381 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Laws. 



Learning 



with each other of different families of the 

 human race. . . . It is not surprising, 

 therefore, that the preservation of the Jews, 

 partly from the relation in which it stands 

 to the apparent fulfilment of prophecy, and 

 partly from the extraordinary nature of the 

 fact itself, is tacitly assumed by many per- 

 sons to come strictly within the category of 

 miraculous events. Yet in itself it is noth- 

 ing more than a striking illustration how a 

 departure from the " ordinary course of Na- 

 ture " may be effected through the instru- 

 mentality of means which are natural and 

 comprehensible. An extraordinary resisting 

 power has been given to the Jewish people 

 against those dissolving and disintegrating 

 forces which have caused the disappearance 

 of every other race placed under similar 

 conditions. They have been torn from home 

 and country and removed, not in a body, 

 but in scattered fragments over the world. 

 Yet they are as distinct from every other 

 people now as they were in the days of Solo- 

 mon. Nevertheless this resisting power, won- 

 derful tho it be, is the result of special 

 laws, overruling those in ordinary opera- 

 tion. It has been effected by the use of 

 means. Those means have been superhuman 

 they have been beyond human contrivance 

 and arrangement. But they belong to the 

 region of the natural. They belong to it 

 not the less, but all the more, because in 

 their concatenation and arrangement they 

 seem to indicate the purpose of a living 

 will seeking and effecting the fulfilment of 

 its designs. This is the manner after which 

 our own living wills in their little sphere 

 effect their little objects. Is it difficult to 

 believe that after the same manner also the 

 divine will, of which ours is the image only, 

 works and effects its purposes? ARGYLL 

 Reign of Law, ch. 1, p. 12. (Burt.) 



1863. LEAD -FRONDS GROWING 

 LIKE FERNS AROUND VOLTAIC WIRE 



By sending a voltaic current through a 

 liquid you know that we decompose the 

 liquid, and if it contains a metal we liber- 

 ate this metal by the electrolysis. . . . 

 Into the cell [containing a solution of ace- 

 tate of lead] are dipped two very thin plat- 

 inum wires, and these are connected by 

 other wires with a small voltaic battery. 

 On sending the voltaic current through the 

 solution the lead will be slowly severed 

 from the atoms with which it is now com- 

 bined; it will be liberated upon one of the 

 wires, and at the moment of its liberation 

 it will obey the polar forces of its atoms 

 and produce crystalline forms of exquisite 

 beauty, . . . sprouting like ferns from 

 the wire, appearing, indeed, like vegetable 

 growths rendered so rapid as to be plainly 

 visible to the naked eye. On reversing the 

 current these wonderful lead-fronds will dis- 

 solve, while from the other wire filaments 

 of lead dart through the liquid. In a mo- 

 ment or two the growth of the lead-trees 



recommences, but they now cover the other 

 wire. TYNDALL Lectures on Light, lect. 3, 

 p. 105. (A., 1898.) 



1864. LEAF-TRACERY IN THE AN- 

 CIENT ROCKS Enduring Record of the Eva- 

 nescent. The earth had already its seasons, 

 its spring and summer, its autumn and win- 

 ter, its seed-time and harvest, tho neither 

 sower nor reaper was there; the forests 

 then, as now, dropped their thick carpet of 

 leaves upon the ground in the autumn, and 

 in many localities they remain where they 

 originally fell, with a layer of soil between 

 the successive layers of leaves a leafy 

 chronology, as it were, by which we read 

 the passage of the years which divided these 

 deposits from each other. Where the leaves 

 have fallen singly on a clayey soil favorable 

 for receiving such impressions they have 

 daguerreotyped themselves with the most 

 wonderful accuracy, and the oaks, poplara, 

 willows, maples, walnuts, gum- and cinna- 

 mon-trees, etc., of the Tertiaries are as 

 well known to us as are those of our own 

 time. AGASSIZ Geological Sketches, ser. i, 

 ch. 7, p. 182. (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



1865. LEAPS OF NATURAL PROC- 

 ESSES The Metamorphoses of Insects. When 

 we think of the mystery involved in the 

 metamorphoses of insects and in the corre- 

 sponding phenomena of alternate generation 

 in other classes of the animal kingdom, we 

 must see what unlimited possibilities of cre- 

 ation lie open in methods which are in full 

 operation round us. In the higher animals 

 the development of germs is carried on in 

 vital and physical connection with the per- 

 fected organism of the mother, and the cycle 

 of changes which lead up to the completion 

 of the parent form is a cycle which thus 

 appears to be wholly governed by the sur- 

 rounding medium. But when we look at the 

 metamorphoses of insects no such delusion 

 is possible. A creature which to all appear- 

 ance is fully formed, and which has led a 

 separate and independent existence, suddenly 

 lays itself to sleep. In that condition, with- 

 out any food without any contact with 

 any directing physical agency external to 

 itself its organization is wholly altered, its 

 whole body is rearranged, its old members 

 dissolve and disappear, new members emerge, 

 and in a few days or weeks are perfected in 

 form and in power. Moreover, that form 

 and that power are both for uses which, so 

 far as the creature's previous " experience " 

 is concerned, are absolutely new. With such 

 " leaps " as this in the creative work going 

 on in every field and stream and sea around 

 us, we may have the utmost confidence that 

 the same work has involved the same prin- 

 ciples through all time. ARGYLL Unity of 

 Nature, ch. 7, p. 161. (Burt.) 



1866. LEARNING, NO ROYAL ROAD 



TO Archimedes Instructing the King. One day 

 the Tyrant of Syracuse ordered the illustri- 

 ous Archimedes to omit the principal mathe- 

 matics in a lesson on astronomy which prom- 



