Assorted Sciences.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 3 January 1901, Page 18

Assorted Sciences.

Prophecy, according to Mark Twain, gives the highest dividend for the smallest investment of fact. But it is not always a safe form of speculation. As late as 1842 the French mathematician-philosopher Comte took down his harp and prophesied that all Btudy of the fixed stars would turn out a mere woful waste of precious time. But the solution, by Kirchhoff, in 1860, of the problem of the solar spectrum (first observed by Dr. Wollaston in England in 1802) has enormously increased our knowledge of the worlds that whirl about in the depths of space. By the aid of spectrum analysis * we are able to ascertain the relative heat and chemical constitution of the stars, and to ascertain the existence, and measure the rate of motion, of stellar bodies which are entirely invisible. 1 The telescope, which enables the astronomer to pser so far into the star-depths, was, like the microscope, the invention of a devout Catholic. The first observatories in Europe, America, the Philippine Islands, India, and Cnina, were founded by Catholics, and chiefly by Catholic ecclesiastics. A prominent place in the astronomical investigations of the past century is occupied by Urbain Leverribr, Fathers Gur, Secchi, Denza, and Perry. Two French Catholic scientists, Fizeau and Faucault, were the first to determine the velocity of light. And Faucault, with his wonderful peudulum experiment in the Pantheon (Paris), and his curious and ingenius gyroscope—the joy of many a schoolboy's heart — was the first to give a practical scientific demonstration of the rotation of the earth on its axis. He was likewise the inventor of those wonders of raechan : cal ingenuity, the heliostat, the siderostat, the automatic electric arc lamp, and many other appliances that are now deemed indispensable in the study of astronomy and physios. Among the other sciences, modern music owes its origin to the Italian monk GuiDO, and most of its highest triumphs to men of his faith and country. The sciences of mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, and hydro-dynamics were created by Da Vinci and Galileo and his school, three of the nio3t prominent of whom were ecclesiastics. Italian and Danish Catholic ecclesiastics laid the foundations of the modern science of geology. And botany, zoology, optics, medicine, and others were greatly furthered by the labors and researches of Catholic scientists and investigators.