194 CHAELES BABBAGE. 



niinating a sbadow in order that it migbt be more liighly magnified, 

 many persons, even professors in colleges, gave the announcement 

 credence, and tbiis added to the popularity of the hoax. This fraud 

 owed its success, in a great measure, to a want, at the time, of precise 

 scientific knowledge in this country, and after the absurdity was pointed 

 out the invention was cried up as a most extraordinary production, since 

 those who had been hoaxed by it attributed their credulity to the inge- 

 nuity of the deception rather than to their own want of knowledge. 



The success of this hoax has had an exceedingly bad influence on the 

 character of our country for veracity. It was followed immediately 

 after, and has been even down to the present time, by a series of con- 

 temptible imitations; and, indeed, to such an extent was this imitation 

 carried on a few years ago, that scarcely any announcement of phe- 

 nomena of unusual occurrence could be accepted as truth. Among 

 these imitations within a few' years, the most successful, and one which 

 evinced considerable reading as well as ingenuity, vras that of the 

 pretended discovery of a series of Eunic inscriptions on the lace of a 

 rock in the Potomac Eiver near Washington. This was the invention 

 of a young student of law in this city, and excited quite a sensation 

 among the archteologists of this and other countries. It was copied in 

 various ethnological journals as a truth, and was hailed by the Scandi- 

 navians as a new evidence of the early explorations of the Northmen 

 in the United States. 



Such inventions must be classed with those practical jokes which have 

 been happily termed " gymnastic wit," of which a notable example was 

 given in England, where a "society" was founded for "insulting women 

 and frightening children." The chronicler naively remarks that the 

 members were never discovered, and, what is just as remarkable, the 

 w4t was equally a mystery. "Truth," says Dr. Johnson, "is a matter of 

 too much importance to be tampered with, even in trifles." — J. H.] 



-On the Permanent Impression of our Words and Actions on the Globe ice 



inhabit. 



The principle of the equality of action and reaction, when traced 

 through all its consequences, opens views which will appear to many 

 persons most unexpected. The pulsations of the air, once set in motion 

 by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they 

 gave rise. Strong and audible as they may be in the immediate neigh- 

 borhood of the speaker, and at the immediate moment of utterance, tlieir 

 quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to the human ears. 

 The motions they have impressed on the particles of one portion of our 

 ;atmosphere are communicated to constantly-increasing numbers, bui 

 the total quantity of motion measured in the same direction receives no 

 addition. Each atom loses as much as it gives, and regains again from 

 other atoms a portion of those motions which they in turn gixo; up. 



