Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/234

 Ball, Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the University of Cambridge. The earliest of them was "The Story of the Heavens" (1886), a singularly lucid and entertaining exposition of the science which, of all sciences, is perhaps the most difficult to render intelligible to untrained minds. Ball's son and biographer, Mr. W. Valentine Ball, records that his earliest recollection of his father's literary life was of his lying at full length on the floor of his study writing this book; he was suffering from lumbago, and that was the only position in which he found it possible to write. The work made a great mark, and brought its author the warmest congratulations from brother astronomers such as Piazzi Smyth, at that time Astronomer-Royal. "The Story of the Sun" followed in 1893, and "The Earth's Beginning" in 1901. Between these two was interposed a smaller book, "Starland," a series of "talks for young people," which was read with delight by Mr. Gladstone, little as he was drawn to natural science. All these works were highly successful, and there is still a regular demand for the three larger ones. It was appropriate that Mr. Valentine Ball's Life of Sir Robert should be issued by the House which had published most of his works. Among the rough memoranda left by this most genial Irishman was found the injunction, "Try and give everything a kind twist!"

A work on one of the byways of astronomy, by an even more distinguished astronomer, was Sir Norman Lockyer's "Dawn of Astronomy," an ingenious study of the temple worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians. It was written with admirable lucidity, and merited more success than it achieved.

To these notes on scientific publications may be added a few sentences about technical books. The first considerable work in this section to be issued by the House was a serial which bore the title of the "Technical Educator," first issued as "The Technical Series of 'Cassell's Popular Educator.'" The enormous success of the latter work obviously suggested a serial dealing with