Power 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



540 



yet be due to such investigations. LANGLEY 

 New Astronomy, ch. 4, p. 111. (H. M. & 

 Co., 1896.) 



2662. POWER NOT PRODUCED BY 



MACHINE The Craze of Perpetual Motion. 

 It was an old notion that power could be 

 gained by machinery, and many men have 

 spent years of time as well as fortunes in 

 pursuing this will-o'-the-wisp, which, if true, 

 would enable us to construct a machine that 

 would propel itself. From their standpoint 

 an animal or a man seemed to be a realiza- 

 tion of a perpetual motion. They did not 

 take into account the fact that the food 

 which an animal eats and the air that it 

 breathes sustain the relation, in a sense, to 

 animal locomotion that coal burned under 

 a boiler does to the propulsion of a steam- 

 engine. In both cases there is oxidation 

 caused by the union of oxygen with the 

 carbon, the result of which is the produc- 

 tion of heat. Many ingenious automatons 

 were .constructed that would simulate the 

 movements of men and animals in the 

 performance of certain kinds of work; and 

 their ingenious constructors had in view 

 the solution of a greater problem than that 

 of the construction of a mere mechanical 

 toy. ELISHA GRAY Nature's Miracles, vol. 

 ii, ch. 2, p. 23. (F. H. & H., 1900.) 



2663. POWER NOT PROPORTIONED TO 



SIZE Bacteria Inconceivably Minute. This 

 [the coccus] is the group of round cells. 

 They vary in size as regards species and 

 as regards the conditions, artificial or nat- 

 ural, under which they have been grown. 

 Some are less than ^fo^ of an inch in diam- 

 eter; others are half as large again, if the 

 word " large " may be used to describe such 

 minute objects. No regular standard can 

 be laid down as reliable with regard to their 

 size. Hence the subdivisions of the cocci are 

 dependent not upon the individual elements 

 so much as upon the relation of those ele- 

 ments to each other. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 

 1, p. 8. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



2664. POWER OF ADAPTATION 



What is a "Common Plant " ? " What," 

 said Professor Lindley, fifty years ago, " is 

 a * common ' plant but one which can grow 

 and propagate itself in almost any kind of 

 soil, and under almost every range of tem- 

 perature ; and what is a ' rare ' plant but 

 one which cannot flourish and produce seed, 

 except under certain special conditions ? " 

 Every botanist knows that among our own 

 wild plants, Rosa, Rubus, and Salix are 

 alike the most " variable " and the most 

 " common " types ; " common," because they 

 have the capacity for adapting themselves 

 to different conditions of growth ; " vari- 

 able," because of the influence of those vary- 

 ing conditions upon their organization. Out 

 of the forms of rose, bramble, and willow, 

 ranked as " varietal " by Mr. Bentham, our 

 ablest student of them, previous systematists 



had created more than three hundred " spe- 

 cies." CARPENTER Nature and Man, lect. 15, 

 p. 437. (A., 1889.) 



2665. POWER OF A GREAT TEACHER 



Work of Agassis in America Influence 

 Long Enduring. With the possible excep- 

 tion of the elder Silliman, the influence of 

 Louis Agassiz on the development of science 

 in our country has been greater than that 

 of any other single man. . . . The son 

 of a Protestant clergyman, he was born in 

 Switzerland in 1807, and his early academic 

 education was obtained in Bienne, Lausanne, 

 and Zurich, whence he passed to the great 

 German universities of Heidelberg, Munich, 

 and Erlangen. Even in those days he was 

 a leader. ... In 1846 an invitation to 

 deliver a course of lectures before the Lowell 

 Institute in Boston was obtained for him 

 through the interest of his friend, Sir 

 Charles Lyell, and he agreed, with Mr. John 

 A. Lowell, to give a course of lectures on 

 the " Plan of the Creation," especially in the 

 animal kingdom. He arrived in Boston in 

 October, and in December delivered his first 

 lecture. " He carried his audience captive." 

 . . . Enthusiastic audiences greeted him 

 in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and 

 elsewhere, and yielding to the irresistible 

 opportunities offered to him he severed the 

 ties that bound him to the land of his birth, 

 and accepted the chair of zoology and ge- 

 ology in the Lawrence Scientific School. 



Guyot, his friend from boyhood, in speak- 

 ing of the immense power he exerted in this 

 country in spreading the taste for natural 

 science and elevating the standard, says: 



"How many leading students of Nature 

 are found to call themselves his pupils, and 

 gratefully acknowledge their great indebted- 

 ness to his judicious training? How many 

 who now occupy scientific chairs in our pub- 

 lic institutions multiply his influence by 

 inculcating his methods, thus rendering fu- 

 ture success sure." 



In this connection I want to quote from 

 a letter of one of his students who wrote 

 me concerning his teaching as follows: 



" The ideal of a young scientific student, 

 and of every great teacher, is a devotion to 

 scientific research for its own sake. Agassiz 

 had that ideal extraordinarily developed, and 

 on that account the student was drawn to 

 him and felt in a corresponding degree a 

 great influence on his life. Agassiz made 

 many and important contributions to sci- 

 ence, but the greatest of all was a life which 

 embodied the ideal that scientific research 

 is an unselfish study of truth for truth's 

 sake. Every student who was brought in 

 contact with Agassiz recognized this ideal, 

 and was profoundly influenced by it." 



The Museum of Comparative Zoology in 

 Cambridge is his most conspicuous monu- 

 ment, but his influence, more powerful than 

 bricks or mortar, will live forever. 



A boulder from the glacier of the Aar 

 marks his last resting-place in Mount Au- 



