From an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
From an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
The point, of course, is that she could execute the complex movement of
her legs well enough until her brain was set to work and her conscious
attention given to the matter. Then “cerebral inhibition” took place
and she broke down.
20. _Colour-photography and Photographs of Mars_
There were admirable photographs of wild birds and their nests, and of
insects and plants in this exhibition. I saw the new Lumière coloured
transparent photographs thrown by a lantern on the screen, and could
distinguish the dots of red, green, and violet colour on what, at
a little distance, appeared to be a brilliantly white part of the
picture (the shirt collar of a “sitter”), just as one sees a mosaic of
coloured dots in the blazing sunlight of the pictures painted by the
French school of so-called “vibristes” (Monod and others). Perhaps the
most remarkable of these photographs was a set of prints from untouched
photographs of the planet Mars, executed in July 1907 by Professor
Perceval Lowell at his observatory in Arizona.
The Mars photographs are each about as big as a dried pea (that is
the biggest size possible with the feeble light reflected by Mars),
but “several of the canals,” says Mr. Lowell, “are distinctly visible
on the photographs, and one has been photographed double.” I should
have liked to examine these photographs in a good light with a lens.
The statement quoted means that the canals in Mars can no longer
be regarded as due to errors of eyesight and imagination, and that
the annual doubling or formation of a second canal parallel to what
was earlier in the year a single canal, is actually recorded by a
disinterested, impartial photographic plate. Are these canals the work
of intelligent inhabitants of Mars? I will not venture to say in reply
more than this, that I have never heard any other explanation of their
occurrence. But that, of course, still leaves the matter open.
21. _Origin of Names by Errors in Copying_
A curious illustration of a mistake perpetuated by a clerical error is
the title of Viscount Glerawly. The title was intended to have been
Glenawly, but the bad writing of a clerk converted the “n” into an “r,”
and the name having been so entered in the patent of nobility, or some
such document, could not be altered. The same thing has happened to
the mammoth. His proper native name is “mammont,” but “mont” became
“mout,” and then “moth.” A similar clerical error is responsible for
the name Gavial, which is applied to the long, narrow-nosed crocodile
of India, both as a scientific name (Gavialis) and colloquially.
Really the “v” is due to a misreading of an “r,” the creature’s native
name being Garial. It was so written down and sent home by an early
explorer, but his handwriting being wanting in clearness, the word was
copied as Gavial and the scientific patent issued in that name.
22. _False News as to Extinct Monsters_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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