SCIENTIFIC CHARLATANISM. 743 



sense it has been my fortune to read in some time. The absurdity of his hypothe- 

 sis and conclusions was pointed out by Mr. McCarty, whose communication was 

 also enclosed. 



Mr. Blake's paper, which is m^de up of glittering absurdities and sensational 

 statements, is so completely guiltless of any argument drawn from either mathe- 

 matics or physics, that it would be a waste of time to take it up in detail. The 

 very first paragraph betrays utter ignorance of the most ordinary astronomical 

 knowledge, although he signs himself pompously "Astronomer," and in a subse- 

 quent communication modestly refers to himself as one of the "wise men" of 

 the country. 



Stripping his expressions of superfluous verbiage, he asserts that the attrac- 

 tion of the planets, at the time of conjunction with the sun, has changed the in- 

 clination of the axis of the Earth to the Sun (he means, probably, changed its 

 inclination to. the ecliptic,) and thereby has brought about a change of zones. 



This idea that the attraction of the Sun and Moon , and planets upon the 

 Earth would change the inclination of the Earth's equator to the plane of the 

 Earth's orbit, was advanced and refuted many years before Mr. Blake's day. His 

 modesty in claiming the idea as an original discovery may therefore be fully ap- 

 preciated. 



The phenomena which actually occur, due to the attraction of the Sun and 

 Moon on the spheroidal figure of the Earth, are explained in every text-book on 

 Astronomy and may be made clear in a few words even to the non-mathematical 

 reader. 



The point where the Earth's axis, when produced, would meet the celestial 

 sphere is called the celestial pole or, ordinarily, the pole. It is the point about 

 which the constellations appear to revolve and at present is near the bright star 

 Polaris, or the pole star. The direction of the Earth's axis is, however, slowly 

 changing from year to year.- This change in the direction of the Earth's axis or 

 the corresponding motion of the great circle of the equator upon the ecliptic is 

 ordinarily called the Precession of the Equinoxes. It is due, as was shown by 

 Newton, to the unequal attraction of the Sun and Moon upon the spheroidal 

 form of the Earth, and may be readily understood frorti the following figure : 



If the Earth were a perfect homogeneous sphere the direction of its axis 

 would never be changed in consequence of the attraction of another body. Sup- 

 pose, however, the excess in matter about the equator to be represented by the 

 ring A B. Suppose a distant attracting body, (the Sun), situated in the direction 

 Cc so that the lines of attraction Cc, Aa, Bb are nearly parallel. The attractive 

 force, being slightly stronger at A than B, on account of its smaller distance from 

 the attracting body, there will be a residual of attracting force which would tend to 

 pull the ring into the plane of Cc, or, in other words bring the equatorial ring 

 into the plane of the Earth's orbit, the ecliptic. In the case of the Earth, how- 

 ever, a modifying force is found in the rotation of the Earth on its axis, so that 

 this residual of attracting force produces a slow revolution of the Earth's axis 

 about a line perpendicular to the direction of the motion, after the manner of 



