70 Notices respecting New Boohs 



prove expensive, yet we do hope that an intelligent Government 

 may relieve him of that difficulty before long. 



Meanwhile, however, we are practically left in the cold comfort, 

 of almost as weak an hypothesis as the one famous medieval idea 

 that " nature abhors a vacuum within the limits of 32 feet of 

 water" — seeing that the final outcome of every thing auroral seems 

 to resolve itself into this rebuke to mankind, that the electric dis- 

 charge of that phenomenon takes place in a medium which we do 

 not know any thing about, and that is why we cannot reproduce 

 the citron spectral line. 



But that by no means satisfies so untiring a genius as Mr. J. 

 Rand Capron ; wherefore up he starts to his feet again in an effec- 

 tive Fourth part to his book, or a series of five Appendices giving 

 additional information, references to, and reprints from, divers 

 works, essays, and codes of instruction issued to polar voyagers. 

 He does all this ; and now comes the one black blot with which to 

 bring this review to a too effective end. 



Tet Mr. Capron himself is not to blame in it. He comes out 

 brighter, more the benefactor of the public, and the pure-souled 

 prosecutor of science for science's own sake, than ever. In his 

 ardent desire to omit nothing that could contribute to the progress 

 of auroral knowledge, he thought he would give a niche in his book, 

 and thereby wider publicity as well as renewed circulation, to the 

 modicum of auroral work performed by the Government's late Polar 

 expedition. "With this view, he both printed the auroral instructions 

 prepared for the officers of the Arctic ships by the Royal Society, and 

 the subsequent reports of what the said officers had observed accord- 

 ingly, just as they appear in the Government's Arctic papers. 



That was easy enough so far ; but finding that the mere written 

 descriptions were hardly clear without the assistance of certain 

 lithographic plates which, having already answered all their in- 

 tended purpose for the Government's report, were about to be 

 wiped off, Mr. Capron applied to My Lords of the Treasury for 

 leave to have copies printed from those stones at his own expense. 

 And what did My Lords of the Treasury answer to this hero, sans 

 peur et sans reproche, of auroral research for advancing the science 

 of our country and of the age in which we live ? They informed 

 him " that he could not be permitted so to do, unless he paid also 

 one third of the cost of the original execution of the drawings " ! — 

 an additional burthen to the other expenses of his scientific book, 

 which it was of course quite out of the question for him to under- 

 take. 



Oh ! that the effects of the now universal education which is 

 spreading throughout the country might be to produce in the upper 

 Government offices, as well as the country at large, genius, large- 

 ness of soul, and hearty love of science ; and then such an example 

 as Mr. Capron has shown in his book on 'Aurora,' though still per- 

 haps rare, would be appreciated more nearly as it well deserves to be. 



