The threads of certain spiders raised for astronomical purposes withstand changes in temperature, so that often in measuring sunspots they are uninjured when the heat is so great that the lenses of the micrometer eye-pieces are cracked. These spider lines are only one-fifth to one-seventh of a thousandth of an inch in diameter, compared with which the threads of the silk-worm are large and clumsy.—Harper’s Weekly.
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Nature Altruistic—See [Altruism in Nature].
Nature and Man—See [Struggle].
Nature and Prayer—See [Prayer and the Body]; [Prayer Answered].
NATURE AS A CLUE TO SCIENCE
Man prides himself on his powers and attainments. Has he ever made a rose or produced a mechanism like the hand, or done a thousand things that Nature knows?
As an illustration of Nature’s superiority, the electric ray is cited.
The electric ray, or torpedo, has been provided with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and compactness of its structure it greatly exceeds the batteries by which man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like those of a bees’ comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the voltaic pile. The whole is supplied with an enormous amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as the animal’s spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all the cells. A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure.
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