Part 1

NEW WORK ON PAINTING.

_Just ready, in small 8vo, with Frontispiece and Vignette_,

PAINTING POPULARLY EXPLAINED;

WITH The Practice of the Art, AND HISTORICAL NOTICES OF ITS PROGRESS.

BY THOMAS J. GULLICK, PAINTER, AND JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.

The plan of this work is thus sketched in the _Introduction_:

“There have been in the history of Art, four grand styles of imitating Nature--Tempera, Encaustic, Fresco, and Oil. These, together with the minor modes of Painting, we propose arranging in something like chronological sequence; but our design being to offer an explanation of the Art derived from practical acquaintance, rather than attempt to give its history, we shall confine ourselves for the most part to so much only of the History of Painting as is necessary to elucidate the origin of the different practices which have obtained at different periods.”

By this means, the Authors hope to produce a work which may be valuable to the Amateur, and interesting to the Connoisseur, the Artist, and the General Reader.

LONDON: KENT & CO. (LATE BOGUE), FLEET STREET.

Things not generally Known Familiarly Explained.

CURIOSITIES OF SCIENCE,

Past and Present.

A BOOK FOR OLD AND YOUNG.

BY JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.

AUTHOR OF THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN; AND EDITOR OF THE YEAR-BOOK OF FACTS.

LONDON: KENT AND CO. (LATE BOGUE), FLEET STREET. MDCCCLVIII.

_The Author reserves the right of authorising a Translation of this Work._

LONDON: PRINTED BY LEVEY, ROBSON, AND FRANKLYN, Great New Street and Fetter Lane.

GENTLE READER,

The volume of “CURIOSITIES” which I here present to your notice is a portion of the result of a long course of reading, observation, and research, necessary for the compilation of thirty volumes of “Arcana of Science” and “Year-Book of Facts,” published from 1828 to 1858. Throughout this period--nearly half of the Psalmist’s “days of our years”--I have been blessed with health and strength to produce these volumes, year by year (with one exception), upon the appointed day; and this with unbroken attention to periodical duties, frequently rendered harassing or ungenial. Nevertheless, during these three decades I have found my account in the increasing approbation of the reading public, which has been so largely extended to the series of “THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN,” of which the present volume of “CURIOSITIES OF SCIENCE” is an instalment. I need scarcely add, that in its progressive preparation I have endeavoured to compare, weigh, and consider, the contents, so as to combine the experience of the Past with the advantages of the Present.

In these days of universal attainments, when Science becomes not merely a luxury to the rich, but bread to the poor, and when the very amusements as well as the conveniences of life have taken a scientific colour, it is reasonable to hope that the present volume may be acceptable to a large class of seekers after “things not generally known.” For this purpose, I have aimed at soundness as well as popularity; although, for myself, I can claim little beyond being one of those industrious “ants of science” who garner facts, and by selection and comparison adapt them for a wider circle of readers than they were originally expected to reach. In each case, as far as possible, these “CURIOSITIES” bear the mint-mark of authority; and in the living list are prominent the names of Humboldt and Herschel, Airy and Whewell, Faraday, Brewster, Owen, and Agassiz, Maury, Wheatstone, and Hunt, from whose writings and researches the following pages are frequently enriched.

The sciences here illustrated are, in the main, Astronomy and Meteorology; Geology and Paleontology; Physical Geography; Sound, Light, and Heat; Magnetism and Electricity,--the latter with special attention to the great marvel of our times, the Electro-magnetic Telegraph. I hope, at no very distant period, to extend the “CURIOSITIES” to another volume, to include branches of Natural and Experimental Science which are not here presented.

I. T. _November 1858._

CONTENTS.

PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1-10

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 11-26

SOUND AND LIGHT 27-53

ASTRONOMY 54-103

GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY 104-145

METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA 146-169

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA 170-192

MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY 193-219

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH 220-228

MISCELLANEA 229-241

The Frontispiece.

THE GREAT ROSSE TELESCOPE.

The originator and architect of this magnificent instrument had long been distinguished in scientific research as Lord Oxmantown; and may be considered to have gracefully commemorated his succession to the Earldom of Rosse, and his Presidency of the Royal Society, by the completion of this marvellous work, with which his name will be hereafter indissolubly associated.

The Great Reflecting Telescope at Birr Castle (of which the Frontispiece represents a portion[1]) will be found fully described at pp. 96-99 of the present volume of _Curiosities of Science_.

This matchless instrument has already disclosed “forms of stellar arrangement indicating modes of dynamic action never before contemplated in celestial mechanics.” “In these departments of research,--the examination of the configurations of nebulæ, and the resolution of nebulæ into stars (says the Rev. Dr. Scoresby),--the six-feet speculum has had its grandest triumphs, and the noble artificer and observer the highest rewards of his talents and enterprise. Altogether, the quantity of work done during a period of about seven years--including a winter when a noble philanthropy for a starving population absorbed the keenest interests of science--has been decidedly great; and the new knowledge acquired concerning the handiwork of the great Creator amply satisfying of even sanguine expectation.”

The Vignette.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY’S OWN MODEL OF HIS SAFETY-LAMP.

Of the several contrivances which have been proposed for safely lighting coal-mines subject to the visitation of fire-damp, or carburetted hydrogen, the Safety-Lamp of Sir Humphry Davy is the only one which has ever been judged safe, and been extensively employed. The inventor first turned his attention to the subject in 1815, when Davy began a minute chemical examination of fire-damp, and found that it required an admixture of a large quantity of atmospheric air to render it explosive. He then ascertained that explosions of inflammable gases were incapable of being passed through long narrow metallic tubes, and that this principle of security was still obtained by diminishing their length and increasing their number. This fact led to trials upon sieves made of wire-gauze; when Davy found that if a piece of wire-gauze was held over the flame of a lamp, or of coal-gas, it prevented the flame from passing; and he ascertained that a flame confined in a cylinder of very fine wire-gauze did not explode even in a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, but that the gases burnt in it with great vivacity.

These experiments served as the basis of the Safety-Lamp. The apertures in the gauze, Davy tells us in his work on the subject, should not be more than 1/22d of an inch square. The lamp is screwed on to the bottom of the wire-gauze cylinder. When it is lighted, and gradually introduced into an atmosphere mixed with fire-damp, the size and length of the flame are first increased. When the inflammable gas forms as much as 1/12th of the volume of air, the cylinder becomes filled with a feeble blue flame, within which the flame of the wick burns brightly, and the light of the wick continues till the fire-damp increases to 1/6th or 1/5th; it is then lost in the flame of the fire-damp, which now fills the cylinder with a pretty strong light; and when the foul air constitutes one-third of the atmosphere it is no longer fit for respiration,--and this ought to be a signal to the miner to leave that part of the workings.

Sir Humphry Davy presented his first communication respecting his discovery of the Safety-Lamp to the Royal Society in 1815. This was followed by a series of papers remarkable for their simplicity and clearness, crowned by that read on the 11th of January 1816, when the principle of the Safety-Lamp was announced, and Sir Humphry presented to the Society a model made by his own hands, which is to this day preserved in the collection of the Royal Society at Burlington House. From this interesting memorial the Vignette has been sketched.

There have been several modifications of the Safety-Lamp, and the merit of the discovery has been claimed by others, among whom was Mr. George Stephenson; but the question was set at rest forty-one years since by an examination,--attested by Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., Mr. Brande, Mr. Hatchett, and Dr. Wollaston,--and awarding the independent merit to Davy.

A more substantial, though not a more honourable, testimony of approval was given by the coal-owners, who subscribed 2500_l._ to purchase a superb service of plate, which was suitably inscribed and presented to Davy.[2]

Meanwhile the Report by the Parliamentary Committee “cannot admit that the experiments (made with the Lamp) have any tendency to detract from the character of Sir Humphry Davy, or to disparage the fair value placed by himself upon his invention. The improvements are probably those which longer life and additional facts would have induced him to contemplate as desirable, and of which, had he not been the inventor, he might have become the patron.”

The principle of the invention may be thus summed up. In the Safety-Lamp, the mixture of the fire-damp and atmospheric air within the cage of wire-gauze explodes upon coming in contact with the flame; but the combustion cannot pass through the wire-gauze, and being there imprisoned, cannot impart to the explosive atmosphere of the mine any of its force. This effect has been erroneously attributed to a cooling influence of the metal.

Professor Playfair has eloquently described the Safety-Lamp of Davy as a present from philosophy to the arts; a discovery in no degree the effect of accident or chance, but the result of patient and enlightened research, and strongly exemplifying the great use of an immediate and constant appeal to experiment. After characterising the invention as the _shutting-up in a net of the most slender texture_ a most violent and irresistible force, and a power that in its tremendous effects seems to emulate the lightning and the earthquake, Professor Playfair thus concludes: “When to this we add the beneficial consequences, and the saving of the lives of men, and consider that the effects are to remain as long as coal continues to be dug from the bowels of the earth, it may be fairly said that there is hardly in the whole compass of art or science a single invention of which one would rather wish to be the author.... This,” says Professor Playfair, “is exactly such a case as we should choose to place before Bacon, were he to revisit the earth; in order to give him, in a small compass, an idea of the advancement which philosophy has made since the time when he had pointed out to her the route which she ought to pursue.”

CURIOSITIES OF SCIENCE.

Introductory.

SCIENCE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

In every province of human knowledge where we now possess a careful and coherent interpretation of nature, men began by attempting in bold flights to leap from obvious facts to the highest point of generality--to some wide and simple principle which after-ages had to reject. Thus, from the facts that all bodies are hot or cold, moist or dry, they leapt at once to the doctrine that the world is constituted of four elements--earth, air, fire, water; from the fact that the heavenly bodies circle the sky in courses which occur again and again, they at once asserted that they move in exact circles, with an exactly uniform motion; from the fact that heavy bodies fall through the air somewhat faster than light ones, it was assumed that all bodies fall quickly or slowly exactly in proportion to their weight; from the fact that the magnet attracts iron, and that this force of attraction is capable of increase, it was inferred that a perfect magnet would have an irresistible force of attraction, and that the magnetic pole of the earth would draw the nails out of a ship’s bottom which came near it; from the fact that some of the finest quartz crystals are found among the snows of the Alps, it was inferred that the crystallisation of gems is the result of intense and long-continued cold: and so on in innumerable instances. Such anticipations as these constituted the basis of almost all the science of the ancient world; for such principles being so assumed, consequences were drawn from them with great ingenuity, and systems of such deductions stood in the place of science.--_Edinburgh Review_, No. 216.

SCIENCE AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

The earliest science of a decidedly English school is due, for the most part, to the University of Oxford, and specially to Merton College,--a foundation of which Wood remarks, that there was no other for two centuries, either in Oxford or Paris, which could at all come near it in the cultivation of the sciences. But he goes on to say that large chests full of the writers of this college were allowed to remain untouched by their successors for fear of the magic which was supposed to be contained in them. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to trace the liberalising effect of scientific study upon the University in general, and Merton College in particular; and it must be remembered that to the cultivation of the mind at Oxford we owe almost all the literary celebrity of the middle ages. In this period the University of Cambridge appears to have acquired no scientific distinction. Taking as a test the acquisition of celebrity on the continent, we find that Bacon, Sacrobosco, Greathead, Estwood, &c. were all of Oxford. The latter University had its morning of splendour while Cambridge was comparatively unknown; it had also its noonday, illustrated by such men as Briggs, Wren, Wallis, Halley, and Bradley.

The age of science at Cambridge may be said to have begun with Francis Bacon; and but that we think much of the difference between him and his celebrated namesake lies more in time and circumstances than in talents or feelings, we would rather date from 1600 with the former than from 1250 with the latter. Praise or blame on either side is out of the question, seeing that the earlier foundation of Oxford, and its superiority in pecuniary means, rendered all that took place highly probable; and we are in a great measure indebted for the liberty of writing our thoughts, to the cultivation of the liberalising sciences at Oxford in the dark ages.

With regard to the University of Cambridge, for a long time there hardly existed the materials of any proper instruction, even to the extent of pointing out what books should be read by a student desirous of cultivating astronomy.

PLATO’S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES.

Plato, like Francis Bacon, took a review of the sciences of his time: he enumerates arithmetic and plane geometry, treated as collections of abstract and permanent truths; solid geometry, which he “notes as deficient” in his time, although in fact he and his school were in possession of the doctrine of the “five regular solids;” astronomy, in which he demands a science which should be elevated above the mere knowledge of phenomena. The visible appearances of the heavens only suggest the problems with which true astronomy deals; as beautiful geometrical diagrams do not prove, but only suggest geometrical propositions. Finally, Plato notices the subject of harmonics, in which he requires a science which shall deal with truths more exact than the ear can establish, as in astronomy he requires truths more exact than the eye can assure us of.

In a subsequent paper Plato speaks of _Dialectic_ as a still higher element of a philosophical education, fitted to lead men to the knowledge of real existences and of the supreme good. Here he describes dialectic by its objects and purpose. In other places dialectic is spoken of as a method or process of analysis; as in the _Phædrus_, where Socrates describes a good dialectician as one who can divide a subject according to its natural members, and not miss the joint, like a bad carver. Xenophon says that Socrates derived _dialectic_ from a term implying to _divide a subject into parts_, which Mr. Grote thinks unsatisfactory as an etymology, but which has indicated a practical connection in the Socratic school. The result seems to be that Plato did not establish any method of analysis of a subject as his dialectic; but he conceived that the analytical habits formed by the comprehensive study of the exact sciences, and sharpened by the practice of dialogue, would lead his students to the knowledge of first principles.--_Dr. Whewell._

FOLLY OF ATHEISM.

Morphology, in natural science, teaches us that the whole animal and vegetable creation is formed upon certain fundamental types and patterns, which can be traced under various modifications and transformations through all the rich variety of things apparently of most dissimilar build. But here and there a scientific person takes it into his foolish head that there may be a set of moulds without a moulder, a calculated gradation of forms without a calculator, an ordered world without an ordering God. Now, this atheistical science conveys about as much meaning as suicidal life: for science is possible only where there are ideas, and ideas are only possible where there is mind, and minds are the offspring of God; and atheism itself is not merely ignorance and stupidity,--it is the purely nonsensical and the unintelligible.--_Professor Blackie_; _Edinburgh Essays_, 1856.

THE ART OF OBSERVATION.

To observe properly in the very simplest of the physical sciences requires a long and severe training. No one knows this so feelingly as the great discoverer. Faraday once said, that he always doubts his own observations. Mitscherlich on one occasion remarked to a man of science that it takes fourteen years to discover and establish a single new fact in chemistry. An enthusiastic student one day betook himself to Baron Cuvier with the exhibition of a new organ--a muscle which he supposed himself to have discovered in the body of some living creature or other; but the experienced and sagacious naturalist kindly bade the young man return to him with the same discovery in six months. The Baron would not even listen to the student’s demonstration, nor examine his dissection, till the eager and youthful discoverer had hung over the object of inquiry for half a year; and yet that object was a mere thing of the senses.--_North-British Review_, No. 18.

MUTUAL RELATIONS OF PHENOMENA.

In the observation of a phenomenon which at first sight appears to be wholly isolated, how often may be concealed the germ of a great discovery! Thus, when Galvani first stimulated the nervous fibre of the frog by the accidental contact of two heterogeneous metals, his contemporaries could never have anticipated that the action of the voltaic pile would discover to us in the alkalies metals of a silver lustre, so light as to swim on water, and eminently inflammable; or that it would become a powerful instrument of chemical analysis, and at the same time a thermoscope and a magnet. When Huyghens first observed, in 1678, the phenomenon of the polarisation of light, exhibited in the difference between two rays into which a pencil of light divides itself in passing through a doubly refracting crystal, it could not have been foreseen that a century and a half later the great philosopher Arago would, by his discovery of _chromatic polarisation_, be led to discern, by means of a small fragment of Iceland spar, whether solar light emanates from a solid body or a gaseous covering; or whether comets transmit light directly, or merely by reflection.--_Humboldt’s Cosmos_, vol. i.

PRACTICAL RESULTS OF THEORETICAL SCIENCE.

What are the great wonders, the great sources of man’s material strength, wealth, and comfort in modern times? The Railway, with its mile-long trains of men and merchandise, moving with the velocity of the wind, and darting over chasms a thousand feet wide; the Electric Telegraph, along which man’s thoughts travel with the velocity of light, and girdle the earth more quickly than Puck’s promise to his master; the contrivance by which the Magnet, in the very middle of a strip of iron, is still true to the distant pole, and remains a faithful guide to the mariner; the Electrotype process, by which a metallic model of any given object, unerringly exact, grows into being like a flower. Now, all these wonders are the result of recent and profound discoveries in theoretical science. The Locomotive Steam-engine, and the Steam-engine in all its other wonderful and invaluable applications, derives its efficacy from the discoveries, by Watt and others, of the laws of steam. The Railway Bridge is not made strong by mere accumulation of materials, but by the most exact and careful scientific examination of the means of giving the requisite strength to every part, as in the great example of Mr. Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait. The Correction of the Magnetic Needle in iron ships it would have been impossible for Mr. Airy to secure without a complete theoretical knowledge of the laws of Magnetism. The Electric Telegraph and the Electrotype process include in their principles and mechanism the most complete and subtle results of electrical and magnetical theory.--_Edinburgh Review_, No. 216.

PERPETUITY OF IMPROVEMENT.

In the progress of society all great and real improvements are perpetuated: the same corn which, four thousand years ago, was raised from an improved grass by an inventor worshiped for two thousand years in the ancient world under the name of Ceres, still forms the principal food of mankind; and the potato, perhaps the greatest benefit that the old has derived from the new world, is spreading over Europe, and will continue to nourish an extensive population when the name of the race by whom it was first cultivated in South America is forgotten.--_Sir H. Davy._

THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SCIENTIFIC TREATISE.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet, wrote a treatise on the Astrolabe for his son, which is the earliest English treatise we have met with on any scientific subject. It was not completed; and the apologies which Chaucer makes to his own child for writing in English are curious; while his inference that his son should therefore “pray God save the king that is lord of this language,” is at least as loyal as logical.

PHILOSOPHERS’ FALSE ESTIMATES OF THEIR OWN LABOURS.