Blood 

 Body 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



78 



ing the whole familj answerable for the 

 deed of one of its members, the public 

 brings the full pressure of familj influence 

 to bear on each individual as a means of 

 keeping the peace. No one who sees the 

 working of blood-vengeance can deny its 

 practical reasonableness, and its use in re- 

 straining men from violence while there are 

 as yet no judges and executioners. Indeed 

 among all savages and barbarians the aven- 

 ger of blood, little as he thinks it himself 

 in his wild fury, is doing his part toward 

 saving his people from perishing by deeds of 

 blood. TYLQB Anthropology, ch. 16, p. 414. 

 (A., 1899.) 



382. BLOOM AMID DESOLATION 



Alpine Flowers in the Midst of Ice and 

 Snow. There are valleys in the Alps far 

 above six thousand feet which have no gla- 

 ciers, and where perpetual snow is seen only 

 on their northern sides. These contrasts in 

 temperature lead to the most wonderful 

 contrasts in the aspect of the soil; summer 

 and winter lie side by side, and bright 

 flowers look out from the edge of snows that 

 never melt. Where the warm winds prevail 

 there may be sheltered spots at a height of 

 ten or eleven thousand feet, isolated nooks 

 opening southward where the most exquisite 

 flowers bloom in the midst of perpetual 

 snow and ice; and occasionally I have seen 

 a bright little flower with a cap of snow 

 over it that seemed to be its shelter. The 

 flowers give, indeed, a peculiar charm to 

 these high Alpine regions. Occurring often 

 in beds of the same kind, forming green, 

 blue, or yellow patches, they seem nestled 

 close together in sheltered spots, or even in 

 fissures and chasms of the rock, where they 

 gather in dense quantities. Even in the 

 sternest scenery of the Alps some sign of 

 vegetation lingers. I remember to have 

 found a tuft of lichen growing on the only 

 rock which pierced through the ice on the 

 summit of the Jungfrau. AGASSIZ Geo- 

 logical Sketches, ser. i, ch. 8, p. 226. (H. 

 M. & Co., 1896.) 



383. BLOSSOMS OF THE FROST 



Hidden Law Binding Water Crystals to the 

 Angle of Sixty Degrees. There is hardly a 

 more beautiful and instructive example of 

 this play of molecular force than that fur- 

 nished by the case of water. You have seen 

 the exquisite fernlike forms produced by 

 the crystallization of a film of water on a 

 cold window-pane. You have also probably 

 noticed the beautiful rosettes tied together 

 by the crystallizing force during the descent 

 of a snow-shower on a very calm day. The 

 slopes and summits of the Alps are loaded 

 in winter with these blossoms of the frost. 

 They vary infinitely in detail of beauty, but 

 the same angular magnitude is preserved 

 throughout: an inflexible power binding 

 spears and spiculae to the angle of 60. The 

 common ice of our lakes is also ruled in its 

 deposition by the same angle. You . may 



sometimes see in freezing water small crys- 

 tals of stellar shapes, each star consisting 

 of six rays, with this angle of 60 between 

 every two of them. This structure may 

 be revealed in ordinary ice. In a sun- 

 beam, or, failing that, in our electric beam, 

 we have an instrument delicate enough to 

 unlock the frozen molecules without dis- 

 turbing the order of their architecture. 

 Cutting from clear, sound, regularly frozen 

 ice a slab parallel to the planes of freezing, 

 and sending a sunbeam through such a slab, 

 it liquefies internally at special points, 

 round each point a six-petaled liquid flower 

 of exquisite beauty being formed. Crowds 

 of such flowers are thus produced. TYN- 

 DALL Lectures on Light, lect. 3, p. 106. (A., 

 1898.) 



384. BLUE OF SKY ARTIFICIALLY 

 PRODUCED Light Separates Atoms from Gas 

 Blue of Sky Results. Sulfur and oxygen 

 combine to form sulfurous acid gas, two 

 atoms of oxygen and one of sulfur consti- 

 tuting the molecule of sulfurous acid. It 

 has been recently shown that waves of ether 

 issuing from a strong source, such as the 

 sun or the electric light, are competent to 

 shake asunder the atoms of gaseous mole- 

 cules. A chemist would call this " decompo- 

 sition " by light ; but it behooves us, who 

 are examining the power and function of 

 the imagination, to keep constantly before 

 us the physical images which underlie our 

 terms. Therefore I say, sharply and defi- 

 nitely, that the components of the molecules 

 of sulfurous acid are shaken asunder by the 

 ether-waves. Enclosing sulfurous acid in 

 a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark room, 

 and sending through it a powerful beam of 

 light, we at first see nothing: the vessel 

 containing the gas seems as empty as a 

 vacuum. Soon, however, along the track of 

 the beam a beautiful sky-blue color is ob- 

 served, which is due to light scattered by 

 the liberated particles of sulfur. TYNDALL 

 Fragments of Science, vol. ii, ch. 8, p. 120. 

 (A., 1897.) 



385. BLUNDER ATTRIBUTED TO NA- 

 TURE The Sloth as Characterized by Buff on 

 A Supposed " Defective Monster" " The 

 inertia of this animal is not so much due to 

 laziness as to wretchedness ; it is the conse- 

 quence of its faulty structure. . . . In- 

 activity, stupidity, and even habitual suf- 

 fering result from its strange and ill-con- 

 structed conformation. Having no weapons 

 for attack or defense, no mode of refuge 

 even by burrowing, its only safety is in 

 flight. Confined within the narrowest range, 

 only climbing with difficulty or dragging 

 itself along painfully, never allowing its 

 plaintive voice to be heard except at night, 

 everything about it shows its wretchedness 

 and proclaims it to be one of those defective 

 monsters, those imperfect sketches, which 

 Nature has sometimes formed, and which, 

 having scarcely the faculty of existence, 





