Patience 

 Perception 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



514 



sat at a powerful telescope all day is ex- 

 ceptionally lucky if he has secured enough 

 glimpses of the true structure to aggregate 

 five minutes of clear seeing, while at all 

 other times the attempt to magnify only 

 produces a blurring of the image. This 

 study, then, demands not only fine telescopes 

 and special optical aids, but endless pa- 

 tience. LANGLEY New Astronomy, ch. 1, p. 

 17. ' (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



2528. PEACE, WOMAN'S INFLUENCE 



FOR A charming confession is made by 

 [E. H. Man] with reference to the moral 

 influence of woman's presence. He says: 

 " Experience has taught us that one of the 

 most effective means of. inspiring confidence 

 when endeavoring to make acquaintance 

 with these savages is to show that we are 

 accompanied by women, as they at once 

 infer that, whatever may be our intentions, 

 they are at least not hostile." MASON Wom- 

 an's Share in Primitive Culture, int., p. 7. 

 (A., 1894.) 



2529. PEAKS, VOLCANIC, THE WORK 

 OF TIME The Slow Building of Mountains. 

 All volcanic mountains are nothing but 

 heaps of materials ejected from fissures in 

 the earth's crust, the smaller ones having 

 been formed during a single volcanic out- 

 burst, the larger ones being the result of 

 repeated eruptions from the same orifice, 

 which may, in some cases, have continued 

 in action for tens or hundreds of thousands 

 of years. JUDD Volcanoes, ch. 4, p. 75. (A., 

 1899.) 



2530. PECULIARITIES OF GEOGRAPH- 

 IC DISTRIBUTION Humming-birds Confined 

 to the American Continent. We come on 

 the curious facts of geographical distri- 

 bution, a class of facts which, as much 

 as any other, suggest some specific methods 

 as having been followed in the work of cre- 

 ation. Humming-birds are absolutely con- 

 fined to the great continent of America, with 

 its adjacent islands. Within those limits 

 there is every range of climate, and there 

 are particular species of humming-bird 

 adapted to every region where a flowering 

 vegetation can subsist. It is therefore 

 neither climate nor food which confines 

 the humming-birds to the New World. What 

 is it, then ? The idea of " centers of cre- 

 ation " is at once suggested to the mind. 

 It seems as if the humming-birds were in- 

 troduced at one spot, and as if they had 

 spread over the whole continent which was 

 accessible to them from that spot. They 

 are absent elsewhere, simply because from 

 that spot the other continents of the world 

 were inaccessible to them. ARGYLL Reign 

 of Law, ch. 5, p. 133. (Burt.) 



2531 . PENALTY OF DISUSE Eyes of 

 Cave- fish Atrophied. For instance, if a spe- 

 cies which had always lived in the light 

 were to find its way into some new habi- 

 tat where there was complete darkness, its 

 eyes would become useless to it; and ac- 



cordingly we commonly find that in such 

 species the eyes have more or less complete- 

 ly atrophied. 



This is the case, for instance, with ani- 

 mals which live in dark caves. ... In 

 the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, among 

 other blind animals we find a blind fish 

 and a blind fresh - water crayfish. It is 

 almost superfluous to offer any further proof 

 that these species are descended from an- 

 cestors which possessed the power of sight, 

 beyond the fact that the caverns in ques- 

 tion have not existed from the beginnings 

 of organic life, and that therefore the ani- 

 mals must have lived in the light before 

 they entered them. Nevertheless, in many 

 of these animals direct proof exists in the 

 fact that they still possess vestiges of what 

 have once been eyes. The proteus and the 

 blind fish of the Mammoth Cave have small, 

 imperfectly developed eyes under the skin, 

 which are no longer of any use as organs 

 of sight. In the case of the blind crayfish 

 the eyes have entirely disappeared, altho 

 the movable stalks upon which they were 

 placed still remain. WEISMANN Heredity, 

 vol. ii, ch. 9, p. 9. (Cl. P., 1897.) 



2532. PENDULUM TELLS FORM OF 

 EARTH Galileo and the Chandeliers. Gali- 

 leo, who first observed when a boy (having, 

 probably, suffered his thoughts to wander 

 from the service) that the height of the 

 vaulted roof of a church might be measured 

 by the time of the vibration of the chande- 

 liers suspended at different altitudes, could 

 hardly have anticipated that the pendulum 

 would one day be carried from pole to 

 pole, in order to determine the form of the 

 earth. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. i, p. 167. 

 (H., 1897.) 



2533. PENETRATION AND ACUTE- 

 NESS OF A GREAT MIND Scientific Spirit 

 of Columbus. Among the characteristics of 

 Christopher Columbus we must especially 

 notice the penetration and acuteness with 

 which, without intellectual culture, and 

 without any knowledge of physical and nat- 

 ural science, he could seize and combine 

 the phenomena of the external world. On 

 his arrival in a new world and under a new 

 heaven he examined with care the form of 

 continental masses, the physiognomy of 

 vegetation, the habits of animals, and the 

 distribution of heat and the variations in 

 terrestrial magnetism. W 7 hile the old ad- 

 miral strove to discover the spices of India, 

 and the rhubarb (ruibarba), which had al- 

 ready acquired a great celebrity through 

 the Arabian and Jewish physicians, and 

 through the account of Rubruquis and the 

 Italian travelers, he also examined with 

 the greatest attention the roots, fruits, and 

 leaves of the different plants. ... In 

 the journal of his voyage and in his re- 

 ports ... we find almost all those 

 circumstances touched upon to which sci- 

 entific enterprise was directed in the latter 

 half of the fifteenth and throughout the 



