Sarp 

 eat 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



296 



beautifully. One might well guess that 

 the strung bow of the warrior would nat- 

 urally become a musical instrument, but, 

 what is more, it really is so used. The 

 Damara in South Africa finds pleasure in 

 the faint tones heard by striking the tight 

 bowstring with a little stick. The Zulu de- 

 spises the bow as a cowardly weapon, but 

 he still uses it for music; his music-bow 

 has a ring slid along the string to alter 

 the note, and is also provided with a hol- 

 low gourd [held behind the bow against the 

 breast] acting as a resonator or sounding- 

 box to strengthen the feeble twang. The 

 ancient Egyptian harp [simply a curved 

 strip of wood, with a few strings stretched 

 across it] may have been developed from 

 such a rude music-bow, the wooden back 

 being now made hollow so as to be bow 

 and resonator in one, while across it are 

 strung several strings of different lengths. 

 All ancient harps, Assyrian, Persian, even 

 old Irish, were made on this plan, yet we 

 can see at a glance that it was defective, 

 the bending of the wooden back putting the 

 strings out of tune. It was not till modern 

 ages that the improvement was made of 

 completing the harp with the front pillar, 

 which makes the whole frame rigid and 

 firm. . . . The harp/ tho now made 

 more perfect than of old, is losing its an- 

 cient place in music; but the reason of this 

 is easy to see it has been supplanted by 

 modern instruments which have come from 

 it. The very form of a grand piano shows 

 that it is a harp laid on one side in a 

 case, and its strings not plucked with the 

 fingers, but struck with hammers worked 

 from a keyboard. It is the latest develop- 

 ment from the bowstring of the prehistoric 

 warrior. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 12, p. 

 295. (A., 1899.) 



1443. HARVEST, GREAT, FROM 

 SCANTY SOWING Few Original Concepts in 

 Sanskrit All India's Languages Therefrom. 

 In analyzing the Sanskrit language, Pro- 

 fessor Max Miiller [" Science of Thought," 

 p. 549] reduces its whole vocabulary to 121 

 roo ts the 121 " original concepts." " These 

 121 concepts constitute the stock-in-trade 

 with which I maintain that every thought 

 that has ever passed through the mind of 

 India, so far as known to us in its litera- 

 ture, has been expressed. It would have 

 been easy to reduce that number still 

 further, for there are several among them 

 which could be ranged together under more 

 general concepts. But I leave this further 

 reduction to others, being satisfied as a 

 first attempt with having shown how small 

 a number of seeds may produce, and has 

 produced, the enormous intellectual vegeta- 

 tion that has covered the soil of India from 

 the most distant antiquity to the present 

 day." DRUMMOND Ascent" of Man, ch. 5, 

 p. 180. (J. P. & Co., 1900.) 



1444. HAWAII, VOLCANOES OF Vast 

 River of Melted Rock Mauna Loa. We 



learn from the valuable observations made 

 by Mr. Dana on the active volcanoes of 

 the Sandwich Islands, that large sheets of 

 compact basaltic lava have been poured 

 out of craters at the top or near the sum- 

 mits of flattened domes higher than Etna, 

 as in the case of Mount Loa, for example, 

 where a copious stream two miles broad and 

 twenty- five miles long proceeded from an 

 opening 13,000 feet above the level of the 

 sea. The usual slope of these sheets of lava 

 is between 5 and 10 ; but Mr. Dana con- 

 vinced himself that, owing to the sudden- 

 ness with which they cool in the air, some 

 lavas may occasionally form on slopes equal- 

 ing 25, and still preserve a considerable 

 compactness of texture. It is even proved, 

 he says, from what he saw in the great 

 lateral crater of Kilauea, on the flanks of 

 Mount Loa, that a mass of such melted rock 

 may consolidate at an inclination of 30, 

 and be continuous for 300 or 400 feet. Such 

 masses are narrow, he admits, " but if the 

 source had been more generous, they would 

 have had a greater breadth, and by a suc- 

 cession of ejections, overspreading each 

 cooled layer, a considerable thickness might 

 have been attained." The same author has 

 also shown . . . that in the " cinder 

 cones" of the Sandwich Islands the strata 

 have an original inclination of between 35 

 and 40. LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. 

 ii, ch. 24, p. 383. (A., 1854.) 



1445. HAWK THE FARMER'S ALLY 



" Chicken-hawk " Lives Chiefly on Mice 

 and Batrachians and Insects. The voices of 

 hawks are in keeping with their disposi- 

 tions, and, while their lives typify all that 

 is fierce and cruel, no birds are more often 

 wrongly accused and falsely persecuted than 

 our birds of prey. To kill one is regarded 

 as an act of special merit; to spare one 

 seems to place a premium on crime. Still, 

 these birds are among the best friends of 

 the farmer. There are but two of our com- 

 mon species, Cooper's and the sharp-shinned, 

 who habitually feed on birds and poultry. 

 Our other common species are, without ex- 

 ception, invaluable aids to the agriculturist 

 in preventing the undue increase of the 

 small rodents so destructive to crops. . . . 

 The red-shouldered hawk, to which the 

 name chicken- or hen-hawk is often applied, 

 has been found to live largely on small 

 mammals, reptiles, batrachians, and insects. 

 CHAPMAN Bird-Life, ch. 7, p. 116. (A., 

 1900.) 



1446. HEALTH BY REMOVAL OF IM- 

 PURITIES The Elbe below Hamburg. In 

 1893 Koch brought out his monograph upon 

 " Water Filtration and Cholera," and his 

 work had a deservedly great influence upon 

 the whole question. He shows how the care- 

 ful filtration of water supplied to Altona 

 from the Elbe saved the town from the epi- 

 demic of cholera which came upon Ham- 

 burg as a result of drinking unfiltered wa- 

 ter, altho Altona is situated several miles 



