Animals 

 Antiquity 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



36 



to clothe and feed the .inventor of the fatal 

 arrow. 



Tired of deadly weapons and decoys and 

 snares and pitfalls set by the most cun- 

 ning of enemies too long ago for any his- 

 torian, the llama, the camel, the horse, the 

 ass, the elephant, the cow entered into a sol- 

 emn and everlasting treaty to lend their 

 agile feet, their patient backs and necks and 

 shoulders, their milk, their flesh, their hides, 

 their hair, their very bones, to minister to 

 men's wants. How well this treaty has 

 been observed 'on both sides let all domestic 

 creatures bear witness. Those that refused 

 to enter in any way into these stipulations 

 are doomed sooner or later to extinction, 

 and many species have already disappeared 

 or withdrawn to the waste places of the 

 earth in despair. MASON Origins of Inven- 

 tion, ch. 8, p. 259. (S., 1899.) 



180. ANIMALS TRANSPORTING 



SEEDS The Bur-marigold The "Stick- 

 tights" H an Limits the Processes of Na- 

 ture. Look at one of these seeds [of the 

 bur-marigold] through a simple lens, and 

 study its structure. See the four ribs ex- 

 tending up and down along the sides, and 

 notice particularly the sharp-pointed hooks 

 curving backward toward the base. See 

 how these ribs project up beyond the seed, 

 as spines provided with recurved barbs. 



In pulling the seed-head to pieces, some 

 of these seeds are likely to adhere to the 

 fingers by means of these barbs, while if 

 you touch them to a piece of cloth they 

 will " stick tight " a fact which has given 

 them this term for a common name. It is 

 easy to see how this sort of an adaptation 

 would be useful to the plant in getting its 

 seed dispersed. Instead of calling upon the 

 wind to waft its seeds far and wide, it 

 makes the beasts of the field its burden- 

 bearers. These " stick-tights " will take firm 

 hold upon the hair or fur of almost any of 

 the larger animals, many of which under 

 the conditions existing in previous ages of 

 the world, when our plants were developing, 

 roamed about in just the situations where 

 the bur-marigold is most at home. So, also, 

 they do to-day, tho mankind has interfered 

 in the older settled regions to render com- 

 munication by sucK animals between regions 

 far apart more difficult than formerly. 

 WEED Seed-travelers, pt. iii, p. 45. (G. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



181. ANIMALS WITHOUT INFANCY 



Parent and Child Never Know Each 

 Other. This abnormal form [the talegal- 

 lus the best known brush-turkey] buries 

 its eggs in the huge mound made by the 

 male, and troubles herself no more about 

 them. When the young is fully developed 

 it simply kicks the coffin to pieces in which 

 its mother interred it, and, burrowing its 

 way up to the sunshine, enters on the pleas- 

 ures and pains of an independent existence 

 from earliest infancy that is, if a species 

 born into the world in full possession of all 



the wisdom of the ancients can be said ever 

 to know infancy. HUDSON Naturalist in 

 La Plata, ch. 5, p. 87. (C. & H., 1895.) 



182. ANOMALIES OF SCIENCE Ex- 

 planation of Discrepancies Will Reveal New 

 Laws. The man of science, like the man 

 of law, has brought before him many an 

 anomaly; but, unlike the judge or the ad- 

 vocate, he knows that the contradictions 

 he studies are only such in seeming; he 

 feels confident that nature at the core is 

 in agreement with herself. Any day, he 

 believes, these apparent contradictions may 

 be resolved into cases of detected law, not 

 simple enough to disclose itself to aught but 

 the most rigorous analysis. In the realm 

 of heat it seems that certain rules of radia- 

 tion, conduction, boiling-points, and the 

 like, are general, not universal. In most 

 cases they act as if alone; in a few cases 

 their efl'ect is masked by causes as yet not 

 understood. Let a few cases as perplexing 

 as that of the alloys under refrigeration 

 be recounted: Common solder has a lower 

 melting-point than any of its ingredients. 

 Sulfur fuses at 120 C., and thickens again 

 at 220 C. When steel is heated and dipped 

 into cold water it is hardened; the same 

 treatment softens copper. While almost 

 every substance expands with heat, rubber 

 shrinks. In most cases electrical conduc- 

 tivity is impaired by increase of tempera- 

 ture, yet a carbon pencil rises to an almost 

 threefold augmentation of conductivity 

 when brought to incandescence in an electric 

 lamp. We may be well assured that when 

 these anomalies are resolved the explana- 

 tions will bear in their train other difficul- 

 ties for research yet more subtile. Science 

 never does worthier work than where, as 

 here, she points to her own unfinished walls, 

 and bids the student as a privilege and a 

 duty to supply their gaps as best he may. 

 ILES Flame, Electricity, and the Camera, ch. 

 6, p. 76. (D. & McC., 1900.) 



183. ANTAGONISMS OF BACTERIA 



Environment That Is Favorable to Some, 

 Destructive of Others. Study of the life- 

 history of many of the water bacteria will 

 reveal the fact that they can live and multi- 

 ply under conditions which would at once 

 prove fatal to other species. Some of these 

 water organisms can indeed increase and 

 multiply in distilled water, whereas it is 

 known that other species cannot even live 

 in distilled water, owing to the lack of 

 pabulum. Thus we see that what is favor- 

 able for one species may be the reverse for 

 another. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 1, p. 33. 

 (G. P. P., 1899.) 



184. ANTHROPOMORPHISM A MIS- 

 NOMER Likeness of Soul, Not of Form. 

 The word [anthropomorphism] is in itself 

 a misrepresentation of the fundamental idea 

 which it is employed to designate, and 

 against which it is intended to raise a prej- 

 udice. Anthropomorphism means literally 





