SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Accident 

 Accumulation 



10. ACCIDENT, SEEMING, LEADS TO 

 DISCOVERY OF URANUS Result of Sir 

 William Herschel's Exhaustive Study. Al- 

 tho Uranus was discovered by accident, it 

 will not be thought that on that account 

 small credit should be given to Sir W. Her- 

 schel, the astronomer, to w T hose redoubtable 

 telescope this planet fell as a spoil. The ac- 

 cident was one which could not have hap- 

 pened but to an enthusiast in astronomical 

 researches. He had penetrated into the star 

 depths again and again with telescopes of 

 his own construction, engaged in the at- 

 tempt to solve problems of the utmost diffi- 

 culty, when one night this new orb swept 

 into his ken. PROCTOR Expanse of Heaven, 

 p. 115. (L. G. & Co.) 



11. ACCIDENT UTILIZED BY MAN 



OF SCIENCE Darwin Led to the Study of 

 Insectivorous Plants Great Destruction of 

 Insects by Drosera or Sundew. During the 

 summer of 1860, I was surprised by finding 

 how large a number of insects were caught 

 by the leaves of the common sundew 

 (Drosera rotundi folia) on a heath in Sussex. 

 I had heard that insects were thus caught, 

 but knew nothing further on the subject. 

 I gathered by chance a dozen plants, bear- 

 ing fifty-six fully expanded leaves, and on 

 thirty-one of these dead insects or remnants 

 of them adhered; and, no doubt, many more 

 would have been caught afterwards by these 

 same leaves, and still more by those as yet 

 not expanded. On one plant all six leaves 

 had caught their prey ; and on several plants 

 very many leaves had caught more than a 

 single insect. On one large leaf I found the 

 remains of thirteen distinct insects. Flies 

 (Dipt era) are captured much oftener than 

 other insects. The largest kind which I 

 have seen caught was a small butterfly 

 (Ccenonympha pamphilus) ; but the Rev. H. 

 M. Wilkinson informs me that he found a 

 large living dragon-fly with its body firmly 

 held by two leaves. As this plant is ex- 

 tremely common in some districts, the num- 

 ber of insects thus annually slaughtered 

 must be prodigious. Many plants cause the 

 death of insects, for instance the sticky buds 

 of the horse-chestnut, without thereby re- 

 ceiving, as far as we can perceive, any 

 advantage; but it was soon evident that 

 Drosera was excellently adapted for the 

 special purpose of catching insects, so that 

 the subject seemed well worthy of investiga- 

 tion. DARWIN Insectivorous Plants, ch. 1, 

 p. 1. (A., 1900.) 



12. ACCIDENT YIELDS DISCOVERY 

 TO TRAINED OBSERVER Goodyear First 

 Vulcanized India-rubber "by Chance. Good- 

 year, the sagacious and persevering investi- 

 gator into the properties and uses of 

 caoutchouc or india-rubber, had long in- 

 quired after some agent in nature which 

 would remove from the substance in ques- 

 tion its special sensibility to cold and heat, 

 and make it in effect a new material. He 

 discovered this long-desired agent in the 



most casual way. " In one of those ani- 

 mated conversations so habitual to him, in 

 reference to his experiments, a piece of 

 india-rubber combined with sulfur, which he 

 held in his hand as the text of all his dis- 

 courses, was by a violent gesture thrown 

 into a burning stove near which he was 

 standing. When taken out, after having 

 been subjected to a high degree of heat, he 

 saw what it may be safely affirmed would 

 have escaped the notice of all others that 

 a complete transformation had taken place, 

 and that an entirely new product, since so 

 felicitously termed ' new metal,' was the 

 consequence." (Decision of the U. S. Com- 

 missioner of Patents.) . . . The eye of 

 Goodyear was quickened by the watching 

 and waiting of years to that sagacity which 

 was able to see in the piece of refuse rubber 

 casually discharged from the fire an answer 

 to the question with which his mind had so 

 long been burdened. PORTER Human In- 

 tellect, pt. iii, ch. 8, p. 490. (S., 1899.) 



13. ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE IM- 

 POSSIBLE Chemistry of Sun and Stars Re- 

 vealed Scientists' Predictions Falsified. 

 Resuming in a sentence what has been al- 

 ready explained, we find that the prismatic 

 analysis of the heavenly bodies was founded 

 upon three classes of facts : First, the un- 

 mistakable character of the light given by 

 each different kind of glowing vapor; sec- 

 ondly, the identity of the light absorbed 

 with the light emitted by each ; thirdly, the 

 coincidences observed between rays missing 

 from the solar spectrum and rays absorbed 

 by various terrestrial substances. Thus, ,a 

 realm of knowledge, pronounced by Morinus 

 in the seventeenth century, and no less dog- 

 matically by Auguste Comte in the nine- 

 teenth, hopelessly out of reach of the human 

 intellect, was thrown freely open, and the 

 chemistry of the sun and stars took its 

 place among the foremost of the experi- 

 mental sciences. CLERKE History of Astron- 

 omy, pt. ii, ch. 1, p. 174. (Bl., 1893.) 



14. ACCUMULATION OF ETHICAL 

 FORCES Advance Must Be Unbroken. One 

 must first learn, unmoved, looking neither 

 to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the 

 straight and narrow path, before one can 

 begin " to make oneself over again." He 

 who every day makes a fresh resolve is like 

 one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch 

 he is to leap, forever stops and returns for 

 a fresh run. Without unbroken advance 

 there is no such thing as accumulation of 

 the ethical forces possible, and to make this 

 possible, and to exercise us and habituate 

 us in it, is the sovereign blessing of regular 

 work. BAHNSEN Beitrdge zur Character- 

 ologie, quoted by JAMES in Psychology, vol. 

 i, ch. 4, p. 124. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



15. ACCUMULATION OF EXCITE- 

 MENTS A stimulus which would be inade- 

 quate by itself to excite a nerve-center to 

 effective discharge may, by acting with one 



