Force of Running Water.
It has been proved by experiment, that the rapidity at the bottom of a stream is everywhere less than in any part above it, and is greatest at the surface. Also, that in the middle of the stream the particles at the top move swifter than those at the sides. This slowness of the lowest and side currents is produced by friction, and when the rapidity is sufficiently great, the soil composing the sides and bottom gives way. If the water flows at the rate of three inches per second, it will tear up fine clay; six inches per second, fine sand; twelve inches per second, fine gravel; and three feet per second, stones of the size of an egg.—Lyell’s Geology.
Correlation of Physical Forces.
Of late years experimental philosophers have been occupied with the investigation of a profound problem. Formerly, the most brilliant phenomena of nature were attributed to the existence of imponderable fluids. But the Correlation of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity, as varying manifestations of force, attributable to modifications of motion in matter, now employs our subtlest thinkers—Faraday and Grove, Wheatstone and De la Rive. These researches extend even to the confines of the moral phenomena. The chemistry of nature differs from that of the laboratory, and the difference has been attributed, not simply to organization, but to the vital force—a power found only in living organisms. Yet, at length, the laboratory of Hoffman imitates the processes of nature, especially in plants, and produces some of the most delicate of the perfumes of flowers and fruits, and even seems on the very verge of the manufacture of some of its greatest treasures—such as quinine. Some are staggered by the steady march of scientific research into the most sacred sanctuaries of life, and recoil from investigations which trace the growth of the cell in the ovary into the perfect man; as though mystery were essential to faith; or, if it were so, as though there is the slightest risk that in ages to come man will have so stolen the sacred fruit that no mystery will remain to be solved.—Sir James Kay Shuttleworth on Public Education.
The Effect of Oil in stilling Waves.
It was thought that this old idea had been completely disproved by experiment; but, according to the Saturday Review, the very contrary has been the result of recent experiments, in course of which, at all events, waves on a pond, generated by the wind, were completely stilled to a “glassy smoothness” by means of a film of oil scarcely more than the 7,000,000th part of an inch in thickness, and exhibiting the most brilliant zones of iridescent colours from its extreme thinness. The modus operandi is believed to consist simply in the wind ceasing to have a hold upon the water by the intervention of the oil, which slips along the surface with the wind, so that the oil must be applied to windward, and it moves to leeward, smoothing the surface as it goes!
Spontaneous Generation.
Of all errors upon the formation of beings, the most absurd is Spontaneous Generation. Yet it is one of the most popular. If this theory is admissible for inferior beings, such as intestinal worms, infusoria, or polypi, why not for superior beings? The difficulty becomes an impossibility in both cases. Can it be imagined that an organized body, of which all the parts are intimately connected, with an admirably contrived correlation, so full of profound wisdom, is produced by a blind assemblage of physical elements? The organized body must have derived its existence from elements of which it was destitute! Then motion might proceed from inertia, sensibility from insensibility, life from death!