Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show." I hope that this specimen of the effusions of two of the most celebrated wits of the age may not be considered as improper. Dryden was also one of the earliest members of the Royal Society, and was finally excused from paying his arrears probably on account of his straitened circumstances. See Birch. The Royal Society certainly afforded some ground for the ridicule that was cast upon them. Sprat says, "their manner of gathering and dispersing questions is this: First they require some of their particular fellows to examine all treatises and descriptions of the natural and artificial productions of those countries in which they would be informed. At the same time they employ others to discourse with the seamen, travellers, tradesmen, and merchants, who are likely to give them the best light. Out of this united intelligence from men and books they compose a body of questions concerning the observable things of those places." These questions, so framed, were dispersed to their correspondents in different quarters. Thus far the scheme was judicious, and was in general judiciously executed; but some of the questions were calculated to create mirth at the expense of the society. Sprat has published answers returned by a gentleman of Batavia to certain inquiries sent thither. Two of them are as follows: "Whether in the island of Sambrero, which lyeth northwards of Sumatra, about eight degrees northern latitude, there be found such a vegetable as Master James Lancaster relates to have seen, which grows up to a tree, shrinks down when one offers to pluck it up into the ground, and would quite shrink unless held very hard? And whether the same being forcibly plucked up, hath a worm for its root, diminishing more and more according as the tree groweth in greatness; and as soon as the worm is wholly turned into the tree, rooting in the ground, and so growing great? And whether the same plucked up young, turns, by that time it is dry, into a hard stone, much like to white coral ? "Answer. I cannot meet with any that ever have heard of such a vegetable. "What ground there may be for that relation concerning horns taking root and growing about Goa? "Answer. Inquiring about this, a friend laught, and told me it was a jeer put upon the Portuguese, because the women of Goa are counted much given to lechery." END OF NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. TRANSACTIONS. No. I. OF COMETS. By HUGH WILLIAMSON, M. D., LL. D., &c. &c. [Read before the Society, 20th June, 1814.] THE theory of comets, in all ages, has been very obscure. Those bodies were formerly supposed to be portentous, and were deemed to be temporary meteors. It seems, however, to have been generally admitted, within the last two centuries, since telescopes have been greatly improved, that comets are solid bodies, though of little use, revolving round the sun, and suffering from him, at certain times, the most astonishing degree of heat; whence they have been called blazing stars. In the year 1769, during the appearance of a remarkable comet, I ventured an opinion on that subject, very different from the opinions that had commonly been received. I presumed that comets do not suffer a great degree of heat in any part of their revolution. That the tail of a comet is not a flame of fire, but the atmosphere of the comet, thrown behind the nucleus by the rays of light, in its approach towards the sun, and illuminated by the refracted light of the sun. Hence I inferred that comets, in all probability, like this earth, are globes inha bited by rational beings, and little more exposed to excessive heat or cold than we are. As objections have been published to some allegations contained in that theory, I have reviewed the subject with some attention, since the appearance of a late comet in the year 1811; but no objections have come under my notice by which the conclusions I formerly drew are, in any degree, impaired. True it is, that it has been questioned whether the rays of the sun's light have any force by which they might propel the particles of air. It has also been objected that the theory of heat, which I formerly mentioned, was not correct. The present theory of heat is confessedly very different from that which I formerly adopted; nor shall I pause a minute to consider whether this or that be most correct; since it is not necessary, because it fortunately happens, that the conclusions I attempted to draw do not require the support of a doubtful theory. This I shall endeavour to show by a different course of reasoning. In order to form correct ideas concerning planets to which we have no access, we are bound to suppose that they agree, in certain prominent characters, with the only planet with which we are well acquainted. From our knowledge, then, of the globe we inhabit, we venture to conclude; 1. That an atmosphere, or air, is essential to animal or vegetable life. 2. That the heat which prevails on the surface of any planet is according to the weight of its atmosphere, and not inversely as the square of its distance from the sun. 3. That all planets, or other bodies revolving round the sun, are provided with an atmosphere that is great in proportion to their several distances from the sun. 4. That the luminous tail of a comet is nothing else than part of its atmosphere thrown to a considerable distance behind the comet, for the relief of the cometarians in their approach towards the sun. |