142 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



produced by words which become fashion- 

 able for a time, and are made to carry a 

 great variety of meanings, and frequently 

 no definite meaning. Such a word is ' cult- 

 ure.' Arnold has defined it, and Huxley 

 has lectured on his definition, and Mr. Ar- 

 nold has lectured in reply. Still, though it 

 is used every day, no one can tell exactly 

 what it means. The common notion at- 

 tached to it is that of traveling in Europe 

 and looking at picture-galleries. In educa- 

 tional circles the word * discipline ' is thrown 

 at you on all occasions. It is the answer 

 given to all educational inquiries ; but its 

 meaning to most minds is not clear. It gen- 

 erally stands for memorizing the rules of 

 Latin prosody and committing the names of 

 the Greek divinities. Another false notion 

 which we absorb with our instruction is that 

 all knowledge comes from books — that 

 knowledge originates in books. The exist- 

 ence of this belief may be denied, because 

 a second thought shows its absurdity ; but 

 the fallacy has taken possession of the mind 

 of most students of books and controls their 

 practical life. Knowledge is sought by 

 them in books, and in books alone. The 

 man educated only in books does not know 

 how to find a truth except by means of a 

 book. It is a fallacy to think that the best 

 education is an education to interpret books, 

 and not an education to interpret nature." 



Solar Storms and Smi-Spots. — What- 

 ever may be said in the matter of terres- 

 trial weather-prediction, astronomers have 

 learned to foretell with considerable cor- 

 rectness the occurrence of the mighty solar 

 storms which produce what are called sun- 

 spots ; that is, they can tell what years will 

 be characterized by many sun-storms and 

 what years by few, for ten or twelve years 

 in advance. The great sun-spots which 

 were seen in the later months of 1882 were 

 predicted at least twelve years before ; and 

 astronomy is far better assured that in the 

 years 1898 and 1894 there will be many 

 sun-spots than meteorologists are that any 

 given month in the future of the present 

 year will be of the normal character. But 

 though the periodicity ,of the spots seems 

 to be established, the reason of it is still 

 wholly unknown. We have learned, from 

 the observations of Professor Langley and 

 the story told by the spectroscope, that so 



much of the light of the body of the sun is 

 absorbed by its atmosphere that its color 

 is changed from the real bluish violet to 

 the yellowish white that we see; that the 

 vapors in that atmosphere are largely me- 

 tallic, and the rains on the sun are rains of 

 metallic drops ; that its storms rage over 

 regions as large as the whole surface of the 

 earth, and travel with a velocity compared 

 with which the swiftest atmospheric move- 

 ments on the earth are as rest ; and that 

 its constant emission of light and heat 

 represents the equivalent of a consumption 

 of fuel so far beyond what man can con- 

 ceive that figures can give no idea of it. 

 A connection seems to be fairly established 

 between solar storms and magnetic disturb- 

 ances on the earth. Yet there are storms, 

 revealed by the protuberances on the edge 

 of the solar disk, that are not felt on the 

 earth ; but this is because they rage on a 

 part of the sun not turned toward the earth, 

 and spend their effects in other portions 

 of space. Whenever the face of the sun 

 turned toward the earth has shown evi- 

 dence of perturbation, our planet has re- 

 sponded quickly enough — quite as quickly 

 as it responds to the rays of solar light. 

 It seems clear, also, that the temperature 

 of the earth as a whole is affected by the 

 absence or presence of many spots on the 

 sun's surface. But that there is any con- 

 nection between the rain and wind cycles, 

 the periods of famine and financial crisis, 

 the recurrence of disasters and shipwrecks, 

 bad vine-years, etc., as some have assumed 

 to infer, has not yet been established ; and 

 the observations on these points are so con- 

 tradictory as to have no value. 



Microbes in Brieks. — ^Director Parize, 

 of the agricultural station at Morlaix, 

 France, has discovered that the crumbling 

 of soft bricks and other earthen articles, 

 which has been ascribed wholly to the action 

 of moisture, is largely promoted, if it is not 

 caused, by the growth of microbes. His 

 attention was called to the fact in examin- 

 ing some mucedines which had grown upon 

 a brick partition in a close, moist place, 

 when he remarked some swellings or blis- 

 ters in the plaster, from which a fine, red 

 dust escaped when it was broken. Nothing 

 but the brick-dust could be seen with the 

 ordinary magnifier, but the application of 



