465 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Mound-builder's 

 Movement 



a eavern becomes too large it eventually 

 collapses. MILNE Earthquakes, ch. 17, p. 

 285. (A., 1899.) 



2279. MOUNTAINS SHATTERED 

 Mountainsides Denuded Rivers Checked 

 Fish Taken on Land. The Blue, and other 

 of the highest mountains [in Jamaica, in 

 the earthquake of 1692], are declared to 

 have been strangely torn and rent. They 

 appeared shattered and half naked, no 

 longer affording a fine green prospect, 

 as before, but stripped of their woods 

 and natural verdure. The rivers on these 

 mountains first ceased to flow for about 

 twenty-four hours, and then brought down 

 into the sea, at Port Royal and other places, 

 several hundred thousand tons of timber, 

 which looked like floating islands on the 

 ocean. The trees were in general barked, 

 most of their branches having been torn off 

 in the descent. It is particularly remarked 

 in this as in the narratives of so many 

 earthquakes, that fish were taken in great 

 numbers on the coast during the shocks. 

 The correspondents of Sir Hans Sloane, who 

 collected with care the accounts of eye-wit- 

 nesses of the catastrophe, refer constantly 

 to subsidences, and some supposed the whole 

 of Jamaica to have sunk down. LYELLjPrw- 

 ciples of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 29, p. 505. (A., 

 1854.) 



2280. MOUNTAINS SNOW-CLAD 

 Meaning of "Perpetual Snow" Perpetual 

 Change and Renewal. The term " perpetual 

 snow " should not lead any one to suppose 

 that there is any elevation at which snow, 

 after falling, remains absolutely unchanged. 

 All the snow that falls on the mountains, 

 however high, is destined to disappear in 

 course of time. It may gradually be forced 

 down by the weight of new accumulations 

 to levels at which it melts and runs away 

 as water; it may be blown down to lower 

 and warmer levels, and in this way great 

 quantities of snow are removed by every 

 high wind on snow-clad mountains; it may 

 be melted by the heat of the sun far above 

 the snow-line, or it may evaporate or dis- 

 appear insensibly in the form of invisible 

 vapor. . . . 



It is not, then, because the snow that falls 

 on the tops of mountains remains always 

 the same, that there is a limit of perpetual 

 snow on the highest mountains, even in the 

 tropics. But this limit is that at which 

 snow never altogether disappears before 

 fresh snow has fallen to take its place. 

 It is for that reason that it is not tempera- 

 ture alone that determines the height of 

 the snow-line. CHISHOLM Nature-Studies, 

 p. 33. (Hum., 1888.) 



2281. MOVEMENT, MOLECULAR, 

 CONTAINS NO SUGGESTION OF CON- 

 SCIOUSNESS The consensus of scientific 

 opinion here is extraordinary. " I know 

 nothing," says Huxley, in the name of bi- 

 ology, " and never hope to know anything, 

 of the steps by which the passage from 



molecular movement to states of conscious- 

 ness is effected." "The two things," em- 

 phasizes the physicist, " are on two utterly 

 different platforms: the physical facts go 

 along by themselves, and the mental facts go- 

 along by themselves." " It is all through 

 and forever inconceivable," protests the 

 German physiologist [Du Bois-Reymond] 

 " that a number of atoms of carbon, hydro- 

 gen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on, shall be 

 other than indifferent as to how they are 

 disposed and how they move, how they were 

 disposed and how they moved, how they 

 will be disposed and how they will be moved. 

 It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness 

 shall arise from their joint action." [Com- 

 pare MOTION, ATOMIC, 2256.] DRUMMOND 

 Ascent of Man, ch. 4, p. 124. (J. P., 1900.) 



2282. MOVEMENT OF A DAY CHAN- 

 GES FACE OF THE EARTH Lava-stream 

 Forming Lake Plastic Current Hardens to 

 Rock. A lava-stream may cross a valley 

 so as to obstruct its drainage and cause a 

 lake to form above it, in much the same 

 way as glaciers dam lateral valleys. A large 

 lake was formed in this manner, probably 

 in Pleistocene times, on the Yukon River, 

 Alaska, where it is joined by Pelly River. A 

 series of lava-flows there filled the river val- 

 ley from side to side to a depth of several 

 hundred feet, and formed a dam which re- 

 tained the waters of the Yukon, and gave 

 origin to a broad water body known as Lake 

 Yukon. The obstruction has since been cut 

 through along the southern margin of the 

 old channel, leaving a series of basaltic 

 precipices on the right bank of the river. 

 RUSSELL Lakes of North America, ch. 1, p. 

 17. (G. &Co., 1895.) 



2283. MOVEMENT OF ENTIRE SOLAR 

 SYSTEM THROUGH SPACE Swiftness of 

 the Motion We Are Part of a Universal 

 System. Sir W. Herschel first, and after- 

 wards several other astronomers, have, by 

 the careful study of the stars' movements, 

 ascertained, with what amounts practically 

 to absolute certainty, that our sun, with his 

 whole family of planets, is moving towards 

 the part of the heavens occupied by the 

 constellation Hercules. Every investigation 

 of the evidence has led to the same general 

 result in this respect. ... It has been 

 said that the sun is traveling at the rate 

 of three or four miles in every second of 

 time. But when one examines the evidence 

 one finds that this conclusion depends on as- 

 sumptions as to the average real magnitude 

 of the stars of various orders of apparent 

 brightness. I was long since led to conclude 

 that such assumptions were unsafe, and also 

 to infer from certain evidence which I had col- 

 lected that our sun moves much more swiftly 

 than had been supposed. PROCTOR Expanse 

 of Heaven, p. 289. (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



2284. MOVEMENT OF MUTILATED 

 ANIMAL Reflex Action Becomes Purely Me- 

 chanical. Surely the reasoning is bad which 

 argues that because a given movement goes 



