The Fairyland of Science E-Book

Arabella B. Buckley

• Herausgeber: Arabella B. Buckley
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The present volume is chiefly intended for those of my young friends who have read, and been interested in, The Fairyland of Science. It travels over a wide field, pointing out a few of the marvellous facts which can be studied and enjoyed by the help of optical instruments. It will be seen at a glance that any one of the subjects dealt with might be made the study of a lifetime, and that the little information given in each lecture is only enough to make the reader long for more.
In these days, when moderate-priced instruments and good books and lectures are so easily accessible, I hope some eager minds may be thus led to take up one of the branches of science opened out to us by magic glasses; while those who go no further will at least understand something of the hitherto unseen world which is now being studied by their help.

Leseprobe

Arabella B. Buckley

UUID: 0780b7c4-09f2-11e5-95af-4fc950d1ab4a

This ebook was created with BackTypo (http://backtypo.com)by Simplicissimus Book Farm

Table of contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

PREFACE

The present volume is chiefly intended for those of my young friends who have read, and been interested in, the Fairyland of Science. It travels over a wide field, pointing out a few of the marvellous facts which can be studied and enjoyed by the help of optical instruments. It will be seen at a glance that any one of the subjects dealt with might be made the study of a lifetime, and that the little information given in each lecture is only enough to make the reader long for more.In these days, when moderate-priced instruments and good books and lectures are so easily accessible, I hope some eager minds may be thus led to take up one of the branches of science opened out to us by magic glasses; while those who go no further will at least understand something of the hitherto unseen world which is now being studied by their help.The two last lectures wander away from this path, and yet form a natural conclusion to the Magician's lectures to his young Devonshire lads. They have been published before, one in the Youth's Companion of Boston, U.S., and the other in Atalanta, in which the essay on Fungi also appeared in a shorter form. All three lectures have, however, been revised and fully illustrated, and I trust that the volume, as a whole, may prove a pleasant Christmas companion.For the magnificent photograph of Orion's nebula, forming the Frontispiece, I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Isaac Roberts, F.R.A.S., who most kindly lent me the plate for reproduction; and I have had the great good fortune to obtain permission from MM. Henri of the Paris Observatory to copy the illustration of the Lunar Apennines from a most beautiful and perfect photograph of part of the moon, taken by them only last March. My cordial thanks are also due to Mr. A. Cottam, F.R.A.S., for preparing the plate of coloured double stars, and to my friend Mr. Knobel, Hon. Sec. of the R.A.S., for much valuable assistance; to Mr. James Geikie for the loan of some illustrations from his Geology; and to Messrs. Longman for permission to copy Herschel's fine drawing of Copernicus.With the exception of these illustrations and a few others, three of which were kindly given me by Messrs. Macmillan, all the woodcuts have been drawn and executed under the superintendence of Mr. Carreras, jun., who has made my task easier by the skill and patience he has exercised under the difficulties incidental to receiving instructions from a distance.

CHAPTER I

THE MAGICIAN'S CHAMBER BY MOONLIGHT

he full moon was shining in all its splendour one lovely August night, as the magician sat in his turret chamber bathed in her pure white beams, which streamed upon him through the open shutter in the wooden dome above. It is true a faint gleam of warmer light shone from below through the open door, for this room was but an offshoot at the top of the building, and on looking down the turret stairs a lecture-room might be seen below where a bright light was burning. Very little, however, of this warm glow reached the magician, and the implements of his art around him looked like weird gaunt skeletons as they cast their long shadows across the floor in the moonlight.

The small observatory, for such it was, was a circular building with four windows in the walls, and roofed with a wooden dome, so made that it could be shifted round and round by pulling certain cords. One section of this dome was a shutter, which now stood open, and the strip, thus laid bare to the night, was so turned as to face that part of the sky along which the moon was moving. In the centre of the room, with its long tube directed towards the opening, stood the largest magic glass, the Telescope, and in the dead stillness of the night, could be heard distinctly the tick-tick of the clockwork, which kept the instrument pointing to the face of the moon, while the room, and all in it, was being carried slowly and steadily onwards by the earth's rotation on its axis. It was only a moderate-sized instrument, about six feet long, mounted on a solid iron pillar firmly fixed to the floor and fitted with the clockwork, the sound of which we have mentioned; yet it looked like a giant as the pale moonlight threw its huge shadow on the wall behind and the roof above.