January 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



condition — that is to say, he has succeeded in making 

 diamonds artificially. 



About the year 1837 electric telegraphs were first 

 established as commercial speculations in three different 

 countries. Steinheil's system was carried out at Munich, 

 Morse's in America, and Wheatstone and Cooke's in 

 England. The wires were buried in the earth, and were 

 five in number, each acting on separate needles, the first 

 telegraph line being on the Great Western Railway from 

 Paddington to West Drayton. These initial attempts at 

 telegraphy, clumsy enough when compared with the 

 refined methods of our own time, were inspired chiefiy by 

 the work of Faraday, who established the connection 

 between magnetic and electric currents ; though Oersted, 

 Ampere, and Schweizzer, by their respective discoveries 

 of the deflection of a magnetic needle by an electric 

 current, the foundation of electro-dynamics, and the 

 electric coil, come in for a share of the credit ; while 

 Sturgeon, who constructed the first electro magnet, should 

 not be forgotten. Faraday, prior to the Victorian era, 

 had succeeded in converting gases into liquids by subject- 

 ing them to pressure in sealed tubes, and thus led the 

 way in that series of grand experiments which later, in 

 the hands of CaiUetet and Pictet, were to prove that there 

 is no such thing as a permanent gas. 



In the domain of invention or mechanical science the 

 contrast between the present time and the year 1837 is 

 most striking. Sixty years ago the great railways were all 

 begun, but not one of them was completed. The line 

 between Liverpool and Manchesterwas opened in September 

 1830. In 183C it was carrying four hundred and fifty 

 thousand passengers m the year. There were also a great 

 many lines projected, which afterwards settled down into 

 the present great trunk lines. At that time a writer in the 

 Atht-n-cewii says : " When these lines are completed, letters 

 and passengers will be conveyed from Liverpool to London 

 in ten hours. Little attention has yet been given to 

 calculate the effects which must result from the establish- 

 ment throughout the kingdom of great lines of intercourse 

 traversed at a speed of twenty miles an hour." There were 

 no hansom cabs, and no Parcels Delivery Company, 

 There was a twopenny post, but no penny post and no book 

 post. It was not till 1888 that the .'Sirius and Great ]\'estcrn 

 first steamed across the Atlantic. In the main, however, 

 there was no means of transporting man, merchandise, or 

 message quicker than a horse could take them. The 

 result was an isolation of town from town, and of 

 the country from London, which made between the 

 England of that day and the England of our own time a 

 difference which will be appreciated by all. There was no 

 single daily newspaper published outside London. It was 

 a society unfurnished with these things that Queen Victoria 

 began to rule over in 1H37. The electric telegraph, 

 making, as it now does, the whole civilized world all of 

 a-piece, through which it ramifies like a vast nervous system, 

 had not then linked the sovereign with every part of her 

 dominions. America and Australia were then practically 

 unknown to the bulk of our people. In short, the 

 nineteenth century actually began with steam communica- 

 tion by sea, with steam machinery, with railways, with 

 telegraphs, with the development of the colonies ; but all 

 these transforming influences were in reality nothing more 

 than the dawning of the brilliant Victorian era, which has 

 made its indelible imprints on the scroll of history. 



The men pourtrayed on the plate accompanying this 

 article are representatives of the philosophers of the latter 

 part of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth 

 centuries, who, by the impetus they gave to science, pre- 



pared the way for those grand generalizations which have 

 lent to the Victorian era such a glorious halo. John 

 Dalton was born at Manchester of a Quaker family, and 

 the chief work of his life was a clear enimciation of the 

 theory of atoms — known as the atomic theory. Sir Hum- 

 phry Davy hailed from Cornwall, and while still very 

 young discovered nitrous oxide (laughing gas), which led 

 to his appointment as the first Professor of Chemistry in 

 the Royal Institution. Michael Faraday, as Davy's 

 assistant, exhibited great ingenuity, which ultimately led 

 to his appointment as his chiefs successor. His discovery 

 of the production of an electric current by the rotation of 

 a magnet has led to many applications of electricity. Sir 

 Joseph Banks was a man of private means, and went 

 round the world, as botanist, with Captain Cook, in the 

 years 1768-1771. He bequeathed his valuable library 

 and herbarium to the British Museum. James Watt, 

 born in Greenock, became a mathematical instrument 

 maker in London, but his chief work was the improvements 

 which he introduced in the construction of the steam 

 engine. Sir Wm. Herschel, born at Hanover, came to 

 England in 1757. He was by profession a musician, being 

 organist at Halifax parish church at one time and at the 

 Octagon Chapel, Bath, at another. But, later, astronomy 

 attracted his attention, and, after making his own tele- 

 scope, he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. John 

 Hunter, born at Long Calderwood, was the greatest 

 anatomist and surgeon of his time. At his death 10,563 

 specimens and preparations illustrative of anatomy, 

 physiology, pathology, and natural history were found in 

 his museum. Edward Jenner, Hunter's pupU, was born 

 at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. He was first led to study 

 vaccination by hearing a countrywoman remark that she 

 could not take the small-pox because she had had the 

 cow-pox. ^ - 



ON DESCRIBING AND DRAWING INSECTS. 



By Fred. Enock, F.L.S., F.E.S. 



IT is not until an entomologist takes upon himself to 

 study, or work up any one of the many neglected 

 families, so plentiful among the Parasitic Hymen- 

 optera, that he finds how difticiilt it is to identify 

 his captures, either from published descriptions or 

 drawings. 



If his dwelling-place be in London he has many advan- 

 tages over his brother entomologist in the country. In 

 Greater London there is no lack of species ; some of the 

 rarest and most beautiful can be found in almost any back 

 garden — in fact, the number that can be obtained in such 

 places by the process of sweeping is astonishing. As soon 

 as we have " set " our captures and numbered each 

 specimen, our next desire is to name them. Now we find 

 this decidedly a difiicult matter, and many of our specimens 

 continue to be known only by the number written on each 

 card. 



Our next effort towards naming is made by visiting the 

 Natural History Museum, South Kensington, where we 

 vainly endeavour to find named representatives of our 

 captures in the glazed cases of insects in the " British 

 Gallery " ; but, alas ! we are soon doomed to disappointment, 

 the covers are replaced, and we return home wondering 

 why there are so few British insects there. 



I have frequently found young naturalists engaged in a 

 simOar hopeless task, and directed them to the Insect 

 Room, where students of either sex, old or young, are 

 always welcome to examine the vast collections of insects, 

 brought from all parts of the globe. 



Gorgeously coloured foreign insects of all orders, tens 

 and hundreds of thousands of named species, in the most 



