1 6^ The West American Scientist. 



that the demon was the cause of the erection of these noble monu- 

 ments of ancient civilization, we can not but rejoice at the more 

 peaceful arts of the present era. The builders of these seem to 

 have been admirers of a grand, massive, and imposing style ; and 

 it was not until some centuries later, that the fine and beautiful 

 architecture of the Greeks and Romans made its appearance. 



Dew was regarded by the ancients as etherial, and they believed 

 that if a lark's egg were to b ^ filled with it, that at sunrise it would 

 fly off into space. But we are not informed that this interesting 

 experiment was ever performed. The Greeks knew that amber, 

 when rubbed, would attract bits of straw, feathers, etc., and from 

 this remarkable quality it was supposed to possess a soul ! From 

 the Greek name for this substance (electron) our word electricity 

 is derived. 



As late as the fifteenth century, questions like the following 

 were discussed in France : "How many angels can stand on the 

 point of a needle at the same time?" Such a question at the pres- 

 ent time would be regarded as ridiculous in the extreme ; yet that 

 and many similar ones were once as earnestly discussed by the 

 best educated men of France, and with as much interest, as the 

 scientists of the present day discuss some newly discovered phe- 

 nomenon in geology, chemistry, astronomy or other branch of 

 science. 



The ancients regarded the stars as gods. There was a god of 

 war, a god of the vine, and so on, every department of art having 

 its special divinity. But the investigations of the modern science 

 prove that many of these stars (the planets) are worlds, and with 

 like diurnal revolutions ; while some of them are accompanied by 

 satellites, and it is very probable, also, that some are inhabited. 

 Others of these stars are suns, which, like our own luminary, have 

 their peculiar systems of planets revolving around them. These 

 stars are so very remote from us and each other, that the human 

 mind is totally incapable of comprehending the distance. 



Then again, the earth was regarded as an extended plain which 

 rested upon the back of an elephant, that on a tortoise, and that 

 on an immense serpent, and so on indefinitely. But modern sci- 

 ence has shown the fallacy of the theory also, and proved that the 

 earth is a globe, suspended in space and revolving around its 

 source of light in an orbit of over 500 billion miles in circumfer- 

 ence. 



Fossils formed during the different periods that passed in fitting 

 this earth for the habitation of man, were regarded as freaks of 

 nature; and fossil remains were supposed to be the tons of fallen 

 angels ! Later, these and similar remains were thought to be the 

 skeletons of a race of giants, supposed to have once inhabited the 

 earth. But as time flew on, the science of geology arose, and has 

 successfully proved these to be the remains of mammoth quad- 

 rupeds, which unknown ages ago, roamed over this earth in per- 



