Mi-'ernls 

 Missiles 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



452 



it would have been readily, admitted that 

 these, or a much greater variety of sub- 

 stances, had been sublimed in the crevices of 

 kiva, just as several new earthy and metallic 

 compounds are known to have been produced 

 by fumaroles, since the eruption of 1822. 

 LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 24, p. 

 385. (A., 1854.) 



2215. MINES , ANCIENT Trees of 

 Great Age Growing on Excavated Earth. 

 [A group of mining-works of very great an- 

 tiquity] appears to have been first discov- 

 ered in 1847 by Mr. Knapp, the agent of the 

 Minnesota Mining Company. His observa- 

 tions have " brought to light ancient exca- 

 vations of great extent, frequently from 

 twenty- five to thirty feet deep, and scattered 

 over an area of several miles. He counted 

 three hundred and ninety-five annular rings 

 on a hemlock-tree which grew on one of the 

 mounds of earth thrown out of an ancient 

 mine. Mr. Foster also notes the great size 

 and age of a pine stump, which must have 

 grown, flourished, and died since the works 

 were deserted; and Mr. C. Whittesley not 

 only refers to living trees upwards of three 

 hundred years old, now flourishing in the 

 gathered soil of the abandoned trenches, but 

 adds, ' On the same spot there are the de- 

 cayed trunks of a preceding generation or 

 generations of trees that have arrived at 

 maturity and fallen down from old age.' " 

 AVEBURY Prehistoric Times, ch. 8, p. 247. 

 (A., 1900.) 



2216. MINUTENESS INCONCEIVABLE 



Dimensions of Waves of Light Micro- 

 scopic Infinity. Whether, however, there 

 are such things as waves of ether or not, 

 there is something concerned in the phe- 

 nomena of light which has definite dimen- 

 sions, that have been measured with as 

 much accuracy as the dimensions of astron- 

 omy, altho they are at the opposite extreme 

 of the scale of magnitude. We represent 

 these dimensions to our imagination as 

 wave-lengths, that is, as the distances from 

 crest to crest of our assumed ether-waves, 

 and we shall find it difficult to think clearly 

 upon the subject without the aid of this 

 wave theory, and every student of physics 

 will bear me out in the statement that, tho 

 our theory may be a fantom of our scien- 

 tific dreaming, these magnitudes must be the 

 dimensions of something. Here they are: 



Dimensions of Light-waves. 



. . . These values always create a smile 

 with a popular audience, which makes it evi- 

 dent that, by those unfamiliar with the sub- 



ject, they are looked upon as unreal, if not 

 absurd. But this is a prejudice. In our 

 universe the very small is as real as the 

 very great; and if science in astronomy can 

 measure distances so great that this same 

 swift messenger, light, traveling 192,000 

 miles a second, requires years to cross them, 

 we need not be surprised that, at the other 

 end of the scale, it can measure magnitudes 

 like these. COOKE New Chemistry, lect. 1, 

 p. 15. (A., 1899.) 



2217. MIRACLE AN EXERCISE OF 



SUPERHUMAN POWER Locke [in his 

 " Discourse on Miracles "] recognizes the 

 great truth that we can never know what is 

 above Nature unless we know all that is 

 within Nature. But he misses another truth, 

 quite as important, that a miracle would 

 still be a miracle even tho we did know the 

 la\vs through which it was accomplished, 

 provided those laws, tho not beyond human 

 knowledge, were beyond human control. We 

 might know the conditions necessary to the 

 performance of a miracle, altho utterly un- 

 able to bring those conditions about. Yet a 

 work performed by the bringing about of 

 conditions which are out of human reach 

 would certainly be a work attesting super- 

 human power. ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 1, 

 p. 15. (Burt.) 



2218. MIRACLE, DIVINE AGENCY 

 WITHOUT God Working in and through Nat- 

 ural Law. " These see the works of the 

 Lord and his wonders in the deep. For he 

 commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind 

 which lifteth up the waves thereof" (Ps. 

 cvii, 24-25). 



He raises the tempest, not without the 

 wind, but by the wind. In the one way it 

 would have been a miracle, in the other way 

 it is alike effectual, but without any change 

 in the properties or laws of visible Nature 

 without what we commonly understand by 

 a miracle. CHALMERS Astronomical Dis- 

 courses, suppl. disc. 2, p. 243. (R. Ct., 

 1848.) 



2219. MIRAGE AMONG ICE-FLOES 



Cities and Towers of Cloudland. The truly 

 wonderful scenery of Glacier Bay appeals 

 most forcibly to the imagination during the 

 lengthened twilights of summer. The lati- 

 tude corresponds with that of the extreme 

 north of Scotland. In summer the sun de- 

 clines but a few degrees below the northern 

 horizon, and the nights are sufficiently light 

 to reveal the white-robed mountains in half- 

 tones of the most delicate beauty. At such 

 times the thousands of bergs and the broad 

 ice-floes are transformed by the tricks of the 

 mirage into shapes of the most remarkable 

 description. Vast cities, with colonnades and 

 ruined temples, towers and battlements, ap- 

 pear with marvelous realism where only a 

 few moments before there was but a glassy 

 plain of water studded with fragments of 

 floating ice. Sheaf-like fountains and monu- 

 mental shafts appear with such faithful 

 imagery that one is more than half inclined 



