The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 6, 1897, Page 19

7 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, All the suns in the universeare shifting; or, in astre terms, the “fixed” stars are dri seem start- ling, reality there is no danger | attenc upon it, for the shifting or | driftinz has been going on for millions of | centuries and in all probability wiil con- t for a miilion times ny more. However, star drift is a subject of the greatest importance to astronomy and bas occupied the minds of some of the ablest workers in that field ever since it was discovered that the “fixed’’ stars were but not fixed, were whirling through space at the rate of millions of miles a vear, their incomprehensible distance from our range of vision making them ap- pear immovable. The question is: Howare the fixed stars drifting, and where? And it is a question that cannot be answered definitely for at least five years, if then, for that is the time set by the obse: t the Lick Ob- servatory to determine thisquestion. The knowledze o ere head wo; in ned will reveal exact the sun and all our planets are g for and let us know where the @ and the dustof our bones will be has been undertaken in as- y for years. stuy rdous tronom In view of the vast importance of the work, which is sure to attract world-wide attention, some explanation of what is alread own of the movements of the suns in verse wili not be untimely. What will strike many people not as- tronon with startling cffeat will be the knowledge that o n is not the center ill t that, as faras o verse has no center. rder to understand t magination and take a trip through out beyond the farthest known It is true that when one gets ere one may find other fixed starsex- millions of miliions of males far- ess realms of space. e can hardly be said to an ending place, but of this we have 12 to sey at present. more startling is <nowledge goes, let us use to the limit noth ! mind can be capabie of su | | | | 1wxm has been accomplished in the past | Having reached our point in space and endowed ourselves with eyes capable of observing the varied movements of the | stars we will look back. Suppose the ef- fects of millions of years could be crowded | into a second and that our eves were ca- | pable ot seeing the mast distant stars as if only a bundred million miles away. What would we see? | Asfar as modern knowledge goes, we | | would see alens-shaped vault of inkv | blackness filled with bright moving ob- | jects, as erratic in their gyrations as a | swarm of bees. Some slowly creep to the right and others to the leit, and some go up and some down. Some appear only as a flasn of light so fast do they travel here ana there, round and round, each inde- pendent of the other, but all bent on one thing—motion. Io this grand physical manifestation of the primary foree our sun could be dimly seen. He would be pretty hard to fnd, because he is only about one-fifth the size of some of theothers. And ourdear little | earth, so brizht and green—well, to tell the truth, we should not be able to see it atall. We should not be able to see it even from Arcturus, the nearest fixed star to us, sosmallis it. All our solar sys- | tem, of which we mortals are so proud, would appear only as a speck of light | journeyinz with a speed a thousand times | faster than lightning toward a point in the constellation of Hercules. But even | l | at the speed it is going it is not likely to get there for something like a million years. So we will come back to earth and | take our chances of getting there at our leisure. Some rough ideas of the magnitude of the work undertaken by the Lick Observ- atory mav be obtained from the foregoing. About 2000 fixed stars have been identified and their motions and speeds calculated in a rough way. It is the intention of the observers to calculate all the movements to a nicety and also to ascertain the move- ments and speeds of those stars which have not yet been identified. 1t hardly seems possible that the human ch a vast under Miss Rese O'Halloran ex- plains in another article on this page how all this is done and aiso gives an idea of taking, but in thie field of iuvestigation. As the spectrographic work now in prog- | ress at Mount Hamilton is awakening much interest some account of kindrea researches in the past by entirely different | methods will expiain how much the “‘new astronomy”’ was needed to shed a suppl mentary light on the unseen lines of siar drift. Though for ages the few thousand stars visible to the naked eye were regarded as | immovable sky marks that knew no| change, and never wandered around like the sun, moon and planets, still it is probabie that the scrutiny of later times, even without telescopic aid, would eventu- ally have qualified this ancient ides of total fixity. Sirius, Aldebaran, Betel- geuse, Arcturus and other conspicuous orbs having moved a large portion of a degree away from the positions assigned to them on the maps of Piolemy would at length be accredited with a slow indepan- dent motion of their own, and belief in the eternal stability of the constellations would be necessarily undermined. The increased facilities for measurement afforded by the telescope enabled Halley, astronomer royal of England, to detect a change of place i the stars named early in the eizhteenth century, and before its close this independent stellar motion, called the proper motion to distinguish it point in R. 67 degrees, declination 32 degrees north. is now regarded as the probable apex of the sun’s way. From a | standpoint in distant space the central | luminary of the solar svstem ranks only as a fixed star, but its onward journey is to meager data, and later investigation has shown that they were not ouly meager, but erroneous. The larger stars were assumed to be in general the nearest, to have the largest raralla and when in a favorable position with rega x to have the largest proper mo- It is now known that the largest proper motions and parallaxes balong chiefly to the smaller stars, and that the | numpner of stellar parallaxes as yet ascer- tained are too few to furnish a reliable standard of star distances in general. It may be asked why stellar parallax, | which is the minute displacement caused by the earth’s journey round the sun, is | an iniportant factor; but it must be re- membered that parallax, which reveals the distance of a heavenly body from the | earth, was long regarded as the oniy clew to the value in miles of the reflex of the | sun’s motion through space. For simpli- | fication 1t may be supvosed that 100 stars, situated 90 degrees from the solar goal, to us the most interesting branch of this mighty problem which includes the entire universe. Just one century after Halley’s discov- ery Bessel published the result ¢f his own investigations on this subject, wh led entirely to support the toeory of solar motion, as a vredominating move- | millions of miles, that 100 more had ment in any one direction was not de- | tances just twice as far, and that the duced. this eminent astronomer | amount of proper motion attributable to who detected a curve in the proper mo- | the sun’s journey was twice as great in tions of Sirius and Procyon and suggested ir 1844 that these orbs were moving under the influence of companion stars too faint to.be seen with the instruments then in use. Several years afterward Alvan Clark discovered the companion of Sirius, and in last November Professor Schaeberle of the Lick Observatory discovered the com- panion of Procyon, which until then had eluded the vision of thousands of ob-| servers. The negative results obtained by Bessel as tothesolsrapex were insufficient to over- | the first case as in the second; solar ve- locity might be then safely inferred from the known value in miles of the parallax as the latter is the length that the earti’s distance from the sun wou!d appear to | have if viewed from the star. 1t it were half a second and the counter- part of solar progress per annum were one- tenth of that amount, the velocity in from common motions sharea by the starry host as a whole, was an established fact in connection with many of the larger stars. Mereover, as a direct movement of the sun with the earth and planets to- ward some particular pointin the beavens | would create a seeming contrary motion in the nearer stars, investigation was car- ried on to detect such a displacement, and if it existed to eliminate it from those | displacements Laving a distinetly stellar 000 of miles, The matter is, considerably complicated distances, and the however, ¥ the different ifferent positions rela- oriein. throw the conclusions of Herschel, and the | 1ive to the supposed apex. Professor To use Tobias Mayer's illustration, | Sun’s motion isnow a generally accented | Eastman of Washington states that if the forest trees as we approach them seem to | fect, based on the testimony of several as- | distances of the 3000 visible stars were widen apart, while the spaces between those from which we reireat seem to diminish; and an effect of this kind in the starfields would indicatea real mo- tronomers who, with improved and ac- curate instruments, subjecied the motions of thousands of stars to the strictest scra- tiny, and also to eiaborate mathematical accurately determined the data would still be inzdequate to a satisfactory solution. Asitis, the distances of not more than avout fi ars have been reliably ascer- tion of the solar system, wouid show that | analysis. It often happens in astronomi- | tained. Conironted with these stern facts, the apex of movement or the sun’s goal | cal work that more is seen than has been | theory has been somewhat stationar. ring the past few years, but with that inextinguishable versistence to which astronomical progress is chiefly due, stel- lar motion is still assiduously observed in several of the leading observatories. In the meantime the powers ard appli- cations of the spectroscope Were being manifested more and more, and as its iridescent band may yet unfold a solution of this complex problem, a brief account of a few of the laws of spectrum analysis may be of interest. The gleam of a heavenly body when passed through the prism of a spectro- scope not only discloses the incandescent matter of which that body is composed, but indicates whether its motion in the was where the stars were most widely looked for, and thus, when testing stellar | d separating, and aiso show the point of re- | fixity, the solar translation came clearly treat on the opposite side of the heavens | into view. 180 degrees distant | In considering the subject of proper mo- The fitness of this level ground simile is | tion its small amount sbould not be lost only slightly impsired by the fact that|sight of. Theansular value of the sun's this reflex of the sun’s motion would not | journey is btt a small portion of 1 second ve confined to one plane, but would take | per annum. The greatest known displace- place all round from the a pex. nent, that of a star named 1830 Groom- All steliar motion directed otherwise | bridge, is only 7 seconds per annum, and would be real, while much would be a |the accumulated movems=nt of centuries compound of real and apparent move- | COuid be scarcely detected without tele- ment, and many stars would give no evi- | scopic aid. In a relative sense, then, the dence, either trom lack of motion, infinite | distance or the fact that they were directly approaching or receding from the ob- server. b stellar hosts may still be called the fixed stars. In the ardor of such resources even iant minds are sometimes dazziea by Herschel’s announcement in 1753 that | alluring phaniom , and the exisience of a | iine of sight is toward us or otherwise. the constellation Hercules inclosed the | central body round which the sun and all | Tnis latter revelation, founded on Dop- | solar goal was tue result of the first sys- | the distant suns of space were marshaled | pler’s principle, enlisied spectroscopy as tematic investigation of this new secret of | in one mighty umversal the sky. Similar work on a more exten- | tained at one procession ob- an aid in the dimmer paths of celestial time considerable credence. mechanics where observation and mathe- tions of this wonderful observer. The | thiscase scientific zeal gave undue weight | the position of a star on the background sive scale, undertaken afterward by Arge- | To a similar cause may be traced the | matical deduction had been found insuf- lander Struve and others, brought little | estimates in miles of the sun ficient. important change in the general deduc- | progress through the infinite voids. As a motion in the line of sight leaves | 5 REMAINS Professor W. T. Lee of the Denver Uni- ‘ versity has just made public the story of one of the most remarkable scientific | finas of the century—the discovery of the entire vertebr® of one of those huge reptiles known to science as clidastes, from which the modern serpent is sup- | posed to have descended. Tne bringing to light of the remains of this strange creature, which has been buried beneath tons of rock and earth for millions of years, has excited the widest interest among all those interested in naleontology. men of the sort ever found 1 Colorado, and is likely to have an important bear- ing as confirming or disproving the pre- historic theories concerning this section of the country. Professor Lee is one of the keenest work- ers in the cause of science in the We: and his observations are therefore of ex- ceeding value. He has prepared a care- f considered from a scientific standpoint. This treatise, made public for the first time, is as follows: «A million years ago, more or less as the case may be, a certain sea monster, which bas suddenly become popular ina small way, basked in the Colorado sun and swam in the Coloradosea. It may seem strange fo think of & sea n a region where little besides icactus and sagebrush will grow without irrigatiou; for it must be remem- bered that the eastern half of Colorado is in the region formerly known as the American desert. But at the time of which Iam writing Colorado was not a mile above the sea, as il is now, and the mountains which we are so proud of as they hold their caps of eternal snow far above the clouds were only in their child- | hood. Our Western States formed tle Hloor of a vast sea dotted here and there with islands. On these islands lived the huge dinosaurs which the researches of | Proiessors Marsh and Cope have made familiar to us. And in the waters about It is also the first speci- | y written statement of the finding of | the clidastes, in which the discovery is | OF AN EXTINCT REPTILE tne one 1 am writing about. these islands swam the monsters, sach as | his one, which has been presented to | the University of Denver, was about twenty or twenty-five feet long—rather short for one of his family. Some of his relatives were seventy-five feet in length. He was mors slender than a lizard, but not quite as slender as the modern ser- pent. He had two pairs of limbs, but :hey were very short and could be used only as paddles for swimming. The humerus, | radius and ulna and the corresponding bones of the hind limbs were reduced in length to such an extent that the fingers and toes made up the greater part of the | length of the limbs. The limbs were some- | what like the flippers of a seal, only | weaker and less nseful. Nearly half the ‘len!:h of the bodv extended back of the | hind legs in the form of a long tail flat- | tened laterally, and was used as a sculling | organ. If one will think of our common water-dog or mud-puppy, much elongated and the limbs much shortened, one will have a very good miniature of our sea | monster. | “But the same fortune came to him | that overtakes his betters; he died. Na- | ture buried him in the sands of that | ancient sea. and her workmen busied themselves through long sges heaping | over his grave hundreds and thousands of feet of sand and clay. Then came the | hardening of the sediments into rock; | the upheaval of the land and tie drsin- ing of the lakes and inland seas formed by the raising of the land, and the turn- ing of the bones into stone. Decades of millenniums passed. What use to try to estimate the years? Ten thousand or a million—we can realize neither. Enough to sey that time has passed sutficient to cut sway the thousands of feet of rock and again expose the bones ¢f our mon- ster. The place which so long ago was | an ocean bottom is now a sheep pasture a | mile above the level of the sea. | ““At this point let us drop the ancient history of our reptile aud take up his| modern history. Some time ago a Mexi- | rd to the | | had each a distance of twenty millions of | miles would then be one-tenth of 93,000,- | | spectrum of our illuminated atmosphere, | 0 PX tion with the solar rotatory movement by of the firmament unchanged, the telescope | alone, though capable of revealing minute lisplacements in any other direction, is powerless in this case. Moreover, the re- moteness of the fixed stars is such that if | the very nearest approached at the rate of | 100 miles per second several cen:uries ‘ would elapse before an apparent increase | of light would be noticeable. Here, for- | | | tuitously, the missing link arrived in the coiored band of light obtained by spectro- scopie appliances. From the time of New- | ton to 1842 the prism was used to study | the nature of the colored comvonents of | light; and tha branch of astronomical re- | search to which it was applied, by name, cosmical physics, or astrophysi disclaims the study of positions and movye- ments. To learn the aspects and constitu- ents of the heavenly bodies was its avowed aim. In the year named Doppler, a professor of mathematics at Prague, announced the opinion that just as sound assumes a | higher pitch when approaching than when | stationary or receding the wave lengths | of light are affected by swift motion in the live of sight. This manifests itself in the spectrum by a shifting of the lines toward the violet end in case of approach and toward the red end in case of reces- sion. Dr. Hueeins of England was the | first to turn this important discovery to practical use, and in 1868 he detected in- finitesimal displacements in the svectra of several stars, including Sirius, the brilliant | orb now so conspicuous in the southwest | after sunset. | As before mentioned thisstar has a com- | panion of dim luster, but of considerable mass, which, according 10 the known laws of gravitation, interferes with its proper motion. As a result the displacement first noticed toward the red end in 1853-86 un- derwent a reversal toward the violet end, as if in temporary approach at the rate of thirty miles per second, which is not far | from the average rate of star motion. In | 1871 Zollner and Vogel detected a disnlace- ment of lines in the soiar spectrum to- | ward the violet end when the slit of the | spectroscope was confined to the east edge | of the sun’s disk, and toward the red end | when the west end was viewed. As the sun’s circumference is 109 times that of | the earth and its rotation period only twenty-five days a point on 1s equator movesat the rate of about one and a quar- | ter miles per second, the eastern rim ap- | proaching and the western rim receding, in close accordance with the testimony of | the spectroscove. A few years later Professor Young of | Princeton College ascertained that the | which is always superposed on the spec- trum of the sun, shows its lack of connec- faint lines retaining their normal position side by side with the dispiaced sun lines. This opportune application of Doppler’s | theory removed all uncertainty as to the | cause of the shifting lines in the spectra of the stars. As it creates no apparent difference in these observations whether it be the observer's standpoint or the object viewed that is moving, the motion of the | powerful | minute changes would defy measurement. | dwarfed 8% earth in its orbit has at times to be al- lowed for and deducted or added accord- ing to its direction. The own value of this motion and the changes it yearly | causes in the shifting lines of an ap- proaching or receding star, is the chief means of ascertain: of the star’s motion. Aided by the elaborate equipmenis of the Astro-Physical Institution at Pots- dam, near Berlin, Professor Vogel, w years ago, from observations of fifty-one stars, concluded that the sun’s through space was about two and tenths miles per second, but did not th the data uvsad sufficient for a correc butation of the W. g the value in miles motion two- nk sun’s goal. Monek, who has given much attention to this grand subject, remarks: *There is much to mask the sun’s motion in the phenomena of stellar spectra, and the Vogel's fifty-one stars may not | well selected for ascertaining goal, 1 believe their proper motions.wos afford a closer approxin vosition than is afforded by th scopic velocities.” Heretofore the chief obstacle to has been the faintn. of starlight and the necessity of enfeebling it still furiher by dispersion, therwise tie O’HALLORAN. The Makers of Dwarf Trees. Closely related to the Chinese farmers is the class of men who, with a taste for the quaint and artistic, earn a lLiving as landscape gardeners. They delight producing miniature copies of nauure. Narrow walks wind in and out through nd grotesque shrubbery. T ponds are spanned by dainty bridge The scene suggests a playground for the wee ones, either little children or fairies. To produce the dwarf trees the gardeners confine the roots within u small, iron-bound cask, or the more rapia method is to select a vigorous branch uron the desired tree and bind around it a band of leaf mold. This is kept moist RoSE in | until roots creep into the mold; then the branch is severed from tke tree. Soon flowers and fruit develop, for their buds were formed by the parent tree.—Lippine cott’s Megazine. e The longest tubular bridge tannia—964 feet. the Brie can herdsman rode into Flagler, Colo, | long string o heavy bones. Mr. Keegan, | and reported that his horse fell over a' a resident of Flagler, heard the story and | interest. Hedrove to the place nd found - et THIS PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS THE PETRIFIED REMAINS. THE REPTILE ONCE INHABITED THE GREAT PREHISTOR.C COLORADO SEA, | of Mr. Keegan NOW AGITATING where it had been left by the decav of the | rock. The head had evidently been ex- posed first and was nearly all destroyed. | About four fest of the tail was still buried intherock. T was removed and all the bones preserved. While the bones were in the possession | they were examined by | several geologists, and the place ot their | preservation also examined. These men reported that the place was so near the division between the cretaceous and the tertiarv rock that they could not deter- mioe whether the animal was a late cre- taceous or early tertiary form. They also | confessed themselves uaable to reler the animal to any species. Last winter Mr. Keegan’s son became interested in the stuay of geology in Denver University, and torough him we obtained the gift of the fossit. Th re about ninety vertebrs, parts of the jaws containing some of the | teetns and portions of the limbs, Wheu the vertebrze are placed in position they | form a columa sbout sixteen feet long. | Many of the bones are broken and there are good reasons for believing that a length of saveral feet 13 gone entirely. | The tail, which was dug from the solid rock, is very perfect. *On receipt of the fossil Iimmediately began studying it. There seemed no ques- | tion of its being a mosasaurid or python- omorth. if we adopt Cope’s nomenclature. With the limited means at hand [ was not satisfied that I couid refer the animal to its proper genus and species, and there- fore sent photographs and a few of the bones to the National Museum at Wash- ington, D. C. The paleontologist in charge wrote me as follows: “‘The two packages of bones arrivea | safely, and carry quite a different imupres- | sion from that produced by the photo- | sraph, and show that your impression of the animal was correct. If, as I infer from the photograph, the chevrons are anchylosed with the verteor, the animal should be clidastes, although the jaw is | more massive and the teeth more com- SCIENTISTS thought the bones might be of scientific | the vertebral column lying on the ground pressed than in the only specimens we bave. The characteristic portions of the neural arch are also lacking. I think that you probably have one of the mostcom- plete vertebral columns of this group of marine reptiles in existence. The tailis particulariy fine, and gives me a much better impression of the depth and com= pression of this part of the body.’ “With the help of what literat I have 1 have studied thefossil. The jaw seems too n sive and the teeth too slender and pointed for clidastes—thouzh the fact that it was found in late cretaceous rock su:gests this genus, for the reptiles of the genus clidas- tes lived, so far as [ know, only in the lat- ter part of the cretuceous period. W hether the genus is clidastes or 10!, I am forced to the opinion that I have gotten hold of an entirely new species ot repiile. “It may be of interest to some if T add been able to obtain on mosasauri is, a word about the habit: a reiations o our reptiles. The mosasaurids lived dur- | ing the cretaceous period and perished in the revolution which closel the age of reptiles. The first one we know anything about was tound in Belgium and described by Cuvier. They : e iorms in Eu- rope, but in America about fifty specres have been described. They pussed out of | existence as our modern type of s:rpeuts came in. They were undoubied an- | cestors of the snskes in an evolutionary sense. The manner in which the serpent takes its food is familiar to =il The structure of a mosasau w <hows that it swallowed its food whole, just as the snake does. In almost every particu- lar of form the mosisaurid shows its re- lation to the moderu serpent, and there is no reasonable doubt of its being tue progenitor of the serp W. T. Lz, “‘Professor of Geology, Denver University SRR g Daniel Lambert, the famous fat man and the most noted example of obesity re- corded in medicai annals, was born in 1770, and died at the age of 40, of excessive fat. His weight was 739 pounds.