Myths and Marvels of Astronomy
the stars which pass overhead in London rise and set on a slant--the
real fact being that _those_ stars never rise or set at all, never
coming within some two dozen moon-breadths of the horizon.
[52] In passing let me note that, of course, I am not discussing the
arguments of paradoxists with the remotest idea of disproving them. They
are not, in reality, worth the trouble. But they show where the general
reader of astronomical text-books, and other such works, is likely to go
astray, and thus conveniently indicate matters whose explanation may be
useful or interesting.
[53] Sterne anticipated this paradoxist in (jestingly) attributing
glassiness to an inferior planet. He made the inhabitants, however, not
the air, glassy. 'The intense heat of the country,' he says, speaking of
the planet Mercury, 'must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies
of the inhabitants to suit them for the climate; so that all the
tenements of their souls may be nothing else, for aught the soundest
philosophy can show to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of
clear glass; so that till the inhabitant grows old and tolerably
wrinkled, whereby the rays of light become monstrously refracted, or
return reflected from the surface, etc., his soul might as well play the
fool out o' doors as in her own house.'
[54] It will be seen from Table X. of my treatise on Saturn that the
ring disappeared on December 12, remaining invisible (because turning
its dark side earthwards) till the spring of 1613. But on December 4,
the ring must have been quite invisible in a telescope so feeble as
Galileo's. The ring then would have been little more than a fine line of
light as seen with one of our powerful modern telescopes.
[55] _North British Review_ for August 1860.
[56] He had, indeed, at an earlier stage, shown a marvellous ignorance
of astronomy by the remark, which doubtless appeared to him a safe one,
that when he saw a planet on the sun in September he supposed it was
Mercury; a September transit of Mercury being as impossible as an
eclipse of the sun during the moon's third quarter.
[57] It is, by the way, somewhat amusing to find Baron Humboldt
referring a question of this sort to the great mathematician Gauss, and
describing the problem as though it involved the most profound
calculations. Ten minutes should suffice to deal with any problem of the
kind.
Transcriber's Note
The following typographical errors were corrected.
Page Error Correction
4 Julias Julius
35 genuis genius
36 artficers artificers
37 signfies signifies
footnote 14 preplexing perplexing
45 Chaldean Chaldaean
46 Chaldeans Chaldaeans
225 peruquier perruquier
237 peruque perruque
281 Northfolk Norfolk
350 ascant askant