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T wish to treat, first, of the earhest stage of the development of oar science ; next, of the time and manner ,„ which it threw ofl" its swaddling clothes ; and lastly, of some of Its latest achievements. Mr. Lindsay, our editor, suggested as a caption, " The Growth of Astronomy,- which will do very well, but 1 .lo not intend to attempt a consecutive Jiistory. To he orderly, this paper should begin with the enquiry how old our civilization is. Plat,, makes his Kritias tell a curious tale. He brings him to our notice as an old man, who, when a boy, heard from his grandfather the story Solon brought from Egypt. A priest at Sais told the Athenian student that the present (Greeks were children, ignorant of their own history ; they had really occupied Hellas 8,000 years before,* and had waged succe.ssful war with the Atlantides, who, coming from a great island just outside the Pillars of Hercules, had subjugated Europe and Africa, as far as the Tyrrhenian sea on the north, and Egypt on the south shore of the Mediterranean. Suddenly, however, great earth- MU^.kes and flootls occurred, as indeed in the history of the human race they often had before : the island of Atlantis was submerged, and the (xreek hosts were also swallowed up. Tn the.^e floods the cities suttered destruction, and none but the hill folk escaped, so that Hellenic civilization liad to recommence. Egypt, however, had always been free from earthquakes and torrential rain, having only the usual regulated Hood of the Nile, wherefore it had j.reserved the records which traced back Its history to the foundation of the kingdom-9,000 years before The description given of the Atlantic island is minute, and it has ever been a debated (jue.stion wlietlier Plato's account is altogetlier in)tliicnl or not. I incline, witii Grote, and against Jowett, to tliiuk it liad a foun- dation in some recorded facts, tliough there is little to favour the conten- tion of an American writer that tlie ancients had a regular coniniunica- tion with Mexico and Peru hy galleys wliich rendezvoused near Ceylon and proceeded to the west coast of both North and South A merica. Saint Augustine, in his great work De Civitate Dei,' refers to a letter ■written by Alexander the Great to his mother 01ynij)ii«s. After the conquest of Persia, Alexander turned his arms to Egypt, which hsid for a short time lieen most unwillingly subject to the Sliah. He was received rather as a protector and liberator tlian as an enemy, and as lie professed respect for their great past, for their monuments and their religion, he was favoured by the priests, who were the depositories of historical and scientific lore. One of these supplied him witli information from tlie sacred books to the effect tliat even the Assyrian kingdom was 5,000 years old, though the Greek histories, which began it with the snme king, Belus, assigned to it only 3,500 years. He gave as the duration ot the Persian and the Macedonian empires more than 8,000 years, though the Greeks allowed but 580 for the growth of Macedon, and l)ut 23U for the Persian rule. Yet, said he, these high numbers must be tiebly multiplied to reach the antiquity of Egy])t I St. Augustine died in A.D. 430, when authentic copies of Alexander's letter may have been still extant. In an endeavour to minimize the length of time, he says the Egyptian year had been one of four months only, but Diodorus expressly states that it consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days six hours, and he gives to Egypt an antiquity of moie than 20,000 years. Callisthenes, who was in Alexander's retinue, informed Aristotle that the JBabylonians reckoned their city to be at least 1,903 years old when Alexander entered it. And Manetho, wlio was keeper of the Egy]>tian archives under Ptolemy Philadelphus, gave 5,300 years as the recorded length of the Egyptian dynasties. We now have evidence from papyri, monuments and tablets to check these figures, for we have learned to read Egyptian and Assyrian ahnost as well as our own language, and have spaded up whole libraries of infor- mation. The Prisse d'Avennes papyrus is claimed to be the oldest writing in the world, and of the third dynasty 5,318 B.C. It is in a bold, clear, firmly set handwriting, which tells of a civilization old * Hook XII. I'lKip. 10. »-\ t;n then. Mr. J. 0. C oiidt'r s;iys tlie I!fil)ylonian.s of the si.xtli century l>.0. believed tlie first Ciiakliean empire was estaMisiied more tlian ;i,200 vi'ars l)efore tlieir time, and it was certainly founded by men of .Mongol race, whose language, called Akkadian, is found on the oldest records. Scholars have not yet come into thorough accord ; one Dr. Hilprecht assigns 3,000 B.C. as tiie date of an inscription in cuneiform writing, which displaced Hittite hieroglyphics when Semitic races became power- ful around Babylon, while a Dr. Oppert thinks it a thousand years later. However, the earliest As.syrian and Egyptian records come fairly close together, and there seems no prospect of tracing either further back than six or seven thousand years. + The origin of astronomical studies is coeval witli reason and observa- tion, and a singular record of them appears to be found in the pyramids of Egypt. They seem to have had openings from which a pa.ssage led to the interior, so built that on a certain day the Sun or a gi\en star could be seen from the recesses of the monument, as if sliining down a tube. To such stars these pyramids are said to be " oriented." The most recent investigation of this interesting subject is to be found in the I'roccediiujs of the Royal Society for last November, where Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge discourses on the Pyramid tields of the Soudan, which are especially important because while in northern Egypt the |>yramids are oriented east and west, in southern Egypt and the Soudan, star worshij) is indi- cated. These tombs had on tli(> south-east side a shrine or cluniel, ■' into the innermost part of which the light from the celestial body to which , was oiiented could enter. * * Tliey consisted of two and sometimes tliree chambers with narrow doorways which served, like the various sights and sections of a telescope, to direct Ui8 rays of light from the celestial body to a given spot — that sjiot in the case of a pyramid being the centre of the shrine, where a figure of the deceased was placed." Now in these Soudan cemeteries, the star chiefly used as a " warning star" is Alj)ha Centauri, and it was .so used from the Xflth dynasty, about 2,700 before Christ. As, owing to the prece.ssion of the enuinoxes, the place of a star nui>t change, the later tombs would have an orientation * Soottish Review, October, 1899. t Tlie Cliinesu recotils do not iiuieh diiler, for they state that the first l']mpti or Folii reigned '2,952 years before CJH'ist, and he, too, composed astronouiical tai)Ies. The tirst King of the Imlies is said to iiave lived 3,5oH years before our era. and the aati'onomical eyoch of the iJrahniiiis is supposed to begin in 3,101 B.C. 6 soniewliat dittereiit from the inirliff ones, and Dr. Budge says the theory is strengthene.l l.y the fact that " archa-ologioal considerations indicate tliat the pyianiids wliicli have diflV-rei,t orientations helong to diH'erent periods." Prof. C. I'lazzi Sniytii, as you proltal.ly all know, wrote a hook on "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," in which he insisted that it was a measure of the polar diameter of the Earth, and was intended as u standard of weights and measures. It seems, however, thoioughly established that it is so oriented timt tlie passage points due north, at al. nngle wliich Col. Howard Vy.se measured as 26' 4 1 '. Sir John Herscliel calculated that in 2,121 B.C. the star a Draconis was the Pole star, and that its lower culmination was then 26^ in' 45". As the annual j.reces- sion in noi-th polar distance in that part of the sky is lb', the date of the orientation, .supposing Col. Vyse's measure to he exact, was 83 vears ))efore, or 2,201 B.C. According to Dr. F. C. Penro.se, Greek temples were similarly oriented, and in the same number of the ProceediHfjs of the Uoyal Society he gives several new instances. Three of the temples he has thus surveyed are oriented to //. Arietis, rising ; two to Spica lising ; one each to a Pegasi setting and a Leonis rising. To illustrate the' method of investigation I transcribe one :^- Xiiiiie of: Orienta- 'IVmple. jtion Angle. The new 26.5 9' A. Amplitude of star or .Sun. ''f^ch- |B. Cori-espoiuling alliuule.. •-''t'um. |C. Declinatiou ID. Hour angles E. Depression of Sun when star heliacal . . F. R. A G. Appro.\-imate date .Stellar Elements. r 6' 30' E 4 0' -10 35 (ill. 13m. ^ Solar Elements. 23h. .JSm. 445 B.C. f 7- 20' ]• 3^ 25' - 7 34' 7h. 2f,im. 12' Ih. 11m. Apiil !) Name of Star. a Arietis rising' In the case of temples the star would shine through some oi-ening in the wall into the adytum at the date of the festival with which °lhe temple was connected. The Greeks took lessons in astronomy from the Eu'vptians, and per- haps from the Assyrians, and in due cour.se became thL teachers of the - ins l{..'M,-.i. wni 1,1. Lucretius, the pott of (,eiencN-, gives tiR-tii tlmt uv.lit in .oiiK" IK 1.!.. \<.ises,* whicii sufler giievoiisly in my tnin.slitti.m :— <»f old, when Human life lay cruslifil to eaith Ity onerous creeds, eacli claiminj,' beiivenly liiith, Wliiuli showed their horriil forms in dreadful yuise, The (Jreeks lirst dared to lift their (lue.itionins; eyes. No tales about the gods, no lightning ilire, Xo growling thunder, threatening heavin's ire. ( 'owed their free uiinds or stopped their opening w i.lo 'I'lie gates of nature, theretofore untried. And thus the living forces of the soul Hegan to contemplate one glorious whole. Outreached the luminous boundaries of K;iitli, Made tiie great universe a Held of worth Kor mental culture, and correctly taught The lawful bounds of profitable thought. In his "Republic,"! Plato considers of tin- sciences to be studied. First, lie mentions aritLnietic.aud then geometry, "which draw^i the soul towards truth and creates the spirit of philosophy." Next, he names astronomy, " For every one, as I think, must feel that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." "The .spangled heavens," he nrges, "should be used as a pattern, and with a view to that higher knowleilge." And he insists that they .should be studied with love "since knowledge acpiired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind." These old philosophers had some fniv conceptions of the mechanism of the heavens. A paper by Mr. ^S J. Musson, in our Transactions for last year, gives an excellent account of the tiieories of motion held by various Greeks, and Vince's "Complete system of astronomy," which we i,os.sess, gives a good summary of the history of the science among eantern nations. It seems clear to me that Plato >poke of the Earth as " revolving " around its pole, though the word nsed may have another meaning. Nor could Anaxagoras have explained the way in which the Moon is illuminated unless he had understood its motion with reference to both Earth and Sun. He was imprisoned for so doing ; the world often maltreats its benefactors. The Aristotelians reasoned out the neces^ sary rotundity of celestial bodies, and the Pythagoreans seem to have held a proper theory of the revolution of the ^^•andering stars. One can see in ' J)e natura reruni, Lib. I., vv, 6:<-()7. + Hook VII. tn« Atlnnteau n.ytl. that tl.o ancients appreciated the etiect upon our Klobo of mmnw forces a.ul of heavy storn.s. Bu^ though they prepared the way tor such nu-n as Tycho Hrahc an.l Copernicus, we must ho.iour ^ ".''•'''" *'"' "« "'" """> ^vho hiunched the l,ar(p.e of astronoinical scienc.. upon its great modern career. All l.efore hin. I call th.. .Mild- hood of astronomy. With him its vigorou.s youth hegan. Our Lihrarian has placed us in possession of a copv of Galileo's works pnnte.l at l5oIo.„r i„ lOo.',, only thirteen years after his death. It seems to me that mv -ot nearer to the great n.en of p^ist centuiies through the perusal of tlu-.se old editions, and he must he dull indeed who does not feel a thrill of ..nusual interest when he sees the Syderins Nuuri,,. in somethnig like its original dress. After the dedication to Cosmo, of the Medici, dated in March, 1(110 and the license to print, declaring that the work contains nothing con- trary to the Holy Catholic Faith, the State, or approved custom, the second and fuller title of this celebrated tract appear.s, " 7%! Asfron. omical M>'m'n,,er, l.oing an account of recent observations with the new Perspidllum on the surface of the Moon, the Milky Way and the nebulous stars ; algo of the innumerable Hxed stars and of four planets nann-d the stars of Cosmo, never before seen." (In the dedica- tion they are called "Aledicean stars.") " About ton months ago," says Galileo, "there came a rumour to our ears that a crtain i^elgian had made a lens by the aid of which nsible objects, though far from the eye, could be distinctly seen, as if they were near, * * which some believed and others not. A few days afterwards the fact was conHrmed in a letter I had from Paris which caused me to turn r.iy thoughts to the reason for the effect, and to |>'-eparn>g an instrument that should produce the same result I ."Studied the subject of r.-fraction, and, having n.ade my.self a leaden tube I fixed glass lenses in the ends of it, plane on one side and spherical on the other— one convex and the other concave. On placing my eye to the concave glass, I looked at some objects of fair size and at a shoit distance, which I fo.md three times as close and nine times as large as when looked at with nati.ral sight. 1 then made another instrument winch magnified sixty times. Finally, sparing neither time nor money, I made one so excellent that ..hings Hien by it were almost a thousand tn.,.>.sonla..g.'d,and appeared more than thirty times a.s close as when viewed by unaided vision. ' a 9 Tlio levolutioumy an-l opoeh-inuking namitive of two n.ontlis' olm.,, VHtioris follows. « First as to the Moon. " It i.s of coiisefiuence," he says, '• t.. know that the surface is not smooth and highly polisl.eil, as fo.m.'ily sup- 130Sb(l, and of exact spherical .sil,.l..^ as the great cohort of pi.ilosophers Ii.'ive thought it and other celestial hodies to he, hut, on the cntrary, acculeuted and rough, covered with swellin-s iind cavities, and fur- rowed like the Earth with mountain ridges and deep valleys." He likens the spots to the eye.s on a peacock's tail and to tin- marks on the .surface of chilled glass. He applauds the l'vtln.goreans. who said the Moon was like an-.ther Karth, ami thinks the Earth, seen from ata,. would resemble her, especially in mountainous parts like Jiohemia. Alluding to the features we call nmrin, as well as to the more fre(iuent hut smaller craters, and the diflering phenomena of sunrise and sunset thereon, he opines that lunar hills are much loftier than ours. As to the fixed stars, he thinks it strange thev do not appear so much increased in l>rilliancy as the power of the telescope would seen, to call for, since witli a magnifying power of a hundred, stars of thr titth and sixth magnitude show no brighter than those of the Hrst do to the naked eye. While the planets look like spheres or little momis, no disc can be noticed to the fixed stars, which are surrounded with •■ays, like lightnhigs, but in addition to the .stars of the fifth ami sixth magnitude the lens reveals an incretlil>le number of smaller ones. His pamphlet gives several engravings of the :\roon, and diagrams of th. belt and sword of Orion, also of the Pleiades, in which h,>. shows 30 stars instead of the six which are usually visible to the naked eye. He pro- ceeds to rejoice in .setting the world free from the disputes, which to.' so 10 in many ct'iituries had engaoed pliilosoi-liecs. as to the essence <.i- material ')f the Milky Way, which is seen in his telescope to be merely a collec- tion of innumerable stars, and, passing to nebula-, he gives an engraving of one in the head of Orion ; also of the Prasepe. In the former lie Hgures 21 stars, and the latter, sy far from being a single object, is an assemblage of more than .")0. L;>:stly, and- with more interest still, he describes the four secondary planets he has discovered, circling aiound Jupit.'r. On the seventh of the preceding January (1610), in the second hour of the night, he was looking at the stars with his newest telescope, when .Jnpitor became visible, and he saw three small but bright stars near the planet, which he supposed to be fixed, but admired because they were in a straight line, parallel to the ecliptic. Two were to the .-ast of Jupiter, one to the west. Eight days thereafter, by a chance he cannot explain, he looked again, and saw (piite a dirt'erent situation ; all three were west of the great planet. His work gives Gf) diagrams of their positions, w^th an occasional fixed .star as a point of comparison, and explains that the four satellites revolve around Jupiter as the Moon does around the Earth. The whole of these aunouneements— title, dedication, figures and all— are contained in a pamphlet of 41 pages, and, at the end, the •' candid reader " is told he may expect more soon, a promise which was fultilled in i\\; Sihrml Mesnenyer, \>i&\X{;(\ in 1611. tialileo having found in his survey of the heavens something he did not wish to i)ublish at the time, announced it to Kepler in the follow- ing jumliie of 37 letters : — Suiaismrmilmepoetaleumibvnenvgttaviras. Kepler tried to put this '• pie "into intelligible words, but failed, so on Noveud)er 1.3th, ItilO, Galileo wrote to him from Florence, whither he liad muved from Padua, and gave him the answer to tlip enigma •— aUisshinoii plniif/aut teKjfiiiunvin ohnerrari. (1 have seen the farthest planet divided into three, or, consisting of three paits. ) Anothf-r such jumble concealed until 1st January, 1610, the dis- covery of the phases of Venus. The Coutiuuation announced also, though with .some uncertainty, the gibbosity of Mars. Xo wonder Kepler said th-al Galik'o used his lens lik.- a ladder, with which to scale the fiirlhest and loftiest ramparts of the world ! U 11 Itiit all was not done yet. Our volunic contains tlie long and faiiioiis treatise Ddh' inncc/iie Solari (on sun-sj.ot.s), the e(iiially famous .■]e disc, but we know the distances of many of them, we know that they are in rapid motion, that they are of many kinds, in various stages of growth or decay, that they are not all luminous, that some are revolving around each other. We know several of the sub- stances present in their glowing atmospheres and we are en-.a-^ed in measuring not only the light they emit but the heat we recefve" from t^.em, and s.ich is the perfection of our instruments, that at the Yerkes Observatory, Mr. Nichols has a radiometer so sensitive that the heat of a J^vndle, 28 kilometres or 17| miles away, will make it deviate a mil- .metre. Arcturus gives us no more heat than a common candle S or '. kilometres or 5 miles distant. Yet we can measure it : What would 16 ' 1 5 t (Jiilileo tliink of tlie pliotogropliic exjiiniimtioii of C»iiiegii Centauri, in the .southern heinisplieiv, where ovei- 7,000 star-i are seen in a luiuinous patch rcseiiililing a faint cloiul, and smaller than the Moon, of which we know that IL'O are variahle? (iaiileo was fortunately wrong in thinking he had settled all (jiiestions aljout the Milky Way ; it is the subject of more lively interest now than ever. It seems to be the rim of the stellar aggregation of which our Sun forms part, and may be likened to the equator on the globe. Most .star.s of the tiist magnitude appear to be dispo.sed in another great belt in a way resembling the ecliptic. The stars of difi'eient constitutions .•?eem to be sorted out in layers or streaks, insomuch that a great (HHerence is noted between the actinic and visual light of .stars of ditl'erent galactic latitudes. The most earnest attention of astronomers is now l)eing given to stellar spectroscopy, the precise work being three- fold — the classification of stars according to the type of spectrum they show, the measurement of the wave-lengths of their bright and dark spectral lines, to identify the substances in their atmospheres, and the measurement of the displacement of such .spectral lines from the normal, by which the velocity of the stellar motion in the line of .sight can be determined. For this, the giant telescopes are used, also for the measurement of close double stars, the spectroscopic and photographic examination of nebuhe and the discovery of new planetary satellites. They are not employed in the work formerly done by smaller instru- ments, but in that which until their advent could not be done at all, so that the smaller observatories still have their hands full, and there is room even for the ordinary instrument of the amateur. To place this question on its lowest plane, 'tis clear there is no telescope so small that its use will not give a better conception than the unaided eye of the features of the Sun, Moon and stars, and enal)le its possessor to read with increased interest the works of astronomical wiiters. One of the most interesting discussions of the present day is as to the age of our system, and e.specially of our own planet, vvhich is distinct from the question of the time when man fiist developed upon it, and equally natural and appropriate at the close of a century. Between the physicists and the students of the natural sciences, the battle races hotly. At the head of the former stands the illustrious Lord Kelvin, who announced his opinion in 18G2, when he was Prof. William Tlioiiipson.* From the rate of increase of heat as the miner goes down- * Transadiom Royal .Socii'ty Kdinburgh, vol. xxiii. 17 ward, he reasoned out the rate of secular cooling, and declared that our Earth must be more than twenty but less than four hundred millions of years old. This argument has been reinforced by one depending on the retardation of the Earth's rotation by tidal friction, and another on the limitation of the age of the Sun. Lord Kelvin has, therefore, reduced his r.aximum to "not much more than twenty millions." The contest IS by no means new. In the Atlantean myth are clear traces that the geologists of pre-Christian days required great lapses of time between deluge and deluge. That great geologist Hugh Miller, though a cata- clysmist, a believer in the sudden destruction of whole races of living beings by terrestrial catastrophes, in beautiful and forcible EnHish almost unequalled in our literature, proved the existence of life duHn- incalculable teons. It is, therefore, historically right that the geolo^is^t of to-day, under the banner of Sir Archibald Geikie, should have tlken up the gage of battle against Lord Kelvin, for them.selves as well as the biologists. Nor is the subject unimportant, for if the sciences are tine they must be concordant, and it is needful, in the warfare of true know' ledge against superstition, which is .surviving ignorance, that divergences should be removed, as removed they cannot fail to be. The whole of Sir Archibald's address to the British Association, 1899, ought to be read by all interested in the subject; but I will quote a few sentences now. "Even in the most ancient of the sedimentary registers of the Earth's history, not only is there no evidence of colos.sal floods, tides and denudation, but there is incontrovertible proof of continuous orderly deposition, such as may be witnessed to-day in any quarter of the globe. * * The conclusions drawn from the nature and arrangement of the sediments are corroliorated and much extended by the structure and manner of entombment of the enclosed organic remains. * * Undoubt- edly, most impressive of all the pala^ontological data is the testimony borne by the grand succession of organic remains among the stratified rocks as to the vast duration of time required for their evolution. ♦ * So far as I have been able to form an opinion, one hundred millions of years would suffice for that portion of the history which is registered in the stratified rocks of the crust. But if the paUeontologists Hnd such a period too narrow for their requirements, I can see no reason on the geological side why they should not be at liberty to enlarge it as far as they may Hnd needful for the evolution of organized existence on the globe." 18 II Sir Arclubald proceeds to regret the absence of numerical data to forn. a satisfactory basis to con.pute the rate of denudation, and asks for the aid of all who can furnish any, as to the wearing away of coasts tiie decay of buildin^-s, and even of ton.bstones. I feel called upon to resjwnd to his request with a new rule for measurement. Our West Algoma is a severely glaciated region, in which none but archa.an rocks remain, and n)any gold-bearing reefs have been exposed Since the ice-cap left, the surface has been decaying, and the greater part of the aluminous and siliceous constituents of the rocks has been removed by water and wind. But the particles of gold, which are not destructible and are of too high a speciHc gravity to be blown awav or carried off by trickling rain, have, in favourable places, been left and I had a number of assays made hist summer from one such spot The gold contents of the reef, when " the .solid " wu. reached, were about $3 50 to the ton, but the thin surface .soil assayed .$100, and, for several inches down, the fine particles of the precious metal had " crawled " into the crevices, enriching this surface rock to al,out $12. Averaging, the cold contents of half a foot in depth at $25 to the ton, there nmst have been an erosion of nearly eight feet, to yield the values. Now, in 1875 I raised a large gneiss boulder to the surface of my grounds in Toron'to since which there has been a noticeable decav, but it cannot exceed the twentieth part of an inch. If the Algoma rocks have been disintec^rated at this rate, it would have taken G.OGO years to wear away a foot and nearly 50,000 years to erode the eight feet in question. I once meas ured the amount of detritus carried away by the creek which ran below the i.lateau where I live, by taking given quantities of its turbid witer in times of freshet and measuring the sediment. Assuming continuity of conditions, I found it must have taken 70,000 years to excavate the valley of that Rosedale brook, and I argued that if the geological theory were true and the removal of a glacier dam at the foot of Lake Ontario had caused the fall of its water-level, this was the time that had elapsfd since the ice age here. As the ice must have left this latitude and elevation before it left Algoma, the calculations tally fairlv, which m-iy indeed be fortuitous, but it is only by averaging reasonable calculations that a safe esti, ,ate can be r'ached. I do not think the time given for the decay of a foot of granite should cause incredulity. I have*seen the Pont du Gard, in France, built about 1,700 years ago, and the -,eat stones there have not decayed three inches. The climate there is perh-ips 1 19 the le.ss severe, but I think the material is limostone. which can scarcely be so durable as granite. But ,lo rocks, covere.l lightly by the product o then, own decay and by vegetation, take longer^/welr awlv thTn U.ose uncovered and does u.uch interior decay proceed along with exterior weathering? An affirmative answer to both these cp.estions would perhaps not n.uch change the result obtained ; but, until thev a.nl nmny others can be answered, much doubt will envelop the subject and th« Imnts of possible error will have an enoruu.us superior ran' tion^nf'.t "° T^"'^ '^^"'"^'""^ ''"^"^"^ '"^-^ •^"^" ""^-°in that por. on of the quaternary penod which is subsequent to the ice a^e here he disappearance of the ice-cap must be geologically very recent A hundred t.n.es as nmch would be all too short for the evolution of" pre- sent ormsot l.fe iron, its first beginnings in early stratified rocks, be ow winch we avetensof thousands of feet n.ore of strata in which Z Uaces of hfe are visible. I myself measured 30,000 feet of the early Cambrian black slates exposed on the north-west of Lake Superior, a, d arched for many weeks for traces of Hfe therein, without fi.uling any Only after hese do we come to the archa.an formations, of unknown thi.k. ness It does seem, fain though I am to take .sides with the physicists hat there IS .some error in their computations, of omLssion or assumption and hat t ns world is almost from everlasting, while almost to everlast! ing It must go on, as nideed they themselves prove. Lord Kelvin's argument, however, like everything emanating from bim, IS beautifully simple. He adopts Fourier's analysis of the follow! ing problem : Given, an infinite plane dividing an infinitely large solid nass, with different constant temperatures on each side of the pFane (a he beginning of an epoch). What will be the rate of variationlr oint to point, and the actual temperature at any point ? He shows that m the case of a globe 8,000 miles through, the surface may be con- sidered as such a plane, and the depth inHnite, without sensible error for .nore than a thousand millions of years. We thus have an equation nto wn.eb there enter as elements the initial temperatures, th time he distance of any point from the given plane an.l the temperature o^ that pom at the time, also the conductivity of the solid. A tyro in differentials can follow the " mathematical poem " throughout Assum ing time to be a hundred million years, the conductivity, in ."elati.n to TOOO i ottert "r " ''"' °' ''''"'"'■-' ""'^^ ' ^"^^'^'- temperature 7,000 iiotter than the present surface, the rate of increase works out 20 H u one fifty (irst part of a degree i)er foot for the first hundred thousand feet or so, such rate then rapidly decreasing. The chief variation allowrtMe is in the function of tiie conductivity, and this, diminished by half or increased by one-half, gives the superior and infeiior limits first alluded to l)y Sir Arch. Geikie. What new fact has induced Lord Kelvin to reduce his estimate 1 do not yet know. The effective tempe- rature of the Sun is stated in the Anlrophijsical Journal for August, 1899, as li,;50U' Centigrade, which equals 20,340° Fahr., and if the Earth had at the first a heat approaching this, and the cooled surface did not sink, as Lord Kelvin assumes it did, until by convection the temperature was so much reduced that the Earth became practically a solid — if, moreover, tlie protection given by its atmosphere of many miles* introduces a neglected element into the Fourier problem — it may be that even Lord Kelvin's estimate will be again revised and meet biological requirements. The extension of our thermonietrical range by Dewar's appai'atus in London, and Moissan's electric furnace in Paris, has made it possible to study the behaviour of substances under conditions of cold and heat respectively, which could not be produced until now. In our immediate neighbourhood are great factories of carbides of calcium and silicon. It is possible that much of our world's original carbon is in the .shape of carbides down below. Some of their known qualities may determine the position of active volcanoes which are all near oceans, and otherwise influence miners' experiences as to increasing heat. Some progress has been made in the enquiry into the sync'aronism between magnetic storms on the Earth and changes in the luminosity of comets, and this being a discovery of my own, first announced to this Society, I venture to descant upon it here. If a magnetised bar be suspended at right angles to the magnetic meridian, one force with which it strains towards its normal position, parallel with that meridian, is called the Hoiizontal Force, while if it be so pivoted as to oscillate up and down, the strain with which it dips towards the magnetic pole is called the Vertical Force. The third element. Declination, involving the angle between the geographical and magnetic meridians, is po.ssibly of little importance in this connection. These forces vary, like the wind, from hour to liour, and when the varia- tion is rapid and continuous and considerable, we have what is called a magnetic storm. Some years the magnets are stolidly quiescent, in others they show frequent and striking signs of great agitation, and it 21 lias been found tlmt tlie measure of annual distiiibance in the Sun, obtained from records of tbe areas of its 8i)ots, corresponds with tiie measure of the disturbance of onr magnets. This was first noted by Sir Edward Sabine, wiien, in 1851, he was discussing the magnetic observa- tions at Toronto and IloVmrton from 1843 to 1848, and found in both a progressive increase of disturbiince. Schwabe had just then pulilished his taldes of sun-spot frequency, which sliowed an increase of spot areas during those very years. Mr. Ellis has published diagrams in the Pro- ceedim/s of the Royal Society which establish this concordance to the present date. The delusion that sun-spots are the ca«.ses of magnetic disturbance must be dispelled. Many of onr magnetic storms can be traced on the records as in process of preparation for months before the appearance of a sun-spot, appearing as .slighter but very evident disturbances at ]>revious periods, measured by the length of the Sun's synodical rotation. Thus the sun-spots can only be an effect of some cause which also makes the magnets tremble. The frequently coincident appearance of great sun- spots and magnetic disturVwnces shows indeed that there is a bond of relationship between them, but no rule obtains as to the position of the spot on the solar disc. At the crisis of the storm, the spot may or may not have reached or passed centrality. Other phenomena are associated with these disturbances. The auroral curve is intimately connected with those of Magnetic Forces. The number of thunder-storms is said to be influencetl by them too. In the Comptes RenJus of June ::6th, is a table of the number of earth- quakes in Greece, from 1893 to 1898, which follow fairly well the descending curve of sun-spots, for that j)eriod. In the Monthly Weather Review for April, the eruptions of Manna Loa are reported to coincide approximately with sun-spot minima, and the same thing has './een .said about the eruptions of ^tna, though further statistics are needed in both cases. I do liot find any agreement in the case of the Philinine islands' volcanoes. Mr. C. Parkinson, writing in a fecent CornhiU of phosphorescence in the ocean, says that " on certain nights the entire marine fauna pulsates with a mysterious incandescent force suggestive of some connection with the. magnetic currents of the universe." If now we can sustain the assertion that comets feel this influence at the same time that Sun and Earth do, we locate the oricin of the disturbances in the Sun — not in the region of cosmic space through which the system is passing. ; i I 92 Jii Pnif. JJiirnHrrf'b kmtn^ifr*. of tlie bicakiiij,' up of Il»,.ierfect, owing to continuous bad weather. The comet si-O'Oti ~. >< re been very variable, and the magnetic weather was mo;^?. '.i- 'tbie too. Ti iV was a very great storm from the 15tli to the .Ti'th September, the greatest violence being however, before and after the date given for the cometic change. Comet 28 1388, I, gives a iniicli inoio distinct confiriimtioii of my views, for on tlie 20th May, the diiy moiitioued by Prof. Kroutz, tht; greatest depression of the year occiirre.l in tiie curve of Horizontal Force, and one of the most reniai-l.al)le magnetic storms known was accompunied hyono of the most I'lilliiint uur( I :i' all over tlie world. Though it was at a sun-spot uiinimiMii, tliere was a large regular spot on tiio Sun followed l)y many otliersinan irregular stream, the whole in a state of constant change. The sjiotted areas for May and the two montliH preceding and following, were:— 1888 Umbra" March 5 April 4 May 37 J 11 tic July W'luile apotfi. . .^4 26 206 30 •-'3 The principal spot, fnst seen on I\Iay 11th and last observed on the 23id, was 37 past the central solar meridian by noon on the 2Uth, Greenwich civil time. It oiUy needs a few more of such striking coincidences to establish my theory beyond a shadow of doubt. It must be admitted that no marked d''i)ression occurred on January ICth, 189;}, the date given for a change in the comet Holmes;* there was indeed an increase of Horizontal Force on the previous dav. But a great variability in the comet is recorded, as well as a much disturbed magnetic curve in November and December, 181)2, the S S. maximum then fast approacliing. As meteoric stones are known to vary in composition, so comets perhaps vary too, and all may not be equally susceptible to the particular solar influence which produces the brightening or dispersion of their appendages. As showing the effect ot this influence on another body than the Earth, 1 nuist refer to Leo Brenner's observation of Mercury on INIay ]8lii, 189G, when he was astonished tf ee the dark side of the i)lanet surrounded by a beautiful aureole. To make sure it was not an illusion, he called Madame Manola to the telescope. That day was the crisis of a magnetic storm upon the Eaith. lie has promised to send me a list of the days when he has seen aureoles around the dark side of Venus, a much more frequent piienomenon, that I may see if they are coincident with magnetic disturbances. * In the Transactions Royal Society for March, 1893, page 'A'A2, the account.s given of this comet for January and February do not agree with I. of the Nachrichten. The only sign of a tail alluded to is on January 27th and . hruary 4th, when there were depressions in the Horizontal Force curve. 24 Berberich's paper on Eucke's comet gives data as to its brightness from 1786 to 1885. The intensity it ought to show is given by tlie formula/ = ;^:^z,^heve r is the distance of the comet from the Sun and D its distance from tlie Earth. After carefully reading the accounts he gives of its observed brightness, I have assigned to them numerical values from 1 to 10, placing a concordance with the average between 5 and G, and have constructed a curve therefrom, wliich agrees remark- ably with the Ellis curves of magnetic Horizontal Force and of sun- spot areas. Berl)erich thinks a higher power of r should be used to bring calculated intensity into accord with what we see when the comet is bright. I suggest adding instead another foctor, connected with magnetic stresses, and I hope to tind what it should be. I do not doubt that other periodical comets are most luminous at times of great magnetic disturbance, or that more comets can be observed in such seasons. That is, however, a different phenomenon from what I have noted, viz., the immediate effect upon some comets of particular ma^rne- tic storms. * is. U* 5 r '^ No. 1 is the curve for brillancy of Eucke's Comet. No. 2 is the cuvve of Hor. Magnetic Force. No. ;! is the curve of sun-spot areas. Tlie second and third from Mr. Ellis paper; the first prepared from Berberich's descriptions by the author. Last year was not an minus mhahilis for observational astronomy. The Sun was almost clear of spots. The planets were not in very favourable positions. No large new stars blazed out. Comets were few 26 and small. Even the November meteors were disappointing. Here it was generally cloudy and I saw through the drifting clouds but one, which was not a Leonid, as it came from Cancer and cros.sed the barely visible sickle in Leo. It is a beautiful sight to see a large shooting star through a haze or mist. Dr. Larratt Smith observed one such, in Janu- ary last, which shot upwards from a radiant below the horizon, and Mr. Gordon Mowat reports seeing one through a cloud which shut other stars from view. The observatoiy at Meudon collected Leonid notes from Deliii in India to San Francisco, and observers all rejjorted a paucity of meteors. The calculation of Leverrier was thus verified, that after the fine display of 186G, the Leonid ring would pass near enough to Jupiter and Saturn to have its orbit changed, and no confocal stream supplied its place, which seems to prove that the meteor-roadway of the ortho-Leonids is comparatively narrow. It is thought the star-shower will be more brilliant in November next. Remarkable observations were, however, made from balloons, two of which were sent up from Paris and three from other places to see the Leonids from above the clouds. Miss Klumpke, an attachee of Meudon, was one of the aeron- auts. Balloon observations afford several advantages. The stars shine brighter when seen from above the mists of Earth. Notwithstanding the light of the nearly full Moon, all the stars in Leo Minor could be well seen, and the colours of the meteois were far better marked. Only minutes were noted, as no chronometer was taken up, but in future ascents, when the omission will be made good, comparisons both as to colour and brilliancy can be made with observations from terra Jirma. The course of such balloons, ascertained by compass, can be checked by dropping weighted cards. The Perseid stream, of August, as important in its bearing on meteoric astronomy as the Leonid ring, was well observed in Europe, the average number of meteors during five days being about 100 an hour; and from a simple calculation we can obtain a very fair idea of the celestial spaces involved in the display. The Earth is 8,000 miles through, and rushes across the meteor-stream with a front we may estimate as equal to a plane of fifty million of miles in area. Supposing an observer can see 35 miles in every direction, he covers about 5,000 square miles, so that ten thousand stations would be needed to see all the meteors that fell. Now a hundred an hour, at ten thous- and stations, for five days, means a hundred and twenty million meteor- ites. Again, the orbit traversed by the Earth in a year is about six i 26 hundred millions of miles long, so that in five days, the Earth would have crossed eight millions of miles, which is the breadth of the thickly starred i)art of the Perseid stream— the only necessary allowance being for the angle at which the orbits of the Earth and of the meteors inter- sect. Further, the Earth travels its own diameter-length in about seven minutes, so that the plane of fifty million miles with its ten thousand stations met within the space traversed in that time 120,000 meteors, and each one must have been flying along over thirty miles, on the average, from its neighbours. Though experienced star-gazers may remember more splendid transitory sights than those of last year, observers who are young, either from years or from newly kindled interest (and of such there is a fresh crop every season) have had enough to stinnilate them. They have enjoyed what some of us have long since lost ; the exquisite luxury of vivid first impressions. The bright diamonds which attend on Jupiter can be seen every year with quite small telescopes ; so, too, can the wonderful Saturnian microcosm. Double stars and nebula; are always with us, I was about to say unchanged, but that is not the case ; com- panion stars circle about each other, while changes in the form and itlative brightness of parts of some nebulaj are thought to be noticeable also. The Moon is only inconstant in a Shakespearean sense, she is an object of transcendent loveliness of which old astronomers never tire ; 1 know not whether she is more beautiful when the lace like edge of the cresent shows like a fringe between the glare of her sunrise and tlie darkness of her half month-long night— when she shines full upon us, a silvery, shadowless sphere— or when, the veil of eclipse thrown over her, she is coloured with the lovely bronze and blue tints of diffracted light. Though i)a.ssing shows have been few, there has been no i)ause in the progress of our science. Wonderful news reaches us from the moun- tain tops, where the clearest seeing is. Tlie observatories thei'e ai'e in an astronomical fairy land, where the visible stars are brighter than below, and doubles shine with colours like " combinations of garnets and sapphires, topazes and rubies." Schaeberle, at the Lick telescope, has seen, of a dull purple, the uiassive companion to Procyon, previously only known to exist by inference, like many other so-called dark stars. The companion to ^ 27 Sirius is calculated to be of great size and weight, and it is very obscure. It was first seen by Alvan G. Clark in 18G2, and has lately been almost in line with its principal, but now emerges. Its orbit is described in 52-20 years. The chief companion to Algol goes round in less than three days.* Prof. See suggests that daik stars seem to be so because they shine with vibrations our optic nerves cannot respond to — say of the ultra- violet type. They may in such case be hereafter caught on a well focussed photographic plate, which is sensitive to vibrations the eye cannot perceive. Phcebe, the new ninth satellite of Saturn, was so found, and has not yet been distinguished by direct vision. It is the most distant of his family, just within the limit of permanent attrac- tion, and quite small, showing oidy as a 15 5 magnitude starlet. More asteroids have been "located." The first, Ceres, was dis- covered on the first of January, 1801, by Piazzi, at Palermo. The eccentric Eros, first known as D. Q. (No. 433), was introduced to his elders in 1898, and now we have E.W., which means that thirty have been found since then. The family group is now so large that when new members are caught, they are turned loose again, unless their orbits present some noticeable peculiarity. Spectroscopists have scored another triumph in the discovery of a layer of carbon in the Sun. Piof. G. E. Hale and Mr. F. Ellerman, of the Yerkes Observatory, announce that they have found it at the base of the chromosphere, a very thin envelope, but unmistakealle. Only instruments of the highest power have revealed its existence. Non- telescopic spectroscopists rejoice in the discovery of vauadium in almost all stony meteoiites, while it is absent from siderites, which they con- sider proves diversity in their origin. Physicists are to the fore with an ex[)lanation of transparency, based, if I understand Mr. Sarzac aright, on the arrangement of the jtarticles in the medium and on its elasticity. Light-waves, striking the surface of glass, water, or the like, force back its particles and communicate successive vibrations, which, if the thickness be not sufticient to absorb *It ia interesting to compare these periods with those of boilius sucli as one of the compoiieiits of the doublo-doiible « Lyne, which takes 900 years to revolve, or the comet of 1811 which is calculated to have an elliptical orbit with a period of nearly 2,000 years. 28 the impulses, are transmitted by the second surface to the ether on tlie otner side. Transparency, and the index of refraction, depend on the arrange.nent of the particles in such a method as to propagate wave motion harmoniously. The communication has recently been made to the French Academy. In Radiography we now speak of Rnssel rays and Becquerel rays in addition to those of Roentgen. It is suspected indeed that all matter, including the ht.man body, emits influences which will aflfect a sensitized plate, if kept in darkness for a sufficient time. Until last year uranium was thought to be the substance whose emanations most rapidly affected the film ; it was displaced by radium, but Madame Curie's discovery of polonium gives us a metal which has four hundred times as much energy, and that without apparent exciting cause or perceptible diminution.' Radium IS even more energetic, with this remarkable difference, that its influence is aflected by an electro-magnetic field, whereas the radiations of polonium seem not to be deflected thereby. This new science has already many applications, the latest being a proposal of Dr. Kolle's, in the Electrical Engineer, to supersede some of the processes ot' typography. I do not know under what head to class the announcement by Mr. Chas. Honoie, of ]V[ontevideo, that the body of the sun, interior to the pliotospliere, rotates somewhat more rapidly than the visible exteiior and on an axis inclined lo that we see evidence of. He promised proof, and thinks that periodicites in the phenomena of temperature and earthquake can be referred to this helio-thermic year. 7 7T \ :^i 't ^ ^^ ^ IK 29 % We have had some very inter- esting lecoids from tlie Toronto .seismograph. The instrument is of tiie Milne type, only intended to show the time at whicli shocks occur, to aid in studying the rapid- ity of the transmission of tiemors, and thus learning something more about the eifective rigidity of the Earth. It is not meant to show the character of the o.scillations, but it does to some extent show their violence. In 1898 it gave us notes of 28 eartluiuakfs, and in 1899 of 37, the excess being prob- ably due to its improved setting. Of these no less than 29 weie in September lust. It seems by the tri^cings that for several days the Earth was constantly shiverin" until on September lOtii at 17h. 11 '56" Greenwich mean time a great throe began. The record from Victoria, B.C., miscarried in the mails, so we lack the most in- teresting coa)pari.son, but at Kew the first tremor was 3 minutes 7 seconds later. The maximum was noted here at 20h. 42' U" Green- wich mean time, and at Kew 24 minutes 't'2 seconds later. Another great shake began at 20h. 42' 14" Greenwich mean time, with a maxi- I'.uui at 22h. :y G". Mr. Stupait, the director of our observatory, has kindly given me the tracin"H and I show you that of the last great shock. The whole dis- 80 tarbnnoe lasted (or nine lioui-. H)n„„l. .-i quiet reigned. Ti,e ceL e f d tf """" '" '""'"" »'"«''"" Nortl..„e..cr„ C„ Lr tut I r""-"" "™'- *'"""' ^t. Eli«. in line there we ,1,„11 e' »ff "\^">«'«'"' "»n tl,e l'„cifio eoa,t. ■n,e ,„„„, ■e.eeta 1': ,.;::.: ;',: "■'.»"■■- A„.H e„,.t„„„..,e. w.a 4,000 n,il« or „,„re in Ce er ' "? T'' ''' "'" »''"<'^' per„,„„entlj cl,„n«ed , „ ", „7i , ''" "'""o"'- "' ""> -««Wine »« knownlnnd'n.ark,',:;;' 1 ,*:f ';;;;.y™>--J ..,. and well- ocean, tl,e water, on ...„ erj' e Lrf i h" '""1 '" ''"'" '"" Ind.an nd,uW,ants of the region were great]/, X;,^, tIT" S. J.el<«on, Superincendent o( M„eation of !ll„t w .. v\ i every glacier on the coast, the Mni. Racier with tt ^T .. , W,.,nred for a n.iie or n.ore fr'on, 11'-': irCrZ,? Ma'"8t,:,::r"';iv'',v'' "' "? '°°''"'» "'■"■•"■^ '■■ "- '--lip- «f ^tL.ie';:t ttr ;:i:::z?:^;i^r;:;r":r''' tlii» side, obaerver, will favonr Geor. i. Id A ,1 °, ' " ° "" «.„e the K.a.t interference fron, olonl' ZV^'Z T ri"', '""' :;:::■ z " '^™" °^ '^"." ^ °- ■"■« »■■»■■ ™'"' - •« ° ;:iw; extended, tlie oarm.ne prominences will prohablv l,e small and 7 ]>« both, as well as other nsnal phenon.en of u,L, e di e, wi^l I ' lZu7o ':: ■ '' "•""■'"'" «'■"'*"•■ "' "I-'' - "l»- worth going whieVi:rei:^ii':;i::;:';:,:7;r''°r™°'^ ■■''-- '■' ' •'J litis ai«ajs tak(-n a deep interest '< One. ,,t +i.„ reforn,s of the hist twenty years " sivs thp IF ./ 7P ^"''"^ f«„ «i 1 ., '"J^frtis, says the II ea/'/^er7e«nft?o of Waslii. ur ton, "has been silent y advancing. * * ti • '^ "i vva..i,ii,g. tion, where the one h red,., I,"!!";' '",''::'"■ !"."■= "«'- P- tion The tired and fifth is adopted," as it is on the me is the case in Canada, and the system i^ hemisphere. We have not yet succeeded in havi Pacific IS spreading on the other ng the twenty -four hour t. 81 notation commonly used, or in having astronomical and civil ti.ne brought together, the former still beginning its clay at noon The French Annuahe