which surrounds it, and developes into a bush or an 

 oak tree, as the case may be, so a soul may extract its nourishment 

 from " spiritism," of which he alleges that " not more (nay, less) 

 universal is air itself." — F. J. Waedale. Clausins and Thomson 

 have shown that pressure must raise the melting-point of 

 solids ; at least, such solids as expand in becoming liquid. In 

 the extremely few which contract (like water) the reverse is 

 the case. Comparatively nothing is known of the internal 

 temperattire of the earth. — R. F. H. No "local inundation" 

 could by any possibihty submerge a mountain 500 ft. high ! 

 Extremely slow subsidence might do so in the course of ages, 

 but then the mountain would remain submerged. On June 16, 

 1819, a tremendous earthquake occurred at Cutch, on the 

 delta of the Indus. By this convulsion the Eastern Channel of the 

 Indus, which had been only one foot deep at low water, was deepened 

 to IS ft., at which it remains. Of com-se, the disturbance was con- 

 fined to a limited area. Water always, as you say, " finds its own 

 level ; " hence, for it to overflow a mountain or anything else, the 

 latter must be depressed. I am, I regret to say, wholly ignorant of 

 naval architecture. 



In the lead production of different countries, Spain holds 

 the first place, the amount reaching some 120,000 tons in one 

 year, or one-sixth more than America, which comes next on the 

 list, while Germany follows with 90,000. Of Spain's total produc- 

 tion, some 67,000 tons are derived from one district, that of 

 Linares, in which more than 800 mines are registered. 



