SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



626 



h 



Captain King in the " Adventure." The cause 

 probably is due to the want of shelter, botli 

 of trees and hills, so that an insect on the 

 wing, with an off-shore breeze, would be very 

 apt to be blown out to sea. DARWIN Nat- 

 uralist's Voyage around the World, ch. 8, p. 

 160. (A., 1898.) 



3101. SHOWER OF VOLCANIC 

 ASHES Cattle Overwhelmed in Fiery Deluge 

 Modern Catastrophe Throws Light on 

 Geologic Past. The great crest or cordil- 

 lera of the Andes is depressed at the Isthmus 

 of Panama to a height of about 1,000 feet, 

 and at the lowest point of separation be- 

 tween the two seas near the Gulf of San 

 Miguel to 150 feet. What some geogra- 

 phers regard as a continuation of that chain 

 in Central America lies to the east of a 

 series of volcanoes, many of which are ac- 

 tive in the provinces of Pasto, Popayan, and 

 Guatemala. Coseguina, on the south side 

 of the Gulf of Fonseca, was in eruption in 

 January, 1835, and some of its ashes fell 

 at Truxillo, on the shores of the Gulf of 

 Mexico. What is still more remarkable, on 

 the same day, at Kingston, in Jamaica, the 

 same shower of ashes fell, having been car- 

 ried by an upper counter-current against the 

 regular east wind which was then blowing. 

 Kingston is about 700 miles distant from 

 Coseguina, and these ashes must have been 

 more than four days in the air, having trav- 

 eled 170 miles a day. Eight leagues to the 

 southward of the crater the ashes covered 

 the ground to the depth of three yards and 

 a half, destroying the woods and dwellings. 

 Thousands of cattle perished, their bodies 

 being in many instances one mass of 

 scorched flesh. Deer and other wild animals 

 sought the towns for protection ; many birds 

 and quadrupeds were found suffocated in 

 the ashes, and the neighboring streams were 

 strewed with dead fish. Such facts throw 

 light on geological monuments, for in the 

 ashes thrown out at remote periods from the 

 volcanoes of Auvergne, now extinct, we find 

 the bones and skeletons of lost species of 

 quadrupeds. LYELL Principles of Geology, 

 bk. ii, ch. 22, p. 349. (A., 1854.) 



3102. SIGHT AND TOUCH NOT 



EQUIVALENT Recovery from Blindness. 

 In regard to our visual conceptions it may 

 be stated with perfect certainty, as the 

 result of very numerous observations made 

 upon persons who have acquired sight for 

 the first time, that these do not serve for 

 the recognition even of those objects with 

 which the individual had become most fa- 

 miliar through the touch, until the two 

 sets of sense-perceptions have been coordi- 

 nated by experience. . . . 



Thus, in a recently recorded case, in which 

 sight was imparted by operation to a young 

 woman who had been blind from birth, but 

 who had nevertheless learned to work well 

 with her needle, when the pair of scissors 

 she had been accustomed to use was placed 

 before her, tho she described their shape, 



color, and glistening metallic character, she 

 was utterly unable to recognize them as 

 scissors until she put her finger on them, 

 when she at once named them, laughing at 

 her own stupidity (as she called it) in not 

 having made them out before. CARPENTER 

 Nature and Man, lect. 6, p. 201. (A., 1889.) 



3103. SIGHT NOT EXPLAINED BY 

 MECHANISM ONLY Material Science Can- 

 not Account for Consciousness, Mind, Life. 

 [In comparing the camera with the eye, we 

 find a close likeness up to a certain point. 

 Mechanism, physics, and chemistry explain 

 the production of the image in both. But 

 suddenly the likeness disappears. There is 

 something in vision that mechanism, phys- 

 ics, and chemistry cannot explain.] At a 

 certain point molecular and chemical change 

 is replaced by sensation, perception, judg- 

 ment, thought, emotion. We pass suddenly 

 into another and wholly different world, 

 where reigns an entirely different order of 

 phenomena. The connection between these 

 two orders of phenomena, the material and 

 the mental, altho it is right . here in the 

 phenomena of the senses, and altho we bring 

 to bear upon it the microscopic eye of sci- 

 ence, is absolutely incomprehensible, and 

 must in the very nature of things always 

 remain so. Certain vibrations of the mole- 

 cules of the brain, certain oxidations, with 

 the formation of carbonic acid, water, and 

 urea, are on the one side, and there appear on 

 the other sensations, consciousness, thoughts, 

 desires, volitions. There are, as it were, 

 two sheets of blotting-paper pasted together ; 

 the one is the brain, the other is the mind. 

 Certain ink-scratches and ink-blotchings, ut- 

 terly meaningless on the one, soak through 

 and appear on the other as intelligible wri- 

 ting. But how or why we know not, and 

 can never hope even to guess. Certain phys- 

 ical phenomena molecular vibrations, de- 

 compositions, and recompositions occur, 

 and there emerge, how we know not, psy- 

 chical phenomena thoughts, emotions, etc. 

 Aladdin's lamp is rubbed physical phe- 

 nomenon and the genie appears psychical 

 phenomenon. LE COMTE Sight, ch. 3, p. 167. 

 (A., 1897.) 



3104. SIGNIFICATION OF LAN- 

 GUAGE LEARNED BY DEAF-MUTE 

 Dr. Howe and Laura Bridgman. Dr. Howe 

 began to teach Laura Bridgman by gum- 

 ming raised letters on various familiar 

 articles. The child was taught by mere con- 

 tiguity to pick out a certain number of 

 particular articles when made to feel the 

 letters. But this was merely a collection of 

 particular signs, out of the mass of which 

 the general purpose of signification had not 

 yet been extracted by the child's mind. Dr. 

 Howe compares his situation at this moment 

 to that of one lowering a line to the bottom 

 of the deep sea in which Laura's soul lay, 

 and waiting until she should spontaneously 

 take hold of it and be raised into the light. 

 The moment came, " accompanied by a radi- 



