ience 

 jiences 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



608 



great marsh at the source of the rivers 

 Aller and Ohre. These resulted in the in- 

 teresting discovery that on clear nights the 

 nightly minimal temperature was several 

 degrees lower upon the uncovered black 

 moor earth than upon neighboring places 

 close by of a different character of soil. But 

 if the moor soil was covered with a layer of 

 sand ten centimeters in thickness, as is the 

 procedure in tilling the moor dikes, the dif- 

 ference in the radiation of heat immediately 

 disappeared, so that this greatest danger 

 to vegetation was materially lessened. ASS- 

 MAN, article on Klima, p. 157, in KIRCH- 

 HOFF'S Anleitung zur deutschen Landes- und 

 Volksforschung. (Translated for Scientific 

 Side-Lights.) 



3006. SCIENCE REPLACING SUPER- 

 STITION Observation and Reasoning Correct 

 Disorders of Imagination. Among nations 

 least advanced in civilization the imagina- 

 tion revels in strange and fantastic crea- 

 tions, and, by its predilection for symbols, 

 alike influences ideas and language. Instead 

 of examining, men are led to conjecture, 

 dogmatize, and interpret supposed facts that 

 have never been observed. The inner world 

 of thought and of feeling does not reflect the 

 image of the external world in its primitive 

 purity. That which in some regions of the 

 earth manifested itself as the rudiments of 

 natural philosophy, only to a small num- 

 ber of persons endowed with superior intel- 

 ligence, appears in other regions, and among 

 entire races of men, to be the result of mys- 

 tic tendencies and instinctive intuitions. An 

 intimate communion with Nature, and the 

 vivid and deep emotions thus awakened, 

 are likewise the source from which have 

 sprung the first impulses toward the wor- 

 ship and deification of the destroying and 

 preserving forces of the universe. But by 

 degrees, as man, after having passed through 

 the different gradations of intellectual de- 

 velopment, arrives at the free enjoyment of 

 the regulating power of reflection, and learns 

 by gradual progress, as it were, to separate 

 the world of ideas from that of sensations, 

 he no longer rests satisfied merely with a 

 vague presentiment of the harmonious unity 

 of natural forces; thought begins to fulfil 

 its noble mission, and observation, aided by 

 reason, endeavors to trace phenomena to the 

 causes from which they spring. HUMBOLDT 

 Cosmos, vol. i, int., p. 37. (H., 1897.) 



3007. SCIENCE, ROMANCE OF The 



Story of Man. The last romance of science, 

 the most daring it has ever tried to pen, 

 is the story of the ascent of man. Withheld 

 from all the wistful eyes that have gone 

 before, whose reverent ignorance forbade 

 their wisest minds to ask to see it, this 

 final volume of natural history has begun 

 to open with our century's close. ^DRUM- 

 MONO Ascent of Mew, eh. l,p. 1. (J. P., 1900.) 



3008. SCIENCE, SPURIOUS, IN 

 EARLY EGYPT A Record of Dead Facts. 

 Of science properly so called the Egyptian 



had none. He claimed to have made rec- 

 ords of natural facts for ages, such, for ex- 

 ample, as astronomical observations, which, 

 as he boasted, had been kept up for six 

 thousand centuries. But out of this vast 

 storehouse of accumulated data not a single 

 theory explanatory of the motions of the 

 heavenly bodies ever emerged. He heaped 

 up facts as he did the stones of the great 

 pyramid, with infinite labor, and over a 

 great interval of time, but the mountain 

 of facts was as lifeless as the mountain of 

 stone. It was dead, it held the dead, and 

 there was no health in it. PARK BENJAMIN 

 Intellectual Rise in Electricity, ch. 2, p. 32. 

 (J. W., 1898.) 



3x>O9. SCIENCE TEACHES PROTEC- 

 TION Pasteurization or Sterilization of Milk. 

 The bacteria causing the diseases convey- 

 able by milk succumb at much lower tem- 

 peratures than the boiling-point. Advantage 

 is taken of this in the process known as 

 " pasteurization." By this method the milk 

 is heated to 167-185 F. (75-85 C.). Such 

 a temperature kills harmful microbes, be- 

 cause 75 C. is decidedly above their aver- 

 age thermal death-point, and yet the physic- 

 al changes in the milk are practically nil, 

 because 85 C. does not relatively approach 

 the boiling-point. There is no fixed stand- 

 ard for pasteurization, except that it must 

 be above the thermal death-point of patho- 

 genic bacteria, and yet below the boiling- 

 point. As a matter of fact, 158 F. (70 

 C.) will kill all souring bacteria as well as 

 disease-producing organisms found in milk. 

 If the milk is kept at that temperature 

 for ten or fifteen minutes we say it has 

 been " pasteurized." If it has been boiled, 

 with or without pressure, for half an hour, 

 we say it has been " sterilized." NEWMAN 

 Bacteria, ch. 6, p. 208. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



3010. SCIENCE TEACHES THE 

 NATURALNESS OF RELIGION Religion 

 Shoivs the Supernaturalness of Nature. No 

 science - contributes to another without re- 

 ceiving a reciprocal benefit. And even as 

 the contribution of science to religion is the 

 vindication of the naturalness of the super- 

 natural, so the gift of religion to science 

 is the demonstration of the supernatural- 

 ness of the natural. Thus, as the supernat- 

 ural becomes slowly natural, will also the 

 natural become slowly supernatural, until 

 in the impersonal authority of law men 

 everywhere recognize the authority of God. 

 DRUMMOND Natural Law in the Spiritual 

 World, pref., p. 20. (H. Al.) 



3011. SCIENCE THE GREAT EX- 

 POSITOR Religion Purified by Science Sci- 

 ence Exalted by Religion. Herbert Spencer 

 points out, with how much truth need not 

 now be discussed, that the purification of re- 

 ligion has always come from science. It is 

 very apparent, at all events, that an immense 

 debt must soon be contracted. The shifting 

 of the furnishings will be a work of time. 



