Part 10

Some good teachers, here and there, are working on the problem of how to make arithmetic educational as well as useful. A person who has lively recollections of days and weeks and months wasted on the dead-lift of memorizing the multiplication table, as an achievement by the side of which all subsequent labors of life were easy, will find comfort in the perfect uselessness of Colburn’s wonderful genius for multiplication without effort.

But it _was_ a wonderful faculty. What if a man were born with _all_ his faculties expanded to the same degree! Shall education and inherited progress yet produce minds as nearly infinite in every power as Zerah Colburn’s was in one? Is there, _is_ there an educational method which can take the shackles off all the faculties?

If not, may there be somewhere a life in which the mind, let out of the strait earthly house of its tabernacle and freed from the sore limitations of physical nature may reach that acme in all its functions? Some of the operations of mind in a condition of suspended physical existence seem to suggest this as a probability for even common-place natures, as occasionally do such splendid exhibitions of a single faculty in so weak a nature as Zerah Colburn’s.

[B] Another expedient adopted to keep the wolf from the door was to ask subscriptions to the yet unpublished and unwritten memoir of the lad. As he had by this time been able to formulate the method by which he made his mental computations, the father advertised to impart the secret of Zerah’s mysterious power to any one who would subscribe for ten copies of the memoir at eight dollars the copy.

ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS FOR FEBRUARY.

By PROF. M. B. GOFF.

THE SUN,

As is evidenced by the continually lengthening days, is making its way northward. On the first it rises at 7:10 and sets at 5:18; on the 15th, rises at 6:54 and sets at 5:34; and on the 29th, rises at 6:35 and sets at 5:51, giving from the 1st to the 29th of the month an increase of one hour and eight minutes. The sun is “slow” during the entire month; that is, it does not reach the meridian until after noon; for example, on the 1st, when the sun is on the meridian, a good time-piece says it is about fourteen minutes after noon. On the 1st, day breaks at 5:32, and evening twilight ends at 6:56.

THE MOON.

On the 4th, at 12:49 a. m., the moon enters her first quarter; on the 10th, at 11:40 p. m., is full; on the 18th, at 10:04 p. m., enters her last quarter; and on the 26th, at 1:27, is again new. On the 1st, 15th and 29th respectively, she reaches the meridian at 3:55 p. m., 3:14 a. m., and 2:41 p. m. She is nearest to the earth at 3:54 on the evening of the 4th, and most distant at twelve minutes after three on the morning of the 18th. She reaches her greatest elevation, 67° 31′ latitude 41° 30′, on the 6th.

MERCURY.

Only early risers need expect to see Mercury this month, as he is a morning star, rising as follows: On the 1st at 5:54 a. m.; on the 13th, on which day also he reaches his greatest western elongation (26° 12′), at 5:41 a. m., or about 76 minutes before sunrise, and on the 29th at 5:49 a. m. On the 26th, at 7:00 a. m., he is farthest from the sun. His diameter diminishes from 8.4″ on the 1st to 5.6″ on the 29th.

VENUS,

As intimated last month, continues to be an evening star, making every evening an increasingly handsome display in the western heavens, her diameter growing from 12.8″ on the 1st to 14.6″ on the 29th. Her motion, which is from west to east, amounts during the month to 31° 51′ 37″ of arc. Her time of setting, on the 1st, 15th and 29th, is as follows: 7:54, 8:26 and 8:57 p. m., respectively. On the 29th, at 10:07 a. m., she will be in conjunction with, and 32′ south of the moon.

MARS

Will present nothing particularly new. His retrograde motion still continuing, he will rise earlier each evening, and, of course, set earlier the following morning. Thus, on the 1st, he rises at 4:51 p. m.; on the 15th, at 3:35 p. m.; and on the 29th, at 2:23 p. m. He sets on the mornings immediately following these dates at 7:29, 6:23 and 5:15; or, on the first date about twenty minutes after, and on the latter date about one hour and twenty minutes before sunrise; during the month taking his place as an evening star. His motion amounts to 9° 7′ 11″ of arc, and as he is going farther from the earth, his diameter grows smaller, being 15″ on the first, and only 13.2″ on the last of the month. On the 10th, at 4:40 a. m., he is 9° 43′ north of the moon, and a little east of the nebula _Præsepe_ in _Cancer_.

JUPITER

Will be evening star throughout the month, and continue his retrograde motion from a point about twenty minutes west of _Præsepe_ on the 1st, to 7 hours 48 minutes 35 seconds right ascension on the 29th. He will rise on the 1st at 3:56; on the 15th at 2:53; and on the 29th at 1:52 p. m., and will set on the 2d at 6:30; on the 16th at 5:29; and on March 1st at 4:30 a. m. On the 9th, at 5:39 a. m., he will be 5° 45′ north of the moon. Of the four satellites, or moons, revolving around Jupiter, three are so near as to be eclipsed by him at each revolution. Roemer, a Danish astronomer, observed, however, that when the earth and Jupiter were on opposite sides of the sun, these eclipses occurred, as he estimated, about twenty-two minutes later than the time predicted by the tables. As the earth in this position was some one hundred and eighty-six millions of miles farther away from Jupiter than when Jupiter and the earth were on the same side of the sun, the discovery was made that the discrepancy in time was occasioned by the fact that light must have time to travel; and later and more accurate investigations afford us the truth that it takes light sixteen minutes and forty seconds to cross the earth’s orbit, or eight minutes and twenty seconds to come from the sun to the earth; and hence, that it travels about 180,000 miles per second. These eclipses occur frequently every month, and can be observed with telescopes of quite moderate power.

SATURN.

This planet will be evening star throughout the month, setting as follows: On the 2d, at 2:28 a. m.; on the 16th, at 1:33 a. m.; and on the 29th, at 12:41 a. m. Its direct motion amounts to 41′ 32.1″ of arc. On the 3d, at 9 a. m., it is stationary. On the 5th, at 7:34 a. m., 1° 18′ north of the moon. On the 22d, at noon, it is “quartile,” being 90° east of the sun. It can be found near the _Hyades_, a little north, at any time this month. Its diameter decreases from 18″ on the 1st, to 17.2″ on the 29th.

URANUS

Makes a retrograde motion of 55′ 47.1″, and retains the same diameter, namely, 3.8″. It will be morning star, rising however, early enough to be viewed in the evening. For example, on the 1st, at 9:00 p. m.; on the 15th, at 8:02 p. m.; and on the 29th, at 7:04 p. m. It will set as follows: On the 2d, at 9:10 a. m.; on the 16th, at 8:14 a. m.; and on the 29th, at 7:18 a. m. On the 13th, at 7:44 p. m., it will be 3° 18′ north of the moon. On the 29th can be found nearly on a line between _Beta_ and _Eta_ in the constellation _Virgo_, and from _Beta_ about one-third of the distance between these two stars.

NEPTUNE

Will be evening star during the month, rising on the 1st at 11:24 in the forenoon, and setting next morning at 1:14; on the 15th, rising at 10:29 a. m., and setting on the 16th at 12:19 a. m.; and on the 29th, rising at 9:35 a. m., and setting at 11:25 the same evening. Its diameter is 2.6″. Motion direct, amounting to 16′ 56″ of arc. On the 4th, at 6:33 a. m., is 11′ north of the moon; and on the 7th, at 9 a. m., is 90° east of the sun. Rises about forty-eight minutes earlier than Saturn.

* * * * *

Whoever wishes to perform something noble, if he would produce some great work, collects quietly and perseveringly the mightiest powers into the smallest space.—_Schiller._

THE SEA AS AN AQUARIUM.

A lecture delivered at the Monterey Assembly, Pacific Grove Retreat, California, 1883.

By C. C. ANDERSON, M.D.

I.

It is said of Milton that in two short lines of poetry he made four mistakes in Natural History. He said of a whale:

“At his gills takes in, And at his trunk lets out a sea.”

Now, in the first place, the whale has no gills; second, he takes in air instead of water; third, he throws out expired air; fourth, the water “spouted” is thrown up by the force of expiration, not out of the animal’s body, but water that may lie between the “blow-hole” and the surface of the sea.

I am not so sure but Milton made more than four mistakes in these lines. For whoever starts out on a wrong premise will follow a line of mistakes continually. Nevertheless, mistakes attentively observed may be profitable. We learn by mistakes. Unsuccessful experiments are mistakes of a kind—something wrong in the formula. The first aquarium I tried to start I made more mistakes than Milton made in his two lines. I made mistakes the second trial, and the third, and a dozen more times. And when I have succeeded in some instances, it was by accident, and to-day I can not tell why I sometimes failed, or why I sometimes succeeded. I have the consolation, however, of company in this respect. One of the most successful managers of aquaria says that he would give very much if he knew how to grow some of the higher marine algæ as one grows plants in a garden. Occasionally he has succeeded, but he confesses it was not by skill, but by chance.

I propose, therefore, that for a little while we consider the sea as an aquarium—a place adapted to the growth of animals and plants. Our subject is somewhat large, I must confess, but if we can see and understand how these things live and grow in the ocean we must be able to grow them in our parks, and possibly in our houses. For what Nature does on a grand scale may also be done in a small way; and principles that govern the successful growth of plants and animals in a bottle of sea water must be the same that govern the fauna and flora of the Pacific Ocean.

In order then to study and understand these things it will not be entirely necessary to make a trip to the equator, to the poles, or to travel around the world.

It has been a favorite theory with Henry D. Thoreau and John Burroughs, those genial and poetical lovers and observers of nature, that we need not rove all over the earth, as is the custom of many, to see this curiosity or that, or to observe nature in her secret recesses, but that we only have to sit down in the woods or by the sea-shore, and everything of interest will come round to us. The little town of Concord was a whole world in miniature to Thoreau. Everything worth finding could be found there. And so to John Burroughs, is the juniper forest of the Hudson, a show case, with the whole world inside. “Nature,” he says, “comes home to one most when he is at home; the stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and a traveler also.”

I think we may infer from this theory of our charming philosophers rather a poetical interpretation. They would urge a careful observation and study of phenomena in and near the places where we live, rather than gadding up and down the earth in search of novelties. If we familiarize ourselves with every day common objects and events of plants, animals, and other operations in nature, we shall then always be at home when nature calls, whether on one side or the other of the world.

I have heard of a good old lady who, when nearing the end of her earthly existence, said she did not mind the dying if she could only breathe. Now this goodly person had doubtless spent all the years of her life without observing the fact that every plant or animal however small or simple in structure must have, if nothing else, the organs for breathing, and when that function is suspended or destroyed, life ceases. The respiratory organs may be reduced to a single cell, wall, or membrane. The forms of these organs, however, are exceedingly variable, elaborate, and sometimes complicated.

In the sea, plants and animals have a compensatory relation to each other. The plant exhales oxygen and the animal exhales carbon. That is to say, the carbonic acid which is mixed mechanically with the water coming in contact with the cell, wall, or membrane, covering the plant, the atom of carbon is appropriated, freeing the two atoms of oxygen, which in turn are appropriated by the animal.

Not only is this process of breathing compensatory and reciprocative—an interchange of commodities—the plant giving two atoms of oxygen for one of carbon, and the animal bringing its single but equally valuable atom of carbon for two atoms of oxygen, but without this interchange, neither could plant or animal live, and our world of life would become as dead as the moon is supposed to be.

The process of breathing is so common that we seldom think about it, unless there is an interference in some way. Each one of us sitting quietly in this room would breathe about 1000 times in an hour, requiring over 100 gallons of air to sustain the proper supply of oxygen for the blood. During this time we have taken from the air a certain amount of oxygen and have returned to it an equal amount of something else, which we call carbon oxide, or carbonic acid gas. The oxygen has burned the effete material which is cast out of the blood in the process of breathing, and it is returned to the atmosphere as a kind of coal. The fundamental principle is the same in animals that breathe water as those that breathe air, only the apparatus is different. Animals that breathe water have a fine capillary network of blood-vessels spread out on gills, branchia or projections arranged so that the water shall pass rapidly over them, and thus the carbon is carried away and the oxygen taken into the circulation.

Animals that breathe air through lungs have little air cells, so very small that a human lung is said to contain 600 millions of them; and these lie in contact with the capillary circulation of the lung which receives the oxygen and gives out the carbon. Some air-breathers have no lungs, but merely spiracles or minute holes in the body through which the air enters, coming in contact with the circulation.

In all cases, whatever the form, size, or character of the animal the object is to bring the air in contact with the circulation that oxygen may be received in exchange for the burnt material—the carbon oxide—which, when once formed, is poisonous, and must be expelled from the animal.

Now if we look over the earth we shall find immense deposits of coal. Here in the United States we have nearly 200,000 square miles of coal deposits. In other countries there is a like proportion of these carbon deposits, such as petroleum, bitumen, and paraffine. Then there are great forests and other vegetable growth. These have stored up the carbon set free by the animal, and have kept the air comparatively free from carbonic acid gas, which but for the vegetables would in a little while have rendered our atmosphere unfit for animal use. What is true of the air in this respect is also true of the sea.

Thus it comes about that by the process of breathing, principally, we have the immense coal fields, the wide spread forests, and the herbage that covers almost the entire globe. For in the air and the water there exist the germs of animal and vegetable life so profusely, so universally, that the proper conditions of heat and light will develop contemporaneously, both the organic kingdoms. If we should take ten drops of water from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, near the surface, and add them to a small tube, say two ounces, of water that had been deprived of life by boiling, and kept sealed for a number of years, and place the tube in favorable conditions, we should in a few days see a little universe spring, as it were, into existence. There might not be a great variety of forms, but who can say that there might not be enough to populate or re-populate some world just entering into the conditions of such life as our earth contains, or some other world that had suffered a reverse, or cataclysm, by which all life was destroyed.

Mr. Lloyd, Superintendent of the Birmingham Aquarium, says he kept for eight years a bottle of sea water, well corked and covered with paper, and that when he opened it the water was perfectly clear, free from smell, and of the same appearance as when taken from the sea. But when exposed for eight days to light in a window an abundance of microscopic plants and animals began to grow, and soon covered the sides of the bottle, and darted about in the fluid.

Having occasion some ten months ago to use some sea-water, I brought to my house a demijohn full and placed it on the north side where the sun seldom shines, and where it is nearly always cool; although the temperature sometimes goes as high as 75° and 80° Fahrenheit in the afternoons. There was no particular effort to exclude light and air; the cork fitted loosely, and the wicker work was not unusually close. And yet, whenever I have examined this water it is clear and free from smell, and there are no plants or animals growing in it. But by exposure of a small quantity to the light and warmth of a window, these have rapidly developed. It is a fact, then, easily demonstrated in our own rooms and houses, that by excluding light from water and keeping it in a cool place we can arrest the growth of organisms. This is the case with springs. The microscope fails to discover germs in spring water until it has been exposed to the light for some time.

Acting on hints of this kind, Mr. Lloyd has constructed aquaria with two reservoirs—one in a dark, cool place, quite large—the other in a light and warm place, favorable to the growth of plants and animals. By means of pipes these two reservoirs are connected so that a circulation can be set up between the light and dark portions. A pump may be used to force the water from the dark reservoir into the other, using vulcanite or rubber of some kind for sea water, instead of such oxidizable metals as brass, tin, lead, etc. The most convenient temperature is about 60° Fahrenheit.

Thus, by exchanging the waters of these two reservoirs, as occasion requires, we shall be able to regulate an aquarium so as to keep many kinds of plants and animals in a healthy, growing condition.

The best aquaria are those where the water is never changed, but ever circulated in the manner I have indicated. Water that has once been made clear and good, and maintained plants and animals, is better than any water newly brought from the sea. It must be remembered that evaporation takes place from the surface of an aquarium more or less according to the heat and dryness of the air. At a temperature of 60° in an ordinary dry air, such as occurs some miles inland, the evaporation from a surface of water six inches square would be about three drops in twenty-four hours. Some very warm, dry days it would be two or three times that much. This waste must be made up by adding occasionally some distilled water.

An aquarium must be kept free of decaying matter. If once formed the sooner it is got rid of the better, for it will poison all creatures that come within its influence. The larger the dark reservoir the better. It can not be too large, but should be not less than four or five times larger than the reservoir in which the plants and animals are kept. Any dead matter then will quickly be burned at a low temperature—for oxygenation by means of the dark reservoir means no more nor less than the burning up of the effete and decaying particles thrown off by plants and animals.

It might be profitable for me to tell now how I didn’t succeed with the first aquarium I undertook.

It was a fine, large structure, capable of holding some twenty gallons. The sea water was procured, and at low tide a friend went with me to help carry an assortment of plants and animals. We had read a good deal about the compensatory properties of these two kingdoms; how the plants exhale oxygen and inhale carbon, and how the animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon, and thus preserve the equilibrium and the purity of the water. Well, we had good luck in searching tide-pools, and the turning over of rocks; and we returned loaded with snails, crabs, sea-anemones, sea-urchins, clams, abelones, date fish, real fish, sea worms (with beautiful red branchia), and sea weeds, an extensive variety of red, green and brown, only one or two of which would grow, as I have since learned, even in the most successful aquarium yet known. There are many other things that I have forgotten. We had rock-work and sand, and pebbles of beautiful colors, and a great many _iridea_, a rainbow-colored sea weed. We intended to imitate one of the beautiful tide-pools we had seen, and astonish our friends with a little bit of the sea, snatched up and transported to our quiet room, away from the fog and wind and chill of the ocean shore. We would willingly have brought the tide and some waves, if they could have been dwarfed to the dimensions of our tank. With these and a few other things we might have succeeded, and kept our aquarium as long as Robert Warrington kept his in London, with unchanged water, during a period of eighteen years.

But in eighteen hours our animals were all dead or dying; and although the plants were in proportion—that is, we had an equilibrium—they were almost equally in as bad a condition as the animals. First the water began to turn cloudy. We looked at our books for light, but they were equally obscure. Then we perceived a smell, somewhat like canned oysters, and this smell grew till it permeated the whole house. We suspected something wrong, so we emptied the aquarium, filtered the water, threw away the decaying matter, and put the things in again. But the “muddy vesture of decay” had covered the stones and entered the crevices, and in a few hours more we had to cast the contents away. The fact is, as I have learned since, we had a large number of bruised, broken and bleeding organisms from the handling in transfer, that the whole ocean’s waters could not save or heal, much less the little tank of twenty gallons. There were no waves to carry away the dead matter, no oxygen in the water to burn it, so it had to be breathed over and over again until the blood was poisoned and the animal died, because it could breathe such water no longer. And the plants began to fade and decay because their blood was also poisoned.

Now let us turn and consider for a moment Nature’s aquarium—the sea. It covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface, and it has been explored to the depth of eight miles at places, without finding bottom. The average depth, however, is about 2½ miles. All this immense mass of salt water is inhabited with a fauna and flora in a state of nature. That is, the hand of man has done nothing in the way of taming or cultivating them. They are absolutely wild, whilst a large part of the earth is subject to man’s dominion, and he was commanded to subdue it. The herbs and the trees of the field “shall be for meat,” and his “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,” pronounced at creation, is, as yet, but partially accomplished. The sea and the air remain as mysteries unsolved, and as powers unconquered. The cyclone and the tidal wave are evidences of the untamableness of these elements. “He bindeth up the waters in thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them,” was the language of some thirty-five centuries ago, and it is equally as true and expressive to-day.