Feb. 13, 1SS5.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



133 



Stellar photometry, or the quatititative measmeraent 

 of the relative amount of lii;ht emitted by the various stars, 

 is a brauch of astronouiy iu which very considerable progress 

 has recently been made ; and I am glad to see, from a re- 

 cently-published report presented to the Philadelphia 

 Meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, thsit an International Committee on 

 Standards of Stellar Magnitude is now at work on this 

 subject The committee point out what must, however, be 

 apparent eno\igh, that it would be impo-sible, in the outset, 

 tochoose stars which should represent anyassigned brightnefs 

 or should be exactly of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, itc-., magnitudes. 

 Even if the soale were made to conform to specified stars, 

 subsequent measures would be sure to show that its divi- 

 sions wrre irregular. What is, then, suggested is that certain 

 suitable stai-s should be selected as standards; their rtlativo 

 light accurately measured, and that these measures should 

 be expressed in terms of any convenient scale of magnitudes 

 that may be finally adopted. The English sub-committee 

 (consisting of five members of the Council of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society) have taken charge of the lucid .stars, 

 or those %'isible to the naked eye. Stars from the sixth to 

 the tenth magnitude are allotted to the German Astro- 

 nomische (Jesellschaft, ; while stars fainter than the tenth 

 magnitude are assigned to the American Association. 

 Possessors of very large telescopes, who may wish to aid in 

 the last-mentioned branch of the work, will find a letter 

 and four specimen charts by Pnifessor Pickering, of Harvard 

 College Observatory, Cambridge,. U.S., in the current 

 number of the Astronomical Register. 



As is well known, a strong agitation (mainly, of course, 

 originated and fomented by briefless barristers, attorneys 

 without clients, and mad doctors whose private a~yl«ms 

 don't fill) ha8 been set on foot in this country for ilie esta- 

 blishment if a Court of Criminal Appeal. The scandals 

 incident on our existing system of appeal in civil cases, 

 might, one would have thought, have sufficed to show to 

 what this must ultimately lead ;but the Ergli.shraan is slow 

 to learn an) thing, and is usually at the mercy of any quack 

 or interested person who will promulgate his views in a 

 sufficiently blatant manner. When we see how a powerful 

 railway company, with hundreds of shareholders at its 

 back, can reduce to utter ruin a plaintiff with an abso- 

 lutely righteous cause of action against them, by dragging 

 him from court to court on appeal, people less accustomed 

 to defer to mere authority than we are, may well ask 

 themselves whether there must not be something terribly 

 rotten in a system which permits and even encourages such 

 a gro^s a'juse and hideous injustice as this. Jlerely as a 

 matter of course, were this system of appeal extended to 

 criminal cases, the overwhelming proportion of people who 

 would be punished would be the poor, the rich man 

 appealing in every case. However, it is needless to 

 theorise on the subject, inasmuch as the Newcastle Weekly 

 Chronicle, of the Slst ult., contains a letter giving details 

 of the actual operation of this system of criminal appeal 

 in the United States, which is so instructive that I reprint 

 it in extetuo : — 



Sm, — I see in the WeeUy Chronicle of Xot. 29 that a Bill has 

 been before Parliament, and is likely to become law soon, to esta- 

 blish a Court of Criminal Appeal. I say God forbid anch a court 

 should ever exist in England. Let any person that advocates it 

 come and spend over iive years in America, as I have done, and see 

 if he or she be of the same opinion after. In this country mur- 

 derers by the hundreds are at liberty through such a court. In the 

 city of Pittsburgh, some that were sentenced to deatii for most 



foul murders havo escaped by second trials. On the other hand, a 

 pcr.son was hanged in June last who was innocent. IIo was tried 

 for murder, as accessory before the fact. Tlie leal murderer was 

 hanged in April, unil ho protested that the other did not know that 

 ho was going to do it. A rich man, named Fowler, who was lynched 

 twelve months since in one of the Western States, had eonimitted 

 seven murders, and been senleneed to death live times. It is deemed 

 impossible in this country to haug a man who has money, and 

 Fowler had 100,000 dollars to his name. Then there is Chiengn, 

 with an average of a murder a week, and only two hanged iu eight 

 years, and they were over poor to fee a lawyer to pull them 

 through. Such like are the only ones they hang here. Let anyone 

 come to this country to inquire, and he will find as many such 

 cases as will fill your paper. — Yours, &c.. 



An Enolisiiman in America. 

 Rosco, Pennsylvania, U.S., Jan. 1, 1885. 



English jurisprudence has, far too frequently, been made 

 the laughing stock of other nations by the capricious inter- 

 ference with capital sentences of conceited, squeezable, and 

 incompetent Home Secretaries. So far, however, the law- 

 abiding population of Great Britain ha.^ not been driven to 

 Ijnch a man who has bought himself oil' the couse(|uence8 

 of five successive murders ! 



The following paragraph, which appeared last week in 

 the papers, is worthy of more attention than, I fear, it is 

 likely to meet with : — ■ 



Thk Royat, Institution. — At the general monthly meeting on 

 Monday, Sir William R. Grove, Vice-President, in the chair, the 

 special thanks of the members were returned for the following 

 donations to the fund for the promotion of experimental research : 

 Mr. Warren De La Rue, £100; Sir Frederick Bramwell, .£50. 



This is as it should be. If Dr. De la Rue and Sir 

 Frederick Li aniwell believe in the Endowment of Research, 

 they are only consistent (in the language of the turf) in 

 " backing their opinions." But this is a very very different 

 thing to saying that John Smith, mason, shall i>ay extra 

 for his tobacco in order that some gentleman may investi- 

 gate the infra-red end of the spectrum ; or that a tax shall con- 

 tinue to be levied on the tea drunk by the numerous family 

 of Patrick O'Sbaughnes.sy, hodman, to keep anybody in 

 quasiidlencss hunting for "Cycles" in Sun-Spots and the 

 Price of Oysters. Disguise it as we will, this is a gross 

 infringement of the personal liberty of Messrs. Smith and 

 O'Shaughnessy respectively; and one which they are justly 

 entitled to resent in the strongest possible way. The 

 private subsidy of investigation may — or may not — prove 

 beneficial. The State payment of people to find something 

 out (in contradistinction to remunerating them by results 

 after it is discovered) is simply and solely to rob the wage- 

 earning taxpayer to administer a genteel form of out-door 

 relief to the impudent, the pushing, the self-advertising, 

 and the quack generally. 



I HAVE heard an expression of opinion that the 

 replies given in these columns under the head of 

 "Letters Received and Short Answers" are occa- 

 sionally rather more curt and sharper than there is any 

 obvious necessity for them to be. Those who so think, 

 though, only see the reply ; never the communication which 

 elicits it. No one but the editor of a journal like this can 

 have any conception of the mass of heterogeneous corre- 

 spondence which is showered on his devoted head ; in 

 fact, of the hundreds of letters he receives from persons 

 of all social ranks, and of the most diverse intellectual 

 capacities. I need scarcely say that peojile with fads 

 and crazes make the most strenuous efforts to advertise 

 their views through such a medium as Knowledge. Anti- 

 Vaccinators, Anti-Vivisectors, Believers in SwedenVjorg, 

 Vegetarians, Spiritualists, Earth-flattenei s, and Immovable 

 Earth men, Cosmogonists who are going to set the entire 



