830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sake of action is not enough, and that I take interest in the game 

 only so far as my self-love is seriously interested in it. It is still 

 necessary for me to have a difficulty to overcome, a rival to sur- 

 pass, an advance to make. In dismounting from a horse, in tak- 

 ing off our skates, in putting away our oars, we congratulate our- 

 selves that we have become stronger, and we feel an imperious 

 necessity for telling of our prowess. We should take less pleas- 

 ure in a game of skill if we could not convince ourselves after 

 each essay, and convince some one else, that we had become more 

 adroit in it. Every exercise in which one is decidedly a past master 

 inspires a vague distaste. 



We are able also to determine, in every physical exercise, a 

 particular kind of pride. Very simple or childish, if you please, 

 but all the deeper and more instinctive — that which one feels in 

 conquering the forces of nature. We delight to refuse what they 

 solicit us to do, and to accomplish what they seem to forbid. 

 Hence the pleasure felt in climbing a hill, putting down an ob- 

 stacle, leaping a ditch, and walking against wind and rain. In 

 canoe-sailing we would rather stand close to the wind than be 

 carried with it, and prefer running over the waves to flying before 

 them. Of all these forces we struggle most earnestly against and 

 most delight to overcome that of gravitation. It binds us to the 

 earth by fetters which we are anxious to unloose, and inflicts dis- 

 abilities upon us and exposes us to dangers that we are glad to 

 escape. Motions of speedy transport are pleasant, because they re- 

 lieve us for the moment from the burden of the feeling of inertia. 

 Hence the agreeableness of riding, driving, cycling, spring-board 

 jumping, vaulting, and riding in an express train. There is a 

 charm in dreaming that we are leaping immense distances and 

 prolonging the bound by the force of the will alone. In the 

 struggle against height, falling is defeat ; equilibrium is the de- 

 fensive ; motion of simple translation is the beginning of enfran- 

 chisement ; and movement upward is triumph. — Translated for 

 the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



The Niagara-studies of Prof. Julius Pohlmann have led him to predict that, 

 after the falls have receded one mile — or in two thousand years — there will be 

 but one fall, the American fall having disappeared, and its islands will be repre- 

 sented by low hill-tops on a peninsula projecting from the American shore ; but 

 the fall will be nearly two hundred feet high. After a recession of three miles 

 more, there will be again two falls at the foot of Grand Island, the Canadian fall 

 being the larger. The height of the falls will thereafter diminish thirty-five feet for 

 every mile they travel south ; and long before they have receded twelve miles, or 

 to the southern end of Grand Island, they must disappear entirely as falls, and pre- 

 sent only a long series of rapids. The second American fall will recede more 

 slowly than the Canadian fall, but will ultimately be reduced to the same con- 

 dition, forming a river with swift-flowing current and perhaps a few short rapids. 



