quarantine?) shelves on which I keep my unestablished discoveries. Had I known of this work in time, (see the Introduction) I should of course, have impaled it (heraldically) with the other work; but the two are very different. Capt. Drayson professes to prove his point by results of observation; and I think he does not succeed. The author before me only speculates; and a speculator can get any conclusion into his premises, if he will only build or hire them of shape and size to suit. It reminds me of a statement I heard years ago, that a score of persons, or near it, were to dine inside the skull of one of the aboriginal animals, dear little creatures! Whereat I wondered vastly, nothing doubting; facts being stubborn and not easy drove, as Mrs. Gamp said. But I soon learned that the skull was not a real one, but artificially constructed by the methods—methods which have had striking verifications, too—which enable zoologists to go the whole hog by help of a toe or a bit of tail. This took off the edge of the wonder: a hundred people can dine inside an inference, if you draw it large enough. The method might happen to fail for once: for instance, the toe-bone might have been abnormalized by therian or saurian malady; and the possibility of such failure, even when of small probability, is of great alleviation. The author before me is, apparently, the sole fabricator of his own premises. With vital force in the earth and continual creation on the part of the original Creator, he expands our bit of a residence as desired. But, as the Newtoness of Cookery observed, First catch your hare. When this is done, when you have a growing earth, you shall dress it with all manner of proximate causes, and serve it up with a growing Moon for sauce, a growing Sun, if it please you, at the other end, and growing planets for side-dishes. Hoping this amount of impalement will be satisfactory, I go on to something else.
THE HAILESEAN SYSTEM OF ASTRONOMY.
The Hailesean System of Astronomy. By John Davey Hailes[[237]] (two pages duodecimo, 1860).
He offers to take 100,000l. to 1,000l. that he shows the sun to be less than seven millions of miles from the earth. The earth in the center, revolving eastward, the sun revolving westward, so that they "meet at half the circle distance in the 24 hours." The diameter of the circle being 9839458303, the circumference is 30911569920.
The following written challenge was forwarded to the Council of the Astronomical Society: it will show the "general reader"—and help him towards earning his name—what sort of things come every now and then to our scientific bodies. I have added punctuation:
Challenge.
1,000 to 30,000.
"Leverrier's[[238]] name stand placed first. Do the worthy Frenchman justice.
By awarding him the medal in a trice.