222 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



Its eyes are small but very bright and provided with 

 lids. 



CAMEL'S-HAIR BRUSHES are not made from the hair of 

 camels but from hair from the tails of Russian and Sibe- 

 rian squirrels. Did any one ever try to use the hairs of 

 any of the large American or Canadian squirrels for this 

 purpose? 



CATGUT. This is never made from the intestines of 

 cats but from those of sheep and sometimes of horses. It 

 is a curious fact that the highly fed and fat sheep of the 

 best farming countries do not yield materials that are 

 fit for making catgut. The lean, hardy sheep of the north 

 of Italy seem to furnish the best article. 



CODDINGTON LENS. This very valuable improvement 

 in magnifying glasses was invented by Sir David Brewster 

 and it ought to be called the "Brewster lens" It is an 

 inexpensive form of simple microscope, and although not 

 equal to a well-made achromatic magnifier, it is very much 

 cheaper and is greatly superior to the ordinary double convex 

 lens. Coddington, who wrote several books on optics, never 

 claimed to be the inventor of this form, but like many other 

 inventions it has been credited to the wrong person. 



GALVANIC BATTERY. This is a singular misnomer 

 which for a time was applied to what really ought to be 

 called the voltaic battery, since the combination of two 

 metals and an acid (or their equivalents) was really in- 

 vented by Volta. Galvani had been dead some years 

 before the voltaic pile or battery was given to the world. 



FOXGLOVE. The syllable fox in this word is a corrup- 

 tion of the word folks, meaning the fairies or " little folks." 

 It should be folks' glove. 



HYDROPHOBIA is a very misleading term as applied to 



