334 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[April 17, 1885. 



Animals have it ... . and even cats will risk the losing of their 

 prey to chase it over again. It is a pleasing labour of the mind to 

 solve the most diiBcnlt problems .... the well connected thread 

 of a play or a novel .... 



"The eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks and 

 serpentine rivers .... 



" Intricacy in form, therefore, I shall define to be that peculiarity 

 in the lints, which compose it, that leads the eye a wanton kind of 

 chace .... 



" To set this matter in somewhat a clearer light, the familiar 

 instance of a common jack with a circular fly may serve our purpose 

 better than a more elegant form : preparatory to which let the 

 figure be consider'd which represents the eye, at a common reading 

 distance viewing a row of letters, but fix'd with most attention to 

 the middle letter A. 



" Now, as we read, a ray may be supposed to be drawn from 

 the centre of the eye to that letter it looks at first, and to move 

 successively with it from letter to letter the whole length of the 

 line ; but if the eye stops at any particular letter. A, to observe 

 it more than the rest, these other letters will grow more and more 

 imperfect to the sight the farther they are situated on either side 

 of A ... . and when we endeavour to see all the letters in a line 

 .... this imaginary ray must course it to and fro with great 

 celerity Hence we shall always suppose some such prin- 

 cipal ray moving along with the eye, and tracing out the parts of 

 every form 



A A A A A A A A /-\ A A A A A A 



-3^ 



" In this manner of attending to forms they will be found, 

 whether at rest or in motion, to give movement to this imaginary 

 ray, or, more properly speaking, to the eye itself*, affecting it 

 thereiy more or less p?t'(^si7^f//J/, according to their different shapes 

 and motions. Thus, for example, in the instance of the jack .... 

 the mind is equally fatigu'd .... But .... when we observe 

 the curling worm into which the worm-wheel is fixt .... this is 

 always pleasing 



" That it is accounted so ... . appears by the ribbon twisted 

 round a stick .... which has been a long-establish'd ornament in 

 the carvings of frames, chimney-pieces, and door-cases ; .... to 

 be seen in almost every house of fashion. 



" But the pleasure it gives the eye is still more lively when in 

 ■motion. I never can forget my frequent strong attention to it,t 

 when I was very young, and that its beguiling movement gave me 

 the same kind of sensation then, which I since have felt at seeing 

 a country dance ; tho' perhaps the latter might be somewhat more 

 engaging, particularly when my eye eagerly pursued a favourite 

 dancer, through all the windings of the figure, who was then 

 bewitching to the sight, as the imaginary ray, we were speaking of, 

 was dancing with her all the time .... 



" But the hair of the head is anotlier very obvious instance. . . . 

 The poet knows it, as well as the painter, and has described the 



wanton ringlets waWng in the wind " — Hogarth's " Analysis 



of Beauty " (Chap. V., " Of Intricacy"). 



An Old Dkaugutsmax. 



"THE DEY-EAKTH SYSTEM." 



[1678] — I hope yon will permit me to offer a little opposition 

 founded upon fact, to some of the statements put forth by Mr. 

 Cuthbert in your last issue. 



* Is not this curiously prophetic of the modern physiology of 

 vision, as expounded in Sir Charles Bell's '* Bridgewater Treatise," 

 published in 1833, eighty years later than Hogarth's book ? — 

 A. 0. D. 



t To a particular part of a roasting-jack. — A. 0. D. 



The fourth paragraph of his letter is the one upon which 1 

 wish to draw your attention and that of your readers. Leeds 

 is a densely-populated town — over 320,000 population — and yet 

 in this town plenty of contractors can be found ready and willing 

 to deal with all the night soil of tlie borough without turning any 

 of it into the sewers. 



Sewers should only be the receptacle for rain-water, suds, and 

 urinal water. Where the latter is not collected for manufacturing 

 purposes, as it is in Leeds and some other Yorkshire towns, fffical 

 matter should be mixed with dry earth or ashes, and be thus 

 returned to the land to compensate for tho lime and bone and 

 other matters which leave it in the form of beef ; and can 

 never be returned save through fcccal matter being again placed 

 upon the land without having the nature washed out of it by 

 travelling through miles of water-course in sewers — as it must do 

 in Leeds — before reaching its destination. 



The fifth paragraph I dispose of thus : — There are four houses 

 to two "dry-earth" closets in the locality in which I live ; there 

 is no connection with main sewer ; all fa?cal matter and chamber- 

 slops are collected at this point ; when they are full, and then 

 emptied, it is found there are twenty times more dry ashes than 

 ftecal excrements contained in the receptacle. This system very 

 largely prevails in Leeds. Had we the improved dry-earth closets 

 that you gave views of lately in Knowledge, no better could be 

 desired. 



The remaining paragraphs need very little comment. I will only 

 observe that if the people who till the soil owned it, there would be 

 more demand for this, the best of all manui-es — human excrement. 

 There is at present one hundred million pounds' worth of this 

 manure going to loss anuually in these islands, and it will continue 

 to be lost to the nation so long as there is no security for the 

 capital of tho tiller of the soil ; but this is politics, not science, 

 therefore forbidden ground. 



I will conclude by recommending the opponents of this class of 

 manure to read Liebig's "Letters on Modern Agriculture" and 

 some kindred works on this subject, when they will be able to see 

 the loss the land is suffering for the want of it. 



James Ellls. 



LETTERS RECEIVED AND SHORT ANSWERS. 



Hallyards. — The writer on whose utterances you (mistakenly) 

 comment is on the other side of the Atlantic. I wholly fail to see 

 how Theology can, in any legitimate sense of that word, be called 

 a " science." But what thoroughly determines mo to exclude it 

 from these columns is that both sides must be impartially heard if 

 it is to be admitted at all; and a magazine professedly devoted to 

 the popular exposition of Natural and Physical Science proper is a 

 wholly unfit arena for such a dispute, which would probably 

 frighten half its readers and disgust the other half. With reference 

 to your queries, (1) I see nothing more in the theory of ultra-gas 

 inconsistent with tho Newtonian theory than I do in that of 

 ordinary gas, in which the repulsion of the molecules by heat over- 

 comes their gravitating tendency : or in the fact that my holding a 

 ball in my hand prevents it from reaching the surface of the earth. 

 (2) Gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance between 

 the attracting and attracted bodies ; hence the sun as compared 

 with Arcturus, attracts the earth in the proportion 1,586,653^: 1 ; 

 but that attraction, infinitesimal as it is, still exists. (3) I fail to 

 see the precise analogy. — Dr. Lewixs. I have read your book and 

 its appendix. Even were I to admit the irrefragability of your 

 dictum that " Materialism " is " obligatory on the contemporary 

 conscience of civilised Europe and America," I must persist in 

 my belief that the columns of Knowledge are not the place in 

 which this dogma should be expounded. As 1 have just said to 

 " Hallyards," this is a magazine devoted to the popular exposition 

 of Physical and Natural Science ; and not in the very least for 

 discussions into which Faith enters as an element. Expla- 

 nations of Natural facts here are " Plainly worded and exactly 

 described," and every school, or no school, of thought is 

 free to make their or its own deductions from such 

 facts. If the teleologist finds ample evidence of design in the 

 intricate inter-adaptation of the component parts of the risible 

 universe, he will always find such inter-adaptation insisted on 

 where it exists. If the fact that mankind existed contempora- 

 neously with the mammoth, reindeer, hyania, and cave bear, at 

 least 100,000 years ago, throws doubt on the Adamic theory of 

 the human race, and conclusively shows that men were born and 

 died unnumbered ages before the events recorded in Genesis, no 

 consideration for anybody's creed or feelings will prevent the plain 

 unvarnished truth from being told. But I must be rigidly 

 impartial, and while I will not have theology attacked from 

 a scientific standpoint, neither shall science be assailed here 

 from a tlieological one. If once such a discussion were initiated in 



