Nation 

 Nature 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



480 



ence in political councils, and has been re- 

 cently deprived of a great part of her an- 

 cient possessions, but the Danes of to-day 

 are no unworthy representatives of their 

 ancestors. Many a larger nation might envy 

 them the position they hold in science and 

 art, and few have contributed more to the 

 progress of human knowledge. Copenhagen 

 may well be proud both of her museums and 

 of her professors, and I would especially 

 point to the celebrated Museum of Northern 

 Antiquities as being most characteristic and 

 unique. AVEBUBY Prehistoric Times, ch. 7, 

 p. 213. (A., 1900.) 



2355. NATURALISTS HAD REA- 

 SONS FOR DENYING DEEP-SEA LIFE 



Fact Contradicts Reasonable Theory. It is 

 not surprising that the naturalists of the 

 tarly part of the present century could not 

 believe in the existence of a fauna at the 

 bottom of the deep seas. The extraordinary 

 conditions of such a region the enormous 

 pressure, the absolute darkness, the probable 

 absence of any vegetable life from want of 

 direct sunlight might very well have been 

 considered sufficient to form an impassable 

 barrier to the animals migrating from the 

 shallow waters and to prevent the develop- 

 ment of a fauna peculiarly its own. HICK- 

 SON Fauna of the Deep Sea, ch. 2, p. 17. 

 (A., 1894.) 



2356. NATURE A COSMOS The Study 

 of Ages. He who can trace, through by- 

 gone times, the stream of our knowledge to 

 its primitive source, will learn from history 

 how, for thousands of years, man has la- 

 bored, amid the ever-recurring changes of 

 form, to recognize the invariability of nat- 

 ural laws; and has thus, by the force of 

 mind, gradually subdued a great portion of 

 the physical world to his dominion. In in- 

 terrogating the history of the past, we trace 

 the mysterious course of ideas yielding the 

 first glimmering perception of the same 

 image of a cosmos, or harmoniously ordered 

 whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the 

 human mind in the primitive ages of the 

 world, is now fully revealed to the maturer 

 intellect of mankind as the result of long 

 and laborious observation. HUMBOLDT Cos- 

 mos, vol. i, int., p. 23. (H., 1897.) 



2357. NATURE AIDS INDUSTRIES 



Native Copper Waiting for Primitive Man 

 to Pick Up. In the neighborhood of Lake 

 Superior, and in some other still more 

 northern localities, copper is found native in 

 large quantities, and the Indians had there- 

 fore nothing to do but to break off pieces 

 and hammer them into the required shape. 

 Hearne's celebrated journey to the mouth of 

 the Coppermine River, under the auspices of 

 the Hudson's Bay Company, was undertaken 

 in order to examine the locality whence the 

 natives of that district obtained the metal. 

 In this 'case it occurred in lumps actually on 

 the surface, and the Indians seem to have 

 picked up what they could, without attempt- 



ing anything that could be called mining. 

 AVEBUBY Prehistoric Times, ch. 8, p. 243. 

 (A., 1900.) 



2358. NATURE AN ARMORY Inva- 

 riable Law Admits of Varying Adjustment 

 Will, Contrivance, and Purpose Find 

 Place. Nature is a great armory of 

 weapons and implements for the service 

 and the use of will. Many of them are too 

 ponderous for man to wield. He can only 

 look with awe on the tremendous forces 

 which are everywhere seen yoked under the 

 conditions of adjustment on the smooth- 

 ness of their motions on the magnitude 

 and the minuteness, on the silence and the 

 perfection, of their work. But there are 

 also many weapons hung upon the walls 

 which lend themselves to human hands 

 lesser tools which man can use. He cannot 

 alter or modify them in shape or pattern, in 

 quality or in power. The fashion of them 

 and the nature of them are fixed forever. 

 These are, indeed, invariable. Only if we 

 know how to use them, then that use is ours. 

 Then also the lesser contrivances which we 

 can set in motion are ever found to work in 

 perfect harmony with the vaster mechanisms 

 which are moving overhead. And as in the 

 material world no effort gives so fully the 

 sense of work achieved as the subjugation of 

 some natural force under the command of 

 will, so in the world of mind no triumphs of 

 the spirit are happier than those by which 

 some natural tendency of human character 

 is led to the accomplishment of a purpose 

 \vhich is wise and good. ARGYLL Reign of 

 Law, ch. 7, p. 227. (Burt.) 



2359. NATURE ANTICIPATES HU- 

 MAN INVENTION The Bees Invented Can- 

 ning. With their honey-cells sealed air- 

 tight, into which some observers believe that 

 a drop of formic acid is injected, the bee 

 folk were actually the first in the world to 

 found a canning factory. GLOCK Die Sym- 

 bolik der Bienen, p. 20. (Translated for 

 Scientific Side-Lights.) 



2360. " NATURE " A PSEUDONYM 

 FOR GOD An Intelligent Creative Mind. 

 An able writer of the agnostic school, in a 

 popular lecture on coal, . . . apostro- 

 phizes " Nature " as the cunning contriver 

 who stored up this buried sunlight by her 

 strange and mysterious alchemy, kept it 

 quietly to herself through all the long ge- 

 ological periods when reptiles and brute 

 mammals were lords of creation, and 

 through those centuries of barbarism when 

 savage men roamed over the productive coal- 

 districts in ignorance of their treasures, and 

 then revealed her long-hidden stores of 

 wealth and comfort to the admiring study 

 of science and civilization, and for the 

 benefit of the millions belonging to densely 

 peopled and progressive nations. It is plain 

 that l f Nature " in such .a connection repre- 

 sents either a poetical fiction, a ^supersti- 

 tious fancy, or an intelligent creative mind. 

 It is further evident that such creative mind 



