Eyes for all our knowledge of the universe, which extended no further than we could see. Even the invention of the telescope did not disturb this proposition, but it is otherwise with the invention of the photographic plate. It is now conceivable that a blind man, by taking photographs and ren dering their records in some way decipherable by his fingers, could investigate the universe; but still it would remain true, that all his knowledge of anything outside the earth would be derived from the use of light and would therefore be limited by its properties. On this little earth there is, indeed, a tiny corner of the universe accessible to other senses: but feeling and taste act only at those minute distances which separate particles of matter when in contact: smell ranges over, at the utmost, a mile or two; and the greatest distance which sound is ever known to have travelled (when Krakatoa exploded in 1883) is but a few thousand miles - a mere fraction of the earth's girdle. The scale of phenomena manifested through agencies other than light is so small that we are unlikely to reach any noteworthy precision by their study. Few people who are not astronomers have spent much thought on the limitations introduced by the.

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