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[Illustration: The Zodiacal Light]
THE STORY OF
THE UNIVERSE
_Told by Great Scientists
and Popular Authors_
COLLECTED AND EDITED
_By_ ESTHER SINGLETON
Author of “Turrets, Towers and Temples,” “Wonders of Nature,”
“The World’s Great Events,” “Famous Paintings,” Translator
of Lavignac’s “Music Dramas of Richard Wagner”
_FULLY ILLUSTRATED_
VOLUME I
THE
STARRY
SKIES
P. F. COLLIER AND SON
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1905
BY P. F. COLLIER & SON
PREFACE
In the following pages I have endeavored to present a comprehensive
and general view of the material side of the universe. Instead of
trying myself to tell the story of the universe, I have gone to the
works of acknowledged weight and authority in this line of research
and selected from them extracts of a popular character, especially
those that are entertaining as well as merely instructive. The
average reader is frequently repelled from the study of the sciences
by the dry treatment adopted by those who try to instruct him. He
cares little for laws, theories, or affinities; and he can not help
being bored by attempts to make him understand classifications with
their long lists of words manufactured from the names of modern
celebrities or non-entities and roots from dead languages. I have
therefore kept constantly in mind the person who seeks entertaining
knowledge, and not the scientific specialist. I have tried to avoid
all technicalities wherever possible.
Of late years, in fact ever since the foundation of the British
Association, there has been a constantly increasing interest in the
wonders of nature; and the specialist has responded to this popular
interest in his scientific labors by speaking in language that an
intelligent child can comprehend. People as a rule prefer to read of
the habits, instincts, intelligence, and movements of animals and
plants, rather than of their organs and structure. Thus the study of
Natural History has received a great impetus from the writings of
such men as Darwin and Lubbock; and Astronomy has been rendered more
attractive to the lay reader by Flammarion, Gore, Proctor, and Ball.
Every traveler who returns from remote or hitherto unknown Arctic or
Torrid Zones has something fresh to tell us of the phenomena and life
of our universe, which adds fresh stimulus to the popular interest in
the Natural Sciences.
The Story of the Universe naturally falls under the following four
heads:
First, the bodies moving in infinite space, including stars, dark and
lucid, planets, nebulæ, comets, and meteors.
Second, the Earth, considered as a separate world and the only one of
which we have precise detailed knowledge. In this chapter we learn
of the past of our globe from the evidence afforded by the rocks of
which its crust is composed. The varying conformations of its present
surface are described, as is its atmospheric envelope and attendant
phenomena. The ocean and its movements and depths are likewise fully
considered.
Third, the Earth’s Garment—its flora. In this chapter we are told
of the wonders and beauties of plant-life, its development and
distribution.
Fourth, the Earth’s Creatures. Here we have a general view of animal
life, from the mighty mammoth to the fairy fly: even the beings
visible only to the microscope are not forgotten. Special attention
is also paid to man, from his origin to the present day.
I have made the selections from authentic editions of the writings of
the scientists; and have taken no liberties with the text, with the
exception of occasional cutting.
In the Introduction I have given a short sketch of the development of
the Natural Sciences, from the dawn of written history to the present
day.
E. S.
NEW YORK, _March, 1905_.
INTRODUCTION
The knowledge of the Natural Sciences among the Greeks and Romans
was derived principally from the Egyptians and Babylonians. The
Phœnicians in their voyages, also, necessarily paid considerable
attention to Astronomy. Their Cynosura consisted of the tail of
the Little Bear, by which they steered. The great names in Greek
Astronomy are Aratus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy.
From the fancies of Astrology, in which the early Arabs largely
indulged, and which, though discountenanced by Mahomet himself, have
never been wholly abandoned by their descendants, a not unnatural
transition, led to the study of Astronomy. Under the patronage of
the Abbaside Caliph Al-Mamun (813-833 A. D.) this science made rapid
progress.
Astronomy was zealously studied in the famous schools of Bagdad and
Cordova.
The _Almagest_, or System of Astronomy, by Ptolemy, was translated
into Arabic by Alhazi and Sergius as early as 812. In the Tenth
Century, Albaten observed the advance of the line of the apsides
in the earth’s orbit; Mohammed-ben-Jeber-al-Batani, the obliquity
of the ecliptic; Alpetragius wrote a theory of the planets; and
Abul-Hassan-Ali, on astronomical instruments. The obliquity of the
ecliptic, the diameter of the earth, and even the precession of
the equinoxes, were then calculated with commendable accuracy; and
shortly after, Abul-Mezar’s _Introduction to Astronomy_ and his
_Treatise on the Conjunction of the Planets_, with the _Elements_
of Al-Furjanee (though this last author was largely indebted to the
Egyptian labors of Ptolemy), proved that the caliph’s liberality
had been well bestowed. But Al-Batinee, a native of Syria (879-920
A. D.), surpassed all his predecessors in the nicety alike of his
observations and computations. Geber, at Seville, constructed (1196
A. D.) the first astronomical observatory on record; and Ebn-Korrah
in Egypt proved by his example that the Arabs could be even better
astronomers than the Greeks.
Ulug Bekh, grandson of the great Tamerlane, was a diligent observer.
He established an academy of astronomers at Samarcand, the capital of
his dominions, and constructed magnificent instruments. Ulug Bekh,
too, made a catalogue of the fixed stars—the only one that had been
compiled since that of Hipparchus, sixteen centuries previously.
Gradually, by their intercourse with civilized nations, the Arabian
conquerors were themselves subjected to the humanizing influence of
letters, and, after 749 A. D., or during the reign of the Abassides,
literature, arts, and sciences appeared, and were generously fostered
under the splendid sway, first of Almansor (754-775), and afterward
of the celebrated Harun-al-Raschid (786-808). Learned men were now
invited from many countries and remunerated for their labors with
princely munificence; the works of the best Greek, Syriac, and old
Persian writers were translated into Arabic, and spread abroad in
numerous copies. The Caliph Al-Mamun, who reigned from 813 to 833,
offered to the Greek emperor five tons of gold and a perpetual treaty
of peace on condition that the philosopher Leo should be allowed to
give instruction to the former. Under the same Caliph the famous
schools of Bagdad, Basra, Bokhara, and Kufa were founded, and large
libraries were collected in Alexandria, Cairo, and Bagdad. The school
of Cordova in Spain soon rivaled that of Bagdad, and in the Tenth
Century the Arabs were everywhere the preservers and distributers of
knowledge.
Pupils from France and other European countries repaired to Spain in
great numbers, to study mathematics and medicine under the Arabs.
There were fourteen academies, with many preparatory and upper
schools, in Spain, and five very considerable public libraries; that
of the Caliph Hakem containing, as is said, more than 600,000 volumes.
In Geography, History, Philosophy, Medicine, Physics, and Mathematics
the Arabians rendered important services to science; and the Arabic
words still employed in science—such as algebra, alcohol, azimuth,
zenith, nadir, with many names of stars, etc. (see _The Arabian
Heavens_, pages 106-120 of Vol. I)—remain as indications of their
influence on the early intellectual culture of Europe. But Geography
owes most to them during the Middle Ages. In Africa and Asia, the
boundaries of geographical science were extended, and the old Arab
treatises on geography and works of travels in several countries by
Abulfeda, Edrisi, Leo Africanus, Ibn Batuta, Ibn Foslan, Ibn Jobair,
Albiruni the astronomer, and others, are still interesting.
The structure of the earth received little attention from the
ancients; the extent of its surface known was limited, and the
changes upon it were neither so speedy nor violent as to excite
special attention. The only opinions deserving to be noticed are
those of Pythagoras and Strabo, both of whom observed the phenomena
which were then altering the surface of the earth, and proposed
theories for explaining the changes that had taken place in
geological time. The first held that, in addition to volcanic action,
the change in the level of sea and land was owing to the retiring of
the sea; while the other maintained that the land changed its level,
and not the sea, and that such changes happened more easily to the
land below the sea because of its humidity.
From the fall of the Roman empire, during the Dark Ages, the physical
sciences were neglected. In the Tenth Century, Avicenna, Omar, and
other Arabian writers commented on the works of the Romans, but added
little of their own.
Geological phenomena attracted attention in Italy in the Sixteenth
Century, the absorbing question then being as to the nature of
fossils; only a few maintained that they were the remains of animals.
Two centuries elapsed before the opinion was generally adopted.
Aristotle was the first who collected, in his work _On Meteors_,
the current prognostics of the weather. Some of these were derived
from the Egyptians, who had studied the science as a branch of
Astronomy, while a considerable number were the result of his own
observation. The next writer upon this subject was Theophrastus, one
of Aristotle’s pupils, who classified the opinions commonly received
regarding the weather under four heads, viz., the prognostics of
rain, of wind, of storm, and of fine weather. The subject was
discussed purely in its popular and practical bearings, and no
attempt was made to explain phenomena whose occurrence appeared so
irregular and capricious. Cicero, Virgil, and a few other writers
also wrote on the subject; but the treatise of Theophrastus contains
nearly all that was known down to comparatively recent times. Partial
explanations were attempted by Aristotle and Lucretius, but their
explanations were vague, and often absurd.
In this dormant condition meteorology remained for ages, and no
progress was made till proper instruments were invented for making
real observations with regard to the temperature, the pressure, the
humidity, and the electricity of the air.
Solomon spoke of “trees, from the cedar in Lebanon even to the hyssop
that springeth out of the wall.” There is reason also to believe
that Zoroaster devoted some attention to plants, and that this
study early engaged some of the philosophers of Greece. The oldest
botanical work which has come down to us is that of Theophrastus, the
pupil of Aristotle, who flourished in the fourth century B. C. His
descriptions of plants are very unsatisfactory, but his knowledge
of their organs and of vegetable physiology may well be deemed
wonderful. It was not, indeed, till after the revival of letters in
Western Europe, that it was ever again studied as it had been by him.
About four hundred years after Theophrastus, in the First Century
of the Christian era, Dioscorides of Anazarbus, in Asia Minor—a
herbalist, however, rather than a botanist—described more than 600
plants in a work which continued in great repute throughout the
Middle Ages.
About the same time, the elder Pliny devoted a share of his attention
to Botany, and his writings contain some account of more than 1,000
species, compiled from various sources and mingled with many errors.
Centuries elapsed without producing another name worthy to be
mentioned. It was among the Arabians that the science next began to
be cultivated, about the close of the Eighth Century. The greatest
name of this period is Avicenna. Among the Arabs, Botany, like
Chemistry, was chiefly studied as subsidiary to medicine; but as an
adjunct to the old herbal pharmacopœia, it received close attention.
The principal mercurial and arsenical preparations of the _materia
medica_, the sulphates of several metals, the properties of acids and
alkalies, the distillation of alcohol—in fine, whatever resources
chemistry availed itself of up to a very recent date—were, with
their practical application, known to Er-Razi and Geber. In fact,
the numerous terms borrowed from the Arabic language—for instance,
alcohol, alkali, alembic, and others—with the signs of drugs and the
like, still in use among modern apothecaries, remain to show how
deeply this science is indebted to Arab research.
Aristotle seems to have been the first to study Zoology. Some of
the groups he established still retain their place in the most
modern classifications. His two great sections of the Animal Kingdom
consisted of Enanima (red blood) and Anima (having a circulation of
colorless fluid). Ælian and Pliny wrote on the subject, but they
indulged largely in fables. There was little advance in the science
during the Dark and Middle Ages. The _Bestiaries_ were written for
the sake of moral teaching, and the animals had to behave with
that end in view. Albertus Magnus is the only famous name in this
department before the revival of learning.
The shining light of the Thirteenth Century was Roger Bacon. His
_Opus Majus_ is “at once the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum
of the Thirteenth Century.” In this, besides other branches of
scientific research, he devotes a rapid examination to questions of
Climate, Hydrography, Geography, and Astrology. Scientific research,
however, was out of date, and from the educated world Roger Bacon
received small recognition. His writings earned only a prison from
his own Order, and he died, in his own words, “unheard, forgotten,
buried.”
The Revival of Learning, commonly known as the Period of the
Renaissance, naturally entailed renewed interest in the sciences as
well as the arts. Green gives a comprehensive view of it:
“The last royalist had only just laid down his arms when the little
company who were at a later time to be known as the Royal Society
gathered round Wilkins at Oxford. It is in this group of scientific
observers that we catch the secret of the coming generation. From
the vexed problems, political and religious, with which it had so
long wrestled in vain, England turned at last to the physical world
around it, to the observation of its phenomena, to the discovery of
the laws which govern them. The pursuit of physical science became
a passion; and its method of research, by observation, comparison,
and experiment, transformed the older methods of inquiry in matters
without its pale. In religion, in politics, in the study of man and
of nature, not faith but reason, not tradition but inquiry, were to
be the watchwords of the coming time. The dead-weight of the past
was suddenly rolled away, and the new England heard at last and
understood the call of Francis Bacon.
“Bacon had already called men with a trumpet-voice to such studies;
but in England at least Bacon stood before his age. The beginnings
of physical science were more slow and timid there than in any
country of Europe. Only two discoveries of any real value came
from English research before the Restoration; the first, Gilbert’s
discovery of terrestrial magnetism in the close of Elizabeth’s
reign; the next, the great discovery of the circulation of the
blood, which was taught by Harvey in the reign of James. Apart from
these illustrious names England took little share in the scientific
movement of the continent; and her whole energies seemed to be
whirled into the vortex of theology and politics by the Civil
War. But the war had not reached its end when a little group of
students were to be seen in London, men ‘inquisitive,’ says one of
them, ‘into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning,
and particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy,...
which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon
(Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy,
France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in
England.’ The strife of the time indeed aided in directing the
minds of men to natural inquiries. ‘To have been always tossing
about some theological question,’ says the first historian of the
Royal Society, Bishop Sprat, ‘would have been to have made that
their private diversion, the excess of which they disliked in the
public. To have been eternally musing on civil business and the
distresses of the country was too melancholy a reflection. It
was nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them in that
estate.’ Foremost in the group stood Doctors Wallis and Wilkins,
whose removal to Oxford, which had just been reorganized by the
Puritan Visitors, divided the little company into two societies.
The Oxford society, which was the more important of the two,
held its meetings at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, who had become
Warden of Wadham College, and added to the names of its members
that of the eminent mathematician Dr. Ward, and that of the first
of English economists, Sir William Petty. ‘Our business,’ Wallis
tells us, ‘was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs)
to discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries and such
as related thereunto, as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy,
Navigation, Statics, Magnetics, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural
Experiments: with the state of these studies, as then cultivated
at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the
blood, the valves in the _venæ lacteæ_, the lymphatic vessels,
the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars,
the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape of Saturn, the spots
in the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and
selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury,
the improvement of telescopes, the grinding of glasses for that
purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of
vacuities, and Nature’s abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian
experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the
degree of acceleration therein, and divers other things of like
nature.’
“The other little company of inquirers, who remained in London, was
at last broken up by the troubles of the Second Protectorate; but
it was revived at the Restoration by the return to London of the
more eminent members of the Oxford group. Science suddenly became
the fashion of the day. Charles was himself a fair chymist, and
took a keen interest in the problems of navigation. The Duke of
Buckingham varied his freaks of riming, drinking, and fiddling by
fits of devotion to his laboratory. Poets like Dryden and Cowley,
courtiers like Sir Robert Murray and Sir Kenelm Digby joined the
scientific company to which in token of his sympathy with it the
King gave the title of ‘The Royal Society.’ The curious glass toys
called Prince Rupert’s drops recall the scientific inquiries which,
with the study of etching, amused the old age of the great cavalry
leader of the Civil War. Wits and fops crowded to the meetings
of the new society. Statesmen like Lord Somers felt honored at
being chosen its presidents. Its definite establishment marks the
opening of a great age of scientific discovery in England. Almost
every year of the half century which followed saw some step made
to a wider and truer knowledge. Our first national observatory
rose at Greenwich, and modern astronomy began with the long
series of astronomical observations which immortalized the name
of Flamsteed. His successor, Halley, undertook the investigation
of the tides, of comets, and of terrestrial magnetism. Hooke
improved the microscope, and gave a fresh impulse to microscopical
research. Boyle made the air-pump a means of advancing the science
of pneumatics, and became the founder of experimental chymistry.
Wilkins pointed forward to the science of philology in his scheme
of a universal language. Sydenham introduced a careful observation
of nature and facts which changed the whole face of medicine. The
physiological researches of Willis first threw light upon the
structure of the brain. Woodward was the founder of mineralogy. In
his edition of Willoughby’s _Ornithology_, and in his own _History
of Fishes_, John Ray was the first to raise zoology to the rank
of a science; and the first scientific classification of animals
was attempted in his _Synopsis of Quadrupeds_. Modern botany began
with his _History of Plants_, and the researches of an Oxford
professor, Robert Morison; while Grew divided with Malpighi the
credit of founding the study of vegetable physiology. But great as
some of these names undoubtedly are, they are lost in the lustre
of Isaac Newton. Newton was born at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire,
on Christmas Day, in the memorable year which saw the outbreak of
the Civil War. In the year of the Restoration he entered Cambridge,
where the teaching of Isaac Barrow quickened his genius for
mathematics, and where the method of Descartes had superseded the
older modes of study. From the close of his Cambridge career his
life became a series of great physical discoveries. At twenty-three
he facilitated the calculation of planetary movements by his theory
of Fluxions. The optical discoveries to which he was led by his
experiments with the prism, and which he partly disclosed in the
lectures which he delivered as mathematical professor at Cambridge,
were embodied in the theory of light which he laid before the Royal
Society on becoming a Fellow of it. His discovery of the law of
gravitation had been made as early as 1666; but the erroneous
estimate which was then generally received of the earth’s diameter
prevented him from disclosing it for sixteen years; and it was not
till the eve of the Revolution that the _Principia_ revealed to the
world his new theory of the Universe.”
Ever since the Fifteenth Century, when Copernicus revived the ancient
theory of Pythagoras that the planets revolved around the sun (a
theory left in an imperfect state and demonstrated later by Kepler,
Galileo, Newton, and others) astronomical research has progressed
steadily. It must be remembered, however, that _De Revolutionibus
Orbium_, which met with great opposition, contained nothing regarding
the laws of motion, for these had not been as yet discovered, and
Saturn marked the boundaries of the Solar System. Copernicus assigned
the “fixed stars” to a sphere, as in Ptolemy’s heavens (see page 331).
The great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, whose idea of the Solar
System is represented on page 343, was his opponent. Brahe, however,
a devoted student, a man of wealth, the favorite of kings and
princes, and the proud possessor of the Castle of Uraniberg (City of
the Heavens), an observatory equipped with fine instruments and built
for him by Frederick II, King of Denmark, on the island of Hueen, and
after his death the protégé of Rudolph II at Benatek, near Prague,
contributed greatly to the advancement of the science by means of
his discoveries, computations, solar and lunar tables, and catalogue
of stars. He, like Copernicus, placed the “fixed stars” in an outer
sphere. His observations on the planets were made to prove the truth
of his system. This mass of observations was used instead by Johann
Kepler, who had been his assistant at the Benatek Observatory, to
prove Copernicus’s theory. Of Kepler, the discoverer of the three
famous laws, who gave a complete theory of solar eclipses, calculated
the transits of Mercury and Venus, and made numerous discoveries in
optics and general physics, Proctor says:
“Kepler was not merely an observer and calculator; he inquired
with great diligence into the physical causes of every phenomenon,
and made a near approach to the discovery of that great principle
which maintains and regulates the planetary motions. He possessed
some very sound and accurate notions of the nature of gravity,
but unfortunately conceived it to diminish simply in proportion
to the distance, although he had demonstrated that the intensity
of light is reciprocally proportional to the surface over which
it is spread, or inversely as the square of the distance from the
luminous body.”
Great names follow in rapid succession. One of Kepler’s
contemporaries was Galileo Galilei, the discoverer of the “three laws
of motion” and the relation of time and space in falling bodies, the
first to apply the newly invented telescope to the observation of the
heavens and the discoverer of four satellites of Jupiter (named by
him the “Medeiran Stars” in honor of his patron). He also detected
spots on the sun’s disk, the phases of Venus, and irregularities on
the moon’s surface, and declared the Milky Way to be composed of a
countless tract of separate stars.
When we remember the limited power of the telescope of the age, we
can but marvel, not at how little, but how much was known regarding
the starry skies.
During this period, numerous observers rendered great service to
Astronomy, and other scientists were engaged in making useful
drawings, charts, maps, tables, and catalogues of stars.
To this period also belongs John Bayer of Augsburg, who published a
description of the constellations with maps upon which the stars were
marked with the letters of the Greek Alphabet—a convenient method
that was universally adopted and is still in use. Other names include
Gassendi, Riccioli, Grimaldi, and Hevelius—the latter a rich citizen
of Dantzig, who had a fine observatory of his own, where he worked
for forty years. His drawings and descriptions of the moon, his
researches on comets, which he still believed moved in parabolas, and
his celestial charts engaged most of his attention.
The Dutch astronomer Huygens (born in 1629) is famous for his
improvements in the telescope use of the pendulum clock and
developments in the machinery of astronomical instruments. He
discovered the ring of Saturn and four of his satellites. Edmund
Halley, an English astronomer (born in 1656), also took a great
interest in the telescope, and went to Dantzig to settle a
controversy between Robert Hooke and Hevelius regarding the best
glasses for use in astronomical observations; for Hevelius still
worked with the ancient instruments, while Hooke believed in the lens.
Halley revived the ancient idea that comets belonged to the Solar
System, and predicted that the comet of 1681 would return to its
perihelion in 1759. This was the first prediction of its kind
verified.
During the last quarter of the Seventeenth Century, the telescope
assumes importance and two great observatories begin their work.
In 1670 the Paris Observatory, of which Cassini was made director,
was finished, and five years later the Greenwich Observatory, where
Flamsteed was installed as royal astronomer.
Of Cassini, Lalande remarks that under him Astronomy underwent
revolutions, and in France he was regarded as the “creator of the
science.” Cassini discovered that Saturn’s ring was double and found
four satellites of Jupiter.
Flamsteed’s observations on planets, satellites, comets, “fixed
stars,” and his catalogue of 2,884 stars were valuable contributions
to science; and his _Historia Cœlestis_ is said to have “formed a new
era in sidereal astronomy.”
Flamsteed was succeeded by Halley, particularly famed for his
investigations of comets. The next great astronomical event was the
discovery of Uranus by Sir William Herschel in 1781. Sir William
Herschel also discovered two more of Saturn’s satellites, and began
the great work of resolving the Milky Way and other clusters into
swarms of suns, single stars into double and triple stars, inquiries
into the mysteries of the nebulæ, and in every way enlarging the
general conception of the sidereal universe.
To the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth
Centuries belongs the brilliant French astronomer and mathematician
Laplace, who published in 1799-1808 his _Mécanique Céleste_, in which
he announced his Nebular Hypothesis (described on page 433 of Vol.
II. The discoveries of the Planetoids are described on pages 396-403,
and that of Neptune in 1846 on pages 430-432). The latest important
additions to the Solar System are the discovery by Prof. Barnard of
Jupiter’s Fifth Satellite in 1892 and Saturn’s Ninth by Prof. W.
H. Pickering in 1904. The discovery even of a Seventh Satellite of
Jupiter has just been announced from the Lick Observatory.
It would be impossible to mention the names of the astronomers
whose work from the middle of the last century to its closing years
has been distinguished in various fields. Space only permits brief
mention of the new methods of research by means of the spectroscope
and celestial photography. With the first the name of the English
astronomer, William Huggins, is identified and has yielded most
important and startling information regarding the composition of
heavenly bodies, and with the application of the photographic
telescope these new methods have created a revolution in astronomical
observation.
It may be interesting to gain a slight idea of the numbers of stars
revealed by the camera by referring to Sir Robert Ball:
“If we take a position on the equator, from whence, of course, all
the heavens can be completely seen in the lapse of six months,
the number of stars that can be reckoned with the unaided eye
will, according to Houzeau, amount to about six thousand. If we
augment our unaided vision by a telescope of even small dimensions,
such as three inches in diameter, the number of stars in the
Northern Hemisphere alone is upward of three hundred thousand. We
may assume that the Southern Hemisphere has an equally numerous
star-population, so that the entire multitude visible with this
optical aid is about six hundred thousand. Thus we see that the
use of a telescope small enough to be carried in the hands suffices
to multiply the lucid stars one-hundredfold. Great telescopes no
doubt soon show us that the hundreds of thousands are only the
brighter members of a host of millions, and now we receive the
assurance of photography that the telescopic stars are only the
more conspicuous members of that vast universe. Mr. Roberts indeed
declares that the multitudes of stars on the photographic plate
grow with each increase of exposure to such a degree that it would
almost seem as if the plate would be a wellnigh continuous mass of
stars if the operations could be sufficiently protracted.”
Naturally the past years have witnessed the making of new catalogues
and maps of stars, and many valuable computations of parallaxes,
etc. Some of the results obtained by these new methods are described
in the chapters on the Nebulæ and Swarms of Suns, The Great Nebula
of Orion, and The Colored, Double, Multiple, Binary, Variable, and
Temporary Stars in Vol. I. From this brief survey of the progress
of Astronomy the fact will be appreciated, therefore, that all the
discoveries and researches have resulted in a larger conception of
the universe, and the Solar System sinks into insignificance in the
vast ocean of stars and suns.
The study of the Earth’s crust and its contents divested of
superstition dates from the end of the Seventeenth Century. Nicolaus
Steno (1638-1687), a Dane, devoted himself to geology, and in 1669
observed successive layers of strata. He is called “the father of
Palæontology.” In 1680 Leibnitz proposed the theory that the Earth
was originally in a molten state. The classification of strata was
begun about the middle of the Eighteenth Century. The views of James
Hutton (1788), who returned to the theories advanced by Ray (a return
to the views of Pythagoras), were continued by Sir Charles Lyell.
Geology and Palæontology have progressed side by side. Among the
most famous investigators are Cuvier, Dawson, Marsh, Owen, Huxley,
Agassiz, De Blainville, Kaup, Sir Roderick Murchison, Boyd Dawkins,
Sir William Flower, R. Lydekker, and E. D. Cope.
To the review of the new developments of meteorology and the science
of probabilities by Sir Ralph Abercromby, on pages 784-792 of Vol.
II, it is only necessary to add that the interest in meteorological
research developed greatly after Torricelli’s discovery in 1643 of
weight and pressure in the atmosphere led to the perfection of the
barometer and the development of the thermometer and hygrometer, both
in the Seventeenth Century. The theory of trade-winds George Hadley
announced in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1735. Dalton’s
_Meteorological Essays_, published in 1793, and Dr. William Charles
Wells’s _Theory of Dew_, published in 1814, attracted much attention.
Regarding the inquiries into the laws of light by Snell, Newton,
Descartes, Thomas Young, and Sir George Airy, the reader is referred
to the chapter on The Rainbow in Vol. II, by John Tyndall, with whose
researches in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century every one is
more or less acquainted.
Little need be said here regarding the history of Botany, which is
reviewed on pages 984-1000 of Vol. II. We may add, however, that one
of the first to revive this study was Otto Brunsfels, whose _Historia
Plantarum Argentorati_ was published in two folio volumes with cuts
in Strasburg in 1530. He had many followers on the Continent and
in England. During the revival of learning, chairs of Botany were
founded in the universities; botanic gardens were established in many
places (the Jardin des Plantes was founded in 1626); and botanists
began to travel to remote countries to search for unknown flora.
To the Seventeenth Century belong the names of Dr. Turner, “the
father of English Botany”; Robert Morison, professor of Botany at
Oxford; John Ray, Nehemiah Grew, Malpighi, Henshaw, and Robert Hooke.
The two latter were among the first to employ the newly invented
microscope to the study of this science. It may be mentioned in
passing, that Huygens is said to have taken from Holland to England
microscopes about the size of a grain of sand, and that the first
microscope consisting of a combination of lenses is attributed
to Jansen, a spectacle-maker of Holland. Hooke, whom Herschel
calls “the great contemporary and almost the rival of Newton,”
gave a tremendous impetus to Microscopy, and practically laid the
foundation of Histology or the Inner Morphology of Plants, due to
Grew and Malpighi. Schleiden undertook to explain the mysteries of
cell formation in 1838, further investigated by Schwann, and is now
known as the Schleiden-Schwann theory. Nägeli and Von Mohl continued
researches on this line. To the contents of the cell Von Mohl gave
the name _protoplasm_.
In 1849, Hofmeister began investigations into the life-histories of
plants, since when the study of Vegetable Physiology has progressed
side by side with Chemistry. To Darwin great subjects are due:
the cross-fertilization of plants, their reproduction, and their
relations to insects and their movements. It may be mentioned,
however, that in 1693 Ray attempted to explain the movements of
leaves, tendrils, and petals by physical and mechanical laws.
Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the branches of Botany
that have been particularly studied are Vegetable Physiology and
Pathology, Inner Morphology, and Fossil Botany—and the discoveries
made have naturally had an effect upon the classification of
vegetable life.
According to Agassiz:
“We must come down to the last century, to Linnæus, before we find
the history taken up where Aristotle had left it, and some of his
suggestions carried out with new freshness and vigor. Aristotle
had already distinguished between genera and species; Linnæus took
hold of this idea, and gave special names to other groups, of
different weight and value. Besides species and genera, he gives
us orders and classes—considering classes the most comprehensive,
then orders, then genera, then species. He did not, however,
represent these groups as distinguished by their nature, but only
by their range; they were still to him, as genera and species had
been to Aristotle, only larger or smaller groups, not founded upon
and limited by different categories of structure. He divided the
animal kingdom into six classes: Mammalia, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes,
Insects, and Worms.”
Linnæus’s classification was, therefore, the first attempt to
group animals; but until Cuvier there was no great principle of
classification. In 1707 Buffon succeeded in making Zoology, which had
been regarded as a most uninteresting study, popular and respected.
He also had the idea of collecting all the known facts of scientific
investigation and arranging them systematically. Buffon was ridiculed
as a scientist by his contemporaries, Hevelius, Diderot, D’Alembert,
and Condillac, who opposed his explanations of natural phenomena.
Buffon’s _Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière_ is his most
important work. A complete edition in thirty-six volumes appeared in
Paris in 1749-1788. Although it is said to “have made an epoch in
the study of the natural sciences” in Buffon’s day, it now possesses
little scientific value.
Cuvier’s classification has never been overthrown. His original
investigations in various departments of science, and particularly
that of fossil vertebrate animals, opened up new fields of study. His
talents with both pen and pencil contributed largely to making that
branch of science popular.
Lamarck, Cuvier’s contemporary, divided the animal kingdom into
Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Lamarck, like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
was a believer in the theory of evolution, which was opposed by
Cuvier.
Lamarck turned from the study of Meteorology to that of Botany,
and later again to that of Zoology. In 1793 he became professor of
the natural history of the lower classes of animals in the Jardin
des Plantes. His theories have greatly influenced modern science,
particularly that of the “Variation of Species,” which was set forth
in his _Philosophie Zoologique_ (two vols., Paris, 1809) and other
works. Lamarck’s _Histoire des Animaux sans Vertèbres_ (seven vols.,
Paris, 1815-22) is his greatest work.
Karl Ernst von Baer, the Russian naturalist, a pupil of Döllinger in
Würzburg, devoted himself chiefly to the study of embryology and made
valuable discoveries.
Passing by many illustrious names, we come to that of Sir Richard
Owen, of whom it has been said that “from the sponge to man, he has
thrown light over every subject he has touched.” His work in the
Hunter Museum, his descriptions and restorations of extinct birds and
animals, and his original works on every branch of animal life, form
an enormous contribution to the progress of science. He promulgated
the advanced views of John Hunter, the great physiologist and
surgeon, of whose famous museum of more than ten thousand specimens,
illustrative of anatomy and natural history, he became curator.
Three names shine with especial lustre upon the Nineteenth
Century—Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer. The theory of evolution first
appeared in De Maillet’s work, _Telliamed_, published in 1758, but
written in 1735. More than thirty writers before Darwin treated
this theory, among whom were Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, Lamarck, and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Largely owing to the opposition of Cuvier,
it never succeeded until it was revived by Charles Darwin, who,
after twenty-one years of work, published his results in 1858 in the
_Journal of the Linnæan Society_, followed in the next year by _The
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_ (see pages 1482-1512
of Vol. IV).
“The lifeless earth,” says Sir Robert Ball, “is the canvas on
which has been drawn the noblest picture that modern science has
produced. It is Darwin who has drawn this picture. He has shown
that the evolution of the lifeless earth from the nebula is but
the prelude to an organic evolution of still greater interest and
complexity. He has taken up the history of the earth at the point
where the astronomer left it, and he has made discoveries which
have influenced thought and opinion more than any other discoveries
that have been made for centuries.”
The neglected department of Marine Zoology the Nineteenth Century has
made particularly its mission to investigate, but space only permits
mention of four names: Edward Forbes, Lord Kelvin (Sir Wyville
Thomson), Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, and the Prince of Monaco.
The first, whom Lord Kelvin considers “the most accomplished
and original naturalist of his time,” was a pupil of Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, Jussieu, and De Blainville. He is regarded as the
originator of the use of the dredge for collecting specimens and
the first who undertook the systematic study of Marine Zoology with
reference to the distribution of fauna. In 1859 his _Natural History
of the European Seas_ appeared after his death.
One of the most important investigators in this line is Prof.
Haeckel, famous for his studies of the lower class of marine animals.
He is also distinguished for his researches in other branches of
Zoology and Palæontology, and was one of the first followers of
Darwin in Germany.
Entomology has also made enormous progress during the Nineteenth
Century. At the end of the Seventeenth Century, Ray estimated the
number of insects throughout the world at 10,000 species! The great
entomologists of the Eighteenth Century include Linnæus, De Geer, and
Fabricius. Next follow Latreille, Kirby and Spence, and a host of
distinguished scientists in Europe and the United States, of whom Sir
John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) heads the list. A comparatively new line
of investigation is that of the Chalcididæ (see Fairy Flies, pages
1449-1458, in Vol. IV).
ESTHER SINGLETON.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Zodiacal Light _Frontispiece_
Chart of the Northern Constellations _Opposite p._ 73
Belt and Sword of Orion ” 121
Nebula in the Constellation Cygnus ” 169
Sun’s Surface and Sun Spot ” 217
Portion of the Moon’s Disk ” 265
Nine Views of the Hour-Glass Sea on Mars ” 313
Twelve Views of Jupiter ” 361
Three Views of Saturn ” 409
CONTENTS
THE HEAVENS. Amédée Guillemin 25
SPACE. Richard A. Proctor 33
EXTENT OF THE SIDEREAL HEAVENS. Sir Robert S. Ball 42
THE STARS. Amédée Guillemin 53
THE LUCID STARS. J. E. Gore 60
THE CONSTELLATIONS. Camille Flammarion 70
THE ARABIAN HEAVENS. Ludwig Ideler 106
ASTRONOMY WITHOUT A TELESCOPE. J. E. Gore 120
THE MILKY WAY. Richard A. Proctor 133
THE MAGELLANIC CLOUDS—ZODIACAL LIGHT—STAR GROUPS.
Amédée Guillemin 147
THE NEBULÆ AND SWARMS OF SUNS. J. E. Gore 154
THE GREAT NEBULA OF ORION. Sir Robert S. Ball 176
COLORED, DOUBLE, MULTIPLE, BINARY, VARIABLE, AND
TEMPORARY STARS. J. E. Gore 187
A WORLD ON FIRE—NOVA PERSEI. Alexander W. Roberts 228
TELESCOPES. A. Fowler 238
METEORS. Sir Robert S. Ball 266
COMETS. Sir John Herschel 282
LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. J. E. Gore 307
THE SUN—WHAT WE LEARN FROM IT. Richard A. Proctor 316
MERCURY. William F. Denning 353
THE PLANET VENUS. Camille Flammarion 358
THE EARTH AS A PLANET. Élisée Réclus 364
THE MOON. Thomas Gwyn Elger 376
MARS. Agnes M. Clerke 385
THE PLANETOIDS. Camille Flammarion 396
JUPITER. Agnes M. Clerke 403
SATURN. Agnes M. Clerke 415
URANUS AND NEPTUNE. William F. Denning 426
THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE
THE HEAVENS.—AMÉDÉE GUILLEMIN
What are the heavens? Where the shores of that limitless ocean; where
the bottom of that unfathomable abyss?
What are those brilliant points—those innumerable stars, which, never
dim, shine out unceasingly from the dark profound? Are they sown
broadcast—orderless, with no other bond save that which perspective
lends to them? Or, if not immovable, as we have so long imagined, if
not golden nails fixed to a crystal vault, whither are they bound?
And, finally, what are the parts assigned to the sun, our earth,
and all the earths attendant on the glorious orb of day in this
tremendous concert of celestial spheres—this sublime harmony of the
universe?
These are magnificent problems of which the most fertile imagination
would have in vain attempted the solution, if, for the greater glory
of the human mind, astronomy—first born of the sciences—had not at
length come to our aid.
How wonderful is the power of man! Chained down to the surface of the
earth, an intelligent atom on a grain of sand lost in the immensity
of a space, he invents instruments which multiply a thousand-fold
his vision, he sounds the depths of the ether, gauges the visible
universe, and counts the myriads of stars which people it; next,
studying their most complicated movements, he measures exactly their
dimensions and the distances of the nearest of them from the earth,
and next deduces their masses; then, discovering in the seeming
disorder of the stellar groupings real bonds of union, he at last
evolves order from apparent confusion.
Nor is this all. Rising by a supreme flight of thought to the most
abstract speculations, he discovers the laws which regulate all
celestial movements, and defines the nature of the universal force
which sustains the worlds.
Such are the fruits of the unceasing labors of twenty generations
of astronomers. Such the result of the genius and of the patient
perseverance of men who have devoted themselves for two thousand
years to the study of the phenomena of the heavens. The Chaldean
shepherds were, they say, the first astronomers. We can well believe
it. Dwelling in the midst of vast plains, where the mildness of the
seasons permitted them to pass the night in the open air, where the
clear sky unfolded before them perpetually the most glorious scenes,
they ought to have been, and they were, contemplative astronomers.
And all of us would be what they were did not the rigor of our
climate and our variable atmosphere so often prevent us observing the
heavens; and did not, moreover, the turmoil and cares of civilized
life deprive us of the necessary leisure.
Nothing is more fitted to elevate the mind toward the infinite than
the pensive contemplation of the starry vault in the silent calm of
night. A thousand fires sparkle in all parts of the sombre azure of
the sky. Varied in color and brilliancy, some shine with a vivid
light, perpetually changing and twinkling; others, again, with a
more constant one—more tranquil and soft; while very many only send
us their rays intermittently, as if they could scarce pierce the
profundity of space.
To enjoy this spectacle in all its magnificence, a night must be
chosen when the atmosphere is perfectly pure and transparent—one
neither illuminated by the moon, nor by the glimmer of twilight or of
dawn. The heavens then resemble an immense sea, the broad expanse of
which glitters with gold dust or diamonds.
In presence of such splendor, the senses, mind and imagination are
alike inthralled. The impression gathered is an emotion at once
profound and religious, an indefinable mixture of admiration, and of
calm and tender melancholy. It seems as if these distant worlds, in
shining earthward, put themselves in close communication with our
thoughts.