757 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Winds 

 Woman 



swim in the water, be they whales, turtles, 

 fishes, crustaceans, or mollusks. It requires 

 but a superficial acquaintance with the 

 anatomy of the flying-fishes to perceive that 

 their organs of flight are built upon exactly 

 the same pattern as the pectoral fins of most 

 fishes, and differ entirely from the wing of 

 birds, as also from the wing of bats, the 

 latter being in all essentials a paw, iden- 

 tical with the paw of ordinary quadrupeds, 

 save the length of the fingers and the ab- 

 sence of nails on the longest of them. No 

 wonder, then, that the flight of the flying- 

 fishes should entirely differ from that of . 

 birds or bats. AGASSIZ Journey in Brazil, 

 ch. 2, app., p. 522. (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



3747. WISDOM TRANSCENDING 

 HUMAN POWER TO ATTAIN Newton's 



Grand Humility. Why . . . should we 

 hesitate to receive the evidence of a philos- 

 opher like Newton, who, after spending a 

 long life in the investigation of Nature, and 

 with a success unparalleled in the history 

 of science, uttered this memorable sentiment 

 shortly before his death : " I do not know 

 what I may appear to the world; but to 

 myself I seem to have been only like a boy 

 playing on the seashore, and devoting myself 

 now and then to finding a smoother pebble 

 or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the 

 great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered 

 before me." I know this sentiment has been 

 so many times repeated as to seem trite, 

 but, coming from whom it does, .it cannot 

 be too often quoted. It is the testimony of 

 the foremost master of science to its great- 

 est and sublimest truth. 



We can all recognize the marks of design 

 in Nature, and when we add to this evidence 

 of our senses the testimony of a man like 

 Newton, who assures us that the more our 

 powers are enlarged, and the wider our 

 knowledge becomes, the grander and vaster 

 the design will appear, until it surpasses 

 all our powers of thought or imagination, 

 we begin to feel the full depth of the truth. 

 . . . If our minds are incapable of com- 

 prehending the plan, who could have been 

 equal to the design? " Whence, then, cometh 

 wisdom, and where is the place of under- 

 standing, seeing it is hid from the eyes of 

 all living, and kept close from the fowls of 

 the air? . . . God understandeth the way 

 thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. 

 For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and 

 seeth under the whole heaven, to make the 

 weight for the winds . . . and a way for 

 the lightning of the thunder. Then did he 

 see it and declare it; he prepared it, yea, 

 and searched it out. And unto man he said, 

 Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wis- 

 dom, and to depart from evil is understand- 

 ing " [Job xxviii, 20-28]. COOKE Religion 

 and Chemistry, ch. 2, p. 66. (S., 1891.) 



3748. WITCH-GRASS ON WINGS OF 



WIND Distribution of Seeds. One breezy 

 October morning the neighboring fields pre- 

 sented the appearance of a fairies' carnival. 



A thousand tenuous will-o'-the-wisps were 

 dancing and sailing and whirling in every 

 direction. Now one alone with feathery 

 grace would glide along, to join a moment 

 later a host of airy sprites, and be wafted 

 hither and thither by the erratic breath of 

 the zephyr god. Here and there the paths 

 of miniature cyclones could be traced by 

 the movements of whirling circles, while 

 in other places solid phalanxes moved stead- 

 ily forward. The ranks of the revelers were 

 constantly depleted through desertions to 

 the eastward, to be quickly filled by new 

 recruits from out the west. 



With some difficulty I caught a few of 

 these feathery sprites, and, holding them 

 securely, started homeward. But a sudden 

 gust of wind left me empty-handed, save for 

 some tiny pieces of stems; the sprites, again 

 at liberty, sailed away with mocking grace. 

 I caught more, and, shielding them from 

 the wind, got them safely indoors, where 

 they proved to be the seed-heads of a grass 

 commonly known as the " old-witch grass." 

 WEED Seed Travellers, pt. i, p. 18. (G. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



3749. WOMAN A POWER IN SAV- 

 AGE LIFE Cowardice Repressed by Fear of 

 Woman's Scorn. It must not be supposed 

 that in any state of civilization a man's con- 

 duct depends altogether on his own moral 

 sense of right and wrong. Controlling forces 

 of society are at work even among savages, 

 only in more rudimentary ways than among 

 ourselves. Public opinion is already a great 

 power, and the way in which it acts is par- 

 ticularly to be noticed. . . . The assem- 

 bled tribe can crush the mean and cowardly 

 with their scorn, or give that reward of 

 glory for which the high-spirited will risk 

 goods and life. Travelers have remarked 

 that the women, however downtrodden, 

 know how to make their influence felt in 

 this way, and many a warrior whose heart 

 was failing him in face of the enemy has 

 turned from flight when he thought of the 

 girls' mockery when he should slink home 

 to the village, safe but disgraced. TYLOR 

 Anthropology, ch. 16, p. 408. (A., 1899.) 



3750. WOMAN DOMESTICATES THE 



CAT The Guardian of the Food Supply. The 

 world has to thank woman for the domesti- 

 cation of the cat. There may be some dis- 

 pute as to who has the honor of subduing 

 the dog and the milk- and fleece-yielding 

 animals. But woman tamed the wildcat for 

 the protection of her granaries. Of the time 

 when this heartless beast laid down its arms 

 and enlisted in her service no one knoweth. 

 Already at the dawn of written history in 

 Egypt " the cat was sacred to Sekhet, or 

 Pasht, daughter of Ra and wife of Ptah. 

 Then as now the cat and the goddess had 

 among their other qualifications the faculty 

 of seeing in the dark. Her method of domes- 

 tication was to secure the young wildcats 

 and rear them about her household as play- 



