Darwin made the great experiments which have changed the whole
aspect of natural history, with the common glasses of his house,
and the common flower-pots in his garden.
There is a legend of an artist who sought long for a piece of
sandalwood out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to
give up the search when in a dream he was bidden to shape the
figure from a block of oak-wood which was destined for the fire.
Obeying the command, he produced from the log of common firewood
a masterpiece.--HUGH MACMILLAN.
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* * * * *
Not so long ago there arrived at a Pacific port a ship from
Belfast, Ireland, after a voyage that was in one respect
remarkable. It appears that this vessel’s ballast consisted of
about 2,000 tons of Irish soil. This, when leveled off, made a
pretty good-sized garden patch, and the members of the crew,
with commendable thrift, took it into their heads to improve it.
They planted a good stock of garden truck--cabbages, leeks,
turnips, radishes, peas, beans, lettuce and other things. These
came up in due course, and flourished admirably, especially
while the ship was in the tropics, and the men had fresh “garden
sass” to their hearts’ content.
As they rounded Cape Horn they replanted the garden, and by the
time they reached the equator everything was again green and the
table well supplied.
The two drawbacks were the weeds, which grew apace, and the
inroads of the ship’s drove of pigs, which were kept in the
“farm-yard attachment,” and which, on several occasions, when
the ship was rolling heavily, broke out of bounds and, of
course, did their best to obtain their share of the garden truck.
The last pig was killed and served with green vegetables just
before the vessel entered the port on the Pacific. On the
arrival of the ship the sod was taken to its destination,
ready to be used again for terrestrial gardening.--_Harper’s
Weekly._
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* * * * *
A public sentiment that fluctuates irregularly can be as little
depended upon in making progress as the sun’s energy noted in the
following:
The energy falling upon an ordinary city lot should run
continuously a hundred-horse-power plant. If all the coal
deposits in Pennsylvania were burned in one second, they
would not produce as much power as the sun furnishes us in
the same time. The difficulty in the practical utilization
of the solar energy lies in its extreme variability. In the
morning and afternoon, when the sun is low in the heavens,
but a small amount of energy reaches the surface, and even at
noon a passing cloud will absorb the greater part of the solar
radiation.--CHARLES LANE POOR, “The Solar System.”
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