The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the goal. In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama. -- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
It may be said that exploration on a large scale is now at an end; there remain only the spaces, nowhere very extensive, between the tracks of the old explorers yet to be examined, and these are chiefly in the Northern Territory and in Western Australia north of the tropic of Capricorn. The search for gold and the quest for unoccupied pasturage daily diminish the extent of these areas. Entry: A
1. BRACHYURA.--For the present, as of old, the true Brachyura are divided into four tribes: _Cyclometopa_, with arched front as in the common eatable crab; _Catometopa_, with front bent down as in the land-crabs and the little oyster-crab; _Oxyrhyncha_, with sharpened beak-like front as in the various spider-crabs; _Oxystomata_, including the Raninidae, and named not from the character of the front but from that of the buccal frame which is usually narrowed forwards. In these tribes the bold and active habits, the striking colours, or the fantastic diversities of structure, have so long attracted remark that recent investigations, while adding a multitude of new species and supplying the specialist with an infinity of new details, have not materially altered the scientific standpoint. New light, however, has been thrown upon the "intellectual" capacity of Crustacea by the proof that the spider-crabs deliberately use changes of raiment to harmonize with their surroundings, donning and doffing various natural objects as we do our manufactured clothes. Others have the power of producing sounds, one use to which they put this faculty being apparently to signal from their burrow in the sand that they are "not at home" to an inopportune visitor. Deep-sea exploration has shown that some species have an immensely extended range, and still more, that species of the same genus, and genera of the same family, though separated by great intervals of space, may be closely allied in character. A curious effect of parasitism, well illustrated in crabs, though not confined to them, has been expounded by Professor Giard, namely, that it tends to obliterate the secondary sexual characters. Modern research has discovered no crab to surpass _Macrocheira kämpferi_, De Haan, that can span between three and four yards with the tips of its toes, but at the other end of the scale it has yielded _Collodes malabaricus_, Alcock, "of which the carapace, in an adult and egg-laden female, is less than one-sixth of an inch in its greatest diameter." The most abyssal of all crabs yet known is _Ethusina abyssicola_, Smith, or what is perhaps only a variety of it, _E. challengeri_, Miers. Of the latter the "Albatross" obtained a specimen from a depth of 2232 fathoms (Faxon, 1895), of the former from 2221 fathoms, and of this S. I. Smith remarks that it has "distinctly faceted black eyes," although in them "there are only a very few visual elements at the tips of the immobile eye-stalks." Entry: 1
McCLELLAN, GEORGE BRINTON (1826-1885), American soldier, was born in Philadelphia on the 3rd of December 1826. After passing two years (1840-1842) in the university of Pennsylvania, he entered the United States military academy, from which he graduated with high honours in July 1846. Sent as a lieutenant of engineers to the Mexican War, he took part in the battles under General Scott, and by his gallantry won the brevets of first-lieutenant at Contreras-Churubusco and captain at Chapultepec; he was afterwards detailed as assistant-instructor at West Point, and employed in explorations in the South-West and in Oregon. Promoted in 1855 captain of cavalry, he served on a military commission sent to Europe to study European armies and especially the war in the Crimea. On his return he furnished an able and interesting report, republished (1861) under the title of _Armies of Europe_. In 1856 he designed a saddle, which was afterwards well known as the McClellan. Resigning his commission in 1857, McClellan became successively chief engineer and vice-president of the Illinois Central railroad (1857-1860), general superintendent of the Mississippi & Ohio railroad, and, a little later, president of the eastern branch of the same, with his residence in Cincinnati. When the Civil War broke out he was, in April 1861, made major-general of three months' militia by the governor of Ohio; but General Scott's favour at Washington promoted him rapidly (May 14) to the rank of major-general, U.S.A., in command of the department of the Ohio. Pursuant to orders, on the 26th of May, McClellan sent a small force across the Ohio river to Philippi, dispersed the Confederates there early in June, and immensely aided the Union cause in that region by rapid and brilliant military successes, gained in the short space of eight days. These operations, though comparatively trivial as the Civil War developed, brought great results, in permanently dividing old Virginia by the creation of the state of West Virginia, and in presenting the first sharp, short and wholly successful campaign of the war. Entry: M
The insect inhabitants of Ecuador, like the birds, include a large number of genera and species, but no complete entomological survey of the country has ever been made, and our knowledge in this respect is insufficient to warrant a detailed description. In one ascent of Pichincha in 1880, Mr Whymper collected 21 species of beetles, all new to science, between 12,000 and 15,600 ft. elevation. On Cotopaxi, at elevations of 13,000 to 15,800 ft., 18 species of the genus _Colpodes_ were collected, of which 16 were new. This may be considered a fair illustration of the situation in Ecuador so far as natural history exploration is concerned. Of the Machachi basin, near Quito, which he calls a "zoologist's paradise," Mr Whymper writes (_Travels amongst the Great Andes of the Equator_): "Butterflies above, below and around; now here, now there, by many turns and twists displaying the brilliant tessellation of their under-sides ... May-flies and dragon-flies danced in the sunlight; lizards darted across the paths; and legions of spiders pervaded the grass, many very beautiful--frosted--silver backs, or curious, like the saltigrades, who took a few steps and then gave a leap. There were crickets in infinite numbers; and flies innumerable, from slim daddy-long-legs to ponderous, black, hairy fellows known to science as _Dejeaniae_; hymenopterous insects in profusion, including our old friend the bishop of Ambato (possibly _Dielis_), in company with another formidable stinger, with chrome antennae, called by the natives 'the Devil'; and occasional _Phasmas_ (caballo de palo) crawling painfully about, like animated twigs." This description refers to a fertile sub-tropical oasis on the partially barren plateau; below in the forested lowlands, where tropical conditions prevail, the numbers and varieties are many times greater. The Coleoptera are especially numerous; Mr Whymper took home with him 206 species which had been identified and described up to 1892, most of them from the uplands and most of them new to science. The total number of species in Ecuador is roughly estimated to be 8000. The Hymenoptera are also numerous, but less so than the Lepidoptera, with which the mountain slopes and sunny, open spaces seem to be literally covered. Of moths alone Mr Whymper took away with him specimens representing no less than 23 genera, with a probable addition of 13 genera more among his undescribed specimens, the largest of which (an _Erebus odora_) was 7¼ in. across the wings. Among the Diptera, which includes a very wide range of genera and species, are some of a highly troublesome character, though on the whole, Mr Whymper did not find the flies and mosquitoes so. His explorations, however, did not extend to the eastern region, where the mosquitoes are usually described by travellers as extremely troublesome. Sand-flies are common, and in the eastern forests the tiny _piúm_ fly (_Trombidium_, sp.?) is a veritable pest. Of the insects which infest dwellings and prey upon their human inmates, such as fleas, bed-bugs, roaches, &c., Ecuador has more than a bountiful supply. Lice-eating is a widely prevalent habit among the Indians and mestizos, and demonstrates how numerous these parasites are among the people. A good illustration of the prevalence of house-infesting animals and insects is given by Mr Whymper (_op. cit._ p. 391), who made a collection of 50 different specimens of the vermin which infested his bedroom in Guayaquil. Entry: ECUADOR
Amongst substances other than metal we can cite only one instance in which crystal was used; this material was evidently found too hard for any general use in the inscriptional line: the solitary instance is the case of a short record found in the remains of a Buddhist stupa or relic-mound at Bhattiprolu in the Kistna district, Madras. In various parts of India there are found in large numbers small tablets of clay prepared from stamps, sometimes baked into terra-cotta, sometimes left to harden naturally. Objects of this class were largely used as votive tablets, especially by the Buddhists; and their tablets usually present the so-called Buddhist formula or creed: "Of those conditions which spring from a cause, Tathagata (Buddha) has declared the cause and the suppression of them; it is of such matters that he, the great ascetic, discourses": but others, from Sunet in the Ludhiana district, Punjab, show by the legends on them that the Saivas and Vaishnavas also habitually made pious offerings of this kind on occasions of visiting sacred places. Recent explorations, however, in the Gorakhpur and Muzaffarpur districts have resulted in the discovery, in this class of records, of great numbers of clay seals bearing various inscriptions, which had been attached to documents sent to and fro between administrative offices, both royal and municipal, between religious establishments, and between private individuals: and amongst these we have seals of the monastery at Kusinara, one of the places at which the eight original portions of the corporeal relics of Buddha were enshrined in relic-mounds, and also a seal-stamp used for making seals of the monastery at Vethadipa, another of those places. And from Kathiawar we have a similar seal-stamp which describes itself as the property "of the prince and commander-in-chief Pushyena, son of the illustrious prince Ahivarman, whose royal pedigree extends back unbroken to Jayadratha." There are no indications that the use of brick for inscriptional purposes was ever at all general in India, as it was in some other eastern lands: but there have been found in the Ghazipur district numerous bricks bearing the inscription "the glorious Kumaragupta," with reference to either the first or the second Gupta king of that name, of the 5th century A.D.; in the Gorakhpur district there have been found brick tablets bearing Buddhist texts, one of which is a version in Sanskrit of a short sermon preached by Buddha; and from the Jaunpur district we have a brick tablet bearing an inscription which registers a mortgage, made in A.D. 1217, of some lands as security for a loan. Inscribed earthenware relic-receptacles have been found in the Bhopal state: donative earthenware jars, bearing inscriptions, have been obtained near Charsadda in the North-West Frontier province: and from Kathiawar we have a piece of earthenware, apparently a fragment of a huge pot, bearing an inscription which presents a date in A.D. 566-67 and the name of "the glorious Guhasena," one of the Maitraka princes of Valabhi. For the great bulk of the inscriptions, however, stone was used: but limitation of space prevents us from entering into any details here, and only permits us to say that in this class the records are found all over India on rocks, on isolated monolith columns and pillars, of which some were erected simply to bear the records that were published on them, others were placed in front of temples as flagstaffs of the gods, and others were set up as pillars of victory in battle; on relic-receptacles hidden away in the interiors of Buddhist stupas; on external structural parts of stupas; on façades, walls, and other parts of caves; on pedestals and other parts of images and statues, sometimes of colossal size; on moulds for making seals; on walls, beams, pillars, pilasters, and other parts of temples; and on specially prepared slabs and tablets, sometimes built into the walls of temples and other erections, sometimes set up inside temples or in the courtyards of them, or in conspicuous places in village-sites and fields, where they have occasionally in the course of time become buried. Entry: II
These local researches, and the more comprehensive attempts of Leichhardt and Mitchell to solve the chief problems of Australian geography, must yield in importance to the grand achievement of Mr Stuart in 1862. The first of his tours independently performed, in 1858 and 1859, were around the South Australian lakes, namely, Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre and Lake Gairdner. These waters had been erroneously taken for parts of one vast horse-shoe or sickle shaped lake, only some 20 m. broad, believed to encircle a large portion of the inland country, with drainage at one end by a marsh into Spencer Gulf. The mistake, shown in all the old maps of Australia, had originated in a curious optical illusion. When Mr Eyre viewed the country from Mount Deception in 1840, looking between Lake Torrens and the lake which now bears his own name, the refraction of light from the glittering crust of salt that covers a large space of stony or sandy ground produced an appearance of water. The error was discovered, after eighteen years, by the explorations of Mr Babbage and Major Warburton in 1858, while Mr Stuart, about the same time, gained a more complete knowledge of the same district. Entry: A
Such being the natural forces at work remodelling the surface of the earth; forces of such gigantic power as to be almost inconceivable in these more placid times, it can easily be understood how, in the course of the many thousands of years before the Quaternary period, when the surface of the globe attained its present aspect, the powerful river-systems of Europe wore their beds deep into the solid rocks. In some cases in Europe the erosive power of the river has worn through its bed to such an extent that the present stream is some hundreds of feet lower than its forerunner in palaeolithic times. From various causes, however, the rivers did not always wear for themselves a deep channel, but spread themselves over a wide area. This seems to have been the case with the Thames near London: the river-bed is not of any great depth, but at various periods it has occupied the space between Clapton on the north-east and Clapham on the south-west. It must not be assumed that the whole of this area of 7 m. or more was filled by the river at any one time, but rather that during the course of the palaeolithic period the river had its bed somewhere between these two limits. For instance, it is probable that at one period the bank of the Thames was at a point nearly midway between the northern and southern limits, where Gray's Inn Road now stands. It was here that the earliest recorded palaeolithic implement (now in the British Museum) was found towards the close of the 17th century in association with mammoth bones. But it is safe to say that the Thames was a very much wider and more imposing river in palaeolithic times than it is now, when its average width at London is under 300 yds. As, in the course of ages, it changed its bed and by degrees lessened in size and volume, it would leave, on the terraces formed on its banks, the deposits of brick-earth and gravel brought down by the stream, and it is on these terraces that the relics of palaeolithic man are found, sometimes in great quantities. It will be obvious from the nature of the case that the highest terraces, and those farthest apart, should contain the earliest implements; but it is by no means easy in the present state of the land surface and with our present knowledge, to place the remains in their relative sequence. More accurate observation, and a better understanding of the conditions under which these deposits were made, should solve many such problems. Much light has been thrown upon many points by Worthington Smith, who has excavated with great care two palaeolithic floors at Clapton and at Caddington near Dunstable. The latter discovery was of quite exceptional interest as confirming the geological evidence by that of archaeology. In this case the original level at which palaeolithic man had worked was clearly defined, and was prolific of dark-grey implements, which had evidently been made on the spot, as Smith found that many of the flakes could be replaced on the blocks or cores from which they had been struck by palaeolithic man; there were also the flint hammers that had been used in the operation. Above the floor was a layer of brick-earth, again covered by contorted drift, in which also implements occurred, but of a very different kind from those found below. In place of being sharp and unabraded, and with the refuse flakes accompanying them, they were rolled and disfigured, of an ochreous tint, and evidently had been transported in the drift from a much higher level now no longer existing, as the site where they occurred is the highest in the vicinity, about 500-600 ft. above sea-level. Here then we have a clear case of palaeolithic man being compelled to abandon his working place on the lower level by the descent of the waters containing the products of his own forerunners, probably then very remote. In this case the sequence of the various strata may be considered certain, and the remains thus accurately determined and correlated are naturally of extreme value and importance. But even this does not enable us to diagnose another discovery unless the internal evidence is equally clear and conclusive. One point of importance that may be noted is that the older abraded implements were mostly of the usual drift type, while the more recent ones from the "floor" contained forms more highly developed and elaborated, such as occur in the French caves. Explorations of this kind, carefully conducted in a strictly scientific spirit by men of training and intelligence, are the only means by which real progress will be made in this puzzling branch of archaeology. Entry: ARCHAEOLOGY
The first specimen of a reflecting telescope was constructed by Isaac Newton in 1668. It was of what is still called "Newtonian" design, and had a speculum 2 in. in diameter. Through the skill of John Hadley (1682-1743) and James Short of Edinburgh (1710-1768) the instrument unfolded, in the ensuing century, some of its capabilities, which the labours of William Herschel enormously enhanced. Between 1774 and 1789 he built scores of specula of continually augmented size, up to a diameter of 4 ft., the optical excellence of which approved itself by a crowd of discoveries. Uranus (q.v.) was recognized by its disk on the 13th of March 1781; two of its satellites, Oberon and Titania, disclosed themselves on the 11th of January 1787; while with the giant 48-in. mirror, used on the "front-view" plan, Mimas and Enceladus, the innermost Saturnian moons, were brought to view on the 28th of August and the 17th of September 1789. These were incidental trophies; Herschel's main object was the exploration of the sidereal heavens. The task, though novel and formidable, was executed with almost incredible success. Charles Messier (1730-1817) had catalogued in 1781 103 nebulae; Herschel discovered 2500, laid down the lines of their classification, divined the laws of their distribution, and assigned their place in a scheme of development. The proof supplied by him in 1802 that coupled stars mutually circulate threw open a boundless field of research; and he originated experimental inquiries into the construction of the heavens by systematically collecting and sifting stellar statistics. He, moreover, definitively established, in 1783, the fact and general direction of the sun's movement in space, and thus introduced an element of order into the maze of stellar proper motions. Sir John Herschel continued in the northern, and extended to the southern hemisphere, his father's work. The third earl of Rosse mounted, at Parsonstown in 1845, a speculum 6 ft. in diameter, which afforded the first indications of the spiral structure shown in recent photographs to be the most prevalent characteristic of nebulae. Down to near the close of the 19th century, both the use and the improvement of reflectors were left mainly in British hands; but the gift of the "Crossley" instrument in 1895, to the Lick observatory, and its splendid subsequent performances in nebular photography, brought similar tools of research into extensive use among American astronomers; and they are now, for many of the various purposes of astrophysics, strongly preferred to refractors. Entry: G