The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1902-12-13
ne srARs 81 DAYLIGHT.
Tradition That They Nay Be Seen from
Bottom Of Shaft.

sight in the daytime? There is a
widespread tradition that they are;
that if an observer places him
self at the bottom Of any deep
shaft - as of q mine, a WE'LL
or a factory chimney - which
may shut off scattered light and re-
duce the area of sky illumination
acting on the retina, he will be able
to discern the brighter stars with
out difficulty. The tradition is one OF
respectable antiquity, for Aristotle
refers to persons seeing stars
in daylight when looking out from
cayerns Of subterranean reservoirs,
and Pliny ascribes to deep wells a
similar power of rendering visible the
stars, the light Of which would other
wise be lost in the oyerpowering
splendor Of the solar rays.
The tradition, well founded or not,
has often been adopted for literary
effect. 1t seems almost sacrilegious
to hint that no star known to astron-
omers could have shown down unceas-
ingly upon poor Stephen Blackpool
during his seven days and nights Of
agony at the bottom Of Old Hell
shaft; that at the best he could only
have caught a glimpse of it for a few
minutes in each "a hours as it
passed across the zenith. Dickens,
indeed, does not absolutely say that
Stephen watched the star by day
light. 1t is only a natural inference
from his description; but Kipling
adopts the tradition in its EXTREMIST
form when he writes of:
'The gorge that shows the stars at noon
day clear"
But is the tradition true? Of
course, says knowledge, every one
knows that Venus from time to time
may be seen even at high noon; but
then Venus at her brightest is many
times over brighter than Sirius. Then,
again, the assistance Of a telescope
enables the brighter stars to be dis
cerned at midday; but the telescope
not only directs the eye and greatly
limits the area from which the sky
light reaches the observer, but it
enormously increases the brightness
Of the star relative to that sky illu-
mination. The naked eye obserya-
ton Of true stars in full sunlight
stands in quite a different category,
Humboldt, who was much inter-
ested in the question, repeatedly
tried the experiment, both in ST.
IBERIA and in America, and not only
failed himself ever to detect a star,
but never came across anyone who
had succeeded. Much more recently
an American astronomer set up a
tube for the express purpose Of see
ing the Pleiades by daylight, also
with no effect. 1t has been supposed
that Flamsteed, the first astronomer
royal, sank a well at Glenwich obsery-
atory for the purpose of observing
Gamma Draconis, the zenith star Of
Greenwich in this manner.
The existence of the well is UNI
doubted, though Sir George Airy, the
late astronomer royal, was unable to
find it, but Flamsteed marks it on
more than one Of his plans Of the OBJ
seryatory, and there is a drawing ex-
tant of the well itself, showing the
spiral staircase that ran down it. But
its purpose seems to have been, not
to have furnished the means Of OBJ
serving the star with the naked eye,
but to enable the observer to measure
as accurately as possible the distance
of the star from the true zenith at the
moment Of transit.
Sir John Herschel mentions a case,
which he considers as satisfactory ey-
idence, Of an optician who stated that
the earliest circumstance that drew
his attention to astronomy "was the
regular appearance at a certain hour
for several successive days, Of a con-
siderable star through the shaft Of a
chimney" This, it will be noticed,
is secondhand evidence. I have
never been able to obtain evidence
even 50 direct as this myself, though
/ have met several persons who felt
quite confident that they had seen
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