(1631)
Inscrutability of God—See [God’s Inscrutability].
INSECT, A MODEL
Mark Isambard Brunel, the great engineer, was standing one day, about three-quarters of a century ago, in a ship-yard watching the movements of an animal known as the Teredo navales—in English, the naval wood-worm—when a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to him. He saw that this creature bored its way into the piece of wood upon which it was operating by means of a very extraordinary mechanical apparatus. Looking at the animal attentively through a microscope, he found that it was covered in front with a pair of valvular shells; that with its foot as a purchase, it communicated a rotary motion and a forward impulse to the valves, which, acting upon the wood like a gimlet, penetrated its substance; and that as the particles of wood were loosened, they passed through a fissure in the foot and thence through the body of the borer to its mouth, where they were expelled. “Here,” said Brunel to himself, “is the sort of thing I want. Can I reproduce it in artificial form?” He forthwith set to work, and the final result of his labors, after many failures, was the famous boring-shield with which the Thames tunnel was excavated. This story was told by Brunel himself, and there is no reason to doubt its truth. The keen observer can draw useful lessons from the humblest of the works of God.—New York Ledger.
(1632)
INSECTS OF REMOTE TIMES
Discoveries in the coal-mines of central France have furnished by far the greatest advance that has ever been made in our knowledge of the insects which inhabited the world millions of years, as geologists believe, before the time when man made his appearance upon the earth. In that wonderful age when the carboniferous plants, whose remains constitute the coal-beds of to-day, were alive and flourishing, the air and the soil were animated by the presence of flies, grasshoppers, cockroaches, dragon-flies, spiders, locusts, and scores of other species which exist but slightly changed at the present time. But the insects of those remote times attained a gigantic size, some of the dragon-flies measuring two feet from tip to tip of their expanded wings. The remains of these insects have been marvelously preserved in the strata of coal and rock.—Harper’s Weekly.
(1633)
Insecurity—See [Human Nature, Insecurity of].
INSENSITIVENESS TO BEAUTY