425 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Man's 

 Mariner's 



2080. MANIA, THE COLLECTING 



Miser a Victim of This Blind Impulse The 

 Same Seen in Lower Animals A Wood-rat's 

 Collection. Every one collects money, and 

 when a man of petty ways is smitten with 

 the collecting mania for this object he neces- 

 sarily becomes a miser. . . . The hoard- 

 ing instinct prevails widely among animals 

 as well as among men. Professor Silliman 

 has thus described one of the hoards of the 

 California wood-rat, made in an empty stove 

 of an unoccupied house: " I found the out- 

 side to be composed entirely of spikes, all 

 laid with symmetry, so as to present the 

 points of the nails outward. In the center 

 of this mass was the nest, composed of fine- 

 ly divided fibers of hemp packing. Inter- 

 laced with the spikes were the following: 

 about two dozen knives, forks, and spoons; 

 all the butchers' knives, three in number; 

 a large carving-knife, fork, and steel; sev- 

 eral large plugs of tobacco, ... an old 

 purse containing some silver, matches, and 

 tobacco ; nearly all the small tools from the 

 tool-closets, with several large augers, . . . 

 all of which must have been transported 

 some distance, as they were originally stored 

 in different parts of the house. . . . The 

 outside casing of a silver watch was dis- 

 posed of in one part of the pile, the glass 

 of the same watch in another, and the works 

 in still another." JAMES Psychology, vol. 

 ii, ch. 24, p. 424. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2081. MANUFACTURE OF NUTRI- 

 TION The Struggle for Food To Be Reduced to 

 a Minimum. At the present moment chem- 

 istry is devoting itself to the experiment of 

 manufacturing nutrition, and with an en- 

 thusiasm which only immediate hope be- 

 gets. It is not the visionaries who have 

 dared to prophesy here. In a hundred labo- 

 ratories the problem is being practically 

 worked out, and, as one of the highest au- 

 thorities assures us, " The time is not far 

 distant when the artificial preparation of 

 articles of food will be accomplished." [Rem- 

 sen, McClure's Magazine, January, 1894.] 

 Already, through the labors of other sci- 

 ences, the struggle for food has been made 

 infinitely easier than it was; but when the 

 immediate quest succeeds, and the food of 

 man is made direct from the elements, the 

 struggle in all its coarser forms will prac- 

 tically be abolished. Civilization cannot 

 ease the whole burden at once; the strug- 

 gle for life will go on, but it will be the 

 struggle with its fangs drawn. DRUMMOND 

 Ascent of Man, ch. 6, p. 213. ( J. P., 1900.) 



2082. MANUFACTURES CONDUCT- 

 ED BY PRIMITIVE WOMAN Her shop 

 was ample enough, for it was the vaulted 

 sky; but her tools and materials and meth- 

 ods were of the simplest kind. What we do 

 in hours she accomplished in years. But if 

 you could from some exalted position take 

 in the exploitation of the earth and sea, the 

 transformation of raw material into things 

 of use, the transportation of these products 



in all directions, the commercial transac- 

 tions involved in the sale of these commodi- 

 ties, you would be astonished to know how 

 many of these wheels were set a-going by 

 women in prehistoric times. MASON Wom- 

 an's Share in Primitive Culture, ch. 1, p. 

 4. (A., 1894.) 



2083. MARCH OF INSECT ARMIES 



The Leaf-bearing Ants. No one can see 

 without astonishment one~of these ant ar- 

 mies traveling along the road they have 

 worn so neatly for themselves, those who 

 are coming from the trees looking like a 

 green procession, almost hidden by the frag- 

 ments of leaves they carry on their backs, 

 while the returning troops, who have al- 

 ready deposited their burden, are hurrying 

 back for more. There seems to be another 

 set of individuals running to and fro, whose 

 office is not quite so clear, unless it be to 

 marshal the whole swarm and act as a kind 

 of police. This view is confirmed by an an- 

 ecdote related by an American resident here, 

 who told us that he once saw an ant, return- 

 ing without his load to the house, stopped 

 by one of these anomalous individuals, se- 

 verely chastised, and sent back to the tree 

 apparently to do his appointed task. AGAS- 

 siz Journey in Brazil, ch. 3, p. 105. (H. 

 M. & Co., 1896.) 



2084. MARINER'S COMPASS, FIRST 

 RECORD OF Now follows in this old trea- 

 tise of an English monk [Neckham, 1157- 

 1217] probably the first of all known de- 

 scriptions of the mariner's compass. Here 

 it is: 



" The sailors, moreover, as they sail over 

 the sea, when in cloudy weather they can 

 no longer profit by the light of the sun, 

 or when the world is wrapped in the dark- 

 ness of the shades of night, and they are 

 ignorant to what part of the horizon the 

 prow is directed, place the needle over the 

 magnet, which is whirled round in a circle, 

 until, when the motion ceases, the point 

 of it (the needle) looks to north." 



The paragraph from the "De Utensilibus " 

 may be best considered simultaneously with 

 the foregoing. The Latin words present 

 many obscurities, to which it is needless to 

 refer in detail here, since they are consid- 

 ered in the following translation: 



" If, then, one wishes a ship well pro- 

 vided with all things, one must have also 

 a needle mounted on a dart. The needle 

 will be oscillated and turn until the point 

 of the needle directs itself to the east 

 (north), thus making known to the sailors 

 the route which they should hold while 

 the Little Bear is concealed from them by 

 the vicissitudes of the atmosphere; for it 

 never disappears under the horizon because 

 of the smallness of the ,circle which it de- 

 scribes." PARK BENJAMIN Intellectual Rise 

 in Electricity, ch. 5, p. 128. (J. W., 1898.) 



2O85. Probability that 



Occident Led Orient A Chinese Copy. The 

 presence of the compass in the early Euro- 



