Chance 

 Change 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



part of the story never gives the lie to an- 

 other part. FISKE Through Nature to God, 

 pt. iii, ch. 2, p. 147. (H. M. & Co., 1900.) 



455. CHANGE ALWAYS THE RESULT 

 OF PREPARATION The Law of Continuity 

 Necessity of Belief in Causation. There 

 is a common superstition that this so-called 

 law [the law of continuity] shuts out the 

 idea of creation and negatives the possi- 

 bility, for example, of the sudden appearance 

 of new forms of life. What it does nega- 

 tive, however, is not any appearance which 

 is sudden, but only any appearance which 

 has been unprepared. But these are two 

 very different conceptions, altho they are 

 conceptions very easily confounded. In- 

 numerable things may come to be in a mo- 

 ment in the twinkling of an eye. But 

 nothing can come to be without a long, even 

 if it be a secret, history. The " law of con- 

 tinuity " is, therefore, a phrase of ambigu- 

 ous meaning; but at the bottom of it there 

 lies the true and invincible conviction that 

 for every change, however sudden for every 

 " leap," however wide there has always 

 been a long chain of predetermining causes, 

 and that even the most tremendous bursts of 

 energy and the most sudden exhibitions of 

 force have all been slowly and silently pre- 

 pared. In this sense the law of continuity 

 is nothing but the idea of causation. It is 

 founded on the necessary duration which we 

 cannot but attribute to the existence of 

 force, and this appears to be the only truth 

 which the law of continuity represents. 

 ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 4, p. 84. 

 (Burt.) 



456. CHANGE AMONG THE STARS 



Sirius Attended by a Darkened Sun. The 

 knowledge of the law of gravitation has here 

 also led to the discovery of new bodies, as 

 in the case of Neptune. Peters of Altona 

 found, confirming therein a conjecture of 

 Bessel, that Sirius, the most brilliant of the 

 fixed stars, moves in an elliptical path about 

 an invisible center. This must have been 

 due to an unseen companion, and when the 

 excellent and powerful telescope of the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge, in the United States, 

 had been set up, this was discovered. It is 

 not quite dark, but its light is so feeble that 

 it can only be seen by the most perfect in- 

 struments. The mass of Sirius is found to 

 be 13.76, and that of its satellite 6.71, times 

 the mass of the sun; their mutual distance 

 is equal to thirty-seven times the radius of 

 the earth's orbit, and is therefore somewhat 

 larger than the distance of Neptune from 

 the sun. Another fixed star, Procyon, is in 

 the same case as Sirius, but its satellite has 

 not yet been discovered. You thus see that 

 in gravitation we have discovered a prop- 

 erty common to all matter, which is not 

 confined to bodies in our system, but ex- 

 tends as far in the celestial space as our 

 means of observation have hitherto been able 

 to penetrate. HELMHOLTZ Popular Lec- 

 tures, lect. 4, p. 150. (L. G. & Co., 1898.) 



457. CHANGE, CEASELESS, OF THE 

 EARTH'S POSITION Its Path through 

 Space an Infinite Spiral We Never Twice 

 Visit the Same Place. Owing to the exist- 

 ence of this motion [of the whole solar sys- 

 tem toward a distant center], our globe has 

 never passed twice through the same place, 

 and it can never return to the spot where 

 it is at present. We fall into the infinite, 

 describing a series of spirals which are con- 

 tinually changing. Our abode is simply a 

 moving globe carried through space, a veri- 

 table sport of cosmical forces, speeding 

 through the eternal void towards an end of 

 which we are ignorant, subject in its un- 

 steady course to the most varied oscilla- 

 tions, balancing itself in the infinite with 

 the lightness of an atom of dust in the sun- 

 light, flying with a dizzy velocity above the 

 unfathomable abyss, and carrying us for 

 thousands of years past, and perhaps for 

 thousands of years to come, to a mysterious 

 destiny, which the most far-seeing mind can- 

 not discern, beyond an horizon always fad- 

 ing into the future. FLAMMARION Popular 

 Astronomy, bk. i, ch. 1, p. 11. (A.) 



458. CHANGE, GRADUAL, OF EARTH'S 

 SURFACE Inroads of the Sea on British 

 Coast. The waves constantly undermine 

 the low chalk cliffs, covered with sand and 

 clay, between Weybourne and Sherringham, 

 a certain portion of them being annually re- 

 moved. At the latter town I ascertained, in 

 1829, some facts which throw light on the 

 rate at which the sea gains upon the land. 

 It was computed, when the present inn was 

 built, in 1805, that it would require seventy 

 years for the sea to reach the spot, the mean 

 loss of land being calculated, from previous 

 observations, to be somewhat less than one 

 yard annually. The distance between the 

 house and the sea was fifty yards; but no 

 allowance was made for the slope of the 

 ground being from the sea, in consequence 

 of which the waste was naturally acceler- 

 ated every year, as the cliff grew lower, 

 there being at each succeeding period less 

 matter to remove when portions of equal 

 area fell down. Between the years 1824 and 

 1829 no less than seventeen yards were 

 swept away, and only a small garden was 

 then left between the building and the sea. 

 There was, in 1829, a depth of twenty feet 

 (sufficient to float a frigate) at one point in 

 the harbor of that port, where, only forty- 

 eight years before, there stood a cliff fifty 

 feet high, with houses upon it! If once in 

 half a century an equal amount of change 

 were produced suddenly by the momentary 

 shock of an earthquake, history would be 

 filled with records of such wonderful revolu- 

 tions of the earth's surface; but, if the con- 

 version of high land into deep sea be 

 gradual, it excites only local attention. 

 LYELL Principles of Geology, ch. 19, p. 305. 

 (A., 1854.) 



459. CHANGE OF CHARACTER PRO- 

 DUCED THROUGH CONTACT Alloys Made 





