A BOY ASTRONOMER.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 4, 5 January 1907, Page 15

A BOY ASTRONOMER.

! One thinks of an astronomer as a Faust-like person, with a great greybeard, a towering, dome-shaped head, and eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot stars,, a man to whom the distractions and allurements of a mundane existence no longer appeal, and who is content to live on parallax, the different calculus, and other strange dishes. But there are few astronomers of to-day who resemble Faust ; and the one who least lesemblss him-except in his unquenchable thirst ioi\ knowledge — is Hector Macpherson, junior, Eon of a popular Scottish journalist. Twelve months ago Hector was introduced to the British public as a boy astronomer who had written a lsarned work. He has just written another, "A Century's Progress in Astronomy" (Blackwood and Sons, 65.), and as ho has now arrived I at the matuie age of eighteen one must reconsider his classification. In any case, the author of two considerable volumes on one of the most difficult sciences can no longer be regarded aS a boy. HOW HE GREW UP. Perhaps the early development of the speculative and tho observing faculty in the young Macpherson may be due to his education, which, under the inspiration of a father who agreed with Herbert Spencer's idea on tuition, has been of the natural, go-as-you-please order. Tho father would no doubt say, "My boy has not been spoiled intellectually by cramming or by the restrictions of a public school." The young student and expositor of the heavens writes hid preface from Balerno, in Midlothian. The house in which he lives has its own inspiration, for it was once the residence of Professor Adam Ferguson, a name dear to students of the intellectual life of Scotland in the eighteenth century. It is only five years ago — but time is long-drawn-out in our teens — that Macpberson began his Studies at Balerno. Splendid, indeed, has been the use ho has made of that brief period. With the aid of his private observatory, his orrery, and his star maps, he contrived to open up for himself the wonders of the firmament, and he is now writing about his discoveries in a clear and masterful fashion that would put many an older, expositor to shame. That Macpherson has the true grit of the fighter for truth is proved by the manner in which he made his debut as an author. His first book, "Astronomers of To-day," came into being in this way. The boy of twelve, searching for a book that would tell him all about the recent work of Schiaparelli and Flammarion, failed to find_ one. He therefore did a better thing : he wrote to tho workers themselves, and started a correspondence which developed into a series of newspaper articles that finally » crystallised into a dignified volume, of which the great Flammarion found himself able to say that it was of living interest from beginning to end, and "put one au courant with the latest contemporary work." ( The present volume, Mr. Macpherson tells us, originated "in a desire to present in small compass a record of the marvellous progress in astronomy during the past hundred years." He has discharged that duty in an amazingly business-like fashion. He does not worry us with the language of wonder and admiration, in the style of Flammarion, but, like a true Scot, suppresses his emotion and dwells on the fact, which in matters astronomical is usually majectic enough in itself. -A plain, simple, unpretentious narrative, this of our young Midlothian student, seeking in no way to disguise the sources of his information, and evidently eager first of all to tell his story without the | intrusion of self. What could be clearer or better than this summary of the views of Profescor Darwin on the effects of tidal friction: — The tides act upon the earth as a brake doss upon a machine — they tend to retard its motion. Consequently the day is growing longer, the moon's orbit is becoming enlarged, and itsl period of revolution is being lengthened. At piesent the day is about twenty-four hours long, andthe month about. twenty-£yjven days. The day, however, will be lengthened at a more rapid rate than the month, and in the remote future the day and month will both last fifty-five of our present days. The moon will revolve round ths earth in the same period that the earth rotates on its axis, and the two bodies will perform their circuit round the sun as united by a bar. THE PEOPLE OF MARS. But the ast /onomcr dips into the past as well as tho future. He shows us the earth in the ancient days revolving on its axis in three or four hours, with the moon too near to be comfortable, and spinning round the earth with the giddy swiftness, of the earth's own rotation. There was nobody then, however, to suffer vertigo, for the two globes were merely great gas bags. Happily for the future of the human race this distressing state of things was put an end to by the salt, estranging sea. Had the month been a second shorter than the day, the moon must ininevitably have fallen back upon the earth. As it was, the condition of affairs could not endure. The condition of the moon resembled that of an egg balanced on its point. The moon must cither recede from the earth of fall back upon it. The solar tide here interfered, and caused the moon to recede from its primary until it reached its present distance of 239,000 miles One may be certain of finding in Mr. Macpherson's book tho very latest theories about our neighbour Mars, for the authors favourite hero is Schiaparelli, who has made that planet his own. The views of most qf the eminent speculators are carefully summarised, and justice done to the most fantastic. We Into the theory of Percival Lowell best. It is quite human : He regards the cailals as strips of vegetation fertilised by a small canal, much too small to be seen — ari idea which originated with W. H. Pickering. Tho canals arc believed by Lowell to bo wa-terways ' down which the water from the melted Polar cap is conveyed to the various oases. He considers, in fact, that the canals are constructed by intelligent beings, with tho express purpose of fertilising the oases, regarded by him as centres of population^ He remarks that water is scarce on tliii planet owing to its small size, and as a consequence the inhabitants are forced to use overy drop. The canal system ' is the result. ROMANCE IN THE PLANETS. We are reminded of Proctor's theory that Iho strange Hut s on Mars are rivers, of somebody else's notion that the canals might be cracks in tho surface, or meteors ploughing tracks above it, and of the belief of a professor of the Lick Observatory that the canals wero chains of mountains running over the light and dark regions. Then the "illusion" theory is carefully explained, and the importance of its inventor, the Italian astronomer Cerulli, insisted upon. But Mr. >\lacpherson is not disposed to accept tho "illusion" explanation- and inclines to believe in the entirely human Lowell, whoso recent observations point to the probability of the canals being after all the work of rational, civilised beings. Last year, indeed, several photographs of Mars wore taken at ths Lowell observatory on which the canals showed, not as dots of light and shade, but as straight dark .lines. , -".This," says the author, "goes f»r_

to prove the reality of the canals— in spite of the ridicule cast on them and their observers— and consequently the truth «* the theory of intelligent life on Mars. That is the right attitude to assume towards the problems of the planets— the attitude of romance where romance is possible. It would not add to our happiness if we were to be convinced that Mars was a dead world, silent sterile, and an object of pity. One is glad that the Balerno astronomer permits us still to cherish the irrigation woiks on its surface, the human interest in our planetary neighbour. A GOOD BOOK. Mr. Macpherson has arranged his book on a plan that makes for ease of study and scientific grouping. There is much interesting biographical matter to relieve the purely speculative, and a sprinkling of story and anecdote to beguile the steep path. The book is a workmanlike performance, and bears but few traces of the youth of its writer. The industry which enabled the boy of twelve to master enough French, German, and Italian to enable him to correspond with foreign savants will no doubt speedily give him that ease and fluency of English which is as yet somewhat lacking. What Professor Celoria said of Mr. Macpherson's first bopk may also be said of this : "It has admirable value as a scientific work and a literary production." — The Reader. '