163 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Design 



truction 



gardens can perfectly well endure our cli- 

 mate, but which never become naturalized, 

 for they cannot compete with our native 

 plants nor resist destruction by our native 

 animals. DARWIN Origin of Species, ch. 1, 

 p. 65. (Eurt.) 



794. DESTRUCTION BY MEANS 

 USED FOR SAFETY Sleep Changed to Sud- 

 den Death Mountain Flung Down upon 

 Plain. The destruction of the Prince of 

 Scilla and a great number of his vassals was 

 one of the most remarkable events attending 

 [the earthquake in Calabria, 1783]. He had 

 persuaded his servants to seek their fishing- 

 boats for safety, and went with them to 

 encourage them. During the night of Febru- 

 ary 5, while they were sleeping, an enormous 

 mass of earth was flung from Mount Jaci 

 upon the plain near which the boats were 

 moored. Immediately the sea rose more 

 than twenty feet above the level of the plain. 

 Every boat was sunk or dashed upon the 

 beach, and hundreds of persons who had 

 been sleeping on the plain were swept out to 

 sea. The prince and 1,430 of his servants 

 perished. PROCTOR Notes on Earthquakes, 

 p. 4. (Hum., 1887.) 



795. DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA'S 



FORESTS Exhaustion of England's Coal- 

 Sun's Direct Heat May Be Reliance of the 

 Future. Your mighty forests seem capable 

 of supplying all the timber that the whole 

 race of man could need for ages ; yet a very 

 moderate computation of the rate at which 

 they are being cut down, and will presuma- 

 bly continue to be, by a population increas- 

 ing rapidly in numbers and in the destruc- 

 tive capabilities which characterize modern 

 civilization, would show that America will 

 be denuded of its forest wealth in about the 

 same period which we in England have cal- 

 culated as probably limiting the effective 

 duration of our stores of coal. That period 

 a thousand or twelve hundred years may 

 seem long compared with the life of indi- 

 vidual men, long even compared with the 

 duration of any nation in the height of 

 power; but tho men and nations pass away 

 the human race continues, and a thousand 

 years are as less than a day in the history 

 of that race. . . . Either a change in 

 their mode of civilization will be forced on 

 the human race, or else it will then have be- 

 come possible, as your Ericsson has already 

 suggested, to make the sun's daily heat the 

 mainspring of the machinery of civilization. 

 PROCTOR Our Place among Infinities, p. 

 26. (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



796. DESTRUCTION OF ART TREAS- 

 URES DEPLORED Wonders of Life De- 

 stroyed without Protest. The large avians, 

 together with the finest of the mammalians, 

 will shortly be lost to the pampas utterly, 

 as the great bustard is to England and as 

 the wild turkey and bison and many other 

 species will shortly be lost to North Amer- 

 ica. What a wail there would be in the 

 world if a sudden destruction were to fall 



on the accumulated art treasures of the Na- 

 tional Gallery, and the marbles in the Brit- 

 ish Museum, and the contents of the King's 

 Library the old prints and medieval illu- 

 minations ! And these are only the work of 

 human hands and brains impressions of in- 

 dividual genius on perishable material, im- 

 mortal only in the sense that the silken 

 cocoon of the dead moth is so, because they 

 continue to exist and shine when the artist's 

 hands and brain are dust and man has the 

 long day of life before him in which to do 

 again things like these, and better than 

 these, if there is any truth in evolution. 

 But the forms of life in the two higher ver- 

 tebrate classes are Nature's most perfect 

 work; and the life of even a single species 

 is of incalculably greater value to mankind, 

 for what it teaches and would continue to 

 teach, than all the chiseled marbles and 

 painted canvases the world contains. HUD- 

 SON Naturalist in La Plata, ch. 1. p. 28. 

 (C. &H., 1895.) 



797. DESTRUCTION OF NOXIOUS 



INSECTS Beneficial Industry of Ants. There 

 are, of course, many cases in which the ac- 

 tion of ants is very beneficial to plants. 

 They kill off a great number of small cater- 

 pillars and other insects. Forel found in 

 one large nest that more than twenty-eight 

 dead insects were brought in per minute, 

 which would give during the period of great- 

 est energy more than 100,000 insects de- 

 stroyed in a day by the inhabitants of one 

 nest alone. AVEBURY Ants, Bees, and 

 Wasps, ch. 3, p. 59. (A., 1900.) 



798. DESTRUCTION OF PLANTS BY 



ANIMALS Besides this direct competition, 

 there is one not less powerful arising from 

 the exposure of almost all plants to destruc- 

 tion by animals. The buds are destroyed by 

 birds, the leaves by caterpillars, the seeds 

 by weevils; some insects bore into the 

 trunk, others burrow in the twigs and 

 leaves; slugs devour the young seedlings 

 and the tender shoots, wireworms gnaw the 

 roots. Herbivorous mammals devour many 

 species bodily, while some uproot and devour 

 the buried tubers. WALLACE Darwinism, 

 ch. 2, p. 11. (Hum., 1889.) 



799. DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH 

 WOULD BE UNFELT IN UNIVERSE 



Like the Falling of a Leaf in the Forest. 

 And what is this world in the immensity 

 which teems with them and what are they 

 who occupy it? The universe at large would 

 suffer as little, in its splendor and variety, 

 by the destruction of our planet, as the ver- 

 dure and sublime magnitude of a forest 

 would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. 

 The leaf quivers on the branch which sup- 

 ports it. It lies at the mercy of the slight- 

 est accident. A breath of wind tears it from 

 its stem, and it lights on the stream of wa- 

 ter which passes underneath. In a moment 

 of time, the life which we know, by the 

 microscope, it teems with, is extinguished; 

 and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye 



