Light as a Motive Power. By Lieutenant R. II. Armit,
R.N. (Triibner and Co.)—The author's scientific creed may be easily and simply formulated. There is but one force, and electricity is its mani- festation. The two-volume exposition of it is one of the most extra- ordinary productions it was ever our misfortune to read, and we cannot hope, in so limited an article, to give any beyond the most superficial idea of its vagaries. The object of the work is to account for the causes which are at work on the surface of the globe producing aerial and oceanic currents. According to the writer, the molten interior of the earth is a vast battery, whose electric circuit is completed by the earth's atmosphere between the two poles. The external conductor is a bright, spherical shell of metallic gas, which entirely surrounds and keeps in the aqueous atmosphere. This metallic gas is derived from the interior of the earth through the cruet, especially in the deserts of Africa, whore its influence can be felt as the sirocco or simoon (!) and from the evaporation (sic) of the metals on the surface. Its existence is easily demonstrated by the meteors or bolides, which are formed by precipitation of the gas, giving out at the same time light and heat,— lightning, accompanied by loud detonation, thunder. This metallic gas in perfectly dry and cold, and wherever it descends to fill a vacuum in the aqueous atmosphere, produces frost, or mixed and tempered by the hot air of the lower current, forms the cool breezes of the temperate zone. If our readers' amazement is not already incapable of increase, we have more in store yet. Electricity, light, and beat are one body or spirit (the Lieutenant is rather uncertain in his use of terms), in three substances, with which also cold is an identical force. It is the electric force of light which holds in its grip this our planet, and whirls it round the sun, the centre of electricity, round which it also causes the fixed stars to revolve,—an astronomical discovery we recommend to the attention of Sir G. Airey. Nor is the sun the incandescent body it has been falsely represented. It is cold, sending forth its dark rays of light only to be endowed with life by contact with some metallic sphere, such as ours, which it "bathes in a sea of molten fire." The grandeur and comprehensiveness of this theory seeks augmentation and further force from the mystical language of the book of Job, which it elucidates in a remarkable manner, and with the hidden meanings of which Lieutenant Armit seems even more familiar than with the behaviour of the bright metallic reflector. By way of showing the close scientific insight of the writer, we will quote the following :—" Rust peels off old anchors, &c. The pure metal has gone, while the rust or oxide remains. Where has the pure metal gone to? We say it has been absorbed in a volatile state by the atmosphere." Again, "The moisture held by the metallic fluid called water being driven out,a solidified, metallic substance called ice remains in its stead." We close the book wondering whether the sailor-author has taken our scientific public for marines.
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