302 
Analyses of Books . 
[May, 
An Attempt to Prove Newton's Law of Gravitation for a 
Resisting Medium. By the Rev. G. T. Carruthers, M.A., 
Chaplain of Moradabad, India. 
The author remarks, “ the theory of Sir Isaac Newton is drawn 
Up like some pretty fairy tale. It is all very beautiful, but it is 
not a description of what goes on in every-day life. Who can 
believe the following to be the facfts which they are said to be by 
all astronomers ? i. Heavy and light bodies are sent the same 
distance by the application of the same one force-producing mass 
to them. 2. A rotating sphere sucks bodies to its surface 
instead of hurling them away from it. 3. Common earth or 
stone can do work of itself without anyone making it do it. 4. 
Matter can draw other matter to itself through long distances 
without ropes, arms, or any intervening agent. 5. There are 
pleasant places in space where revolving bodies, once set in 
motion, never require any further looking after, as they go on 
turning for ever without the renewal of the applied force. 6. 
Gases, air, and vapour will not fill and permeate freely the room 
they are in. 7. Nature, without the aid of any known engine, 
in ages long past hurled the planets all at the same time along 
straight lines with enormous velocities, and with a speed calcu- 
lated to the very foot per second, and having shown this care in 
putting them straight it then placed a body to pull them out of 
that course by a force aCting under a law that no one can under- 
stand, except advanced mathematicians. It naturally died in the 
effort, for it never touched them again, and has attempted nothing 
like it since. 8. To these must be added another well-received 
theory, which, however, is not altogether connected with the 
Newtonian philosophy. Most of the matter in space has been 
made so hot that nothing that we know of can live in the greatest 
worlds ; and even if the spheres were not hot, yet the force of 
gravity is so great that only flat creatures could live in them* 
Most of the spheres which are not hot, and in which the weights 
are not too hot for ordinary creatures to bear, are so cold that 
there cannot be a trace of life there, or of vegetation, and in 
moons living things would be thankful to get water and to breathe 
fresh air.” 
Here, surely, is matter for reflection. 
