,ife 

 ,ight 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



394 



to imagine life enduring without reproduc- 

 tion as it would be to conceive life lasting 

 without the capacity for absorption of food 

 and without the power of metabolism. Life 

 is continuous and not periodically inter- 

 rupted : ever since its first appearance upon 

 the earth, in the lowest organisms, it has 

 continued without break; the forms in 

 which it is manifested have alone undergone 

 change. Every individual alive to-day 

 even the very highest is to be derived in an 

 unbroken line from the first and lowest 

 forms. WEISSMAN Heredity, vol. i, p. 161. 

 (C. U. P., 1892.) 



1924. LIFE, WANTON DESTRUC- 

 TION OF Grace of Form and Motion of the 

 Great Blue Heron Irreparable Loss. The 

 presence of a stately great blue heron or 

 " crane " adds an element to the landscape 

 which no work of man can equal. Its grace 

 of form and motion, emphasized by its large 

 size, is a constant delight to the eye; it is a 

 symbol of the wild in Nature; one never 

 tires of watching it. What punishment, 

 then, is severe enough for the man who robs 

 his fellows of so pure a source of enjoyment? 

 A rifle-ball turns this noble creature into a 

 useless mass of flesh and feathers; the loss 

 is irreparable. Still, we have no law to pre- 

 vent it. Herons are said to devour large 

 numbers of small fish. But is not the la- 

 borer worthy of his hire ? Are the fish more 

 valuable than this, one of the grandest of 

 birds? CHAPMAN Bird-Life, ch. 7, p. 95. 

 (A., 1900.) 



1925. LIFE WITHOUT MOTIVE OR 

 PURPOSE Sensations without Ideas The 

 Brainless Pigeon Spontaneity Destroyed. 

 To illustrate this sensori-motor or instinc- 

 tive action, we may take the results of 

 Flourens's well-known experiment of remov- 

 ing the cerebral hemispheres of a pigeon. 

 What happens ? The pigeon seemingly loses 

 at once all intelligence and all power of 

 spontaneous action. It appears as^if it were 

 asleep; yet, if thrown into the air, it will 

 fly. If laid on its back, it struggles on to 

 its legs again; the pupil of the eye con- 

 tracts to light, and, if the light be very 

 bright, the eyes are shut. It will dress its 

 feathers if they are ruffled, and will some- 

 times follow with a movement of its head 

 the movement of a candle before it; and, 

 when a pistol is fired off, it will open its 

 eyes, stretch its neck, raise its head, and 

 then fall back into its former attitude. It 

 is quite evident from this experiment that 

 general sensibility and special sensations 

 are possible after the removal of the hemi- 

 spheres; but they are not then transformed 

 into ideas. The impressions of sense reach 

 and affect the sensory centers, but they are 

 not intellectually perceived ; and the proper 

 movements are excited, but these are reflex 

 or automatic. There are no ideas, there is 

 no true spontaneity; and the animal would 

 die of hunger before a plateful of food, tho 

 it will swallow it when pushed far enough 



into its mouth to come within the range of 

 the reflex acts of deglutition. MAUDSLEY 

 Body and Mind, lect. 1, p. 20, (A., 1898.) 



1926. LIFTING OF HEAVY STONES 

 BY PRIMITIVE MAN Wedges and Cob- 

 work. The only puzzle the modern student 

 can have is to conceive how the ancient 

 engineer lifted [such] great weights. If he 

 could lift them he could move them. It 

 was within the ability of a company of 

 American Indians in several areas to ham- 

 mer down any great stone into any form. 

 It was customary for them, as tribes, to all 

 engage in the same operation in hauling 

 logs, or seines, or boats, or stones, in rowing 

 and dancing. The problem is somewhat like 

 that of Archimedes. " Given a rope long 

 enough and a cribwork strong enough," and 

 any modern savage people will undertake to 

 set up the monuments of Brittany. In point 

 of fact the ancient Americans did quarry 

 single stones weighing three hundred tons, 

 did move them great distances and set them 

 in place. In the copper mines of Michigan 

 was discovered a huge nugget of copper rest- 

 ing still on a mass of cobwork. Around 

 were wedges and mauls, and, by means of 

 shoring up alternate sides after lifting them 

 by wedges, the engineers had hoisted the 

 mass twenty-six feet. This is the only his- 

 toric example I have found of actual work 

 done. MASON Aboriginal American Me- 

 chanics (Memoirs of the Inter national Con- 

 gress of Anthropology, p. 83). (Sch. P. C.) 



1927. LIGHT AND SOUND NOT 

 MERE SENSATIONS Existent Waves Ex- 

 ternal to Human Organism. Until modern 

 science had established its methods of phys- 

 ical investigation, light and sound were 

 known as sensations only; that is to say, 

 they were known in terms of the mental im- 

 pressions which they immediately produce 

 upon us, and in no other terms whatever. 

 There was no proof that in these sensations 

 we had any knowledge " in themselves " of 

 the external agencies which produce them. 

 But now all this is changed. Science has 

 discovered what these two agencies are " in 

 themselves " ; that is to say, it has defined 

 them under aspects which are totally dis- 

 tinct from seeing or hearing, and is able to 

 describe them in terms addressed to wholly 

 different faculties of conception. Both light 

 and sound are in the nature of undulatory 

 movements in elastic media to which un- 

 dulations our organs of sight and hearing 

 are respectively adjusted or " attuned." In 

 these organs, by virtue of that adjustment 

 or attuning, these same undulations are 

 " translated " into the sensations which we 

 know. It thus appears that the facts as 

 described to us in this language of sensation 

 are the true equivalent of the facts as de- 

 scribed in the very different language of 

 intellectual analysis. The eye is now under- 

 stood to be an apparatus for enabling the 

 mind instantaneously to appreciate differ- 

 ences of motion which are of almost incon- 



