70 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. I., No. 3. 



than for the student in any other field. It is 

 this sense of the oneness of human historj-, 

 this sympathj' and understanding of men of all 

 times, that gives the charm to his immortal 

 Principles of geologj' ; and in this A&y, when 

 we are debating as to the use of classical 

 training, it is well to ask what this book would 

 have been if the Oxford element had not been 

 there. It would perhaps have an equallj' valua- 

 ble bodj' of fact, but the informing spirit would 

 have been wanting. 



His power to make avail of his Oxford life 

 was doubtless due to his keenness of apprecia- 

 tion of all forms of intellectual stimulus, though 

 he took a fair rank in his college, winning sec- 

 ond honors in classics. We see in his letters 

 home that he has a lively interest in music, 

 which had been an earl3--developed taste ; for 

 in his schoolboy' daj's he had been the leader 

 of a schoolboy orchestra. He is also some- 

 thing of a versifier ; and some of his verses 

 show a delicate fancj', though hy no means a 

 strong wing. 



His first acquaintance with geology seems to 

 have been made through Bakewell's Geology, 

 which he found in his father's librarj' ; and that 

 author's account of the earth's antiquit}" ap- 

 pears to have first aroused his curiositj' to 

 know more of the subject. While he was at 

 Oxford, Buckland was at the height of his 

 singular popularity'. His lectures affirmed this 

 earlj'-acquired taste. His first geological jour- 

 nej' was to Yarmouth, where he saw the great 

 cutting power of the sea on that soft-cliffed 

 coast. In the same year a journej' to Stafl"a, 

 of which his journal is given, served to pos- 



sess him of the love for field-work. In 1818, 

 when he was just of age, he made a tour 

 through France, Switzerland, and Italj' as far 

 as Rome. His journal showed the keenest 

 appreciation of the ordinarj' nature of travel, 

 but as 3'et but little interpreting power. He 

 appears, as were all others of his time, strange- 

 ly blind to the structure of the Alps : even the 

 parallel moraines on the glaciers puzzle him, 

 — a matter that is one of the most transpar- 

 ent things in their history. The motion of the 

 glaciers is not seen to be a problem : j-et his 

 critical spirit is awake ; for, one of his party 

 finding in an album the lines, — 



" Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains : 

 They crowned him long ago, 

 Enthroned in ice, with robes of clouds, 

 And diadem of snow," — 



he well saj-s, " It contains more real poetrj' 

 than I thought could be found in all the albums 

 of Europe." He did not recognize that they, 

 a little garbled, were from Byron's Manfred, 

 which had been published the .year before. It 

 may be that it shows us the place of birth of 

 these the finest lines in that strange dramatic 

 poem. Despite the veil that hid the deeper 

 secrets of the Alps from his eyes, his good 

 fortune showed him manj- things which served 

 to lead his mind to the notion that the present 

 forces of the earth are strong enough to ex- 

 plain the past. He saw the Goldau &)oulement, 

 or landslide, then but a dozen j-ears old ; and 

 in the Rhone valley' he beheld the frightful 

 marks of the flood which poured from the lake 

 formed bj' the Glacier de Bagne but six weeks 

 before his coming. 



WEEKLY SUMMARY OF THE PBOaBESS OF SCIENCE. 



GEODESY. 



Length of a nautical mile. — In common par- 

 lance, the length of a nautical mile is considered as 

 a ' minute of latitude,' without any consideration of 

 tlie range of value included within this definition. 

 A paper upon this subject by Prof. J. E. Hilgard, 

 superintendent of the Coast and geodetic survey, 

 has just been publislied. It gives the values of one 

 minute under nine different definitions. The values 

 are, based upon the elements of the Clarke spheroid. 

 One minute, of latitude at the poles = 1,861.655 metres 

 = 6,107.85 feet; one minute of latitude at the equa- 

 tor = 1,842.787 metres = 6,045.95 feet; one minute 

 on the equator (considering it as a circle) = 1,855.345 

 metres = 6,087.15 feet. 



As adopted by the Coast and geodetic survey and 

 by tlie Hydrograpliic ofBce, a nautical mile is one- 

 sixtieth part of the length of a degree on the great cir- 

 cle of a sphere whose surface is equal to the surface 

 of the earth. Using tlie < larke splieroid, this defini- 

 tion gives a nautical mile = 1,853.248 metres = 6,080.- 



27 feet. This value closely corresponds with the 

 English admiralty knot of 0,080 feet. — (Bep. U.S. 

 coast suj'!)., 1881, app. 12.) H. w. B. [172 



Night signals for geodetic ■work (by Mr. O. S. 

 Wilson of the N.Y. state survey). — Owing to the 

 small number of days during any season when the 

 air is in good condition for sighting points more than 

 twenty-five miles distant, and the few hours during 

 even good-seeing days available for such geodetic 

 work, especially in measuring liorizontal angles, it is 

 important not only to use to the best advantage what 

 daylight is available, but also if i^ossible to lengthen 

 every good-seeing day. Hence any device for contin- 

 uing work during clear nights is of great value. For 

 tliis purpose electric lights were used on the triangu- 

 lation carried across the Mediterranean in 1879 by the 

 French and Spanish governments, witli remarlvably 

 good results ; the error of closure of a triangle being 

 but a trifle over one second of arc. Some of tliese 

 lines were the longest ever sighted for geodetic pur- 

 poses, one of them being 167.7 miles. The burning 



