Pleasant Ways in Science

by Richard A. Proctor

[31] The paper is soaked in dilute ferrocyanide of potassium, and the passage of the current forms a Prussian blue.

[32] Sir W. Thomson states, in his altogether excellent article on the electric telegraph, in Nichol’s Cyclopædia, that the invention of this process is due to Mr. Bakewell.

[33] It is to be noticed, however, that the recording pointer must always mark its lines in the same direction, so that, unless a message is being transmitted at the same time that one is being received (in which case the oscillations both ways are utilized), the instrument works only during one-half of each complete double oscillation.

[34] It seems to me a pity that in the English edition of this work the usual measures have not been substituted throughout. The book is not intended or indeed suitable for scientific readers, who alone are accustomed to the metric system. Other readers do not care to have a little sum in reduction to go through at each numerical statement.

[35] Hanno’s Periplus—the voyage of Hanno, chief of the Carthaginians, round the parts of Libya, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the narrative of which he posted up in the Temple of Kronos.

[36] I may mention one which occurred within my own experience. A mastiff of mine, some years ago, was eating from a plate full of broken meat. It was his custom to bury the large pieces when there was more than he could get through. While he was burying a large piece, a cat ran off with a small fragment. The moment he returned to the plate he missed this, and, seeing no one else near the plate, he, in his own way, accused a little daughter of mine (some two or three years old) of the theft. Looking fiercely at her, he growled his suspicions, and would not suffer her to escape from the corner where his plate stood until I dragged him away by his chain. Nor did he for some time forget the wrong which he supposed she had done him, but always growled when she came near his house.

[37] It may be suggested, in passing, that the association which has been commonly noticed between prominent eyeballs and command of language (phrenologists place the organ of language, in their unscientific phraseology, behind the eyeballs) may be related in some degree to the circumstance that in gradually emerging from the condition of an arboreal creature the anthropoid ape would not only cease to derive advantage from sunken eyes, but would be benefited by the possession of more prominent eyeballs. The increasing prominence of the eyeballs would thus be a change directly associated with the gradual advance of the animal to a condition in which, associating into larger and larger companies and becoming more and more dependent on mutual assistance and discipline, they would require the use of a gradually extending series of vocal signs to indicate their wants and wishes to each other.

[38] The word hypothesis is too often used as though it were synonymous with theory, so that Newton’s famous saying, “Hypotheses non fingo” has come to be regarded by many as though it expressed an objection on Newton’s part against the formation of theories. This would have been strange indeed in the author of the noblest theory yet propounded by man in matters scientific. Newton indicates his meaning plainly enough, in the very paragraph in which the above expression occurs, defining an hypothesis as an opinion not based on phenomena.

[39] I find it somewhat difficult to understand clearly Mr. Mivart’s own position with reference to the general theory of evolution. He certainly is an evolutionist, and as certainly he considers natural selection combined with the tendency to variation (as ordinarily understood) insufficient to account for the existence of the various forms of animal and vegetable existence. He supplies the missing factor in “an innate law imposed on nature, by which new and definite species, under definite conditions, emerged from a latent and potential being into actual and manifest existence;” and, so far as can be judged, he considers that the origin of man himself is an instance of the operation of this law.

[40] The Middle Tertiary period—the Tertiary, which includes the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, being the latest of the three great periods recognized by geologists as preceding the present era, which includes the entire history of man as at present known geologically.