LECTURE IN GERALDINE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1120, 12 July 1883, Page 3

LECTURE IN GERALDINE.

Archdeacon Harper delivered a lecture in the Oddfellows’ Hall, Geraldine, last Tuesday evening. The Rev Mr Preston occupied the chair, and expressed regret at so few being present. After an overture by Miss Foster, and songs by Mr Willoughby and Mrs Glass, Archdeacon Harper, who was received with applause, stated that in his leisure hours he had studied astronomy. He referred to the early ages when people worshipped the sun. Six hundred years before Christ astronomers thought it was a mass of fire burning earthly matter, and latter discoveries proved their conjectures to have been correct. He also referred to the Greek philosopher*' theories, and said that only for the sun the earth would fly into space and nothing would live on it, and passed on to say that Galileo was the inventor of the telescope, and that he was able to discover spots the sun’s surface. He showed diagrams of the sun, moon, and earth, and showed that the sun was 400 times bigger than the moon. The length of the moon’s orbit was 500,000 miles, and the sun’s 800,000 miles. An express train train travelling at the rate it travelled through here would take 367 years to reach the sun, The lecturer then showed on the diagram the spots on the sun which Galileo discovered in 1610. The sun’s surface seen through a telescope looked like a snow ball, with the edges mottled. If a person looked attentively at the sun he would see that spots visible on the edge of the sun travelled across the face of the sun in twelve days, proving that it had a rotary motion. Herschel imagined that the middle of the sun was a black mass surrounded by luminous matter, and that it was inhabited ; but the best received opinions hold that the spots are vapours and cooler spaces. The spots were of all sizes, and gradually increase and decrease in the space of eleven years. The heat of the sun comes to us through space which it does not heat. This could be proved by putting a piece of glass between oneself and the sun. They would get the heat, but the glass would not be hot. It was supposed the cold space rushes in on the sun, and causes the darx spots. After a few minutes’ interval Miss Foster opened again with an overture, Mr Collraan sang ‘Nancy Lee,’ Miss Fish ‘No one will marry me,’ and was loudly encored, to which she responded by sing, ing ‘ When the days are growing weary, aud Mrs Glass sang ‘Killarney,’ all the songs being accomprnied by Miss M Fish.

The Yen. Archdeacon Harper then continued his lecture, dealing with the light of the sun. Sir Isaac Newton tried to discover the color of light, and concluded it was u mixture of colors. Amongst other things he construced the prism, and found seven colors in the rays of the sun. In 1802 Dr Wolleston, by putting a slit in the telescope, found dark lines in the rays of the sun, and now the spectrum showed 800 dark lines. By experimenting with a kerosene lamp in introducing sodium into it, and in placing the spectroscope between it and the prisms these lines were shown. No oxygen gas, but all hydrogen, was found. The' sun was composed of the same substance as the earth, and the stars the same also, proving that God made all the earth of one substance. He then showed diagrams of the sun’s eclipses. The lecturer then gave some further explanations of the lines of the sun, and concluded by expressing the belief that in the future state of man the works of God would be further seen into.

Dr Fish proposed a vote of thanks to the Yen. Archdeacon Harper for his interesting lecture. The Rev Mr Preston moved a vote of thank to Mr Eckford and the ladies who assisted in getting up the entertainment, and after singing the National Anthem, the proceedings came to a close-