Nature 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



482 



happy isles whereof the poets have given 

 such glowing descriptions, those sandy 

 tracts had begun to yield spontaneously an 

 annual supply of grain, we might then, in- 

 deed, have fancied alterations still more re- 

 markable in the economy of Nature to have 

 attended the first coming of our species 

 into the planet. Or if, when a volcanic is- 

 land like Ischia was, for the first time, 

 brought under cultivation by the enterprise 

 and industry of a Greek colony, the inter- 

 nal fire had become dormant, and the earth- 

 quake had remitted its destructive violence, 

 there would then have been some ground 

 for speculating on the debilitation of the 

 subterranean forces, when the earth was first 

 placed under the dominion of man. But 

 after a long interval of rest the volcano 

 bursts forth again with renewed energy, an- 

 nihilates one-half of the inhabitants, and 

 compels the remainder to emigrate. The 

 course of Nature remains evidently un- 

 changed; and, in like manner, we may sup- 

 pose the general condition of the globe im- 

 mediately before and after the period when 

 our species first began to exist to have been 

 the same, with the exception only of man's 

 presence. LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. 

 i, ch. 9, p. 150. (A., 1854.) 



2368. NATURE, INCITEMENTS TO 

 STUDY OF Early Impressions Determine 

 Life-work. In the simple consideration of 

 the incitements to a scientific study of Na- 

 ture, I would not omit calling attention 

 to the fact that impressions arising from 

 apparently accidental circumstances often 

 as is repeatedly confirmed by experience 

 exercise so powerful an effect on the 

 youthful mind as to determine the whole 

 direction of a man's career through life. 

 The child's pleasure in the form of coun- 

 tries, and of seas and lakes, as deline- 

 ated in maps; the desire to behold southern 

 stars, invisible in our hemisphere; the rep- 

 resentation of palms and cedars of Lebanon 

 as depioted in our illustrated Bibles, may 

 all implant in the mind the first impulse 

 to travel into distant countries. If I might 

 be permitted to instance my own experience, 

 and recall to mind the source from whence 

 sprang my early and fixed desire to visit 

 the land of the tropics, I should name 

 George Forster's " Delineations of the South 

 Sea Islands," the pictures of Hodge, which 

 represented the shores of the Ganges, and 

 which I first saw at the house of Warren 

 Hastings, in London, and a colossal dragon- 

 tree in an old tower of the Botanical Gar- 

 den at Berlin. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, 

 pt. i, p. 20. (H., 1897.) 



2369. NATURE, MUNIFICENCE OF 



Power of Sun's Whole Radiance Would 

 Melt in One Instant an Ice-bridge That 

 Reached to the Moon. Let us suppose that 

 we could sweep up from the earth all the 

 ice and snow on its surface, and, gathering 

 in the accumulations which lie on its arctic; 

 and antarctic poles, commence building with 



it a tower greater than that of Babel, fifteen 

 miles in diameter, and so high as to exhaust 

 our store. Imagine that it could be pre- 

 served untouched by the sun's rays, while 

 we built on with the accumulations of suc- 

 cessive winters, until it stretched out 240,000 

 miles into space, and formed an ice-bridge 

 to the moon, and that then we concentrated 

 on it the sun's whole radiation, neither 

 more nor less than that which goes on every 

 moment. In one second the whole w T ould 

 be gone, melted, boiled, and dissipated in 

 vapor. And this is the rate at which the 

 solar heat is being (to human apprehension) 

 wasted! LANGLEY New Astronomy, ch. 4, 

 p. 96. (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



2370. NATURE NAMED " MATTER 



Mystery Not the End of Inquiry Aris- 

 totle on " the Divine." What is generally 

 called Nature Professor Tyndall names mat- 

 ter a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new 

 definitions (as he avers), inviting misun- 

 derstanding, and leaving the questions we 

 are concerned with just where they were. 

 For it is still to ask: Whence this rich 

 endowment of matter? Whence conies that 

 of which all we see and know is the out- 

 come? That to which potency may in the 

 last resort be ascribed, Professor Tyndall, 

 suspending further judgment, calls mystery 

 using the word in one of its senses, name- 

 ly, something hidden from us which we are 

 not to seek to know. But there are also 

 mysteries proper to be inquired into and to 

 be reasoned about; and altho it may not 

 be given unto us to know the mystery of 

 causation, there can hardly be a more legiti- 

 mate subject of philosophical inquiry. Most 

 scientific men have thought themselves in- 

 tellectually authorized to have an opinion 

 about it. " For, by the primitive and very 

 ancient men, it has been handed down in 

 the form of myths, and thus left to later 

 generations, that the Divine it is which holds 

 together all Nature " ; and this tradition, of 

 which Aristotle, both naturalist and philoso- 

 pher, thus nobly speaks continued through 

 succeeding ages, and illuminated by the light 

 which has come into the world may still 

 express the worthiest thoughts of the mod- 

 ern scientific investigator and reasoner. 

 ASA GRAY Darwiniana, art. 13, p. 389. (A., 

 1889.) 



2371. NATURE OF FORCE UN- 

 KNOWN Gravitation Ascribed to a Supreme 

 Will. We know nothing of the ultimate 

 nature or of the ultimate seat of force. 

 Science, in the modern doctrine of the con- 

 servation of energy, and the convertibility 

 of forces, is already getting something like 

 a firm hold of the idea that all kinds of 

 force are but forms or manifestations of 

 some one central force issuing from some 

 one fountainhead of power. Sir John Her- 

 schel has not hesitated to say that " it is 

 but reasonable to regard the force of gravi- 

 tation as the direct or indirect result 

 of a consciousness or a will existing 



