Reooiis tructioi 

 Reflection 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



576 



of a huge lobster." He arranged the speci- 

 mens in the group before him with as much 

 apparent ease as I have seen a young girl 

 arranging the pieces of ivory or mother-of- 

 pearl in an Indian puzzle. A few broken 

 pieces completed the lozenge-shaped shield; 

 two detached specimens, placed on its op- 

 posite sides, furnished the claws; two or 

 three semirings, with serrated edges, com- 

 posed the jointed body; the compound fig- 

 ure, which but a minute before had so 

 strongly attracted his attention, furnished 

 the terminal flap, and there lay the huge 

 lobster before us, palpable to all. There is 

 homage due to supereminent genius, which 

 Nature spontaneously pays when there are 

 no low feelings of envy or jealousy to inter- 

 fere with her operations, and the reader 

 may well believe that it was willingly ren- 

 dered on this occasion to the genius of Agas- 

 siz. MILLER Old Red Sandstone, ch. 8, p. 

 135. (G. & L., 1851.) 



2843. RECORD, ENDURING, OF 

 THE EVANESCENT Prints of Rain-drops 

 in Geologic Rocks. It may be asked how 

 any clue can be found to phenomena so eva- 

 nescent as those of clouds and moisture. But 

 do we not trace in the old deposits the 

 rain-storms of past times ? The heavy drops 

 of a passing shower, the thick, crowded 

 tread of a splashing rain, or the small pin- 

 pricks of a close and fine one all the story, 

 in short, of the rising vapors, the gathering 

 clouds, the storms and showers of ancient 

 days, we find recorded for us in the fossil 

 rain-drops; and when we add to this the 

 possibility of analyzing the chemical ele- 

 ments which have been absorbed into the 

 soil, but which once made part of the at- 

 mosphere, it is not too much to hope that 

 we shall learn something hereafter of the 

 meteorology even of the earliest geological 

 ages. AGASSIZ Geological Sketches, ser. i, 

 ch. 3, p. 74. (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



2844. RECORD OF MEMORY IM- 

 PERISHABLE Accident May Recall What is 

 Lost from Consciousness The Day of Judg- 

 ment. Accordingly, in a brain that is not 

 disorganized by injury or disease, the organ- 

 ic registrations are never actually forgotten, 

 but endure while life lasts; no wave of 

 oblivion can efface their characters. Con- 

 sciousness, it is true, may be impotent to 

 recall them; but a fever, a blow on the 

 head, a poison in the blood, a dream, 

 the agony of drowning, the hour of death, 

 rending the veil between our present 

 consciousness and these inscriptions, will 

 sometimes call vividly back, in a mo- 

 mentary flash, and call back, too, with all 

 the feelings of the original experience, much 

 that seemed to have vanished from the mind 

 forever. In the deepest and most secret re- 

 cesses of mind there is nothing hidden from 

 the individual self, or from others, which 

 may not be thus some time accidentally re- 

 vealed, so that it might well be that, as De 



Quincey surmised, the opening of the book at 

 the day of judgment shall be the unfolding 

 of the everlasting scroll of memory. MAUDS- 

 LEY Body and Mind, lect. 1, p. 26. (A., 

 1898.) 



2845. RECORDS, EARLY, OF SCI- 

 ENTIFIC FACT Eruptions of Etna. Etna 

 appears to have been in activity from the 

 earliest times of tradition, for Diodorus Si- 

 culus mentions an eruption which caused a 

 district to be deserted by the Sicani before 

 the Trojan war. Thucydides informs us that 

 in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, 

 or in the spring of the year 425 B. C., a lava- 

 stream ravaged the environs of Catania, and 

 this, he says, was the third eruption which 

 had happened in Sicily since the coloniza- 

 tion of that island by the Greeks. The 

 second of the three eruptions alluded to by 

 the historian took place in the year 475 B. C., 

 and was that so poetically described by Pin- 

 dar, two years afterwards, in his first Pythi- 

 an ode. . . . 



In these verses a graphic description is 

 given of Etna, such as it appeared five cen- 

 turies before the Christian era, and such 

 as it has been seen when in eruption in 

 modern times. The poet is only making a 

 passing allusion to the Sicilian volcano as 

 the mountain under which Typhoeus lay 

 buried, yet by a few touches of his master- 

 hand every striking feature of the scene 

 has been faithfully portrayed. We are told 

 of " the snowy Etna, the pillar of heaven 

 the nurse of everlasting frost, in whose deep 

 caverns lie concealed the fountains of un- 

 approachable fire a stream of eddying 

 smoke by day, a bright and ruddy flame by 

 night, and burning rocks rolled down with 

 loud uproar into the sea." LYELL Princi- 

 ples of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 25, p. 398. (A., 

 1854.) 



2846. RECORDS, IMPERISHABLE, 

 OF THE BABYLONIANS Humane Laws 

 Astronomical Beginnings Cuneiform In- 

 scriptions. Of the early Babylonians or 

 Chaldeans less is known [than of the Egyp- 

 tians], yet their monuments and inscriptions 

 show how ancient and how high was their 

 civilization. Their writing was in cunei- 

 form or wedge-shaped characters, of which 

 they seem to have been the inventors, and 

 which their successors, the Assyrians, learnt 

 from them. They were great builders of 

 cities, and the bricks inscribed with their 

 kings' names remain as records of their 

 great temples, such, for instance, as that 

 dedicated to the god of Ur, at the city known 

 to Biblical history as Ur of the Chaldees. 

 Written copies of their laws exist, so ad- 

 vanced as to have provisions as to the prop- 

 erty of married women, the imprisonment 

 of a father or mother for denying their 

 son; the daily fine of a half-measure of corn 

 levied on the master who killed or ill-used 

 his slaves. Their astrology, which made the 

 names of Chaldean and Baylonian famous 

 ever since, led them to make those regular 



