Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-04-21
The Aiaryeis Of Science.

4 London correspondent writes: / do not
know any experiences to be had in London
so bewildering to the imagination as those
which one gets at the Royal Institution. The
experiments there carried on are not, alas,
for the people few things are for the million
in England you must have a friend at court ;
but if once you do get in, you find yourself
seeing sights and dreaming dreams no mortal
ever dared to see or dream before. Profess
sor Marshall takes you to pieces puts you
drop by drop into bottles on your table you
find that you are seven gallons Of water, five
pounds Of starch, ditto of sugar, "a bar of iron,
with a touch here and there of a few other
articles. Did you fancy you were fearfulIy
and wonderfully made? Simple mortal e!
there is nothing wonderful about you. You
are very easily made. A little lime and cleo
tricity, and, presto there are your bones; a
little albumen, sugar, etc, and there IS the
fat meat of you The professor acknowledges
with shame that he has not quite contrived
to create your muscular and cerebral tissue,
but has hope of doing that in his next years
series Then you go home, muttering be-
tween your long hreaths-What is to come of
all this -? Is there really Il scientific good
time coming, when not only, as Emerson
prophesied, will your salad grow whilst the
water to cook it is boiling, but when in some
sputtering retort on the table the related
ham will be created in the same hour? Or
shall we one day when our lungs are worn
out, instead of going to Cuba, send out and
order new pair of the apothecary? Shall
we see along the streets signs that read,
'Liyers and Hearts mended here with neat
ness and dispatch?"
But now here is Prof FARMLAND, who lee
lures every Saturday on the Metallic Ele-
ments. To prove to you that the sun is en-
yclopcd in cloak of large willow leaves
that where this cloak has flared aside there
are black spots, the light from even those
black spots, however, being far brighter than
the eve can bear-is the least of his perform
ances He discourses Familiarity on the met
ais that are i'll the sun, reporting the amount
of gold and silver it contains just as if he
were giving a statement of the funds in the
Bank of England. Nay, he visits the stars,
and as if he were reporting celestial coast
survey, tells you just what metals they hold
and how much. For these metals correspond
to certain rays of light in the spectrum, and
chromium is made to give its sign-manual
written with q Star-bcam across a billion or
so miles of space. Now whilst he is dscours-
ing about star, he thinks we may as we'll see its
carte de e2sjte-ah, there on his screen is Syrius
Simple enough is the little crcscent-shaped
body-an inch and Il half in length-but
rather amazing to reflect that light started
out from Syrius Just twunty-one years ago,
and when it touched the nitrate Of silver on
earth, unfold to it its shape and beauty. 1t
is much as if | were to drop a stone into the
Atlantic at Liverpool, and that from it the
widening wave should at last beat at your feet
at Concv Island, and that from that wave you
could tell the character of the stone | had
dropped.
Then the professor brings out his electric
lights the room is darkened He takes a
wire, puts bit of chloride of tin upon it, and
burns it; now see on the screen vast fern
leaves, enormous lichens-all the growths of
the primal world A little lead is now burnt
and from it swell up stately pines. Shade of
Lamark, do you not hover near to witness
the blooming out of your theory in grander
ways than in the "Vestiges of Creation" or
the more accepted Darwinianism Is it pos
sible for any one to see these crystalline folia-
tons of tin and lead without imaging that in
the early world there was great electric
burning at the core of the world, and that I'M
der it the metals of primodial rocks sprang
into vast fern swamps? But professor Frank
land is not speculative man; he is coldly
scientific, snubbing every thing beyond the
attained fact. Yet | can see plainly that he
feels that, in the attainment of a separate
color from the sun for every earthly metal,
Photographic science hovers on the verge of
producing not only the lineaments of every
object, but its tints and Colors.