Alphabet 

 Analogy 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



30 



modified as I advanced. Some distance up 

 the gorge I found upon the slopes to my 

 right quantities of rolled stones, evidently 

 rounded by water-action. Still further up, 

 and just before reaching the first bridge 

 which spans the chasm, I found more rolled 

 stones, associated with sand and gravel. 

 Through this mass of detritus, fortunately, 

 a vertical cutting had been made, which ex- 

 hibited a section showing perfect stratifica- 

 tion. There was no agency in the place to 

 roll these stones, and to deposit these alter- 

 nating layers of sand and pebbles, but the 

 river which now rushes some hundreds of 

 feet below them. At one period of the Via 

 Mala's history the river must have run at 

 this high level. Other evidences of water- 

 action soon revealed themselves. TYNDALL 

 Hours of Exercise in the Alps, ch. 20, p. 

 220. (A., 1898.) 



149. ALTAR OF STONEHENGE A 



Nameless Ancient Astronomer and His En- 

 during Memorial Evidence of Ancient 

 Sun-worship in England. The visitor to 

 Salisbury Plain sees around him a lonely 

 waste, utterly barren except for a few re- 

 cently planted trees, and otherwise as deso- 

 late as it could have been when Hengist and 

 Horsa landed in Britain; for its monotony 

 is still unbroken except by the funeral 

 mounds of ancient chiefs, which dot it to 

 its horizon, and contrast strangely with the 

 crowded life and fertile soil which every- 

 where surround its borders. In the midst 

 of this loneliness rise the rude, enormous 

 monoliths of Stonehenge circles of gray 

 stones which seem as old as time, and were 

 there, as we now are told, the temple of a 

 people which had already passed away, and 

 whose worship was forgotten when our 

 Saxon forefathers first saw the place. 



In the center of the inner circle is a stone 

 which is believed once to have been the 

 altar ; while beyond the outmost ring, quite 

 away to the northeast upon the open plain, 

 still stands a solitary stone, set up there 

 evidently with some -special object by the 

 same unknown builders. Seen under ordi- 

 nary circumstances, it is difficult to divine 

 its connection with the others; but we are 

 told that once in each year, upon the morn- 

 ing of the longest day, the level shadow of 

 this distant, isolated stone is projected at 

 sunrise to the very center of the ancient 

 sanctuary, and falls just upon the altar. 

 The primitive man who devised this was 

 both astronomer and priest, for he not only 

 adored the risen god whose first beams 

 brought him light and warmth, but he could 

 mark his place, and tho utterly ignorant of 

 its nature, had evidently learned enough of 

 its motions to embody his simple astronomi- 

 cal knowledge in a record so exact and so 

 enduring that, tho his very memory has 

 gone, common men are still interested in it ; 

 for, as I learned when viewing the scene, 

 people are accustomed to come from all the 

 surrounding country and pass in this deso- 



late spot the short night preceding the long- 

 est day of the year, to see the shadow touch 

 the altar at the moment of sunrise. LANG- 

 LEY The New Astronomy, ch. 1, p. 1. (H. M. 

 & Co., 1896.) 



150. ALTRUISM A NECESSITY OF 

 REPRODUCTION Only by Maternal Care 

 and Solicitude Do Races Survive The 

 Vicarious Principle in Nature. Sympathy, 

 tenderness, unselfishness, and the long list 

 of virtues which make up altruism, are the 

 direct outcome and essential accompaniment 

 of the reproductive process. Without some 

 rudimentary maternal solicitude for the egg 

 in the humblest forms of life, or for the 

 young among higher forms, the living world 

 would not only suffer, but would cease. For 

 a time in the life-history of every higher 

 animal the direct, personal, gratuitous, un- 

 rewarded help of another creature is a con- 

 dition of existence. Even in the lowliest 

 world of plants the labors of maternity be- 

 gin, and the animal kingdom closes with 

 the creation of a class in which this func- 

 tion is perfected to its last conceivable ex- 

 pression. The vicarious principle is shot 

 through and through the whole vast web 

 of nature; and if one actor has played a 

 mightier part than another in the drama of 

 the past, it has been self-sacrifice. What 

 more has come into humanity along the line 

 of the struggle for the life of others will be 

 shown later. But it is quite certain that, 

 of all the things that minister to the wel- 

 fare and good of man, of all that make the 

 world varied and fruitful, of all that make 

 society solid and interesting, of all that 

 make life beautiful and glad and worthy, by 

 far the larger part has reached us through 

 the activities of the struggle for the life of 

 others. DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, p. 18. 

 (J. P., 1900.) 



151. AMAZEMENT AT POWER OF 

 MAGNET Augustine's Description. 1 ' When 

 I first saw it," says St. Augustine, speak- 

 ing of the attraction of the magnet, " I 

 was thunderstruck ( t( vehement er inhor- 

 rui"), for I saw an iron ring attracted and 

 suspended by the stone; and then, as if it 

 had communicated its own property to the 

 iron it attracted, and had made it a sub- 

 stance like itself, this ring was put near 

 another and lifted it up, and as the first 

 ring clung to the magnet, so did the second 

 ring to the first. A third and fourth were 

 similarly added, so that there hung from 

 the stone a kind of chain of rings with their 

 hoops connected, not interlinking, but at- 

 tached together by their outer surface. 

 Who would not be amazed at this virtue of 

 the stone, subsisting, as it does, not only 

 in itself, but transmitted through so many 

 suspended rings and binding them together 

 by invisible links? 



" Yet far more astonishing is what I 

 heard about the stone from my brother in 

 the episcopate, Severus, Bishop of MilevK 

 Tie told me that Bathanarius, once Count of 



