Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

of whom only two are men of known scientific attainments, the others being but scientific amateurs. Fven in the details of these experiments, we find that Dr. Huggins feels himself obliged to confess that the most startling phenomenon of all was not witne sed by him, although, of course, he has no doubt that it was seen as described by Mr. Crookes.

The experiments are but two in number; but in them, such is the peculiar nature of this "psychic" force as it manifests itself through the agency of Mr. Home (of spiritual and mediumistic reputation), that there is hardly any known law in Physical and Biological Science which it does not tend to overthrow. Fortunately, however, in the interest of Science and the true bearing of modern scientific education, this force but rarely manifests itself, and it is particularly disobliging when many scientific sceptics wish to investigate it.* Work is done without apparently any force, mental or physical, being used up, so that we have here the direct creation of force-bodies ordinarily susceptible to the action of gravity are seen freely sus pended in the air-a musical instrument (a wind instrument ordinarily played by keys), is suddenly imbued with so great a love and accurate knowledge of music that whilst the keys are visibly not touched, it plays a well-known sad and plaintive melody, and, moreover, executes it perfectly in a very beautiful manner." All these and other phenomena, so varied, so thrilling, so "psychic," we are solemnly informed took place one evening in a room of which the temperature varied from 68° to70° F. !

[ocr errors]

To most scientific men I am afraid there will appear something in the above so absurd and ludicrous, something so allied to the performances of professed jugglers and spiritual mediums, that it would not be worth any serious consideration, did not the scientific reputation of Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins demand that the experiments which gave the above results should be at once disproved or confirmed. If we proceed to examine these experiments carefully, and rigidly investigate them, we find, however, a complete want of attention to minute but by no means unimportant details-a complete absence of any attempt to ascertain whether it was not possible to produce these results without any "psychic force," and a firm confidence and belief in the ingenuousness (I had almost unwittingly written "ingenuity") of Mr. Home.

Let us now examine the experiments in detail. Firstly, with regard to the accordion, we are not told why the cage was constructed at all, and why, moreover, when constructed it was placed under a dining-room table of all places in the world. Does Mr. Crookes wish us to believe that it is only inside such wooden cages and in such peculiar positions that this "psychic force "manifests itself? If that is not the case, why was not the cage placed openly in the room, so that Dr. Huggins might not have had to confess that he did not see the accordion freely suspended in air, which Mr. Crookes and the others by dint of straining under the table did s-e. Then again, the accordion was confessedly placed in Mr. Home's hands before it was placed in the cage under the table-this was certainly unnecessary and is very unsatisfactory. Then it is obvious that to play the accordion the keys must in turn have been depressed. Yet Mr. Crookes does not volunteer a single word to show that he noticed whether the keys were successively pressed down or not, in fact, he rather leads us to infer that they were not. Again, it is cle rly a physical impossibility for the accordion to have gone round and round the cage if Mr. Home's hand was quite still, for if he held the accordion at all, his bands must have followed its movements, and what is there to show that the accordion moved his hand or his hand the accordion? Then again, as to the instrument chosen, would a concertina act in the same manner or not? for, from the frequency with which an accordion has been appealed to by spiritual mediums," it has acquired anything but a good reputation. It is a pity we are not informed whether Mr. Home could in the moments when he is free from "psychic influence" play on the accordion or not, and also as to what were the names of "the simple air" and the "sweet and plaintive melody" whi h it so obligingly played. We are also not told either how long the experiment lasted, or how long the accordion was playing, or, what is much more to the point, how long it contravened all the laws of gravity and of the acoustics of wind instruments. Surely this is an important question, quite as important as that the temperature varied from 68 to 70° Fahr. Such are some of the questions which arise with respect to the first experiment, and which must be answered before any reliance can be placed on the results attained.

"Vide Mr. Home's St. Petersburg experiments.

There still remains the second experiment, which was of an entirely different kind: the one with the spring-balance. Mr. Crookes here says, "Mr. Home's fingers were never more than oneand-a-half inches from the extreme end, and the wooden foot being only one-and-a-half inches wide, and resting flat on the table, it is evident that no amount of pressure exerted in that space could produce any action on the balance ;" and in this I quite agree; but did Mr. Crookes notice if the table itself was moved at all? From a very slight consideration of the peculiar apparatus employed, it is obvious that were the table to tip up in any so small a manner, the index of the balance must descend; and if the table was to tip up and down successively, the very same effect would be produced on the index of the balance as that which Mr. Crookes ascribes to "successive waves of psychic force." I do not say that the table was tipped up-that would have been trickery-but we have to account for certain results, and I do say that the tipping of the table would produce those very results, and that, moreover, there is nothing said about the table being immo able, or even heavy, or in any way fastened to the ground, as it most assuredly ought to have been. It does not appear so difficult to imagine that the "psychic force," which cou'd produce such a strange effect upon an accordion could also so agitate the table that it also should show a tendency to move-and, if this were the case, the whole apparatus was so placed that the very slighest movements of the table would be magnified by the index of the balance.

On account of these and many other objections, I am forced to the conclusion previously stated, that these experiments were inaccurately performed-the de ails were not sufficiently examined, nor obvious errors apparently avoided, so that until they are repeated in the pre ence of other scientific men, they are not worthy of scientific consideration. We have read of the same phenomenon over and over again described as due to spiritual manifestation--many of them, as is well known, performed through the same agency-a medium-as those in this case. The British Association is about to meet. Let Mr. Crookes but repeat any one of the experiments at one of the evening soirées, and, if he can do this, he will make the Edinburgh Meeting for ever memorable, and wil have earned for himself the undying reputation of having been the first to discover that in the midst of apparent humbug true science really and truly did exist. J. P. EARWAKER

PROF. BALFOUR STEWART, in NATURE for July 27, does ing," he says, "that things of but scant justice to Mr. Crookes's investigations. "Allowfrequently witnessed on such occasions" (he, no doubt, means to an extraordinary nature are refer to the so-called Spiritualistic séances) "yet we are by no means sure that these constitute external realities." And he then goes on to suggest that the phenomena may occur rather in the imagination of the spectators than in the outside world; or that the mediums (though he won't give them that name) may be By the way it is a pity that any man of science should help under son e mental influence of an electro-biological" nature. in giving currency to such a quack-scientific word; if this unknown influence must have a name, Mesmerism is the most appropriate; that does not pre end to explain the carse of the phenomena, but only to commemorate their discoverer. Now in the experiments upon which Prof. Stewart comments (I presume he refers to those described in the current number of the Quarterly Journal of Science) there does not seem to have been much room for the exercise of the imagination of the spectators, nor for any "electro-biological" influence to act through the medium. Setting aside the accordion performances, the trial with the spring-ba ance were quite opposed to the which perhaps left a little scope for eye deception, the results of known laws of mechanics. And certainly this trial took place under conditions which should have rendered deception impossible. The evidence of two such careful observers as Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins is not readily set down as a phanta-m of their imagina ion; they are men accustomed to weigh the evidence of their senses with the utmost caution, for the slightest error therein would cause grave disturbance in their calculations. When such men testy that some mysterious force acted upon a lever in a way that no known force acts, and produced before their eyes results quite new to their experience, we should be as ready to believe them as if Dr. Huggins announced a new planet or Mr. Crookes a new mictal; their testimony is as valuable in the one case as in the other. It is true that here they can only bear witness to the

1

unknown, but the very existence of this unknown has hitherto been questioned. That when it is known this force shall be acknowledged to be a spiritual one is repugnant to all philosophy, and Serjeant Cox's haste to name it "psychic" is neither wise nor politic. Things spiritual have been materialised in the gros-est manner by so-called spiritualists until the word has lost its meaning, and come to signify merely a cause unknown of phenomena sensual to the last degree. So it will be with "psychic" unless some one in authority stop this misuse of it at the very beginning. GEORGE FRASER

Height of Auroras

I SAW the aurora of Sept. 3, 1870, described by H. C. Key on p. 121, and I observed it from 10 to 11 P. M., but here it never reached quite to the zenith, and at 11.2 P.M. was no where high. Its brightest feature was then a distinct arch, the apex of whose central line was 12° in altitude. If Mr. Key's description of the clear space of 7° or 8° below the aurora in the S.S.E., applies to that time, it would seem hat the part of the aurora bordering the clear space cannot have been more than 25 miles above the earth, and was more likely only 17 or 18 miles.

It would be well if the heights of auroras were better known than they are; and I think if systematic observations were made simultaneously at different stations, our knowledge on the subject would be largely increased. I am willing to be one of the observers in such an investigation, and Mr. G. J. Symons, the editor of the Meteorological Magazine, has expressed his readiness to aid. T. W. BACKHOUSE

Sunderland, July 22

Daylight Auroras

ON Sunday, the 23rd July, at 7.40 P. M., there was visible from Blackpool a phenomenon which might readily be mistaken for a day light manifestation of the Aurora. The phenomenon in question consisted of a number of parallel streamers of light rising vertically and situated from the observer in a north-westerly direction. That portion of the sky occupied by these streamers would be about twenty-five degrees square, its lowest portion being about fifteen degrees above the horizon. At the time of the appearance the sun was obscured by a small but very dense cloud. Large masses of nimbus clouds cccupied almost the whole of the north-western, northern, and north-eastern portion of the sky, whilst a few cumulus and cirro-cumulus clouds were visible in the eastern and southern parts of the heavens ; one-twentieth part perhaps of the whole sky being apparently free from cloud. The streamers, which, like those of the Aurora, were intermittent in intensity, contrasted greatly in direction with any proximate beams of the sun. The whole thing, however, I am strongly of opinion, was nothing more than a meteorological phenomenon of a very different nature from the Aurora; in short, I believe it was an unusual appearance attendant on a distant and somewhat singularly circumstanced rainfall. Immediately above the uppermost boundary of the space occupied by the streamers there was a large nimbus cloud entirely obscured from the sun's direct rays, whilst that part of the sky occupied by the streamers themselves was in a strong sunshine. The whole phenomenon lasted about half an hour, and my opinion that it was but an unusual aspect of a distant rainfall was strengthened by the fact of a heavy shower of rain descending immediately after the disappearance of the streamers, the upper-current of the air being from the west by north. The rain-fall lasted about a quarter of an hour, and was accompanied by a double rainbow. When it had ceased that portion of the sky previously occupied by the streamers and almost half the remainder contained no vi-ible trace of cloud.

This is the first instance in which I have seen what might be mistaken for a daylight manifestation of the Aurora. The streamers were so like those of the northern light, and the nature of the appearance nevertheless so obviously connected with a transient condition of the atmosphere, that I am very much tempted to doubt the visibility at any time of genuine Aurora by daylight. D. WINSTANLEY

Manchester, July 24

Spectrum of the Aurora

HAVING noticed that Prof. Zöllner observed a red line in the spectrum of the aurora on October 25, 1870, and as it appears this was the first time the red line had been observed in Europe,

I am induced to send you the following extract from a short paper read by me April 12, 1870, before the Royal Society of Victoria, on the great aurora of April 5, 1870

"The spectrum of the aurora was obtained with one of Mr. Browning's micro-spectroscopes. When the spectroscope was directed to the red streamers, a red line, more refrangible than C (hydrogen line), a greenish line about the position of the green calcium lines, and an indistinct band more refrangible still, which appeared as if resolvable into lines, were observed. When the spectroscope was directed to the green auroral arch, the red line disappeared, and only green ones remained; the rapid disap pearance of the red line as the slit passed across the boundary between the base of the streamers and the green arch, was remarkable."

In this aurora there was the usual auroral cloud-like bank on the horizon (sea-horizon) surmounted by an arch of bright greenish light to an altitude of nearly 20°, terminating with a very defined margin, from which the red streamers sprung upwards as if from behind a screen, which shed enough light at midnight to read a newspaper by. This aurora was ushered in by great magnetic disturbances for days previously, which culminated about the time of the brightest display. ROBERT J. ELLERY

Melbourne Observatory, May 19

Sparrow Cages

A PARAGRAPH in NATURE speaks of the export of sparrows to America. Such long low cages as are described at page 245, covered with canvas, may be seen at Leadenhall Market, in which very many thousands of Egyptian quails are brought to London alive and, I am told, disposed of as larks; of course not for the voice. A. IL. July 27

BOOKS RECEIVED

ENGLISH.-Taine on Intelligence, part II. ; translated by T. D. Haye (L. Reeve and Co.).-A Treatise on Terrestrial Magnetism (Blackwood).—Textbooks of Science; Elements of Geometry: J. Watson (Longmans).—Domes tic Botany: John Smith (L. Reeve and Co..-Lighthouse Illumination: T. Stevenson, second edition: (A. and C. Black.)

PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

ENGLISH.-On the Dermal and Visceral Structures of the Kagu, Sunbittern, and Boatbill: Dr. Murie.-Researches on the Anatomy of the Pinrpedia, part 1.: Dr. Murie. Poison ng and Pilfering, Wholesale and Retail. -Journal of the Anthropological Institute, part 1. March and April, 1871.— Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society, vols. 9-10.-Report of the Meteorological Committee of the Royal Society.- Journal of the Statistical Society, June.

AMERICAN. On the Secular Perturbations of the Planets: A. Hall.—On the Application of Photography to the Determination of Astronomical Data A. Hall.-Equatorial Observations made at the U. S. National Observatory, Washington: A. Hall.-The School Laboratory of Physical Science, part 1.: Prof. G. Hinrichs.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1871

THE ORGANISATION OF LOCAL SCIENTIFIC
EFFORT

treme importance of science lectures, but we must not forget that they will have missed their mark if they have not engendered the desire for something more durable (because more useful) in the way of scientific instruction, which can be obtained in a variety of ways, as, for instance, in Mechanics' Institutions, in the science classes of the Science and Art Department, or in other organisa

AMONG the many topics of national importance tions which may be subsequently developed.

have been discussed at the recent meeting

of the British Association, there is none which promises to bear more fruit, or which we more gladly bring before the notice of our readers, than a scheme already suggested in these columns, which has been discussed and adopted at a full and influential meeting of representatives of all branches of Science, the President of the Association, Sir William Thomson, being in the chair.

This scheme is essentially as follows:-It is proposed in the first instance, to make an attempt to extend and improve the present system of giving scientific lectures to the people, and by this means to awaken an interest in science and scientific progress in places where otherwise there would be little probability of such good work being done.

There is little need that we should expatiate on the extreme importance of this object, and on the value of the results which are certain to follow from an energetic carrying out of the proposal. With the example of Manchester and other large towns before us, it is not too much to hope that as soon as the scheme is properly developed, the beneficial effects already experienced in these places will become general throughout the country. In Manchester, to take one instance, we find that each Science Lecture has, on an average, been attended by upwards of one thousand persons, and that the interest excited by the lectures has not been a mere temporary amusement is evidenced by the fact that the lectures when reprinted have sold by tens of thousands. In Belfast, also, Science Lectures to working-men have been most successfully given for more than ten years. In this way it is clear that not merely the auditors, but a very large outside public, have benefited by this method of bringing science and its teachings home to everyone. A project, which has been so successful over limited areas, and which must be as successful if tried on a larger scale, is well deserving of being adopted and extended by so important a body as the British Association.

There is another consideration which renders the adoption of this scheme by the British Association doubly valuable. The danger attending the delivery of popular lectures has always been that true scientific method may be lost sight of in the desire of the lecturer to merely please the eye, or to keep up interest in the auditory by mere sensational display. It is to be hoped that we shall now have a guarantee at any rate against this evil. It is not possible always to make science amusing, but we now possess ample experience which goes to show that a scientific lecture delivered by a competent man, fully impressed himself with the dignity of what he is doing, is able to awake the interest and rivet the attention of those classes for whom the lectures are specially intended.

This, however, after all, is only one side of the project. We do not for one moment wish to undervalue the ex

It is not, however, merely a question of scientific instruction. Throughout the country we find societies, field clubs, local museums, &c., all of which are more or less actively engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, local inquiries, or exploration, and all of which are working, more or less, at a disadvantage, in consequence of the chaotic state of our scientific arrangements, and from their lack of that power which springs from unity.

Now is it too much to expect that under the best possible conditions such engines of scientific advancement would be more useful than they are at present, or that there would be more of them? We have only to look at what has been done in some of the higher schools even, to satisfy ourselves upon this point. At Rugby, Clifton, Marlborough, not to mention other schools, we have museums and natural history societies existing side by side with the work of the school, and the masters testify in the most definite manner to the extreme importance of the culture obtained by such means. Now, if this is important for a limited number of schoolboys, how much more important must it be throughout the length and breadth of the land; where at present we find teaching going on without museums, museums existing in localities where there is no one to look after them, field clubs examining every inch of the ground, while a much richer region elsewhere is entirely unexplored, each worker, as it were, away from his support, and the workers few. It is as if an army were moving through a hostile country without commander, without plan, without any power of combination, and without either vanguard, Uhlan, or second line.

Here then we have plainly before us the ground to be viewed by the Committee to which we have referred, a Committee which we doubt not will be appointed by the British Association with full power to report upon, and, if necessary, to carry out at once, any measures which it may be desirable to take in the directions we have indicated. When once such a body is established, and its existence generally known, its work will soon take the most concrete form, a more concrete one than we have ventured to assign to it in this article; but it is clear that if limited in its functions in the first instance to the lecture arrangements to which we have referred, and to inquiries into the actual geographical position of and condition of our local societies, museums, field clubs, and the like, so that the committee should become the head-quarters of information on these subjects to those who wish to establish similar institutions in new districts, or to expand an existing one, the greatest possible good to science will follow. But it is not too much to hope that such a body would in time become the centre of influence as well as of information, would be able to mould actual and potential institutions into the best form for effective work, and would be able to economise their resources, and to increase the utility of each of them.

VOL. IV.

Q

KINGSLEY'S "AT LAST"

At Last: a Christmas in the West Indies. By Charles Kingsley. With Illustrations. In two volumes. (Macmillan and Co., 1871.)

A

BOOK on the West Indies by an ordinary tourist would be hardly bearable. Mr. Trollope was amusingly brilliant as well as philosophical, and we read him with pleasure; but the author of "Westward Ho!" possesses a wealth of knowledge both in history and in natural science wherewith to illustrate his journey, which, even without his charming style and world-wide popularity, would render his book attractive to many a thoughtful reader. To him the air of the West Indies is "full of ghosts" of gallant soldiers and sailors, whose deeds of daring have made almost every bay and roadstead famous, and who, he thinks, might well ask us to render an account of our stewardship of those beautiful islands, which they won for us with precious blood, and which we, too ignorant and helpless to govern them properly, have misused and neglected. Passing by Dominica recalls one of those deeds, the record of which must thrill the heart of every Englishman: here Rodney, on the glorious 12th of April broke Count de Grasse's line (teaching thereby Nelson to do the same in like case), took and destroyed seven French ships of the line, and scattered the rest, preventing the French fleet from joining the Spaniards at Hispaniola, thus saving Jamaica and the whole West Indies, and brought about by that single tremendous blow the honourable peace of 1783. On what a scene of crippled and sinking, shattered and triumphant ships, in what a sea, must the conquerors have looked round from the Formidable's poop, with De Grasse at luncheon with Rodney in the cabin below, and not, as he had boastfully promised, on board his own Ville de Paris!"

66

A little farther he comes in sight of " an isolated rock, of the shape, but double the size, of one of the great Pyramids, which was once the British sloop of war, Diamond Rock," and tells us the interesting tale, not of any magical transformation or nautical legend, but of one of those inspirations of genius which converted an almost inaccessible rock into a fortress, which was manned by 120 men and boys, and for a year and a half swept the seas, being "borne on the books of the Admiralty as Her Majesty's ship Diamond Rock."

More suited, however, to our present purpose is the reminiscence of the eruption of the volcano of St. Vincent in 1812, which lasted three days and nights, covering most of the island with ashes, and utterly ruining whole estates. In Barbadoes, eighty miles to windward, the dust fell so thick that total darkness continued till near midday, and strange to say, with the darkness was unusual silence, for the trade wind had fallen dead, and the everlasting roar of the surf was gone. As the dust-cloud drifted away and the sun again appeared, the trade wind blew suddenly once more out of the east, and the surf roared again along the shore. The authority for this fact Mr. Kingsley considers to be sufficient, but its explanation is by no means easy.

Arriving at Trinidad, our author fairly revels in the delights of tropical life, scenery, and vegetation. The flowers and forest trees, the creepers and climbers, and the noble palms, fill his soul with delight; and he is never

[merged small][ocr errors]

"In Europe a forest is usually made up of one dominant plant-of firs or of pines, of oaks or of beeches, of birch or of heather. Here no two plants seem alike. There are more species on an acre here than in all the New Forest, Savernake, or Sherwood. Stems rough, smooth, prickly, round, fluted, stilted, upright, sloping, branched, arched, jointed, opposite-leaved, alternateleaved, leafless, or covered with leaves of every conceivable pattern, are jumbled together, till the eye and brain are tired of continually asking What next?' The stems are of every colour-copper, pink, grey, green, brown, black as if burnt, marbled with lichens, many of them silvery white, gleaming afar in the bush, furred with mosses and delicate creeping film-ferns, or laced with the air-roots of some parasite aloft. Up this stem scrambles a climbing Seguine (Philodendron) with entire leaves; up the next another quite different with deeply cut leaves; up the next the Ceriman (Monstera pertusa) spreads its huge leaves, latticed and forked again and again. So fast do they grow, that they have not time to fill up the spaces between their nerves, and are consequently full of oval holes ; and so fast does its spadix of flowers expand, that an actual genial heat and fire of passion, which may be tested by the thermometer, or even by the hand, is given off during fructification. Look on at the next stem. Up it and down again a climbing fern, which is often seen in hothouses, has tangled its finely-cut fronds. Up the next a quite different fern is crawling, by pressing tightly to the rough bark its creeping root-stalks, furred like a hare's leg. Up the next the prim little griffe-chatte plant has walked by numberless clusters of small cat's-claws which lay hold of the bark. . . . .”

Again-"Look here at a fresh wonder. Away, in front of us, a smooth grey pillar glistens on high. You can see neither the top nor the bottom of it. But its colour and its perfectly cylindrical shape tell you what it is a glorious palmiste, one of those queens of the forest which you saw standing in the fields, with its capital buried in the green cloud, and its base buried in that bank of green velvet plumes, which you must skirt carefully round, for they are a dwarf prickly palm, called here Black Roseau. Close to it rises another pillar, as straight and smooth, but one-fourth of the diameter, a giant's walking cane. Its head, too, is in the green cloud. But near are two or three younger ones, only forty or fifty feet high, and you see their delicate feather heads, and are told that they are Manacques (Euterpe oleracea), the slender nymphs which attend upon the forest queen, as beautiful, though not as grand, as she."

The wonderful flowers, the strange creepers and fantastic jungle ropes, the buttress trees, the orchids, and a hundred other characteristic tropical forms, are described in equally picturesque language. A giant Hura tree, forty-four feet in girth, and 192 feet high, is the occasion for some remarks on Darwinism. For this is a euphorbiaceous tree, and allied, therefore, to our humble spurges, as well as to the manioc, the castor-oil plant, the crotons, the scarlet poinsettia, and many other distinct forms.

"But what if all these forms are the descendants of one original form? Would that be one whit more wonderful,

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

duce such fantastic variety, we always knew that God works by very simple or seemingly simple means; that the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organisation of the most simple means."

must have made every traveller in the tropics think what scenes of surpassing beauty might be created by judicious clearing and planting, by helping Nature in a country and climate where, even unassisted, she can do so much, and The beauty of many of the clearings in the forests where such a profusion of beautiful materials exists to

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »