florins 

 Freedom 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



270 



blood's own temperature, we can see it liter- 

 ally to flow from one shape to another. It 

 imitates in this way the movements of many 

 an animalcule in the pools. We may also 

 see our independent white corpuscle seizing 

 and digesting food-particles, as if, in very 

 truth, it were an independent animalcule. 

 This power of feeding, we shall see, is an 

 important characteristic of our wandering 

 particle. . . . For it is now a matter of 

 certainty that among all the servants of our 

 bodies we possess none more active, none 

 more faithful, and none more necessary 

 than our wandering cells. . . . There is 

 a battle between our white cells [leucocytes] 

 and the germs of disease. If the latter are 

 victorious, we fall ill of the fever or other 

 ailment; if we escape the fever, our im- 

 munity is due to the victory of our micro- 

 scopic friends over the germs. WILSON 

 Glimpses of Nature, ch. 23, p. 74. (Hum., 

 1892.) 



1316. FOSSILS AS MEMENTOES OF 

 THE PAST Surpass Coins and Medals in 

 Interest. " However trivial a thing," he 

 [Robert Hooke, 1688] says, " a rotten shell 

 may appear to some, yet these monuments 

 of Nature are more certain tokens of an- 

 tiquity than coins or medals, since the best 

 of those may be counterfeited or made by 

 art and design, as may also books, manu- 

 scripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned 

 are now sufficiently satisfied has often been 

 actually practised," etc. ; " and tho it must 

 be granted that it is very difficult to read 

 them (the records of Nature) and to raise a 

 chronology out of them, and to state the in- 

 tervals of the time wherein such or such 

 -catastrophes and mutations have happened, 

 yet it is not impossible." LYELL Principles 

 of Geology, pt. i, ch. 3, p. 27. (A., 1854.) 



I 1317. FOSSILS, MAGICAL VIRTUES 

 ATTRIBUTED TO "Unicorn's Horn" Hu- 

 man Remains in Ancient Caves Man Con- 

 temporary with Extinct Animals. The ex- 

 istence of fossil remains of animals in the 

 caves of Europe has long been known. In 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they 

 were, under the name of " ebur fossile," or 

 unicorn's horn, greatly esteemed as a medi- 

 cine, and were obtained in great quantity 

 from the caves of the Hartz district and of 

 Hungary and Franconia. Baumann's Hole 

 in the Hartz had already become famous at 

 the close of the seventeenth century, and de- 

 scriptions of other caves and of their con- 

 tents followed at intervals, until at last a 

 new branch of investigation sprang up, the 

 importance of which can hardly be exag- 

 gerated when its bearings upon the early 

 history of man are considered. It was long, 

 however, before the possibility of man's ex- 

 istence contemporaneously with the extinct 

 animals found in some of the oldest caves 

 was entertained by the majority of scientific 

 men; but the doubt was finally set at rest 

 in 1858 upon the discovery of undoubted 

 human relics in the celebrated Brixham 



Cave in Devonshire. DALLAS Nature- 

 Studies, p. 45. (Hum., 1888.) 



1318. FOSSILS OF THE COAL PERIOD 



Evidence of Warm and Uniform Climate. 

 The flora of the coal appears to indicate 

 a uniform and mild temperature in the 

 air, while the fossils of the contemporaneous 

 mountain limestone, comprising abundance 

 of lamelliferous corals, large-chambered ceph- 

 alopods, and Crinoidea, naturally lead us 

 to infer a considerable warmth in the wa- 

 ters of the northern sea of the Carboniferous 

 period. So also in regard to strata older 

 than the coal, they contain in high north- 

 ern latitudes mountain masses of corals 

 which must have lived and grown on the 

 spot, and large-chambered univalves, such 

 as OrthoceraJa and Nautilus, all seeming to 

 indicate, even in regions bordering on the 

 arctic circle, the former prevalence of a 

 temperature more elevated than that now 

 prevailing. 



The warmth and humidity of the air, 

 and the uniformity of climate, both in the 

 different seasons of the year and in dif- 

 ferent latitudes, appear to have been most 

 remarkable when some of the oldest of the 

 fossilif erous strata were formed. LYELL 

 Principles of Geology, bk. i, ch. 6, p. 91. 

 (A., 1854.) 



1319. FOSSILS OF THE OLD RED 

 SANDSTONE Fantastic Forms That Have 

 Become Extinct. Half my closet walls are 

 covered with the peculiar fossils of the Lower 

 Old Red Sandstone; and certainly a stran- 

 ger assemblage of forms have rarely been 

 grouped together creatures whose very type 

 is lost, fantastic and uncouth, and which 

 puzzle the naturalist to assign them even 

 their class boat-like animals, furnished 

 with oars and a rudder fish-plated over, 

 like the tortoise, above and below, with a 

 strong armor of bone, and furnished with 

 but one solitary rudder-like fin; other fish 

 less equivocal in their form, but with the 

 membranes of their fins thickly covered 

 with scales creatures bristling over with 

 thorns; others glistening in an enameled 

 coat, as if beautifully japanned the tail, 

 in every instance among the less equivocal 

 shapes, formed not equally, as in existing 

 fish, on each side the central vertebral col- 

 umn, but chiefly on the lower side the 

 column sending out its diminished vertebrae 

 to the extreme termination of the fin. All 

 the forms testify of a remote antiquity 

 of a period whose " fashions have passed 

 away." The figures on a Chinese vase or 

 an Egyptian obelisk are scarce more unlike 

 what now exists in Nature than the fossils 

 of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. MILLER 

 'The Old Red Sandstone, ch. 2, p. 30. (G. 

 & L., 185L) 



1320. FOUNDERS OF PHYSICAL SCI- 

 ENCE Arabs Deserve the Title. The Arabs, 

 a people of Semitic origin, partially dispelled 

 the barbarism which had shrouded Europe 

 for upward of two hundred years after the 



