EDITORIAL 



SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S discovery of the Attraction of Gravita- 

 tion was the inevitable Evolution of his research in centripetal 

 forces, and the then opaque subject of the motions of the Moon 

 connected with the tides of the ocean. 



In 1687 he published his Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathe- 

 matica and for years thereafter scientists generally, and astronomers 

 in particular, combatted each other with acrimonions discussions pro 

 and contra the forces of attraction, until Newton's dicta was proved 

 scientifically orthodox in the catholic assent to the Procrustean law 

 of the revolution of the planets in our system; for were this attrac- 

 tion annihilated, not only our Sun, which undoubtedly is traveling in 

 an inconceivably immense orbit around some huge central body, but 

 all our planets and their satellites would fly off at a tangent and 

 travel through all eternity in a straight path, like that wonderful 

 Sun, Groomb ridge, 1830, rushing a-muck through space at the rate 

 of 200 miles each second. 



Johann Kepler's Law of Gravitation — "Every particle of matter 

 in the universe attracts every other particle with a force varying 

 directly as the masses, and inversely as the square of their distances"; 

 and the first of what are known as Kepler's Three Laws — "Every 

 planet moves in an elliptical orbit, in one of the foci of which the 

 Sun is situated," are the imperishable enactments which control in 

 all investigations of that most ancient, most wonderful and most 

 entrancing branch of the Sciences, Astronomy; and that universal 

 genius, Shakespeare, enlists under the banner of Kepler when he says 

 "But the strong base and building of my love 

 Is the very center of the Earth 

 Drawing all things to it." 



