Design 

 Destruction 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



162 



1854] we began to hear a good deal about 

 " flint implements." They had not been al- 

 together unknown previously, as specimens 

 of them were to be found in museums of 

 antiquities; but they had never been 

 brought to light in such numbers, and un- 

 der such very peculiar circumstances, as in 

 the working of the gravel-beds of the valley 

 of the Somme, near Abbeville and Amiens. 

 The matter was brought into notice by M. 

 Boucher de Perthes, a distinguished anti- 

 quarian and collector at Abbeville. English 

 men of science went over to study the con- 

 ditions under which these flint implements 

 were found, and very soon satisfied them- 

 selves of the genuineness and importance of 

 this discovery. There were many who at 

 first denied that they afforded any evidence 

 of the existence of man at the time when 

 these gravel-beds were deposited, maintain- 

 ing that their peculiar shapes had been 

 given by accidental collisions. I do not 

 know that any sane man now questions their 

 human production. CARPENTER Nature and 

 Man, lect. 15, p. 416. (A., 1889.) 



790. 



Cumulative Evidence 



of Human Handiwork. If, in walking 

 through a chalk country, you look at a heap 

 of flints collected by the roadside for mend- 

 ing the road, you will find the greater part 

 of them entire, having shapes that suggest 

 to the naturalist the forms of the sponges, 

 by the silicification of which they were origi- 

 nally produced. You will doubtless find some 

 broken; but you will never 'meet with one 

 that even remotely resembles the character- 

 istic " flint implement " of the Amiens and 

 Abbeville gravels. They may have one or 

 two, or perhaps half a dozen, fractured sur- 

 faces; but these are quite irregular, having 

 no relation one to another. Now, a " flint 

 implement" exhibits, perhaps, fifty frac- 

 tures, and they are all so related in size and 

 position as to bring out a very definite 

 shape. Yet this consideration alone 'did not 

 by any means satisfy those who were unwill- 

 ing to admit the conclusion that this shape 

 had been worked out by human hands. I 

 well remember that when these objects were 

 first brought into public notice there were 

 many persons who said, " The shaping of 

 these flints is merely accidental; the flint 

 fell into a river in which there were many 

 stones knocking about, and the fractures 

 have been produced by the flint having got, 

 so to speak, under a number of hammers; 

 so that, a bit having been broken away here 

 and a bit there, it has come to be shaped as 

 it is now found." I will not say that this is 

 an absolutely impossible supposition with 

 respect to any single example ; but when we 

 find numbers of these flints, all showing the 

 same form, in one gravel-bed when we meet 

 with forms exactly similar in other gravel- 

 beds and when we learn that exactly simi- 

 lar flints are used at the present time by 

 peoples (some of the hill tribes of India, for 

 instance) among whom iron implements 

 have not yet found their way, the imple- 



ments being held in a cleft stick and bound 

 round by a leather thong then, I think, we 

 have an accumulation of evidence which 

 makes it inconceivable that these gravel- 

 flints, of which I have spoken, owed their 

 shape to anything else than human handi- 

 work. CARPENTER Nature and Man, lect. 

 15, p. 417. (A., 1889.) 



791. DESIRE OF WEALTH AP- 

 PROVED Modern in Contrast to Ancient 

 Systems. Since the dissolution of the 

 Greek and Roman commonwealths, no na- 

 tion has acted on the one great error of all 

 the ancient systems of political philosophy 

 that the natural desire of men for the ac- 

 cumulation of wealth is an evil to be 

 dreaded and repressed. So far as this goes 

 there is a sharp and striking contrast be- 

 tween the spirit of ancient and of modern 

 policy. The great object of the ancient 

 policy, says Dugald Stewart, " was to coun- 

 teract the love of money and a taste for 

 luxury by positive institutions, and to main- 

 tain in the great body of the people habits 

 of frugality and a severity of manners. The 

 decline of states is uniformly ascribed by 

 philosophers and historians, both of Greece 

 and Rome, to the influence of riches on na- 

 tional character, and the laws of Lycurgus, 

 which, during a course of ages, banished the 

 precious metals from Sparta, are proposed 

 by many of them as the most perfect model 

 of legislation devised by human wisdom. 

 How opposite to this is the doctrine of mod- 

 ern politicians! Far from considering pov- 

 erty as an advantage to a state, their 

 great aim is to open new sources of national 

 opulence, and to animate the activity of all 

 classes of the people by a taste for the com- 

 forts and accommodations of life." ARGYLL 

 Reign of Law, ch. 7, p. 199. (Burt.) 



792. DESTRUCTION, AGENTS OF 



Putrefaction an Impossibility without 

 Bacteria. " No putrefaction," says Cohn 

 ["Beitrage zur Biologic der Pflanzen/'zweites 

 Heft, 1872, p. 203], " can occur in a nitrog- 

 enous substance if it be kept free from the 

 entrance of new bacteria after those which 

 it may contain have been destroyed. Putre- 

 faction begins as soon as bacteria, even in 

 the smallest numbers, are accidentally or 

 purposely introduced. It progresses in di- 

 rect proportion to the multiplication of the 

 bacteria; it is retarded when the bacteria 

 (for example, by a low temperature) de- 

 velop a small amount of vitality, and is 

 brought to an end by all influences which 

 either stop the development of the bacteria 

 or kill them. All bactericidal media are 

 therefore antiseptic and disinfecting." 

 TYNDALL Floating Matter of the Air, essay 

 2, p. 48. (A., 1895.) 



793. DESTRUCTION BY INDIRECT 



ACTION Ornate and Garden Plants. That 

 climate acts in main part indirectly by fa- 

 voring other species we clearly see in the 

 prodigious number of plants which in our 



