THE BIRTH OF WORLDS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2761, 3 May 1916, Page 7

THE BIRTH OF WORLDS

O : MR, CLEMENT WRAGGE'S LECTURE.

Mr. Clement Wraggo had a full audience at his second lecture," "The Majesty of Creation," in tho Town Hall last night. The. lecture was in parts highly scientific, and always entertaining and interesting, at least to those who had the beginning of the scientist's thirst for analysed and classified truth. Mr., Wraggo prefaced his lecture with a talk about radium, and tho vivid light the. discovery of this substance bus cast upon all tho theories of science about .the evolution of matter and life. After a very brief glance at tha.heavens in their glorious majesty, the shining galaxy of suns and systems, the glistening nebulas which shows us other suns and systems m embryo, he asked his audience f.u pause- for a moment to view the equally wonderful realm of the infinitely minute, —the genii, r,ho unicellular organism, and the other manifestation* of the apparently least complex life as revealed by the microscope. . All these things Mr. Wraggo had spoken of on the previous evening, but his treatment and Ids pictures, of which lie has very many, were quite new. The subject is boundless in its extent, so that repetition is needless.' He , spoke of tho birth of suns, operations of such appalling energy and velocity that we cannot even symbolise their impart; and yet of such awful magnitude that the rate of change apparent is scarce to bo measured in terms of planetary tune. So he comes to the kindred subject or tile birth of satellites of suus, — .the birth of our: planet. earth. The succeeding changes in tho form of out globe, through the nine hundred million years of its life down to that ijtfleeting space of historic time ho liau of necessity to pass .in most rapid review. For, -be it remembered, historic time is to the life of the world as live seconds to twenty-four hours,'' and the Christian era as two seconds to the twenty-f<jur hours. Most interesting were his digressions to cxamino/for a moment,or two the story of tho rocks, tiie "sermons in stones," which tell to the man of science, something of what, happened .oh earth ages and ages ago. He described at great pains and with commendable clearness tho reasons for tho, present round of seasons, and also he told how the seasons formerly were vastly different;, accounting for so-called ice-ages on earth, and for the discovery inpolar regions of fossils of tropical vegetation. Almost last of all he snoko of tho lifft of man on earth, in the course of which ho xalated many very interesting facts about the. doings of men of long dead ages. Incidentally ho gave a very interesting account of his own ii-.scarclies in the islands of the Pacific, all that now remains of the great laud "Lemurion.* 1 This was one of the most interesting sections of a remarkable lecture. Of course, as Mr. Wraggc admits, ho is a hc|orodox scientist, and in his development of a generalisation he 'sometimes leaps across a hiatus before .which other investigators have paused. Hut Mr. Wragge has an imagination if limitless exuberance. To-night, Mr. Wraggo will ].-cbiire en "Forecasting the Seasons."