Apbil 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



101 



the earth, and that the movements in the interior of the 

 nebulosity are not remarkably rapid. 



With the records we now possess of the nebula and of 

 the details of its structure, it will be both easy and certain to 

 detect any change that may take place in it in the future 

 if it should exceed about three seconds of arc in extent. 



1 



M 



THE STORY OF A USEFUL LIFE.* 



.\XY of the great figures of the Victorian era — 

 figures which towered like giants over their 

 rivals for fame iji their day and generation — 

 were, in all probability, simply the lucky 

 creatures of circumstance, who enjoyed such 



excaptional opportunities — holding all the trump cards — 



that perhaps the most 



reckless playing in the 



game of life could not pre- 

 vent them from winning. 



On the other hand, it has 



happened, once in a while, 



that a great soul circum- 

 scribed by every conceiv- 

 able retarding influence has 



risen like a phoenix out of 



the ashes of annihilated 



foes — foes consumed by 



the fire of genius sus- 

 tained at a white heat 



by steady and persistent 



effort. The impressionable 



world of hero worshippers 



— people who stalk through 



the diversified avenues of 



life as mere spectators of 



the real actors — are now 



and again arrested in their 



perambulations by the 



startling revelations of 



some fellow mortal, who, it 



may be, has thought out 



some of life's problems or 



solved some of its mysteries. 

 Time and space form, as 



it were, the ordinates of 



human life, of the world, 



and of the universe. We 



are all interested in these 



subjects, which concern us 



so much and yet convey so 



vague an idea to our under- 

 standing. Our grandfathers 



stood aghast when the elder 



Herschel drew aside the 



curtain and enabled them 



to perceive the vastness of 



the puny dimensions of our 



own day we 



the late Dr, 



Jaues Ceoll, LL.D., F.E.S., etc. 

 f luipi " Autobiographical Sketch of Jarms CroU, LL.D., F.E.S 



the universe and to 

 own solar system. 



realize 



In our 



were equally paralyzed with wonder when 



CroU invented, so to speak, the geological 



clock, and taught us to measure time, not in minutes 

 and hours, but in millions and tens of millions of years ! 

 Seeing how few and short are the days which fall to us 

 here, one may well pause when writing, thinking, and 

 speaking of years by the million. 

 And who was Dr. Croll ? Probably most readers of 



* "Autobiographical Skitcli of James Croll, LLP., F.R S., etc., 

 ■with Memoir of his Life and Work." By James Campbell Irons, 

 M.A. (Stanford.) 12s. 



Knowledge will remember him as the world-famous author 

 of " Climate and Time," which made its appearance in 1875 ; 

 but, beyond the Cheviot Hills, there are many villagers and 

 citizens who only knew him as plain .James Croll, an 

 unobtrusive artizan entirely dependent on the labour of 

 his own hands for a living until well advanced in years, 

 and yet by his own unaided efforts he attained to such a 

 high plane of thought as to win the admiration and respect 

 of the greatest philosophers of his time in all civilized 

 nations. 



•James Croll was born in the parish of Cargill, Perthshire, 

 January 2, 1821, and received only the rudiments of an 

 education. His early science studies were instigated by 

 the fascination with which the Penn;/ Maijazine, Dick's 

 "Christian Philosopher," and Joyce's "Scientific Dia- 

 logues," held his boyish 

 taste for novelty. There 

 was in these out-of-the-way 

 studies no ulterior aim, no 

 guidance or assistance of 

 any kind from anyone — it 

 was diversion pure and 

 simple, and the lad was 

 intended for manual work. 

 In 1837 he was apprenticed 

 to a millwright, and occu- 

 pied in this rough, rambling 

 life, on an average, three 

 different beds in a week. 

 Later, he found more con- 

 genial occupation as a 

 working joiner; but a defect 

 of long standing in one arm 

 being accentuated by an 

 accident, his course was 

 again deflected, and he, in 

 184G, learnt the mechanical 

 art of weighing and par- 

 celling up tea, serving over 

 the counter, and the usual 

 routine of shop work. As 

 tea merchant he struggled 

 on till about 1850, and 

 then, as a stopgap, he made 

 induction apparatus for use 

 as a curative agent, as 

 electricity and so-called 

 galvanism at that time 

 were exciting much atten- 

 tion. But to the imperative 

 question — how to earn a 

 permanent livelihood — a 

 possible solution now pre- 

 sented itself in the form 

 of a temperance hotel, 

 and we accordingly find him at Blairgowrie, in 1852, 

 making chairs, tables, bedsteads, basin stands, toilet 

 tables, and other articles in order to make a start with- 

 out sinking hopelessly in debt ; but a year and a half 

 was sufficient to show that the hotel would never become 

 self-supporting, and hence, in 1853, he began what 

 proved to be the most disagreeable part of his life — 

 that of an insurance agent — for to one of a retiring 

 disposition like Croll it was venom to his soul to be 

 constantly obhged to make up to strangers. In 1858 he 

 obtained a place in the office of the Comnionwealtk, a 

 Glasgow weekly newspaper, and in the following year he 

 was appointed caretaker of Anderson's College and Museum. 

 After upwards of twenty years of all sorts of hardships 



