176 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Feb. 27, 1885. 



ft telegraphic acknowledgment lias been received by the 

 discoverer from Dr. Swift. Great care sLould be observed 

 regarding this condition, as it is essential to the proper 

 transmission of the discovery, with the name of the dis- 

 coverer, to the various parts of the world, which will be 

 immediately made by Dr. Swift. Discoverers in Great 

 Britain, the Australian Continent and Islands, West Indies, 

 and South America are absolved from the restriction in 

 conditions 2nd and 3rd." Distinction, and .£40, then, 

 await alike the possessor of anything from a S-iuch 

 " Bateman ' up to an 18-inch " Oalver," or even an opera- 

 glass, who can and will during the next twelve months 

 pick up one of these erratic intruders into our system. 



But this is not all. Mr. Warner proceeds to ofter a 

 " Second prize of ■'^200 in gold to any person in the world 

 ■who will write the best 3,000 word paper on the cause of 

 the atmospheric effects ['red light,' Arc] accompanying 

 sunset and sunrise during the past sixteen months. It is 

 desired that these papers be as original as possible, both in 

 facts, observations, and treatment. Essays must be exclu- 

 sively sent prepaid to Dr. Lewis Swift, Director Warner 

 Observatory, Rochester, New York, must be written in 

 English, on one side of paper only, with ink, and must be 

 in the simplest, untechnical phrase. Each competitor must 

 sign a 710111 de ylume to his essay, and enclose his real name 

 and addre.ss in an envelope, superscribed with his twin de 

 2)lume. The essays must be in Dr. Swift's hands by Dec. 1, 

 188.5. Three disinterested scientists will be .selected to 

 determine the result, and also to settle any dispute that 

 may arise regarding comet discoveries." This really looks 

 like a covert intimation that the explanation (?) of tbe 

 wonderful fore and after-glow.", which have at once as- 

 tonished and delighted observers in all parts of the world 

 during the last three years, given by the little Krakatoa 

 Committee at Brompton, had explained nothing, and that 

 the source of this strange phenomenon has still to be 

 detected. 



Reading as I do in L'lUnstrite Zeitung how the after- 

 glow in Berlin on Jan. 26 was quite equal in intensity 

 and beauty to anything seen last year, I am almost tempted 

 to ask whether this strangely-persistent apparition may not 

 really have a cosmical origin, and Lot a merely terrestrial 

 one at all. 



Here is another chance of quasi-astronomical distinction. 

 M. Palisa, who has spent so much time (which might have 

 been more profitably employed) in adding to the number of 

 known pocket-planets between Mars and Jupiter, is desirous 

 of orgauising an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 

 Aug. 29, 1886 ; and, to aid in raising the necessary funds, 

 offers to sell, for 1,250 f, the right of naming the Planetoid 

 No. 244 ! Now, gentlemen ; who wishes to gain immor- 

 tality, at the almost nominal rate of £50, by the inscription 

 of his name in the sky 1 Don't all speak at once. 



A VERY remarkable illustration of the intimate con- 

 nection between the mind and the body reaches me from 

 Staffordshire, where at Hauley a certain so-called " Major " 

 Pearson, of the " Salvation Army," is stated to be working 

 cures on the blind, the deaf, and the lame. Rubbing aud 

 praying seem to be the immediately operative agencies in 

 (what are alleged to be) the cures effected. " A lad," we 

 read, " who had been a cripple from an early age . . . was 

 induced to rise and walk about a little. Further, we learn 

 that " an old woman, who represented that she had been 

 deaf for forty years, stated that she had regained her 



hearing ; and a young woman, who went into the building 

 stone deaf, testified to her cure. Another young woman, a 

 confirmed invalid, who was taken to the Circus in a bath- 

 chair, was prayed for, and finally staggered to her feet and 

 walked a yard or two, and a few moments afterwards 

 another woman walked feebly across the building, her 

 bath-chair being hoisted over the heads of the people. 

 Several persons ascended the platform and publicly testified 

 to their cure, and the congregation joined in thanksgiving 

 for these recoveries." 



Now, allowing for a certain amount of inevitable exag- 

 geration in such a report as this, it is abundantly evident 

 that well-marked physical efi'ects did supervene as an 

 immediate result of this mountebank nonsense ; and that 

 what Dr. Carpenter has called " expectant attention " 

 produced more or less remarkable results on sick and 

 suffering people. That the phenomena, curious as they 

 were, were wholly and solely subjective, no sane person 

 possessing the merest smattering of psychology and patho- 

 logy can for an instant doubt. Not so very many 

 generations have passed, though, since they would have 

 been regarded as actual miracles, wrought by aid either 

 from above or beneath, and the "Major" performing them 

 would have been either canonised or cremated. 



The mathematical astronomer will find much to interest 

 him in an essay by Professor Simon Newcomb, " On the 

 Motion of Hyperion (the seventh satellite of Saturn). A 

 New Casein Celestial Mechanics," which has recently been 

 issued by the Bureau of Navigation, at Wasliington ; in 

 other words from the ofiice of the American Kaulkal 

 Almanac. Hyperion is the outermost satellite but one of 

 Saturn, and the last discovered. Immediately within its 

 eccentric orbit lies the nearly circular one of the largest of 

 all the satellites. Titan, and it is the disturbing eti'ect of 

 this body upon Hyperion which gives rise to the abnormal 

 phenomenon which Professor Newcomb very beautifully 

 explains. According to the law of gravitation, when a 

 body moving in an eccentric orbit is disturbed by another 

 travelling in a nearly circular one, the secular motion of 

 the peri-centre will always be direct. In the case of Hype- 

 rion, however, its peri-Saturnium actually revolves in a 

 retrograde direction in eighteen years or thereabouts ; 

 which at first sight looks as though the law of gravitation 

 had here broken down. How, though, this is really abso- 

 lutely in accordance with that law, and has its origin in a 

 relation between the mean longitudes of the two satellites, 

 the reader must go to the paper itself to discover. I must, 

 however, add that, save to those versed in the higher 

 mathematics, Mr. Newcomb's essay will surely be unintel- 

 ligible. As far as the student of ordinary popular science 

 is concerned it might be written in Tamil or provincial 

 Dongolese. An even more abstruse ])aper on "Lunar 

 Irregularities due to the EUipticity of the Earth," by Mr. 

 G. W. Hill, accompanies it. 



No better evidence of the wide diffusion of a taste for 

 scientific knowledge could be found, than that afforded by 

 the fact that the Standard of Thursday week contained a 

 leading article on the Occultation of Aldebaran, which 

 happened on Sunday evening last. That the principal 

 London daily newspaper should devote a column of its most 

 valuable space to an essay — and by the way, an admirably 

 well written essay, too — on so technical an astronomical 

 subject as this, only shows the enormous growth of a public 

 interest in science. Let us hope that it stimulated apathetic 

 observers ; and so bore fruit in more than one direction. 



