136 



KNOWLEDGE, 



[June 1, 1899. 



Text-book of Practical Solid Geomeiry. Bj E. H. de Y. Atkinson. 

 (Spon.) 76. 6d. 



Under the Searchlight. By Agnes 'Wet.ton. (Eojal Sailors' Rest, 

 Portsmouth.) 



Catalogue General des Livresde Sciences. (J. B. Baillifere et Tils, 

 Paris.) 



Scieniia : Expose et developqienier.t des qiiesiiorts seieniijiques a 

 I'ordre du jour. (Georges Carre and C. Xaud, Editeurs, Ptris.) 



A Message to Garcia. By Elbert Habliard. (George H. Daniels, 

 Kew Tork.) 



Senage-Analiisis. Bt J. Alfred Wanklvn and William John 

 Cooper. (Kegan Paul & Co.) 5s. 



Man : Past and present. ByA. H. Keanc. (C. J. Clay ct Sons.) 12s. 



Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers. By F. J. Britten. 



(B. T. Batsford.) 



.^ 



On April 20tli, at bis studio near Primrose HOI, at the 

 ripe age of seventy-nine, died Joseph Wolf — animal painter. 

 A painter Tvho produced the most beautiful and life-like 

 pictures of animals and birds that have ever been seen, who 

 was characterized by Landseer himself as "without excep- 

 tion the best all-round animal painter that ever lived," 

 Wolf was, nevertheless, quite unknown to the public, and 

 little known to picture lovers. Born on 21st of January, 

 1820. in the little village of Moerz, near Coblenz, the son 

 of a farmer, Wolf showed at a very early age an extra- 

 ordinary love for Nature, and that faculty for close 

 observation which enabled him in after years to make 

 live for ever on paper or canvas the animals and birds he 

 loved. His first artistic efforts were paper silhouettes cut 

 out with a pair of scissors. But he soon took to a pencil 

 and a brush, and notwithstanding the greatest possible 

 discouragements from his parents, by the light of his own 

 genius, and the force of his own character, he taught 

 himself to draw, and eventually, at the age of sixteen, won 

 his father's consent to be apprenticed to a lithographer at 

 Coblenz. Three years of the dull routine of a lithographic 

 draughtsman's office, which would destroy all originality in 

 most, left him uninjured — indeed this training in exactness 

 and minutiiP steed him in good stead in after life. After 

 a year at home, he journeyed to Frankfort and Darmstadt 

 with some miniatures of birds and beasts. These were 

 shown to the zoologists. Dr. Kiippell and Dr. Kaup, who 

 recognised his extraordinary talent and first introduced 

 him to the world as an animal artist. From that time 

 onwards Wolf's career was assured. For eight years or so 

 he worked extremely hard on the Continent, illustrating 

 many scientific works, as well as going through the 

 drudgery of an art school. At the age of twenty-eight 

 W^olf came to London, where his first commission was to 

 complete the illustrations for Mr. G. E. Gray's standard 

 book on the " Genera of Birds." It is of course impossible 

 to enumerate here a tithe of the enormous number of 

 works — scientific and popular — which were Olustrated or 

 partly illustrated by Wolf. Amongst the chief we may 

 mention the " Proceedings" and the " Transactions " of 

 the Zoological Society of London, the " Ibis," Anderssons 

 " Lake K'Gami " (1856), James' " .Lsop's Fables " (18.58), 

 Wood's " Illustrated Natural History " (1859), " Zoological 

 Sketches by Joseph Wolf" (1861 and 1887), Stevenson's 

 "Birds of Norfolk" (1866), Elliot's Monographs (1872— 

 1873—1883), Gould's " Birds of Great Britain " (1873), 

 and " Birds of Asia " (1888), Dresser's" Birds of Europe " 

 (1879), Brehm's " Thierleben " (187C), "Big Game 

 Shooting," Badminton Library (1895). Those who knew 

 Wolf deplore his loss, not only as a consummate artist and 

 accomplished naturalist, but as a kind and generous friend, 

 unmercenary, a man of noble character, a hater of all that 

 is false and a lover of all that is true. We would refer 



those who wish for a full account of Wolf's life and work 

 to Mr. A. H. Palmer's " Life of Joseph Wolf," published 

 in 1895 by Messrs. Longmans. 



WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. 



A MODEST genius, James Bowman Lindsay, who 

 lacked the art of self-advertisement, first dis- 

 covered wireless telegraphy, and fully appreciated 

 the possibilities of the invention, but he was imable 

 to secure sufficient public attention to carry his 

 idea into the domain of practical utility. He conceived 

 the project in 1831, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, 

 and in 1857 he transmitted messages across the Earl Grey 

 Dock without the aid of wires ; while, later on, he made 

 calculations tending to show that by selecting two stations 

 in Britain — one in Scotland and one in Cornwall — and two 

 corresponding stations in America, it would be possible to 

 send messages across the ocean without the intervention 

 of a cable. According to Tesla, a German electrician, 

 some years ago, also sent messages over a space of about 

 thirty-six miles without the use of wires. Moreover, a 

 passage in the Spectator (No. 241, 1711) has an interesting 

 bearing on this subject ; it reads thus : — " Strada, in one 

 of his prolusions, gives an account of a chimerical corre- 

 spondence between two friends by the help of a certain 

 loadstone, which had such virtue in it that if it touched two 

 several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to 

 move, the other, though at never so great a distance, 



moved at the same time and in the same manner 



By this means they talked together across a whole con- 

 tinent, and conveyed their thoughts to one another in an 

 instant over cities or mountains, seas or deserts." 



To Hertz belongs the distinction of having discovered 

 the electric waves, and by his experiments he proved that 

 electricity in its progress through space follows the laws 

 of optics, but, so far, no one has obtained such practical 

 results with these Hertzian waves at anything approaching 

 the distance as Signor Marconi. Fog, or even the most 

 solid substance, has no effect on the waves ; they can 

 penetrate walls or rocks without being materially affected, 

 but in the case of large metallic bodies intercepting the 

 path of the rays there remains some slight difficulty to 

 overcome. These ether waves, as Prof. Fleming calls 

 them, travel through space with the velocity of light, 

 about one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, 

 and when they impinge on the receiving apparatus at a 

 distant station they excite a sympathetic current, some- 

 thing after the fashion of a violin or piano, the strings of 

 which respond to sounds of the same wave-length. As to 

 how far Signor Marconi's system is an invention and how 

 much a development, the words of Mr. W. H. Preece are 

 to the point. He says : " Mr. Marconi has invented a new 

 relay, which, for sensitiveness and delicacy, exceeds all 

 known electrical apparatus ... he has not invented 

 any new rays, his transmitter is comparatively old, his 

 receiver is based on Branly's coherer. Columbus did not 

 invent the egg, but he showed how to make it stand on its 

 end, and Marconi has produced from known means a new 

 electric eye more delicate than any known electrical 

 instrument, and a new system of telegraphy that will 

 reach places hitherto inaccessible." Indeed, many workers 

 have devoted their time and skill in the laboratory to the 

 perfecting of the details, so to speak, of the new scientific 

 machine which Signor Marconi has forged from their 

 materials as a new weapon competent to in some measure 

 annihilate time and distance, which form such formidable 

 barriers to the world's progress. A vast gulf separates 

 laboratory experiments from practical large scale demon- 



