Mechanics 

 emory 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



him. The desire to accomplish a chosen task 

 seems a sufficient inducement to lead him to 

 take any amount of trouble. This seems a 

 very human feeling, such as is not shown, I 

 believe, by any other animal. It is not the 

 desire of praise, as he never notices people 

 looking on; it is simply the desire to 

 achieve an object for the sake of achieving 

 an object, and he never rests nor allows his 

 attention to be distracted until it is done. 

 ROMANES Animal Intelligence (extract from 

 diary of author's sister), ch. 17, p. 490. (A., 

 1899.) 



2133. MECHANICS OF AMERICA 

 BEFORE COLUMBUS Variety of Tools 

 A True Stone Age. The handy tools of our 

 day do not change the mode of action, they 

 do not add many new ideas out and out. 

 They substitute better material, work more 

 rapidly, and introduce cooperation in their 

 actions. They are more often now driven by 

 power rather than by hand. But the Ameri- 

 can mechanic before the days of Columbus 

 had a respectable tool-chest, as his works 

 will testify. The knives, shears, planes, 

 axes, adzes, chisels, gouges, and saws of the 

 aborigines of the Western Continent were of 

 stone for the most part. The use of teeth, 

 shell, and copper for such purposes was lim- 

 ited. Bronze may have sparingly entered 

 into the list of cutting-tools among the ad- 

 vanced nations. For cutting, the Americans 

 used both chipped and polished implements, 

 and had a great variety of forms for work- 

 ing in hides or wood, or in ivory, antler, 

 horn, slate, and such hard materials. These 

 tools were best developed in the places where 

 the best material abounded, such as British 

 Columbia or the West Indies. . . . Mor- 

 tars for paint, tobacco, and food, and me- 

 tates for food and clay and chocolate, are to 

 be found in all latitudes. From a hole in a 

 natural boulder, in which an elongated 

 pebble was worked, to the intricate Cali- 

 fornia acorn-grinding apparatus, with its 

 exquisite basketry hopper, or to a Mexican 

 metate, tastefully carved, there are several 

 grades of technical education, filled by the 

 triturating and rubbing apparatus of other 

 tribes. There were no mills in America four 

 hundred years ago, turned either by man or 

 beast. The grinding was done with metates 

 and in mortars. For making holes, the im- 

 plement of chief importance is universal, 

 namely, a sharpened bone, used as a mar- 

 linespike, is employed by sailors. The skin- 

 sewer and the basket-maker could not do 

 without it, and hundreds of examples are 

 found in their graves. MASON Aboriginal 

 American Mechanics (Memoirs of Interna- 

 tional Congress of Anthropology, p. 72). 

 (Sch. P. C.) 



2134. MEDITERRANEAN, ABYSSES 



OF Unsolved Problems of Science. The cen- 

 tral abysses, therefore, of this sea [the 

 Mediterranean] are, in all likelihood, at 

 least as deep as the Alps are high; and, as 

 at the depth of seven hundred fathoms only, 

 water has been found to contain a propor- 



tion of salt four times greater than at the 

 surface, we may presume that the excess of 

 salt may be much greater at the depth of 

 two or three miles. After evaporation, the 

 surface-water becomes impregnated with a 

 slight excess of salt, and, its specific gravity 

 being thus increased, it instantly falls to the 

 bottom, while lighter water rises to the top, 

 or flows in laterally, being always supplied 

 by rivers and the current from the Atlantic. 

 The heavier fluid, when it arrives at the 

 bottom, cannot stop if it can gain access to 

 any lower part of the bed of the sea, not 

 previously occupied by water of the same 

 density. 



How far this accumulation of brine can 

 extend before the inferior strata of water 

 will part with any of their salt, and what 

 difference in such a chemical process the im- 

 mense pressure of the incumbent ocean, or 

 the escape of heated vapors, thermal 

 springs, or submarine volcanic eruptions, 

 might occasion, are questions which cannot 

 be answered in the present state of science. 

 LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 

 20, p. 336. (A., 1854.) 



2135. MELODY AND MOTION 

 UNITED Many songsters in widely differ- 

 ent families possess the habit of soaring and 

 falling alternately while singing, and in 

 some cases all the aerial postures and move- 

 ments, the swift or slow descent, vertical, 

 often with oscillations, or in a spiral, and 

 sometimes with a succession of smooth 

 oblique lapses, seem to have an admirable 

 correspondence with the changing and fall- 

 ing voice melody and motion being united 

 in a more intimate and beautiful way than 

 in the most perfect and poetic forms of 

 human dancing. HUDSON Naturalist in La 

 Plata, ch. 19, p. 274. (C. & H., 1895.) 



2136. MEMORY A MARVELOUS 

 PHENOMENON Pvemember ! Have you 

 ever reflected on the marvelous phenomenon 

 we call memory? There is nothing we know 

 better, nothing more familiar. There is no 

 greater mystery. Every hour, every mo- 

 ment, external facts, scenes, utterances, 

 physical sensations, ideas, and moral im- 

 pressions are engraving themselves upon our 

 minds and contributing to form the being 

 which is ourself. Without memory we evi- 

 dently should be nothing, for^the present 

 moment is continually vanishing, and we 

 oscillate perpetually between the past and 

 the future. It is our past that makes some- 

 thing of us, that imparts to us intellectual 

 or moral value; every judgment we form 

 presupposes memory. BERSIER " Souviens 

 Toi" (a Sermon). (Translated for Scien- 

 tific Side-Lights.) 



2137. MEMORY A MYSTERY A 

 Resurrection of the Buried Past. The mys- 

 tery of memory lies in the apparent imme- 

 diateness of the mind's contact with the 

 vanished past. In " looking back " on our 

 life, we seem to ourselves for the moment to 

 rise above the limitations of time, to undo 



