admittedly more comely than a certain dwarf with half a

The work of Johannes Hevelius--Halley and Hevelius--Halley's observation of the transit of Mercury, and his method of determining the parallax of the planets--Halley's observation of meteors--His inability to explain these bodies--The important work of James Bradley--Lacaille's measurement of the arc of the meridian--The determination of the question as to the exact shape of the earth--D'Alembert and his influence upon science- -Delambre's History of Astronomy--The astronomical work of Euler.

CHAPTER II. THE PROGRESS OF MODERN ASTRONOMY

The work of William Herschel--His discovery of Uranus--His discovery that the stars are suns--His conception of the universe--His deduction that gravitation has caused the grouping of the heavenly bodies--The nebula, hypothesis, --Immanuel Kant's conception of the formation of the world--Defects in Kant's conception--Laplace's final solution of the problem--His explanation in detail--Change in the mental attitude of the world since Bruno--Asteroids and satellites--Discoveries of Olbers1--The mathematical calculations of Adams and Leverrier--The discovery of the inner ring of Saturn--Clerk Maxwell's paper on the stability of Saturn's rings--Helmholtz's conception of the action of tidal friction--Professor G. H. Darwin's estimate of the consequences of tidal action--Comets and meteors--Bredichin's cometary theory--The final solution of the structure of comets--Newcomb's estimate of the amount of cometary dust swept up daily by the earth--The fixed stars--John Herschel's studies of double stars--Fraunhofer's perfection of the refracting telescope--Bessel's measurement of the parallax of a star,--Henderson's measurements--Kirchhoff and Bunsen's perfection of the spectroscope--Wonderful revelations of the spectroscope--Lord Kelvin's estimate of the time that will be required for the earth to become completely cooled-- Alvan Clark's discovery of the companion star of Sirius-- The advent of the photographic film in astronomy--Dr. Huggins's studies of nebulae--Sir Norman Lockyer's "cosmogonic guess,"--Croll's pre-nebular theory.

CHAPTER III. THE NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY

William Smith and fossil shells--His discovery that fossil rocks are arranged in regular systems--Smith's inquiries taken up by Cuvier--His Ossements Fossiles containing the first description of hairy elephant--His contention that fossils represent extinct species only--Dr. Buckland's studies of English fossil-beds--Charles Lyell combats catastrophism, --Elaboration of his ideas with reference to the rotation of species--The establishment of the doctrine of uniformitarianism, --Darwin's Origin of Species--Fossil man--Dr. Falconer's visit to the fossil-beds in the valley of the Somme--Investigations of Prestwich and Sir John Evans--Discovery of the Neanderthal skull, --Cuvier's rejection of human fossils--The finding of prehistoric carving on ivory--The fossil-beds of America--Professor Marsh's paper on the fossil horses in America--The Warren mastodon, --The Java fossil, Pithecanthropus Erectus.

CHAPTER IV. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN GEOLOGY

James Hutton and the study of the rocks--His theory of the earth--His belief in volcanic cataclysms in raising and forming the continents--His famous paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1781---His conclusions that all strata of the earth have their origin at the bottom of the sea---His deduction that heated and expanded matter caused the elevation of land above the sea-level--Indifference at first shown this remarkable paper--Neptunists versus Plutonists-- Scrope's classical work on volcanoes--Final acceptance of Hutton's explanation of the origin of granites--Lyell and uniformitarianism--Observations on the gradual elevation of the coast-lines of Sweden and Patagonia--Observations on the enormous amount of land erosion constantly taking place, --Agassiz and the glacial theory--Perraudin the chamois- hunter, and his explanation of perched bowlders--De Charpentier's acceptance of Perraudin's explanation--Agassiz's paper on his Alpine studies--His conclusion that the Alps were once covered with an ice-sheet--Final acceptance of the glacial theory--The geological ages--The work of Murchison and Sedgwick--Formation of the American continents--Past, present, and future.

CHAPTER V. THE NEW SCIENCE OF METEOROLOGY