The Fairy-Land of Science | Page 3

shore. They are close at hand, these sprites, to the simple peasant or the
gallant knight, or to anyone who has the gift of the fairies and can see
them. but the man who scoffs at them, and does not believe in them or
care for them, he never sees them. Only now and then they play him an

ugly trick, leading him into some treacherous bog and leaving him to
get out as he may.
Now, exactly all this which is true of the fairies of our childhood is true
too of the fairies of science. There are forces around us, and among us,
which I shall ask you to allow me to call fairies, and these are ten
thousand times more wonderful, more magical, and more beautiful in
their work, than those of the old fairy tales. They, too, are invisible, and
many people live and die without ever seeing them or caring to see
them. These people go about with their eyes shut, either because they
will not open them, or because no one has taught them how to see.
They fret and worry over their own little work and their own petty
troubles, and do not know how to rest and refresh themselves, by
letting the fairies open their eyes and show them the calm sweet picture
of nature. They are like Peter Bell of whom Wordsworth wrote:-
"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it
was nothing more."
But we will not be like these, we will open our eyes and ask, "What are
these forces or fairies, and how can we see them?"
Just go out into the country, and sit down quietly and watch nature at
work. Listen to the wind as it blows, look at the clouds rolling overhead,
and waves rippling on the pond at your feet. Hearken to the brook as it
flows by, watch the flower-buds opening one by one, and then ask
yourself, "How all this is done?" Go out in the evening and see the dew
gather drop by drop upon the grass, or trace the delicate hoar-frost
crystals which bespangle every blade on a winter's morning. Look at
the vivid flashes of lightening in a storm, and listen to the pealing
thunder: and then tell me, by what machinery is all this wonderful work
done? Man does none of it, neither could he stop it if he were to try; for
it is all the work of those invisible forces or fairies whose acquaintance
I wish you to make. Day and night, summer and winter, storm or calm,
these fairies are at work, and we may hear them and know them, and
make friends of them if we will.
There is only one gift we must have before we can learn to know them -

we must have imagination. I do not mean mere fancy, which creates
unreal images and impossible monsters, but imagination, the power of
making pictures or images in our mind, of that which is, though it is
invisible to us. Most children have this glorious gift, and love to picture
to themselves all that is told them, and to hear the same tale over and
over again till they see every bit of it as if it were real. This is why they
are sure to love science it its tales are told them aright; and I, for one,
hope the day may never come when we may lose that childish clearness
of vision, which enables us through the temporal things which are seen,
to realize those eternal truths which are unseen.
If you have this gift of imagination come with me, and in these lectures
we will look for the invisible fairies of nature.
Watch a shower of rain. Where do the drops come from? and why are
they round, or rather slightly oval? In our fourth lecture we shall se that
the little particles of water of which the raindrops are made, were held
apart and invisible in the air by heat, one of the most wonderful of our
forces* or fairies, till the cold wind passed by and chilled the air. Then,
when there was no longer so much heat, another invisible force,
cohesion, which is always ready and waiting, seized on the tiny
particles at once, and locked them together in a drop, the closest form
in which they could lie. Then as the drops became larger and larger
they fell into the grasp of another invisible force, gravitation, which
dragged them down to the earth, drop by drop, till they made a shower
of rain. Pause for a moment and think. You have surely heard of
gravitation, by which the sun holds the earth and the planets, and keeps
them moving round him