SCIENCE, INVENTION, DISCOVERY. 



349 





been successfully raised in California, Ohio, 

 Kansas, East Tennessee, Northern Georgia, 

 Kentucky, and in some parts of New Jersey. 



Soap is a salt, a compound of fatty acid 

 with an alkali, soda, or potash. The Hebrew 

 borith, translated soap, is merely a general 

 term for cleaning substances. Pliny declares 

 soap to be an invention of the Gauls, though 

 he preferred the German to the Gallic soap. 

 In remote periods clothes were cleansed by 

 being rubbed or stamped upon in water. 

 Homer tells us that Nausicaa and her attend- 

 ants washed clothes by treading upon them with 

 their feet in pits of water. The Roman's used 

 fuller's earth. Savon, the French word for 

 soap, is ascribed to its having been manufac- 

 tured at Savona, near Genoa. The manufac- 

 ture of soap began in London in 1524, before 

 which time it was supplied by Bristol at one 

 penny per pound. 



Soaps, Natural. From time immemo- 

 rial the Egyptian soaproot and the Spanish 

 soaproot have been employed for washing in 

 Southern Europe and Egypt, and are, to some 

 extent, exported for use in cleansing fine arti- 

 cles. In the West Indies and South' America, 

 a pulpy fruit, which grows on a tree known as 

 the soap-tree, is said to have such cleansing 

 properties that it will clean as much linen as 

 sixty times its weight of manufactured soap. 

 There is also a tree in Peru, Quillaja Saponaria, 

 whose bark, in infusion, yields a soapy liquid 

 much valued for washing woolens, and is 

 largely imported to England and other coun- 

 tries for this purpose. The juice of the soap- 

 wort, or, as it is commonly called in the 

 United States and Great Britain, the " Bounc- 

 ing Bet," strongly possesses the saponaceous 

 qualities. In California the roots of the Phel- 

 angium Pomaridianum, which grows there abun- 

 dantly, are much used for washing. This 

 plant has a strong odor of brown soap in its 

 leaves and stems, as well as the roots. The 

 South Sea Islands and the islands of the Carib- 

 bean Sea also produce plants which are used as 

 soap substitutes. 



Solar System, The. So named from sol 

 (Latin), the sun, consists of the sun in the 

 center, numerous planets, and an unknown 

 number of bodies named comets. The word 

 planet is from the Greek planao, to wander, 

 because the few such bodies known to the 

 ancients were chiefly remarkable in their eyes 

 on account of their constantly shifting their 

 places with reference to the other luminaries 

 of the sky. Comets are so named from coma 

 (Latin), a head of hair, because they seem to 

 consist of a bright spot, with a long brush 

 streaming behind. 



Some of the planets have other planets mov- 



ing round them as centers the moon, for in- 

 stance, round the earth. These are called 

 secondary planets, moons, or satellites ; while 

 those that move round the sun are called pri- 

 mary planets. The primary planets consist 

 1st, of eight larger planets, including the 

 Earth ; their names, in the order of their near- 

 ness to the sun, are Mercury, Venus, the 

 Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Herschel or 

 Uranus, and Neptune. 2d. A group of small 

 planets or planetoids, called also asteroids, con- 

 siderable in number. The disc overy of a new 

 asteroid by Professor Borelli, places the entire 

 number of planets in the solar system at one 

 hundred and eighteen, against six known in 

 1781, when Sir W. Herschel discovered Ura- 

 nus. 



The planets move round the sun on nearly 

 one level or plane, corresponding with the 

 center of his body, and in one direction, from 

 west to east. The secondary planets, in like 

 manner, move in planes round the centers of 

 their primaries, and in the same direction, 

 from west to east. These are denominated 

 revolutionary motions ; and it is to be ob- 

 served that they are double in the case, of the 

 satellites, which have at once a revolution 

 round the primary, and a revolution, in com- 

 pany with the primary, round the sun. The 

 path described by a planet in its revolution is 

 called its orbit. 



Each planet, secondary as well as primary, 

 and the sun also, has a motion in its own body, 

 like that of a bobbin upon a spindle. Au 

 imaginary line, forming, as it were, the spindle 

 of the sun or planet, is denominated the axis, 

 and the two extremities of the axis are called 

 the poles. The axes of the sun and planets 

 are all nearly at a right angle with the plane 

 of the revolutionary movements. The motion 

 on the axis is called the rotary motion, from 

 rota, the Latin for a wheel. The sun, the pri- 

 mary planets, and the satellites, with the 

 doubtful exception of two attending on Uranus, 

 move on their axes in the same direction as the 

 revolutionary movements, from west to east. 



