Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/415

Rh great gaps produced by absorption somewhere; but, since they show no signs of diminution at great altitudes, they are obviously due to an extra-terrestrial cause. Here a tempting field of inquiry lies open to scientific explorers.

On one other point, earlier ideas have had to give way to better-grounded ones derived from this fruitful series of investigations. Professor Langley has effected a redistribution of energy in the solar spectrum. The maximum of heat was placed by former inquirers in the obscure tract of the infra-red; he has promoted it to a position in the orange approximately coincident with the point of greatest luminous intensity. The triple curve, denoting by its three distinct summits the supposed places in the spectrum of the several maxima of heat, light, and "actinism," must now finally disappear from our textbooks, and with it the last vestige of belief in a corresponding threefold distinction of qualities in the solar radiations. From one end to the other of the whole gamut of them, there is but one kind of difference—that of wave-length, or frequency in vibration; and there is but one curve by which the rays of the spectrum can properly be represented—that of energy, or the power of doing work on material particles. What the effect of that work may be depends upon the special properties of such material particles, not upon any recondite faculty in the radiations.

These brilliant results of a month's bivouac encourage the most sanguine anticipations as to the harvest of new truths to be gathered by a steady and well-organized pursuance of the same plan of operations. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme completed on Mount Whitney had been carefully designed, and in its preliminary parts executed, at Alleghany. The interrogatory was already prepared; it only remained to register replies, and deduce conclusions. Nature seldom volunteers information: usually it has to be extracted from her by skillful cross-examination. The main secret of finding her a good witness consists in having a clear idea beforehand what it is one wants to find out. No opportunities of seeing will avail those who know not what to look for. Thus, not the crowd of casual observers, but the few who consistently and systematically think, will profit by the efforts now being made to rid the astronomer of a small fraction of his terrestrial impediments. It is, nevertheless, admitted on all hands that no step can at present be taken at all comparable in its abundant promise of increased astronomical knowledge to that of providing suitably elevated sites for the exquisite instruments constructed by modern opticians.—Edinburgh Review.