Page images
PDF
EPUB

engravings. Such works are quite prizes for the young. Really we could almost like to be young again, in order to be able to read, with youthful feelings, such books as are now, at so cheap a rate, provided for the young. There was nothing like it in our young days. Study had fewer helps then than now.

NOTICES OF ANIMATED AND VEGETABLE

NATURE,

FOR JANUARY, 1843.

BY MR. WILLIAM ROGERSON, of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

Now rains prevail,

Now pelting storms of pattering hail;
To these succeed sharp-cutting sleets,
That, fiercely blown in driving sheets,
Swiftly maintain their cruel race,
And deeply wound the traveller's face:
The feather'd meteor fluttering flies,
And softly sails from thicken'd skies;
The north-east winds now fiercely blow,
And, lo! the fountains cease to flow;
They turn the floods to ice, and make
A solid mass of every lake."

"THE winter solstice calls us to reflect on the blessings which the munificent Author of nature grants us in this rigorous season. The advantages of winter to the earth, to the atmosphere, and to man, are incalculably great. In consequence of the cold and frost, many noxious vapours are retained in the superior regions of the atmosphere, by which means the air is rendered more pure. Far from being prejudicial to the health of man, they often improve it, and counteract that debility which a continued heat would produce. The constitution of the human body varies according to the climate in which it is placed; so that the inhabitants of the northern countries enjoy a constitution adapted to the excessive cold that prevails there, and they are generally very robust and hardy. Even as man, though he loves to be in action, and that labour is necessary to him, is yet glad to have his toil interrupted by the recurrence of each evening, to taste the sweets of sleep, and to pass into a state altogether opposite to that in which he was when awake, so also does our nature accommodate itself to the vicissitudes of the seasons, and we are pleased with them, because they contribute to our happiness and well-being.

"At present our fields and our gardens are covered with snow, which is necessary to preserve them from being injured by the cold, to secure the seeds from the impetuosity of the winds, and to prevent their being destroyed. The fields, after having, during the fine weather, produced all the fruits upon which we live in the winter, require some repose. And in this we have great cause to acknowledge the wisdom and goodness of God: for if he had not provided

for our support, and if to obtain our nourishment we were obliged to cultivate the earth in this rigorous season, our complaints might have some foundation; but He has begun by filling our magazines, which are sufficient to supply all our wants, and permit us to enjoy a degree of repose suitable to the season."-Time's Telescope.

"Almighty God, thy power we sing;
And to thy goodness tribute bring
For all thy works of love:

Thy wisdom crowns thy boundless might;
Thy kindness brings thy truth to light,
As clear as orbs above.

"How full are earth, and sea, and air!
How great thy love! what constant care
Of all the host is shown!

On great and small thy bounty flows,
And all creation richly glows

With goodness all thine own."

The first half of the month.-The squirrel, the hedgehog, the dormouse, the bat, and the tortoise, continue in their torpid state. The fox wanders to the hen-roost in quest of food.

"The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad,
And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb:
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep,
In unrecumbent sadness."

Chaffinches, titmice, and yellow-hammers are seen in company with sparrows in farm-yards, especially in snowy weather; flocks of fieldfares appear on the trees; and

"Aloft, in mazy course, the golden wren

Sports on the boughs, nor fears the' approach of men."

The redbreast (motacilla rubecula) at this season is peculiarly fond of the habitation of man, and, unless the weather is extremely cold, even cheers the wintry gloom with his song.

"Dear little tenant of the flowery grove,

Sweet warbler at my frost-embroider'd pane,
When Winter rules despotic hill and plain,
And hush'd the feather'd suitor's lay of love,
And wandering minstrels seek more genial clime;
Come, sweetest bird, that little heed'st the storm,
And, perch'd near lonely cottage-casement warm,
Full blithely sing'st, scorning the iron time;

Come, with thy sparkling eye of purest ray,
And throat that might Virginia's songsters dare
With hers in brilliant plumage to compare ;

Come, cheer the wintry as the summer's day;
And, like a faithful friend, be thine to bless,
When sunbeams dazzle, or when clouds oppress."

In sheltered situations in our gardens some of the flowers of amaryllis lutea are yet to be seen. The laurustinus remains in blossom, together with the Christmas-rose.

the

The last half of the month.-The hedge-sparrow, the wren, thrush, and the blackbird are occasionally heard to tune their harps to the wintry breeze. Gnats are often seen sporting in the solar rays: winter moths, and bay-shouldered button-moths, are at times seen. The little tick-tack, or death-watch, (termes pulsator,) is occasionally seen among old books in dry dusty situations. I put a number of these minute insects into paper bags, in the month of July, in which they frequently made a noise equal to that of a common watch, during the remainder of summer and autumn. When the cold weather set in, I placed my little companions near the fire; where they were merrily beating at the beginning of December. I have often wondered that so small an insect can make so loud a noise.

The vegetable world by this time is making some little movements: the snowdrop is beginning to unfold its white and elegantlyformed blossoms; while the hardy yellow crocus is forcing its green leaves above the surface of the earth, at the base of which appears its golden bloom. The crocus versicolor, or variegated crocus, in pots in a sunny window, will be at this time in full blow, and appear very beautiful. "The oak, the ash, the beech, and most of our foresttrees, with the exception of the larch, the numerous varieties of the fir and the pine, retain their leaves, and variegate the disrobed grove with their unfading verdure. In the woodland copse, or lonely dell, the beautiful holly still gladdens the eye with its shining and dark-green leaves. Nor are our shrubberies without their living green: the laurel and bay defy the blasts of winter, and continue to shelter and beautify our dwellings."—Duncan.

BRIEF ASTRONOMICAL NOTICES,

FOR JANUARY, 1843.

BY MR. WILLIAM ROGERSON, of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. "AND now, in ether's vast expanse,

Ten thousand moving orbs advance;
Wheels upon wheels unnumber'd turn,
And radiant lights incessant burn;
Each system with a thousand teems,
And like a world the smallest seems;
All perfect in degree and kind,
Alike for wholes and parts design'd:
Thus lifeless matter all around,

By constant laws of order bound,
In solemn state, and mystic maze,

Moves and proclaims its Maker's praise:
The Artist in his work appears,

And humble man adores and fears;
While seraphs, with ecstatic fire,
Burn, sing, and, ever rapt, admire."

By way of introducing these Notices with the new year, I shall make a somewhat copious extract from the last publication of my worthy friend, that eminent Christian philosopher, the late Dr. Olinthus Gregory, as it relates to the fundamental principles of astronomy.

66

[ocr errors]

Physical astronomy, as a department of mathematical theory, owes its origin to a simple accident. Sir Isaac Newton was forced from Cambridge in the year 1666, by the plague. During his retirement, his friend Dr. Pemberton states, as he was sitting alone in a garden, some apples falling from a tree led his thoughts to the subject of gravity.' He was induced to conjecture that the moon was retained in her orbit by the same kind of force as that which caused the apples to descend to the earth, or that gave a curvilinear motion to bullets, or other projectiles, near the earth's surface. Ere long, he made a computation upon this hypothesis; and found that the deviation of the moon, moving in her orbit, from the tangent at any given point, was precisely what it ought to be, supposing the force of terrestrial gravity to vary inversely as the squares of the distances from the earth's centre. This step accomplished, it was not for such a mind as Newton's there to rest. He collected 'from mathematical reasoning, unexceptionably demonstrated, that all bodies which are moved in any curve line described in a plane, and which, by a radius drawn to a point, either quiescent or moved in any manner, describe areas round that point proportional to the times, are urged by forces directed to that point. And since it is agreed among astronomers that the primary planets describe about the sun, and the secondary planets describe about their primaries, areas proportional to their times, it follows that the force by which they are continually deflected from the rectilinear tangents, and made to revolve in curvilinear orbits, is directed towards bodies placed in the centres of those orbits. This force, from whatever cause it may be supposed to arise, he thought might not improperly be called centripetal with respect to the revolving body, attractive with respect to the central body.' But he uses great caution to prevent a misinterpretation of his meaning; which I mention here, because I have heard very confident arguments against his philosophy, founded on a mistake as to this point.

"What I call attraction,' he suggests, 'may be performed by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use the word here to signify in general any force by which bodies tend towards one another, whatever be the cause; for we must learn from the phenomena of nature what bodies attract one another, and what are the laws and properties of the attraction, before we inquire the cause by which the attraction is performed.'

"How immense and fertile the region of inquiry which was thus laid open to the world, I need scarcely hint: yet who can be entirely silent on so magnificent a theme? The earth, the sun, and all the celestial bodies which attend the sun, attract each other mutually. The minutest particles of each of them, and of all other

bodies, conform to the same law; each particle acting proportionally to the quantity of matter directly, and to the squares of its distances from other particles reciprocally. Hence flow a variety, not yet, nor perhaps ever to be, exhausted, of interesting and important propositions. Such, for example, as those which relate to the attraction of spheres, spheroids, and other solids, whether homogeneous or not, upon particles in assigned positions; the forces which retain the planets in their orbits, so as to conform to the Keplerean laws; the forces which disturb the elliptical motions of the planets and satellites; the irregularities of the lunar motions, and those of the other secondaries; the mutations of the planes of the several orbits; the figure of the earth and planets; the variations of gravity at different points on their surfaces; the tides; the oscillations of the atmosphere; the variations of atmospheric pressure at different altitudes; the refraction of light while passing through the atmosphere; the attraction of mountains; the precession of the equinoxes, and the nutation of the earth's axis; the irregular figure and balancing of Saturn's ring, and the dependence of that balancing upon that irregular figure; the libration of the moon :-these, and many more topics of investigation, springing from the theory of attraction, and each and all of them, as they are pursued, supplying greater or less confirmation of the existence, 'the simple and sublime agency, of this commanding principle.'

"By this principle, philosophers have, so to speak, decomposed the physical system of the world, reduced it to its single element, and then recomposed it. Viewed in this relation, physical astronomy is, unquestionably, of all the sciences, the most complete, the most sublime, and that in which the human intellect is most elevated. 'But that which gives it, above all, an inestimable value, is its perfect certainty.' Other branches of science have changed incessantly, and several must still undergo modifications; several, perhaps, be abandoned: yet, whatever be the progress of knowledge, whatever the expansion of intellect, the principle of universal gravitation is established irrefragably, and the main deductions from it rest on an immoveable foundation.

"Before I quit this subject, I venture upon one more observation. It has been demonstrated by Lagrange and Laplace, having been, on some points, preceded by T. Simpson, Clairault, Frisi, and others, that all the planetary inequalities are PERIODICAL, each returning, after a certain time, to go through the same series of changes which it had formerly exhibited; the whole system oscillating, as it were, between certain limits which it can never pass. Now this property, so essential to the well-being of the inhabitants of the several planets, requires the concurrence of these four independent conditions:—that the force shall be inversely as the square of the distance; that the masses of the revolving bodies be small, compared with that of the central body; that the eccentricities of the orbits be inconsiderable; and that the planes of those orbits be originally not much inclined to each other. The irresistible conclusion thus furnished is, that all

« PreviousContinue »