73 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Belief 

 Biology 



self in teaching a school. He embraced, as 

 we Americans would say, the wrong side 

 of the question on that occasion he sided 

 with the king's government. He went to 

 England, became a man of mark, and was 

 knighted. Then he went on the Continent, 

 again distinguished himself by his scientific 

 attainments, again was titled, and this 

 time, in memory of his American home, was 

 called Count Kumford. On his return to 

 London, Count Rumford founded the Royal 

 Institution, and thus to a native American 

 the world owes that establishment which 

 has been glorified by Davy, and Young, and 

 Faraday. Had it not been for Rumford, 

 Davy might have spent his life in filling 

 gas-bags for Dr. Beddoes's patients, and 

 Faraday might have been a bookbinder. 



But if Benjamin Thompson, an American, 

 founded the Royal Institution, James 

 Smithson, an Englishman, shortly after- 

 wards founded that noble institution in 

 Washington w^hich bears his name, and 

 which, under the enlightened care of Prof. 

 Henry, has so greatly ministered to the ad- 

 vancement and diffusion of science. TYN- 

 DALL Lectures on Light, app. (Draper's Ad- 

 dress), p. 235. (A... 1898.) 



363. BIBLE THE ONLY STANDARD 

 OF EARLY CHRISTIANS Science Measured 

 by Scripture. The sufferings of the early 

 Christians, and the extraordinary exalta- 

 tion of mind which enabled them to triumph 

 over the diabolical tortures to which they 

 were subjected, must have left traces not 

 easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in 

 view of that " building of God, that house 

 not made with hands, eternal in the 

 heavens." The Scriptures which ministered 

 to their spiritual needs were also the meas- 

 ure of their science. When, for example, 

 the celebrated question of Antipodes came to 

 be discussed, the Bible was with many the 

 ultimate court of appeal. Augustine, who 

 flourished A. D. 400, would not deny the 

 rotundity of the earth; but he would deny 

 the possible existence of inhabitants at the 

 other side, " because no such race is recorded 

 in Scripture among the descendants of 

 Adam." Archbishop Boniface was shocked 

 at the assumption of a " world of human be- 

 ings out of the reach of the means of salva- 

 tion." Thus reined in, science was not like- 

 ly to make much progress. TYNDALL Frag- 

 ments of Science, vol. ii, ch. 9, p. 146. (A., 

 1897.) 



364. BIGOTRY AND SCIENCE Des- 

 cartes Assailed Alike ~by Catholics and ~by 

 Protestants. Descartes lived and died a 

 good Catholic, and prided himself upon hav- 

 ing demonstrated the existence of God and 

 of the soul of man. As a reward for his 

 exertions, his old friends the Jesuits put his 

 w T orks upon the " Index," and called him 

 an atheist, while the Protestant divines of 

 Holland declared him to be both a Jesuit 

 and an atheist. His books narrowly escaped 



being burned by the hangman; the fate of 

 Vanini was dangled before his eyes; and 

 the misfortunes of Galileo so alarmed him 

 that he well-nigh renounced the pursuits by 

 which the world has so greatly benefited, 

 and was driven into subterfuges and eva- 

 sions which were not worthy of him. HUX- 

 LEY Lay Sermons, serin. 14, p. 342. (G. P. 

 P., 1899.) 



365. BINDING A SUBSTITUTE FOR 

 NAILS AND CEMENT The Sennit of Oce- 

 anica. But the savage man's unfailing 

 friend in holding together the parts of his 

 tools is a seizing of some sort. It is so 

 easy, so effective, so readily repaired, and it 

 makes the handle stronger instead of 

 weaker. Hence the Polynesian gentleman, 

 when he goes out to visit or sits in the 

 shade of his own vine and fig-tree, takes 

 along a good quantity of coco-fiber and 

 braids it into sennit. If the reader never 

 saw a roll of sennit, it will pay him to visit 

 the nearest ethnological museum for this 

 sole purpose. The uniformity of the strands, 

 the evenness of the braid, the incomparable 

 winding on the roll or spool, as one might 

 call it, constitute one of the fine arts of 

 Oceanica. But prettier still are the regu- 

 lar, geometrical wrappings of this sennit 

 when it is designed to hold an adz blade and 

 handle in close union. While speaking of this 

 combining substance, it may as well be said 

 that in the building of houses the frame- 

 work is held together entirely by the 

 braided sennit. The strakes of a boat are 

 united by its means. In short, whatsoever 

 is wrapped for amusement or seriously, and 

 whatsoever is nailed or screwed or pegged 

 or glued in other lands, is in this region 

 united by means of this textile. MASON 

 Origins of Invention, ch. 2, p. 41. (S., 

 1899.) 



366. BIOLOGY, PROBLEMS OF, DEFY 

 MECHANICAL EXPLANATION I think that 

 the more thoroughly and conscientiously 

 we endeavor to study biological problems, 

 the more we are convinced that even those 

 processes which we have already regarded as 

 explicable by chemical and physical laws are 

 in reality infinitely more complex, and at 

 present defy any attempt at a mechanical 

 explanation. 



Thus we have been satisfied to account 

 for the absorption of food from the ali- 

 mentary canal by the laws of diffusion and 

 osmosis. But we now know that, as regards 

 osmosis, the wall of the intestine does not 

 behave like a dead membrane. We know 

 that the intestinal wall is covered with 

 epithelium, and that every epithelial cell is 

 in itself an organism, a living being with 

 the most complex functions. We know that 

 it takes up food by the active contraction of 

 its protoplasm in the same way as observed 

 in independent naked animal cells. BUNGE 

 Text-book of Physiological and Pathologi- 

 cal Chemistry, p. 3. [K. P. & Co.] (Trans- 

 lated for Scientific Side-Lights. ) 



