759 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Woman 

 Wonders 



release from parental authority doing away 

 with manifold limitations founded on cus- 

 tom. All of the deeper moral relations, 

 the most difficult duties, and the problems 

 of self-abnegation are hidden from youth, 

 and cannot be made comprehensible to them. 

 But the likelihood of the fulfilment of duty 

 does not increase with the systematic foster- 

 ing of ignorance, or the fear of overculture, 

 but with that moral effort that will not al- 

 low any year to pass without profit, with 

 the development of ripe understanding and 

 a firm, self-conscious will. HOLTZENDORFF 

 Die Verbesserungen in der gesellschaftlichen 

 und wirlhsch aft lichen Stellung der Frauen 

 (a Lecture). (Translated for Scientific Side- 

 Lights. ) 



3756. WOMAN'S MISSION The Strug- 

 gle for the Life of Others Motherhood 

 Psychical Attributes of Sex. That cleavage, 

 therefore, which began in the merely physic- 

 al region is now seen to extend into the 

 psychical realm, and ends by supplying the 

 world with two great and forever separate 

 types. No efforts, or explanations, or ex- 

 postulations can ever break down that dis- 

 tinction between maleness and femaleness, 

 or make it possible to believe that they were 

 not destined from the first of time to play 

 a different part in human history. Male 

 and female never have been and never will 

 be the same. They are different in origin; 

 they have traveled to their destinations by 

 different routes; they have had different 

 ends in view. The result is that they are 

 different, and the contribution, therefore, of 

 each to the evolution of the human race is 

 special and unique. ... To him [man] 

 has been mainly assigned the fulfilment of 

 the first great function the struggle for 

 life. Woman ... is the chosen instru- 

 ment for carrying on the struggle for the 

 life of others. Man's life, on the whole, is 

 determined chiefly by the function of nutri- 

 tion; woman's by the function of reproduc- 

 tion. Man satisfies the one by going out 

 into the world, and in the rivalries of war 

 and the ardors of the chase, in conflict with 

 Nature, and amid the stress of industrial 

 pursuits, fulfilling the law of self-preserva- 

 tion; woman completes her destiny by oc- 

 cupying herself with the industries and 

 sanctities of the home, and paying the debt 

 of motherhood to her race. DRUMMOND As- 

 cent of Man, ch. 7, p. 256. ( J. P., 1900.) 



3757. WOMEN THE INVENTORS OF 

 TEXTILES AND POTTERY Mental Power 

 Required for Early Inventions. Only now 

 and then the angry sky was lighted for the 

 primitive man by electricity, and even then 

 it filled him with terror. But it was he 

 that invented the apparatus for conjuring 

 from dried wood, by a rude sort of dynamo, 

 the Promethean spark. It was our Aryan 

 ancestors that paid their devotions to the 

 rising sun by kindling fresh fire every morn- 

 ing as the orb of day flashed his first beam 

 across the earth. 



Who has not read with almost breaking 

 heart the story of Palissy, the Huguenot 

 potter? But what have our witnesses to 

 say of that long line of humble creatures 

 that conjured out of prophetic clay, without 

 wheel or furnace, forms and decorations of 

 imperishable beauty, which are now being 

 copied in glorified material in the best fac- 

 tories of the world ? In_ ceramic as well as 

 in textile art the first inventors were wom- 

 en. They quarried the clay, manipulated 

 it, constructed and decorated the ware, 

 burned it in a rude furnace, and wore it 

 out in a hundred uses. MASON The Birth 

 of Invention (Address at Centenary of Amer- 

 ican Patent System, Washington, D. C., 

 1891; Proceedings of the Congress, p. 409). 



3758. WONDERS OF LIFE RE- 

 VEALED BY CLOSER STUDY Phosphor- 

 escence of Ocean Due to Light-bearing Ani- 

 mals. The luminosity of sea-water is in 

 part owing to living light-bearing animals, 

 and in part to the organic fibers and mem- 

 branes of the same, when in a state of de- 

 composition. The first named of these causes 

 of the phosphorescence of the ocean is un- 

 doubtedly the most common and the most 

 widely diffused. The more actively and the 

 more efficiently that travelers engaged in the 

 study of Nature have learned to employ pow- 

 erful microscopes, the more our zoological 

 systems have been enriched by new groups 

 of Mollusca and Infusoria, whose property 

 of emitting light either at will or from 

 external stimulus has been recognized. . . . 

 The development of light [is] an organic 

 vital process, which exhibits itself in infu- 

 sorial animals as a momentary spark of 

 light, and is repeated after short intervals 

 of rest. HUMBOLDT Views of Nature, p. 247. 

 (Bell, 1896.) 



3759. WONDERS OF NATURE Gla- 

 cier-tables in the Alps. A mass of rock, 

 having fallen on the surface of the glacier, 

 protects the ice immediately beneath it from 

 the action of the sun; and as the level of 

 the glacier sinks all around it, in conse- 

 quence of the unceasing waste of the surface, 

 the rock is gradually left standing on an 

 ice-pillar of considerable height. In pro- 

 portion as the column rises, however, the 

 rays of the sun reach its sides, striking 

 obliquely upon them under the boulder, and 

 wearing them away, until the column be- 

 comes at last too slight to sustain its bur- 

 den, and the rock falls again upon the 

 glacier; or, owing to the unequal action of 

 the sun, striking, of course, with most power 

 on the southern side, the top of the pillar 

 becomes slanting, and the boulder slides off. 

 These ice-pillars, crowned with masses of 

 rock, form a very picturesque feature in 

 the scenery of the glacier, and are represent- 

 ed in many of the landscapes in which Swiss 

 artists have endeavored to reproduce the 

 grandeur and variety of Alpine views, es- 

 pecially in the masterly aquarelles of Lory. 

 The English reader will find them admirably 



