revision 

 roblem 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



554 



side, on the leaf-stalks of plants. The eggs 

 are laid early in October on the food-plant 

 of the insect. They are of no direct use to 

 the ants, yet they are not left where they 

 are laid, exposed to the severity of the 

 weather and to innumerable dangers, but 

 brought into their nests by the ants, and 

 tended by them with the utmost care 

 through the long winter months until the 

 following March, when the young ones are 

 brought out and again placed on the young 

 shoots of the daisy. This seems to me a 

 most remarkable case of prudence. Our ants 

 may not, perhaps, lay up food for the win- 

 ter, but they do more, for they keep during 

 six months the eggs which will enable them 

 to procure food during the following sum- 

 mer, a case of prudence unexampled in the 

 animal kingdom. AVEBUKY Ants, Bees, and 

 Wasps, ch. 4, p. 73. (A., 1900.) 



2727. 



The Carpenter-bee 



Remarkable Congenital Instinct of Lar- 

 VCB. The carpenter-bee was first observed 

 and described by Reaumur. It makes a long 

 cylindrical tube in the wood of beams, pa- 

 lings, etc. This it divides into a number 

 of successive chambers by partitions made 

 of agglutinated sawdust built across the 

 tube at right angles to its axis. In each 

 chamber there is deposited a single egg, 

 together with a store of pollen for the nour- 

 ishment of the future larva. The larvae 

 hatch out in succession and in the order 

 of their age i. e., the dates at which they 

 were deposited. To provide for this, the 

 bee bores a hole from the lower cell to the 

 exterior, so that each larva, when ready to 

 escape from its chamber, finds an open way 

 from the tube. The larvse have to cut their 

 own way out through the walls of their 

 respective chambers, and it is remarkable 

 that they always cut through the wall that 

 faces the tubular passage left by the parent ; 

 they never bore their way out in the oppo- 

 site direction, which, were they to do so, 

 would entail the destruction of all the other 

 and immature larvse. ROMANES Animal In- 

 telligence, ch. 4, p. 179. (A., 1899.) 



2728. PREVISION OF THOUGHT-^w- 



phasis in Reading Shoivs Sense of Words to 

 Come. How comes it about that a man 

 reading something aloud for the first time 

 is able immediately to emphasize all his 

 words aright, unless from the very first 

 he have a sense of at least the form of the 

 sentence yet to come, which sense is fused 

 with his consciousness of the present word, 

 and modifies its emphasis in his mind so as 

 to make him give it the proper accent as he 

 utters it? Emphasis of this kind is almost 

 altogether a matter of grammatical con- 

 struction. If we read " no more " we expect 

 presently to come upon a " than " ; if we 

 read " however " at the outset of a sentence 

 it is a " yet," a " still," or a " nevertheless " 

 that we expect. A noun in a certain posi- 

 tion demands a verb in a certain mood and 



number, in another position it expects a 

 relative pronoun. Adjectives call for nouns, 

 verbs for adverbs, etc., etc. And this fore- 

 boding of the coming grammatical scheme 

 combined with each successive uttered word 

 is so practically accurate that a reader in- 

 capable of understanding four ideas of the 

 book he is reading aloud can nevertheless 

 read it with the most delicately modulated 

 expression of intelligence. JAMES Psychol- 

 ogy, vol. i, ch. 9, p. 253. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



2729. PRIDE OF HALF-KNOWLEDGE 



Scientific Basis for Practical Precaution 

 Thin Coverings Protect from Frost.- We 

 have the following beautiful passage in the 

 "Essay" of Wells: "I had of ten, in the pride 

 of half-knowledge, smiled at the means fre- 

 quently employed by gardeners to protect 

 tender plants from cold, as it appeared to 

 me impossible that a thin mat or any such 

 flimsy substance could prevent them from 

 attaining the temperature of the atmosphere, 

 by which alone I thought them liable to be 

 injured. But when I had learned that bodies 

 on the surface of the earth become, during 

 a still and serene night, colder than the 

 atmosphere, by radiating their heat to the 

 heavens, I perceived immediately a just rea- 

 son for the practise which I had before 

 deemed useless." TYNDALL Heat a Mode of 

 Motion, lect. 17, p. 500. (A., 1900.) 



2 7 3D. PRINCIPLE OF LIFE ONE 

 THROUGH ALL NATURE AND ALL TIME 



Whatever else may be true, the conviction 

 is brought home to us that in all this endless 

 multifariousness there is one single prin- 

 ciple at work, that all is tending toward 

 an end that was involved from the very be- 

 ginning, if one can speak of beginnings and 

 ends where the process is eternal. The 

 whole universe is animated by a single prin- 

 ciple of life; and whatever we see in it, 

 whether to our half- trained understanding 

 and narrow experience it may seem to be 

 good or bad, is an indispensable part of 

 the stupendous scheme. FISKE Through Na- 

 ture to God, pt. i, ch. 4, p. 24. (H. M. & 

 Co., 1900.) 



2731. PRINCIPLES, NEW, OF LOCO- 

 MOTION Changes in Habits and Speech. 

 During the nineteenth century three distinct 

 modes of locomotion have been originated 

 and brought to a high degree of perfection. 

 Two of them, the locomotive and the steam- 

 ship, are altogether different in principle 

 from what had gone before. Up to the 

 very times of men now living, all our loco- 

 motion was on the same old lines which 

 had been used for thousands of years. It 

 had been improved in details, but without 

 any alteration of principle and without any 

 very great increase of efficiency. The prin- 

 ciples on which our present methods rest 

 are new; they already far surpass anything 

 that could be effected by the older methods; 

 with wonderful rapidity they have spread 



