765 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



World 

 Worms 



They live in society, are grouped in families, 

 associated in nations, have raised cities, and 

 conquered the arts. Doubtless, their senses 

 of sight and hearing do not differ essen- 

 tially from ours, and if we happened to pass 

 a day not far from their abodes, we should 

 perhaps be surprised with their architecture, 

 or charmed by the echo of melodious har- 

 mony, reminding us of the musical inspira- 

 tions of our great masters. In the midst 

 of varieties inherent to planetary diversi- 

 ties and the secular metamorphoses of 

 worlds, we should find the same vital torch 

 kindled on all the spheres. FLAMMABION 

 Popular Astronomy, bk. iv, ch. 4, p. 397. 

 (A.) 



3782. Experience Not the 



Measure of Possibility Increase of Knowl- 

 edge Leads to Modesty of Judgment Life 

 in Ocean Depths. We are apt to forget that 

 the forms of life we are accustomed to are 

 not necessarily the only possible forms of 

 life. It is almost impossible to say under 

 what conditions life is possible or impos- 

 sible. Men of science have lately been taught 

 this in a very striking manner. For, judg- 

 ing by what they know of the state of things 

 at the bottom of the deep sea, they concluded 

 that there could be no living creatures there. 

 They reasoned that the pressure exerted by 

 the water v/ould crush the life out of any 

 known creature, which was unquestionably 

 true. . . . The tremendous mail of the 

 crocodile or the thick skin of the rhinoceros 

 would be unable to resist a tithe of the enor- 

 mous pressure exerted by the water at the 

 bottom of deep seas. Yet it is now known 

 that creatures not only exist down there, 

 but that, notwithstanding the great dark- 

 ness which must prevail there, these crea- 

 tures are provided with the means of seeing. 

 So unlike are they to all other creatures, 

 however, that they are unable to live out 

 of their native depths, and when dragged 

 up by the dredges they burst asunder and 

 are killed long before reaching the surface. 

 This should teach us that altho it may be 

 proved that in some inaccessible world, like 

 Venus or any of her fellow planets, the con- 

 ditions which prevail are not such as would 

 be convenient to terrestrial creatures, or are 

 even such that no creatures known to us 

 could endure them even for a few minutes, 

 life may nevertheless exist. PROCTOR Ex- 

 panse of Heaven, p. 49. (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



3783. 



Neptune Life in 



Ocean Depths Supposed Impossibility Over- 

 come. Is this equivalent to saying that this 

 world [Neptune] is condemned to remain 

 eternally in the state of a sterile and un- 

 inhabited desert? Nature herself replies 

 that such a supposition would be entirely 

 contrary to her acts and her views. Short- 

 sighted naturalists, who think they know 

 everything, would teach dogmatically that 

 a pressure of so many atmospheres prevents 

 life from being produced; that a certain 

 amount of light is indispensable to life, and 



that the ocean depths are absolutely desti- 

 tute of all vital manifestation. A ship starts 

 on an immense liquid plain to visit the 

 equatorial and polar zones, casts the sound- 

 ing-line at 2,000 fathoms, at 10,000 feet in 

 depth, in eternal night a black darkness, 

 where the pressure is such that could a man 

 descend there he would have to support a 

 weight equal to that of twenty locomotives, 

 each accompanied by a train of wagons load- 

 ed with bars of iron. Evidently there is 

 nothing there! The sounding-line is drawn 

 in, however, and brings up charming, deli- 

 cate beings which the lightest touch of the 

 finger of Psyche would kill: they live there 

 tranquil, happy, " like the fish in water," 

 and, since there is no light there, they make 

 it! If they could understand you, you 

 should not speak to them of your castles, 

 your parks and venerable trees, nor of the 

 Paris worldling and the boulevards which 

 you love so much; they prefer their abode, 

 their dark abode in the depths of the sea, 

 scarcely illuminated with the light of their 

 own phosphorescence, and to them there is 

 the true medium, there is real happiness. 

 And when you cast these living debris on the 

 deck of the ship, and when these marvelous 

 beings with variegated embroideries die be- 

 fore your eyes, overwhelmed by the light of 

 the sky, suffocated by the rarefaction of the 

 air which nourishes your lungs, do you not 

 think of Neptune? Do you not see that 

 the god of the ocean has down there an em- 

 pire as vast as the one we see? And as they 

 have there 900 times less light and heat 

 than on the deck of your ship, you imagine 

 that Nature has been unable to produce any- 

 thing there! Error, foolish, insane error, 

 excusable, perhaps, in the time of Aristotle, 

 but absolutely unpardonable now. FLAM- 

 MARION Popular Astronomy, bk. iv, ch. 9, 

 p. 469. (A.) 



3784. WORMS AS BUILDERS In- 

 telligent Skill Shown in the Lining of Their 

 Burrows. Many leaves of the Scotch fir or 

 pine (Pinus sylvestris) were given to worms 

 kept in confinement in two pots; and when 

 after several weeks the earth was carefully 

 broken up, the upper parts of three oblique 

 burrows were found surrounded for lengths 

 of 7, 4, and %]/ 2 inches with pine leaves, 

 together with fragments of other leaves 

 which had been given the worms as food. 

 Glass beads and bits of tile, which had been 

 strewed on the surface of the soil, were 

 stuck into the interstices between the pine 

 leaves; and these interstices were likewise 

 plastered with the viscid castings voided by 

 the worms. The structures thus formed 

 cohered so well that I succeeded in remov- 

 ing one with only a little earth adhering to 

 it. It consisted of a slightly curved cylin- 

 drical case, the interior of which could be 

 seen through holes in the sides and at either 

 end. The pine leaves had all been drawn 

 in by their bases, and the sharp points of 

 the needles had been pressed into the lining 



