131 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Contrivance 

 Cookery 



there rises a small hill known as the Kam- 

 merbiihl, which has attracted to itself an 

 amount of interest and attention quite out 

 of proportion to its magnitude or impor- 

 tance. During the latter part of the last 

 century and the earlier years of the present 

 one, the fiercest controversies were waged 

 between the partisans of rival schools of cos- 

 mogony over this insignificant hill, some 

 maintaining that it originated in the com- 

 bustion of a bed of coal, others that its ma- 

 terials were entirely formed by some kind 

 of " aqueous precipitation," and others again 

 that the hill was the relic of a small vol- 

 canic cone. Among those who took a very 

 active part in this controversy was the poet 

 Goethe, who stoutly maintained the vol- 

 canic origin of the Kammerbuhl, styling it 

 " a pocket edition of a volcano " [which the 

 excavations undertaken at his instance have 

 proved it to be]. JUDD Volcanoes, ch. 5, p. 

 112. (A., 1899.) 



65O. CONVERGENCE OF SCIENCES 

 UPON EVOLUTION Authority in Agree- 

 ment. The hypothesis of evolution must be 

 ultimately either established or disproved by 

 its accordance or disaccordance with a vast 

 aggregate of facts of Nature which belong 

 to different departments of scientific in- 

 quiry. The geologist traces the succession 

 of plants and animals in paleontological or- 

 der, and finds, as he advances in his studies, 

 less and less evidence of interruption, and 

 more and more of continuity, biological as 

 well as physical. The zoologist and botanist, 

 who have been accustomed to classify their 

 multitudinous and diversified forms of 

 plants and animals according to their " nat- 

 ural affinities," find a real meaning in their 

 classification, a new significance in their 

 terms of relationship, when these are used 

 to represent what might be regarded with 

 probability as actual community of descent. 

 The morphologist who has been accustomed 

 to trace a " unity of type " in each great 

 group, and especially to recognize this in the 

 presence of rudimentary parts which must 

 be entirely useless to the animals that pos- 

 sess them, delights in the new idea which 

 gives a perfect rationale of what had pre- 

 viously seemed an inexplicable superfluity. 

 And the embryologist, who carries back his 

 studies to the earliest phases of develop- 

 ment, and follows out the grand law of Von 

 Baer, " from the general to the special," in 

 the evolution of every separate type, finds 

 the extension of that law from the indi- 

 vidual to the whole succession of organic 

 life impart to his soul a feeling of grandeur 

 like that which the physical philosopher of 

 two hundred years ago must have experi- 

 enced when Newton first promulgated the 

 doctrine of universal gravitation.- And last- 

 ly, when the doctrine of evolution is looked 

 at in its moral aspect, as one which leads 

 man ever onwards and upwards, and which 

 encourages his brightest anticipations of the 

 ultimate triumph of truth over error, of 



knowledge over ignorance, of right over 

 wrong, of good over evil, who shall presume 

 to say that the convergence of all these 

 great lines of thought, each of them the re- 

 sultant of the patient toil of a whole army 

 of scientific workers, is a fact of no account ? 

 CARPENTER Nature and Man, lect. 7, p. 

 237. (A., 1889.) 



651. CONVOLUTIONS DETERMINE 

 SURFACE AND POWER OF BRAIN An 



Invisible Engraving in Bodily Substance 

 Wrought by All Great /SfowZs. Increase of 

 the cerebral surface is shown not only in 

 the general size of the organ; but to a still 

 greater extent in the irregular creasing and 

 furrowing of the surface. This creasing and 

 furrowing begins to occur in the higher 

 mammals, and in civilized man it is carried 

 to an astonishing extent. The amount of 

 intelligence is correlated with the number, 

 the depth, and the irregularity of the fur- 

 rows. A cat's brain has a few symmetrical 

 creases. In an ape the creases are deepened 

 into slight furrows, and they run irregu- 

 larly, somewhat like the lines in the palm 

 of your hand. With age and experience the 

 furrows grow deeper and more sinuous, and 

 new ones appear; and in man these phe- 

 nomena come to have great significance. 

 The cerebral surface of a human infant is 

 like that of an ape. In an adult savage, or 

 in a European peasant, the furrowing is 

 somewhat marked and complicated. In the 

 brain of a great scholar the furrows are 

 very deep and crooked, and hundreds of 

 creases appear which are not found at all in 

 the brains of ordinary men. In other words, 

 the cerebral surface of such a man, the seat 

 of conscious mental life, has become enor- 

 mously enlarged in area ; and we must fur- 

 ther observe that it goes on enlarging in 

 some cases into extreme old age. FISKE 

 Destiny of Man, ch. 5, p. 48. (H. M. & Co., 

 1900.) 



652. COOKERY AMONG PRIMITIVE 



WOMEN Cassava Griddle-cakes. The. cook- 

 ing is done after the following fashion: A 

 large flat slab of stone is placed over a fire, 

 and on this griddle a thin layer of meal is 

 spread. A woman, fan in hand, sits by the 

 fire watching. With her fan she smooths 

 the upper surface of the cake and makes its 

 edges round. In a few minutes one side is 

 done, and when the cake is turned it is done 

 in two minutes more. They are next thrown 

 on the roof to dry, and I have often vainly 

 tried to imitate the skill with which an 

 Indian woman " quoits " up one of these 

 large and thin cakes on to the roof, often 

 high above her head. When thoroughly 

 dried the bread is hard and crisp. MASON 

 Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, ch. 2, 

 p. 39. (A., 1894. ) 



653. COOKERY, IMPORTANCE OF 



More Depends on the Cook than on the 

 Materials Cooked The Quality of a Soup. 

 His [Benjamin Thompson's] faith in cook- 



