The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy—
were converted into nonsense by the simple change of Troy into _Tory_.
‘In a short biographical notice of Pope which I compiled for an edition
of his poems, I briefly enumerated his prose works, among which I named
his _Memoirs of a Parish Priest_; when the proof came before me, I
found that the compositor had set it Memoirs of a _Paint Brush_.’ It
is possible that this blunder may have arisen from a cause to which we
shall presently advert, obscure writing in the author’s manuscript; but
Mr Martin also took notice of the matter mentioned above, namely the
partial disarrangement of some of the types in the cells, as a cause
of typographical bewilderment.
This misplacing of types in cells would fail, however, to account for a
multitude of blunders. The author, the compositor, and the ‘corrector
of the press’ must be responsible on other grounds for ‘A silver medal
given to a florist for _stealing_ geraniums;’ and for putting a wrong
date on the tops of some of the pages of a newspaper—such as the _Daily
News_ in one of its issues, which put ‘Monday July 18th’ on the top of
one page, and ‘Tuesday July 18th’ on the top of all the others; and
in a quite recent instance in the _Illustrated London News_, where on
the top of one page Saturday was assigned to a date that certainly did
not belong to it. At the Duke of Wellington’s funeral in 1852, Sir
Peregrine Maitland was one of the pall-bearers. A statement appeared
in some of the journals to the effect that when Sir Archibald Alison
published the last volume of his _History of Europe_, the name of
Sir Peregrine Maitland appeared as Sir Peregrine _Pickle_; and it
was remarked that such a misprint could not have been otherwise than
intentional, a poor attempt at a joke on the part of the compositor,
or the ‘corrector.’ In the only copy which we have consulted, this
absurdity does _not_ appear—a negative testimony so far as it goes in
favour of the compositor.
The wrong placing of words in lines, and lines in columns or pages, is
an instance of careless ‘making-up,’ for which the compositor in the
first place is clearly responsible, but which as certainly ought to be
detected in the proof by the corrector. Nevertheless, the examples of
this are manifold. Sometimes a whole line is transferred higher up or
lower down the page than the proper place; and at others one single
word makes an excursion to a line where no reader would look for it. We
notice, for instance, in one of the magazines for September 1877 the
word _see_ is used where it has no meaning; twelve lines lower down
occurs the word _They_ where it has no meaning; but on transposing the
two words, nonsense becomes converted into sense. A practical printer
could tell us how such an error might arise in the technical management
of his ‘composing-stick’ and ‘form;’ but to outsiders it is well-nigh
incomprehensible.
It was a little too bad in the printers of a Cambridge Bible, published
some years back, that such a line should appear as ‘I will never
_forgive_ thy precepts.’ Here there was no writer nor transcriber
concerned; the compositor made the blunder, and the press-reader passed
it without detection; because as new editions of the Bible, unless
newly annotated, are copied from the print of a previous edition, no
manuscript is needed. A somewhat trifling error, though puzzling in its
result, occurs in spacing the words: the last letter or syllable of one
word is inadvertently placed at the beginning of the next, or else the
first is placed at the end of the preceding word. When a lady is said,
in a recent novel, to ‘rush down-stairs _without stretched_ arms,’ we
know what is meant; but the corrector ought not to have passed such a
slip unnoticed. On one occasion—perhaps one among many—a foot-note is
incorporated in the body of the page, throwing the whole sense of a
paragraph into utter confusion. A printer will know how this may occur,
in arranging his lines into pages; but what is the corrector about?
The most trying part perhaps of a compositor’s duty is to decipher the
writing of some authors whose manuscripts have to be set up in type.
No one can conceive, merely judging from the interchange of ordinary
letters between relations and acquaintances, the large amount of badly
written manuscript which reaches the printing-offices. And it is known
that some of our most eminent authors, whose veritable words are
regarded as more important than those of other men, are great sinners
in this respect; they torment the compositor with specimens of the art
of penmanship almost hopelessly unintelligible. Our readers will find
this part of the subject—that is the misprints that are due wholly to
the bad writing of the author or amanuensis, and not to carelessness
shewn by the compositor or the corrector—fully illustrated by examples
in the article ‘Wretched Writers’ in this _Journal_ for March 14, 1874.
The late Horace Greeley, the distinguished American, is pictured in
that article as about the worst penman that ever disturbed the peace of
a compositor.
A word or two about correctors and correcting. When the compositor has
set up and arranged matter enough for say a sheet, a ‘proof’ is pulled
at the hand-press, and the ‘first reader’ is employed to examine it
closely for the detection of any technical errors; then, with the aid
of a ‘reading-boy,’ he compares the paragraphs, one after another, with
the author’s manuscript, corrects as he goes on by means of marginal
marks on the proof, and queries any doubtful word or passage to which
he wishes to draw the author’s attention. The compositor makes all the
corrections suggested by this ‘first reader,’ and for common cheap
kinds of printing this is enough; but for better work, a ‘second
reader’ is employed to correct not merely the compositor but to advise
even the author in regard to badly chosen words or badly arranged
sentences—an intellectual revision, in fact, often performed by men
who sometimes themselves afterwards rise to distinction as authors.
The perplexities that beset the printer’s reader were pretty fully set
forth thirteen years ago in the _Journal_; and we need say nothing more
on that subject. What with the reading-boy, the first reader, and the
second reader, we see that there are many possible responsibilities for
misprints besides those due to the author, the copyist or amanuensis,
and the compositor. An impartial distribution of blame is hence
desirable so far as it can be done.
NATURE’S TEACHINGS.
In a curious and instructive book which we have just read, entitled
_Nature’s Teachings_, by Mr Wood, we are shewn that scientific
inventions, no matter how original and ingenious they may _appear_ to
be, have each and all been anticipated in the world of nature.
Countless inventions have been made by man without his having any
knowledge of the fact that the machine which in its first idea sprang
from a single brain, and was afterwards, during the progress of time,
slowly improved and perfected perhaps by many successive generations
of inventors, had been in use in nature in a more perfect form than
art could accomplish, for ages before man existed on the earth. There
is scarcely a principle or part in architecture that has not its
natural parallel—walls, floors, towers, doors and hinges, porches,
eaves, and windows; thatch, slates, and tiles, girders, ties, and
buttresses, bridges, dams, the pyramid, and even mortar, paint, and
varnish, are all there. The Eskimo snow-house is an exact copy of
the dwelling the seal builds for her tender young; the wasp’s nest
is composed of several stories supported on numerous pillars. The
well-known instance of the building of the Crystal Palace on a ‘new
principle,’ by Sir Joseph Paxton, is mentioned by the author, and is
one of the many cases where man has confessedly copied nature in art;
for that beautiful structure of iron and glass is simply an adaptation
of the framework of the enormous leaves of the Victoria regia plant,
which, owing to its formation, combines great strength with great
apparent fragility. The present Eddystone lighthouse, which has so long
withstood the force of the waves, was constructed in 1760 by Smeaton
on an entirely new idea, the model being taken from a tree trunk, and
the stones of which it was built being strengthened by being dovetailed
into one another, as is the case with the sutures of the skull.
The study of the eye of man, as well as of birds, quadrupeds, and
insects, has shewn how the most beautiful and gradually improved
inventions, such as the telescope, microscope, pseudoscope,
stereoscope, multiplying glass, &c., had already been perfected in
nature for ages. By the combination of a few prisms and a magnifying
glass, is produced that most wonderful of all optical instruments, the
spectroscope, which equally reveals to us the constituents of the most
distant stars or the colouring matter of the tiniest leaf; and yet the
prismatic colours developed by this marvellous instrument have existed
equally within the glorious arch of the rainbow and in the tiniest
dew-drop as it glitters in the rising sun, ever since the sun first
shone and the first rain fell.
In the arts of peace, we must look to the animal world for the most
perfect specimens of tools for digging, cutting, or boring. No spade
is equal to the foot of the mole; and our hammers and pincers look
clumsy indeed beside the woodpecker’s beak or the lobster’s claw.
Moreover, the dwellings in the construction of which such tools are
employed, are models of beauty and ingenuity. Symmetrically shaped
pottery made of moulded mud or clay is found in Nature in the form
of birds’ and insects’ nests; in the jaws of the skate is found the
crushing-mill, and in the tooth of the elephant the grindstone. In the
ichneumon fly and the grasshopper was perfected from the first the
modern agricultural improvement on the hand-dibble, the seed-drill.
It is only of late years that the use of the teasel has been
superseded by machinery; and brushes and combs, buttons, hooks, eyes,
stoppers, filters, &c. are all found in Nature. The principle of the
diving-bell and air-tube exists in varieties of insects; birds make
beds and hammocks and even sew, and the bower-bird emulates us in the
construction of ornamental bowers and gardens. Graceful fans exist in
plants and insects, cisterns in the traveller’s tree and the camel’s
stomach, and natural examples of the balloon and parachute.
In other varieties of art, Nature has stolen a march on man;
certain insects make paper of different textures; the art known as
‘nature-printing’ was anticipated in the coal measures. Star-stippling,
as now used in engraving to produce extra softness of effect, exists
in utmost perfection in every flower petal. The caddis-worm, common in
all our fresh waters, constructs for itself a circular window-grating
which admits the water and yet protects the pupa from injury, an
apparatus exactly like the wheel-windows of a Gothic building. There is
a bird in South Africa, the Sociable Weaver-bird, which may be looked
upon as a dweller in cities, each pair, up to the number of perhaps
three hundred, building its own nest; while the whole community unite
to form a common roof or covering of thatch made from a coarse kind
of grass, to protect their habitations from the heavy tropical rains.
The Driver-ants, also found in Africa, are so sensitive to the fierce
heat of the sun, that when on their marches they are obliged to cross
open ground, ‘they construct as they go on, a slight gallery which
looks very much like the lining of a tunnel stripped of the surrounding
earth;’ and if they come to thick grass which makes a shelter for
them, they take advantage of it, and only resume the tunnel when they
emerge on the other side. Not less wonderful than any of these are
the Trap-door spiders, of which mention has been before made in this
_Journal_. In making their nests, they begin by sinking a shaft in the
ground; it is then lined with a silken web, and closed by a circular
door, which can scarcely be distinguished from the moss and lichens
which grow around. The hinges are most exactly fitted, and the spider
has an extraordinary power of closing his door from the inside, and
resisting all intrusion.
It is curious that as we _advance_ in the scale of creation these
wonderful dwellings cease. Strange to say, the creature which roams
at will through the forest, and has no settled resting-place, is
higher in the scale of life—according to the recognised scheme
of naturalists—than the animal that is mechanically capable of
constructing the most perfect abode!
Mr Wood reminds us that though the march of Science has destroyed much
of our belief in the sweet old tales of fairyland, yet she has given
us ample compensation, inasmuch as the ‘fairy tales of science’ are
in reality more full of grace and poetry than any of the myths that
delighted our childhood. And many of the forms which meet us, if we
apply ourselves to the study of natural history, are more full of
quaint or graceful fancy than the wildest tales that have ever stirred
the imagination of an Eastern story-teller. What can be more beautiful
than the little Velella, a sea-creature like a circular raft, with an
upright membrane answering to a sail; ‘semi-transparent, and radiant in
many rainbow-tinted colours.’ What more grotesque than the Archer-fish,
‘which possesses the curious power of feeding itself by shooting drops
of water at flies, and very seldom fails to secure its prey;’ or the
Angler-fish, which is endowed by Nature with a rod and bait ready
adjusted. This remarkable creature has an enormous mouth; on the top
of its head are certain prolonged cane-like filaments, beautifully set
in a ring and staple joint, so as to turn every way; and at the end of
these singular appendages is a little piece of flesh, which when waved
about, looks like a living worm, and attracts the fish, which is then
ingulfed in the huge jaws of this natural angler.
Many interesting forms come to us from the water-world, suggestive of
rafts, boats, oars, and anchors. An insect called the Water-boatman is
itself both boat and oars, besides being its own passenger; the legs
with which it rows are fashioned in most exact resemblance to the blade
of an oar; or we should rather say that the blade of an oar resembles
the leg of this Water-boatman. That fragile creature the Portuguese
Man-of-war, which traverses the surface of the ocean like a bubble, and
can at pleasure distend itself with air and float, or discharge the air
and sink, shews us the principle of the life-dress in which Captain
Boyton made his daring passage across the Channel. Cables too we have
in plenty: the Pinna, a kind of mussel, anchors itself to some rock
or stone with a number of silk-like threads spun by itself; and the
Water-snail moors itself, perhaps to a water-lily leaf, by means of a
gelatinous thread, slight, almost invisible, yet very strong, which it
can elongate at pleasure.
In connection with this there is a very curious account of a spider,
which shews a marvellous power of adaptation. Its wheel-like net was
in danger from a high wind. ‘The spider descended to the ground, a
depth of about seven feet, and instead of attaching its thread to a
stone or plant, fastened it to a piece of loose stick, hauled it up
a few feet clear of the ground, and then went back to its web. The
piece of stick thus left suspended, acted in a most admirable manner,
giving strength and support, and at the same time yielding partly to
the wind. By accident the thread became broken, and the stick, which
was about as thick as an ordinary pencil, and not quite three inches
in length, fell to the ground. The spider immediately descended,
attached another thread, and hauled it up as before. In a day or two,
when the tempestuous weather had ceased, the spider voluntarily cut
the thread and allowed the then useless stick to drop.’ The plan here
adopted by the spider is frequently followed by fishermen who during
stormy weather at sea, ride out the gale by attaching the boat to their
yielding nets.
It is natural to expect that in the arts of war and self-defence
Nature should shew us an infinite variety; and man has not been slow
in using his powers to adapt the same principles to his own use. If
man has armed himself with spears or daggers, if he has dug pitfalls
or set traps in hunting, his most deadly contrivances are but feeble
adaptations of the weapons, offensive and defensive, with which Nature
has endowed her offspring. We are prepared to find the serpent’s fang
a terrible instrument; and we are not surprised that the piercing
apparatus and sheaths of gnats and fleas, or the lancets of mosquitoes
when magnified, are dangerous and blood-thirsty; but it is curious
to find how many of these deadly weapons belong to the vegetable
world. The sword-grass has a notched blade which, when magnified, is
almost exactly the same as the shark-tooth sword of Mangaia. There are
nettles whose sting is sufficiently venomous to cause violent pain,
inflammation, cramp, and even death; and it is well known that some of
the most graceful of plants, such as Venus’s Fly-trap, which is common
in the Carolinas, and the Drosera or Sundew, one of our British plants,
are in fact nothing but skilful traps to catch and digest unwary
insects.
Some of the most curious of natural defences are those which simulate
some form quite different from the true character of the creature. We
are tempted to think of the Mighty Book of Michael Scott, in which was
Much of glamour might,
Could make a ladye seem a knight,
The cobwebs on a dungeon wall
Seem tapestry in lordly hall.
And Nature, in her turn exercising her powerful glamour, can make a
caterpillar seem a twig, or a moth look exactly like a withered leaf.
The Spider-crab might be taken for a moving mass of zoophytes and
corallines, so thickly is its shell covered with extraneous growths.
The Leaf-insects are so exactly like leaves that the most experienced
eye can scarcely distinguish them from the leaves among which they are
placed. We must all have noticed other instances in which the colours
of insects, and also the plumage of birds, harmonise in a wonderful way
with the scenes in the midst of which they are placed. Indeed there
seems no end to the resemblance which may be traced between the works
of Nature and those of man. Many of the most obvious of these strike us
with fresh surprise when we find the comparison carefully drawn out.
What a freak of Nature, for instance, are the aphides, the milk-cows
of a species of ant; or the tailor-bird, ‘which sews leaves together
by their edges, and makes its nest inside them!’ It is sufficiently
strange too, to remember that the elaborate process of paper-making was
carried on by the wasps, ages before it was known to the Chinese.
One of the most powerful of all natural forces is that of electricity;
and it is at present so little understood, and so full of mystery, that
we may perhaps suppose that many of the most important discoveries
of the future must lie in that direction. But Nature has known how
to turn this as well as her other powers to her own use. She has her
living galvanic batteries, such as the torpedo and the electric eel,
both of which secure their prey by paralysing it with their electric
discharges. And the light of the glow-worm and that of the fire-fly,
though hitherto it has been a puzzle to naturalists, may, there is
little doubt, be referred to animal electricity.
After a careful perusal of the book, we are convinced that the more
closely the connection between Nature and human inventions is observed,
the more perfect and the more numerous will further discoveries
be. Endowed with high moral capabilities of truth and justice, and
benevolence; gifted with reasoning faculties, which enable him to
observe, to argue, to draw conclusions, it is for man himself to work
according to the same laws which, unconsciously to themselves, govern
the organisations of the lower animal, and the vegetable world.
WASTE SUBSTANCES.
CIGAR-ENDS.
Probably few people in this country are aware that that usually wasted
substance a cigar-end is utilised in Germany to a large extent, and
with even beneficent results.
We can imagine many of our readers wondering what can be the object
of collecting these small ends; and we will therefore briefly explain
that they are sold for the purpose of being made into snuff, and that
the proceeds of such sales are devoted to charitable purposes. There
is in Berlin a society called the ‘Verein der Sammler von Cigarren
Abschnitten,’ or the Society of Collectors of Cigar-cuttings, which
has been in existence some ten years, and has done much good. Every
Christmas the proceeds of the cigar-ends collected by this Society and
its friends are applied to the purchase of clothes for some poor orphan
children. In 1876 about thirty children were clothed by this Society,
each child being provided with a shirt, a pair of good leather boots,
a pair of woollen stockings, a warm dress, and a pocket-handkerchief.
In addition to this, a large well-decorated Christmas-tree is given for
their entertainment, and each child is sent home with a good supply
of fruit and sweetmeats. Altogether more than two hundred poor orphan
children have been clothed by this Society simply by the proceeds of
such small things as cigar-ends.
The success of the Society at Berlin has induced further enterprise
in the same direction, and it is now proposed to erect a building to
be called the ‘Deutsches Reichs-Waisenhaus’ (Imperial German Orphan
Home), where orphans who are left unprovided for may be properly cared
for, clothed, and instructed. The site proposed for this institution
is at Lahr in Baden, where there are a number of snuff manufactories,
and it is therefore well adapted to the scheme, which we can only hope
may be successfully carried out. Although the directors of this Home
propose to have a plan prepared for a large building, only a small
part of it will at first be erected, to which each year or two more
rooms may be added, in accordance with the original plan, in proportion
to the success which is found to attend the undertaking. It will be
readily understood that a good many difficulties beset this scheme,
for it requires the most perfect co-operation of the smoking community
and some assistance also from the non-smokers; but much can be done by
friends who will undertake the duty of collecting, and some of the most
energetic of these are not unfrequently of the fair sex.
The system of collection, which is extended over a large part of
Germany, is generally undertaken by one or two ladies or gentlemen in
each town, who collect now and then from their smoking friends the
ends which they have been saving up. These collectors either send on
the cigar-ends to the central Society, or sell them on the spot and
transmit the proceeds. This latter plan, when it can be worked, is
preferable, as saving expenses in carriage and packing. It is proposed
that the number of children which each town shall have the privilege of
sending to the Home shall be regulated according to the amount which
they have contributed to the Society.