A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Part 33

The next announcement of the discovery of "Vulcan" was on the occasion of the total solar eclipse of July 29, 1878.[830] This time it was stated to have been seen at some distance south-west of the obscured sun, as a ruddy star with a minute planetary disc; and its simultaneous detection by two observers--the late Professor James C. Watson, stationed at Rawlins (Wyoming Territory), and Professor Lewis Swift at Denver (Colorado)--was at first readily admitted. But their separate observations could, on a closer examination, by no possibility be brought into harmony, and, if valid, certainly referred to two distinct objects, if not to four; each astronomer eventually claiming a pair of planets. Nor could any one of the four be identified with Lescarbault's and Leverrier's Vulcan, which, if a substantial body revolving round the sun, must then have been found on the _east_ side of that luminary.[831]

The most feasible explanation of the puzzle seems to be that Watson and Swift merely saw each the same two stars in Cancer: haste and excitement doing the rest.[832] Nevertheless, they strenuously maintained their opposite conviction.[833]

Intra-Mercurian planets have since been diligently searched for when the opportunity of a total eclipse offered, especially during the long obscuration at Caroline Island. Not only did Professor Holden "sweep" in the solar vicinity, but Palisa and Trouvelot agreed to divide the field of exploration, and thus make sure of whatever planetary prey there might be within reach; yet with only negative results. Photographic explorations during recent eclipses have been equally fruitless. Belief in the presence of any considerable body or bodies within the orbit of Mercury is, accordingly, at a low ebb. Yet the existence of the anomaly in the Mercurian movements indicated by Leverrier has been made only surer by further research.[834] Its elucidation const.i.tutes one of the "pending problems" of astronomy.

From the observation at Bologna in 1666-67 of some very faint spots, Domenico Ca.s.sini concluded a rotation or libration of Venus--he was not sure which--in about twenty-three hours.[835] By Bianchini in 1726 the period was augmented to twenty-four _days_ eight hours. J. J. Ca.s.sini, however, in 1740, showed that the data collected by both observers were consistent with rotation in twenty-three hours twenty minutes.[836] So the matter rested until Schroter's time. After watching nine years in vain, he at last, February 28, 1788, perceived the ordinarily uniform brightness of the planet's disc to be marbled with a filmy streak, which returned periodically to the same position in about twenty-three hours twenty-eight minutes. This approximate estimate was corrected by the application of a more definite criterion. On December 28, 1789, the southern horn of the crescent Venus was seen truncated, an outlying lucid point interrupting the darkness beyond. Precisely the same appearance recurred two years later, giving for the planet's rotation a period of 23h. 21m.[837] To this only twenty-two seconds were added by De Vico, as the result of over 10,000 observations made with the Cauchoix refractor of the Collegio Romano, 1839-41.[838] The axis of rotation was found to be much more bowed towards the orbital plane than that of the earth, the equator making with it an angle of 53 11'.

These conclusions inspired, it is true, much distrust, consequently there were no received ideas on the subject to be subverted.

Nevertheless, a shock of surprise was felt at Schiaparelli's announcement, early in 1890,[839] that Venus most probably rotates after the fashion just previously ascribed to Mercury. A continuous series of observations, from November, 1877, to February, 1878, with their records in above a hundred drawings, supplied the chief part of the data upon which he rested his conclusions. They certainly appeared exceptionally well-grounded; and the doubts at first qualifying them were removed by a fresh set of determinations in July, 1895.[840] Most observers had depended, in their attempts to ascertain the rotation-period of Venus, upon evanescent shadings, most likely of atmospheric origin, and scarcely recognisable from day to day. Schiaparelli fixed his attention upon round, defined, l.u.s.trously white spots, the presence of which near the cusps of the illuminated crescent has been attested for close upon two centuries. His steady watch over them showed the invariability of their position with regard to the terminator; and this is as much as to say that the regions of day and night do not shift on the surface of the planet. In other words, she keeps the same face always turned towards the sun. Moreover, since her orbit is nearly circular, libratory effects are very small. They amount in fact to only just one-thirtieth of those serving to modify the severe contrasts of climate in Mercury.

Confirmatory evidence of Schiaparelli's result for Venus is not wanting.

Thus, observations irreconcilable with a swift rate of rotation were made at Bothkamp in 1871 by Vogel and Lohse;[841] and a drawing executed by Professor Holden with the great Washington reflector, December 15, 1877, showed the same markings in the positions recorded at Milan to have been occupied by them eight hours previously. Further, a series of observations, carried out by M. Perrotin at Nice, May 15 to October 4, 1890, and from Mount Mounier in 1895-6, with the special aim of testing the inference of synchronous rotation and revolution, proved strongly corroborative of it.[842] A remarkable collection of drawings made by Mr. Lowell in 1896 appeared decisive in its favour;[843] Tacchini at Rome,[844] Mascari at Catania and Etna,[845] Cerulli at Terano,[846]

obtained in 1892-6 evidence similar in purport. On the other hand, Niesten of Brussels found reason to revert to Vico's discarded elements for the planet's rotation;[847] and Trouvelot,[848] Stanley Williams,[849] Villiger,[850] and Leo Brenner,[851] so far agreed with him as to adopt a period of approximately twenty-four hours. Finally, E.

Von Oppolzer suggested an appeal to the spectroscope;[852] and Belopolsky secured in 1900[853] spectrograms apparently marked by the minute displacements corresponding to a rapid rate of axial movement.

But they were avowedly taken only as an experiment, with unsuitable apparatus; and the desirable verification of their supposed import is not yet forthcoming. Until it is, Schiaparelli's period of 225 days must be allowed to hold the field.

Effects attributed to great differences of level in the surface of Venus have struck many observers. Francesco Fontana at Naples in 1643 noticed irregularities along the inner edge of the crescent.[854] Lahire in 1700 considered them--regard being had to difference of distance--to be much more strongly marked than those visible in the moon.[855] Schroter's a.s.sertions to the same effect, though scouted with some unnecessary vehemence by Herschel,[856] have since been repeatedly confirmed; amongst others by Madler, De Vico, Langdon, who in 1873 saw the broken line of the terminator with peculiar distinctness through a veil of auroral cloud;[857] by Denning,[858] March 30, 1881, despite preliminary impressions to the contrary, as well as by C. V. Zenger at Prague, January 8, 1883. The great mountain ma.s.s, presumed to occasion the periodical blunting of the southern horn, was precariously estimated by the Lilienthal observer to rise to the prodigious height of nearly twenty-seven miles, or just five times the elevation of Mount Everest!

Yet the phenomenon persists, whatever may be thought of the explanation.

Moreover, the speck of light beyond, interpreted as the visible sign of a detached peak rising high enough above the encircling shadow to catch the first and last rays of the sun, was frequently discerned by Baron Van Ertborn in 1876;[859] while an object near the northern horn of the crescent, strongly resembling a lunar ring-mountain, was delineated both by De Vico in 1841 and by Denning forty years later.

We are almost equally sure that Venus, as that the earth is encompa.s.sed with an atmosphere. Yet, notwithstanding luminous appearances plainly due to refraction during the transits both of 1761 and 1769, Schroter, in 1792, took the initiative in coming to a definite conclusion on the subject.[860] It was founded, first, on the rapid diminution of brilliancy towards the terminator, attributed to atmospheric absorption; next, on the extension beyond a semicircle of the horns of the crescent; lastly, on the presence of a bluish gleam illuminating the early hours of the Cytherean night with what was taken to be genuine twilight. Even Herschel admitted that sunlight, by the same effect through which the heavenly bodies show _visibly above_ our horizons while still _geometrically below_ them, appeared to be bent round the shoulder of the globe of Venus. Ample confirmation of the fact has since been afforded. At Dorpat in May, 1849, the planet being within 3 26' of inferior conjunction, Madler found the arms of waning light upon the disc to embrace no less than 240 of its extent;[861] and in December, 1842, Mr. Guthrie, of Bervie, N.B., actually observed, under similar conditions, the whole circ.u.mference to be lit up with a faint nebulous glow.[862] The same curious phenomenon was intermittently seen by Mr.

Leeson Prince at Uckfield in September, 1861;[863] but with more satisfactory distinctness by Mr. C. S. Lyman of Yale College,[864]

before and after the conjunction of December 11, 1866, and during nearly five hours previous to the transit of 1874, when the yellowish ring of refracted light showed at one point an approach to interruption, possibly through the intervention of a bank of clouds. Again, on December 2, 1898, Venus being 1 45' from the sun's centre, Mr. H. N.

Russell, of the Halsted Observatory, descried the coalescence of the cusps, and founded on the observation a valuable discussion of such effects.[865] Taking account of certain features in the case left unnoticed by Neison[866] and Proctor,[867] he inferred from them the presence of a Cytherean atmosphere considerably less refractive than our own, although possibly, in its lower strata, enc.u.mbered with dust or haze.

Similar appearances are conspicuous during transits. But while the Mercurian halo is characteristically seen on the sun, the "silver thread" round the limb of Venus commonly shows on the part _off_ the sun. There are, however, instances of each description in both cases.

Mr. Grant, in collecting the records of physical phenomena accompanying the transits of 1761 and 1769, remarks that no one person saw both kinds of annulus, and argues a dissimilarity in their respective modes of production.[868] Such a dissimilarity probably exists, in the sense that the inner section of the ring is illusory, the outer, a genuine result of the bending of light in a gaseous envelope; but the distinction of separate visibility has not been borne out by recent experience. Several of the Australian observers during the transit of 1874 witnessed the complete phenomenon. Mr. J. Macdonnell, at Eden, saw a "shadowy nebulous ring" surround the whole disc when ingress was two-thirds accomplished; Mr. Tornaghi, at Goulburn, perceived a halo, entire and unmistakable, at half egress.[869] Similar observations were made at Sydney,[870] and were renewed in 1882 by Lescarbault at Orgeres, by Metzger in Java, and by Barnard at Vanderbilt University.[871]

Spectroscopic indications of aqueous vapour as present in the atmosphere of Venus, were obtained in 1874 and 1882, by Tacchini and Ricc in Italy, and by Young in New Jersey.[872] Janssen, however, who made a special study of the point subsequently to the transit of 1882, found them much less certain than he had antic.i.p.ated;[873] and Vogel, by repeated examinations, 1871-73, could detect only the very slightest variations from the pattern of the solar spectrum. Some additions there indeed seem to be in the thickening of a few water and oxygen-lines; but so nearly evanescent as to induce the persuasion that most of the light we receive from Venus has traversed only the tenuous upper portion of its atmosphere.[874] It is reflected, at any rate, with comparatively slight diminution. On the 26th and 27th of September, 1878, a close conjunction gave Mr. James Nasmyth the rare opportunity of watching Venus and Mercury for several hours side by side in the field of his reflector; when the former appeared to him like clean silver, the latter as dull as lead or zinc.[875] Yet the light _incident_ upon Mercury is, on an average, three and a half times as strong as the light reaching Venus. Thus, the reflective power of Venus must be singularly strong.

And we find, accordingly, from a combination of Zollner's with Muller's results, that its albedo is but little inferior to that of new-fallen snow; in other words, it gives back 77 per cent. of the luminous rays impinging upon it.

This extraordinary brilliancy would be intelligible were it permissible to suppose that we see nothing of the planet but a dense canopy of clouds. But the hypothesis is discountenanced by the Flagstaff observations, and is irreconcilable with the visibility of mountainous elevations, and permanent surface-markings. To Mr. Lowell these were so distinct and unchanging as to furnish data for a chart of the Cytherean globe, and the peculiar arrangement of divergent shading exhibited in it cannot off-hand be set down as unreal, in view of Perrotin's earlier discernment of a.n.a.logous linear traces. Gruithuisen's "snow-caps,"[876]

however--it is safe to say--do not exist as such; although shining regions near the poles form a well-attested trait of the strange Cytherean landscape.

The "secondary," or "ashen light," of Venus was first noticed by Riccioli in 1643; it was seen by Derham about 1715, by Kirch in 1721, by Schroter and Harding in 1806;[877] and the reality of the appearance has since been authenticated by numerous and trustworthy observations. It is precisely similar to that of the "old moon in the new moon's arms"; and Zenger, who witnessed it with unusual distinctness, January 8, 1883,[878] supposes it due to the same cause--namely, to the faint gleam of reflected earth-light from the night-side of the planet. When we remember, however, that "full earth-light" on Venus, at its nearest, has little more than 1/12000 its intensity on the moon, we see at once that the explanation is inadequate. Nor can Professor Safarik's,[879] by phosph.o.r.escence of the warm and teeming oceans with which Zollner[880]

regarded the globe of Venus as mainly covered, be seriously entertained.

Vogel's suggestion is more plausible. He and O. Lohse, at Bothkamp, November 3 to 11, 1871, saw the dark hemisphere _partially_ illuminated by secondary light, extending 30 from the terminator, and thought the effect might be produced by a very extensive twilight.[881] Others have had recourse to the a.n.a.logy of our aurorae, and J. Lamp suggested that the grayish gleam, visible to him at Bothkamp, October 21 and 26, 1887,[882] might be an accompaniment of electrical processes connected with the planet's meteorology. Whatever the origin of the phenomenon, it may serve, on a night-enwrapt hemisphere, to dissipate some of the thick darkness otherwise encroached upon only by "the pale light of stars."

Venus was once supposed to possess a satellite. But belief in its existence has died out. No one, indeed, has caught even a deceptive glimpse of such an object during the last 125 years. Yet it was repeatedly and, one might have thought, well observed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fontana "discovered" it in 1645; Ca.s.sini--an adept in the art of seeing--recognised it in 1672, and again in 1686; Short watched it for a full hour in 1740 with varied instrumental means; Tobias Mayer in 1759, Montaigne in 1761; several astronomers at Copenhagen in March, 1764, noted what they considered its unmistakable presence; as did Horrebow in 1768. But M. Paul Stroobant,[883] who in 1887 submitted all the available data on the subject to a searching examination, identified Horrebow's satellite with Theta Librae, a fifth-magnitude star; and a few other apparitions were, by his industry, similarly explained away. Nevertheless, several withstood all efforts to account for them, and together form a most curious case of illusion. For it is quite certain that Venus has no such conspicuous attendant.

The third planet encountered in travelling outward from the sun is the abode of man. He has in consequence opportunities for studying its physical habitudes altogether different from the baffling glimpse afforded to him of the other members of the solar family.

Regarding the earth, then, a ma.s.s of knowledge so varied and comprehensive has been acc.u.mulated as to form a science--or rather several sciences--apart. But underneath all lie astronomical relations, the recognition and investigation of which const.i.tute one of the most significant intellectual events of the present century.

It is indeed far from easy to draw a line of logical distinction between items of knowledge which have their proper place here, and those which should be left to the historian of geology. There are some, however, of which the cosmical connections are so close that it is impossible to overlook them. Among these is the ascertainment of the solidity of the globe. At first sight it seems difficult to conceive what the apparent positions of the stars can have to do with subterranean conditions; yet it was from star measurements alone that Hopkins, in 1839, concluded the earth to be solid to a depth of at least 800 or 1,000 miles.[884] His argument was, that if it were a mere sh.e.l.l filled with liquid, precession and nutation would be much larger than they are observed to be. For the sh.e.l.l alone would follow the pull of the sun and moon on its equatorial girdle, leaving the liquid behind; and being thus so much the lighter, would move the more readily. There is, it is true, grave reason to doubt whether this reasoning corresponds with the actual facts of the case;[885] but the conclusion to which it led has been otherwise affirmed and extended.

Indications of an identical purport have been derived from another kind of external disturbance, affecting our globe through the same agencies.

Lord Kelvin (then Sir William Thomson) pointed out in 1862[886] that tidal influences are brought to bear on land as well as on water, although obedience to them is perceptible only in the mobile element.

Some bodily distortion of the earth's figure _must_, however, take place, unless we suppose it of absolute or "preternatural" rigidity, and the amount of such distortion can be determined from its effect in diminishing oceanic tides below their calculated value. For if the earth were perfectly plastic to the stresses of solar and lunar gravity, tides--in the ordinary sense--would not exist. Continents and oceans would swell and subside together. It is to the _difference_ in the behaviour of solid and liquid terrestrial const.i.tuents that the ebb and flow of the waters are due.

Six years later, the distinguished Glasgow professor suggested that this criterion might, by the aid of a prolonged series of exact tidal observations, be practically applied to test the interior condition of our planet.[887] In 1882, accordingly, suitable data extending over thirty-three years having at length become available, Mr. G. H. Darwin performed the laborious task of their a.n.a.lysis, with the general result that the "effective rigidity" of the earth's ma.s.s must be _at least_ as great as that of steel.[888]

Ratification from an unexpected quarter has lately been brought to this conclusion. The question of a possible mobility in the earth's axis of rotation has often been mooted. Now at last it has received an affirmative reply. Dr. Kustner detected, in his observations of 1884-85, effects apparently springing from a minute variation in the lat.i.tude of Berlin. The matter having been brought before the International Geodetic a.s.sociation in 1888, special observations were set on foot at Berlin, Potsdam, Prague, and Strasbourg, the upshot of which was to bring plainly to view synchronous, and seemingly periodic fluctuations of lat.i.tude to the extent of half a second of arc. The reality of these was verified by an expedition to Honolulu in 1891-92, the variations there corresponding inversely to those simultaneously determined in Europe.[889] Their character was completely defined by Mr. S. C.

Chandler's discussion in October, 1891.[890] He showed that they could be explained by supposing the pole of the earth to describe a circle with a radius of thirty feet in a period of fourteen months.

Confirmation of this hypothesis was found by Dr. B. A. Gould in the Cordoba observations,[891] and it was provided with a physical basis through the able co-operation of Professor Newcomb.[892] The earth, owing to its ellipsoidal shape, should, apart from disturbance, rotate upon its "axis of figure," or shortest diameter; since thus alone can the centrifugal forces generated by its spinning balance each other.

Temporary causes, however, such as heavy falls of snow or rain limited to one continental area, the shifting of ice-ma.s.ses, even the movements of winds, may render the globe slightly lop-sided, and thus oblige it to forsake its normal axis, and rotate on one somewhat divergent from it.

This "instantaneous axis" (for it is incessantly changing) must, by mathematical theory, revolve round the axis of figure in a period of 306 days. Provided, that is to say, the earth were a perfectly rigid body.

But it is far from being so; it yields sensibly to every strain put upon it; and this yielding tends to protract the time of circulation of the displaced pole. The length of its period, then, serves as a kind of measure of the plasticity of the globe; which, according to Newcomb's and S. S. Hough's independent calculations,[893] seems to be a little less than that of steel. In an earth compacted of steel, the instantaneous axis would revolve in 441 days; in the actual earth, the process is accomplished in 428 days. By this new path, accordingly, astronomers have been led to an identical estimate of the consistence of our globe with that derived from tidal investigations.

Variations of lat.i.tude are intrinsically complex. To produce them, an incalculable interplay of causes must be at work, each with its proper period and law of action.[894] All the elements of the phenomenon are then in a perpetual state of flux,[895] and absorb for their continual redetermination, the arduous and combined labours of many astronomers.

Nor is this trouble superfluous. Minute in extent though they be, the shiftings of the pole menace the very foundations of exact celestial science; their neglect would leave the entire fabric insecure. Just at the beginning of the present century they reached a predicted minimum, but are expected again to augment their range after the year 1902. The interesting suggestion has been made by Mr. J. Halm that such fluctuations are, in some obscure way, affected by changes in solar activity, and conform like them to an eleven-year cycle.[896]

In a paper read before the Geological Society, December 15, 1830,[897]

Sir John Herschel threw out the idea that the perplexing changes of climate revealed by the geological record might be explained through certain slow fluctuations in the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t, produced by the disturbing action of the other planets. Shortly afterwards, however, he abandoned the position as untenable;[898] and it was left to the late Dr. James Croll, in 1864[899] and subsequent years, to reoccupy and fortify it. Within restricted limits (as Lagrange and, more certainly and definitely, Leverrier proved), the path pursued by our planet round the sun alternately contracts, in the course of ages, into a moderate ellipse, and expands almost to a circle, the major axis, and consequently the mean distance, remaining invariable. Even at present, when the eccentricity approaches a minimum, the sun is nearer to us in January than in July by above three million miles, and some 850,000 years ago this difference was more than four times as great. Dr.

Croll brought together[900] a ma.s.s of evidence to support the view, that, at epochs of considerable eccentricity, the hemisphere of which the winter, occurring at aphelion, was both intensified and prolonged, must have undergone extensive glaciation; while the opposite hemisphere, with a short, mild winter, and long, cool summer, enjoyed an approach to perennial spring. These conditions were exactly reversed at the end of 10,500 years, through the shifting of the perihelion combined with the precession of the equinoxes, the frozen hemisphere blooming into a luxuriant garden as its seasons came round to occur at the opposite sites of the terrestrial orbit, and the vernal hemisphere subsiding simultaneously into ice-bound rigour.[901] Thus a plausible explanation was offered of the anomalous alternations of glacial and semi-tropical periods, attested, on incontrovertible geological evidence, as having succeeded each other in times past over what are now temperate regions.

They succeeded each other, it is true, with much less frequency and regularity than the theory demanded; but the discrepancy was overlooked or smoothed away. The most recent glacial epoch was placed by Dr. Croll about 200,000 years ago, when the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t was 34 times as great as it is now. At present a faint representation of such a state of things is afforded by the southern hemisphere. One condition of glaciation in the coincidence of winter with the maximum of remoteness from the sun, is present; the other--a high eccentricity--is deficient. Yet the ring of ice-bound territory hemming in the southern pole is well known to be far more extensive than the corresponding region in the north.

The verification of this ingenious hypothesis depends upon a variety of intricate meteorological conditions, some of which have been adversely interpreted by competent authorities.[902] What is still more serious, its acceptance seems precluded by time-relations of a simple kind. Dr.

Wright[903] has established with some approach to certainty that glacial conditions ceased in Canada and the United States about ten or twelve thousand years ago. The erosive action of the Falls of Niagara qualifies them to serve as a clepsydra, or water-clock on a grand scale; and their chronological indications have been amply corroborated elsewhere and otherwise on the same continent. The astronomical Ice Age, however, should have been enormously more antique. No reconciliation of the facts with the theory appears possible.

The first attempt at an experimental estimate of the "mean density" of the earth was Maskelyne's observation in 1774 of the deflection of a plumb-line through the attraction of Schehallien. The conclusion thence derived, that our globe weighs 4-1/2 times as much as an equal bulk of water,[904] was not very exact. It was considerably improved upon by Cavendish, who, in 1798, brought into use the "torsion-balance"

constructed for the same purpose by John Mich.e.l.l. The resulting estimate of 548 was raised to 566 by Francis Baily's elaborate repet.i.tion of the process in 1838-42. From experiments on the subject made in 1872-73 by Cornu and Baille the slightly inferior value of 556 was derived; and it was further shown that the data collected by Baily, when corrected for a systematic error, gave practically the same result (555).[905] M.

Wilsing's of 558, obtained at Potsdam in 1889,[906] nearly agreed with it; while Professor Poynting, by means of a common balance, arrived at a terrestrial mean density of 549.[907] Professor Boys next entered the field with an exquisite apparatus, in which a quartz fibre performed the functions of a torsion-rod; and the figure 553 determined by him, and exactly confirmed by Dr. Braun's research at Mariaschein, Bohemia, in 1896,[908] may be called the standard value of the required datum.

Newton's guess at the average weight of the earth as five or six times that of water has thus been curiously verified.

Operations for determining the figure of the earth were carried out during the last century on an unprecedented scale. The Russo-Scandinavian arc, of which the measurement was completed under the direction of the elder Struve in 1855, reached from Hammerfest to Ismailia on the Danube, a length of 25 20'. But little inferior to it was the Indian arc, begun by Lambton in the first years of the century, continued by Everest, revised and extended by Walker. Both were surpa.s.sed in compa.s.s by the Anglo-French arc, which embraced 28; and considerable segments of meridians near the Atlantic and Pacific sh.o.r.es of North America were measured under the auspices of the United States Coast Survey. But these operations shrink into insignificance by comparison with Sir David Gill's grandiose scheme for uniting two hemispheres by a continuous network of triangulation. The history of geodesy in South Africa began with Lacaille's measurements in 1752. They were repeated and enlarged in scope by Sir Thomas Maclear in 1841-48; and his determinations prepared the way for a complete survey of Cape Colony and Natal, executed during the ten years 1883-92 by Colonel Morris, R.E., under the direction of Sir David Gill.[909] Bechua.n.a.land and Rhodesia were subsequently included in the work; and the Royal Astronomer obtained, in 1900, the support of the International Geodetic a.s.sociation for its extension to the mouth of the Nile. Nor was this the limit of his design. By carrying the survey along the Levantine coast, connection can be established with Struve's system, and the magnificent amplitude of 105 will be given to the conjoined African and European arcs. Meantime, the French have undertaken the remeasurement of Bouguer's Peruvian arc, and a corresponding Russo-Swedish[910] enterprise is progressing in Spitzbergen; so that abundant materials will ere long be provided for fresh investigations of the shape and size of our planet. The smallness of the outstanding uncertainty can be judged of by comparing J. B.

Listing's[911] with General Clarke's[912] results, published in the same year (1878). Listing stated the dimensions of the terrestrial spheroid as follows: Equatorial radius = 3,960 miles; polar radius = 3,947 miles; ellipticity = 1/2885. Clarke's corresponding figures were: 3,963 and 3,950 miles, giving an ellipticity of 1/2935. The value of the latter fraction at present generally adopted is 1/292; that is to say, the thickness of the protuberant equatorial ring is held to be 1/292 of the equatorial radius. From astronomical considerations, it is true, Newcomb estimated the ratio at 1/308;[913] but for obtaining this particular datum, geodetical methods are unquestionably to be preferred.

The moon possesses for us a unique interest. She in all probability shared the origin of the earth; she perhaps prefigures its decay. She is at present its minister and companion. Her existence, so far as we can see, serves no other purpose than to illuminate the darkness of terrestrial nights, and to measure, by swiftly-recurring and conspicuous changes of aspect, the long span of terrestrial time. Inquiries stimulated by visible dependence, and aided by relatively close vicinity, have resulted in a wonderfully minute acquaintance with the features of the single lunar hemisphere open to our inspection.

Selenography, in the modern sense, is little more than a hundred years old. It originated with the publication in 1791 of Schroter's _Selenotopographische Fragmente_.[914] Not but that the lunar surface had already been diligently studied, chiefly by Hevelius, Ca.s.sini, Riccioli, and Tobias Mayer; the idea, however, of investigating the moon's physical condition, and detecting symptoms of the activity there of natural forces through minute topographical inquiry, first obtained effect at Lilienthal. Schroter's delineations, accordingly, imperfect though they were, afforded a starting-point for a _comparative_ study of the superficial features of our satellite.

The first of the curious objects which he named "rills" was noted by him in 1787. Before 1801 he had found eleven; Lohrmann added 75; Madler 55; Schmidt published in 1866 a catalogue of 425, of which 278 had been detected by himself;[915] and he eventually brought the number up to nearly 1,000. They are, then, a very persistent lunar feature, though wholly without terrestrial a.n.a.logue. There is no difference of opinion as to their nature. They are quite obviously clefts in a rocky surface, 100 to 500 yards deep, usually a couple of miles across, and pursuing straight, curved, or branching tracks up to 150 miles in length. As regards their origin, the most probable view is that they are fissures produced in cooling; but Neison inclines to consider them rather as dried watercourses.[916]

On February 24, 1792, Schroter perceived what he took to be distinct traces of a lunar twilight, and continued to observe them during nine consecutive years.[917] They indicated, he thought, the presence of a shallow atmosphere, about 29 times more tenuous than our own. Bessel, on the other hand, considered that the only way of "saving" a lunar atmosphere was to deny it any refractive power, the sharpness and suddenness of star-occultations negativing the possibility of gaseous surroundings of greater density (admitting an extreme supposition) than 1/500 that of terrestrial air.[918] Newcomb places the maximum at 1/400.

Sir John Herschel concluded "the non-existence of any atmosphere at the moon's edge having 1/1980 part of the density of the earth's atmosphere."[919]

This decision was fully borne out by Sir William Huggins's spectroscopic observation of the disappearance behind the moon's limb of the small star Eta Piscium, January 4, 1865.[920] Not the slightest sign of selective absorption or unequal refraction was discernible. The entire spectrum went out at once, as if a slide had suddenly dropped over it.

The spectroscope has uniformly told the same tale; for M. Thollon's observation during the total solar eclipse at Sohag of a supposed thickening at the moon's rim, of certain dark lines in the solar spectrum, is now acknowledged to have been illusory. Moonlight, a.n.a.lysed with the prism, is found to be pure reflected sunlight, diminished in _quant.i.ty_, owing to the low reflective capability of the lunar surface, to less than one-fifth its incident intensity, but wholly unmodified in _quality_.

Nevertheless, the diameter of the moon appeared from the Greenwich observations discussed by Airy in 1865[921] to be 4" smaller than when directly measured; and the effect would be explicable by refraction in a lunar atmosphere 2,000 times thinner than our own at the sea-level. But the difference was probably illusory. It resulted in part, if not wholly, from the visual enlargement by irradiation of the bright disc of the moon. Professor Comstock, employing the 16-inch Clark equatoreal of the Washburn Observatory, found in 1897 the refractive displacements of occulted stars so trifling as to preclude the existence of a permanent lunar atmosphere of much more than 1/5000 the density of the terrestrial envelope.[922] The possibility, however, was admitted that, on the illuminated side of the moon, temporary exhalations of aqueous vapour might arise from ice-strata evaporated by sun-heat. Meantime, some renewed evidence of actual crepuscular gleams on the moon had been gathered by MM. Paul and Prosper Henry of the Paris Observatory, as well as by Mr. W. H. Pickering, in the pure air of Arequipa, at an alt.i.tude of 8,000 feet above the sea.[923] An occultation of Jupiter, too, observed by him August 12, 1892,[924] was attended with a slight flattening of the planet's disc through the effect, it was supposed, of lunar refraction--but of refraction in an atmosphere possessing, at the most, 1/4000 the density at the sea-level of terrestrial air, and capable of holding in equilibrium no more than 1/250 of an inch of mercury. Yet this small barometric value corresponds, Mr. Pickering remarks, "to a pressure of hundreds of tons per square mile of the lunar surface." The compression downward of gaseous strata on the moon should, in any case, proceed very gradually, owing to the slight power of lunar gravity,[925] and they might hence play an important part in the economy of our satellite while evading spectroscopic and other tests. Thus--as Mr. Ranyard remarked[926]--the cliffs and pinnacles of the moon bear witness, by their unworn condition, to the efficiency of atmospheric protection against meteoric bombardment; and Mr. Pickering shows that it could be afforded by such a tenuous envelope as that postulated by him.

The first to emulate Schroter's selenographical zeal was Wilhelm Gotthelf Lohrmann, a land-surveyor of Dresden, who, in 1824, published four out of twenty-five sections of the first scientifically executed lunar chart, on a scale of 37-1/2 inches to a lunar diameter. His sight, however, began to fail three years later, and he died in 1840, leaving materials from which the work was completed and published in 1878 by Dr.

Julius Schmidt, late director of the Athens Observatory. Much had been done in the interim. Beer and Madler began at Berlin in 1830 their great trigonometrical survey of the lunar surface, as yet neither revised nor superseded. A map, issued in four parts, 1834-36, on nearly the same scale as Lohrmann's, but more detailed and authoritative, embodied the results. It was succeeded, in 1837, by a descriptive volume bearing the imposing t.i.tle, _Der Mond; oder allgemeine vergleichende Selenographie_.