247 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Family 

 Fauna 



night they fly high, and when they see Ab- 

 irecon Inlet light, which is 167 feet above the 

 ground, they head directly for it. They 

 seem to be attracted in the same way that 

 the moths which flicker around a candle are. 

 If carried along by a heavy wind, they dart 

 against the plate-glass windows surrounding 

 the lens, and drop to the ground dead, be- 

 spattering the panes with their blood, to 

 prevent which a wire netting has been con- 

 structed on the north and south sides of the 

 lantern. Not long ago a large duck, which 

 was sailing along in a furious storm, was 

 dashed against this netting with such force 

 as to indent it six square inches. When the 

 weather is clear immense numbers of small 

 birds hover about the light after dark, and 

 then, as soon as they have rested on the rail 

 surrounding it, fly off, but soon return 

 again. A large snipe landed so violently 

 against the wirework that he plunged 

 through one of the meshes and stripped 

 himself of all his feathers as far back as the 

 shoulders. BROWN Nature-Studies, p. 13. 

 (Hum., 1888.) 



1209. FATALISM, FAILURE OF, IN- 

 EVITABLE Impulse To Take Life Strivingly 

 Js Indestructible. Nothing could be more 

 absurd than to hope for the definitive tri- 

 umph of any philosophy which should refuse 

 to legitimate, and to legitimate in an em- 

 phatic manner, the more powerful of our 

 emotional and practical tendencies. Fatal- 

 ism, whose solving word in all crises of be- 

 havior is "All striving is vain," will never 

 reign supreme, for the impulse to take life 

 strivingly is indestructible in the race. 

 Moral creeds which speak to that impulse 

 will be widely successful in spite of incon- 

 sistency, vagueness, and shadowy determi- 

 nation of expectancy. Man needs a rule for 

 his will, and will invent one if one be not 

 given him. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 

 21, p. 315. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



1 2 1 . FATHERHOOD ESSENTIAL TO 

 FAMILY LIFE The Goal of Evolution. Now 

 here is a very pretty problem for evolution. 

 She has at once to make good husbands and 

 good fathers out of lawless savages. Unless 

 this problem is solved the higher progress 

 of the world is at an end. It is the mature 

 opinion of every one who has thought upon 

 the history of the world, that the thing of 

 highest importance for all times and to all 

 nations is family life. When the family was 

 instituted, and not till then, the higher evo- 

 lution of the world was secured. Hence the 

 exceptional value of the father's develop- 

 ment. As the other half of the arch on 

 which the whole higher world is built, his 

 taming, his domestication, his moral dis- 

 cipline, are vital; and in the nature of 

 things this was the next great operation un- 

 dertaken by evolution. DRTJMMOND Ascent 

 of Man, p. 295. (J. P., 1900.) 



1211. FATHERHOOD OF GOD Prim- 

 itive Conception of Deity as Recorded in the 

 Vedas A Descending Evolution Thence. 



One of the most remarkable schools of 

 Christian thought which has arisen in recent 

 times is that which has made the idea of 

 the " Fatherhood of God " the basis of its 

 distinctive teaching. Yet it is nothing but 

 a reversion to the simplest of all ideas, the 

 most rudimentary of all experiences that 

 which takes the functions and the authority 

 of a father as the most natural image of the 

 invisible and infinite being to whom we owe 

 " life and breath and all things." In the 

 facts of Vedic literature, tts now sifted and 

 presented to us by scholars, when we care- 

 fully separate these facts from theories 

 about them, there is really no symptom of 

 any time when the idea of some living being 

 in the nature of God had not yet been at- 

 tained. On the contrary, the earliest indi- 

 cations of this conception are indications of 

 the sublimest character, and the process of 

 evolution seems distinctly to have been a 

 process, not of an ascending, but of a de- 

 scending order. Thus it appears that the 

 great appellative " Dyaus," which in the 

 earliest Vedic literature is masculine and 

 stood for " the Bright or Shining One," or 

 the Living Being whose dwelling is the 

 light, had in later times become a feminine 

 and stood for nothing but the sky. ARGYLL 

 Unity of Nature, ch. 12, p. 302. (Burt.) 



1212. 



Sublimity of Early 



Conceptions A Personal God Addressed in 

 the Vedas. It is quite evident that in the 

 oldest times of the Aryan race, in so far as 

 those times have left us any record, not only 

 had the idea of a personal God been fully 

 conceived, but such a being had been de- 

 scribed and addressed in language and under 

 symbols which are comparable with the sub- 

 limest imagery in the visions of Patmos. 

 How firmly, too, and how naturally these 

 conceptions of a God were rooted in the 

 analogies of our own human personality is 

 attested by the additional fact that pater- 

 nity was the earliest Vedic idea of creation, 

 and Dyaus was invoked not only as the 

 heaven-father, but specially as the " Dyaush 

 pita ganita," which is the Sanskrit equiva- 

 lent of the Greek Zei> nar^p ye^p [Zeus, 

 the All-producing Father]. ARGYLL Unity 

 of Nature, ch. 12, p. 302. (Burt.) 



1213. FAUNA, RANGE OF, DETER- 

 MINED BY CLIMATE Arctic, Temperate, 

 and Tropical Varieties Buffalo, Opossum, 

 Raccoon. The predominant influence of 

 climate over all the other causes which limit 

 the range of species in the mammalia is per- 

 haps nowhere so conspicuously displayed as 

 in North America. The arctic fauna, so ad- 

 mirably described by Sir John Richardson, 

 has scarcely any species in common with the 

 fauna of the State of New York, which is 

 600 miles farther south, and comprises 

 about forty distinct mammifers. If again 

 we travel farther south about 600 miles, and 

 enter another zone, running east and west, 

 in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and 

 the contiguous States, we again meet with a 



