453 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Minerals 

 Missiles 



to yield to the delusion and believe that the 

 apparitions are real. The weird beauty of 

 the expanse of ice- freighted waters and the 

 cold, stern, snow-covered mountains, as well 

 as the lively anticipation of what is to come, 

 make a sail on those northern waters, in 

 brilliant weather, an event that thrills the 

 fancy and leaves an indelible picture on the 

 memory. RUSSELL Glaciers of North 

 America, ch. 6, p. 81. (G. & Co., 1897.) 



2220. "MISCHIEF" IN CHILDREN 



Result of Constructive Instinct. Construct- 

 iveness is as genuine and irresistible an in- 

 stinct in man as in the bee or the beaver. 

 Whatever things are plastic to his hands, 

 those things he must remodel into shapes of 

 his own, and the result of the remodeling, 

 however useless it may be, gives him more 

 pleasure than the original thing. The 

 mania of young children for breaking and 

 pulling apart whatever is given them is 

 more often the expression of a rudimentary 

 constructive impulse than of a destructive 

 one. " Blocks " are the playthings of which 

 they are least apt to tire. Clothes, weapons, 

 tools, habitations, and works of art are the 

 result of the discoveries to which the plastic 

 instinct leads, each individual starting 

 where his forerunners left off, and tradition 

 preserving all that once is gained. JAMES 

 Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 24, p. 426. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



2221. MISER A LUNATIC Typical 

 Hoard of Miser in Boston. In every lunatic 

 asylum we find the collecting instinct devel- 

 oping itself in an equally absurd way. Cer- 

 tain patients will spend all their time pick- 

 ing pins from the floor and hoarding them. 

 Others collect bits of thread, buttons, or 

 rags, and prize them exceedingly. Now, 

 " the miser " par excellence of the popular 

 imagination and of melodrama, the monster 

 of squalor and misanthropy, is simply one 

 of these mentally deranged persons. . . . 

 Even as I write, the morning paper gives an 

 account of the emptying of a miser's den in 

 Boston by the City Board of Health. What 

 the owner hoarded is thus described: 



" He gathered old newspapers, wrapping- 

 paper, incapacitated umbrellas, canes, pieces 

 of common wire, cast-off clothing, empty 

 barrels, pieces of iron, old bones, battered 

 tinware, fractured pots, and bushels of such 

 miscellany as is to be found only at the city 

 * dump/ The empty barrels were filled, 

 shelves were filled, every hole and corner 

 was filled, and in order to make more 

 storage-room, ' the hermit ' covered his 

 storeroom with a network of ropes, and 

 hung the ropes as full as they could hold of 

 his curious collections. There was nothing 

 one could think of that wasn't in that room. 

 As a wood-sawyer the old man had never 

 thrown away a saw-blade or a wood-buck. 

 The bucks were rheumatic and couldn't 

 stand up, and the saw-blades were worn 

 down to almost nothing in the middle. Some 

 had been actually worn in two, but the ends 

 were carefully saved and stored away. As 



a coal-heaver the old man had never cast 

 off a worn-out basket, and there were dozens 

 of the remains of the old things, patched up 

 with canvas and rope-yarns, in the store- 

 room. There were at least two dozen old 

 hats, fur, cloth, silk, and straw," etc. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 24, p. 424. 

 (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2222. MISINTERPRETATION, POPU- 

 LAR, OF SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENON 



I found an opinion prevalent among the 

 sailors of the Spanish ships of the Pacific, 

 that the age of the moon might be deter- 

 mined before the first quarter by looking at 

 it through a piece of silk and counting the 

 multiplied images. Here we have a phe- 

 nomenon of diffraction observed through fine 

 slits. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. iii, p. 129. 

 (H., 1897.) 



2223. MISSILES, METEORIC Air as 



Armor A Soft but Sure Defense The 

 Ceaseless Rain of Meteors Shed Harmlessly 

 Away. How, then, is it, it may be asked, 

 that we never hear of even an accident from 

 ordinary meteors, tho accidents from aero- 

 lites have not been altogether unknown? 

 Here is this great vessel, the earth, sailing 

 through space, and saluted every twenty- 

 four hours by 400 millions of missiles, each 

 flying towards her with many times the ve- 

 locity of the swiftest cannon-ball. This goes 

 on by day and by night, when living crea- 

 tures are far from shelter as well as when 

 they are protected in their various abodes; 

 and yet the inhabitants of earth are perfect- 

 ly safe from all danger. It is not merely 

 that they have been so far fortunate as to 

 escape hitherto, but that they really are as 

 safe as tho the earth were protected by those 

 three-feet armor-plates which will one day, 

 we are told, defend our floating batteries. 



The real protection of the earth is the air 

 which surrounds her. Soft as the air is, the 

 resistance it opposes to swift motion is very 

 great. The swifter the motion the more ef- 

 fective is the resistance. In the case of the 

 meteoric missiles falling 1 on the earth the 

 resistance is so great, owing to their enor- 

 mous velocity, that they are consumed and 

 presently vaporized in their rush through 

 the upper parts of the air. Thus the air 

 forms a perfect protection to our earth. 

 PROCTOR Expanse of Heaven, p. 164. (L. G. 

 & Co., 1897.) 



2224. Unseen Dangers 



We Live Safely under an Annual Rain of 

 One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Millions 

 of Meteors. It is perhaps sufficiently start- 

 ling to be told at the outset that nearly all 

 shooting stars nine hundred and ninety- 

 nine out of every thousand, certainly are 

 missiles which rush towards the earth with 

 a velocity far exceeding that of the swiftest 

 cannon-ball. They are not missiles which 

 miss their mark. They do not, as was once 

 thought, merely graze our atmosphere. They 

 come straight towards the earth, and many 

 among them must make straight towards 



