Part 31

Dr. Emile Bessels was tried at New York in 1872, on the charge of having poisoned Captain Hall, but was acquitted.

The phenomena here described are well worth observing on their own account, as affording a very instructive and at the same time very beautiful illustration of wave motions. They can be well seen at many of our watering-places. The same laws of wave motion can be readily illustrated also by throwing two stones into a large smooth pool, at points a few yards apart. The crossing of the two sets of circular waves produces a wave-net, the meshes of which vary in shape according to their position.

It is a pity that men of science so often forget, when addressing those who are not men of science, or who study other departments than theirs, that technical terms are out of place. Most people, I take it are more familiar, on the whole, with eyelids than with palpebræ.

This nautical expression is new to me. Top-gallants—fore, main, and mizen—I know, and forecastle I know, but the top-gallant forecastle I do not know.

The instrument was lent to Mr. Huggins by Mr. W. Spottiswoode. It has been recently employed successfully at Greenwich.

Thus in Christie Johnstone, written in 1853, when Flucker Johnstone tells Christie the story of the widow’s sorrows, giving it word for word, and even throwing in what dramatists call “the business,” he says, “‘Here ye’ll play your hand like a geraffe.’ ‘Geraffe?’ she says; ‘that’s a beast, I’m thinking.’ ‘Na; it’s the thing on the hill that makes signals.’ ‘Telegraph, ye fulish goloshen!’ ‘Oo, ay, telegraph! geraffe’s sunnest said for a’.’” “Playing the hand like a telegraph” would now be as unmeaning as Flucker Johnstone’s original description.

Not “to represent the gutta-percha,” as stated in the Times account of Mr. Muirhead’s invention. The gutta-percha corresponds to the insulating material of the artificial circuit; viz., the prepared paper through which the current along the tinfoil strips acts inductively on the coating of tinfoil.

I must caution the reader against Fig. 348 in Guillemin’s Application of the Physical Forces, in which the part c d of the wire is not shown. The two coils are in reality part of a single coil, divided into two to permit of the bar being bent; and to remove the part c d is to divide the wire, and, of course, break the current. It will be seen that c d passes from the remote side of coil b c, Fig. 6, to the near side of coil d e. If it were taken round the remote side of the latter coil, the current along this would neutralize the effect of the current along the other.

The paper is soaked in dilute ferrocyanide of potassium, and the passage of the current forms a Prussian blue.

Sir W. Thomson states, in his altogether excellent article on the electric telegraph, in Nichol’s Cyclopædia, that the invention of this process is due to Mr. Bakewell.

It is to be noticed, however, that the recording pointer must always mark its lines in the same direction, so that, unless a message is being transmitted at the same time that one is being received (in which case the oscillations both ways are utilized), the instrument works only during one-half of each complete double oscillation.

It seems to me a pity that in the English edition of this work the usual measures have not been substituted throughout. The book is not intended or indeed suitable for scientific readers, who alone are accustomed to the metric system. Other readers do not care to have a little sum in reduction to go through at each numerical statement.

Hanno’s Periplus—the voyage of Hanno, chief of the Carthaginians, round the parts of Libya, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the narrative of which he posted up in the Temple of Kronos.

I may mention one which occurred within my own experience. A mastiff of mine, some years ago, was eating from a plate full of broken meat. It was his custom to bury the large pieces when there was more than he could get through. While he was burying a large piece, a cat ran off with a small fragment. The moment he returned to the plate he missed this, and, seeing no one else near the plate, he, in his own way, accused a little daughter of mine (some two or three years old) of the theft. Looking fiercely at her, he growled his suspicions, and would not suffer her to escape from the corner where his plate stood until I dragged him away by his chain. Nor did he for some time forget the wrong which he supposed she had done him, but always growled when she came near his house.

It may be suggested, in passing, that the association which has been commonly noticed between prominent eyeballs and command of language (phrenologists place the organ of language, in their unscientific phraseology, behind the eyeballs) may be related in some degree to the circumstance that in gradually emerging from the condition of an arboreal creature the anthropoid ape would not only cease to derive advantage from sunken eyes, but would be benefited by the possession of more prominent eyeballs. The increasing prominence of the eyeballs would thus be a change directly associated with the gradual advance of the animal to a condition in which, associating into larger and larger companies and becoming more and more dependent on mutual assistance and discipline, they would require the use of a gradually extending series of vocal signs to indicate their wants and wishes to each other.

The word hypothesis is too often used as though it were synonymous with theory, so that Newton’s famous saying, “Hypotheses non fingo” has come to be regarded by many as though it expressed an objection on Newton’s part against the formation of theories. This would have been strange indeed in the author of the noblest theory yet propounded by man in matters scientific. Newton indicates his meaning plainly enough, in the very paragraph in which the above expression occurs, defining an hypothesis as an opinion not based on phenomena.

I find it somewhat difficult to understand clearly Mr. Mivart’s own position with reference to the general theory of evolution. He certainly is an evolutionist, and as certainly he considers natural selection combined with the tendency to variation (as ordinarily understood) insufficient to account for the existence of the various forms of animal and vegetable existence. He supplies the missing factor in “an innate law imposed on nature, by which new and definite species, under definite conditions, emerged from a latent and potential being into actual and manifest existence;” and, so far as can be judged, he considers that the origin of man himself is an instance of the operation of this law.

The Middle Tertiary period—the Tertiary, which includes the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, being the latest of the three great periods recognized by geologists as preceding the present era, which includes the entire history of man as at present known geologically.

Closely following in this respect his illustrious namesake Roger, who writes, in the sixth chapter of his Opus Majus, “Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest.”

Fibrine and albumen are identical in composition. Caseine, which is the coagulable portion of milk, is composed in the same manner. The chief distinction between the three substances consists in their mode of coagulation; fibrine coagulating spontaneously, albumen under the action of heat, and caseine by the action of acetic acid.

To this article of the Professor’s faith decided objection must be taken, however.

Those whose custom it is to regard all theorizing respecting the circumstances revealed by observation as unscientific, may read with profit an extremely speculative passage in Newton’s Principia relating to the probable drying up of the earth in future ages. “As the seas,” he says, “are absolutely necessary to the constitution of our earth, that from them the sun, by its heat, may exhale a sufficient quantity of vapours, which, being gathered together into clouds, may drop down in rain, for watering of the earth, and for the production and nourishment of vegetables; or being condensed with cold on the tops of mountains (as some philosophers with reason judge), may run down in springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and fluids of the planets, comets seem to be required, that, from their exhalations and vapours condensed, the wastes of the planetary fluids spent upon vegetation and putrefaction, and converted into dry earth, may be ultimately supplied and made up; for all vegetables entirely derive their growths from fluids, and afterwards, in great measure, are turned into dry earth by putrefaction; and a sort of slime is always found to settle at the bottom of putrefied fluids; and hence it is that the bulk of the solid earth is continually increased; and the fluids, if they are not supplied from without, must be in a continual decrease, and quite fail at last. I suspect, moreover, that it is chiefly from the comets that spirit comes which is indeed the smallest but the most subtle and useful part of our air, and so much required to sustain the life of all things with us.”

See my “Science Byways,” pp. 244, 245.

The following passage from Admiral Smyth’s Bedford Catalogue is worth noticing in this connection:—“We find that both the Chinese and the Japanese had a zodiac consisting of animals, as zodiacs needs must, among which they placed a tiger, a peacock, a cat, an alligator, a duck, an ape, a hog, a rat, and what not. Animals also formed the Via Solis of the Kirghis, the Mongols, the Persians, the Mantshus, and the ancient Turks; and the Spanish monks in the army of Cortes found that the Mexicans had a zodiac with strange creatures in the departments. Such a striking similitude is assuredly indicative of a common origin, since the coincidences are too exact in most instances to be the effect of chance; but where this origin is to be fixed has been the subject of interminable discussions, and learning, ignorance, sagacity, and prejudice have long been in battle array against each other. Diodorus Siculus considers it to be Babylonian, but Bishop Warburton, somewhat dogmatically tells us, ‘Brute worship gave rise to the Egyptian asterisms prior to the time of Moses.’” There is now, of course, very little reason for questioning that Egyptian astronomy was borrowed from Babylon.

Transcriber’s Notes

Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.