Individual!! 



ty 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



332 



tioning credulity. Both are alike detrimen- 

 tal to the force of investigation. Notwith- 

 standing that for more than two thousand 

 years the annals of different nations had re- 

 corded falls of meteoric stones, many of 

 which had been attested beyond all doubt 

 by the evidence of irreproachable eye-wit- 

 nesses; notwithstanding the important part 

 enacted by the baetyli in the meteor- wor- 

 ship of the ancients; notwithstanding the 

 fact of the companions of Cortez having 

 seen an aerolite at Cholula which had fallen 

 on the neighboring pyramid; notwithstand- 

 ing that califs and Mongolian chiefs had 

 caused swords to be forged from recently 

 fallen meteoric stones; nay, notwithstand- 

 ing that several persons had been struck 

 dead by stones falling from heaven, as, for 

 instance, a monk at Crema on the 4th of 

 September, 1511, another monk at Milan in 

 1650, and two Swedish sailors on board ship 

 in 1674 yet this great cosmical phenome- 

 non remained almost wholly unheeded, and 

 its intimate connection with other planetary 

 systems unknown, until attention was drawn 

 to the subject by Chladni. HUMBOLDT Cos- 

 mos, vol. i, p. 135. (H., 1897.) 



1622. INDEPENDENCE WEAKENED 

 BY SURVEILLANCE "Mother's Apron- 

 strings " Lack of Moral Perspective. It is 

 an old and just observation that youths 

 who have been " brought up at their moth- 

 ers' apron-strings " are the most likely to 

 " go wrong " when first thrown upon their 

 own guidance; and that when such once 

 begin to go astray they soonest run into 

 wild excesses. The rationale of this seems 

 to be that the tendency of such an education 

 is usually to repress, instead of fostering, 

 habits of independence and self-regulation; 

 and too frequently to weaken, instead of 

 strengthening, the force of moral obligation, 

 by attaching to small things the same im- 

 portance as to great. If a lad is constantly 

 watched and never trusted, he is almost 

 sure to abuse his liberty when he first ac- 

 quires it. And if he is taken to task as 

 severely for spilling ink on a table-cloth or 

 for tearing his clothes, as for telling a lie or 

 appropriating what does not belong to him, 

 it is not to be wondered at that he should 

 come to regard the graver offenses in the 

 same light as those which he feels to be 

 venial. CARPENTER Mental Physiology, bk. 

 i, ch. 9, p. 427. (A., 1900.) 



1623. INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF THE 

 ATOM An Unproved Assumption. The sup- 

 posed indestructibility of the atom amounts 

 merely to this, that with our limited range 

 of experimental methods we have not been 

 able to cause any appreciable portion of 

 matter to disappear, as such, permanently, 

 but can always recover it unchanged in mass 

 and chemical properties. To assert that 

 matter cannot, under any circumstances, be 

 made to disappear as matter, seems to me to 

 be the most unjustifiable dogma imagi- 



nable. STOKES The Atomic Theory from the 

 Chemical Standpoint, in Science, N. S., vol. 

 xi, No. 277, April 20, 1900. 



1624. INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF 

 THREE GREAT POWERS Matter, Energy, 

 Intelligence Imperishable. All modern 

 chemistry rests on the great truth that mat- 

 ter is indestructible, and is measured by 

 weight. . . . Another great central 

 truth, more recently discovered, is not 

 less far - reaching or important, namely, 

 energy is indestructible, and is measured by 

 work. Add to these two [truths] a third, 

 namely, intelligence is indestructible, and 

 is measured by adaptation, and you have, 

 as it seems to me, the three great manifes- 

 tations of Nature: Matter, energy, and in- 

 telligence. These great truths explain and 

 supplement each other. Give to each its due 

 weight in your philosophy, and you will 

 avoid the extremes of idealism on the one 

 side, and of materialism on the other. 

 COOKE New Chemistry, lect. 10, p. 235. (A., 

 1899.) 



1625. INDIFFERENCE TO CATAS- 

 TROPHE Lack of Record Is Not Disproof of 

 Event. We must not conclude without al- 

 luding to a moral phenomenon connected 

 with this tremendous catastrophe [the vol- 

 canic eruption in Sumbawa in 1815], which 

 we regard as highly deserving the attention 

 of geologists. It is stated by Sir A. Burnes 

 that " these wonderful events passed un- 

 heeded by the inhabitants of Cutch"; for 

 the region convulsed, tho once fertile, had 

 for a long period been reduced to sterility 

 by want of irrigation, so that the natives 

 were indifferent as to its fate. Now it ^is to 

 this profound apathy which all but highly 

 civilized nations feel, in regard to physical 

 events not having an immediate influence on 

 their worldly fortunes, that we must ascribe 

 the extraordinary dearth of historical infor- 

 mation concerning changes of the earth's 

 surface, which modern observations show 

 to be by no means of rare occurrence in the 

 ordinary course of Nature. 



Since the above account was written, a 

 description has been published of more re- 

 cent geographical changes in the district of 

 Cutch, near the mouth of the Koree, or east- 

 ern branch of the Indus, which happened in 

 June, 1845. A large area seems to have sub- 

 sided, and the Sindree Lake has become a 

 salt marsh. LYELL Principles of Geology, 

 bk. ii, ch. 27, p. 464. (A., 1854.) 



1626. INDIGO MANUFACTURED BY 

 CHEMICAL PROCESS Indigo Farms Aban- 

 doned. To such an extent has this [manu- 

 facture of substances like the organic] been 

 the case that in several instances the old 

 methods of producing certain chemical com- 

 pounds through the medium of cultivated 

 plants has been entirely abandoned. Per- 

 haps the most striking illustration of this 

 is in the case of the indigo-plant. The cul- 

 tivation ol this plant and the manufacture 

 of indigo therefrom were once profitable in- 



