Walking 

 Waste 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



744 



fants vary enormously; but on the whole 

 it is safe to say that the mode of develop- 

 ment of these locomotor instincts is incon- 

 sistent with the account given by the older 

 English associationist school, of their being 

 results of the individual's education. . . . 

 [Persons] who have observed new-born 

 calves, lambs, and pigs agree that in these 

 animals the powers of standing and walking, 

 and of interpreting the topographical sig- 

 nificance of sights and sounds, are all but 

 fully developed at birth. Often in animals 

 who seem to be " learning " to walk or fly 

 the semblance is illusive. The awkwardness 

 shown is not due to the fact that " experi- 

 ence " has not yet been there to associate 

 the successful movements and exclude the 

 failures, but to the fact that the animal 

 is beginning his attempts before the coordi- 

 nating centers have quite ripened for their 

 work. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 24, p. 

 405. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3684. WALKING SCIENTIFICALLY 



DESCRIBED Walking is a continual fall- 

 ing forward. KAAT Leonardo da, Vinci als 

 Naturforscher. (Translated for Scientific 

 Side-Lights.) 



3685. WANDERERS OF ANCIENT 

 DAYS Boulders Carried Far by Ice North- 

 ern Rocks on Western Prairies. The min- 

 eralogical character of the loose materials 

 forming the American drift leaves no doubt 

 that the whole movement [of the ancient 

 glaciers], with the exception of a few local 

 modifications easily accounted for by the lay 

 of the land, was from north to south, all 

 the fragments not belonging to the localities 

 where they occur being readily traced to 

 rocks in situ to the north of their present 

 resting-places. The farther one journeys 

 from their origin the more extraordinary 

 does the presence of these boulders become. 

 It strikes one strangely to find even in New 

 England fragments of rock from the shores 

 of Lake Superior; but it is still more im- 

 pressive to meet with masses of northern 

 rock on the prairies of Illinois or Iowa. One 

 may follow these boulders to the fortieth de- 

 gree of latitude, beyond which they become 

 more and more rare, while the finer drift 

 alone extends farther south. AGASSIZ Geo- 

 logical Sketches, ser. ii, p. 84. (H. M. & Co., 

 1896.) 



3686. WAR AMONG INSECTS -Slave- 

 making Ants Terrible in Battle Prowess 

 and Excellence Not Coextensive. Polyer- 

 gus rufescens, the celebrated slave-making 

 or Amazon-ant, has a mode of combat almost 

 peculiar to herself. The jaws are very pow- 

 erful, and pointed. If attacked if, for in- 

 stance, another ant seizes her by a leg she 

 at once takes her enemy's head into her 

 jaws, which generally makes her quit her 

 hold. If she does not, the Polyergus closes 

 her mandibles, so that the points pierce the 

 brain of her enemy, paralyzing the nervous 

 system. The victim falls in convulsions, 

 setting free her terrible foe. In this manner 



a comparatively small force of Polyergus 

 will fearlessly attack much larger armies 

 of other species, and suffer themselves scarce- 

 ly any loss. AVEBURY Ants, Bees, and 

 Wasps, ch. 1, p. 18. (A., 1900.) 



3687. WAR, FOREIGN MERCENA- 

 RIES NO LONGER EMPLOYED IN Mod- 

 ern Standing Armies. Looking at the army 

 system as it is in our modern world, one 

 favorable change is to be noticed. The em- 

 ployment of foreign mercenary troops, which 

 almost through the whole stretch of histor- 

 ical record has been a national evil alike in 

 war and peace, is at last dying out. It is 

 not so with the system of standing armies 

 which drain the life and wealth of the world 

 on a scale more enormous even than in past 

 times, and stand as the great obstacle to 

 harmony between nations. The student of 

 politics can but hope that in time the pres- 

 sure of vast armies kept on a war-footing 

 may prove unbearable to the European na- 

 tions which maintain them, and that the 

 time may come when the standing army 

 may shrink to a nucleus ready for the ex- 

 igencies of actual war if it shall arise, while 

 serving in peace-time as a branch of the 

 national police. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 9, 

 p. 228. (A., 1899.) 



3688. WAR, THE FOLLY OF Rela- 

 tive Insignificance of the Earth in the Uni- 

 verse. Behold a little globe whirling in the 

 infinite void. Hound this globule vegetate 

 1,450 millions of so-called reasonable beings 

 or rather talkers who know not whence 

 they come nor whither they go, each of 

 them, moreover, born to die very soon; and 

 this poor humanity has resolved the prob- 

 lem, not of living happily in the light of 

 Nature, but of suffering constantly both in 

 body and mind. It does not emerge from 

 its native ignorance, it does not rise to the 

 intellectual pleasures of art and science, and 

 torments itself perpetually with chimerical 

 ambitions. Strange social organization! 

 This race is divided into tribes subject to 

 chiefs, and from time to time we see these 

 tribes, afflicted with furious folly, arrayed 

 against each other, obeying the signal of a 

 handful of sanguinary evil-doers who live 

 at their expense, and the infamous hydra of 

 war mows down its victims, who fall like 

 ripe ears of corn on the blood-stained fields. 

 Forty millions of men are killed regularly 

 every century in order to maintain the mi- 

 croscopical divisions of a little globule into 

 several ant-hills. FLAMMARION Popular As- 

 tronomy, bk. i, ch. 1, p. 12. (A.) 



3689. WARFARE IN NATURE 



Animals Constructed for Others' Destruc- 

 tion. Very many animals contribute nat- 

 urally to the destruction of caterpillars, spi- 

 ders, and other insects. They lay their eggs 

 in living caterpillars, which consequently be- 

 come diseased and die either before or after 

 their change into pupae. Many also confine 

 themselves to other species of their own 

 genus, in whose bodies they lay their eggs, 



