Sensitiveness 

 Sewing 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



622 



3O8O. SENSITIVENESS OF PLANTS 

 TO LIGHT Exactness^/ Movement. In our 

 various experiments we were often struck 

 with the accuracy with which seedlings 

 pointed to a light, altho of small size. To 

 test this, many seedlings of Phalaris, which 

 had germinated in darkness in a very nar- 

 row box several feet in length, were placed 

 in a darkened room near to and in front 

 of a lamp having a small cylindrical wick. 

 The cotyledons at the two ends and in the 

 central part of the box would therefore 

 have to bend in widely different directions 

 in order to point to the light. After they 

 had become rectangularly bent, a long white 

 thread was stretched by two persons, close 

 over and parallel, first to one and then to 

 another cotyledon, and the thread was found 

 in almost every case actually to intersect 

 the small circular wick of the now extin- 

 guished lamp. The deviation from accuracy 

 never exceeded, as far as we could judge, 

 a degree or two. DARWIN Power of Move- 

 ment in Plants, ch. 9, p. 469. (A., 1900.) 



3O81. SENSITIVENESS SPECIALIZED 



Leaves of Dioncea Close at Touch of In- 

 sect Wind and Rain Have No Effect. 

 Drops of water, or a thin, broken stream, 

 falling from a height on the filaments, did 

 not cause the blades to close, tho these fila- 

 ments were afterwards proved to be highly 

 sensitive. No doubt, as in the case of Dros- 

 era, the plant is indifferent to the heaviest 

 shower of rain. Drops of a solution of a 

 half an ounce of sugar to a fluid ounce of 

 water were repeatedly allowed to fall from 

 a height on the filaments, but produced no 

 effect, unless they adhered to them. Again, 

 I blew many times through a fine-pointed 

 tube with my utmost force against the fila- 

 ments without any effect, such blowing being 

 received with as much indifference as no 

 doubt is a heavy gale of wind. We thus see 

 that the sensitiveness of the filaments is of 

 a specialized nature, being related to a mo- 

 mentary touch rather than to prolonged 

 pressure; and the touch must not be from 

 fluids, such as air or water, but from some 

 solid object. DARWIN Insectivorous Plants, 

 ch. 13, p. 236. (A., 1900.) 



3O82. SENTIMENT WITHOUT AC- 

 TION PERNICIOUS Character Hopelessly 

 Enervated. No matter how full a reservoir 

 of maxims one may possess, and no matter 

 how good one's sentiments may be, if one 

 have not taken advantage of every concrete 

 opportunity to act, one's character may re- 

 main entirely unaffected for the better. 

 . . . A tendency to act only becomes effect- 

 ively ingrained in us in proportion to the 

 uninterrupted frequency with which the ac- 

 tions actually occur, and the brain " grows " 

 to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine 

 glow of feeling evaporates without bearing 

 practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; 

 it works so as positively to hinder future 

 resolutions and emotions from taking the 

 normal path of discharge. There is no more 



contemptible type of human character than 

 that of the nerveless sentimentalist and 

 dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering 

 sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never 

 does a manly, concrete deed. Rousseau, in- 

 flaming all the mothers of France by his elo- 

 quence, to follow Nature and nurse their 

 babies themselves, while he sends his own 

 children to the foundling hospital, is the 

 classical example of what I mean. JAMES 

 Psychology, vol. i, ch. 4, p. 125. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



3083. SEPARATENESS OF GREAT 

 SUBKINGDOMS OF ANIMALS "Missing 

 Links " Not Found No Transitional Forms 

 Known in Present or Past. If I had fol- 

 lowed out all these various lines of classi- 

 fication fully I should discover in the end 

 that there was no animal, either recent or 

 fossil, which did not at once fall into one 

 or other of these subkingdoms. In other 

 words, every animal is organized upon one 

 or other of the five or more plans whose 

 existence renders our classification possible. 

 And so definitely and precisely marked is 

 the structure of each animal that, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, there is not 

 the least evidence to prove that a form, in 

 the slightest degree transitional between any 

 two of the groups Vertebrata, Annulosa, Mol- 

 lusca, and Ccelenterata, either exists, or has 

 existed, during that period of the earth's 

 history which is recorded by the geologist. 

 HUXLEY Lay Sermons, vol.'vi, p. 103. (A., 

 1895.) 



3084. SERVICE OF AMATEURS 



Schwabe, a German Magistrate, Takes to 

 Counting Sun-spots Important Law Dis- 

 covered. The sun sometimes has numerous 

 spots on it, and sometimes none at all; but 

 it does not seem to have occurred to any 

 one to. see whether they had any regular 

 period for coming or going, till Schwabe, a 

 magistrate in a little German town, who 

 happened to have a small telescope and a 

 good deal of leisure, began for his own 

 amusement to note their number every day. 

 He commenced in 1826, and with German 

 patience observed daily for forty years. 

 He first found that the spots grew more 

 numerous in 1830, when there was no single 

 day without one; then the number declined 

 very rapidly, till in 1833 they were about 

 gone; then they increased in number again 

 till 1838, then again declined; and so on, 

 till it became evident that sun-spots do not 

 come and go by chance, but run through a 

 cycle of grov/th and disappearance, on the 

 average about once in every eleven years. 

 LANGLEY New Astronomy, ch. 1, p. 77. 

 (H. M. & Co.) 



3085. SERVICE OF GREAT TO 



SMALL "Whosoever Will Be Chief among 

 You, Let Him Be Your Servant" (Matt, xxi, 

 27) Saturn a Minor Sun to His Satellites. 

 We seem compelled, then, to adopt the view 

 that Saturn subserves useful purposes to 



