Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 413 



Philosophical Magazine, with M. Zbllner's great memoir " On the 

 Origin of the Earth's Magnetism, and the Magnetic Relations of 

 the Heavenly Bodies." In § 24 of this (like every thing that comes 

 from M. Zollner) ingenious and thoughtful treatise, there is a de- 

 tailed account of a new instrument, which in November 1869 had 

 been brought by M. Zollner to the notice of the Saxon Royal Society 

 of Sciences, in a memoir " On a new Method for measuring Attract- 

 ing and Repelling Forces " — which had remained unknown to me. 

 He proposes to name the new instrument " horizontal pendulum," 

 mentioning also that, in 1863, M. Perrot had proposed for the same 

 purposes, and described in the Comptes Bendus of the Paris Aca- 

 demy, an instrument resting on the same principles. 



It is of high interest, and will certainly interest M. Zollner to 

 learn, that, more than a generation since, in Germany his instru- 

 ment was not only described and figured, but also applied to expe- 

 riments, although no particulars of the results are given. 



Singularly, the matter goes back to a man whose name has no 

 good sound in connexion with the exact sciences, and from whom it 

 certainly would be least expected — Gruithuisen of Munich. I feel 

 so much the more obligation to render him this late justice, as seven 

 years since, in a longer memoir published in the Bohmische Museum- 

 zeitschrift, vol. xxxix., " On the present State of Lunar Investiga- 

 tions," I took the fanciful philosopher of Munich somewhat sharply 

 to task — : in fact, designated him as selenoprotophantast. I feel 

 now myself, in somewhat riper years, that this asperity towards one 

 far advanced in age, and so much my senior, who, with all his ex- 

 travagancies, always proceeded in good faith, was perhaps not in 

 place ; and I hereby gladly retract, not the substance of my words, 

 but the too great acrimony of their form. 



The very first Part of Gruithuisen's Analekten fur Erd- und Him- 

 melskunde (Munich, 1828, 80 pages 8vo) opens with a truly original 

 and remarkable paper of 45 pages, by the editor, " On the Proposal 

 to dig a hole through the earth ; whether the condition of the air at 

 great depths can be ascertained in any other way, by the excava- 

 tion of a tunnel transversely through a mountain-range or an arm 

 of the sea, by the catachthonic observatory, its mathematical and 

 optical instruments, and also by the elkysmometer." (The words 

 in italics are so in the original.) 



At a time when (of course mostly through the fault of Gruit- 

 huisen himself and those like him) all so-called physical investiga- 

 tion of the heavens had fallen into such discredit that, in conse- 

 quence of a natural reaction, professional astronomers rigorously 

 insisted on acknowledging as the substance of Astronomy merely 

 places and times, therefore merely motions and their variations — 

 that (to mention only one instance) even the discovery of the dark 

 ring of Saturn by G-alle at Berlin (in the presence of Madler !) and 

 Vico at Rome, in 1838, could be suppressed or at least remain un- 

 noticed (incredible but true) — at such a time Gruithuisen's memoir 

 could not but seem preposterous ; at the present time, when celes- 

 tial physics are developing so promisingly, much therein contained 



