Man 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



414 



wide over the world. This immense work 

 had been already accomplished in ages be- 

 fore the earliest inscriptions of Egypt, Baby- 

 lon, Assyria, Phenicia, Persia, Greece, for 

 these show the great families of human 

 speech already in full existence. TYLOR An- 

 thropology, ch. 1, p. 12. (A., 1899.) 



2O25. 



Stone Age Co- 



eval with Buried Pine-forests. The ques- 

 tion is how long ago tribes who made such 

 stone implements were living in Europe. 

 As to this, we may fairly judge from the 

 position in which they are found in Den- 

 mark. The forests of that country are main- 

 ly of beeches, but in the peat-mosses lie in- 

 numerable trunks of oaks, which show that 

 at an earlier period oak forests prevailed, 

 and deeper still there lie trunks of pine- 

 trees, which show that they were pine for- 

 ests still older than the oak forests. Thus 

 there have been three successive forest-peri- 

 ods, the beech, the oak, and the pine; and 

 the depth of the peat -mosses, which in 

 places is as much as thirty feet, shows that 

 the period of the pine-trees was thousands 

 of years ago. While the forests have been 

 changing, the condition of the people living 

 among them has changed also. The modern 

 woodman cuts down the beech-trees with his 

 iron ax, but among the oak-trunks in the 

 peat are found bronze swords and shield- 

 bosses, which show that the inhabitants of 

 the country were then in the Bronze Age; 

 and, lastly, a flint hatchet taken out from 

 where it lay still lower in the peat beneath 

 the pine-trunks, proves that Stone- Age men 

 in Denmark lived in the pine-forest period, 

 which carries them back to high antiquity. 

 In England the tribes who have left such 

 stone implements were in the land before 

 the invasion of that Celtic race whom we 

 call the ancient Britons, and who no doubt 

 came armed with weapons of metal. The 

 stone hatchet-blades and arrow-heads of the 

 older population lie scattered over our coun- 

 try, hill and dale, moor and fen, near the 

 surface of the ground, or deeper under- 

 ground in peat-mosses or beds of mud and 

 silt. TYLOR Antropology, ch. 1, p. 26. (A., 

 1899.) 



2026. MAN A PART OF NATURE 



Type of the Supernatural. All the analo- 

 gies of human thought are in themselves 

 analogies of Nature; and in proportion as 

 they are built up or are perceived by mind 

 in its higher attributes and work, they are 

 part and parcel of natural truth. Man 

 he whom the Greeks call Anthropos, be- 

 cause, as it has been supposed, he is the only 

 being whose look is upward man is a part 

 of Nature, and no artificial definitions can 

 separate him from it. And yet in another 

 sense it is true that man is above Nature 

 outside of it; and in this aspect he is the 

 very type and image of the " supernatural." 

 ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 8, p. 183. 

 (Burt.) 



2027. MAN AS A MEAT-EATER 

 Helvetius claimed that man was intended 

 to be carnivorous; J. J. Rousseau main- 

 tained, on the contrary, that, like the an- 

 thropoids and the primates in general, man 

 is herbivorous, and tends to become car- 

 nivorous in proportion as he develops. The 

 prehistoric man was herbivorous and fru- 

 givorous. Later, the invention of stone in- 

 struments fitted him to pursue fishing and 

 the chase. Finally, the domestication of 

 certain animals furnished him with a con- 

 stant provision of meat. It was thus that 

 from being herbivorous man has become om- 

 nivorous. But for a long period meat played 

 only a secondary r6le in the alimentation 

 of the superior races. It is only within 

 the last century that this role has increased 

 to such proportions that Europe has become 

 actually more carnivorous than herbivorous. 

 In France, for example, the food, which was 

 almost exclusively vegetable up to a hundred 

 years ago, tends more and more to become 

 animal. DELAUNAY jfitudes de Biologie 

 comparees, 2e partie, p. 34. (Translated 

 for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



2028. MAN AS AN INSTRUMENT 

 OF RESEARCH Specialists in German Uni- 

 versities. The German universities are 

 proud of the number of young specialists 

 whom they turn out every year, not necessa- 

 rily men of any original force of intellect, 

 but men so trained to research that when 

 their professor gives them an historical or 

 philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of 

 laboratory work to do, with a general in- 

 dication as to the best method, they can go 

 off by themselves and use apparatus and 

 consult sources in such a way as to grind 

 out in the requisite number of months some 

 little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of 

 being added to the store of extant human in- 

 formation on that subject. Little else is 

 recognized in Germany as a man's title to 

 academic advancement than his ability thus 

 to show himself an efficient instrument of 

 research. JAMES Talks to Teachers, ch. 4, 

 p. 31. (H. H. & Co., 1900.) 



2029. MAN AS A SEED-DISTRIB- 

 UTER Commerce and Agriculture Good and 

 Evil Spread Abroad. The agency of man in 

 the distribution of plants exceeds in im- 

 portance that of all other means combined. 

 He buys and sells seeds and plants, and 

 sends them to all parts of the habitable 

 globe. He exterminates many plants in 

 large areas, and substitutes in large meas- 

 ure those of his choice. Mixed with seeds of 

 grasses, clovers, or grains, he introduces 

 many weeds and sows them to grow with 

 his crops. BEAL Seed Dispersal, ch. 8, p. 

 81. (G. & Co., 1898.) 



2030. MAN A UNITY, AS A TREE 

 IS NOT Nervous System Makes the Differ- 

 ence. If I begin chopping the foot of a tree 

 its branches are unmoved by my act, and 

 its leaves murmur as peacefully as ever in 



