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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
■were to supplement this volume by undertaking a simple description of other 
higher curves now but little known and concealed under mystical titles such 
as “ the Witch,” with methods for their continuous instrumental tracing 
where possible, and a geometrical delineation of their properties. 
EWTON stated the first law of motion in the following words : “ Corpus 
omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter 
in directum.” And since his time it has been universally accepted that 
inertia was equally applicable to uniform unretarded motion in a straight line 
as to a state of rest. 
Mr. Jordan, however, states in his first lecture that u the latter half of the 
definition of vis inertia is, without the slightest fear of anyone in this room 
rising to contradict what I say, a mere fiction. It is a fiction, and has 
always been a fiction. It is a fiction invented to explain phenomena for 
which no other explanation had been found ; no practical evidence of its 
existence can be given in any physical phenomena.” 
It is sincerely to be hoped that the writer of this passage will not try the 
dangerous, though perfectly conclusive experiment, of jumping out of a 
railway train when in motion. He might obtain unpleasant “ practical 
evidence of its ^existence.” 
In place of this “ fiction ” he seems to substitute what he terms “ astral 
gravitation.” This new force he holds to be demonstrated by Dr. Wallich’s 
discovery of animal life at the bottom of the sea, and Mr. Rainey’s experi- 
ments as to molecular motions of small particles in hermetically sealed globes 
of water. 
The writer of the present notice is well acquainted with these laborious 
and remarkable observations of Mr. Rainey, but has always regretted that 
their author should have attributed the really existent currents to so novel 
and unheard-of a cause as “ an alteration in the centre of gravity of the 
earth.” Such a phenomenon, if existent, would surely be known to astro- 
nomers, and would probably appear in the Nautical Almanac. 
The lecturer then proceeds to describe and explain ocean-currents, of 
which a good map is appended, on his own hypothesis ; especially contro- 
verting Dr. Carpenter’s views on the subject, and the usual temperature 
theory. 
In a second lecture, after adverting to u the fickleness of common sense,” 
the trade-winds are referred to “ astral gravitation,” as are also ocean cur- 
rents “analogous to the trade-winds.” Dr. Carpenter and Sir Wyville 
Thomson are stated to have “ strangely mistaken sloppy mud for living flesh 
in the form of Bathybius,” and thus to have “ made the greatest mistake 
that has ever been recorded in the annals of science.” 
The “ new theory of vis inertiae ” is next applied to the tides, and 
* “ The System of the World. Challenge Lectures. Winds, Ocean 
Currents, and Tides, aDd what they tell of the system of the world, &c.,” by 
William Leighton Jordan, F.R.G.S. Second Edition. Hardwicke. 1877. 
W. H. Stone. 
THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD.* 
