153 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Decay 



generacy 



service in the economy of Nature, and its 

 constituents not lost, it is necessary that it 

 should be broken down again into simpler 

 conditions. This prodigious task is accom- 

 plished by the agency of two groups of or- 

 ganisms, the decomposition and denitrifying 

 bacteria [i. e., bacteria that reduce ni- 

 trates]. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 5, p. 148. 

 (G. P. P., 1899.) 



748. Extensive Group of 



/Saprophytes in Soil. This group [the 

 saprophytic bacteria in soil] of micro-or- 

 ganisms is by far the most abundant as re- 

 gards number. They live on the dead or- 

 ganic matter of the soil, and their function 

 appears to be to break it down into simpler 

 constitution. Specialization is probably 

 progressing among them, for their name is 

 legion, and the struggle for existence keen. 

 After we have eliminated the economic bac- 

 teria, most of which are obviously sapro- 

 phytes, the group is greatly reduced. . . . 

 At present the decomposition, denitrifying, 

 nitrifying, and nitrogen-fixing organisms are 

 the only saprophytes which have been res- 

 cued from the oblivion of ages, and brought 

 more or less into daylight. It is but our 

 lack of knowledge which requires the present 

 division of saprophytes whose business and 

 place in the world is unknown. NEWMAN 

 Bacteria, ch. 5, p. 166. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



749. DEFENSE OF PLANT AGAINST 

 USELESS INSECTS Protection Varied with 

 Situation. Polygonum amphibium is a very 

 interesting case. The small rosy flowers are 

 richly supplied with honey; but from the 

 structure of the flower, it would not be fer- 

 tilized by creeping insects [but only by 

 winged insects] . As its name indicates, this 

 plant grows sometimes on land, sometimes 

 in water. Those individuals, however, which 

 grow on dry land are covered by innumer- 

 able glandular viscid hairs, which constitute 

 an effectual protection. On the other hand, 

 the individuals which grow in water are 

 protected by their situation. To them the 

 glandular hairs would be useless, and in fact 

 on such specimens they are not developed. 

 AVEBUBY Ants, Bees, and Wasps, ch. 3. p. 56. 

 (A., 1900.) 



750. DEFINITIONS OF GOD Con- 

 spicuous Failure of Theology (Is. xl, 18, 25) 

 Primeval Conceptions Likely To Be as 

 True. Professor Max Miiller is disposed to 

 deprecate the supposition that the " Heaven- 

 Father " of the earliest Vedic hymns is 

 rightly to be understood as having meant 

 " what we mean by God." Very probably 

 indeed it may have meant something much 

 more simple. But not the less on that ac- 

 count it may have meant something quite as 

 true. I do not know, indeed, why we should 

 set any very high estimate on the success 

 which has attended the most learned the- 

 ologians in giving anything like form or 

 substance to our conceptions of the God- 

 head. Christianity solves the difficulty by 

 presenting, as the type of all true concep- 



tions on the subject, the image of a Divine 

 Humanity, and the history of a perfect life. 

 . . . When we come to the abstract defi- 

 nitions of subsequent theology, they invari- 

 ably end either in self-contradictions or in 

 words in which beauty of rhythm takes the 

 place of intelligible meaning. ... I do 

 not know, therefore, by what title we are to 

 assume that " what we mean by God " is 

 certainly so much nearer the truth than the 

 simplest conceptions of a primeval age. 

 ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 12, p. 300. 

 (Burt.) 



751. DEGENERACY BEYOND POW- 

 ER OF RECOVERY Civilization Blights and 

 Destroys Decline of American Indians be- 

 fore White Man's Advent. It is another 

 symptom of a wrong development being the 

 real secret of their [the savages'] condition 

 that the lowest of them seem to have lost 

 even the power to rise. Tho individually 

 capable of learning what civilized men have 

 taught them, yet as races they have been in- 

 variably scorched by the light of civilization, 

 and have withered before it like a plant 

 whose roots have failed. The power of as- 

 similation seems to have departed, as it al- 

 ways does depart from an organism which 

 is worn out. This has not been the result 

 with races which, tho -very barbarous, have 

 never sunk below the pastoral or the agri- 

 cultural stage. It is remarkable that the 

 Indian races of North America are perhaps 

 the highest which have exhibited this fatal 

 and irredeemable incapacity to rise: and it 

 is precisely in their case that we have the 

 most direct evidence of degradation by de- 

 velopment in a wrong direction. There are 

 abundant remains of a very ancient Ameri- 

 can civilization, which was marked by the 

 construction of great public works and by 

 the development of an agriculture founded 

 on the maize, which is a cereal indigenous to 

 the continent of America. This civilization 

 was subsequently destroyed or lost, and then 

 succeeded a period in which man relapsed 

 into partial barbarism. The spots which 

 had been first forest, then, perhaps, sacred 

 monuments, and thirdly, cultivated ground, 

 relapsed into forest once more. So strong is 

 this evidence of degradation having affected 

 the population of a great part of the Ameri- 

 can continent, that the distinguished author 

 [Avebury, in " Prehistoric Times "] from 

 whom these words are quoted, and who gen- 

 erally represents the savage as the nearest 

 living representative of primeval man, is 

 obliged to ask, " What fatal cause destroyed 

 this earlier civilization? Why were these 

 fortifications forsaken these cities in 

 ruins? How were the populous nations 

 which once inhabited the rich American val- 

 leys reduced to the poor tribes of savages 

 whom the European found there? Did the 

 North and South once before rise up in arms 

 against one another? Did the terrible ap- 

 pellation, the 'Dark and Bloody Land,' ap- 

 plied to Kentucky, commemorate these an- 

 cient wars ? " Whatever may have been the 



