Page images
PDF
EPUB

It

Nor is this all: up to 1846 this comet had appeared as a vague cloudy body to all observers, and it had a bright nucleus or centre. But at this time cloudy weather was universal over Europe and America for two months, and the comet could not then be seen; but when it was once more perceived, it was found that from some profoundly mysterious cause, it had two nuclei instead of one! next appeared in 1852, still travelling as a body with a double nucleus. It could not be seen on its return in 1859, nor in 1866, nor in 1872; so we cannot tell whether this curious body is still in the same state, or more divided, or again united; but this year he comes again to the region of our sun and will, it may be hoped, be visible. His return is, of course, looked for with the deepest interest, for it is known that one comet, at least (Gambert's), was definitively divided into two.

The question of the collision of the earth with comets, again, is very fertile in problems. What would be the result of collision? In May, 1861, astronomers followed with their telescopes a very beautiful comet which soon became visible to the naked eye. Its tail was enormously long; and it was ascertained, during the visibility of the comet, that the tail actually reached our earth, and extended beyond it. Thus the earth passed through a comet's tail on the 3rd of June, 1861: that is to say, the earth passed through the comet's tail just as a cannon-ball would pass through a cloud of dust. But what were the phenomena manifested as the result of this? Nothing of any remarkable character. There were observations of certain phosphorescent luminosities and certain aurora boreales, but nothing in any way alarming. So that we have, even as the result of this, no true light upon the question as to what is the actual effect of collision with a comet; but certain

phenomena have been noted that are very suggestive. In June, 1783, the atmosphere throughout Europe was suddenly invaded by a sort of dry fog of a very peculiar nature. It deposited no moisture, it did not affect the hygrometer; and it persisted when the wind rose and when the rain fell. It paled the lustre of the sun and lasted quite a month, and that which is most striking in it is— it was phosphorescent, and gave a soft light, like moonlight. At the end of 1821, a similar fog was observed in Western Europe, which continued twelve days. It very

materially affected the sun's light, and gave it a bluish tint; but twilight was very unusually bright, causing the day to be much prolonged; and it was affirmed that the light at midnight was so strong that one could read.

There was a similar fog in 1822, with similar phenomena. The only explanation is, that the luminosity arose from the presence in the air of a cometic substance, or that the earth was passing through some cosmic body. Still, it is manifest that our knowledge in such matters is most imperfect, so that we dare not dogmatize. Science teaches us much, but it also shows us that we have yet much to learn. Our danger is lest we be unduly uplifted by the former, and do not sufficiently consider and weigh the latter.

The Yellowstone National Park in America has been very steadily explored and scientifically studied for some time. Many remarkable facts and phenomena have been brought to light concerning this wonderful region. Mr. Norris describes the discovery of a mountain of glass, which rises in columns and immense masses countless in number, and hundreds of feet in height, from a hissing and seething hot spring, forming the margin of a lake, a barrier,

the main mass of which was three hundred feet high and sloped at an angle of 45° to the surface of the lake; its glistening surface being impassable, neither an Indian nor even a game track being found upon it. It was therefore necessary to make a road; and to do this, huge fires were made against the glass so as to thoroughly heat and expand it, and then cold water was suddenly thrown upon it, causing huge fragments to break off by sudden contraction; and by breaking these into smaller fragments, a road was constructed for the purposes of the explorers, over which wagons could be drawn. Thus a road constructed wholly of volcanically produced glass-perhaps the only one in the world-is amongst the curiosities of the Yellowstone Park. It is said that there are large quarries in the mountain which have evidently been worked by the Indians to get materials for arrows, spear-heads, and other instruments. The glass is of great hardness.

We have on several former occasions pointed out instances of the remarkable relations that may exist between plants and insects. An account was given some little time since of an Acacia-tree, which grows thorns containing food and providing shelter for ants, which ants protect the tree from the leaf-cutting ants which attack it, cutting off the leaves and putting them down to decay, so as to obtain a small fungus which grows upon these leaves in decay, and of which the predatory ants are fond. It is now known that certain birds build their nests and rear their young in this tree to secure protection for their unfledged brood, which on ordinary unprotected trees the ants attack and devour.

Another instance is now before us. The Trumpet-tree, a South and Central American plant, is also protected by a standing army of ants; but it

grows, for the sole use of its protectors, small food-bodies containing oil. It does not secrete nectar, however, of which ants are extremely fond; but to supply this lack, it harbours a small insect (a coccus), whose sweet secretions the ants greatly affect.

There is another plant, a parasitic plant, growing like the mistletoe in England, which is plentiful upon the trees of Borneo. The seedling-stem grows to about an inch in length, and remains in that condition until a certain species of ant bites a hole in the stem, which then produces a gall-like growth that ultimately constitutes a home for the ants. If the plant is not so fortunate as to be bitten by an ant, it dies; but if it becomes an ant city, they protect the tubers from all comers, and the plant becomes crowned with stemless flowers.

We presume that the ghost raised by the Edison 'subdivision of the electric light,' and the supply of electric force as an illuminator, a motor and a cooking agent, through the pipes and other conveniences laid down by the gas companies, is now at an end. The Times, in recording the

character of Mr. Edison's latest patents, sees sufficiently into their value to observe: 'It seems tolerably certain that the proprietors of gas shares may possess their souls in peace.'

Professor Roscoe, at the Royal Institution, has given a most interesting account of a new chemical industry. It arises out of the manufacture of Beetroot sugar. Seventy thousand tons of this are now annually manufactured in Europe. For this purpose the beet is crushed and the sugar is obtained by expression, the juice being refined, boiled, and allowed to crystallize. There is. molasses or syrup left behind. After

distillation there remains in the retort a liquid known as Vinasse. It was until lately wasted; but it contains salts of potash, and is now utilized to obtain these. The vinasse is evaporated to dryness and burned, and the ash is known as salin, rich in compounds of potassium ; and by this means two thousand tons of carbonate of potash are produced by the French distilleries.

But this is not all. There is yet a residual matter, some of which is nitrogenous. During the calcination of the dried vinasse the organic matter is decomposed, leaving a porous carbonaceous mass associated with the mineral residues. If this be subjected to destructive distillation in iron retorts, the volatile products of the decomposition may be secured just as in the process of gas making. On condensing these products they are found to be mainly tarry and ammoniacal liquors. But the ammonia water obtained during distillation of the vinasse-ash contains, among other products, large quantities of the salts of a substance known as trimethylamine; and upon the presence of this, the new manufacture is based. It was discovered thirty years ago, and is one of the compound ammonias: that is, a gaseous compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia may have one of its hydrogen atoms (in combination) replaced by an organic radical like methyl, thus we get methylamine. Then a second atom of hydrogen may be replaced by methyl, and thus a body is formed which is termed dimethylamine. Finally, the last atom of hydrogen may be replaced by this radical, and in this way is formed trimethylamine. This has been looked upon merely as a chemical rarity, and even now it has no industrial value; but it has been found that its hydrochlorate may be easily decomposed by heat into free ammonia (a very useful product), free trimethylamine and

chloride of methyl. This chloride is a combustible gaseous body easily condensed into a mobile liquid, and capable of preparation to any required amount. The interesting feature of this substance is that it is a powerful refrigerating agent. By rapid evaporation of the condensed liquid a very great reduction of temperature is produced; and as the liquid is neither poisonous nor corrosive, it may prove of very great importance in a commercial sense. Already M. Vincent has produced a refrigerating apparatus which is practically a freezing machine, in which, by the evaporation of chloride of methyl, as low a temperature as fifty-five degrees Centigrade below the freezing point may be obtained-a temperature below the freezing point of mercury.

The uncertainty of any calculations at present made as to the actual age of the world is constantly manifest by the conflict of conclusions drawn by the Physicists on the one hand, and the Biologists and Geologists on the other. It is instructive to note the nature of the calculations made very recently by a Geologist distinguished for such reasoning and conclusionsMr. Millard Reade. In a paper contributed to the Royal Society, heestimates the age of the world as enormously in excess of the limits assigned by the Physicists, and allows ample time for the production of all the changes of the organic and inorganic world postulated by the theory of evolution. Limestones, he remarks, have been in course of formation from the earliest known geological periods; but it would appear that the later formed strata are more calcareous than the earlier, and that there has, in fact, been a gradually progressive increase of calcareous matter. The very extensive deposition of carbonate of lime over wide areas of the ocean-bottom at the present day is attested by the soundings of the Challenger. Ac

!

cording to Mr. Reade, the sedimentary crust of the earth is at least one mile in average thickness, of which probably one-tenth consists of calcareous matter. In seeking the origin of this calcareous matter, it is assumed that the primitive rocks of the original crust were of the nature of granitic or basaltic rocks. By disintegration of such rocks, calcareous and other sedimentary deposits have been formed. The amount of lime-salts in waters which drain districts made up of granites and basalts is on an average about 3.75 parts in 100,000 parts of water.

It is furthur assumed that the exoposed areas of igneous rocks, taking

The

an average throughout all geological time, will bear to the exposures of sedimentary rocks a ratio of about one to nine. From these and other data, Mr. Reade concludes that the elimination of the sedimentary strata must have occupied at least six hundred million years. This would be the minimum age of the world. author infers that the formation of the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian strata must have occupied about two hundred million years; the Old Red Sandstone, the Carboniferous, and the Poikilitic systems another two hundred million; and all the other strata the remaining two hundred million.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

'THY WAY IS IN THE SEA:'

BY THE REV. JOSEPH DAWSON.

UPON a restless sea the age is cast;
And while a scattered few the haven find
Where waves are still and silent is the wind,
Unnumbered hearts now battle with the blast,
Nor can they tell how long the strife will last,
Nor whether what they count their richest gain
May soon be swallowed in the boundless main
That rocks them on its heavings wild and vast.
Thrice happy they whose souls the truth have gained
Taught long ago on Galilean sea-
When hearts beat quick, and startled eyes were strained
To find the Form that walked its waves was He-
Who know He reigns Who lordship then maintained,
And winds and waves must still His servants be!

SELECT LITERARY NOTICES.

Sermons. By the Rev. Phillips Brooks. London: Richard D. Dickinson.- Mr. Brooks may be regarded as the Robertson of America. He has evidently, to a considerable extent, consciously or unconsciously, made Robertson his model; albeit he is himself a sufficiently original, independent, self-consulting and self-reliant thinker. Therein, indeed, consists one of his strongest resemblances to Robertson of Brighton. These sermons exhibit most of

the excellencies and most of the defects of that eloquent and richly suggestive lecturer upon texts of Scripture. The selfconfidence of Mr. Brooks is not so obtrusive as that of Mr. Robertson, nor is it so offensive, in either sense of that word: it is neither so combative nor so distasteful to a thorough believer in the Bible. On the other hand, Mr. Brooks is Mr. Robertson's inferior as an expositor of Scripture, taking the discourses of the latter on the

Epistles to the Corinthians as the index of his power. Exegesis is not Mr. Brooks' taste, so it is not likely to be his forte. To him the Bible is a book of mottoes: a text is a thing to be talked about, in as ethical, interesting, able and generally pleasing and profitable a manner as possible. He usually shows an utter indifference to the context, and does not much trouble himself with correlating the saying of the sacred writer which he has chosen as the basis or starting-point of his remarks with the other utterances of the same inspired writer. The frequent result of this is that some secondary truth is thrust into the foreground, whilst the primary teaching of the passage is either cast into the shade or lost sight of altogether. This is glaringly the case in his otherwise very edifying and, of course, very striking Good Friday Sermon on: Then were there two thieves crucified with Him,' and 'I am crucified with Christ.' In treating of the latter text, the truths which were uppermost in St. Paul's own mind, at the time when he first spoke and then wrote those words (as is clear from the immediately preceding verses); the spiritual facts which were always uppermost and most influential, as proved from the whole tenor of his writings -namely, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ and justification by faithin Himthese are conspicuous by their absence. Now it must be seen at once that this is gravely wrong. In the first place, it is, from a merely literary and critical point of view, leaving out of sight the authoritative inspiration of St. Paul, an altogether indefensible misrepresentation of St. Paul's real views and sentiments. Mr. Brooks professes to be giving St. Paul's views and sentiments; in reality and in effect, he is paring down both the teaching and the experience of St. Paul to make it fit into the mental preferences and moral æsthetics of the Rev. Phillips Brooks and his Boston audience. Moreover, this is a most grievous practical mistake for a sincere and earnest Preacher to be betrayed into by intellectual self-indulgence-a man with an obvious and intense desire to be really helpful to his hearers in striving to be and do what they ought to be and do. The simple and robust believer cannot but feel how much more powerful, how much more real, all this fine Christian sentiment would be, if it were vitally connected with the revealed verities with which it was associated in the mind and the personal experience of St. Paul. A diluted Gospel is an enfeebled Gospel. If Divine truth be first maimed and then crutched by a speculative, self-evolved, self-pleasing dogmatism or doubtingness, it is, perforce, crippled, both

on the march and in the field of fight.

Hence the silver trumpet which Mr. Brooks puts to his muscular and skilful lips too often gives 'an uncertain sound,' which cannot but bewilder the man who is summoned to 'prepare himself to the battle' with evil, error, denial, and doubt. The evil spirit will not heed the most exquisite minstrelsy, if incertitude makes 'a rift in the lute,' so that neither the patient, in his paroxysm, nor the fiend in his fury, can 'know what is piped or harped.' Mr. Brooks-athlete as he is sometimes, happily not often, so fights 'as one that beateth the air'; strikes blindly and confusedly right and left, as if he could not clearly make out whether the form before were a friend or a foe. Aggressive, dogmatizing doubt seems to him to come in 'such a questionable shape,' that he must challenge it with the demand, 'Be'st thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned?'

Our readers must not for a moment suppose that these strictures apply to all, or even to most, of these remarkable discourses. More than one-third of the book is read before the slightest misgiving is aroused as to the completeness or the firmness of the Preacher's faith in the Scriptures, or the absoluteness of his deference to them. The first apprehension is awoke by a faintly-hinted, airily-syllabled universalism. This finds less indistinct articulation in the antepenultimate sermon, that from: 'Brethren, the time is short,' where the indefinite prolongation of life as a term of probation and a season of salvation after bodily death, is regarded as quite an open question in Christian theology. The obvious fact that this, to say the least, greatly enfeebles both the argument and the appeal of the Apostle, does not disconcert Mr. Brooks at all, but we wonder he does not feel its weakening effect even on his own reasonings and admonitions. How nebulous in his theological system, if he have a theological system at all, are some of the grand, stupendous, basal truths of Christianity is shown in his sermon for Trinity Sunday, where, after stating his views of the doctrine of the Trinity, he adds: 'To other worlds of other needs, and so of other understandings (for our needs are always the avenues for our intelligence), other sides of the personal force of the Divine life must have issued.' If this do not mean that other Persons in the Trinity besides the Son and the Spirit, or instead of the Son and the Spirit, must have issued' 'to other worlds, we cannot make out its relevancy or its signification in this connection.

The first two sermons-on The Purpose and Use of Comfort; and on The Withheld Completions of Life-are very touching

« PreviousContinue »