129 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Contraction 

 Contrivance 



was crimson, being illuminated by trans- 

 mitted light. The contrast of both was finer 

 than I can describe. TYNDALL Hours of Ex- 

 ercise in the Alps, ch. 4, p. 57. (A., 1898.) 



639. CONTRAST OF STORM-SWEPT 

 MOUNTAIN AND SUNLIT VALLEY 



Pike's Peak in July Waiting for Solar 

 Eclipse under Difficulties. The snow en- 

 tered [the tent] with the wind and lay in a 

 deep drift on the pillow, when I woke after 

 a brief sleep toward morning, and, looking 

 out on the gray dawn, found that the snow 

 had turned to hail, which was rattling 

 sharply on the rocks with an accompani- 

 ment of thunder, which seemed to roll from 

 all parts of the horizon. The snow lay 

 thick, and the sheets of hail were like a 

 wall, shutting out the sight of everything a 

 few rods off, and this was in July [1878] ! 

 Hail, rain, sleet, snow, fog, and every form 

 of bad weather continued for a week on the 

 summit, while it was almost always clear 

 below. It was often a remarkable sight to 

 go to the edge and look down. The expanse 

 of " the plains," which stretched eastward 

 to a horizon line over a hundred miles dis- 

 tant, would be in bright sunshine beneath, 

 while the hail was all around and above us ; 

 and the light coming up instead of down 

 gave singular effects when the clouds parted 

 below, the plains seeming at such times to 

 be opalescent with luminous yellow and 

 green, as tho the lower world were translu- 

 cent and the sun were beneath it and shin- 

 ing up through. LANGLEY New Astronomy, 

 ch. 2, p. 54. (H. M. & Co.) 



640. CONTRAST OF TEMPERATE 

 AND TROPICAL VEGETATION -Temper- 

 ate Lands within the Tropics. The ex- 

 traordinary height to which not only indi- 

 vidual mountains but even whole districts 

 rise in tropical regions, and the consequent 

 cold of such elevations, affords the inhabit- 

 ant of the tropics a singular spectacle. For 

 besides his own palms and bananas, he is 

 surrounded by those vegetable forms which 

 would seem to belong solely to northern 

 latitudes. Cypresses, pines, and oaks, bar- 

 berry shrubs and alders (nearly allied to 

 our own species ) , cover the mountain plains 

 of southern Mexico and the chain of the 

 Andes at the equator. Thus Nature has 

 permitted the native of the torrid zone to 

 behold all the vegetable forms of the earth 

 without quitting his own clime, even as are 

 revealed to him the luminous worlds which 

 spangle the firmament from pole to pole. 

 HUMBOLDT Views of Nature, p. 231. (Bell, 

 1896.) 



641. CONTRAST WITH ALL KNOWN 

 EARTHLY CONDITIONS Endless Day and 

 Endless Night on Mercury. And after long 

 and patient watching, the conclusion was at 

 last reached that Mercury turns on his axis 

 in the same time needed to complete a revo- 

 lution in his orbit. One of his hemispheres, 

 then, is always averted from the sun, as one 



of the moon's hemispheres from the earth, 

 while the other never shifts from beneath his 

 torrid rays. The " librations," however, of 

 Mercury are on a larger scale than those of 

 the moon, because he travels in a more ec- 

 centric path. The temporary inequalities 

 arising between his " even pacing " on an 

 axis and his alternately accelerated and re- 

 tarded elliptical movement occasion, in fact, 

 an oscillation to and fro of the boundaries 

 of light and darkness on his globe over an 

 arc of 47 22', in the course of his year of 

 88 days. Thus the regions of perpetual day 

 and perpetual night are separated by two 

 segments, amounting to one-fourth of the 

 entire surface, where the sun rises and sets 

 once in 88 days. No variation from the 

 fierce glare on one side of the globe and the 

 nocturnal blackness on the other can, in- 

 deed, take place. Yet these apparently in- 

 tolerable climatic conditions may be some- 

 what mitigated by the vigorous atmospheric 

 circulation to which they would naturally 

 give rise. CLERKE History of Astronomy, 

 pt. ii, ch. 7, p. 305. (Bl., 1893.) 



642. CONTRASTS, MAN A CREA- 

 TURE OF Physical Insignificance and Men- 

 tal Supremacy " What Is Man, that Thou 

 Art Mindful of Him? . . . Thou Hast 

 Made Him a Little Lower than the Angels " 

 (Ps. viii, 3-5). It is, for instance, a strange 

 and suggestive circumstance that man, in- 

 significant in his dimensions and in all his 

 physical powers, when viewed in comparison 

 even with the earth on which he lives, and 

 compelled to remain always upon that orb, 

 which is utterly insignificant compared with 

 the solar system, should yet dare to raise his 

 thoughts beyond the earth and beyond the 

 solar system, to contemplate boldly those 

 amazing depths amidst which the stellar 

 glories are strewn. 



That he should undertake to measure the 

 scale on which the universe is built, to rate 

 the stars as with swift yet stately motion 

 they career through space, to test and an- 

 alyze their very substance, to form a judg- 

 ment as to processes taking place upon and 

 around them, tho not one star in all the 

 heavens can be magnified into more than the 

 merest point all this affords noble concep- 

 tions of the qualities which the Almighty 

 has implanted in the soul of man. PROCTOR 

 Expanse of Heaven, p. 104. (L. G. & Co.) 



643. CONTRIVANCE FOR FERTIL- 

 IZING ORCHID Bee Made to Carry Pollen 

 from Flower to Flower. With most orchids 

 the flowers remain open for some time be- 

 fore they are visited by insects; but with 

 spiranthes I have generally found the boat- 

 formed disks removed very soon after their 

 expansion. For example, in the two last 

 spikes which I happened to examine there 

 were numerous buds on the summit of one, 

 with only the seven lowest flowers expanded, 

 of which six had their disks and pollinia re- 

 moved; the other spike had eight expanded 

 flowers, and the pollinia of all were removed. 



