Richard A. Proctor

“ As surely as the brilliant planets which deck the nocturnal skies are illuminated by the same orb which gives us our days and seasons, so they are subject to the same mysterious influence which causes the northern banners to wave resplendently over the star-lit depths of heaven. Nay, it is even probable that every flicker and coruscation of our auroral displays corresponds with similar manifestations upon every planet which travels round the sun. ”

“ It is, indeed, utterly inconceivable, I think, that Great Britain and her people will ever be able to progress at the rate implied by these suggestions. To conceive of Great Britain as arriving at ruin within a thousand years by the over-rapid exhaustion of her coal stores, is, in fact, equivalent to supposing that she will attain in the interval to a wholly unprecedented—I had almost said a wholly incredible—degree of wealth and power. ”

“ In fact, our whole system of weights and measures is founded on the apparent diurnal motion of the sidereal system, that is, on the real diurnal rotation of the earth. We may look on the meridian-plane in which the great transit-telescope of the Greenwich Observatory is made to swing, as the gigantic hand of a mighty dial, a hand which, extending outwards among the stars, traces out for us, by its motion among them, the exact progress of time, and so gives us the means of weighing, measuring, and valuing terrestrial objects with an exactitude which is at present beyond our wants. ”

“ Why the working of this same machinery should be attended with so much evil, is a mystery far beyond the reach of our philosophy, and must probably remain so until we are permitted to investigate, not our planet alone and its inhabitants, but other parts of the moral and material universe with which they may be connected. Could our survey embrace other worlds, and the events, not of a few centuries only, but of periods as indefinite as those with which geology renders us familiar, some apparent contradictions might be reconciled, and some difficulties would doubtless be cleared up. ”

“ That this wave ‘does work,’ no one can doubt who has watched its effects. The mere rise and fall in open ocean may not be strikingly indicative of ‘work done;’ but when we see the behaviour of the tidal wave in narrow channels, when we see heavily-laden ships swept steadily up our tidal rivers, we cannot but recognise the expenditure of force. Now, where does this force come from? Motion being the great ‘force-measurer,’ what motion suffers that the tides may work? We may securely reply, that the only motion which can supply the requisite force is the earth’s motion of rotation. ”

“ When we remember that the enormous icebergs of the Arctic and Antarctic seas, the snow-caps which crown the Alps and Andes and Himalayas, and the glaciers which urge their way with resistless force down the mountain valleys, are all made up of these delicate and beautiful snow-flowers, we are struck with the force of the strange contrasts which Nature presents to our contemplation. ”

“ Old shore-lines shift their place, old soundings vary; the sea advances in one place and retires in another; on every side Nature’s plastic hand is at work modelling and remodelling the earth, in order that it may always be a fit abode for those who are to dwell upon it. ”

“ The cone has risen above the rim of the crater, from which torrents of lava are poured forth. At first the lava formed a lake of fire, but the seething mass found an outlet, and poured in a wide stream towards Ottajano. Masses of red-hot stone and rock are hurled forth, and a vast canopy of white vapour hangs over Vesuvius, forming at night, when illuminated by the raging mass below, a glory of resplendent flame around the summit of the mountain. ”

“ An aurora may be in progress in the north of Europe, or even in Asia or America, and as the coloured banners wave to and fro, the tiny needle, watched by patient observers at Greenwich or Paris, will respond to every phase of the display. ”

“ We know, certainly, that the moon is not self-luminous, and therefore we conclude with the utmost certainty that the light we receive from her is simply reflected solar light. So far all is clear. But now take the case of an object like a comet, which may or may not be self-luminous. If we find that a comet’s spectrum resembles the sun’s—and this is not altogether a hypothetical case, for a portion of the light of every comet yet examined does in reality give a rainbow-coloured streak resembling the solar spectrum—we cannot form, in that case, any such positive conclusion. ”

“ It is to the fact that we have the sun’s disc, whereby to measure the change, that we chiefly trust; and even that would be insufficient were it not for the fact that Venus is not at rest, but travels athwart the great solar dial-plate. We are thus enabled to make a time measurement take the place of a measurement of space. If an observer in one place sees Venus cross the sun’s face at a certain distance from the centre, while an observer at another place sees her follow a path slightly farther from the centre, the transit clearly seems longer to the former observer than to the latter. ”

“ Compelled to creep slowly and cautiously along the difficult and narrow ways which alone were open to them, decimated by the chilling blasts which swept the face of the rugged mountain-range, and dreading at every moment the pitiless swoop of the avalanche, the French and Carthaginian troops exhibited little of the pomp and dignity which we are apt to associate with the operations of warlike armies. ”

“ The modern theories of the correlation of force suffice to show how enormous a loss a country suffers226 when there is a failure in the supply of rain, or when that supply comes out of its due season. When we consider rain in connection with the causes to which it is due, we begin to recognise the enormous amount of power of which the ordinary rainfall of a country is the representative; and we can well understand how it is that ‘the clouds drop fatness on the earth.’
The sun’s heat is, of course, the main agent—we may almost say the only agent—in supplying the rainfall of a country. ”

“ Let it be understood that, when I speak of the requirements of the population, I do not mean only what they must obtain from other countries. The commerce of a country is the expression of the activity with which the nation is ‘earning its living,’ so to speak, and in a given population there is a limit to what is necessary for this purpose, precisely as there is a limit to the sum which an individual person in any given state of life requires for the maintenance of a given family. ”

“ If we here recognise the mainspring of the Gulf Stream mechanism, or rather of the whole system of oceanic circulation-for the movements observed in the Atlantic have their exact counterpart in the Pacific—we shall have no difficulty in accounting for all the motions which that mechanism exhibits. We need no longer look upon the Gulf Stream as the rebound of the equatorial current from the shores of North America. Knowing that there is an underflow towards the equator, we see that there must be a surface-flow towards the Poles. ”

“ We must not forget, in the first place, that in all matters of statistical research there is room for misapprehension unless careful attention be paid, not merely to the observed facts, but to the circumstances with which those facts are more or less intimately associated. If we consider, for example, the progress of the consumption of our coal during the past fifteen years, we find that a law of increase exists, which is, as we have seen, easily expressed, and which, after being tested by a process resembling prediction, has been singularly confirmed by the result. ”

“ But the recent deep-sea dredgings have proved that not only does life exist in the very deepest parts of the Atlantic, but that the beings which live and move and have their being beneath three miles of water have eyes which the ablest naturalists pronounce to be perfectly developed. Light, then, of some sort must exist in those abysms, though whether the home of the deep-sea animals be phosphorescent, as Sir Charles Lyell suggests, or whether light reaches these creatures in some other way, we have no present means of determining. ”

“ In a short time the fire increased to such a degree that it burst open the earth in this place, and threw up a quantity of ashes and pumice-stones, mixed with water, which covered the whole country. The next morning the poor inhabitants of Pozzuoli quitted their habitations in terror, covered with the muddy and black shower, which continued the whole day in that country—flying from death, but with death painted in their countenances. Some with their children in their arms, some with sacks full of their goods; others leading an ass, loaded with their frightened family, towards Naples.... ”

“ The thousands of years during which the coal stores of the earth may be expected to last will pass away, and then the descendants of those now living on the earth will have to trust to other force-supplies than those which we are now using so lavishly. It may seem fanciful to look so far forward, and yet by comparison with the periods which the astronomer deals with in considering the future of our earth, thousands of years are as nothing. ”