297 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



below Hamburg, and its drinking-water is 

 taken from the river after it has received 

 the sewage of Hamburg. NEWMAN Bac- 

 teria, eh. 2, p. 75. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



1447. HEALTH CONDUCES TO MO- 

 RALITY Interaction of Matter and Spirit. 

 There is assuredly morality in the oxygen 

 of the mountains, as there is immorality in 

 the miasma of a marsh, and a higher power 

 than mere brute force lies latent in Alpine 

 mutton. We are recognizing more and more 

 the influence of physical elements in the 

 conduct of life, for when the blood flows 

 in a purer current the heart is capable of 

 a higher glow. Spirit and matter are in- 

 terfused; the Alps improve us totally, and 

 we return from their precipices wiser as 

 well as stronger men. TYNDALL Hours of 

 Exercise in the Alps, ch. 14, p. 155. (A., 

 1898.) 



1448. HEALTH IN TROPICAL LANDS 

 Danger of Excesses in Food Alcoholic 

 Stimulants Perilous. Englishmen, accus- 

 tomed to an active life at home, and a 

 climate demanding much fuel-food for the 

 maintenance of animal heat, go to India, 

 crammed, maybe, with Latin, but ignorant 

 of the laws of health; cheap servants pro- 

 mote indolence, tropical heat diminishes 

 respiratory oxidation, and the appetite 

 naturally fails. 



Instead of understanding this failure as 

 an admonition to take smaller quantities 

 of food, or food of less nutritive and com- 

 bustive value, such as carbohydrates instead 

 of hydrocarbons and albuminoids, they re- 

 gard it as a symptom of ill-health, and take 

 curries, bitter ale, and other tonics or appe- 

 tizing condiments, which, however mischie- 

 vous in England, are far more so here. 



I know several men who have lived ra- 

 tionally in India, and they all agree that 

 the climate is especially favorable to lon- 

 gevity, provided bitter beer and all other 

 alcoholic drinks, all peppery condiments, 

 and flesh foods are avoided. The most re- 

 markable example of vigorous old age I 

 have ever met was a retired colonel eighty- 

 two years of age, who had risen from the 

 ranks, and had been fifty-five years in In- 

 dia without furlough; drunk no alcohol 

 during that period; was a vegetarian in 

 India, tho not so in his native land. 

 I guessed his age to be somewhere about 

 sixty. He was a Scotchman, and an ar- 

 dent student of the works of both George 

 and Dr. Andrew Combe. WILLIAMS Chem- 

 istry of Cookery, ch. 15, p. 261. (A., 1900.) 



1449. HEARING, SENSE OF, IN BEES 

 Seemingly Too Fine for Human Discern- 

 ment. As in ants, so in bees, Sir John 

 [Lubbock's] experiments failed to yield any 

 evidence of a sense of hearing. But in this 

 connection we must not forget the well- 

 known fact, first observed by Huber, that 

 the queen bee will answer by a certain 

 sound the peculiar piping of a pupa queen ; 

 and again, by making a certain cry or hum- 



ming noise, will strike consternation sud- 

 denly on all the bees in the hive these 

 remaining for a long time motionless as 

 if stupefied. ROMANES Animal Intelligence, 

 ch. 4, p. 144. (A., 1899.) 



1450. HEARTH AS TYPE OF HOME 



Wood as Fuel Exhaustion of The In- 

 dian's Guess. When in the savage hut the 

 logs are piled on the earthen floor, this sim- 

 ple hearth already becomes the gathering- 

 place of the family and the type of home. 

 But in treeless districts the want of fuel is 

 one of the difficulties of life, as where on the 

 desert plains the buffalo-hunter has to pick 

 up for the evening fire the droppings which 

 he calls " buffalo-chips " or bois de vache. 

 Even in woodland countries, as soon as peo- 

 ple collect in villages, the fire-wood near by 

 is apt to run short. When some American 

 Indians were asked what reason they sup- 

 posed had brought the white men to their 

 country, they answered quite simply that no 

 doubt we had burnt up all our wood at 

 home and had to move. The guess was so 

 far good that something of the kind must 

 really have happened had we depended on 

 the fuel from our forests and peat-bogs, for 

 the supply in England was giving out. 

 TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 11, p. 270. (A., 

 1899.) 



1451. HEAT A MODE OF MOTION 



Recent Theory Foreshadowed. By this cor- 

 puscular or mechanical philosophy Boyle 

 [1626-1692] explains such things as he re- 

 gards as natural phenomena such as heat 

 and cold, tastes, corrosiveness, fixedness, 

 volatility, chemical precipitation, and, 

 finally, magnetism and electricity. Thus, 

 heat, he says, is " that mechanical affection 

 of matter we call local motion, mechanically 

 modified " in three ways : first, by the vehe- 

 ment agitation of the parts; second, that 

 the motions be very various in direction; 

 and third, that the agitated particles, or at 

 least the greatest number of them, be so 

 minute as to be singly insensible. 



It is singular how the mechanical theory 

 or, as we now term it, the dynamical 

 theory, as applied to heat impressed itself 

 upon the philosophers of the seventeenth 

 century. Bacon defines heat as " a motion 

 acting in its strife upon the smaller par- 

 ticles of bodies." Boyle saw clearly that 

 when heat is generated by mechanical means 

 new heat is called into existence, and be- 

 lieved that the production of heat and elec- 

 tricity were somehow correlated. Locke, in 

 his " Essay on the Human Understanding," 

 says that " what in our sensation is heat, in 

 the object is nothing but motion." Hooke 

 plainly perceived heat as a vibration, and 

 denies the existence of anything without 

 motion, and hence perfectly cold. Yet it 

 was the material and not the mechanical 

 theory which prevailed and which held the 

 beliefs of the world up to our own time. 

 PARK BENJAMIN Intellectual Rise in Elec- 

 tricity, ch. 13, p. 416. (J. W., 1898.) 



