Belief 

 Biolo 



ogy 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



tion with objects of which she had till then 

 left us cold. " I realize for the first time," 

 we then say, " what that means ! " This 

 happens often with moral propositions. We 

 have often heard them; but now they shoot 

 into our lives; they move us; we feel their 

 living force. Such instantaneous beliefs are 

 truly enough not to be achieved by will. 

 But gradually our will can lead us to the 

 same results by a very simple method: we 

 need only in cold blood act as if the thing 

 in question were real, and keep acting as if 

 it were real, and it will infallibly end by 

 growing into such a connection with our 

 life that it will become real. It will become 

 so knit with habit and emotion that our in- 

 terests in it will be those which characterize 

 belief. Those to whom " God " and " Duty " 

 are now mere names can make them much 

 more than that if they make a little sacri- 

 fice to them every day. JAMES Psychology, 

 vol. ii, ch. 21, p. 321. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



358. BELIEF THAT NO SUNLIGHT 

 PENETRATES TO DEPTHS OF SEA 

 Until quite recently, every one agreed that 

 no rays of sunlight could possibly penetrate 

 the sea to a greater depth than a few hun- 

 dred fathoms. Moseley says that " probably 

 all is dark below 200 fathoms excepting in 

 so far as light is given out by phosphores- 

 cent animals," and Wyville Thomson speaks 

 of the " utter darkness of the deep-sea bot- 

 tom." HICKSON Fauna of the Deep Sea, ch. 

 2, p. 22. (A., 1894.) 



359. BENEFITS CONFERRED BY UN- 

 SEEN ORGANISMS Their Action Essential 

 to Best Quality of Butter Bacteria Have 

 Economic Value. Cream in ordinary dairies 

 and creameries invariably contains some 

 bacteria, a large number of which are in no 

 sense injurious. Indeed, it is to these bac- 

 teria that the ripening and flavoring proc- 

 esses are due. They are perfectly consist- 

 ent with the production of the best quality 

 of butter. The aroma of butter, as we know, 

 controls in a large measure its price in the 

 market. This aroma is due to the decom- 

 posing effect upon the constituents of the 

 butter of the bacteria contained in the 

 cream. In the months of May and June the 

 variety and number of these types of bac- 

 teria are decidedly greater than in the win- 

 ter months, and this explains in part the 

 better quality of the butter at these seasons. 

 NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 6, p. 215. (G. P. 

 P., 1899.) 



360. BENEFITS OF FIRE Range of 

 Habitation Widened Forests Subdued 

 Canoes Invented Eskimos and Cave-men. 

 Incalculable were the gains that began to 

 flow in upon the first fire-maker, his victory 

 won, its spoils assured. Beneath his tread 

 the globe expanded itself with invitation, 

 for now no longer chained by the sunbeam, 

 he added all the frozen North to his hunt- 

 ing-ground. The Eskimos, according to 

 Professor Dawkins, are the lineal descend- 



ants of the cave-men. They are the only 

 American aborigines who have invented a 

 lamp; that simple device has enabled them 

 to conquer and hold an outpost twenty de- 

 grees nearer the pole than any other human 

 settlement. Whether the first explorers had 

 caves to fall back upon or not, fire was in- 

 dispensable to them. A burning brand 

 cleared their paths through forests other- 

 wise impenetrable. When they singled out 

 a tree for their rude carpentry, it was no 

 longer cut down by flints so soon dulled and 

 broken in the process. Fire cunningly ap- 

 plied, to be as cunningly quenched with wet 

 mud, had a sharper and quicker tooth than 

 stone. The tree felled, its trunk was soft- 

 ened and shaped, again by fire, into a canoe 

 for voyages too daring for any raft. ILES 

 Flame, Electricity, and the Camera, ch. 3, 

 p. 24. (D. & McC., 1900.) 



361. BENEFITS POSSIBLE IN UN- 

 KNOWN FUTURE Studies Not To Be Lim- 

 ited to Manifest Demand. Let me, firstly, 

 note that those who object to study any sub- 

 ject which they themselves deem uncon- 

 nected with their own special life and avo- 

 cation, commit the illogical, and I must say 

 illiberal, mistake of seeking to limit their 

 intellectual progress from a very unreason- 

 able motive and cause. Because such per- 

 sons consider any particular study of no 

 use, or, what is still more absurd, because 

 they think that it cannot be of any future 

 service to them, the study is rejected. But 

 one is naturally tempted to ask of such per- 

 sons how, without pretending to possess a 

 special gift of prophecy, they can attain to 

 any knowledge of what will or what will 

 not be of service to them in the future? 

 Who can, in the first place, and as a matter 

 of common-sense detail, reasonably assert 

 that they will never be in any position, or 

 placed in any circumstances, in which a 

 knowledge of the despised branch will not 

 come handy, and even be of valuable nature 

 to them? Human policy in this respect, 

 and especially that which would take upon 

 itself the office of educational censor, and of 

 deciding according to its narrow lights 

 what should or should not be studied in 

 view of the unknown future, is of a very 

 short-sighted kind. The study we prosecute 

 from a liking for it, and in our leisure time, 

 may in the days of the future become the 

 prop and mainstay of our physical and in- 

 tellectual life, and may unfold sources of 

 pleasure and gratification to us undreamt 

 of until the occasion calls them forth. 

 ANDREW WILSON Science-Culture for the 

 Masses, p. 26. (Hum., 1888.) 



362. BENEFITS, RECIPROCAL, OF 

 NATIONS IN SCIENCE The Royal Institu- 

 tion of Great Britain Founded by an Ameri- 

 can The Smithsonian, by an Englishman. 

 At the time of the American Revolution 

 there resided in the town of Rumford, N. H., 

 one Benjamin Thompson, who occupied him- 



