The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-15 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

DISCOVERIES OF LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPE.
(From Professor " System of the Wori'd.")
And now, if only for a moment, contemplate that stel-
lar creation in its unveiled magnificence ! Restrained no
longer by the consideration of probabilities, freed from
the necessity of discerning amongst its mighty forms only
resemblances of those developments of power which more
closely surround us, we can recognise no limit either to
its stupendous extent or inconceivable variety. The
nebulous spots resolved into stars, is a fact which of i•self
vastly modifies our conception of the magnitude of that
creation; but bow hopelessly does imagination strive to
enlarge itself, that so we realize the interior gorgeousness
of these distant groups ! In the masses of nebulous stars,
circular or compact galaxies of all orders of glory may
now be traced, leading from the splendid cluster in Her-
cules, as their lowest point, up through schemes of being
in which sun is nearer sun, until their entire skies merge
into one blaze of light and one throng of activities ;—not
like ours, coldly studded with points far apart, whose
mutual influences are sundered by huge abysses! But
high above all stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory and
wonder of the sideral universe. Considering it as so re-
mote, that its light cannot reach us in less than sixty
thousand years, and at the same time as occupying so
large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendous
must be the extent of that nebula! It would seem almost
that, if all other clusters hitherto gauged were collected
and compressed into one, they would not surpass this
mighty group, in which every wisp, every wrinkle, is
verily a sand-heap of stars ! There are cases in which,
though imagination has quailed, reason may still adven-
ture inquiries and prolong its speculations ; but at times
we are brought to a limit across which no human faculty
has the strength to penetrate, and where, as now—as if
on the threshold of the very infinite—we can only bend
our heads and silently adore. * *
In regard of inquiries so vast, perhaps we should expect
no more than an intimation of the reality of such motions.
But we can go a step still onward. The solar motion, if
undefined in reference to the nature of its vast curve, can
yet be approximately valued, in regard of absolute amount.
The question of the parallax of the fired stars, or of our
power of measuring spaces sufficiently evanescent to de-
termine the distance of those stars from our solar sphere,
is irresolvable no longer. Twice, at least, has it been
distinctly answered, and by two men of no uncongenial
habit of mind, over whose loss science had recently to
grieve: one the illustrious Bessel, with whose fame Eu-
rope is filled, and my lamented countryman Thomas
Henderson. Unquestionably to this latter astronomer
belongs the glory of planting the first mile-stone amid
the external spaces ; and—speaking in reverence, though
in unison with the imperfect desires of man—it may surely
be deplored that, unlike the case of the immortal German,
the life of the discoverer was closed, not indeed in the
beginning of his usefulness, but in the very spting-time
of a fame adequate to his great deserts. The case of one
of these stars, and probably the best defined, will suit us
now. It is Bessel's-61 Cygni. The circumstances are
briefly these : the remoteness of this star from our plane-
tary sphere is definitely about 670,000 times our distance
from the sun ; and we have accurately determined its
apparent motion through space. Its distance from the
point of observation being known, that apparent angular
motion can be converted into an apparent motion of so
many miles: just as a traveller could tell, should a remote
object appear to be in motion—if he knew the interval
dividing him from it—the exact amount of its displace-
ment. Now, if this displacement of 61 Cygni is owing,
as it is, in all likelihood, not to its proper motion, but to
the translation of the sun, we may clearly infer, on the
simple principle above stated, with what velocity we are
darting through space. In Bessel's opinion, we may move
in this immense orbit thrice as fast as the earth travels in
its planetary ellipse ; or with a speed so swift that we
might reach 61 Cygni in 41,000 years. Now, large
though this period is, there is no:.: in it whatever to
overwhelm our imagination. If geology is not the veriest
fable, if we are not to return to the old conceptions, that
the rocks of our world's crust, with their entombed crea-
tures, have been laid down there purposely as the most
mocking of
_enigmas—an enigma that seems to have a
meaning and yet has none—even this great course of
years is only a very brief point amid the latest changes
affecting the surface of the earth. Free, then, from fear,
let us rise far higher; and, assuming that Bessel's star
indicates the average distance of the nearest orbs, we
infer that the sun would require no more than 500,000
years to reach that extremest verge at which the eye can
descry a single star ; nay, it could reach that remotest
distance to which Lord Rosse's telescope can pierce, in
about two hundred and fifty millions of years; and so far
is even this stupendous period from sounding all the
working time of nature, that many of the mountains of
our earth may, through its whole duration, have been in
being, rearing their peaks towards different constellations,
and surviving, in their littleness and fragility, even these
immense transitions! The numbers I have quoted are
indeed only approximate; but, in rendering conceivable a
subject so vast and vague, they have, notwithstanding
their necessary inaccuracy, an important use. Under
their direct announcements, the stability of our supposed
universe wholly disappears. The stars that shine over us
now may indeed be those that arrested the ardent gaze of
the Chaldeans ; but at depths of time by no means beyond
our reach, we must have passed through many arrange-
ments of orbs; and if, as assuredly they do, these stars
move like the sun, our majestic cluster may not now in
any part have been a similitude of what it was I How
stupendous such ceaseless evolutions ! How overwhelm-
ing the thought, that what, above all things, seemed the
fitting emblem of the Eternal, is thus almost visibly sub-
ject to transiency ; even in its most august and awful
forms, only one phase of the fleeting and phantasmal!
Often overpowered by the dread contemplation; beneath
such majesties feeling, as in faintness, that surely I must
be lone and forlorn, I turn ever with a cheering delight
to that sweet home-picture of Luther's, when he speaks
of the little bird that, on summer's evenings, came to his
pear.tree at sunset, and sang, ever melodiously and with-
out one note of misgiving, because, though dread eternity
was above, below, and around it, God was there also !

DEER STALKING.—The detestation of deer to sheep is
so great that they will not inhabit the same ground with
these animals. A remarkable instance of this antipathy
was observed in the end of the last century by an old dro-
ver. " familiarly called " Androbhair ban," when crossing
one of the great moors of Sutherland, soon after the first
" head of sheep " had been turned into Lord Ray's forest.
The narrator was surprised by the appearance of a large
column of near a thousand deer, marching out of the
country in a steady determined emigration. Disgusted
by the invasion of the sheep and their dogs, they had col-
lected from all parts, and unable to find " clean ground,"
continued their course out of the country, dispersing into
the most solitary glens. From these they never returned,
and harassed and killed by the shepherds and farmers,
their numbers became reduced to the few and scattered
fugitives which lingered in a state of outlawry in remote
coires, until the " commercial spirit " of England spread
to the Highland hills, and it was discovered that harts and
hinds could be converted into marketable stock, like other
cattle. Hence deer are now " grown " for Saxon guns,
as wool for Manchester looms, or beef for Smithfield
shambles. The abhorrence of the deer to sheep did not
result merely from the disturbance of their dogs. It is
true, that, like the corollary of St. Columbus concerning
cows and women, " where there are sheep there must be
dogs, and where there are dogs there must be mischief."
But the chief cause for which the deer shun the society of
their woollen enemies is the closeness of their feeding and
the foulness of their fleece. The deer is very delicate in
his food, and exceedingly fastidious as to the purity of his
pasture. Independent, therefore, of the abridgement of
his provision by the excoriating teeth of the tree and herb
exterminating " gailgeall," he cannot endure the oily ran-
cour of their wool, which poisons the fresh heather and
sweet green shealing. Wanting these nuisances, he exhi-
bits an antipathy to the intercourse of black cattle, his old
aboriginal brethren of the hill, whose clean coat and mo-
derate feeding spar the grass and leave no tint of tar and
oil in the pasture. Hence the deer and the stirks may be
seen herding in the same coire and reposing on the same
turf. Sheep in any considerable number are an introduc-
tion into the highlands since the latter end of the last
, century, in which it was discovered that mutton was not
only a safer, but a more profitable stock than man. It is
yet well remembered in Argyllshire, that the first Cheviot
flock brought into that county was introduced by Mr.
Campbell, of Combie, upon the farm of Balantyre, near
Inverary, in the year 1771. The earliest similar coloni-
sation in Inverness-shire was in Morven, about the year
1777. The shepherd of these flocks, of whom the first
was a certain John Todd, from the neighbourh )od of
Duml:arton; the second, a Braidfoot from the border,
introduced the first " wand," or " shepherd's plaid,"

worn in Argyll or Inverness. Similar flocks and their
feeders disseminated the expulsion of the deer, and the
introduction of the base "hodden-grey," which has since
usurped the place of the tartans of the clans ; and at its
first appearance, from the calamities by which it was ac-
companied, and its degraded supplantation of the national
dress, was truly and significantly named, " Bratgalla,"
" The foreigner's rag," and "an riochd-mallaichte,"
"The accursed grey." This hue is to the Highlanders
what black is to their neighbours ; and so detestable for
its wan and ghastly appearance, that its association af-
forded the popular appellation for ghosts and devils;
hence an apparition—a phantom—" an Riochd.'' The
grey, or wan—The spectre foreboding death—" am bo-
dach glass," the grey earl; another of an evil genius, in
the shape of a goat—" an Glastig," or " Glasdidh "
" the Grey," or wan ; and, as in the south, the great ene-
my is named familiarly " The Black Gentlemon," so, in
the Highlands, he is called " Mac an Riochd," the son of
the grey. In the ideas of the old wives and children of
the last century, all these personifications, except one,
were as nearly as possible those of the modern " dubh
gall," deer-sta:kers, in their chequered " hodden grey,"
wanting only the " Jim Crow," " ruffian, " or " crush
hat "—enormities which had not then completed the mas-
querade of Death and Satan. It is easy to trace the ori-
gin of this association. The ancient Caledonian hell, like
that of Scandinavia, was a frozen and glassy region, an is-
land named "/fruinn," far away among the " wan
waters" of the northern ocean, and involved in the ever-
lasting ice, and snow, and fog. In this association, the
appearance of the evil spirits, its inhabitants, like that of
mortals in similar circumstances, was believed to be dim,
wan, and cloudy shades, such as men become when seen
through a frosty mist. Thus a party of modern deer-
stalkers, noble, well appointed, and gallant though they
be, in despite of the gold Geneva watch-chains, and cost y
Purdie rifles, which peep from beneath their shepherd
plaids, would represent to an old " Sealgair-nambeann"
the liveliest vision of the fiend and his familiars; and we
have no doubt that, if " Alasdair Mac•Dhonacha-raidh,"
or even " Eoin-dubh-drinachin," had even met, in the
grey of the morning, either Lord 0-, Sir H. G., or " The
Ruffians of Aberarder," he would have fled the hill for
that time, and never would have returned to it again be-
tween sun setting and sun rising.—[lt has pleased a wri-
ter of the " Cockney school " of Highlanders to convert
this word into " Glaslig," which we take leave to observe
is unknown in the Highlands, and did not exist before
the year 1841.]—Caledonian Mercury.

DALY BESTOWS A lILLMET ON BULLY DODD

(From The Knight of Gwynne.)