MR WRAGGE'S LECTURES.

Evening Star, Issue 12163, 6 April 1904, Page 5

MR WRAGGE'S LECTURES.

Last evening Mr Clement L. Wragge brought his Dunedin season to a close, his subject being ‘The Majesty of the Creation.’ jhe house was a good one, most of the ; seating accommodation downstairs being taken up. As on former occasions, Air Wragge manipulated the lantern and illu- i minuted his remarks partly by that means and partly by his own peculiar humor. The naivete of some of Iris remarks drew much laughter from the house, and the general enjoyment of the audience was evident from the frequent bursts of applause. | Among the first of the views which were 1 projected on to the screen was one showing the interior of an observatory, the lecturer explaining the structure and manipulate® of the astronomical telescope and the methods whereby photographs of the heavens are obtained. Views of the nebulae followed, the discoveries effected by the spec- I troscope and the wonders revealed by Fraunhofer and Kirchcff being touched on. ' Early in the evening the lecturer proceeded to attribute the wonders of matter and life to the supernatural, remarking that when one contemplated the vastness and the order oi the great universe Atheism became an Impossibility. As surely as the electric car was dependent upon the power-house, so surely was the whole working of the uni- i verse dependent upon “the infinite dynamo ! whom we call God Almighty.” This excursion into the domain of theology was followed by a fine photographic view of the Pleiades, and the biology of mu - own planet was introduced in almost the same sentence, photographs of geological strata succeeding, The late Queen Victoria and the late Marquis of Salisbury were sandwiched \ in between the last-mentioned topic, and a ! lecturette given on the X and other rays, i Air Wragge then went on to touch on the i work of the Society for Psychical Re- 1 search, and followed this up by some fine I views of the sun’s photosphere, reference j being made to the so-called sun spots. The planets of the solar system next revolved Into the lecture, the visible features of some | of them, such as Mercury and Venus, being ' touched on. Their diameters, orbits, and I the apparent magnitude of the son as seen from each, were described, and Mr Wragge i proceeded to state that no doubt all the j planets were inhabited and inhabitable by being suited to the environment. The lecturer then conducted his audience on a tour round the earth, the whole of the series of views being good and many excellent. A particularly fine one was the Channel, off Weymouth, as seen by moonlight. When,* after compassing Africa, Europe, and Asia, the lecturer had got his audience as far as Mount Kosciusko and Mr Wragge’s late observatory thereon, the of the New South Wales Government towards scientists, weather experts, et hoc genus omne, was freely criticised. The entertainment concluded with an exhibition of views of various comets and the latest photographs of stars, taken at the Lick »nd other observatories. Mr Wragge appears at On tram to-nieht.