ftone 

 to rin 8 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



654 



plowing or digging. One favorite notion 

 in England and elsewhere is that the stone 

 hatchets are " thunderbolts " fallen from the 

 sky with the lightning flash. It has been 

 imagined that in the east, the seat of the 

 most ancient civilizations, some district 

 might be found without any traces of man 

 having lived there in a state of early rude- 

 ness, so that in this part of the world he 

 might have been civilized from the first. 

 But it is not so. In Assyria, Palestine, 

 Egypt, as in other lands, one may find 

 sharp-chipped flints, which show that here 

 also tribes in the Stone Age once lived 

 before the use of metal brought in higher 

 civilization. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 1, p. 

 25. (A., 1899.) 



3234. STONE AS BUILDING MA- 

 TERIAL Durability of Causes of Decay- 

 Bending of Bunker Rill Monument. The 

 solvent power of water, which attacks even 

 glass, must in time produce an appreciable 

 effect on the most solid material, particu- 

 larly where it contains, as the water of the 

 atmosphere always does, carbonic acid in 

 solution. The attrition of silicious dusts, 

 when blown against a building, or washed 

 down its sides by rain, is evidently oper- 

 ative in wearing away the surface, tho the 

 evanescent portion removed at each time 

 may not be indicated by the nicest balance. 

 An examination of the basin which former- 

 ly received the water from the fountain at 

 the western entrance of the Capitol, now 

 deposited in the Patent Office, will convince 

 any one of the great amount of action pro- 

 duced principally by water charged with 

 carbonic acid. Again, every flash of light- 

 ning not only generates nitric acid (which 

 in solution in the rain acts on the marble ) , 

 but also by its inductive effects at a distance 

 produces chemical changes along the moist 

 wall, which are at the present time beyond 

 our means of estimating. Also the constant 

 variations of temperature from day to day, 

 and even from hour to hour, give rise to 

 molecular motions which must affect the 

 durability of the material of a building. 

 Recent observations on the pendulum have 

 shown that the Bunker Hill monument is 

 scarcely for a moment in a state of rest, 

 but is constantly warping and bending under 

 the influence of the ever varying tempera- 

 ture of its different sides. 



Moreover, as soon as the polished surface 

 of a building is made rough from any of the 

 causes aforementioned, the seeds of minute 

 lichens and mosses, which are constantly 

 floating in the atmosphere, make it a place 

 of repose, and from the growth and decay 

 of the microscopic plants which spring from 

 these discoloration is produced and disin- 

 tegration assisted. HENRY Mode of Test- 

 ing Building Materials, Scientific Writings, 

 vol. i, p. 345. (Sm. Inst., 1886.) 



3235. STONE-CUTTING, ANCIENT 



Blocks Laid without Cement. In ancient 

 Egypt the masons hewed and smoothed even 



granite and porphyry to a finish which is 

 envied by the architects of our own day, 

 and the pyramids of Gizeh are as wonderful 

 for the fine masonry of their slopes, cham- 

 bers, and passages as for their prodigious 

 size. Our modern notion of a stone build- 

 ing is that the blocks of stone are to be 

 fixed together with a layer of mortar to 

 bind them, but in the old and beautiful 

 architecture of Egypt and Greece the faced 

 stone blocks lie on one another, having no 

 cement to hold them, and needing none. 

 TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 10, p. 233. (A., 

 1899.) 



3236. STONES OF ANCIENT MONU- 

 MENTS BURIED BY WORMS Stonehenge. 

 At Stonehenge some of the outer druidic- 

 al stones are now prostrate, having fallen 

 at a remote but unknown period, and these 

 have become buried to a moderate depth in 

 the ground. They are surrounded by slo- 

 ping borders of turf, on which recent cast- 

 ings were seen. Close to one of these fallen 

 stones, which was 17 feet long, 6 feet broad, 

 and 28 y 2 inches thick, a hole was dug, and 

 here the vegetable mold was at least 9% 

 inches in thickness. At this depth a flint 

 was found, and a little higher up on one 

 side of the hole a fragment of glass. The 

 base of the stone lay about 9y 8 inches be- 

 neath the level of the surrounding ground, 

 and its upper surface 19 inches above the 

 ground. 



A hole was also dug close to a second 

 huge stone, which in falling had broken 

 into two pieces, and this must have hap- 

 pened long ago, judging from the weathered 

 aspect of the fractured ends. The base was 

 buried to a depth of 10 inches, as was ascer- 

 tained by driving an iron skewer horizontal- 

 ly into the ground beneath it. The vegetable 

 mold forming the turf-covered sloping bor- 

 der round the stone, on which many castings 

 had recently been ejected, was 10 inches in 

 thickness, and most of this mold must have 

 been brought up by worms from beneath 

 its base. DARWIN Formation of Vegetable 

 Mold, ch. 3, p. 45. (Hum., 1887.) 



3237. STORE OF NUTRIMENT IN 

 SEED A Help to Plant in Struggle for Life. 

 The store of nutriment laid up within 

 the seeds of many plants seems at first 

 sight to have no sort of relation to other 

 plants. But from the strong growth of 

 young plants produced from such seeds as 

 pease and beans, when sown in the midst 

 of long grass, it may be suspected that the 

 chief use of the nutriment in the seed is to 

 favor the growth of the seedlings, while 

 struggling with other plants growing vigor- 

 ously all around. DARWIN Origin of Spe- 

 cies, ch. 3, p. 71. (Burt.) 



3238. STORIES ABOUT GORILLA 

 DISCREDITED His Dwelling a Mere Rude 

 N es t Ferocity in Attack. Dr. Savage re- 

 pudiates the stories about the gorillas car- 

 rying off women and vanquishing elephants, 

 and then adds: 



