623 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Sensitiveness 

 Sewing 



the worlds which circle round him. To these 

 he certainly supplies much reflected light, 

 and possibly a considerable proportion of 

 inherent light. He probably warms them in 

 a much greater degree. And it seems no 

 unworthy thought respecting him that even 

 as he sways them by his attractive energy, 

 so he nourishes them as a subordinate sun 

 by the heat with which his great mass is 

 instinct. If our sun, so far surpassing all 

 his dependent worlds in mass, yet acts as 

 their servant in such respects, we may rea- 

 sonably believe that Saturn and Jupiter act 

 a similar part towards the orbs which circle 

 round them. PROCTOR Expanse of Heaven, 

 p. 103. (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



3086. SERVICE, RECIPROCAL, OF 

 PLANTS AND ANIMALS Plant life seizes 

 upon its required constituents, and by means 

 of the energy furnished by the sun's rays 

 builds these materials up into its own com- 

 plex forms. Its many and varied forms 

 fulfil a place in beautifying the world. But 

 their contribution to the economy of Na- 

 ture is, by means of their products, to sup- 

 ply food for animal life. The products of 

 plant life are chiefly sugar, starch, fat, and 

 proteids. Animal life is not capable of ex- 

 tracting its nutriment from soil, but it 

 must take the more complex foods which 

 have already been built up by vegetable 

 life. Again, the complementary functions of 

 animal and vegetable life are seen in the 

 absorption by plants of one of the waste 

 materials of animals, viz., carbonic acid 

 gas. Plants abstract from this gas carbon 

 for their own use, and return the oxygen 

 to the air, which in turn is of service to ani- 

 mal life. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 5, p. 147. 

 (G. P. P., 1899.) 



3087. " SETTING OF THE MEM- 

 ORY Learning in Order to Forget Religion 

 and Morality May Be Limited to Times and 

 Seasons. There is an interesting fact con- 

 nected with remembering, which, so far as I 

 know, Mr. R. Verdon was the first writer 

 expressly to call attention to. We can set 

 our memory as it were to retain things for 

 a certain time, and then let them depart. 



" Individuals often remember clearly and 

 well up to the time when they have to use 

 their knowledge, and then, when it is no 

 longer required, there follows a rapid and 

 extensive decay of the traces. Many school- 

 boys forget their lessons after they have 

 said them, many barristers forget details 

 got up for a particular case. Thus a boy 

 learns thirty lines of Homer, says them per- 

 fectly, and then forgets them so that he 

 could not say five consecutive lines the next 

 morning, and a barrister may be one week 

 learned in the mysteries of making cog- 

 wheels, but in the next he may be well 

 acquainted with the anatomy of the ribs 

 instead." 



The rationale of this fact is obscure, and 

 the existence of it ought to make us feel 



how truly subtle are the nervous processes 

 which memory involves. JAMES Psychol- 

 ogy, vol. i, ch. 16, p. 685. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



3088. SEVERITY AND PRIVATION 

 OF THE NORTH Mental Triumph a Com- 

 pensation. Many of the enjoyments which 

 Nature affords are denied to the nations of 

 the North. Many constellations and many 

 vegetable forms, including more especially 

 the most beautiful productions of the earth 

 (palms, tree-ferns, bananas, arborescent 

 grasses, and delicately feathered mimosas), 

 remain forever unknown to them; for the 

 puny plants pent up in our hothouses give 

 but a faint idea of the majestic vegetation 

 of the tropics. But the rich deyelopment of 

 our language, the glowing fancy of the poet, 

 and the imitative art of the painter, afford 

 us abundant compensation; and enable the 

 imagination to depict in vivid colors the 

 images of an exotic Nature. In the frigid 

 North, amid barren heaths, the solitary stu- 

 dent may appropriate all that has been dis- 

 covered in the most remote regions of the 

 earth, and thus create within himself a 

 world as free and imperishable as the spirit 

 from which it emanates. HUMBOLDT Views 

 of Nature, p. 231. (Bell, 1896.) 



3089. SEWING AMONG SAVAGES 



Needles in the Stone Age New Zealand- 

 ers Drill Hole in Glass. The neatness with 

 which the Hottentots, Eskimos, North- 

 American Indians, etc., are able to sew, is 

 very remarkable, altho awls and sinews 

 would in our hands be but poor substitutes 

 for needles and thread. . . . Some cau- 

 tious archeologists hesitated to refer the 

 reindeer caves of the Dordogne to the Stone 

 Age, on account of the bone needles and the 

 works of art which are found in them. The 

 eyes of the needles especially, they thought, 

 could only be made with metallic imple- 

 ments. Professor Lartet ingeniously re- 

 moved these doubts by making a similar 

 needle for himself with the help of a flint; 

 but he might have referred to the fact stated 

 by Cook in his first voyage, that the New 

 Zealanders succeeded in drilling a hole 

 through a piece of glass which he had given 

 them, using for this purpose, as he supposed, 

 a piece of jasper. AVEBTJRY Prehistoric 

 Times, ch. 15, p. 523. (A., 1900.) 



3090. SEWING OF PRIMITIVE 

 WOMAN Plain sewing among the lowest 

 peoples is an affair of the skin dresser. 

 They do not, as has been said, make cloth in 

 long pieces to be cut up and sewed into gar- 

 ments and other useful things. This being 

 the fact, the best tailors ought to be sought 

 in the arctic regions. And this is true, as 

 any one knows who has examined the gar- 

 ments of caribou skin, of sealskin, of the 

 pelts of the little fur-bearing animals, of the 

 intestines of the larger mammals, wrought 

 by the Siberians and the Eskimo. 



Parkas or blouses, trousers or boots, are 



