473 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Mystery 



tractableness and vileness of matter that the 

 divine idea finds itself so imperfectly real- 

 ized. Thus the Creator's power is limited 

 by the nature of the material out of which 

 he makes the world. In other words, the 

 world in which we live is the best the Crea- 

 tor could make out of the wretched material 

 at his disposal. Matter is endowed with a 

 diabolical character of its own. FISKE 

 Through Nature to God, pt. i, ch. 3, p. 13. 

 (H. M. & Co., 1900.) 



2317. MYSTERY OF EVOLUTION 



Is Part of the Mystery of Life Problems 

 Unanswered. The process of organic evolu- 

 tion is far from being fully understood. We 

 can only suppose that as there are devised 

 by human beings many puzzles apparently 

 unanswerable till the answer is given, and 

 many necromantic tricks which seem impos- 

 sible till the mode of performance is shown; 

 so there are apparently incomprehensible 

 results which are really achieved by natural 

 processes. Or, otherwise, we must conclude 

 that since life itself proves to be in its ulti- 

 mate nature inconceivable, there is probably 

 an inconceivable element in its ultimate 

 workings. SPENCER Biology, pt. iii, ch. 14 A , 

 p. 574. (A., 1900.) 



2318. MYSTERY OF EXTENDED 

 CONSCIOUSNESS Feeling through Tools and 

 Implements. With the point of a cane we 

 can trace letters in the air or on a wall just 

 as with the finger-tip, and in so doing feel 

 the size and shape of the path described by 

 the cane's tip just as immediately as, with- 

 out a cane, w T e should feel the path described 

 by the tip of our finger. Similarly the 

 draftsman's immediate perception seems to 

 be of the point of his pencil, the surgeon's 

 of the end of his knife, the duelist's of the 

 tip of his rapier as it plunges through his 

 enemy's skin. When on the middle of a vi- 

 brating ladder, we feel not only our feet on 

 the round, but the ladder's feet against the 

 ground far below. If we shake a locked 

 iron gate we feel the middle, on which our 

 hands rest, move, but we equally feel the 

 stability of the ends where the hinges and 

 the lock are, and we seem to feel all three 

 at once. And yet the place where the con- 

 tact is received is in all these cases the skin, 

 whose sensations accordingly are sometimes 

 interpreted as objects on the surface, and at 

 other times as objects a long distance off. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 17, p. 37. (H. 

 H. & Co., 1899.) 



2319. MYSTERY OF FLIGHT Seem- 

 ing Defiance of Gravitation. " The way of 

 an eagle in the air " was one of the things 

 of which Solomon said that " he knew it 

 not." No wonder that the wise king reck- 

 oned it among the great mysteries of Na- 

 ture! The force of gravitation, tho its ex- 

 act measure was not ascertained till the 

 days of Newton, has been the most familiar 

 of all forces in all ages of mankind. How, 

 then, in violation of its known effects could 

 heavy bodies be supported upon the thin 



air, and be gifted with the power of sustain- 

 ing and directing movements more easy,, 

 more rapid, and more certain than the move- 

 ments of other animals upon the firm and 

 solid earth? No animal motion in Nature 

 is so striking or so beautiful as the 



Scythe-like sweep of wings, that dare 

 The headlong plunge through eddying gulfs of air. 



LONGFELLOW, Wayside Inn. 



Nor will the wonder jcease when, so far 

 as the mechanical problem is concerned, 

 the mystery of flight is solved. If we wish 

 to see how material laws can be bent to 

 purpose, we shall study this problem. AR- 

 GYLL Reign of Law, ch. 3, p. 77. (Burt.) 



2320. MYSTERY OF GEOLOGY 



Lake of Unexplained Origin We Find It 

 Amid the Mountains Lake Basin Once the 

 Bed of a Glacier. The sounding-line has. 

 shown that Lake Chelan is over eleven hun- 

 dred feet deep, but its full depth remains- 

 to be determined. In several soundings, 

 made by the writer in its central and west- 

 ern portions, no bottom was reached at the 

 depth indicated. The surface of the lake is. 

 but 950 feet above the sea, so that the bot- 

 tom of the trough is below sea-level. . . . 

 How the great gash in the mountain, fully 

 one hundred miles long, and now filled for 

 more than a thousand feet in depth by the 

 lake, was formed is not easy to explain. 

 Previous to the birth of the present lake the 

 valley was occupied by a large glacier which 

 flowed through it and joined another great 

 ice-stream in the canon of the Columbia. 

 The ice smoothed the precipices of rock and 

 piled up moraines on the more gentle slopes 

 at the east end of the valley, but that the 

 main depression existed before the glacial 

 invasion is evident and is in harmony with 

 the histories of many other valleys in the 

 Cordilleran region. The valley has a still 

 more ancient history, and in Tertiary, or in 

 part perhaps in pre-Tertiary times, was ex- 

 cavated in the hard granite, now seen in its 

 enclosing walls by the slow wear of streams. 

 It is a stream-cut channel, but where the 

 stream rose that did the work, or whence it 

 flowed, remains to be determined by a care- 

 ful study of all the facts bearing on the 

 problem. RUSSELL Lakes of North America* 

 ch. 4, p. 66. (G. & Co., 1895.) 



2321. MYSTERY OF GLACIAL 



EPOCH We have as yet no clue to the 

 source of this great and sudden change of 

 climate [that produced the Glacial epoch]. 

 Various suggestions have been made, among- 

 others that formerly the inclination of the 

 earth's axis was greater, or that a submer- 

 sion of the continents under water might 

 have produced a decided increase of cold; 

 but none of these explanations are satisfac- 

 tory, and science has yet to find any cause 

 which accounts for all the phenomena con- 

 nected with it. It seems, however, unques- 

 tionable that since the opening of the 

 Tertiary Age a cosmic summer and winter 

 have succeeded each other, during which a 



