SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Balance 

 Beauty 



some fishes construct for themselves little 

 retreats where they may hide. Long before 

 the fire-maker, the potter, or even the cook, 

 came the mothers of the Fates, spinning 

 threads, drawing them out, and cutting 

 them off. Coarse basketry or matting is 

 found charred in very ancient sepulchers. 

 MASON Woman's Share in Primitive Cul- 

 ture, ch. 3, p. 42. (A., 1894.) 



314. BAS-RELIEFS OF NINEVEH 



Ancient Scenes Preserved Gigantic Stature 

 Given to Kings and Heroes. In the British 

 Museum the alabaster bas-reliefs that 

 adorned the palace courts of Nineveh give a 

 wonderfully clear idea of what Assyrian life 

 was like, how the king rode in his chariot, 

 or let fly his arrows at the lion at bay, or 

 walked with the state umbrella held over 

 his head; how the soldiers swam the rivers 

 on blown skins and the storming party 

 scaled the fortress, while the archers shot 

 down among them from the battlements, 

 and the impaled captives hung in rows full 

 in view outside the walls. But in such 

 scenes proportion did not much matter if 

 only the meaning were conveyed. It did 

 not seem artistically absurd to the Assy- 

 rians to make archers so big that two fill a 

 whole parapet; nor did the Egyptians feel 

 the comic impression made on our modern 

 minds by the gigantic figure of the king 

 striding half across the battle-field and 

 grasping a dozen pigmy barbarians at a 

 grip, to slash their heads off with one sweep 

 of his mighty falchion. TYLOB Anthropol- 

 ogy, ch. 12, p. 302. (A., 1899.) 



315. BEAM OF LIGHT IN DARKNESS 



Gifted Men of Middle Ages Rapid 

 Spread of Investigation Once Started. The 

 germ of those events which have imparted 

 any strongly marked progressive movement 

 to the human mind may be traced deeply 

 rooted in the track of preceding ages. It 

 does not lie in the destinies of mankind that 

 all should equally experience mental obscu- 

 ration. A principle of preservation fosters 

 the eternal vital process of advancing rea- 

 son. The Age of Columbus attained the ob- 

 ject of its destination so rapidly because a 

 track of fruitful germs had already been 

 cast abroad by a number of highly gifted 

 men, who formed, as it were, a lengthened 

 beam of light amid the darkness of the 

 Middle Ages. One single century the thir- 

 teenth shows us Roger Bacon, Nicolaus 

 Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Vincentius of 

 Beauvais. The mental activity, once awak- 

 ened, was soon followed by an extension of 

 geographical knowledge. When Diego Ri- 

 bero returned, in the year 1525, from the 

 geographical and astronomical congress 

 which had been held at the Puente de Caya, 

 near Yelves, for the purpose of settling the 

 contentions that had arisen regarding the 

 boundaries of the two empires of the Por- 

 tuguese and the Spaniards, the outlines of 

 the new continent had been already laid 



down from Terra del Fuego to the coasts of 

 Labrador. . . . The emulous enterprise 

 of the Spaniards, English, and Portuguese, 

 directed to one and the same object, was 

 then so great that fifty years sufficed to de- 

 termine the external configuration or the 

 general direction of the coasts of the coun- 

 tries in the western hemisphere. HUM- 

 BOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 229. (H., 

 1891.) 



316. BEAUTIES OF NATURE NEG- 

 LECTED BY ROMANS No description has 

 been transmitted to us from antiquity of 

 the eternal snow of the Alps reddened by 

 the evening glow or the morning dawn, of 

 the beauty of the blue ice of the glaciers, or 

 of the sublimity of Swiss natural scenery, 

 altho statesmen and generals, with men of 

 letters in their retinue, continually passed 

 through Helvetia on their road to Gaul. All 

 these travelers think only of complaining of 

 the wretchedness of the roads, and never ap- 

 pear to have paid any attention to the ro- 

 mantic beauty of the scenery through which 

 they passed. ... Silius Italicus, who 

 died in the time of Trajan, when Switzer- 

 land was already considerably cultivated, 

 describes the region of the Alps as a dreary 

 and barren wilderness at the same time 

 that he extols with admiration the rocky 

 ravines of Italy and the woody shores of 

 the Liris. HTJMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. i, 

 p. 38. (H., 1897.) 



317. BEAUTY AMID DESOLATION 



Fascination of Alaskan Glaciers Contin- 

 ual Roar of Avalanches. The tide-water 

 glaciers of Alaska are the ones that claim 

 the greatest share of admiration from tour- 

 ists on account of the wonderful coloring 

 and marvelous beauty of their ice-cliffs and 

 the picturesqueness of the floating islands 

 of ice to which they give origin. The ap- 

 proach to a tide-water glacier is usually 

 first made known by the fleet of bergs that 

 dot the water and chill the atmosphere. 

 These become more numerous as one pro- 

 ceeds, and many times completely cover the 

 water before the ice-cliffs from which they 

 came can be seen. Indeed, at times, the 

 floating bergs form an impenetrable pack 

 through which it is impossible for a vessel 

 to advance. The vicinity of a glacier which 

 terminates in the sea is frequently made 

 manifest also by the roar of avalanches, as 

 fresh masses of ice fall from its face and 

 join the fleet of gleaming bergs crowding 

 the adjacent waters. The noise of the fall- 

 ing fragments may be heard many miles, 

 and sounds like distant thunder or the dis- 

 charge of heavy guns. 



When a large tide-water glacier is seen 

 for the first time, the beholder is fascinated 

 by its beauty, especially if it is illuminated 

 by a brilliant sun, and learns a new lesson, 

 for the reason that the scene is so different 

 from the popular idea of the appearance 

 of glaciers, derived principally from the 



