[22] The letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley, containing suggestions for the Boyle Lectures, possess a peculiar interest in the present day. “They show” (says Sir David Brewster) “that the nebular hypothesis, the dull and dangerous heresy of the age, is incompatible with the established laws of the material universe, and that an omnipotent arm was required to give the planets their positions and motions in space, and a presiding intelligence to assign to them the different functions they had to perform.”—Life of Newton, vol. ii.
[23] The constitution of the nebulæ in the constellation of Orion has been resolved by this instrument; and by its aid the stars of which it is composed burst upon the sight of man for the first time.
[24] Several specimens of Meteoric Iron are to be seen in the Mineralogical Collection in the British Museum.
[25] Life of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. i. p. 62.
[26] Description of the Monster Telescope, by Thomas Woods, M.D. 4th edit. 1851.
[27] This instrument also discovered a multitude of new objects in the moon; as a mountainous tract near Ptolemy, every ridge of which is dotted with extremely minute craters, and two black parallel stripes in the bottom of Aristarchus. Dr. Robinson, in his address to the British Association in 1843, stated that in this telescope a building the size of the Court-house at Cork would be easily visible on the lunar surface.
[28] Mr. Hopkins supports his Glacial Theory by regarding the Waves of Translation, investigated by Mr. Scott Russell, as furnishing a sufficient moving power for the transportation of large rounded boulders, and the formation of drifted gravel. When these waves of translation are produced by the sudden elevation of the surface of the sea, the whole mass of water from the surface to the bottom of the ocean moves onward, and becomes a mechanical agent of enormous power. Following up this view, Mr. Hopkins has shown that “elevations of continental masses of only 50 feet each, and from beneath an ocean having a depth of between 300 and 400 feet, would cause the most powerful divergent waves, which could transport large boulders to great distances.”
[29] It is scarcely too much to say, that from the collection of specimens of building-stones made upon this occasion, and first deposited in a house in Craig’s Court, Charing Cross, originated, upon the suggestion of Sir Henry Delabeche, the magnificent Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street; one of the most eminently practical institutions of this scientific age.
[30] Mr. R. Mallet, F.R.S., and his son Dr. Mallet, have constructed a seismographic map of the world, with seismic bands in their position and relative intensity; and small black discs to denote volcanoes, femaroles, and soltataras, and shades indicating the areas of subsidence.
[31] It has been computed that the shock of this earthquake pervaded an area of 700,000 miles, or the twelfth part of the circumference of the globe. This dreadful shock lasted only five minutes; and nearly the whole of the population being within the churches (on the feast of All Saints), no less than 30,000 persons perished by the fall of these edifices.—See Daubeny on Volcanoes; Translator’s note, Humboldt’s Cosmos.