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THE SEVEN FOLLIES
OF SCIENCE

TO WHICH IS ADDED A SMALL BUDGET OF INTERESTING PARADOXES,
ILLUSIONS, MARVELS, AND POPULAR FALLACIES.

A
POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE MOST FAMOUS

SCIENTIFIC IMPOSSIBILITIES

AND THE ATTEMPTS WHICH HAVE BEEN MADE TO SOLVE THEM.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

JOHN PHIN

AUTHOR OF " THE EVOLUTION OF THE ATMOSPHERE " : " How TO USE THE MIC .o-

SCOPE " ; " THE WORKSHOP COMPANION " ; " THE SHAKESPEARE CYCLOPEDIA " ;

EDITOR MARQUIS OP WORCESTER'S " CENTURY OF INVENTIONS," ETC.

SECOND EDITION, GREATLY ENLARGED

NEW YORK

D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY

23 MURRAY AND 27 WARREN STREETS
191 I

COPYRIGHT 1906, IQII, BY
D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY

PREFACE

IN the following pages I have endeavored to give a sim-
ple account of problems which have occupied the attention
of the human mind ever since the dawn of civilization, and
which can never lose their interest until time shall be no
more. While to most persons these subjects will have but
an historical interest, yet even from this point of view they
are of more value than the history of empires, for they are
the intellectual battlefields upon which much of our prog-
ress in science has been won. To a few, however, some of
them may be of actual practical importance, for although
the schoolmaster has been abroad for these many years, it
is an unfortunate fact that the circle-squarer and the per-
petual-motion-seeker have not ceased out of the land.

In these days of almost miraculous progress it is difficult
to realize that there may be such a thing as a scientific im-
possibility. I have therefore endeavored to point out
where the line must be drawn, and by way of illustration
I have added a few curious paradoxes and marvels, some
of which show apparent contradictions to known laws of
nature, but which are all simply and easily explained when
we understand the fundamental principles which govern each
case.

In presenting the various subjects which are here dis-
cussed, I have endeavored to use the- simplest language
and to avoid entirely the use of mathematical formulae, for

223166

iv PREFACE

I know by large experience that these are the bugbear of
the ordinary reader, for whom this volume is specially in-
tended. Therefore I have endeavored to state everything
in such a simple manner that any one with a mere common
school education can understand it. This, I trust, will ex-
plain the absence of everything which requires the use of
anything higher than the simple rules of arithmetic and the
most elementary propositions of geometry. And even this
I have found to be enough for many lawyers, physicians,
and clergymen who, in the ardent pursuit of their profes-
sions, have forgotten much that they learned at college.
And as I hope to find many readers amongst intelligent
mechanics, I have in some cases suggested mechanical
proofs which any expert handler of tools can easily carry
out.

As a matter of course, very little originality is claimed
for anything in the book, — the only points that are new
being a few illustrations of well-known principles, some of
which had already appeared in "The Young Scientist " and
" Self-education for Mechanics." Whenever the exact
words of an author have been used, credit has always
been given ; but in regard to general statements and ideas,
I must rest content with naming the books from which I
have derived the greatest assistance. Ozanam's "Recrea-
tions in Science and Natural Philosophy," in the editions
of Hutton (1803) and Riddle (1854), has been a storehouse
of matter. Much has been gleaned from the " Budget of
Paradoxes " by Professor De Morgan and also from Profes-
sor W. W. R. Ball's " Mathematical Recreations and Prob-
lems." Those who wish to inform themselves in regard to
what has been done by the perpetual -motion-mongers must
consult Mr. Dirck's two volumes entitled "Perpetuum

PREFACE V

Mobile " and I have made free use of his labors. To these
and one or two others I acknowledge unlimited credit.

Some of the marvels which are here described, although
very old, are not generally known, and as they are easily
put in practice they may afford a pleasant hour's amusement
to the reader and his friends.

JOHN PHIN

Paterson, N.J.,July,

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

THE notable favor with which the first edition of this
work has been received has encouraged the author to en-
large it by the addition of some new problems and the
discussion of an entirely new department of popular mis-
conception and error. The numerous personal letters which
he has received convince him that a book which gave a
simple and popular view of the old so-called " scientific
impossibilities " was needed, for very many of those who
had heard of the problems discussed in these pages had the
most erroneous ideas as to their real nature, although the
principles involved in most of them are the foundation of
almost all our scientific knowledge.

And so the author hopes that the subjects which have
been added to this edition will be as useful and as inter-
esting as those already presented.

JOHN PHIN

Paterson, N.J., March 2O,

CONTENTS

Preface

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE PAGE

Introductory Note i

I Squaring the Circle 9

II The Duplication of the Cube 30

III The Trisection of an Angle 33

IV Perpetual Motion 36

V The Transmutation of Metals — Alchemy 79

VI The Fixation of Mercury 92

VII The Universal Medicine and the Elixir of Life .... 95

ADDITIONAL FOLLIES

Perpetual or Ever-burning Lamps 100

The Alkahest or Universal Solvent 104

Palingenesy 106

The Powder of Sympathy in

A SMALL BUDGET OF PARADOXES, ILLUSIONS, AND MARVELS
(WITH APOLOGIES TO PROFESSOR DE MORGAN)

The Fourth Dimension 117

How a Space may be apparently Enlarged by merely chang-
ing its Shape 126

Can a Man Lift Himself by the Straps of his Boots? .... 128

How a Spider Lifted a Snake 130

How the Shadow may be made to move backward on the Sun-
dial 133

How a Watch may be used as a Compass 134

Micrography or Minute Writing. Writing so fine that the
whole Bible, if written in characters of the same size,
might be inscribed twenty-two times on a square inch . . 136

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

Illusions of the Senses 149

Taste and Smell . . . 150

Sense of Heat 150

Sense of Hearing 150

Sense of Touch — One Thing Appearing as Two 151

How Objects may be apparently Seen through a Hole in the

Hand 156

How to See (apparently) through a Solid Brick 158

CURIOUS ARITHMETICAL PROBLEMS

The Chess-board Problem 163

The Nail Problem 164

A Question of Population 165

How to Become a Millionaire 166

The Actual Cost and Present Value of the First Folio Shake-
speare 168

Arithmetical Puzzles 170

Archimedes and His Fulcrum 171

An Interesting Egg Problem 173

Popular Fallacies and Common Errors 175

That most Great Discoveries were made by Accident 179

That the Idea of the Steam-engine was suggested by a Tea-kettle. 182

That Whetstones are Oiled to Lessen Friction 185

That Lightning never strikes Twice in Same Place 187

That the First Fire came from Branches of Trees moved by the

Wind 189

That Volcanoes are Burning Mountains 190

That the Force of Dynamite is always Exerted Downwards . . 192

That the Art of Hardening Copper is Lost 194

That Steam can be Seen 196

That Hannibal used Vinegar to cut a Way over the Alps . . . 197

That Large Lenses are the Most Powerful 197

That Serpents have Stings in their Tails 199

That the Forked Tongue of the Snake is a Weapon of Offense . 200

That a Horsehair placed in Water turns to a Snake 201

That Hairs are Tubes 203

That Worms shall eat Us after We are Dead 204

That a Decaying Dead Carcass Breeds Worms 207

That Small Flies are the Young of Large Flies 208

That Dragon Flies Sting 209

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

That Powdered Glass is a Poison 211

That a Man Becomes of Age on His Twenty-first Birthday . . 211

That " The Exception Proves the Rule " 213

That Cinderella's Slipper was of Glass 214

That Glass is Very Hard 215

That Frankenstein was a Monster 216

Words which convey Erroneous Ideas 219

Knowledge is Power 225

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF
SCIENCE

HE difficult, the dangerous, and the impossible have
always had a strange fascination for the human
mind. We see this every day in the acts of boys
who risk life and limb in the performance of
useless but dangerous feats, and amongst children of larger
growth we find loop-the-loopers, bridge-jumpers, and all
sorts of venture-seekers to whom much of the attraction
of these performances is undoubtedly the mere risk that is
involved, although, perhaps, to some extent, notoriety and
money-making may contribute their share. Many of our
readers will doubtless remember the words of James Fitz-
James, in " The Lady of the Lake " :

Or, if a path be dangerous known
The danger's self is lure alone.

And in commenting on the old-time game laws of England,
Froude, the historian, says : " Although the old forest
laws were terrible, they served only to enhance the excite-
ment by danger."

That which is true of physical dangers holds equally true
in regard to intellectual difficulties. Professor De Mor-
gan tells us, in his "Budget of Paradoxes," that he once
gave a lecture on " Squaring the Circle " and that a
gentleman who was introduced to it by what he said, re-
marked loud enough to be heard by all around : " Only

OF SCIENCE

prove to me that it is impossible and I will set about it
this very evening."

Therefore it is not to be wondered at that certain very
difficult, or perhaps impossible problems have in all ages
had a powerful fascination for certain minds. In that
curious olla podrida of fact and fiction, "The Curiosities
of Literature," DTsraeli gives a list of six of these prob-
lems, which he calls "The Six Follies of Science." I do
not know whether the phrase " Follies of Science " origi-
nated with him or not, but he enumerates the Quadrature
of the Circle ; the Duplication, or, as he calls it, the
Multiplication of the Cube ; the Perpetual Motion ; the
Philosophical Stone ; Magic, and Judicial Astrology, as
those known to him. This list, however, has no classical
standing such as pertains to the " Seven Wonders of the
World," the " Seven Wise Men of Greece," the " Seven
Champions of Christendom," and others. There are some
well-known follies that are omitted, while some authorities
would peremptorily reject Magic and Judicial Astrology as
being attempts at fraud rather than earnest efforts to dis-
cover and utilize the secrets of nature. The generally
accepted list is as follows :

1. The Quadrature of the Circle or, as it is called in

the vernacular, " Squaring the Circle."

2. The Duplication of the Cube.

3. The Trisection of an Angle.

4. Perpetual Motion.

5. The Transmutation of the Metals.

6. The Fixation of Mercury.

7. The Elixir of Life.

The Transmutation of the Metals, the Fixation of Mer-
cury, and the Elixir of Life might perhaps be properly

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 3

classed as one, under the head of the Philosopher's Stone,
and then Astrology and Magic might come in to make up
the mystic number Seven.

The expression " Follies of Science " does not seem a
very appropriate one. Real science has no follies. Neither
can these vain attempts be called scientific follies because
their very essence is that they are unscientific. Each one
is really a veritable " Will-o' -the- Wisp " for unscientific
thinkers, and there are many more of them than those that
we have here named. But the expression has been adopted
in literature and it is just as well to accept it. Those on
the list that we have given are the ones that have become
famous in history and they still engage the attention of a
certain class of minds. It is only a few months since a
man who claims to be a professional architect and techni-
cal writer put forth an alleged method of "squaring the
circle," which he claims to be " exact " ; and the results of
an attempt to make liquid air a pathway to perpetual
motion are still in evidence, as a minus quantity, in the
pockets of many who believed that all things are pos-
sible to modern science. And indeed it is this false idea
of the possibility of the impossible that leads astray the
followers of these false lights. Inventive science has
accomplished so much — many of her achievements being
so astounding that they would certainly have seemed
miracles to the most intelligent men of a few generations
ago — that the ordinary mind cannot see the difference be-
tween unknown possibilities and those things which well-
established science pronounces to be impossible, because
they contradict fundamental laws which are thoroughly
established and well understood.

Thus any one who would claim that he could make a

4 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

plane triangle in which the three angles would measure
more than two right angles, would show by this very claim
that he was entirely ignorant of the first principles of
geometry. The same would be true of the man who
would claim that he could give, in exact figures, the diag-
onal of a square of which the side is exactly one foot or
one yard, and it is also true of the man who claims that
he can give the exact area of a circle of which either the
circumference or the diameter is known with precision.
That they cannot both be known exactly is very well
understood by all who have studied the subject, but that
the area, the circumference, and the diameter of a circle
may all be known with an exactitude which is far in
excess of anything of which the human mind can form
the least conception, is quite true, as we shall show when
we come to consider the subject in its proper place.

These problems are not only interesting historically
but they are valuable as illustrating the vagaries of the
human mind and the difficulties with which the early in-
vestigators had to contend. They also show us the bar-
riers over which we cannot pass, and they enforce the
immutable character of the natural laws which govern
the world around us. We hear much of the progress of
science and of the changes which this progress has
brought about, but these changes never affect the funda-
mental facts and principles upon which all true science is
based. Theories and explanations and even practical
applications change or pass away, so that we know them
no more, but nature remains the same throughout the
ages. No new theory of electricity can ever take away
from the voltaic battery its power, or change it in any
respect, and no new discovery in regard to the constitution

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 5

of matter can ever lessen the eagerness with which carbon
and oxygen combine together. Every little while we
hear of some discovery that is going to upset all our pre-
conceived notions and entirely change those laws which
long experience has proved to be invariable, but in
every case these alleged discoveries have turned out to
be fallacies. For example, the wonderful properties of
radium have led some enthusiasts to adopt the idea
that many of our old notions about the conservation of
energy must be abandoned, but when all the facts are
carefully examined it is found that there is no rational
basis for such views. Upon this point Sir Oliver Lodge
says :

" There is absolutely no ground for the popular and gra-
tuitous surmise that radium emits energy without loss or
waste of any kind, and that it is competent to go on for-
ever. The idea, at one time irresponsibly mooted, that it
contradicted the principle of the conservation of energy,
and was troubling physicists with the idea that they must
overhaul their theories — a thing which they ought always
to be delighted to do on good evidence — this idea was a
gratuitous absurdity, and never had the slightest founda-
tion. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that radium
and the other like substances are drawing upon their own
stores of internal atomic energy, and thereby gradually dis-
integrating and falling into other and ultimately more stable
forms of matter."

One would naturally suppose that the extensive diffusion
of sound scientific knowledge which has taken place during
the century just past, would have placed these problems
amongst the lumber of past ages ; but it seems that some
of them, particularly the squaring of the circle and per-
petual motion, still occupy considerable space in the atten-
tion of the world, and even the futile chase after the

6 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

"Elixir of Life" has not been entirely abandoned. In-
deed certain professors who occupy prominent official po-
sitions, assert that they have made great progress towards
its attainment. In view of such facts one is almost driven
to accept the humorous explanation which De Morgan has
offered and which he bases on an old legend relating to the
famous wizard, Michael Scott. The generally accepted
tradition, as related by Sir Walter Scott in his notes to
the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," is as follows :

" Michael Scott was, once upon a time, much embar-
rassed by a spirit for whom he was under the necessity of
finding constant employment. He commanded him to
build a 'cauld,' or dam head across the Tweed at Kelso ;
it was accomplished in one night, and still does honor to
the infernal architect. Michael next ordered that Eildon
Hill, which was then a uniform cone, should be divided
into three. Another night was sufficient to part its summit
into the three picturesque peaks which it now bears. At
length the enchanter conquered this indefatigable demon,
by employing him in the hopeless task of making ropes out
of sea-sand."

Whereupon De Morgan offers the following exceedingly
interesting continuation of the legend :

" The recorded story is that Michael Scott, being bound
by contract to procure perpetual employment for a num-
ber of young demons, was worried out of his life in invent-
ing jobs for them, until at last he set them to make ropes
out of sea-sand, which they never could do. We have
obtained a very curious correspondence between the wizard
Michael and his demon slaves ; but we do not feel at liberty
to say how it came into our hands. We much regret that
we did not receive it in time for the British Association.
It appears that the story, true as far as it goes, was never
finished. The demons easily conquered the rope difficulty,
by the simple process of making the sand into glass, and

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 7

spinning the glass into thread which they twisted. Michael,
thoroughly disconcerted, hit upon the plan of setting some
to square the circle, others to find the perpetual motion,
etc. He commanded each of them to transmigrate from
one human body into another, until their tasks were done.
This explains the whole succession of cyclometers and all
the heroes of the Budget. Some of this correspondence is
very recent; it is much blotted, and we are not quite sure
of its meaning. It is full of figurative allusions to driving
something illegible down a steep into the sea. It looks
like a humble petition to be allowed some diversion in the
intervals of transmigration; and the answer is:

" 'Rumpat et serpens iter institutum'

a line of Horace, which the demons interpret as a direction
to come athwart the proceedings of the Institute by a sly
trick."

And really those who have followed carefully the history
of the men who have claimed that they had solved these
famous problems, will be almost inclined to accept De
Morgan's ingenious explanation as something more than a
mere " skit." The whole history of the philosopher's stone,
of machines and contrivances for obtaining perpetual motion,
and of circle-squaring, is permeated with accounts of the
most gross and obvious frauds. That ignorance played an
important part in the conduct of many who have put forth
schemes based upon these pretended solutions is no doubt
true, but that a deliberate attempt at absolute fraud was the
mainspring in many cases cannot be denied. Like Dou-
sterswivel in "The Antiquary," many of the men who ad-
vocated these delusions may have had a sneaking suspicion
that there might be some truth in the doctrines which they
promulgated ; but most of them knew that their particular
claims were groundless, and that they were put forward for
the purpose of deceiving some confiding patron from whom

8 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

they expected either money or the credit and glory of having
done that which had been hitherto considered impossible.

Some of the questions here discussed have been called
" scientific impossibilities " — an epithet which many have
considered entirely inapplicable to any problem, on the
ground that all things are possible to science. And in
view of the wonderful things that have been accomplished
in the past, some of my readers may well ask : "Who shall
decide when doctors disagree ? "

Perhaps the best answer to this question is that given by
Ozanam, the old historian of these and many other scientific
puzzles. He claimed that " it was the business of the
Doctors of the Sorbonne to discuss, of the Pope to decide,
and of a mathematician to go straight to heaven in a per-
pendicular line! "

In this connection the words of De Morgan have a deep
significance. Alluding to the difficulty of preventing men
of no authority from setting up false pretensions and the
impossibility of destroying the assertions of fancy specula-
tion, he says : " Many an error of thought and learning has
fallen before a gradual growth of thoughtful and learned
opposition. But such things as the quadrature of the circle,
etc., are never put down. And why ? Because thought
can influence thought, but thought cannot influence self-
conceit ; learning can annihilate learning ; but learning
cannot annihilate ignorance. A sword may cut through an
iron bar, and the severed ends will not reunite ; let it go
through the air, and the yielding substance is whole again
in a moment."

I.

SQUARING THE CIRCLE

NDOUBTEDLY one of the reasons why this
problem has received so much attention from
those whose minds certainly have no special lean-
ing towards mathematics, lies in the fact that
there is a general impression abroad that the governments
of Great Britain and France have offered large rewards for
its solution. De Morgan tells of a Jesuit who came all the
way from South America, bringing with him a quadrature
of the circle and a newspaper cutting announcing that a
reward was ready for the discovery in England. As a
matter of fact his method of solving the problem was
worthless, and even if it had been valuable, there would
have been no reward.

Another case was that of an agricultural laborer who
spent his hard-earned savings on a journey to London, car-
rying with him an alleged solution of the problem, and who
demanded from the Lord Chancellor the sum of one hun-
dred thousand pounds, which he claimed to be the amount
of the reward offered and which he desired should be
handed over forthwith. When he failed to get the money
he and his friends were highly indignant and insisted that
the influence of the clergy had deprived the poor man of
his just deserts !

And it is related that in the year 1788, one of these de-
luded individuals, a M. de Vausenville, actually brought an

9

10 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

action against the French Academy of Sciences to recover
a reward to which he felt himself entitled. It ought to be
needless to say that there never was a reward offered
for the solution of this or any other of the problems which
are discussed in this volume. Upon this point De Mor-
gan has the following remarks :

" Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three
notions prevalent among the cyclometers [or circle-squar-
ers]: i. That there is a large reward offered for success;

2. That the longitude problem depends on that success;

3. That the solution is the great end and object of geometry.
The same three notions are equally prevalent among the
same class in England. No reward has ever been offered
by the government of either country. The longitude
problem in no way depends upon perfect solution; existing
approximations are sufficient to a point of accuracy far
beyond what can be wanted. And geometry, content with
what exists, has long pressed on to other matters. Some-
times a cyclometer persuades a skipper, who has made land
in the wrong place, that the astronomers are in fault for
using a wrong measure of the circle ; and the skipper thinks
it a very comfortable solution! And this is the utmost
that the problem ever has to do with longitude."

In the year 1775 the Royal Academy of Sciences of
Paris passed a resolution not to entertain communications
which claimed to give solutions of any of the following
problems : The duplication of the cube, the trisection of
an angle, the quadrature of a circle, or any machine an-
nounced as showing perpetual motion. And we have
heard that the Royal Society of London passed similar
resolutions, but of course in the case of neither society did
these resolutions exclude legitimate mathematical investi-
gations— the famous computations of Mr. Shanks, to
which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter, were sub-
mitted to the Royal Society of London and published in

SQUARING THE CIRCLE II

their Transactions. Attempts to " square the circle,"
when made intelligently, were not only commendable but
have been productive of the most valuable results. At the
same time there is no problem, with the possible exception
of that of perpetual motion, that has caused more waste of
time and effort on the part of those who have attempted
its solution, and who have in almost all cases been ignorant
both of the nature of the problem and of the results which
have been already attained. From Archimedes down
to the present time some of the ablest mathemati-
cians have occupied themselves with the quadrature, or,
as it is called in common language, "the squaring of the
circle " ; but these men are not to be placed in the same
class with those to whom the term " circle-squarers " is
generally applied.

As already noted, the great difficulty with most circle-
squarers is that they are ignorant both of the nature of
the problem to be solved and of the results which have
been already attained. Sometimes we see it explained as
the drawing of a square inside a circle and at other times
as the drawing of a square around a circle, but both these
problems are amongst the very simplest in practical geo-
metry, the solutions being given in the sixth and seventh
propositions of the Fourth Book of Euclid. Other defini-
tions have been given, some of them quite absurd. Thus
in France, in 1753, M. de Causans, of the Guards, cut a
circular piece of turf, squared it, and from the result de-
duced original sin and the Trinity. He found out that the
circle was equal to the square in which it is inscribed, and
he offered a reward for the detection of any error, and ac-
tually deposited 10,000 francs as earnest of 300,000. But
the courts would not allow any one to recover.

12 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

In the last number of the Athenaeum for 1855 a corres-
pondent says " the thing is no longer a problem but an
axiom." He makes the square equal to a circle by making
each side equal to a quarter of the circumference. As De
Morgan says, he does not know that the area of the circle
is greater than that of any other figure of the same cir-
cuit.

Such ideas are evidently akin to the poetic notion of the
quadrature. Aristophanes, in the "Birds," introduces a
geometer, who announces his intention to make a square
circle. And Pope in the "Dunciad" delivers himself as
follows :

Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind, —
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now, running round the circle, finds it square.

The author's note explains that this "regards the wild
and fruitless attempts of squaring the circle." The poetic
idea seems to be that the geometers try to make a square
circle.

As stated by all recognized authorities, the problem is
this : To describe a square which shall be exactly equal in
area to a given circle.

The solution of this problem may be given in two ways :

(1) the arithmetical method, by which the area of a circle
is found and expressed numerically in square measure, and

(2) the geometrical quadrature, by which a square, equal in
area to a given circle, is described by means of rule and
compasses alone.

Of course, if we know the area of the circle, it is
easy to find the side of a square of equal area ; this can be
done by simply extracting the square root of the area, pro-

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 13

vided the number is one of which it is possible to extract
the square root. Thus, if we have a circle which contains
100 square feet, a square with sides of 10 feet would be
exactly equal to it. But the ascertaining of the area of the
circle is the very point where the difficulty comes in ; the
dimensions of circles are usually stated in the lengths of
the diameters, and when this is the case, the problem re-
solves itself into another, which is : To find the area of a
circle when the diameter is given.

Now Archimedes proved that the area of any circle is
equal to that of a triangle whose base has the same
length as the circumference and whose altitude or height
is equal to the radius. Therefore if we can find the length
of the circumference when the diameter is given, we are in
possession of all the points needed to enable us to " square
the circle."

In this form the problem is known to mathematicians as
that of the rectification of the curve.

In a practical form this problem must have presented
itself to intelligent workmen at a very early stage in the
progress of operative mechanics. Architects, builders,
blacksmiths, and the makers of chariot wheels and vessels
of various kinds must have had occasion to compare the
diameters and circumferences of round articles. Thus
in I Kings, vii, 23, it is said of Hiram of Tyre that "he
made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the
other; it was round all about * * * and a line of
thirty cubits did compass it round about," from which it
has been inferred that among the Jews, at that time, the
accepted ratio was 3 to I, and perhaps, with the crude
measuring instruments of that age, this was as near as could
be expected. And this ratio seems to have been accepted

14 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

by the Babylonians, the Chinese, and probably also by the
Greeks, in the earliest times. At the same time we must
not forget that these statements in regard to the ratio
come to us through historians and prophets, and may not
have been the figures used by trained mechanics. An
error of one foot in a hoop made to go round a tub or cis-
tern of seven feet in diameter, would hardly be tolerated
even in an apprentice.

The Egyptians seem to have reached a closer approxima-
tion, for from a calculation in the Rhind papyrus, the ratio of
3. 1 6 to i seems to have been at one time in use. It is prob-
able, however, that in these early times the ratio accepted
by mechanics in general was determined by actual meas-
urement, and this, as we shall see hereafter, is quite
capable of giving results accurate to the second fractional
place, even with very common apparatus.

To Archimedes, however, is generally accorded the
credit of the first attempt to solve the problem in a
scientific manner ; he took the circumference of the circle
as intermediate between the perimeters of the inscribed
and the circumscribed polygons, and reached the conclusion
that the ratio lay between 3^ and 3}^, or between 3.1428
and 3.1408.

This ratio, in its more accurate form of 3.141592 . . is
now known by the Greek letter TT (pronounced like the
common word pie), a symbol which was introduced by
Euler, between 1737 and 1748, and which is now adopted
all over the world. I have, however, used the term ratio,
or value of the ratio instead, throughout this chapter, as
probably being more familiar to my readers.

Professor Muir justly says of this achievement of
Archimedes, that it is " a most notable piece of work ; the

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 15

immature condition of arithmetic, at the time, was the only
real obstacle preventing the evaluation of the ratio to any
degree of accuracy whatever."

And when we remember that neither the numerals now
in use nor the Arabic numerals, as they are usually called,
nor any system equivalent to our decimal system, was
known to these early mathematicians, such a calculation
as that made by Archimedes was a wonderful feat.

If any of my readers, who are familiar with the Hebrew
or Greek numbers, and the mode of representing them by
letters, will try to do any of those more elaborate sums
which, when worked out by modern methods, are mere
child's play in the hands of any of the bright scholars in
our common schools, they will fully appreciate the diffi-
culties under which Archimedes labored.

Or, if ignorant of Greek and Hebrew, let them try it
with the Roman numerals, and multiply XCVIII by
MDLVII, without using Arabic or common numerals.
Professor McArthur, in his article on " Arithmetic " in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, makes the following statement
on this point :

" The methods that preceded the adoption of the Arabic
numerals were all comparatively unwieldy, and very simple
processes involved great labor. The notation of the Ro-
mans, in particular, could adapt itself so ill to arithmetical
operations, that nearly all their calculations had to be
made by the abacus. One of the best and most manage-
able of the ancient systems is the Greek, though that, too,
is very clumsy."

After Archimedes, the most notable result was that
given by Ptolemy, in the " Great Syntaxis." He made
the ratio 3.141552, which was a very close approximation.

For several centuries there was little progress towards

16 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

a more accurate determination of the ratio. Among the
Hindoos, as early as the sixth century, the now well-known
value, 3.1416, had been obtained by Arya-Bhata, and a
little later another of their mathematicians came to the
conclusion that the square root of 10 was the true value
of the ratio. He was led to this by calculating the perim-
eters of the successive inscribed polygons of 12, 24, 48,
and 96 sides, and finding that the greater the number of
sides the nearer the perimeter of the polygon approached
the square root of 10. He therefore thought that the
perimeter or circumference of the circle itself would be the
square root of exactly 10. It is too great, however, being
3.1622 instead of 3.14159. . . The same idea is attrib-
uted to Bovillus, by Montucla.

By calculating the perimeters of the inscribed and cir-
cumscribed polygons, Vieta (1579) carried his approxima-
tion to ten fractional places, and in 1585 Peter Metius,
the father of Adrian, by a lucky step reached the now
famous fraction |||, or 3.141 59292, which is correct to the
sixth fractional place. The error does not exceed one part
in thirteen millions.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Ludolph
VanCeulen reached 3 5 places. This result, which "in his
life he found by much labor," was engraved upon his
tombstone in St. Peter's Church, Leyden. The monu-
ment has now unfortunately disappeared.

From this time on, various mathematicians succeeded,
by improved methods, in increasing the approximation.
Thus in 1705, Abraham Sharp carried it to 72 places;
Machin (1706) to 100 places; Rutherford (1841) to 208
places, and Mr. Shanks in 1853, to 607 places. The
same computer in 1873 reached the enormous number of
707 places.

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 19

the giant must make. He will not succeed, unless his
microscopes be much better for his size than ours are for
ours."

It would of course be impossible for any human mind to
grasp the range of such an illustration as that just given.
At the same time these illustrations do serve in some
measure to give us an impression, if not an idea, of the
vastness on the one hand and the minuteness on the other
of the measurements with which we are dealing. I there-
fore offer no apology for giving another example of the
nearness to absolute accuracy with which the circle has
been "squared."

It is common knowledge that light travels with a ve-
locity of about 185,000 miles per second. In other words,
light would go completely round the earth in a little more
than one-eighth of a second, or, as Herschel puts it, in less
time than it would take a swift runner to make a single
stride. Taking this distance of 185,000 miles per second
as our unit of measurement, let us apply it as follows :

It is generally believed that our solar system is but an
individual unit in a stellar system which may include hun-
dreds of thousands of suns like our own, with all their
attendant planets and moons. This stellar system again
may be to some higher system what our solar system is to
our own stellar system, and there may be several such
gradations of systems, all going to form one complete whole
which, for want of a better name, I shall call a universe.
Now' this universe, complete in itself, may be finite and
separated from all other systems of a similar kind by an
empty space, across which even gravitation cannot exert its
influence. Let us suppose that the imaginary boundary of
this great universe is a perfect circle, the extent of which

20 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

is such that light, traveling at the rate we have named
(185,000 miles per second), would take millions of millions
of years to pass across it, and let us further suppose that
we know the diameter of this mighty space with perfect
accuracy ; then, using Mr. Shanks' 707 places of decimal
fractions, we could calculate the circumference to such a
degree of accuracy that the error would not be visible under
any microscope now made.

An illustration which may impress some minds even
more forcibly than either of those which we have just
given, is as follows :

Let us suppose that in some titanic iron-works a steel
armor-plate had been forged, perfectly circular in shape
and having a diameter of exactly 185,000,000 miles, or
very nearly that of the orbit of the earth, and a thickness
of 8000 miles, or about that of the diameter of the earth.
Let us further assume that, owing to the attraction of some
immense stellar body, this huge mass has what we would
call a weight corresponding to that which a plate of the
same material would have at the surface of the earth, and
let it be required to calculate the length of the side of a
square plate of the same material and thickness and which
shall be exactly equal to the circular plate.

Using the 707 places of figures of Mr. Shanks, the length
of the required side could be calculated so accurately that
the difference in weight between the two plates (the circle
and the square) would not be sufficient to turn the scale of
the most delicate chemical balance ever constructed.

Of course in assuming the necessary conditions, we are
obliged to leave out of consideration all those more refined
details which would embarrass us in similar calculations on
the small scale and confine ourselves to the purely mathe-

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 21

matical aspect of the case ; but the stretch of imagination
required is not greater than that demanded by many illus-
trations of the kind.

So much, then, for what is claimed by the mathemati-
cians ; and the certainty that their results are correct, as far
as they go, is shown by the predictions made by astrono-
mers in regard to the moon's place in the heavens at any
given time. The error is less than a second of time in
twenty-seven days, and upon this the sailor depends for a
knowledge of his position upon the trackless deep. This
is a practical test upon which merchants are willing to
stake, and do stake, billions of dollars every day.

It is now well established that, like the diagonal and
side of a square, the diameter and circumference of any
circle are incommensurable quantities. But, as De Morgan
says, " most of the quadrators are not aware that it has been
fully demonstrated that no two numbers whatsoever can
represent the ratio of the diameter to the circumference,
with perfect accuracy. When, therefore, we are told that
either 8 to 25 or 64 to 201 is the true ratio, we know that
it is no such thing, without the necessity of examination.
The point that is left open, as not fully demonstrated to
be impossible, is the geometrical quadrature, the determina-
tion of the circumference by the straight line and circle,
used as in Euclid."

But since De Morgan wrote, it has been shown that a
Euclidean construction is actually impossible. Those who
desire to examine the question more fully, will find a very
clear discussion of the subject in Klein's "Famous Problems
in Elementary Geometry." (Boston, Ginn & Co.)

There are various geometrical constructions which give
approximate results that are sufficiently accurate for most

22 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

practical purposes. One of the oldest of these makes the
ratio 3y to i. Using this ratio we can ascertain the cir-
cumference of a circle of which the diameter is given by
the following method : Divide the diameter into 7 equal
parts by the usual method. Then, having drawn a straight
line, set off on it three times the diameter and one of the
sevenths ; the result will give the circumference with an
error of less than the one twenty-five-hundredth part or
one twenty-fifth of one per cent.

If the circumference had been given, the diameter might
have been found by dividing the circumference into twenty-
two parts and setting off seven of them. This would give
the diameter. A more accurate method is as follows :

Given a circle, of which it is desired to find the length
of the circumference : Inscribe in the given circle a square,
and to three times the diameter of the circle add a fifth of
the side of the square ; the result will differ from the circum-

ference of the circle by less than one-seventeen-thousandth
part of it. Another method which gives a result accurate
to the one-seventeen-thousandth part is as follows :

Let AD, Fig. I, be the diameter of the circle, C the
center, and CB the radius perpendicular to AD. Continue
AD and make DE equal to the radius ; then draw BE, and
in AE, continued, make EF equal to it ; if to this line EF,

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 23

its fifth part FG be added, the whole line AG will be equal
to the circumference described with the radius CA, within
one-seventeen-thousandth part.

The following construction gives even still closer results :
Given the semi-circle ABC, Fig 2 ; from the extremities
A and C of its diameter raise two perpendiculars, one of
them CE, equal to the tangent of 30°, and the other AF,
equal to three times the radius. If the line FE be then

Fig. 2.

drawn, it will be equal to the semi-circumference of the
circle, within one-hundred-thousandth part nearly. This is
an error of one-thousandth of one per cent, an accuracy
far greater than any mechanic can attain with the tools
now in use.

When we have the length of the circumference and the
length of the diameter, we can describe a square which

24 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

shall be equal to the area of the circle. The following is
the method :

Draw a line ACB, Fig. 3, equal to half the circumference
and half the diameter together. Bisect this line in O, and
with O as a center and AO as radius, describe the semi-
circle ADB. Erect a perpendicular CD, at C, cutting the
arc in D ; CD is the side of the required square which can

then be constructed in the usual manner. The explanation
of this is that CD is a mean proportional between AC
and CB.

De Morgan says : "The following method of finding the
circumference of a circle (taken from a paper by Mr. S.
Drach in the ' Philosophical Magazine,' January, 1863,
Suppl.), is as accurate as the use of eight fractional places:
From three diameters deduct eight-thousandths and seven-
millionths of a diameter ; to the result, add five per cent.
We have then not quite enough ; but the shortcoming is
at the rate of about an inch and a sixtieth of an inch in
14,000 miles."

For obtaining the side of a square which shall be equal
in area to a given circle, the empirical method, given by
Ahmes in the Rhind papyrus 4000 years ago, is very

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 25

simple and sufficiently accurate for many practical purposes.
The rule is : Cut off one-ninth of the diameter and construct
a square upon the remainder.

This makes the ratio 3.16.. and the error does not exceed
one-third of one per cent.

There are various mechanical methods of measuring and
comparing the diameter and the circumference of a circle,
and some of them give tolerably accurate results. The
most obvious device and that which was probably the old-
est, is the use of a cord or ribbon for the curved surface
and the usual measuring rule for the diameter. With an
accurately divided rule and a thin metallic ribbon which
does not stretch, it is possible to determine the ratio to the
second fractional place, and with a little care and skill the
third place may be determined quite closely.

An improvement which was no doubt introduced at a
very early day is the measuring wheel or circumferentor.
This is used extensively at the present day by country
wheelwrights for measuring tires. It consists of a wheel
fixed in a frame so that it may be rolled along or over any
surface of which the measurement is desired.

This may of course be used for measuring the circumfer-
ence of any circle and comparing it with the diameter.
De Morgan gives the following instance of its use : A
squarer, having read that the circular ratio was undeter-
mined, advertised in a country paper as follows: "I thought
it very strange that so many great scholars in all ages
should have failed in finding the true ratio and have been
determined to try myself." He kept his method secret,
expecting "to secure the benefit of the discovery," but it
leaked out that he did it by rolling a twelve-inch disk along
a straight rail, and his ratio was 64 to 201 or 3.140625

20 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

exactly. As De Morgan says, this is a very creditable piece
of work ; it is not wrong by i in 3000.

Skilful machinists are able to measure to the one-five-
thousandth of an inch ; this, on a two-inch cylinder, would
give the ratio correct to five places, provided we could
measure the curved line as accurately as we can the straight
diameter, but it is difficult to do this by the usual methods.
Perhaps the most accurate plan would be to use a fine wire
and wrap it round the cylinder a number of times, after
which its length could be measured. The result would
of course require correction for the angle which the wire
would necessarily make if the ends did not meet squarely
and also for the diameter of the wire. Very accurate results
have been obtained by this method in measuring the diam-
eters of small rods.

A somewhat original way of finding the area of a circle
was adopted by one squarer. He took a carefully turned
metal cylinder and having measured its length with great,
accuracy he adopted the Archimedean method of finding
its cubical contents, that is to say, he immersed it in water
and found out how much it displaced. He then had all
the data required to enable him to calculate the area of the
circle upon which the cylinder stood.

Since the straight diameter is easily measured with great
accuracy, when he had the area he could readily have found
the circumference by working backward the rule announced
by Archimedes, viz : that the area of a circle is equal to
that of a triangle whose base has the same length as the
circumference and whose altitude is equal to the radius.

One would almost fancy that amongst circle-squarers
there prevails an idea that some kind of ban or magical
prohibition has been laid upon this problem ; that like the

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 2/

hidden treasures of the pirates of old it is protected from
the attacks of ordinary mortals by some spirit or demoniac
influence, which paralyses the mind of the would-be solver
and frustrates his efforts.

It is only on such an hypothesis that we can account
for the wild attempts of so many men, and the persistence
with which they cling to obviously erroneous results in the
face not only of mathematical demonstration, but of prac-
tical mechanical measurements. For even when working
in wood it is easy to measure to the half or even the one-
fourth of the hundredth of an inch, and on a ten-inch circle
this will bring the circumference to 3.1416 inches, which is
a corroboration of the orthodox ratio (3.14159) sufficient
to show that any value which is greater than 3.142 or less
than 3.141 cannot possibly be correct.

And in regard to the area the proof is quite as simple.
It is easy to cut out of sheet metal a circle 10 inches in
diameter, and a square of 7.85 on the side, or even one-
thousandth of an inch closer to the standard 7.854. Now
if the work be done with anything like the accuracy with
which good machinists work, it will be found that the circle
and the square will exactly balance each other in weight,
thus proving in another way the correctness of the accepted
ratio.

But although even as early as before the end of the
eighteenth century, the value of the ratio had been accu-
rately determined to 1 5 2 places of decimals, the nineteenth
century abounded in circle-squarers who brought forward
the most absurd arguments in favor of other values. In
1836, a French well-sinker named Lacomme, applied to a
professor of mathematics for information in regard to the
amount of stone required to pave the circular bottom of a

28 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

well, and was told that it was impossible " to give a correct
answer, because the exact ratio of the diameter of a circle
to its circumference had never been determined " ! This
absolutely true but very unpractical statement by the pro-
fessor, set the well-sinker to thinking ; he studied mathe-
matics after a fashion, and announced that he had discovered
that the circumference was exactly 3! times the length of
the diameter ! For this discovery (?) he was honored by
several medals of the first class, bestowed by Parisian
societies.

Even as late as the year 1860, a Mr. James Smith of
Liverpool, took up this ratio 3^ to I, and published several
books and pamphlets in which he tried to argue for its
accuracy. He even sought to bring it before the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. Professors
De Morgan and Whewell, and even the famous mathema-
tician, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, tried to convince
him of his error, but without success. Professor Whewell's
demonstration is so neat and so simple that I make no
apology for giving it here. It is in the form of a letter to
Mr. Smith : " You may do this : calculate the side of a
polygon of 24 sides inscribed in a circle. I think you are
mathematician enough to do this. You will find that if
the radius of the circle be one, the side of the polygon is
.264, etc. Now the arc which this side subtends is, accord-
ing to your proposition, — — -=.2604, and, therefore, the

chord is greater than its arc, which, you will allow, is
impossible."

This must seem, even to a school-boy, to be unanswer-
able, but it did not faze Mr. Smith, and I doubt if even the
method which I have suggested previously, viz., that of

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 29

cutting a circle and a square out of the same piece of sheet
metal and weighing them, would have done so. And yet
by this method even a common pair of grocer's scales will
show to any common-sense person the error of Mr. Smith's
value and the correctness of the accepted ratio.

Even a still later instance is found in a writer who, in
1892, contended in the New York "Tribune" for 3.2
instead of 3.1416, as the value of the ratio. He an-
nounces it as the re-discovery of a long lost secret, which
consists in the knowledge of a certain line called "the
Nicomedean line." This announcement gave rise to con-
siderable discussion, and even towards the dawn of the
twentieth century 3.2 had its advocates as against the
accepted ratio 3.1416.

Verily the slaves of the mighty wizard, Michael Scott,
have not yet ceased from their labors !

THE DUPLICATION OF THE CUBE

HIS problem became famous because of the halo
of mythological romance with which it was sur-
rounded. The story is as follows :

About the year 430 B.C. the Athenians were
afflicted by a terrible plague, and as no ordinary means
seemed to assuage its virulence, they sent a deputation of
the citizens to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delos, in the
hope that the god might show them how to get rid of it.

The answer was that the plague would cease when they
had doubled the size of the altar of Apollo in the temple
at Athens. This seemed quite an easy task ; the altar was
a cube, and they placed beside it another cube of exactly
the same size. But this did not satisfy the conditions pre-
scribed by the oracle, and the people were told that the
altar must consist of one cube, the size of which must be
exactly twice the size of the original altar. They then
constructed a cubic altar of which the side or edge was
twice that of the original, but they were told that the new
altar was eight times and not twice the size of the original,
and the god was so enraged that the plague became worse
than before.

According to another legend, the reason given for the
affliction was that the people had devoted themselves to
pleasure and to sensual enjoyments and pursuits, and had
neglected the study of philosophy, of which geometry is

30

THE DUPLICATION OF THE CUBE 31

one of the higher departments — certainly a very sound
reason, whatever we may think of the details of the story.
The people then applied to the mathematicians, and it is
supposed that their solution was sufficiently near the truth
to satisfy Apollo, who relented, and the plague disappeared.

In other words, the leading citizens probably applied
themselves to the study of sewerage and hygienic condi-
tions, and Apollo (the Sun) instead' of causing disease by
the festering corruption of the usual filth of cities, especi-
ally in the East, dried up the superfluous moisture, and
promoted the health of the inhabitants.

It is well known that the relation of the area and the
cubical contents of any figure to the linear dimensions of
that figure are not so generally understood as we should
expect in these days when the schoolmaster is supposed
to be "abroad in the land." At an examination of candi-
dates for the position of fireman in one of our cities, several
of the applicants made the mistake of supposing that a
two-inch pipe and a five-inch pipe were equal to a seven-inch
pipe, whereas the combined capacities of the two small
pipes are to the capacity of the large one as 29 to 49.

This reminds us of a story which Sir Frederick Bram-
well, the engineer, used to tell of a water company using
water from a stream flowing through a pipe of a certain
diameter. The company required more water, and after
certain negotiations with the owner of the stream, offered
double the sum if they were allowed a supply through a
pipe of double the diameter of the one then in use. This
was accepted by the owner, who evidently was not aware of
the fact that a pipe of double the diameter would carry
four times the supply.

A square whose side is twice the length of another, and

32 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

a circle whose diameter is twice that of another will each
have an area four times that of the original. And in the
case of solids : A ball of twice the diameter will weigh
eight times as much as the original, and a ball of three times
the diameter will weigh twenty-seven times as much as the
original.

In attempting to calculate the side of a cube which shall
have twice the volume of a given cube, we meet the old
difficulty of incommensurability, and the solution cannot be
effected geometrically, as it requires the construction of
two mean proportionals between two given lines.

Ill

THE TRISECTION OF AN ANGLE

HIS problem is not so generally known as that of
squaring the circle, and consequently it has not
received so much attention from amateur mathe-
maticians, though even within little more than a
year a small book, in which an attempted solution is given,
has been published. When it is first presented to an un-
educated reader, whose mind has a mathematical turn, and
especially to a skilful mechanic, who has not studied theo-
retical geometry, it is apt to create a smile, because at first
sight most persons are impressed with an idea of its sim-
plicity, and the ease with which it may be solved. And
this is true, even of many persons who have had a fair gen-
eral education. Those who have studied only what is
known as "practical geometry" think at once of the ease
and accuracy with which a right angle, for example, may
be divided into three equal parts. Thus taking the right
angle ACB, Fig. 4, which may be set off more easily and
accurately than any other angle except, perhaps, that of
60°, and knowing that it contains 90°, describe an arc
ADEB, with C for the center and any convenient radius.
Now every schoolboy who has played with a pair of com-
passes knows that the radius of a circle will " step " round
the circumference exactly six times ; it will therefore
divide the 360° into six equal parts of 60° each. This
being the case, with the radius CB, and B for a center,

33

34

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

describe a short arc crossing the arc ADEB in D, and join
CD. The angle DCB will be 6o°,'and as the angle ACB
is 90°, the angle ACD must be 30°, or one-third part of
the whole. In the same way lay off the angle ACE of
60°, and ECB must be 30°, and the remainder DCE must
also be 30°. The angle ACB is therefore easily divided

A

C

B

Fig. 4.

into three equal parts, or in other words, it is trisected.
And with a slight modification of the method, the same
may be done with an angle of 45°, and with some others.
These however are only special cases, and the very essence
of a geometrical solution of any problem is that it shall be
applicable to all cases so that we require a method by
which any angle may be divided into three equal parts by
a pure Euclidian construction. The ablest mathematicians
declare that the problem cannot be solved by such means,
and De Morgan gives the following reasons for this conclu-
sion : " The trisector of an angle, if he demand attention
from any mathematician, is bound to produce from his con-
struction, an expression for the sine or cosine of the third
part of any angle, in terms of the sine or cosine of the
angle itself, obtained by the help of no higher than the

THE TRISECTION OF AN ANGLE 3-5

square root. The mathematician knows that such a thing
cannot be ; but the trisector virtually says it can be, and
is bound to produce it to save time. This is the misfortune
of most of the solvers of the celebrated problems, that they
have not knowledge enough to present those consequences
of their results by which they can be easily judged."

De Morgan gives an account of a " terrific " construc-
tion by a friend of Dr. Wallich, which he says is " so
nearly true, that unless the angle be very obtuse, common
drawing, applied to the construction, will not detect the
error." But geometry requires absolute accuracy, not a
mere approximation.

IV

PERPETUAL MOTION

T is probable that more time, effort, and money
have been wasted in the search for a perpetual-
motion machine than have been devoted to at-
tempts to square the circle or even to find the
philosopher's stone. And while it has been claimed in
favor of this delusion that the pursuit of it has given rise
to valuable discoveries in mechanics and physics, some
even going so far as to urge that we owe the discovery of
the great law of the conservation of energy to the sugges-
tions made by the perpetual -motion seekers, we certainly
have no evidence to show anything of the kind. Perpetual
motion was declared to be an impossibility upon purely
mechanical and mathematical grounds long before the law
of the conservation of energy was thought of, and it is very
certain that this delusion had no place in the thoughts of
Rumford, Black, Davy, Young, Joule, Grove, and others
when they devoted their attention to the laws governing
the transformation of energy. Those who pursued such a
will-o'-the-wisp, were not the men to point the way to any
scientific discovery.

The search for a perpetual-motion machine seems to be
of comparatively modern origin ; we have no record of the
labors of ancient inventors in this direction, but this may
be as much because the records have been lost, as because
attempts were never made. The works of a mechanical

36

PERPETUAL MOTION 37

inventor rarely attracted much attention in ancient times,
while the mathematical problems were regarded as amongst
the highest branches of philosophy, and the search for the
philosopher's stone and the elixir of life appealed alike to
priest and layman. We have records of attempts made
4000 years ago to square the circle, and the history of the
philosopher's stone is lost in the mists of antiquity ; but it
is not until the eleventh or twelfth century that we find
any reference to perpetual motion, and it was not until
the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seven-
teenth century that this problem found a prominent place
in the writings of the day.

By perpetual motion is meant a machine which, without
assistance from any external source except gravity, shall
continue to go on moving until the parts of which it is
made are worn out. Some insist that in order to be prop-
erly entitled to the name of a perpetual-motion machine,
it must evolve more power than that which is merely re-
quired to run it, and it is true that almost all those who
have attempted to solve this problem have avowed this to
be their object, many going so far as to claim for their
contrivances the ability to supply unlimited power at no
cost whatever, except the interest on a small investment,
and the trifling amount of oil required for lubrication.
But it is evident that a machine which would of itself
maintain a regular and constant motion would be of great
value, even if it did nothing more than move itself. And
this seems to have been the idea upon which those men
worked, who had in view the supposed reward offered for
such an invention as a means for finding the longitude.
And it is well known that it was the hope of attaining
such a reward that spurred on very many of those who
devoted their time and substance to the subject.

38 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

There are several legitimate and successful methods of
obtaining a practically perpetual motion, provided we are
allowed to call to our aid some one of the various natural
sources of power. For example, there are numerous moun-
tain streams which have never been known to fail, and
which by means of the simplest kind of a water-wheel
would give constant motion to any light machinery. Even
the wind, the emblem of fickleness and inconstancy, may
be harnessed so that it will furnish power, and it does not
require very much mechanical ingenuity to provide means
whereby the surplus power of a strong gale may be stored
up and kept in reserve for a time of calm. Indeed this
has frequently been done by the raising of weights, the
winding up of springs, the pumping of water into storage
reservoirs and other simple contrivances.

The variations which are constantly occurring in the
temperature and the pressure of the atmosphere have also
been forced into this service. A clock which required no
winding was exhibited in London towards the latter part
of the eighteenth century. It was called a perpetual
motion, and the working power was derived from variations
in the quantity, and consequently in the weight of the
mercury, which was forced up into a glass tube closed at
the upper end and having the lower end immersed in a
cistern of mercury after the manner of a barometer. It
was fully described by James Ferguson, whose lectures on
Mechanics and Natural Philosophy were edited by Sir
David Brewster. It ran for years without requiring wind-
ing, and is said to have kept very good time. A similar
contrivance was employed in a clock which was possessed
by the Academy of Painting at Paris. It is described in
Ozanam's work, Vol. II, page 105, of the edition of 1803.

PERPETUAL MOTION 39

The changes which are constantly taking place in the
temperature of all bodies, and the expansion and contrac-
tion which these variations produce, afford a very efficient
power for clocks and small machines. Professor W. W. R.
Ball tells us that " there was at Paris in the latter half of
last century a clock which was an ingenious illustration of
such perpetual motion. The energy, which was stored up
in it to maintain the motion of the pendulum, was provided
by the expansion of a silver rod. This expansion was
caused by the daily rise of temperature, and by means of a
train of levers it wound up the clock. There was a dis-
connecting apparatus, so that the contraction due to a fall
of temperature produced no effect, and there was a similar
arrangement to prevent overwinding. I believe that a rise
of eight or nine degrees Fahrenheit was sufficient to wind
up the clock for twenty-four hours."

Another indirect method of winding a watch is thus
described by Professor Ball:

" I have in my possession a watch, known as the Lohr
patent, which produces the same effect by somewhat differ-
ent means. Inside the case is a steel weight, and if the
watch is carried in a pocket this weight rises and falls at
every step one takes, somewhat after the manner of a
pedometer. The weight is moved up by the action of the
person who has it in his pocket, and in falling the weight
winds up the spring of the watch. On the face is a small
dial showing the number of hours for which the watch is
wound up. As soon as the hand of this dial points to fifty-
six hours, the train of levers which wind up the watch dis-
connects automatically, so as to prevent overwinding the
spring, and it reconnects again as soon as the watch has
run down eight hours. The watch is an excellent tune-
keeper, and a walk of about a couple of miles is sufficient
to wind it up for twenty-four hours."

40 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

Dr. Hooper, in his "Rational Recreations," has described
a method of driving a clock by the motion of the tides, and
it would not be difficult to contrive a very simple arrange-
ment which would obtain from that source much more
power than is required for that purpose. Indeed the prob-
ability is that many persons now living will see the time
when all our railroads, factories, and lighting plants will be
operated by the tides of the ocean. It is only a question
of return for capital, and it is well known that that has
been falling steadily for years. When the interest on in-
vestments falls to a point sufficiently low, the tides will be
harnessed and the greater part of the heat, light, and power
that we require will be obtained from the immense amount
of energy that now goes to waste along our coasts.

Another contrivance by which a seemingly perpetual
motion may be obtained is the dry pile or column of De Luc.
The pile consists of a series of disks of gilt and silvered
paper placed back to back and alternating, all the gilt sides
facing one way and all the silver sides the other. The so-
called gilding is really Dutch metal or copper, and the sil-
ver is tin or zinc, so that the two actually form a voltaic
couple. Sometimes the paper is slightly moistened with
a weak solution of molasses to insure a certain degree of
dampness ; this increases the action, for if the paper be
artificially dried and kept in a perfectly dry atmosphere,
the apparatus will not work. A pair of these piles, each
containing two or three thousand disks the size of a quarter
of a dollar, may be arranged side by side, vertically, and
two or three inches apart. At the lower ends they are
connected by a brass plate, and the upper ends are
each surmounted by a small metal bell and between these
bells a gilt ball, suspended by a silk thread, keeps vibrating

PERPETUAL MOTION 4!

perpetually. Many years ago I made a pair of these col-
umns which kept a ball in motion for nearly two years, and
Professor Silliman tells us that "a set of these bells rang
in Yale College laboratory for six or eight years unceas-
ingly." How much longer the columns would have con-
tinued to furnish energy sufficient to cause the balls to
vibrate, it might be difficult to determine. The amount of
energy required is exceedingly small, but since the columns
are really nothing but a voltaic pile, it is very evident that
after a time they would become exhausted.

Such a pair of columns, covered with a tall glass shade,
form a very interesting piece of bric-a-brac, especially if the
bells have a sweet tone, but the contrivance is of no prac-
tical use except as embodied in Bohnenberger's electroscope.

Inventions of this kind might be multiplied indefi-
nitely, but none of these devices can be called a perpetual
motion because they all depend for their action upon energy
derived from external sources other than gravity. But
the authors of these inventions are not to be classed with
the regular perpetual-motion-mongers. The purposes for
which these arrangements were invented were legitimate,
and the contrivances answered fully the ends for which
they were intended. The real perpetual-motion-seekers
are men of a different stamp, and their schemes readily fall
into one of these three classes: i. ABSURDITIES, 2. FAL-
LACIES, 3. FRAUDS. The following is a description of
the most characteristic machines and apparatus of which
accounts have been published.

42 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

I. ABSURDITIES

In this class may be included those inventions which have
been made or suggested by honest but ignorant persons in
direct violation of the fundamental principles of mechanics
and physics. Such inventions if presented to any expert
mechanic or student of science, would be at once condemned
as impracticable, but as a general rule, the inventors of these
absurd contrivances have been so confident of success, that
they have published descriptions and sketches of them, and
even gone so far as to take out patents before they have
tested their inventions by constructing a working machine.
It is said, that at one time the United States Patent Office
issued a circular refusal to all applicants for patents of this
kind, but at present instead of sending such a circular, the
applicant is quietly requested to furnish a working model
of his invention and that usually ends the matter. While
I have no direct information on the subject, I suspect that
the circular was withdrawn because of the amount of useless
correspondence, in the shape of foolish replies and argu-
ments, which it drew forth. To require a working model
is a reasonable request and one for which the law duly pro-
vides, and when a successful model is forthcoming, a patent
will no doubt be granted ; but until that is presented the
officials of the Patent Office can have no positive informa-
tion in regard to the practicability of the invention.

The earliest mechanical device intended to produce per-
petual motion is that known as the overbalancing wheel.
This is described in a sketch book of the thirteenth century
by Wilars de Honecourt, an architect of the period, and
since then it has been reinvented hundreds of times. In its
simplest forms it is thus described and^figured by Ozanam :

PERPETUAL MOTION 43

" Fig. 5 represents a large wheel, the circumference of
which is furnished, at equal distances, with levers, each
bearing at its extremity a weight, and movable on a hinge
so that in one direction they can rest upon the circumfer-
ence, while on the opposite side, being carried away by the
weight at the extremity, they are obliged to arrange them-
selves in the direction of the radius continued. This being
supposed, it is evident that when the wheel turns in the
direction ABC, the weights A, B, and C will recede from the
center; consequently, as they act with more force, they
will carry the wheel towards that side ; and as a new lever

Fig. 5. Fig. 6.

will be thrown out, in proportion as the wheel revolves, it
thence follows, say they, that the wheel will continue to
move in the same direction. But notwithstanding the
specious appearance of this reasoning, experience has
proved that the machine will not go; and it may indeed be
demonstrated that there is a certain position in which the
center of gravity of all these weights is in the vertical
plane passing through the point of suspension, and that
therefore it must stop."

Another invention of a similar kind is thus described by
the same author :

" In a cylindric drum, in perfect equilibrium on its axis,
are formed channels as seen in Fig. 6, which contain balls
of lead or a certain quantity of quicksilver. In consequence
of this disposition, the balls or quicksilver must, on the one
side, ascend by approaching the center, and on the other

44

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

must roll towards the circumference. The machine ought,
therefore, to turn incessantly towards that side."

In his " Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy,"
Dr. Thomas Young speaks of these contrivances as fol-
lows :

" One of the most common fallacies, by which the super-
ficial projectors of machines for obtaining perpetual motion
have been deluded, has arisen from imagining that any

Fig. 7.

number of weights ascending by a certain path, on one
side of the center of motion and descending on the other
at a greater distance, must cause a constant preponderance
on the side of the descent: for this purpose the weights
have either been fixed on hinges, which allow them to fall
over at a certain point, so as to become more distant from
the center, or made to slide or roll along grooves or planes
which lead them to a more remote part of the wheel, from
whence they return as they ascend; but it will appear on
the inspection of such a machine, that although some of
the weights are more distant from the center than others,

PERPETUAL MOTION 45

yet there is always a proportionately smaller number of
them on that side on which they have the greatest power,
so that these circumstances precisely counterbalance each
other."

He then gives the illustration (Fig. 7), shown on the
preceding page, of "a wheel supposed to be capable of pro-
ducing a perpetual motion ; the descending balls acting at a
greater distance from the center, but being fewer in number
than the ascending. In the model, the balls may be kept
in their places by a plate of glass covering the wheel."

A more elaborate arrangement embodying the same idea
is figured and described by Ozanam. The machine, which
is shown in Fig. 8, consists of " a kind of wheel formed of
six or eight arms, proceeding from a center where the axis
of motion is placed. Each of these arms is furnished with
a receptacle in the form of a pair of bellows : but those on
the opposite arms stand in contrary directions, as seen in

46 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

the figure. The movable top of each receptacle has
affixed to it a weight, which shuts it in one situation and
opens it in the other. In the last place, the bellows of the
opposite arms have a communication by means of a canal,
and one of them is filled with quicksilver.

" These things being supposed, it is visible that the bel-
lows on the one side must open, and those on the other
must shut ; consequently, the mercury will pass from the
latter into the former, while the contrary will be the case
on the opposite side."

Ozanam naively adds : " It might be difficult to point
out the deficiency of this reasoning ; but those acquainted
with the true principles of mechanics will not hesitate to
bet a hundred to one, that the machine, when constructed,
will not answer the intended purpose."

That this bet would have been a perfectly safe one must
be quite evident to any person who has the slightest knowl-
edge of practical mechanics, and yet the fundamental idea
which is embodied in this and the other examples which we
have just given, forms the basis of almost all the attempts
which have been made to produce a perpetual motion by
purely mechanical means.

The hydrostatic paradox by which a few ounces of liquid
may apparently balance many pounds, or even tons, has
frequently suggested a form of apparatus designed to secure
a perpetual motion. Dr. Arnott, in his " Elements of Phy-
sics," relates the following anecdote : " A projector thought
that the vessel of his contrivance, represented here (Fig. 9),
was to solve the renowned problem of the perpetual mo-
tion. It was goblet-shaped, lessening gradually towards
the bottom until it became a tube, bent upwards at c and
pointing with an open extremity into the goblet again. He

PERPETUAL MOTION

47

reasoned thus : A pint of water in the goblet a must more
than counterbalance an ounce which the tube b will con-
tain, and must, therefore, be constantly pushing the ounce
forward into the vessel again at a, and keeping up a stream
or circulation, which will cease only when the water dries

Fig. 9.

up. He was confounded when a trial showed him the
same level in a and in b"

This suggestion has been adopted over and over again by
sanguine inventors. Dircks, in his " Perpetuum Mobile,"
tells us that a contrivance, on precisely the same principle,
was proposed by the Abb6 de la Roque, in "Le Journal
des S^avans," Paris, 1686. The instrument was a U tube,
one leg longer than the other and bent over, so that any
liquid might drop into the top end of the short leg, which
he proposed to be made of wax, and the long one of iron.
Presuming the liquid to be more condensed in the metal
than the wax tube, it would flow from the end into the wax
tube and so continue.

48 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

This is a typical case. A man of learning and of high
position is so confident that his theory is right that he does
not think it worth while to test it experimentally, but
rushes into print and immortalizes himself as the author
of a blunder. It is safe to say that this absurd invention
will do more to perpetuate his name than all his learning
and real achievements. And there are others in the same
predicament — circle-squarers who, a quarter of a century
hence, will be remembered for their errors when all else
connected with them will be forgotten.

To every miller whose mill ceased working for want of
water, the idea has no doubt occurred that if he could only
pump the water back again and use it, a second or a third
time he might be independent of dry or wet seasons. Of
course no practical miller was ever so far deluded as to
attempt to put such a suggestion into practice, but innu-
merable machines of this kind, and of the most crude
arrangement, have been sketched and described in maga-
zines and papers. Figures of wheels driving an ordinary
pump, which returns to an elevated reservoir the water
which has driven the wheel, are so common that it is not
worth while to reproduce any of them. In the following
attempt, however, which is copied from Bishop Wilkins'
famous book, "Mathematical Magic" (1648), the well-
known Archimedean screw is employed instead of a pump,
and the nai'vete of the good bishop's description and con-
clusion are well worth the space they will occupy.

After an elaborate description of the screw, he says :
"These things, considered together, it will hence appear
how a perpetual motion may seem easily contrivable.
For, if there were but such a waterwheel made on this
instrument, upon which the stream that is carried up

PERPETUAL MOTION 49

may fall in its descent, it would turn the screw round,
and by that means convey as much water up as is required
to move it; so that the motion must needs be continual
since the same weight which in its fall does turn the wheel,
is, by the turning of the wheel, carried up again. Or, if
the water, falling upon one wheel, would not be forcible
enough for this effect, why then there might be two, or
three, or more, according as the length and elevation of the
instrument will admit ; by which means the weight of it
may be so multiplied in the fall that it shall be equivalent
to twice or thrice that quantity of water which ascends ;
as may be more plainly discerned by the following diagram
(Fig. 10):

"Where the figure LM at the bottom does represent a
wooden cylinder with helical cavities cut in it, which at AB
is supposed to be covered over with tin plates, and three
waterwheels, upon it, HIK; the lower cistern, which
contains the water, being CD. Now, this cylinder being
turned round, all the water which from the cistern ascends
through it, will fall into the vessel at E, and from that
vessel being conveyed upon the waterwheel H, shall conse-
quently give a circular motion to the whole screw. Or, if
this alone should be too weak for the turning of it, then
the same water which falls from the wheel H, being re-
ceived into the other vessel F, may from thence again
descend on the wheel I, by which means the force of it
will be doubled. And if this be yet insufficient, then may
the water, which falls on the second wheel T, be received
into the other vessel G, and from thence again descend on
the third wheel at K ; and so for as many other wheels as
the instrument is capable of. So that besides the greater
distance of these three streams from the center or axis by

50 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

which they are made so much heavier; and besides that
the fall of this outward water is forcible and violent,
whereas the ascent of that within is natural — besides all
this, there is twice as much water to turn the screw as is
carried up by it.

Fig. 10.

"But, on the other side, if all the water falling upon one
wheel would be able to turn it round, then half of it would
serve with two wheels, and the rest may be so disposed of
in the fall as to serve unto some other useful, delightful
ends.

PERPETUAL MOTION 51

"When I first thought of this invention, I could scarce
forbear, with Archimedes, to cry out 'Eureka! Eureka!'
it seeming so infallible a way for the effecting of a per-
petual motion that nothing could be so much as probably
objected against it; but, upon trial and experience, I find it
altogether insufficient for any such purpose, and that for
these two reasons :

1. The water that ascends will not make any considera-
ble stream in the fall.

2. This stream, though multiplied, will not be of force
enough to turn about the screw."

How well it would have been for many of those inven-
tors, who supposed that they had discovered a successful
perpetual motion, if they had only given their contrivances
a fair and unprejudiced test as did the good old bishop!

A modification of this device, in which mercury is used
instead of water, is thus described by a correspondent of
"The Mechanic's Magazine." (London.)

"In Fig. u, A is the screw turning on its two pivots
GG; B is a cistern to be filled above the level of the lower
aperture of the screw with mercury, which I conceive to be
preferable to water on many accounts, and principally be-
cause it does not adhere or evaporate like water; c is a
reservoir, which, when the screw is turned round, receives
the mercury which falls from the top ; there is a pipe, which,
by the force of gravity, conveys the mercury from, the
reservoir c on to (what for want of a better term may be
called) the float-board E, fixed at right angles to the center
[axis] of the screw, and furnished at its circumference with
ridges or floats to intercept the mercury, the moment and
weight of which will cause the float-board and screw to re-
volve, until, by the proper inclination of the floats, the
mercury falls into the receiver F, from whence it again falls
by its spout into the cistern G, where the constant revolu-
tion of the screw takes it up again as before."

52 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

He then suggests some difficulties which the ball, seen
just under the letter E, is intended to overcome, but he
confesses that he has never tried it, and to any practical
mechanic it is very obvious that the machine will not work.

Fig. ii.

But we give the description in the language of the inventor,
as a fair type of this class of perpetual-motion machines.

In the year 1790 a Doctor Schweirs took out a patent
for a machine in which small metal balls were used instead
of a liquid, and they were raised by a sort of chain pump
which delivered them upon the circumference of a large
wheel, which was thus caused to revolve. It was claimed
for this invention that it kept going for some months, but
any mechanic who will examine the Doctor's drawing must
see that it could not have continued in motion after the
initial impulse had been expended.

PERPETUAL MOTION 53

That property of liquids known as capillary attraction
has been frequently called to the aid of perpetual-motion
seekers, and the fact that although water will, in capillary
tubes and sponges, rise several inches above the general
level, it will not overflow, has been a startling surprise to
the would-be inventors. Perhaps the most notable instance
of a mistake of this kind occurred in the case of the famous
Sir William Congreve, the inventor of the military rockets
that bore his name, and the author of certain improvements
in matches which were called after him. It was thus de-
scribed and figured in an article which appeared in the
" Atlas " (London) and was copied into " The Mechanic's
Magazine" (London) for 1827:

" The celebrated Boyle entertained an idea that perpetual
motion might be obtained by means of capillary attraction;
and, indeed, there seems but little doubt that nature has
employed this force in many instances to produce this effect.

" There are many situations in which there is every
reason to believe that the sources of springs on the tops
and sides of mountains depend on the accumulation of
water created at certain elevations by the operation of
capillary attraction, acting in large masses of porous ma-
terial, or through laminated substances. These masses
being saturated, in process of time become the sources of
springs and the heads of rivers; and thus by an endless
round of ascending and descending waters, form, on the
great scale of nature, an incessant cause of perpetual
motion, in the purest acceptance of the term, and precisely
on the principle that was contemplated by Boyle. It is
probable, however, that any imitation of this process on
the limited scale practicable by human art would not be
of sufficient magnitude to be effective. Nature, by the
immensity of her operations, is able to allow for a slowness
of process which would baffle the attempts of man in any
direct and simple imitation of her works. Working, there-
fore, upon the same causes, he finds himself obliged to
take a more complicated mode to produce the same effect.

54

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

" To amuse the hours of a long confinement from illness,
Sir William Congreve has recently contrived a scheme of
perpetual motion, founded on this principle of capillary at-
traction, which, it is apprehended, will not be subject to
the general refutation applicable to those plans in which
the power is supposed to be derived from gravity only.
Sir William's perpetual motion is as follows:

" Let ABC, Fig. 12, be three horizontal rollers fixed in
a frame; aaa, etc., is an endless band of sponge, running
round these rollers; and bbb, etc., is an endless chain of
weights, surrounding the band of sponge, and attached

to it, so that they must move together; every part of this
band and chain being so accurately uniform in weight that
the perpendicular side AB will, in all positions of the band
and chain, be in equilibrium with the hypothenuse AC, on
the principle of the inclined plane. Now, if the frame in
which these rollers are fixed be placed in a cistern of water,
having its lower part immersed therein, so that the water's
edge cuts the upper part of the rollers BC, then, if the
weight and quantity of the endless chain be duly propor-
tioned to the thickness and breadth of the band of sponge,
the band and chain will, on the water in the cistern being
brought to the proper level, begin to move round the rollers
in the direction AB, by the force of capillary attraction,
and will continue so to move. The process is as follows:

PERPETUAL MOTION 55

" On the side AB of the triangle, the weights bbb, etc.,
hanging perpendicularly alongside the band of sponge, the
band is not compressed by them, and its pores being left
open, the water at the point x, at which the band meets its
surface, will rise to a certain height y, above its level, and
thereby create a load, which load will not exist on the as-
cending side CA, because on this side the chain of weights
compresses the band at the water's edge, and squeezes out
any water that may have previously accumulated in it; so
that the band rises in a dry state, the weight of the chain
having been so proportioned to the breadth and thickness
of the band as to be sufficient to produce this effect. The
load, therefore, on the descending side AB, not being op-
posed by any similar load on the ascending side, and the
equilibrium of the other parts not being disturbed by the
alternate expansion and compression of the sponge, the
band will begin to move in the direction AB; and as it
moves downwards, the accumulation of water will continue
to rise, and thereby carry on a constant motion, provided
the load at xy be sufficient to overcome the friction on the
rollers ABC.

" Now to ascertain the quantity of this load in any par-
ticular machine, it must be stated that it is found by ex-
periment that the water will rise in a fine sponge about an
inch above its level; if, therefore, the band and sponge be
one foot thick and six feet broad, the area of its horizontal
section in contact with the water would be 864 square
inches, and the weight of the accumulation of water raised
by the capillary attraction being one inch rise upon 864
square inches, would be 30 lb., which, it is conceived, would
be much more than equivalent to the friction of the rollers."

The article, inspired no doubt by Sir William, then goes
on to give elaborate reasons for the success of the device,
but all these are met by the damning fact that the machine
never worked. Some time afterwards Sir William, at
considerable expense, published a pamphlet in which he
explained and defended his views. If he had only had a
working model made and the thing had continued in motion

56 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

for a few hours, he would have silenced all objectors far
more quickly and forcibly than he ever could have done
by any amount of argument.

And in his case there could have been no excuse for
his not making a small machine "after the plans that he
published and even patented. He was wealthy and could
have commanded the services of the best mechanics in
London, but no working model was ever made. Many in-
ventors of perpetual-motion machines offer their poverty
as an excuse for not making a model or working machine.
Thus Dircks, in his " Perpetuum Mobile " gives an account
of " a mechanic, a model maker, who had a neat brass
model of a time-piece, in which were two steel balls A and
B ; — B to fall into a semicircular gallery C, and be car-
ried to the end D of a straight trough DE ; while A in its
turn rolls to E, and so on continuously ; only the gallery C
not being screwed in its place, we are desired to take the
will for the deed, until twenty shillings be raised to com-
plete this part of the work ! "

And Mr. Dircks also quotes from the "Builder" of
June, 1847 : " This vain delusion, if not still in force, is at
least as standing a fallacy as ever. Joseph Hutt, a frame-
work knitter, in the neighborhood of the enlightened town
of Hinckley, professes to have discovered it [perpetual
motion] and only wants twenty pounds, as usual, to set it
agoing."

The following rather curious arrangement was described
in "The Mechanic's Magazine" for 1825.

" I beg leave to offer the prefixed device. The point at
which, like all the rest, it fails, I confess I did not (as I
do now) plainly perceive at once, although it is certainly
very obvious. The original idea was this — to enable a

PERPETUAL MOTION 57

body which would float in a heavy medium and sink in a
lighter one, to pass successively through the one to the
other, the continuation of which would be the end in view.
To say that valves cannot be made to act as proposed will
not be to show the rationale (if I may so say) upon which
the idea is fallacious."

The figure is supposed to be tubular, and made of glass,
for the purpose of seeing the action of the balls inside,
which float or fall as they travel from air through water
and from water through air. The foot is supposed to be
placed in water, but it would answer the same purpose if
the bottom were closed.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGRAVING, FIG. 13. No. i, the
left leg, filled with water from B to A. 2 and 3, valves,
having in their centers very small projecting valves ; they
all open upwards. 4, the right leg, containing air from
A to F. 5 and 6, valves, having very small ones in their
centers; they all open downwards. The whole apparatus
is supposed to be air and water-tight. The round figures
represent hollow balls, which will sink one-fourth of their
bulk in water (of course will fall in air) ; the weight there-
fore of three balls resting upon one ball in water, as at E,
will just bring its top even with the water's edge ; the
weight of four balls will sink it under the surface until the
ball immediately over it is one-fourth its bulk in water,
when the under ball will escape round the corner at C,
and begin to ascend.

"The machine is supposed (in the figure) to be in
action, and No. 8 (one of the balls) to have just escaped
round the corner at C, and to be, by its buoyancy, rising
up to valve No. 3, striking first the small projecting valve
in the center, which when opened, the large one will be

58 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

raised by the buoyancy of the ball ; because the moment
the small valve in the center is opened (although only the
size of a pin's head), No. 2 valve will have taken upon it-
self to sustain the whole column of water from A to B.
The said ball (No. 8) having passed through the valve

Fig. 13.

No. 3, will, by appropriate weights or springs, close ; the
ball will proceed upwards to the next valve (No. 2), and
perform the same operation there. Having arrived at A,
it will float upon the surface three-fourths of its bulk out
of water. Upon another ball in due course arriving under
it, it will be lifted quite out of the water, and fall over the

PERPETUAL MOTION 59

point D, pass into the right leg (containing air), and fall to
valve No. 5, strike and open the small valve in its center,
then open the large one, and pass through ; this valve will
then, by appropriate weights or springs, close; the ball will
roll on through the bent tube (which is made in that form
to gain time as well as to exhibit motion) to the next valve
(No. 6), where it will perform the same operation, and
then, falling upon the four balls at E, force the bottom one
round the corner at C. This ball will proceed as did No.
8, and the rest in the same manner successively."

That an ordinary amateur mechanic should be misled by
such arguments is perhaps not so surprising, when we re-
member that the famous John Bernoulli claimed to have
invented a perpetual motion based on the difference be-
tween the specific gravities of two liquids. A translation
of the original Latin may be found in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Vol. XVIII, page 555. Some of the premises
on which he depends are, however, impossibilities, and
Professor Chrystal concludes his notice of the invention
thus : " One really is at a loss with Bernoulli's wonderful
theory, whether to admire most the conscientious state-
ment of the hypothesis, the prim logic of the demonstra-
tion— so carefully cut according to the pattern of the
ancients — or the weighty superstructure built on so frail
a foundation. Most of our perpetual motions were clearly
the result of too little learning ; surely this one was the
product of too much."

A more simple device was suggested recently by a cor-
respondent of " Power." He describes it thus :

The J-shaped tube A, Fig. 14, is open at both ends,
but tapers at the lower end, as shown. A well-greased
cotton rope C passes over the wheel B and through the

6o

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

small opening of the tube with practically little or no fric-
tion, and also without leakage. The tube is then filled with
water. The rope above the line WX balances over the
pulley, and so does that below the line YZ . The rope in

Fig. 14.

the tube between these lines is lifted by the water, while
the rope on the other side of the pulley between these lines
is pulled downward by gravity.

The inventor offers the above suggestion rather as a
kind of puzzle than as a sober attempt to solve the famous
problem, and he concludes by asking why it will not work ?

In addition to the usual resistance or friction offered by
the air to all motion, there are four drawbacks :

1. The friction in its bearings of the axle of the wheel B.

2. The power required to bend and unbend the rope.

3. The friction of the rope in passing through the water
from z to x and its tendency to raise a portion of the water
above the level of the water at x,

PERPETUAL MOTION 6l

4. The friction at the point y, this last being the most
serious of all. An " opening of the tube with practically
little or no friction, and also without leakage " is a mechan-
ical impossibility. In order to have the joint water-tight,
the tube must hug the rope very tightly and this would
make friction enough to prevent any motion. And the
longer the column of water xz, the greater will be the ten-
dency to leak, and consequently the tighter must be the
joint and the greater the friction thereby created.

A favorite idea with perpetual-motion seekers is the
utilization of the force of magnetism. Some time prior to
the year 1579, Joannes Taisnierus wrote a book which is
now in the British Museum and in which considerable
space is devoted to " Continual Motions " and to the
solving of this problem by magnetism. Bishop Wil-
kins in his " Mathematical Magick " describes one of the
many devices which have been invented with this end
in view. He says : " But amongst all these kinds of inven-
tion, that is most likely, wherein a loadstone is so disposed
that it shall draw unto it on a reclined plane a bullet of
steel, which steel as it ascends near to the loadstone, may
be contrived to fall down through some hole in the plane,
and so to return unto the place from whence at first it
began to move ; and, being there, the loadstone will again
attract it upwards till coming to this hole, it will fall down
again ; and so the motion shall be perpetual, as may be
more easily conceivable by this figure (Fig. 15) :

" Suppose the loadstone to be represented at AB, which,
though it have not strength enough to attract the bullet
C directly from the ground, yet may do it by the help of
the plane EF. Now, when the bullet is come to the top
of this plane, its own gravity (which is supposed to exceed

62

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

the strength of the loadstone) will make it fall into that
hole at E; and the force it receives in this fall will carry it
with such a violence unto the other end of this arch, that
it will open the passage which is there made for it, and by
its return will again shut it ; so that the bullet (as at the

Fig. 15.

first) is in the same place whence it was attracted, and,
consequently must move perpetually."

Notwithstanding the positiveness of the "must " at the
close of his description, it is very obvious to any practical
mechanic that the machine will not move at all, far less
move perpetually, and the bishop himself, after carefully
and conscientiously discussing the objections, comes to the
same conclusion. He ends by saying : " So that none of
all these magnetical experiments, which have been as yet
discovered, are sufficient for the effecting of a perpetual
motion, though these kind of qualities seem most conduci-
ble unto it, and perhaps hereafter it may be contrived from
them."

It has occurred to several would-be inventors of perpet-
ual motion that if some substance could be found which
would prevent the passage of the magnetic force, then by
interposing a plate of this material at the proper moment,

PERPETUAL MOTION 63

between the magnet and the piece of iron to be attracted,
a perpetual motion might be obtained. Several inventors
have claimed that they had discovered such a non-conduct-
ing substance, but it is needless to say that their claims
had no foundation in fact, and if they had discovered anything
of the kind, it would have required just as much force to
interpose it as would have been gained by the interposi-
tion. It has been fully proved that in every case where a
machine was made to work apparently by the interposition
of such a material, a fraud was perpetrated and the machine
was really made to move by means of some concealed
springs or weights.

A correspondent of the " Mechanic's Magazine " (Vol. xii,
London, 1829), gives the following curious design for a
" Self -moving Railway Carriage." He describes it as a
machine which, were it possible to make its parts hold to-
gether unimpaired by rotation or the ravages of time, and
to give it a path encircling the earth, would assuredly con-
tinue to roll along in one undeviating course until time
shall be no more.

A series of inclined planes are to be erected in such a
manner that a cone will ascend one (its sides forming an
acute angle), and being raised to the summit, descend on
the next (having parallel sides), at the foot of which it
must rise on a third and fall on a fourth, and so continue
to do alternately throughout.

The diagram, Fig. 16, is the section of a carriage A,
with broad conical wheels a, a, resting on the inclined plane
b. The entrance to the carriage is from above, and there are
ample accommodations for goods and passengers. " The
most singular property of this contrivance is, that its speed
increases the more it is laden ; and when checked on any

64

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

part of the road, it will, when the cause of stoppage is re-
moved, proceed on its journey by mere power of gravity.
Its path may be a circular road formed of the inclined
planes. But to avoid a circuitous route, a double road
ought to be made. The carriage not having a retrograde
motion on the inclined planes, a road to set out upon, and
another to return by, are indispensable."

Fig. 16.

How any one could ever imagine that such a contrivance
would ever continue in motion for .even a short time,
except, perhaps, on the famous decensus averni, must be a
puzzle to every sane mechanic. I therefore give it as
a climax to the absurdities which have been proposed in
sober earnest. As a fitting close, however, to this chapter
of human folly, I give the following joke from the " Penny
Magazine," published by the Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge.

" * Father, I have invented a perpetual motion ! J said a
little fellow of eight years old. ' It is thus : I would make
a great wheel, and fix it up like a water-wheel; at the top
I would hang a great weight, and at the bottom I would
hang a number of little weights; then the great weight

PERPETUAL MOTION 6$

would turn the wheel half round and sink to the bottom,
because it is so heavy: and when the little weights reach
the top they would sink down, because they are so many;
and thus the wheel would turn round for ever.*

The child's fallacy is a type of all the blunders which
are made on this subject. Follow a projector in his
description, and if it be not perfectly unintelligible, which
it often is, it always proves that he expects to find certain
of his movements alternately strong and weak — -not
according to the laws of nature — but according to the
wants of his mechanism.

2. FALLACIES

Fallacies are distinguished from absurdities on the one
hand and from frauds on the other, by the fact that with-
out any intentionally fraudulent contrivances on the part
of the inventor, they seem to produce results which have
a tendency to afford to certain enthusiasts a basis of hope
in the direction of perpetual motion, although usually not
under that name, for that is always explicitly disclaimed by
the promoters.

The most notable instance of this class in recent times
was the application of liquid air as a source of power, the
claim having been actually made by some of the advocates
of this fallacy that a steamship starting from New York
with 1000 gallons of liquid air, could not only cross the
Atlantic at full speed but could reach the other side with
more than 1000 gallons of liquid air on board — the power
required to drive the vessel and to liquefy the surplus air
being all obtained during the passage by utilizing the
original quantity of liquid air that had been furnished in
the first place.

66 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

That this was equivalent to perpetual motion, pure and
simple, was obvious even to those who were least familiar
with such subjects, though the idea of calling it perpetual
motion was sternly repudiated by all concerned — the term
" perpetual motion" having become thoroughly offensive
to the ears of common-sense people, and consequently
tending to cast doubt over any enterprise to which it
might be applied.

That liquid air is a real and wonderful discovery, and
that for a certain small range of purposes it will prove
highly useful, cannot be doubted by those who have seen
and handled it and are familiar with its properties, but that
it will ever be successfully used as an economical source
of mechanical power is, to say the least, very improbable.
That a small quantity of the liquid is capable of doing an
enormous amount of work, and that under some conditions
there is apparently more power developed than was origin-
ally required to liquefy the air, is undoubtedly true, but
when a careful quantitative examination is made of the
outgo and the income of energy, it will be found in this,
as in every similar case, that instead of a gain there is a
very decided and serious loss. The correct explanation of
the fallacy was published in the " Scientific American," by
the late Dr. Henry Morton, president of the Stevens
Institute, and the same explanation and exposure were
made by the writer, nearly fifty years ago, in the case of
a very similar enterprise. The form of the fallacy in both
cases is so similar and so interesting that I shall make no
apology for giving the details.

About the year 1853 or l&$4> two ingenious mechanics
of Rochester, N. Y., conceived the idea that by using some
liquid more volatile than water, a great saving might be

PERPETUAL MOTION 67

effected in the cost of running an engine. At that time
gasolene and benzine were unknown in commerce, and the
same was true in regard to bisulphide of carbon, but as
the process of manufacturing the latter was simple and the
sources of supply were cheap and apparently unlimited, they
adopted that liquid. The name of one of these inventors
was Hughes and that of the other was Hill, and it would
seem that each had made the invention independently of
the other. They had a fierce conflict over the patent, but
this does not concern us except to this extent, that the
records of the case may therefore be found in the archives
of the Patent Office at Washington, D.C. Hughes was
backed by the wealth of a well-known lawyer of Rochester,
whose son subsequently occupied a high office in the state
of New York, and he constructed a beautiful little steam-
engine and boiler, made of the very finest materials and
with such skill and accuracy that it gave out a very consid-
erable amount of power in proportion to its size. The
source of heat was a series of lamps, fed, I think, with
lard oil (this was before the days of kerosene), and the ex-
hibition test consisted in first filling the boiler with water,
and noting the time that it took to get up a certain steam
pressure as shown by the gage." After this test, bisulphide
of carbon was added to the water, and the time and pres-
sure were noted. The difference was of course remark-
able, and altogether in favor of the new liquid. The
exhaust was carried into a vessel of cold water and as bi-
sulphide of carbon is very easily condensed and very heavy,
almost the entire quantity used was recovered and used
over and over again.

But to the uninstructed onlooker, the most remarkable
part of the exhibition was when the steam pressure was so

68 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

far lowered that the engine revolved very slowly, and then,
on a little bisulphide being injected into the boiler, the
pressure would at once rise, and the engine would work
with great rapidity. This seemed almost like magic.

The same experiment was tried on an engine of twelve
horse-power, and with a like result. When the steam
pressure had fallen so far that the engine began to move
quite slowly, a quantity of the bisulphide would be injected
into the boiler and the pressure would at once rise, the
engine would move with renewed vigor, and the fly-wheel
would revolve with startling velocity. All this was seen
over and over again by myself and others. At that time
the writer, then quite a young man, had just recovered
from a very severe illness and was making a living by
teaching mechanical drawing and making drawings for in-
ventors and others, and in the course of business he was
brought into contact with some parties who thought of in-
vesting in the new and apparently wonderful invention.
They employed him to examine it and give an opinion as
to its value. After careful consideration and as thorough
a calculation as the data then at command would allow, he
showed his clients that the tests which had been exhibited
to them proved nothing, and that if a clear proof of the
value of the invention was to be given, it must be after a
run of many hours and not of a few minutes, and against
a properly adjusted load, the amount of which had been
carefully ascertained. This test was never made, or if
made the results were not communicated to the prospec-
tive purchasers ; the negotiations fell through, and the in-
vention which was to have revolutionized our mechanical
industries fell into "innocuous desuetude."

That the inventors were honest I have no doubt. They

PERPETUAL MOTION 69

were themselves deceived when they saw the engine start
off with tremendous velocity as soon as a little bisulphide
of carbon was injected into the boiler, and they failed to
see that this spurt, if I may use the expression, was simply
clue to a draft upon capital previously stored up. The
capacity of bisulphide of carbon for heat is quite low, when
compared with that of water ; its vaporizing point is also
much lower and consequently, an ordinary boiler full of
hot water contains enough heat to vaporize a considerable
quantity of bisulphide of carbon at a pretty high pressure.
In even a still greater measure the same is true of liquid
air, and this was the underlying fallacy in the case of the
tests made with liquid-air motors.

3. FRAUDS

But while the inventors of these schemes may have been
honest, there is another class who deliberately set out to
perpetrate a fraud. Their machines work, and work well,
but there is always some concealed source of power, which
causes them to move. As a general rule, such inventors
form a company or corporation of unlimited " lie-ability," as
De Morgan phrases it, and then they proceed by means of
flaring prospectuses and liberal advertising, to gather in
the dupes who are attracted by their seductive promises
of enormous returns for a very small outlay. Perhaps the
most widely known of these fraudulent schemes of recent
years was the notorious Keeley motor, the originator of
which managed to hoodwink a respectable old lady, and to
draw from her enormous supplies of cash. At his death,
however, the absolutely fraudulent nature of his contri-
vances was fully disclosed, and nothing more has been

70 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

heard of his alleged discovery. But, while he lived and
was able to put forward claims based upon some apparent
results, he found plenty of fools who accepted the idea that
there is nothing impossible to science.

It is true that the Keeley motor was examined by sev-
eral committees and some very respectable gentlemen acted
in such a way as to give a seeming endorsement of the
scheme, but it must not be supposed for an instant that
any well-educated engineers and scientific men were de-
ceived by Mr. Keeley's nonsense. The very fact that he
refused to allow a complete examination of his machine by
intelligent practical men, ought to have been enough to
condemn his scheme, for if he had really made the discovery
which he claimed there would have been no difficulty in
proving it practically and thoroughly, and then he might
have formed company after company that would have re-
warded him with "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice."

The Keeley motor was not put forward as a perpetual
motion ; in these days none of these schemes is admitted
to be a perpetual motion, for that term has now become
exceedingly offensive and would condemn any invention ;
but the result is the same in the end, and the whole his-
tory of perpetual motion is permeated with frauds of this
kind, some of them having been so simple that they were
obvious to even the most unskilled observer, while others
were exceedingly complicated and most ingeniously con-
cealed. Many years ago a number of these fraudulent per-
petual-motion machines were manufactured in America
and sent over to Great Britain for exhibition, and quite a
lucrative business was done by showing them in various
towns. But the fraud was soon detected and the British
police then made it too warm for these swindlers.

PERPETUAL MOTION 71

Mr. Dircks, in his " Perpetuum Mobile," has given ac-
counts of quite a number of these impostures. The fol-
lowing are some of the most notable :

M. Poppe of Tubingen tells of a clock made by M. Geiser,
which was an admirable piece of mechanism and seemed to
have solved this great problem in an ingenious and simple
manner, but it deceived only for a time. When thoroughly
examined inwardly and outwardly, some time after his
death, it was found that the center props supporting its
cylinders contained cleverly constructed, hidden clock-work,
wound up by inserting a key in a small hole under the sec-
ond-hand.

Another case was that of a man named Adams who ex-
hibited, for eight or nine days, his pretended perpetual
motion in a town in England and took in the natives for
fifty or sixty pounds. Accident, however, led to a discov-
ery of the imposture. A gentleman, viewing the machine
took hold of the wheel or trundle and lifted it up a little,
which probably disengaged the wheels that connected the
hidden machinery in the plinth, and immediately he heard
a sound similar to that of a watch when the spring is run-
ning down. The owner was in great anger and directly
put the wheel into its proper position, and the machine
again went around as before. The circumstance was men-
tioned to an intelligent person who determined to find out
and expose the imposture. He took with him a friend to
view the machine and they seated themselves one on each
side of the table upon which the machine was placed.
They then took hold of the wheel and trundle and lifted
them up, there being some play in the pivots. " Immedi-
ately the hidden spring began to run down and they con-
tinued to hold the machine in spite of the endeavors of

72 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

the owner to prevent them. When the spring had run
down, they placed the machine again on the table and
offered the owner fifty pounds if it could then set itself
going, but notwithstanding his fingering and pushing, it re-
mained motionless. A constable was sent for, the impostor
went before a magistrate and there signed a paper confess-
ing his perpetual motion to be a cheat.

In the " Mechanic's Magazine," Vol. 46, is an account
of a perpetual motion, constructed by one Redhoeffer of
Pennsylvania, which obtained sufficient notoriety to in-
duce the Legislature to appoint a committee to enquire
into its merits. The attention of Mr. Lukens was turned
to the subject, and although the actual moving cause was
not discovered, yet the deception was so ingeniously imi-
tated in a machine of similar appearance made by him and
moved by a spring so well concealed, that the deceiver him-
self was deceived and Redhoeffer was induced to believe
that Mr. Lukens had been successful in obtaining a mov-
ing power in some way in which he himself had failed,
when he had produced a machine so plausible in appear-
ance as to deceive the public.

Instances of a similar kind might be multiplied in-
definitely.

The experienced mechanic who reads the descriptions
here given of the various devices which have been proposed
for the construction of a perpetual-motion machine must be
struck with the childish simplicity of the plans which have
been offered ; and those who will search the pages of the
mechanical journals of the last century or who will ex-
amine the two closely printed volumes in which Mr. Dircks
has collected almost everything of the kind, will be aston-
ished at the sameness which prevails amongst the offerings

PERPETUAL MOTION 73

of these would-be inventors. Amongst the hundreds, or,
perhaps, thousands, of contrivances which have been de-
scribed, there is probably not more than a dozen kinds
which differ radically from each other ; the same arrange-
ment having been invented and re-invented over and over
again. And one of the strange features of the case is that
successive inventors seem to take no note of the failure of
those predecessors who have brought forward precisely the
same combination of parts under a very slightly different
form.

It is true that we occasionally find a very elaborate and
apparently complicated machine, but in such cases it will be
found, on close examination, to owe its apparent complexity
to a mere multiplication of parts ; no real inventive ingen-
uity is exhibited in any case.

Another singular characteristic of almost all those who
have devoted themselves to the search for a perpetual
motion is their absolute confidence in the success of the
plans which they have brought forth. So confident are
they in the soundness of their views and so sure of the suc-
cess of their schemes that they do not even take the trouble
to test their plans but announce them as accomplished
facts, and publish their sketches and descriptions as if the
machine was already working without a hitch. Indeed, so
far was one inventor carried away with this feeling of con-
fidence in the success of his machine that he no longer
allowed himself to be troubled with any doubts as to the
machine's going but was greatly puzzled as to what means
he should take to stop it after it had been set in motion !

These facts, which are well known to all who have been
brought into contact with this class of minds, explain many
otherwise puzzling circumstances and enable us to place

74 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

a proper value on assertions which, if not made so posi-
tively and by such apparently good authority, would be at
once condemned as deliberate falsehoods. That falsehood,
pure and simple, has formed the basis of a good many
claims of this kind, there can be no doubt, but at the same
time, it is probable that some of the claimants really de-
ceived themselves and attributed to causes other than radi-
cal errors of theory, the fact that their machines would not
continue to move.

While many have claimed the actual invention of a per-
petual motion it is very certain that not one has ever suc-
ceeded. How, then, are we to explain the statements
which have been made in regard to Orffyreus and the
claims of the Marquis of Worcester ? For both of these
men it is claimed that they constructed wheels which were
capable of moving perpetually and apparently strong testi-
mony is offered in support of these assertions.

In the famous " Century of Inventions," published by
the Marquis in 1663, four years before his death, the cele-
brated 56th article reads as follows (verbatim et literatim] :

" To provide and make that all the Weights of the descend-
ing side of a Wheel shall be perpetually further from the
Centre, then those of the mounting side, and yet equal in
number and heft to the one side" as the other. A most in-
credible thing, if not seen, but tried before the late king
(of blessed memory) in the Tower, by my directions, two
Extraordinary Embassadors accompanying His Majesty, and
the Duke of Richmond and Duke Hamilton, with most of
the Court, attending Him. The Wheel was 14. Foot over,
and 40. Weights of 50. pounds apiece. Sir William Balfcre,
then Lieutenant of the Tower, can justifie it, with several
others. They all saw, that no sooner these great Weights
passed the Diameter-line of the lower side, but they hung
a foot further from the Centre, nor no sooner passed the
Diameter-line of the upper side, but they hung a foot nearer.
Be pleased to judge the consequence."

PERPETUAL MOTION 75

Such is the account given by the Marquis himself, and
that he exhibited such a wheel at the time and place which
he names, I have not the least doubt. And that some of
the weights on one side hung a foot further from the cen-
ter than did weights on the other side is also no doubt true,
but, as the judging of the "consequence" is left to our-
selves we know that after the first impulse given to it had
been expended, the wheel would simply stand still unless
kept in motion by some external force.

Mr. Dircks in his " Life, Times and Scientific Labours
of the Second Marquis of Worcester," gives an engraving
of a wheel which complies with all the conditions laid down
by the Marquis and which is thus described :

" Let the annexed diagram, Fig. 17, represent a wheel of
14 feet in diameter, having 40 spokes, seven feet each, and
with an inner rim coinciding with the periphery, at one
foot distance all round. Next provide 40 balls or weights,
hanging in the center of cords or chains two feet long.
Now, fasten one end of this cord at the top of the center

76 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

spoke C, and the other end of the cord to the next right-
hand spoke one foot below the upper end, or on the inner
ring; proceed in like manner with every other spoke in
succession; and it will be found that, at A, the cord will
have the position shown outside the wheel ; while at B, C,
and D, it will also take the respective positions, as shown
on the outside. The result in this case will be, that all
the weights on the side A, C, D, hang to the great or outer
circle, while on the side B, C, D, all the weights are sus-
pended from the lesser or inner circle. And if we reverse
the motion of the wheel, turning it from the right to the
left hand, we shall reverse these positions also (the lower
end of the cord sliding in a groove towards a left-hand
spoke), but without the wheel having any tendency to move
of itself."

But it is quite as likely that the wheel constructed by
the Marquis was like one of the "overbalancing" wheels
described at the beginning of this article.

It is upon this " scantling " that has been based the
claim that the Marquis really invented a perpetual motion,
but to those who have seen much of inventors of this kind,
the discrepancy between the suggested claim made by the
Marquis and what we know must have been the actual
results, is easily explained. The Marquis felt sure that
the thing ought to work, and the excuse for its not doing
so was probably the imperfect manner in which the wheel
was made. Only put a little better work on it, says the
inventor, and it will go.

Caspar Kaltoff, mechanician to the Marquis, probably
got the wheel up in a hurry so as to exhibit it on the occa-
sion of the king's visit to the tower. If he only had had a
little more time he would have made a machine that would
have worked. (?) I have heard the same excuse under
almost the same circumstances, scores of times.

The case of Orffyreus was very different. The real

PERPETUAL MOTION 77

name of this inventor was Jean Ernest Elie-Bessler, and he
is said to have manufactured the name Orffyreus by plac-
ing his own name between two lines of letters, and picking
out alternate letters above and below. He was educated
for the church, but turned his attention to mechanics and
became an expert clock maker. His character, as given
by his contemporaries was fickle, tricky, and irascible.
Having devised a scheme for perpetual motion he con-
structed several wheels which he claimed.to be self-moving.
The last one which he made was 1 2 feet in diameter and
14 inches deep, the material being light pine boards,
covered with waxed cloth to conceal the mechanism. The
axle was 8 inches thick, thus affording abundant space fop
concealed machinery.

This wheel was submitted to the Landgrave of Hesse
who had it placed in a room which was then locked, and
the lock secured with the Landgrave's own seal. At the
end of forty days it was found to be still running.

Professor 'sGravesande having been employed by the
Landgrave to make an examination and pronounce upon
its merits, he endeavored to perform his work thoroughly ;
this so irritated Orffyreus that the latter broke the machine
in pieces, and left on the wall a writing stating that he had
been driven to do this by the impertinent curiosity of the
Professor !

I have no doubt that this was a clear case of fraud, and
that the wheel was driven by some mechanism concealed
in the huge axle. As already stated, Orffyreus was at
one time a clock maker ; now clocks have been made to go
for a whole year without having to be rewound, so that
forty days was not a very long time for the apparatus to
keep in motion.

78 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

Professor 'sGravesande seems to have had some faith
in the invention, but then we must remember that it would
not have been very difficult to deceive an honest old pro-
fessor whose confidence in humanity was probably un-
bounded. The crowning argument against the genuineness
of the motion was the fact that the inventor refused to
allow a thorough examination, although a wealthy patron
stood ready with a large reward if the machine could be
proved to be what was claimed.

And now comes up the question which has arisen in
regard to other problems, and will recur again and again
to the end of the chapter : Is a perpetual motion machine
one of the scientific impossibilities ?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that there
is no principle more thoroughly established than that no
combination of machinery can create energy. So far as
our present knowledge of nature goes we might as well
try to create matter as to create energy, and the creation
of energy is essential to the successful working of a per-
petual-motion machine because some power must always
be lost through friction and other resistances and must be
supplied from some source if the machine is to keep on
moving. And since the law of the conservation of energy
makes it positive that no more power can be given out by
a machine than was originally supplied to it, it seems as
certain as anything can be that the construction of a per-
petual-motion machine is one of the impossibilities.

V
TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS

HE " accursed thirst for gold " has existed from
the earliest ages and, as the apostle says, " is the
root of all evil." Those who have a greed for
power, a craving for luxury, or a fever for lust,
all think that their wildest dreams might be realized if
they could only command sufficient gold. Never was
there a more lurid picture of a mind inflamed with all these
evil passions than that set forth by Ben Jonson in the
Second Act of " The Alchemist," and who can doubt but
that such desires and dreams spurred on many, either to
engage in an actual search for the philosopher's stone, or
to become the dupes of what Van Helmont calls " a dia-
bolical crew of gold and silver sucking flies and leeches."

As we might naturally expect, the early history of
alchemy is shrouded in myths and fables. Zosimus the
Panapolite tells us that the art of Alchemy was first
taught to mankind by demons, who fell in love with the
daughters of men, and, as a reward for their favors, taught
them all the works and mysteries of nature. On this
Boerhaave remarks :

" This ancient fiction took its rise from a mistaken in-
terpretation of the words of Moses, * That the sons of God
saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they
took them wives of all which they chose. ' l From whence
it was inferred that the sons of God were daemons, con-
sisting of a soul, and a visible but impalpable body, like

1 Genesis vi, 2.
79

80 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

the image in a looking-glass (to which notion we find
several allusions in the evangelists) ; that they know all
things, appeared to men and conversed with them, fell
in love with women, had intrigues with them and revealed
secrets. From the same fable probably arose that of the
Sibyl, who is said to have obtained of Apollo the gift of
prophecy, and revealing the will of heaven in return for
a like favor. So prone is the roving mind of man to fig-
ments, which it can at first idly amuse itself with, and at
length fall down and worship. "

This idea of the supernatural origin of the arts perme-
ates the ancient mythology which everywhere teaches that
men were taught the sacred arts of medicine and chemis-
try by gods and demigods.

Modern science discards all these mythological accounts.
Whatever knowledge the ancients acquired of medicine and
chemistry was, no doubt, reached along two lines — phar-
macy and metallurgy. That the pharmacist or apothecary
exercised his calling at a very early period we have posi-
tive knowledge ; thus in the Book of Ecclesiastes we are
told that " dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary
to send forth a stinking savor," and that men at a very
early day found out the means of working iron, copper,
gold, silver, etc., is evident from the accounts given of
Vulcan and Tubalcain, as well as from the remains of old
tools and weapons. And that Alchemy, as it is generally
understood, is a comparatively modern outgrowth of these
two arts, is pretty certain. No mention of the art of con-
verting the baser metals into gold, and no account of a
universal medicine or elixir of life is to be found in any of
the authentic writings of the ancients. Homer, Aristotle,
and even Pliny are all silent on the subject, and those
writings which treat of the art, and which claim an ancient
origin, such as the books of Hermes Trismegistus, are now

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 8l

regarded by the best authorities as spurious — the evi-
dence that they were the work of a far later age being
irrefragable.

Several writers have taken the ground that the alchemi-
cal treatises which have come down to us from the early
writers on the subject, are purely allegorical and do not
relate to material things, but to the principles of a higher
religion which, in those days, it was dangerous to expound
in plain language. One or two elaborate works and several
articles supporting this view have been published, but the
common-sense reader who will glance through the im-
mense collection of alchemical tracts gathered together by
Mangetus in two folio volumes of a thousand pages each,
will rise from such examination, very thoroughly convinced
that it was the actual metal gold, and the fabled universal
medicine that these writers had in view.

There can be little doubt that Geber, Roger Bacon,
Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully, Helvetius, Van Hel-
mont, Basil Valentine, and others, describe very substan-
tial things with a minuteness of detail which leaves no
room for doubt as to their materiality though we cannot
always be sure of their identity.

Some confusion of thought has been caused by the
difference which has been made between the terms alchemy
and chemistry and their applications. The word alchemy
is simply the word chemistry with the Arabic word al,
which signifies the, prefixed, and the history of alchemy is
really the history of chemistry — wild and erratic in its
beginnings, and giving rise to strange hopes and still
stranger theories, but ever working along the line of dis-
covery and progress. And, although many of the profes-
sional chemists or alchemists of the middle ages were

82 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

undoubted charlatans and quacks, yet did we not have
many of the same kind in the nineteenth century ? We
may use the word alchemist as a term of reproach, and apply
it to these early workers because their theories appear
to us to be absurd, but how do we know that the chemists
of the twenty-second century will not regard us in a similar
light, and set at naught the theories we so fondly cherish ?

Only seven out of the large number of metals now cata-
logued by us were known to the ancients ; these were
gold, silver, mercury, copper, tin, lead, and iron. And as it
happened that the list of so-called planets also numbered
exactly seven, it was thought that there must be a connec-
tion between the two, and, consequently, in the alchemical
writings, each metal was called by the name of that one of
the heavenly bodies which was supposed to be connected
with it in influence and quality.

In the astronomy of the ancients, as is generally known,
the earth occupied the center of the universe, and the list
of planets included the sun and moon. After them came
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. To the metal
gold was given the name of Sol, or the sun, on account
of its brightness and its power of resisting corroding agents ;
hence the compounds of gold were known as solar compounds
and solar medicines. As might have been expected, silver
was assigned to Luna or the moon, and in the modern
pharmacopoeia such terms as lunar caustic and lunar salts
still have a place. Mercury was, of course, appropriated to
the planet of that name. Copper was named after Venus,
and cupreous salts were known as venereal salts. Iron,
probably from its being the metal chiefly used for making
arms and armor, was dedicated to Mars, and we still speak
of martial salts. Tin was named after Jupiter from his bril-

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 83

liancy, the compounds of tin being called jovial salts. The
dull, leaden color of Saturn, with his apparently heavy and
slow motion, seemed to fit him for association with lead, and
we still have the saturnine ointment as a reminder of old
alchemical times.

Of these metals gold was supposed to be the only one
that was perfect, and the belief was general that if the
others could be purified and perfected they would be
changed to gold. Many of the old chemists worked faith-
fully and honestly to accomplish this, but the path to wealth
seemed so direct and the means for deception were so
ready and simple, that large numbers of quacks and charla-
tans entered the field and held out the most alluring induce-
ments to dupes who furnished them liberally with money
and other necessaries in the hope that when the discovery
was made they would be put in possession of unbounded
wealth. These dupes were easily deceived and led astray
by simple frauds, which scarcely rose to the level of amateur
legerdemain. In the "Memoirs of the Academy of
Sciences" for 1772, M. Geoffroy gives an account of the
various modes in which the frauds of these swindlers were
carried on. The following are a few of their tricks :
Instead of the mineral substances which they pretended
to transmute they put a salt of gold or silver at the bottom
of the crucible, the mixture being covered with some pow-
dered crucible and gum water or wax so that it might
look like the bottom of the crucible. Another method was
to bore a hole in a piece of charcoal, fill the hole with fine
filings of gold or silver, stopping it with powered charcoal,
mixed with some agglutinent so that the whole might look
natural. Then when the charcoal burned away, the silver
or gold was found in the bottom of the crucible. Or they

84 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

soaked charcoal in a solution of these metals and threw
the charcoal, when powdered, upon the material to be trans-
muted. Sometimes they whitened gold with mercury and
made it pass for silver or tin, and the gold when melted was
exhibited as the result of transmutation. A common ex-
hibition was to dip nails in a liquid and to take them out
apparently half converted into gold ; these nails consisted
of one-half iron neatly soldered to the other half, which was
gold, and covered with something to conceal the color.
The paint or covering was removed by the liquid. A very
common trick was the use of a hollow, iron stirring rod ;
the hollow was filled with gold or silver filings, and neatly
stopped with wax. When used to stir the contents of the
crucible the wax melted and allowed the gold or silver to
fall out.

These frauds were rendered all the more easy because
of certain statements which were current in regard to suc-
cessful attempts to convert lead and other metals into gold.
These accounts were vouched for by well-known chemists
and others of high standing. Perhaps the most famous of
these is that given by Helvetius in his " Brief of the* Golden
Calf ; Discovering the Rarest Miracle in Nature ; how by
the smallest portion of the Philosopher's Stone, a great
piece of common lead was totally transmuted into the purest
transplendent gold, at the Hague in 1666." The following
is Brande's abridgment of this singular account.

" The 27th day of December, 1666, in the afternoon,
came a stranger to my house at the Hague, in a plebeick
habit, of honest gravity and serious authority, of a mean
stature and a little long face, black hair not at all curled,
a beardless chin, and about forty-four years (as I guess) of
age and born in North Holland. After salutation, he be-
secched me with great reverence to pardon his rude accesses,

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 85

for he was a lover of the Pyrotechnian art, and having
read my treatise against the sympathetic powder of Sir
Kenelm Digby, and observed my aoubt about the philo-
sophic mystery, induced him to ask me if I really was a
disbeliever as to the existence of an universal medicine
which would cure all diseases, unless the principal parts
were perished, or the predestinated time of death come.
I replied, I never met with an adept, or saw such a medi-
cine, though I had fervently prayed for it. Then I said,
4 Surely you are a learned physician.' ' No,' said he, ' I am a
brass-founder, and a lover of chemistry.1 He then took
from his bosom-pouch a neat ivory box, and out of it three
ponderous lumps of stone, each about the bigness of a
walnut. I greedily saw and handled for a quarter of an
hour this most noble substance, the value of which might
be somewhere about twenty tons of gold; and having
drawn from the owner many rare secrets of its admirable
effects, I returned him this treasure of treasures with a
most sorrowful mind, humbly beseeching him to bestow a
fragment of it upon me in perpetual memory of him, though
but the size of a coriander seed. 'No, no,' said he, 'that is
not lawful, though thou wouldest give me as many golden
ducats as would fill this room; for it would have particular
consequences, and if fire could be burned of fire, I would
at this instant rather cast it all into the fiercest flames.'
He then asked if I had a private chamber whose prospect
was from the public street; so I presently conducted him
to my best furnished room backwards, which he entered,
says Helvetius (in the true spirit of Dutch cleanliness),
without wiping his shoes, which were full of snow and
dirt. I now expected he would bestow some great secret
upon me ; but in vain. He asked for a piece of gold, and
opening his doublet showed me five pieces of that precious
metal which he wore upon a green riband, and which very
much excelled mine in flexibility and color, each being
the size of a small trencher. I now earnestly again craved
a crumb of the stone, and at last, out of his philosophical
commiseration, he gave me a morsel as large as a rape-
seed ; but I said, ' This scanty portion will scarcely trans-
mute four grains of lead.' 'Then,' said he, 'Deliver it me
back : ' which I did, in hopes of a greater parcel ; but lie,
cutting off half with his nail, said : ' Even this is sufficient

86 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

for thee.' ' Sir,' said I, with a dejected countenance, * what
means this ? ' And he said, * Even that will transmute half
an ounce of lead.' So I gave him great thanks, and said I
would try it, and reveal it to no one. He then took his
leave, and said he would call again next morning at nine.
I then confessed, that while the mass of his medicine was
in my hand the day before, I had secretly scraped off a
bit with my nail, which I projected on lead, but it caused no
transmutation, for the whole flew away in fumes. * Friend,'
said he, * thou art more dexterous in committing theft than
in applying medicine; hadst thou wrapt up thy stolen prey
in yellow wax, it would have penetrated and transmuted
the lead into gold.' I then asked if the philosophic work
cost much or required long time, for philosophers say that
nine or ten months are required for it. He answered,
'Their writings are only to be understood by the adepts,
without whom no student can prepare this magistery. Fling
not away, therefore, thy money and goods in hunting out
this art, for thou shalt never find it.' To which I replied,
' As thy master showed it thee so mayest thou perchance
discover something thereof to me who know the rudiments,
and therefore, it may be easier to add to a foundation than
begin anew.' ' In this art,' said he, ' it is quite otherwise,
for unless thou knowest the thing from head to heel, thou
canst not break open the glassy seal of Hermes. But
enough; tomorrow at the ninth hour I will show thee the
manner of projection.' But Elias never came again; so
my wife, who was curious in the art whereof the worthy
man had discoursed, teazed me to make the experiment
with the little spark of bounty the artist had left me; so
I melted half an ounce of lead, upon which my wife put
in the said medicine ; it hissed and bubbled, and in a quarter
of an hour the mass of lead was transmuted into fine gold,
at which we were exceedingly amazed. I took it to the
goldsmith, who judged it most excellent, and willingly
offered fifty florins for each ounce."

Such is the celebrated history of Elias the artist and
Dr. Helvetius.

Helvetius stood very high as a man and chemist, but in
connection with this and some other narratives of the same

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 87

kind, it may be well to remember that something over a
hundred years before that time the celebrated Paracelsus
had introduced laudanum.

The following is another history of transmutation, given
by Mangetus, on the authority of M. Gros, a clergyman of
Geneva, " of the most unexceptionable character, and at
the same time a skilful physician and expert chemist."

" About the year 1650 an unknown Italian came to
Geneva and took lodgings at the sign of the Green Cross.
After remaining there a day or two, he requested De Luc,
the landlord, to procure him a man acquainted with Italian,
to accompany him through the town and point out those
things which deserved to be examined. De Luc was ac-
quainted with M. Gros, at that time about twenty years of
age, and a student in Geneva, and knowing his proficiency
in the Italian language, requested him to accompany the
stranger. To this proposition he willingly acceded, and
attended the Italian everywhere for the space of a fort-
night. The stranger now began to complain of want of
money, which alarmed M. Gros not a little, for at that
time he was very poor, and he became apprehensive, from
the tenor of the stranger's conversation, that he intended
to ask the loan of money from him. But instead of this,
the Italian asked him if he was acquainted with any gold-
smith, whose bellows and other utensils they might be
permitted to use, and who would not refuse to supply them
with the different articles requisite for a particular process
which he wanted to perform. M. Gros named a M. Bureau,
to whom the Italian immediately repaired. He readily
furnished crucibles, pure tin, quicksilver, and the other
things required by the Italian. The goldsmith left his
workshop, that the Italian might be under the less restraint,
leaving M. Gros, with one of his own workmen as an attend-
ant. The Italian put a quantity of tin into one crucible,
and a quantity of quicksilver into another. The tin was
melted in the fire and the mercury heated. It was then
poured into the melted tin, and at the same time a red
powder enclosed in wax was projected into the amalgam.
An agitation took place and a great deal of smoke was

88 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

exhaled from the crucible; but this speedily subsided, and
the whole being poured out, formed six heavy ingots,
having the color of gold. The goldsmith was called in by
the Italian and requested to make a rigid examination of
the smallest of these ingots. The goldsmith not content
with the touch-stone and the application of aquafortis,
exposed the metal on the cupel with lead and fused it with
antimony, but it sustained no loss. He found it possessed
of the ductility and specific gravity of gold; and full of
admiration, he exclaimed that he had never worked before
upon gold so perfectly pure. The Italian made him a
present of the smallest ingot as a recompense and then,
accompanied by M. Gros, he repaired to the mint, where
he received from M. Bacuet, the mint-master, a quantity
of Spanish gold coin, equal in weight to the ingots which
he had brought. To M. Gros he made a present of twenty
pieces on account of the attention that he had paid to him
and after paying his bill at the inn, he added fifteen pieces
more, to serve to entertain M. Gros and M. Bureau for
some days, and in the meantime he ordered a supper, that
he might, on his return, have the pleasure of supping with
these two gentlemen. He went out, but never returned,
leaving behind him the greatest regret and admiration.
It is needless to add that M. Gros and M. Bureau continued
to enjoy themselves at the inn till the fifteen pieces which
the stranger had left, were exhausted."

Narratives such as these led even Bergman, a very able
chemist of the period, to take the ground that " although
most of these relations are deceptive and many uncertain,
some bear such character and testimony that, unless we re-
ject all historical evidence, we must allow them entitled to
confidence."

A much more probable explanation is that the relators
were either dreaming or deceived by clever legerdemain.

Of the possibility or impossibility of converting the more
common metals into gold or silver, it would be rash to
give a positive opinion. To say that gold, silver, lead,

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 89

copper, etc., are elements and cannot be changed, is merely
to say that we have not been able to decompose them.
Water, potash, soda, and other substances, were at one
time considered elements, and resisted all the efforts of
the older chemists to resolve them into their components,
but with the advent of more powerful means of analysis
they were shown to be compounds, and it is not impossible
that the so-called elements into which they were resolved
may themselves be found to be compounds. This has
happened in regard to some substances which were at one
time announced as elements, and it is not impossible that
it may happen in regard to others. The ablest chemists
of the present day recognize this fully and are prepared
for radical changes in our knowledge of the nature and
constitution of matter. Amongst the new views is the
hypothesis of Rutherford and Soddy, which, as given by
Sir William Ramsay, in a recent article contributed by him
to "Harper's Magazine," is that,

" atoms of elements of high atomic weight, such as radium,
uranium, thorium, and the suspected elements polonium
and actinium, are unstable ; that they undergo spontaneous
change into other forms of matter, themselves radioactive
and themselves unstable; and that finally elements are
produced, which, on account of their non-radioactivity, are
as a rule, impossible to recognize, for their minute amount
precludes the application of any ordinary test with success.
Tie recognition of helium however, which is compara-
tively easy of detection, lends great support to this hypo-
thesis."

At the same time we must not lose sight of the fact
that the substances which we now recognize as elements
have not only resisted the most powerful analytical agencies
and dissociating forces, but have maintained their ele-

QO THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

mental character in spectrum analysis, and shown their
presence as distinct elements in the sun and other heavenly
bodies where they must have been subjected to the action
of the most energetic decomposing forces. So that in the
present state of our knowledge the near prospect of suc-
cessful transmutation does not seem to be very bright,
although we cannot regard it as impossible. In the article
from which we have already quoted, Sir William Ramsay,
after discussing the bearing of certain experiments in re-
gard to the parting with and absorbing of energy by cer-
tain elements, says: "If these hypotheses are just, then
the transmutation of the elements no longer appears an
idle dream. The philosopher's stone will have been dis-
covered, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that
it may lead to that other goal of the philosophers of the
dark ages — the elixir vitos. For the action of living cells
is also dependent on the nature and direction of the energy
which they contain ; and who can say that it will be im-
possible to control their action, when the means of impart-
ing and controlling energy shall have been investigated ! "

In the event of the discovery of a cheap method of pro-
ducing gold, the change which would certainly occur in our
financial or currency system would be important, if not
revolutionary. It has become the fashion at present with
certain writers to scout the so-called "quantitative theory"
of money as if it were an exposed fallacy. Now the quan-
titative theory of money rests on one of the most well-
grounded and firmly established principles in political econ-
omy : the trouble is that the writers in question do not
understand it or even know what it is. At present, the
production of gold barely keeps pace with the increasing
demand for the metal as currency and in the arts, but if

TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 91

that production were increased ten-fold, the value of gold
would decline and prices would go up astonishingly.

One of the objects which the better class of alchemists
had in view was the making of gold to such an extent that
it might become quite common and cease to be sought after
by mankind. One alchemical writer says : " Would to
God that all men might become adepts in our art, for then
gold, the common idol of mankind, would lose its value and
we should prize it only for its scientific teaching."

VI

THE FIXATION OF MERCURY

HIS is really one of the processes supposed to
be involved in the transmutation of the metals
and might, therefore, perhaps, with propriety, be
included under that head. But as it has received
special attention in the apocryphal works of Hermes Tris-
megistus, who is generally regarded as the Father of Al-
chemy, it is frequently mentioned as one of the old scientific
problems. Readers of Scott's novel, " Kenilworth," may
remember that Wayland Smith, in his account of his former
master, Demetrius Doboobius, describes him as a profound
chemist who had " made several efforts to fix mercury, and
judged himself to have made a fair hit at the philosopher's
stone." Hermes, or, rather, those who wrote over his
name, speaks in the jargon of the adepts, about " catching
the flying bird," by which is meant mercury, and " drown-
ing it so that it may fly no more." The usual means for
effecting this was amalgamation with gold, or some other
metal or solution in some acid.

To the ancient chemists mercury must have been one of
the most interesting of objects. Its great heaviness, its
metallic brilliancy, and its wonderful mobility, must all have
combined to render it a subject for deep thought and an
attractive object for experiment and investigation.

Living in a warm climate, as they did, there was no
means at their command by which its fluidity could be im-
paired. This subtle substance seemed to defy the usual

92

THE FIXATION OF MERCURY 93

attempts to grasp it ; it rolled about like a solid sphere, but
offered no resistance to the touch, and when pressed it split
up into innumerable smaller globules so that the problem
of " fixing " it must have had a strange fascination for the
thoughtful alchemist, especially when he found that, on
subjection to a comparatively moderate degree of heat, this
heavy metal disappeared in vapor and left not a trace behind.

I have often wondered what the old alchemists would
have said if they had seen fluid mercury immersed in a
clear liquid and brought out in the form of a lump of solid,
bright metal. For, although this is not in any sense a so-
lution of the problem, yet it is a most curious sight and one
which was rarely seen before the discovery of the liquefac-
tion of the gases. To Geber, Basil Valentine, Van Helmont,
Helvetius, and men of their day, living in their climate, this
startling phenomenon would have seemed nothing short of
a miracle.

In modern times the solidification of mercury had been
frequently witnessed by these who dwelt in northern cli-
mates and by the skilful use of certain freezing mixtures
made up of ordinary salts, it is not difficult to exhibit this
metal in the solid state at any time. But it was not until the
discovery of the liquefaction of carbonic acid, nitrous oxide,
and other gases by Faraday, about 1823, that the freezing
of mercury became a common lecture-room experiment.

In the year 1862 the writer delivered a course of lectures
on chemistry, in the city of Rochester, N. Y., and during
the progress of these lectures he reduced carbonic acid first
to the liquid, and then to the solid state, in the form of a
white snow. The temperature of this snow was about
—80° Cent. ( — 1 76° Fahr.) and when it was mixed with
ether and laid on a quantity of mercury, the latter was

94 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

quickly frozen. In this way it was easy to make a ham-
mer-head of frozen mercury and drive a nail with it.

Another very interesting experiment was the freezing of
a slender triangular bar of mercury which might be twisted,
bent, and tied in a knot. This was done by folding a long
strip of very stiff paper so as to make an angular trough
into which the mercury was poured. This trough was then
carefully leveled and a mixture of solid carbonic acid and
ether was placed over the metal in the usual way. In a few
seconds the mercury was frozen quite solid so that it could
be lifted out by means of two pairs of wooden forceps and
bent and knotted at will. But the most striking part of the
experiment was the melting of this bar of mercury by
means of a piece of ice. The moment the ice touched the
mercury, the latter melted and fell down in drops in the
same way that a bar of lead or solder melts when it is
touched with a red-hot iron.

The melted mercury was allowed to fall into a tall ale-glass
of water, the temperature of which had been reduced as
nearly as possible to the freezing point. When the mercury
came in contact with the cold water, the latter began to freeze
and by careful manipulation it was possible to freeze a tube
of ice through the center of the column of water. The
effect of this under proper illumination was very striking.

Owing to the fact that the specific heat or thermal ca-
pacity of mercury is only about one-thirtieth of that of
water, it requires a considerable amount of melted mercury
to produce the desired result.

But these processes do not enable us to fix mercury in
the alchemical sense ; the accomplishment of that still
remains an unsolved problem, and it is more than likely
that it will remain so,

VII

THE UNIVERSAL MEDICINE AND THE
ELIXIR OF LIFE

|OVE of life is a characteristic of all animals, man
included, and notwithstanding the fact that an
occasional individual becomes so dissatisfied with
his environment that he commits suicide, and
also in the face of the poet's assertion that

" protracted life is but protracted woe "

most men and women are of the same way of thinking as
Charmian, the attendant on Cleopatra, and "love long life
better than figs." And the force of this general feeling is
appealed to in the only one of the Mosaic commandments
to which a promise is attached, the inducement for honor-
ing father and mother being " that thy days may be long
in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee."

No wonder then that the old alchemists dreamed of a
universal medicine that would not only prevent or cure
sickness but that would renew the youth of the aged and
the feeble, for in this, as in most other attempts at discov-
ery, the wish was father to the thought. That the renewal
of youth in the aged was supposed to be within the ability
of the magicians and gods of old, we gather from the stories
of Medea and Aeson and the ivory shoulder of Pelops, as
referred to in Shakespeare, and explained in the " Shake-
speare Cyclopaedia."

Of the form of this supposed elixir we know very little

95

96 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

for the language of the alchemists was so vague and mys-
tical that it is often very difficult to ascertain their meaning
with any approach to certainty. The following, which is a
fair sample of their metaphorical modes of expressing them-
selves, is found in the works of Geber. In one of his writ-
ings, he exclaims : " Bring me the six lepers that I may
cleanse them." Modern commentators explain this as being
his mode of telling his readers that he would convert into
gold the six inferior or, as they were called by the alchem-
ists, the six imperfect metals. No wonder that Dr. John-
son adopted the idea that the word gibberish (anciently
written gcberisJi] owed its origin to an epithet applied to
the language of Geber and his tribe.

Some have claimed that the elixir and the philosopher's
stone were one and the same thing, and some of the writ-
ings of the old alchemists would seem to confirm this view.
Thus, at the close of a formula for preparing the philoso-
pher's stone, Carolus Musitanus gives the following ad-
monition :

"Thus friend, you have a description of the universal
medicine, not only for curing diseases and prolonging life,
but also for transmuting all metals into gold. Give there-
fore thanks to Almighty God, who, taking pity on human
calamities, has at last revealed this inestimable treasure,
and made it known for the benefit of all."

And Brande tells us that " nearly all the alchemists
attributed the power of prolonging life either to the philoso-
pher's stone or to certain preparations of gold, imagining
possibly that the permanence of that metal might be trans-
ferred to the human system. The celebrated Descartes is
said to have supported such opinions ; he told Sir Kenelm
Digby that although he would not venture to promise im-
mortality, he was certain that life might be lengthened to

UNIVERSAL MEDICINE AND ELIXIR OF LIFE 97

the period of that of the Patriarchs. His plan, however,
seems to have been the very rational one of limiting all
excess of diet and enjoining punctual and frugal meals."

It is an old saying that history repeats itself. About
forty years ago certain medical practitioners strongly urged
the use of salts of gold in the treatment of disease, and
great hopes were entertained in regard to their efficacy.
And the Keeley gold cure for drunkards is strongly in
evidence, even at the present day.

On the other hand, some have held that the elixir was
quite distinct from the stone by which metals might be
transmuted into gold. In the second part of "King Henry
IV," Falstaff (Act III, Scene 2, line 355), says of Shallow:
" it shall go hard but I will make him a philosopher's two
stones to me," and this saying of his has given considerable
trouble to the commentators.

Warburton's explanation of this expression is, that "there
was two stones, one of which was a universal medicine and
the other a transmuter of base metals into gold." And in
Churchyard's " Discourse and Commendation of those that
can make Gold," we read of Remundus, who

Wrate sundry workes, as well doth yet appeare
Of stone for gold, and shewed plaine and cleare
A stone for health.

Johnson and some others have objected to this explana-
tion, but it seems to be evident that Falstaff meant that he
would get health and wealth from Shallow. He got the
wealth to the extent of a thousand pounds.

The intense desire which exists in the human bosom
for an elixir that will cure all diseases, and prolong life has
made itself evident, even in recent times, and has called

98 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

forth serious efforts on the part of men occupying promi-
nent positions in the scientific world. Both in Europe and
in this country suggestions have been made of fluids which,
when injected into the veins of the old and the feeble,
would renew youth and impart fresh strength. But alas !
the results thus far attained have been anything but grati-
fying, and the probabilities against success in this direction
are very strong.

The latest gleam of light comes from discoveries in con-
nection with the radioactive elements, as the reader will find,
on referring to Sir William Ramsay's utterance, which is
given at the close of the article on the " Transmutation of
the Metals," on a preceding page.

ADDITIONAL "FOLLIES"

IN addition to the seven " Follies," of which an account
has been given in the preceding pages, there are^ar^few
which deserve to be classed with them, although they do
not find a place in the usual lists. These are known as

PERPETUAL LAMPS.

THE ALKAHEST OR UNIVERSAL SOLVENT.

PALINGENESY.

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY.

PERPETUAL OR EVER-BURNING LAMPS

[ART of the sepulchral rites of the ancients con-
sisted in placing lighted lamps in the tombs or
vaults in which the dead were laid, and, in many
cases, these lamps were carefully tended and kept
continually burning. Some authors have claimed, how-
ever, that these men of old were able to construct lamps
which burned perpetually and required no attention. In
number 379 of the "Spectator" there is an anecdote of
some one having opened the sepulcher of the famous
Rosicrucius. There he discovered a lamp burning which
a statue of clock-work struck into pieces. Hence, says the
writer, the disciples of this visionary claimed that he had
made use of this method to show that he had re-invented
the ever-burning lamps of the ancients. And Fortunio
Liceti wrote a book in which he collected a large number
of stories about lamps, said to have been found burning in
tombs or vaults. Ozanam fills eight closely printed pages
with a discussion of the subject.

Attempts have been made to explain many of the facts
upon which is based the claim that the ancients were able
to construct perpetual lamps by the suggestion that the
light sometimes seen on the opening of ancient tombs
may have been due to the phosphorescence which is well
known to arise during the decomposition of animal and
vegetable matter. Decaying wood and dead fish are familiar
objects which give out a light that is sufficient to render
dimly visible the outlines of surrounding objects, and such

JOO

PERPETUAL OR EyERj-BURNLNG ^AMES, IOI

a light, seen in the vicinity of an old lamp, might give rise
to the impression that the lamp had been actually burning
and that it had been blown out by sudden exposure to a
draft of air.

Another supposition was that the flame, which was sup-
posed to have been seen, may have been caused by the
ignition of gases arising from the decomposition of dead
bodies, and set on fire by the flambeaux or candles of the
investigators, and it is quite possible that the occurrence
of each of these phenomena may have given a certain
degree of confirmation to preconceived ideas.

After the discovery of phosphorus in 1669, by Brandt
and Kunckel, it was employed in the construction of lumin-
ous phials which could be carried in the pocket, and which
gave out sufficient light to enable the user to see the
hands of a watch on a dark night. Directions for making
these luminous phials are very simple, and may be found
in most of the books of experiments published prior to the
introduction of the modern lucifer match. They were
also used for obtaining a light by means of the old matches,
which were tipped merely with a little sulphur, and which
could not be ignited by friction. Such a match, after being
dipped into one of these phosphorus bottles, would readily
take fire by slight friction, and some persons preferred this
contrivance to the old flint and steel, partly, no doubt,
because it was a novelty. But these bottles were not in
any sense perpetual, the light being due to the slow oxida-
tion of the phosphorus so that, in a comparatively short
time, the luminosity of the materials ceased. Nevertheless,
it has been suggested that some form of these old luminous
phials may have been the original perpetual lamp.

After the discovery of the phosphorescent qualities of

102 A j iTSjE^&E^EN^EOLLiEs OF SCIENCE

barium sulphate or Bolognian phosphorus, as it was called,
it was thought that this might be a re-discovery of the
long-lost art of making perpetual lamps. But it is well
known that this substance loses its phosphorescent power
after being kept in the dark for some time, and that occa-
sional exposure to bright sun-light is one of the conditions
absolutely essential to its giving out any light at all. This
condition does not exist in a dark tomb.

A few years ago phosphorescent salts of barium and
calcium were employed in the manufacture of what was
known as luminous paint. These materials shine in the
dark with brilliancy sufficient to enable the observer to
read words and numbers traced with them, but regular
exposure to the rays of the sun or some other bright light
is absolutely necessary to enable them to maintain their
efficiency.

More recently it has been suggested that the ancients
may have been acquainted with some form of radio-active
matter like radium, and that this was the secret of the
lamps in question. It is far more likely, however, that the
reports of their perpetual lamps were based upon mere
errors of observation.

The perpetual lamp is, in chemistry, the counterpart of
perpetual motion in mechanics — both violate the funda-
mental principle of the conservation of energy. And just
as suggestions of impossible movements have been numer-
ous in the case of perpetual motion, so impossible devices
and constructions have been suggested in regard to perpet-
ual lamps. Prior to the development, or even the sugges-
tion of the law of the conservation of energy, it was believed
that it might be possible to find a liquid which would burn
without being consumed, and a wick which would feed the

PERPETUAL OR EVER-BURNING LAMPS 103

liquid to the flame without being itself destroyed. Dr.
Plott suggested naphtha for the fluid and asbestos for the
wick, but since kerosene oil, naphtha, gasolene, and other
liquids of the kind have become common, every housewife
knows that as her lamp burns, the oil, of whatever kind it
may be, disappears.

Under present conditions the construction of a perpetual
lamp is not a severely felt want ; for constancy and bril-
liancy our present means of illumination are sufficient for
almost all our requirements. Whether or not it would be
possible to gather up those natural currents of electricity,
which are suspected to flow through and over the earth, and
utilize them for purposes of illumination, however feeble,
it might be difficult to decide. But such means of perpet-
ual electric lighting would be similar to a perpetual motion
derived from a mountain stream. Such natural means of
illumination already exist, and have existed for ages in the
fire-giving wells of naphtha which are found on the shores
of the Caspian sea, and in other parts of the east, and
which have long been objects of adoration to the fire-
worshippers.

As for the outcome of present researches into the prop-
erties of radium, polonium, and similar substances, and
their possible applications, it is too early to form even a
surmise.

THE ALKAHEST OR UNIVERSAL SOLVENT

HE production of a universal solvent or alkahest
was one of the special problems of the alchemists
in their general search for the philosopher's
stone and the means of transmuting the so-called
inferior metals into gold and silver. Their idea of the
way in which it would aid them to attain these ends does
not seem to be very clearly stated in any work that I have
consulted ; probably they thought that a universal solvent
would wash away all impurities from common materials
and leave in absolute purity the higher substance, which
constituted the gold of the adepts. But whatever their
particular object may have been, it is well known that much
time and labor were expended in the fruitless search.

The futility of such attempts was very well exposed by
the cynical sceptic, who asked them what kind of vessel
could they provide for holding such a liquid ? If its solvent
powers are such that it dissolves everything, it is very evi-
dent that it would dissolve the very material of the vessel
in which it must be placed.

When hydrofluoric acid became a subject of investigation
it was thought that its characteristics approached, more
nearly than those of any other substance known, to those
of the universal solvent, and the very difficulty above sug-
gested, presented itself strongly to the chemists who ex-
perimented with it. Not only common metals but glass
and porcelain were acted upon by this wonderfully ener-
getic liquid and when attempts were made to isolate the

104

THE ALKAHEST OR UNIVERSAL SOLVENT 105

fluorine, even the platinum electrodes were corroded and
destroyed. Vessels of pure silver and of lead served toler-
ably well, but Davy suggested that the most scientific
method of constructing a containing vessel would be to use
a compound in which fluorine was already present to the
point of saturation. As there is a limit to the amount of
fluorine with which any base can combine, such a vessel
would be proof against its solvent action. I am not aware,
however, that the suggestion was ever carried into actual
practice with success.

PALINGENESY

HIS singular delusion may have been partly due
to errors of observation, the instruments and
methods of former times having been notably
crude and unreliable. This fact, taken in con-
nection with the wild theories upon which the natural
sciences of the middle ages were based, is a sufficient ex-
planation of some of the extraordinary statements made by
Kircher, Schott, Digby, and ethers.

By palingenesy these writers meant a certain chemical
process by means of which a plant or an animal might be
revived from its ashes. In other words a sort of material
resurrection. Most of the accounts given by the old au-
thors go no further than to assert that by proper methods
the ashes of plants, when treated with water, produce small
forests of ferns and pines. Thus, an English chemist,
named Coxe, asserts that having extracted and dissolved
the essential salts of fern, and then filtered the liquor, he
observed, after leaving it at rest for five or six weeks, a
vegetation of small ferns adhering to the bottom of the
vessel. The same chemist, having mixed northern potash
with an equal quantity of sal ammoniac, saw, some time
after, a small forest of pines and other trees, with which he
was not acquainted, rising from the bottom of the vessel.

And Kircher tells us in his " Ars Magnetica" that he
had a long-necked phial, hermetically sealed, containing
the ashes of a plant which he could revive at pleasure by
means of heat ; and that he showed this wonderful phe-

106

PALINGENESY

nomenon to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was highly
delighted with it. Unfortunately he left this valuable
curiosity one cold day in his window and it was entirely
destroyed by the frost. Father Schott also asserts that
he saw this chemical wonder which, according to his ac-
count, was a rose revived from its ashes. And he adds
that a certain prince having requested Kircher to make
him one of the same kind, he chose rather to give up his
own than to repeat the operation.

Even the celebrated Boyle, though not very favorable to
palingenesy, relates that having dissolved in water some
verdigris, which, as is well known, is produced by combin-
ing copper with the acid of vinegar, and having caused this
water to congeal, by means of artificial cold, he observed, at
the surface of the ice, small figures which had an exact
resemblance to vines.

In this connection it is well to bear in mind that in
Boyle's time almost all vinegar was really what its name
implies — sour wine (yin aigre] — and verdegris or copper
acetate was generally prepared by exposing copper plates
to the action of refuse grapes which had been allowed to
ferment and become sour. Therefore to him it might not
have seemed so very improbable that the green crystals
which appeared on the surface of the ice were, in reality,
minute resuscitated grape-vines.

The explanation of these facts given by Father Kircher
is worthy of the science of the times. He tells us that
the seminal virtue of each mixture is contained in its salts
and these salts, unalterable by their nature, when put in
motion by heat, rise in the vessel through the liquor in
which they are diffused. Being then at liberty to arrange
themselves at pleasure, they place themselves in that order

108 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

in which they would be placed by the effect of vegetation,
or the same as they occupied before the body to which they
belonged had been decomposed by the fire ; in short, they
form a plant, or the phantom of a plant, which has a per-
fect resemblance to the one destroyed.

That the operators have here mistaken for true vegetable
growth the fern-like crystals of the salts which exist in the
ashes of all plants is very obvious. Their knowledge of
plant structure was exceedingly limited and their micro-
scopes were so imperfect that imagination had free scope.
As seen under our modern microscopes, there are few pret-
tier sights than the crystallization of such salts as sal
ammoniac, potassic nitrate, barium chloride, etc. The crys-
tals are actually seen to grow and it would not require a
very great stretch of the imagination to convince one that
the growth Is due to a living organism. Indeed, this view
has actually been taken in an article which recently ap-
peared in a prominent magazine. The writer of that article
sees no difference between the mere aggregation of inor-
ganic particles brought together by voltaic action and the
building up of vital structures under the influence of or-
ganic forces. This is simply materialism run mad.

Perhaps the finest illustration of such crystallization is
to be found in the deposition of silver from a solution of
the nitrate as seen under the microscope. A drop of the
solution is placed on a glass slide and while the observer
watches it through a low power, a piece of copper wire or,
preferably, a minute quantity of the amalgam of tin and
mercury, such' as is used for " silvering " cheap looking
glasses, is brought into contact with it. Chemical decom-
position at once sets in and then the silver thus deposited
forms one element of a very minute voltaic couple and

PALINGENESY 109

fresh crystals of silver are deposited upon the silver already
thrown down. When the illumination of this object under
the microscope is properly managed, the appearance, which
resembles that shown in Fig. 18, is exceedingly brilliant,
and beautiful beyond description.

That imagination played strange pranks in the observa-
tions of the older microscopists is shown by some of the
engravings found in their books. I have now before me a

Fig. 18.

thick, dumpy quarto in which the so-called seminal animal-
cules are depicted as little men and women, and I have no
doubt that, to the eye of this early observer, they had that
appearance. But the microscopists of to-day know better.
Sir Kenelm Digby, whose name is associated with the
Sympathetic Powder, tells us that he took the ashes of
burnt crabs, dissolved them in water and, after subjecting
the whole to a tedious process, small crabs were produced
in the liquor. These were nourished with blood from the

1 10 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

ox, and, after a time, left to themselves in some stream
where they throve and grew large.

Now, although Evelyn, in his diary, declares that " Sir
Kenelm was an errant mountebank," it is quite possible that
he was honest in his account of his experiments and that he
was merely led astray by the imperfection of his instru-
ments of observation. It is more than likely that the
creatures which Digby saw were entomostraca introduced
in the form of ova which, unless a good microscope be used,
are quite invisible. These would develop rapidly and might
easily be mistaken for some species of crab, though, when
examined with proper instruments, all resemblance vanishes.
When let loose in a running stream it would evidently be
impossible to trace their identity and follow their growth.

But while some of these stories may have originated in
errors of observation this will hardly explain some of the
statements made by those who have advocated this strange
doctrine. Father Schott, in his " Physica Curiosa," gives
an account of the resurrection of a sparrow and actually
gives an engraving in which the bird is shown in a bottle
revived !

Although the subject, of itself, is not worthy of a mo-
ment's consideration, it deserves attention as an illustration
of the extraordinary vagaries into which the human mind
is liable to fall.

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY

HIS curious occult method of curing wounds is
indissolubly associated with the name of Sir
Kenelm Digby (born 1603, died 1665), though
it was undoubtedly in use long before his time.
He himself tells us that he learned to make and apply the
drug from a Carmelite, who had traveled in the east, and
whom he met in Florence, in 1622. The descendants of
Digby are still prominent in England, and O. W. Holmes,
in his " One Hundred Days in Europe," tells us that he
had met a Sir Kenelm Digby, a descendant of the famous
Sir Kenelm of the seventeenth century, and that he could
hardly refrain from asking him if he had any of his ancestor's
famous powder in his pocket.

Digby was a student of chemistry, or at least of the
chemistry of those days, and wrote books of Recipes and
the making of " Methington [metheglin or mead ?] Syder,
etc." He was, as we have seen in the previous article,
a believer in palingenesy and made experiments with a view
to substantiate that strange doctrine. Evelyn calls him an
" errant quack," and he may have been given to quackery,
but then the loose scientific ideas of those days allowed a
wide range in drawing conclusions which, though they seem
absurd to us, may have appeared to be quite reasonable to
the men of that time.

From his book on the subject,1 we learn that the wound

1 Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy. With
Instructions how to make the said Powder. Rendered faithfully out of
French into English by R. White, Gent. London, 1658.

Ill

112 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

was never to be brought into contact with the powder. A
bandage was to be taken from the wound, immersed in the
powder, and kept there until the wound healed.

This beats the absent treatment of Christian Science !

The powder was simply pulverized vitriol, that is, ferric
sulphate, or sulphate of iron.

There was another and probably an older method of
using sympathetic powders and salves ; this was to apply
the supposed curative to the weapon which caused the
wound, instead of the wound itself. In -the " Lay of the
Last Minstrel," Scott gives an account of the way in which
the Lady of Buccleuch applied this occult surgery to the
wound of William of Deloraine :

<4 She drew the splinter from the wound,

And with a charm she stanched the blood.

She bade the gash be cleansed and bound :

No longer by his couch she stood ;
But she has ta'en the broken lance.

And washed it from the clotted gore,

And salved the splinter o'er and o'er.
William of Deloraine, in trance,
Whene'er she turned it round' and round
Twisted as if she galled his wound.

Then to her maidens she did say,
That he should be whole man and sound,

Within the course of a night and day.
Full long she toiled, for she did rue

Mishap to friend so stout and true."1

That no direct benefit could have been derived from
such a mode of treatment must be obvious, but De Morgan
very plausibly claims that in the then state of surgical and
medical knowledge, it was really the very best that could
have been adopted. His argument is as follows : " The
1 Canto III. Stanza 23.

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY 113

sympathetic powder was that which cured by anointing the
weapon with its salve instead of the wound. I have been
long convinced that it was efficacious. The directions
were to keep the wound clean and cool, and to take care of
diet, rubbing the salve on the knife or sword. If we re-
member the dreadful notions upon drugs which prevailed,
both as to quantity and quality, we shall readily see that
any way of not dressing the wound, would have been use-
ful. If the physicians had taken the hint, had been careful
of diet, etc., and had poured the little barrels of medicine
down the throat of a practicable doll, they would have had
their magical cures as well as the surgeons. Matters are
much improved now ; the quantity of medicine given, even
by orthodox physicians, would have been called infinitesi-
mal by their professional ancestors. Accordingly, the
College of Physicians has a right to abandon its motto,
which is, Ars longa, vita brevis, meaning, Practice is long,
so life is short"

As set forth by Digby and others, the use of the Powder
of Sympathy is free from all taint of witchcraft or magic,
but, in another form, it was wholly dependent upon incanta-
tions and other magical performances. This idea of sym-
pathetic action was even carried so far as to lead to attempts
to destroy or injure those whom the operator disliked. In
some cases this was done by moulding an image in wax
which, when formed under proper occult influences, was
supposed to have the power of transferring to the victim
any injuries inflicted on the image. Into such images pins
and knives were thrust in the hope that the living original
would suffer the same pains and mutilations that would be
inflicted if the knives or pins were thrust into him, and
sometimes the waxen form was held before the fire and

114 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

allowed to melt away slowly in the hope that the prototype
would also waste away, and ultimately die. Shakespeare
alludes to this in the play of King John. In Act v., Scene
4, line 24, Melun says :

" A quantity of life

Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax,
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire ? "

And Hollinshed tells us that "it was alleged against
Dame Eleanor Cobham and her confederates that they had
devised an image of wax, representing the king, which, by
their sorcerie, by little and little consumed, intending
thereby, in conclusion, to waste and destroy the king's
person."

In these cases, however, the operator always depended
upon certain occult or demoniacal influences, or, in other
words, upon the art of magic, and therefore examples of
this kind do not come within the scope of the present
volume. In the case of the Powder of Sympathy the
results were supposed to be due entirely to natural causes.

A SMALL BUDGET OF PARADOXES,
ILLUSIONS, AND MARVELS

THE FOURTH DIMENSION AND THE POSSI-
BILITY OF A NEW SENSE AND NEW
SENSE-ORGAN

HIS subject has now found its way not only into
semi-scientific works but into our general litera-
ture and magazines. Even our novel-writers
have used suggestions from this hypothesis as
part of the machinery of their plots so that it properly
finds a place amongst the subjects discussed in this
volume.

Various attempts have been made to explain what is
meant by "the fourth dimension," but it would seem that
thus far the explanations which have been offered are, to
most minds, vague and incomprehensible, this latter condi-
tion arising from the fact that the ordinary mind is utterly
unable to conceive of any such thing as a dimension which
cannot be defined in terms of the three with which we are
already familiar. And I confess at the start that I labor
under the superlative difficulty of not being able to form
any conception of a fourth dimension, and for this incapac-
ity my only consolation is, that in this respect I am not alone.
I have conversed upon the subject with many able mathe-
maticians and physicists, and in every case I found that
they were in the same predicament as myself, and where I
have met men who professed to think it easy to form a
conception of a fourth dimension, I have found their ideas,
not only in regard to the new hypothesis, but to its corre-

117

Il8 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

lations with generally accepted physical facts, to be nebu-
lous and inaccurate.

It does not follow, however, that because myself and
some others cannot form such a clear conception of a fourth
dimension as we can of the third, that, therefore, the theory
is erroneous and the alleged conditions non-existent. Some
minds of great power and acuteness have been incapable
of mastering certain branches of science. Thus Diderot,
who was associated with d'Alembert, the famous mathe-
matician, in the production of " L' Encyclopedic," and who
was not only a man of acknowledged ability, but who, at one
time, taught mathematics and wrote upon several mathe-
matical subjects, seems to have been unable to master the
elements of algebra. The following anecdote regarding
his deficiency in this respect is given by Thiebault and
indorsed by Professor De Morgan : At the invitation of
the Empress, Catherine II, Diderot paid a visit to the
Russian court. He was a brilliant conversationalist and
being quite free with his opinions, he gave the younger
members of the court circle a good deal of lively atheism.
The Empress herself was very much amused, but some of
her councillors suggested that it might be desirable to
check these expositions of strange doctrines. As Cathe-
rine did not like to put a direct muzzle on her guest's tongue,
the following plot was contrived. Diderot was informed
that a learned mathematician was in possession of an al-
gebraical demonstration of the existence of God and would
give it to him before all the court if he desired to hear it.
Diderot gladly consented, and although the name of the
mathematician is not given, it is well known to have been
Euler. He advanced toward Diderot, and said in French,
gravely, and in a tone of perfect conviction : " Monsieur,

THE FOURTH DIMENSION 1 19

- = *•, therefore, God exists; reply!" Diderot, to

whom algebra was Hebrew, was embarrassed and discon-
certed, while peals of laughter rose on all sides. He asked
permission to return to France at once, which was granted.
Even such a mind as that of Buckle/ who was generally
acknowledged to be a keen-sighted thinker, could not form
any idea of a geometrical line — that is, of a line without
breadth or thickness, a conception which has been grasped
clearly and accurately by thousands of school-boys. He
therefore asserts, positively, that there are no lines without
breadth, and comes to the following extraordinary conclu-
sions :

" Since, however, the breadth of the faintest line is so
slight as to be incapable of measurement, except by an
instrument under the microscope, it follows that the as-
sumption that there can be lines without breadth is so
nearly true that our senses, when unassisted by art, can
not detect the error. Formerly, and until the invention of
the micrometer, in the seventeenth century, it was im-
possible to detect it at all. Hence, the conclusions of the
geometrician approximate so closely to truth that we are
justified in accepting them as true. The flaw is too minute
to be perceived. But that there is a flaw appears to me
certain. It appears certain that, whenever something is
kept back in the premises, something must be wanting
in the conclusion. In all such cases, the field of inquiry
has not been entirely covered; and part of the preliminary
facts being suppressed, it must, I think, be admitted that
complete truth be unattainable, and that no problem in
geometry has been exhaustively solved."1

The fallacy which underlies Mr. Buckle's contention is
thus clearly exposed by the author of "The Natural His-
tory of Hell."

1 "History of Civilization in England." American edition, Vol.
II, page 342.

120 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

"If it be conceded that lines have breadth, then all we
have to do is to assign some definite breadth to each line
— say the one-thousandth of an inch — and allow for it.
But the lines of the geometer have no breadth. All the
micrometers of which Mr. Buckle speaks depend, either
directly or indirectly, upon lines for their graduations, and
the positions of these lines are indicated by rulings or
scratches. Now, in even the finest of these rulings, as,
for example, those of Nobert or Fasoldt, where the ruling
or scratching, together with its accompanying space,
amounts to no more than the one hundred and fifty thou-
sandth part of an inch, the scratch has a perceptible breadth.
But this broad scratch is not the line recognized by the
microscopist, to say nothing of the geometer. The true
line is a line which lies in the very center of this scratch
and it is certain that this central line has absolutely no
breadth at all." 1

It must be very evident that if Mr. Buckle's contention
that geometrical lines have breadth were true, then some
of the fundamental axioms of geometry must be false. It
could no longer hold true that " the whole is equal to all its
parts taken together," for if we divide a square or a circle
into two parts by means of a line which has breadth, the
two parts cannot be equal to the whole as it formerly was.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Buckle's lines are saw-cuts, not
geometrical lines. Geometrical points, lines, and surfaces,
have no material existence and can have none. An ideal
conception and a material existence are two very different
things.

A very interesting book 2 has been written on the move-
ments and feelings of the inhabitants of a world of two di-
mensions. Nevertheless, if we know anything at all, we
know that such a world could not have any actual existence

1 "The Natural History of Hell," by John Phlllipson, page 37.
8 « Flatland," by E. A. Abbott. London, 1884.

THE FOURTH DIMENSION I2i

and when we attempt to form any mental conception of it
and its inhabitants, we are compelled to adopt, to a certain
extent, the idea of the third dimension.

But at the same time we must remember that since the
ordinary mechanic and the school-boy who has studied ge-
ometry, find no difficulty in conceiving of points without
magnitude, lines without breadth, and surfaces without
thickness — conceptions which seem to have been impos-
sible to Buckle, a man of acknowledged ability — it may be
possible that minds constituted slightly differently from
that of myself and some others, might, perhaps, be able to
form a conception of a fourth dimension.

Leaving out of consideration the speculations of those
who have woven this idea into romances and day-dreams we
find that the hypothesis of a fourth dimension has been
presented by two very different classes of thinkers, and
the discussion has been carried on from two very different
standpoints.

The first suggestion of this hypothesis seems to have
come from Kant and Gauss and to have had a purely meta-
physical origin, for, although attempts have been made to
trace the idea back to the famous phantoms of Plato, it is
evident that the ideas then advanced had nothing in com-
mon with the modern theory of the existence of a fourth
dimension. The first hint seems to have been a purely
mathematical one and did not attract any very general at-
tention. It was, however, seized upon by a certain branch
of the transcendentalists, closely allied to the spiritualists,
and was exploited by them as a possible explanation of
some curious and mysterious phenomena and feats exhibited
by certain Indian and European devotees. This may have
been done merely for the purpose of mystifying and con-

122 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

founding their adversaries by bringing forward a striking
illustration of Hamlet's famous dictum —

''There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

A very fair statement of this view is thus given by
Edward Carpenter : 1

" There is another idea which modern science has been
familiarizing us with, and which is bringing us towards
the same conception — that, namely, of the fourth dimen-
sion. The supposition that the actual world has four
space-dimensions instead of three makes many things
conceivable which otherwise would be incredible. It makes
it conceivable that apparently separate objects, e. g., dis-
tinct people, are really physically united; that things ap-
parently sundered by enormous distances of space are
really quite together; that a person or other object might
pass in and out of a closed room without disturbance of
walls, doors or windows, etc., and if this fourth dimension
were to become a factor of our consciousness it is obvious
that we should have means of knowledge which, to the
ordinary sense, would appear simply miraculous. There is
much, apparently, to suggest that the consciousness at-
tained to by the Indian gfianis in their degree, and by
hypnotic subjects in theirs, is of this fourth dimensional
order.

" As a solid is related to its own surface, so, it would
appear, is the cosmic consciousness related to the ordinary
consciousness. The phases of the personal consciousness
are but different facets of the other consciousness; and
experiences which seem remote from each other in the in-
dividual are perhaps all equally near in the universal.
Space itself, as we know it, may be practically annihilated
in the consciousness of a larger space, of which it is but the
superficies; and a person living in London may not un-
likely find that he has a back door opening quite simply
and unceremoniously out in Bombay."

On the other hand, the mathematicians, looking at it as
a purely speculative idea, have endeavored to arrive at

1 " From Adam's Peak to Elephanta — " page 160,

-
THE FOURTH DIMENSION 123

definite conclusions in regard to what would be the condi-
tion of things if the universe really exists in a fourth, or
even in some higher dimension. Professor W. W. R. Ball
tells us that

" the conception of a world of more than three dimensions
is facilitated by the fact that there is no difficulty in imagin-
ing a world confined to only two dimensions — which we
may take for simplicity to be plane — though equally
well it might be a spherical or other surface. We may
picture the inhabitants of flatland as moving either on the
surface of a plane or between two parallel and adjacent
planes. They could move in any direction along the
plane, but they could not move perpendicularly to it, and
would have no consciousness that such a motion was
possible. We may suppose them to have no thickness,
in which case they would be mere geometrical abstractions ;
or we may think of them as having a small but uniform
thickness, in which case they would be realities."

" If an inhabitant of flatland was able to move in three
dimensions, he would be credited with supernatural powers
by those who were unable so to move ; for he could appear
or disappear at will ; could (so far as they could tell) create
matter or destroy it, and would be free from so many con-
straints to which the other inhabitants were subject that his
actions would be inexplicable to them."

" Our conscious life is in three dimensions, and natur-
ally the idea occurs whether there may not be a fourth
dimension. No inhabitant of flatland could realize what
life in three dimensions would mean, though, if he evolved
an analytical geometry applicable to the world in which
he lived, he might be able to extend it so as to obtain results
true of that world in three dimensions which would be to
him unknown and inconceivable. Similarly we cannot
realize what life in four dimensions is like, though we can
use analytical geometry to obtain results true of that world,
or even of worlds of higher dimensions. Moreover, the
analogy of our position to the inhabitants of flatland en-

124 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

ables us to form some idea of how inhabitants of space of
four dimensions would regard us."

" If a finite solid was passed slowly through flatland, the
inhabitants would be conscious only of that part of it which
was in their plane. Thus they would see the shape of the
object gradually change and ultimately vanish. In the
same way, if a body of four dimensions was passed through
our space, we should be conscious of it only as a solid
body (namely, the section of the body by our space) whose
form and appearance gradually changed and perhaps ul-
timately vanished. It has been suggested that the birth,
growth, life, and death of animals, may be explained thus
as the passage of finite four-dimensional bodies through
our three-dimensional space."

Attempts have been made to construct drawings and
models showing a four-dimensional body. The success of
such attempts has not been very encouraging.

Investigators of this class look upon the actuality of a
fourth dimension as an unsolved question, but they hold
that, provided we could see our way clear to adopt it, it
would open up wondrous possibilities in the way of explain-
ing abstruse and hitherto inexplicable physical conditions
and phenomena.

There is obviously no limit to such speculations, provided
we assume the existence of such conditions as are needed
for our purpose. Too often, however, those who indulge
in such day-dreams begin by assuming the impossible, and
end by imagining the absurd.

We have so little positive knowledge in regard to the
ultimate constitution of matter and even in regard to the
actual character of the objects around us, which are revealed
to us through our senses, that the field in which our imagin-
ation may revel is boundless. Perhaps some day the

THE FOURTH DIMENSION 12$

humanity of the present will merge itself into a new race,
endowed with new senses, whose revelations are to us, for
the present, at least, utterly inconceivable.

The possibility of such a development may be rendered
more clear if we imagine the existence of a race devoid of
the sense of hearing, and without the organs necessary to
that sense. They certainly could form no idea of sound,
far less could they enjoy music or oratory, such as afford
us so much delight. And, if one or more of our race should
visit these people, how very strange to them would appear
those curious appendages, called ears, which project from
the sides of our heads, and how inexplicable to them would
be the movements and expressions of intelligence which we
show when we talk or sing ? It is certain that no devel-
opment of the physical or mathematical sciences could give
them any idea whatever of the sensations which sound, in
its various modifications, imparts to us, and neither can any
progress in that direction enable us to acquire any idea of
the revelations which a new sense might open up to us.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the development of new
senses and new sense organs is not only more likely to be
possible, but that it is actually more probable, than any
revelation in regard to a fourth dimension.

HOW A SPACE MAY BE APPARENTLY EN-
LARGED BY CHANGING ITS SHAPE

HE following is a curious illustration of the errors
to which careless observers may be subject :

Draw a square, like Fig. 19, and divide the sides
into 8 parts each. Join the points of division in
opposite sides so as to divide the whole square into 64
small squares. Then draw the lines shown in black and cut
up the drawing into four pieces. The lines indicating the
cuts have been made quite heavy so as to show up clearly,

Fig. 19.

Fig. 20.

but on the actual card they may be made quite light. Now,
put the four pieces together, so as to form the rectangle
shown in Fig. 20. Unless the scale, to which the drawing
is made is quite large and the work very accurate, it will
seem that the rectangle contains 5 squares one way and
13 the other which, when multiplied together, give 65 for
the number of small squares, being an apparent gain of
one square by the simple process of cutting.

SPACE APPARENTLY ENLARGED 127

This paradox is very apt to puzzle those who are not
familiar with accurate drawings. Of course, every person of
common sense knows that the card or drawing is not made
any larger by cutting it, but where does the 6$th small
square come from ?

On careful examination it will be seen that the line AB,
Fig. 20, is not quite straight and the three parts into which
it is divided are thus enabled to gain enough to make one
of the small squares. On a small scale this deviation from
the straight line is not very obvious, but make a larger draw-
ing, and make it carefully, and it will readily be seen how
the trick is done.

CAN A MAN LIFT HIMSELF BY THE STRAPS
OF HIS BOOTS?

THINK it was the elder Stephenson, the famous
engineer, who told a man who claimed the
honor of having invented a perpetual motion,
that when he could lift himself over a fence by
taking hold of his waist-band, he might hope to accomplish
his object. And the query which serves as a title for this
article has long been propounded as one of the physical
impossibilities. And yet, perhaps, it might be possible to
invent a waist-band or a boot-strap by which this apparently
impossible feat might be accomplished !

Travelers in Mexico frequently bring home beans which
jump about when laid on a table. They are well-known as
"jumping beans" and have often been a puzzle to those
who were not familiar with the facts in the case. Each
bean contains the larva of a species of beetle and this af-
fords a clue to the secret. But the question at once comes
up : " How is the insect able to move, not only itself, but its
house as well, without some purchase or direct contact with
the table?"

The explanation is simple. The hollow bean is elastic
and the insect has strength enough to bend it slightly ;
when the insect suddenly relaxes its effort and allows the
bean to spring back to its former shape, the reaction on
the table moves the bean. A man placed in a perfectly
rigid box could never move himself by pressing on the
sides, but if the box were elastic and could be bent by the
strength of the man inside, it might be made to move.

128

CAN A MAN LIFT HIMSELF 129

A somewhat analogous result, but depending on different
principles, is attained in certain curious boat races which
are held at some English regattas and which is explained
by Prof. W. W. Rouse Ball, in his " Mathematical Recrea-
tions and Problems." He says that it

" affords a somewhat curious illustration of the fact that
commonly a boat is built so as to make the resistance to
motion straight forward less than that to motion in the
opposite direction.

" The only thing supplied to the crew is a coil of rope,
and they have (without leaving the boat) to propel it from
one point to another as rapidly as possible. The motion
is given by tying one end of the rope to the afterthwart,
and giving the other end a series of violent jerks in a
direction parallel to the keel.

" The effect of each jerk is to compress the boat. Left
to itself the boat tends to resume its original shape, but
the resistance to the motion through the water of the
stern is much greater than that of the bow, hence, on the
whole, the motion is forwards. I am told that in still water
a pace of two or three miles an hour can be thus attained."

HOW A SPIDER LIFTED A SNAKE

NE of the most interesting books in natural his-
tory is a work on " Insect Architecture," by
Rennie. But if the architecture of insect
homes is wonderful, the engineering displayed
by these creatures is equally marvellous. Long before man
had thought of the saw, the saw-fly had used the same tool,
made after the same fashion, and used in the same way for
the purpose of making slits in the branches of trees so that
she might have a secure place in which to deposit her
eggs. The carpenter bee, with only the tools which nature
has given her, cuts a round hole, the full diameter of her
body, through thick boards, and so makes a tunnel by which
she can have a safe retreat, in which to rear her young.
The tumble-bug, without derrick or machinery, rolls over
large masses of dirt many times her own weight, and the
sexton beetle will, in a few hours, bury beneath the ground
the carcass of a comparatively large animal. All these feats
require a degree of instinct which in a reasoning creature
would be called engineering skill, but none of them are as
wonderful as the feats performed by the spider. This ex-
traordinary little animal has the faculty of propelling her
threads directly against the wind, and by means of her
slender cords she can haul up and suspend bodies which
are many times her own weight.

Some years ago a paragraph went the rounds of the
papers in which it was said that a spider had suspended an
unfortunate mouse, raising it up from the ground, and

'3°

HOW A SPIDER LIFTED A SNAKE 131

leaving it to perish miserably between heaven and earth.
Would-be philosophers made great fun of this statement,
and ridiculed it unmercifully. I know not how true it was,
but I know that it might have been true.

Some years ago, in the village of Havana, in the State of
New York, a spider entangled a milk-snake in her threads,
and actually raised it some distance from the ground,
and this, too, in spite of the struggles of the reptile, which
was alive.

By what process of engineering did the comparatively
small and feeble insect succeed in overcoming and lifting up
by mechanical means, the mouse or the snake ? The solution
is easy enough if we only give the question a little thought.

The spider is furnished with one of the most efficient
mechanical implements known to engineers, viz., a strong
elastic thread. That the thread is strong is well known.
Indeed, there are few substances that will support a greater
strain than the silk of the silkworm, or the spider ; careful
experiment having shown that for equal sizes the strength
of these fibers exceeds that of common iron. But notwith-
standing its strength, the spider's thread alone would be
useless as a mechanical power if it were not for its elasticity.
The spider has no blocks or pulleys, and, therefore, it cannot
cause the thread to divide up and run in different directions,
but the elasticity of the thread more than makes up for
this, and renders possible the lifting of an animal much
heavier than a mouse or a snake. This may require a little
explanation.

Let us suppose that a child can lift a six-pound weight
one foot high and do this twenty times a minute. Furnish
him with 350 rubber bands, each capable of pulling six
pounds through one foot when stretched. Let these bands

132 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

be attached to a wooden platform on which stand a pair
of horses weighing 2,100 Ibs., or rather more than a ton.
If now the child will go to work and stretch these rubber
bands, singly, hooking each one up, as it is stretched, in
less than twenty minutes he will have raised the pair of
horses one foot !

We thus see that the elasticity of the rubber bands
enables the child to divide the weight of the horses into
350 pieces of six pounds each, and at the rate of a little less
than one every three seconds, he lifts all these separate pieces
one foot, so that the child easily lifts this enormous weight.

Each spider's thread acts like one of the elastic rubber
bands. Let us suppose that the mouse or the snake weighed
half an ounce and that each thread is capable of supporting
a grain and a half. The spider would have to connect the
mouse with the point from which it was to be suspended
with 150 threads, and if the little quadruped was once
swung off his feet, he would be powerless. By pulling
successively on each thread and shortening it a little, the
mouse or snake might be raised to any height within the
capacity of the building or structure in which the work was
done. So that to those who have ridiculed the story we
may justly say: "There are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

What object the spider could have had in this work I
am unable to see. It may have been a dread of the harm
which the mouse or snake might work, or it may have been
the hope that the decaying carcass would attract flies which
would furnish food for the engineer. I can vouch for the
truth of the snake story, however, and the object of this
article is to explain and render credible a very extraordinary
feat of insect engineering.

HOW THE SHADOW MAY BE MADE TO MOVE
BACKWARD ON THE SUN-DIAL

N the twentieth chapter of II Kings, at the
eleventh verse we read, that "Isaiah the prophet
cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow
ten degrees backward, by which it had gone
down in the dial of Ahaz."

It is a curious fact, first pointed out by Nonez, the
famous cosmographer and mathematician of the sixteenth
century, but not generally known, that by tilting a sun-dial
through the proper angle, the shadow at certain periods of
the year can be made, for a short time, to move backwards
on the dial. This was used by the French encyclopaedists
as a rationalistic explanation of the miracle which is related
at the opening of this article.

The reader who is curious in such matters will find direc-
tions for constructing "a dial, for any latitude, on which
the shadow shall retrograde or move backwards," in
Ozanam's " Recreations in Science and Natural Philosophy,"
Riddle's edition, page 5 29. Professor Ball in his " Mathe-
matical Recreations," page 214, gives a very clear explana-
tion of the phenomenon. The subject is somewhat too
technical for these pages.

133

HOW A WATCH MAY BE USED AS A COMPASS

EVERAL years ago a correspondent of " Truth "
(London) gave the following simple directions for
finding the points of the compass by means of
the ordinary pocket watch : " Point the hour hand
to the sun, and south is exactly half way between the hour
hand and twelve on the watch, counting forward up to
noon, but backward after the sun has passed the meridian."
Professor Ball, in his " Mathematical Recreations and
Problems," gives more complete directions and explanations.
He says :

" The position of the sun relative to the points of the
compass determines the solar time. Conversely, if we
take the time given by a watch as being the solar time
(and it will differ from it only by a few minutes at the
most), and we observe the position of the sun, we can find
the points of the compass. To do this it is sufficient to
point the hour-hand to the sun and then the direction which
bisects the angle between the hour and the figure XII will
point due south. For instance, if it is four o'clock in the
afternoon, it is sufficient to point the hour-hand (which
is then at the figure IIII) to the sun, and the figure II on
the watch will indicate the direction of south. Again, if
it is eight o'clock in the morning, we must point the hour-
hand (which is then at the figure VIII) to the sun, and the
figure X on the watch gives the south point of the compass.

" Between the hours of six in the morning and six in
the evening the angle between the hour and XII, which
must be bisected is less than 180 degrees, but at other times
the angle to be bisected is greater than 180 degrees; or per-
haps it is simpler to say that at other times the rule gives
the north point and not the south point.

"The reason is as follows: At noon the sun is due

134

WATCH MAY BE USED AS A COMPASS 135

south, and it makes one complete circuit round the points
of the compass in 24 hours* The hour-hand of a watch
also makes one complete circuit in 12 hours. Hence, if
the watch is held with its face in the plane of the ecliptic,
and the figure XII on the dial is pointed to the south, both
the hour-hand and the sun will be in that direction at noon.
Both move round in the same direction, but the angular
velocity of the hour-hand is twice as great as that of the
sun. Hence the rule. The greatest error due to the neglect
of the equation of time is less than 2 degrees. Of course,
in practice, most people would hold the face of the watch
horizontal, and in our latitude (that of London) no serious
error would thus be introduced.

" In the southern hemisphere, or in any tropical country
where at noon the sun is due north, the rule will give the
north point instead of the south."

MICROGRAPHY OR MINUTE WRITING AND
MICROPHOTOGRAPHY

INUTE works of art have always excited the
curiosity and commanded the admiration of the
average man. Consequently Cicero thought it
worth while to record that the entire Illiad of
Homer had been written upon parchment in characters so
fine that^the copy could be enclosed in a nutshell. This
has always been regarded as a marvelous feat.

There is in the French Cabinet of Medals a seal, said to
have belonged to Michael Angelo, the fabrication of which
must date from a very remote epoch, and upon which fifteen
figures have been engraved in a circular space of fourteen
millimeters (.55 inch) in diameter. These figures cannot
be distinguished by the naked eye.

The Ten Commandments have been engraved in charac-
ters so fine that they could be stamped upon one side of a
nickle five-cent piece, and on several occasions the Lord's
Prayer has been engraved on one side of a gold dollar, the
diameter of which is six-tenths of an inch. I have also
seen it written with a pen within a circle which measured
four-tenths of an inch in diameter.

In the Harleian manuscript, 530, there is an account of a
"rare piece of work, brought to pass by Peter Bales, an
Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery." Disraeli tells
us that it was " The whole Bible in an English walnut, no
bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the book : there
are as many leaves in his little book as in the great Bible,

136

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 137

and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as
a great leaf of the Bible."

By most people, such achievements are considered mar-
vels of skill, and the newspaper accounts of them which are
published always attract special attention. And it must
be acknowledged that such work requires good eyes, steady
nerves, and very delicate control of the muscles. But with
ordinary writing materials there are certain mechanical
limitations which must prevent even the most skilful from
going very far in this direction. These limitations are im-
posed by the fiber or grain of the paper and the construc-
tion of the ordinary pen, neither of which can be carried
beyond a certain very moderate degree of fineness. Of
course, the paper that is chosen will be selected on account
of its hard, even-grained surface, and the pen will be chosen
on account of the quality of its material and its shape, and
the point is always carefully dressed on a whetstone so as
to have both halves of the nib equal in strength and length,
and the ends smooth and delicate. When due preparation
has been made, and when the eyes and nerves of the writer
are in good condition, the smallness of the distinctly read-
able letters that may be produced is wonderful. And in
this connection it is an interesting fact that in many me-
chanical operations, writing included, the hand is far more
delicate than the eye. That which the unaided eye can
see to write, the unaided eye can see to read, but the hand,
without the assistance or guidance of the eye, can produce
writing so minute that the best eyes cannot see to read it,
and yet, when viewed under a microscope, it is found to
compare favorably with the best writing of ordinary size.
And those who are conversant with the more delicate
operations of practical mechanics, know that this is no ex-

138 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

ceptional case. The only aid given by the eye in the case
of such minute writing is the arrangement of the lines,
otherwise the writing could be done as well with the eyes
shut as open.

Since the mechanical limitations which we have noted
prevent us from going very far with the instruments and
materials mentioned, the next step is to adopt a finer sur-
face and a sharper point. These conditions may be found
in the fine glazed cards and the metal pencils or styles used
by card writers. In these cards the surface is nearly homo-
geneous, that is to say, free from fibers, and the point of
the metal pencil may be made as sharp as a needle, but to
utilize these conditions to the fullest extent, it is necessary
to aid the eye, and a magnifier is, therefore, brought into
use. Under a powerful glass the hand may be so guided
by the eye that the writing produced cannot be read by the
unaided vision.

The specimens of fine writing thus far described have
been produced directly by the hand under the guidance
either of a magnifier or the simple sense of motion. Just
how far it would be possible to go by these means has
never been determined, so far as I know, but those who
have examined the specimens of selected diatoms and in-
sect scales in which objects that are utterly invisible to the
naked eye are arranged with great accuracy so as to form
the most beautiful figures, can readily believe that a com-
bination of microscopical dexterity and skill in penmanship
might easily go far beyond anything that has yet been ac-
complished in this direction, either in ancient or modern
times.

But by means of a very simple mechanical arrangement,
the motion of the hand in every direction may be accurately

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 139

reduced or enlarged to almost any extent, and it thus
becomes possible to form letters which are inconceivably
small. The instrument by which this is accomplished is
known as a pantagraph, and it has, within a few years,
become quite popular as a means of reducing or enlarging
pictures of various kinds, including crayon reproductions
of photographs. Its construction and use are, therefore,
very generally understood. It was by means o{ a very
finely-made instrument embodying the principles of the
pantagraph that the extraordinarily fine work which we
are about to describe was accomplished.

It is obvious, however, that in order to produce very fine
writing we must use a very fine pen or point and the finer
the point the sooner does it wear out, so that in a very
short time the lines which go to form the letters become
thick and blurred and the work is rendered illegible. As
a consequence of this, when the finest specimens of writing
are required, it is necessary to abandon the use of ordinary
points and surfaces and to resort to the use of the diamond
for a pen, and glass for a surface upon which to write. One
of the earliest attempts in this direction was that of M.
Froment, of Paris, who engraved on glass, within a circle,
the one-thirtieth of an inch in diameter, the Coat of Arms
of England — lion, unicorn, and crown — with the following
inscription, partly in Roman letters, partly in script : " Honi
soit qui mat y pensc, Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen
Victoria, and His Royal Highness, Prince Albert, Dieu et
man droit. Written on occasion of the Great Exhibition,
by Froment, a Paris, 1851."

The late Dr. Barnard, President of Columbia College,
had in his possession a copy of the device borne by the seal
of Columbia College, New York, executed for him by M.

140 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

Dumoulin-Froment, within a circle less than three one-
hundredths of an inch in diameter, " in which are embraced
four human figures and various other objects, together with
inscriptions in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, all clearly legible.
In this device the rising sun is represented in the horizon,
the diameter of the disk being about three one-thousandths
of an inch. This disk has been cross-hatched by the
draughtsman in the original design from which the copy
was made ; and the copy shows the marks of the cross-
hatching with perfect distinctness. When this beautiful
and delicate drawing is brought clearly out by a suitably
adjusted illumination, the lines appear as if traced by a
smooth point in a surface of opaque ice."

Lardner, in his book on the " Microscope/' published in
1856, gives a wood cut which shows the first piece of en-
graving magnified 1 20 diameters, but he said that he was
not at liberty to describe the method by which it was
done. As happens in almost all such cases, however, the
very secrecy with which the process was surrounded natu-
rally stimulated others to rival or surpass it, and Mr. N.
Peters, a London banker, turned his attention to the subject
and soon invented a machine which produced results far
exceeding anything that M. Froment had accomplished.
On April 25, 1855, Mr. Farrants read before the Microsco-
pical Society'of London a full account of the Peters machine,
with which the inventor had written the Lord's Prayer (in
the ordinary writing character, without abbreviation or
contraction of any kind), in a space not exceeding the one
hundred and fifty-thousandth of a square inch. Seven
years later, Mr. Farrants, as President of the Microscopical
Society, described further improvements in the machine of
Mr. Peters, and made the - following statement : " The

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 141

Lord's Prayer has been written and may be read in the
one-three hundred and fifty-six thousandth of an English
square inch. The measurements of one of these specimens
was verified by Dr. Bowerbank, with a difference of not
more than one five-millionth of an inch, and that difference,
small as it is, arose from his not including the prolongation
of the letter/ in the sentence 'deliver us from evil ' ; so
he made the area occupied by the writing less than that
stated above."

Some idea of the minuteness of the characters in these
specimens may be obtained from the statement that the
whole Bible and Testament, in writing of the same size,
might be placed twenty-two times on the surface of a square
inch. The grounds for this startling assertion are as
follows : " The Bible and Testament together, in the English
language, are said to contain 3,566,480 letters. The num-
ber of letters in the Lord's Prayer, as written, ending in
the sentence, ' deliver us from evil,' is 223, whence, as
3,566,480 divided by 223, is equal to 15,922, it appears
that the Bible and Testament together contain the same
number of letters as the Lord's Prayer written 16,000
times; if then the prayer were written in i-i 6,000 of an
inch, the Bible and Testament in writing of the same size
would be contained by one square inch ; but as i-356,oooth
of an inch is one twenty-secondth part of 1-15,922 of an
inch, it follows that the Bible and Testament, in writing of
that size, would occupy less space than one twenty-secondth
of a square inch."

It only now remains to be seen that, minute as are the
letters written by this machine, they are characterized by a
clearness and precision of form which proves that the mov-
ing parts of the machine, while possessing the utmost

142 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

delicacy of freedom, are absolutely destitute of shake, a
union of requisites very difficult of fulfilment, but quite
indispensable to the satisfactory performance of the ap-
paratus.

I have no information in regard to the present where-
abouts of any of the specimens turned out by Mr. Peters,
and inquiry in London, among persons likely to know, has
not supplied any information on the subject.

There was, however, another micrographer, Mr. William
Webb, of London, who succeeded in producing some mar-
vellous results. Epigrams and also the Lord's Prayer
written in the one-thousandth part of a square inch have
been freely distributed. Mr. Webb also produced a few
copies of the second chapter of the Gospel, according to St.
John, written on the scale of the whole Bible, to a little
more than three-quarters of a square inch, and of the Lord's
Prayer written on the scale of the whole Bible eight times
on a square inch. Mr. Webb died about fifteen years ago,
and I believe he has had no successor in the art. Speci-
mens of his work are quite scarce, most of them having
found their way into the cabinets of public Museums and
Societies, who are unwilling to part with them. The late
Dr. Woodward, Director of the Army Medical Museum,
Washington, D.C., procured two of them on special order
for the Museum. Mr. Webb had brought out these fine
writings as tests for certain qualities of the microscope, and
it was to "serve as tests for high-power objectives" that
Dr. Woodward procured the specimens now in the micro-
scopical department of the Museum. I am so fortunate as
to have in my possession two specimen's of Mr. Webb's
work. One is an ordinary microscopical glass slide, three
inches by one, and in the center is a square speck which

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 143

measures 1-4 5th, of an inch on the side. Upon this square
is written the whole of the second chapter of the Gospel
according to St. John — the chapter which contains the
account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee.

In order to estimate the space which the whole Bible
would occupy if written on the same scale as this chapter,
I have made the following calculation which, I think, will be
more easily followed and checked by my readers, than that
of Mr. Farrants.

The text of the old version of the Bible, as published in
minion by the American Bible Society, contains 1272
pages, exclusive of title pages and blanks. Each page
contains two columns of 58 lines each, making 116 lines
to the page. This includes the headings of the chapters
and the synopses of their contents, which are, therefore,
thrown in to make good measure. We have, therefore,
1272 pages of 116 lines each, making a total of 147,552
lines.

The second chapter of St. John has 25 verses contain-
ing 95 lines, and is written on the 1-202 5th of an inch, or,
in other words, it would go 2025 times on a square inch.
A square inch would, therefore, contain 95 x 2025 or
J92>375 lines. This number (192,375), divided by the
number of lines in the Bible (147,552), gives 1.307, which
is the number of times the Bible might be written on a
square inch in letters of the same size. In other words,
the whole Bible might be written on .77 inch, or very little
more than three-quarters of a square inch.

Perhaps the following gives a more impressive illustration :
The United States silver quarter of a dollar is .95 inch in
diameter, so that the surface of each side is .707 of a square
inch. The whole Bible would, therefore, very nearly go on

144 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

one side of a quarter of a dollar. If the blank spaces at
the heads of the chapters and the synopses of contents
were left out, it would easily go on one side.

The second specimen, which I have of Mr. Webb's writ-
ing, is a copy of the Lord's Prayer written on a scale of
eight Bibles to the square inch. According to a statement
kindly sent me by the superintendent of the United States
Mint at Philadelphia, the diameter of the last issued gold
dollar, and also of the silver half-dime, is six-tenths of an
inch. This gives .2827+ of a square inch as the area of
the surface of one side, and, therefore, the whole Bible
might be written more than two and a quarter times on one
side of either the gold dollar or the silver half dime.

Such numerical and space relations are far beyond the
power of any ordinary mind to grasp. With the aid of a
microscope we can see the object and compare with other
magnifications the rate at which it is enlarged, and a per-
son of even the most ordinary education can follow the
calculation and understand why the statements are true,
but the final result, like the duration of eternity or the
immensity of space, conveys no definite idea to our minds.

But at the same time we must carefully distinguish
between our want of power to grasp these ideas and our
inability to form a conception of some inconceivable sub-
ject, such as a fourth dimension or the mode of action of a
new sense.

Wonderful as these achievements are, there is another
branch of the microscopic art which, from the practical
applications that have been made of it, is even more inter-
esting. This is the art of microphotography.

About the middle of the last century Mr. J. B. Dancer,
of Manchester, England, produced certain minute photo-

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 145

graphs of well-known pictures and statues which com-
manded the universal attention of the microscopists of that
day, and for a time formed the center of attraction at all
microscopical exhibitions. They have now, however, be-
come so common that they receive no special notice. Mr.
Dancer and other artists also produced copies of the Lord's
Prayer, the Creed, the Declaration of Independence, etc.,
on such a scale that the Lord's Prayer might be covered
with the head of a common pin, and yet, when viewed
under a very moderate magnifying power, every letter was
clear aftd distinct. I have now before me a slip of glass,
three inches long and one inch wide, in the center of
which is an oval photograph which occupies less than the
i-2OOth of a square inch. This photograph contains the
Declaration of Independence with the signatures of all the
signers, surrounded by portraits of the Presidents and
the seals of the original thirteen States. Under a moder-
ate power every line is clear and distinct. In the same
way copies of such famous pictures as Landseer's " Stag
at Bay," although almost invisible to the naked eye, come
out beautifully clear and distinct under the microscope, so
that it has been suggested that one might have an exten-
sive picture gallery in a small box, or pack away copies of
all the books in the Congressional Library in a small hand-
bag. With such means at our command, it would be a
simple matter to condense a bulky dispatch into a few
little films, which might be carried in a quill or concealed
in ways which would have been impossible with the origi-
nal. If Major Andre had been able to avail himself of
this mode of reducing the bulk of the original papers, he
might have carried, without danger of discovery, those re-
ports which caused his capture and led to his death. And

146 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

hereafter the ordinary methods of searching suspected
spies will have to be exchanged for one that is more
efficient.

The most interesting application of microphotography,
of which we have any record, occurred during the Franco-
Prussian war in 1870-71.

On September 21, 1870, the Germans so completely
surrounded the French capitol, that all communication by

Fig. 21.

roads, railways, and telegraphs, was cut off and the only
way of escape from the city was through the air. On
April 23, the first balloon left Paris, and in a short time
after that, a regular balloon post was established, letters
and packages being sent out at intervals of three to seven
days. In order to get news back to the city, carrier
pigeons were employed, and at first the letters were simply
written on very thin paper and enclosed in quills which
were fastened to the middle tail-feather of the bird, as
shown in the engraving, Fig. 21. It is, of course, need-

MICROGRAPHY AND MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 14;

less to say, that the ordinary pictures of doves with letters
tied lound their necks or love-notes attached to their
wings, are all mere romance. A bird loaded in that way
would soon fall a prey to its enemies. As it was, some of
the pigeons were shot by German gunners or captured by
hawks trained by the Germans for the purpose, but the
great majority got safely through.

Written communications, however, were of necessity,
bulky and heavy, and therefore M. Dagron, a Parisian
photographer, suggested that the news be printed in large
sheets of which microphotographs could be made and trans-
ferred to collodion positives which might then be stripped
from the glass and would be very light. This was done;
the collodion pellicles measuring about ten centimeters
(four inches) square and containing about three thousand
average messages. Eighteen of these pellicles weighed
less than one gramme (fifteen grains) and were easily
carried by a single pigeon. The pigeons having been bred
in Paris and sent out by balloons, always returned to their
dove-cotes in that city.

M. Dagron left Paris by balloon on November 12, and
after a most adventurous voyage, being nearly captured by
a German patrol, he reached Tours and there established
his headquarters, and organized a regular system of com-
munication with the capitol. The results were most satis-
factory, upwards of two and a half millions of messages
having been sent into the city. Even postal orders, and
drafts were transmitted in this way and duly honored.

And thus through the pigeon-post, aided by micropho-
tography, Paris was enabled to keep in touch with the
outer world, and the anxiety of thousands of families was
relieved.

148 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

It is not likely, however, that the pigeon-post will ever
again come into use for this purpose; our interest in it
is now merely historical, for in the next great siege, if we
ever have one, the wireless telegraph will no doubt take
its place and messages, which no hawks can capture and no
guns can destroy, will be sent directly over the heads of
the besiegers.

But let us hope and pray, that the savage and unneces-
sary war which is now being waged in the east will be the
last, and that in the near future, two or more of the great
nations of the globe will so police the world, that peace on
earth and good will toward men will everywhere prevail.

ILLUSIONS OF THE SENSES

UR senses have been called the " Five Gateways
of Knowledge " because all that we know of the
world in which we live reaches the mind, either
directly or indirectly, through these avenues.
From the " ivory palace," in which she dwells apart, and
which we call the skull, the mind sends forth her scouts —
sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell — bidding them
bring in reports of all that is going on around her, and if
the information which they furnish should be untrue or
distorted, the most dire results might follow. She, there-
fore, frequently compares the tale that is told by one with
the reports from the others, and in this way it is found that
under some conditions these reporters are anything but
reliable ; the stories which they tell are often distorted and
untrue, and in some cases their tales have no foundation
whatever in fact, but are the "unsubstantial fabric of a
vision."

It is, therefore, of the greatest importance to us, that we
should find out the points on which these information
bearers are most likely to be deceived so that we may
guard against the errors into which they would otherwise
certainly lead us.

All the senses are liable to be imposed upon under
certain conditions. The senses of taste and of smell are
frequently the subject of phantom smells and tastes, which
are as vivid as the sensations produced by physical causes
acting in the regular way. Even those comparatively new

149

ISO THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

senses1 which have been differentiated from the sense of
touch and which, with the original five, make up the mystic
number seven, are very untrustworthy guides under certain
circumstances. Thus we all know how the sense of heat
may be deceived by the old experiment of placing one hand
in a bowl of cold water and the other in a bowl of hot
water, and then, after a few minutes, placing both hands
together in a bowl of tepid water; the hand, which has
been in the cold water will feel warm, while that which has
just been taken from the hot water, will feel quite cold.

We have all experienced the deceptions to which the
sense of hearing exposes us. Who has not heard sounds
which had no existence except in our own sensations ?
And every one is familiar with the illusions to which we
are liable when under the influence of a skilful ventrilo-
quist.

Even the sense of touch, which most of us regard as
infallible, is liable to gross deception. When we have
"felt " anything we are always confident as to its shape,
number, hardness, etc., but the following very simple ex-
periment shows that this confidence may be misplaced :

Take a large pea or a small marble or bullet and place it

1 The old and generally recognized list of the senses is as follows : Sight,
Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch. This is the list enumerated by John
Bunyan in his famous work, " The Holie Warre." It has, however, been
pointed out that the sense which enables us to recognize heat is not quite
the same as that of touch and modern physiologists have therefore set
apart, as a distinct sense, the power by which we recognize heat.

The same had been previously done in the case of the sense of Muscular
Resistance but, as the author of " The Natural History of Hell " says,
"when we differentiate the ' Sense of Heat,' and the 'Sense of Resistance'
from the Sense of Touch, we may set up new signposts, but we do not
open up any new ' gateways ' , things still remain as they were of old, and
every messenger from the material world around us must enter the ivory
palace of the skull through one of the old and well-known ways."

ILLUSIONS OF THE SENSES 151

on the table or in the palm of the left hand. Then cross
the fingers of the right hand as shown in the engraving,
Fig. 22, the second finger crossing the first, and place them
on the ball, so that the latter may lie between the fingers,

Fig. 22.

as figured in the cut. If the pea or ball be now rolled
about, the sensation is apparently that given by two peas
under the fingers, and this illusion is so strong that it can-
not be dispelled by calling in any of the other senses (the
sense of sight for example) as is usually the case under
similar circumstances. We may try and try, but it will

152 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

only be after considerable experience that we shall learn to
disregard the apparent impression that there are two balls.

The cause of this illusion is readily found. In the ordi-
nary position of the fingers the same ball cannot touch at
the same time the exterior sides of two adjoining ringers.
When the two fingers are crossed, the conditions are ex-
ceptionally changed, but the instinctive interpretation
remains the same, unless a frequent repetition of the exper-
iment has overcome the effect of our first education on this
point. The experiment, in fact has to be repeated a great
number of times to make the illusion become less and less
appreciable.

But of all the senses, that of sight is the most liable to
error and illusion, as the following simple illustrations will
show.

In Fig. 23 a black spot has been placed on a white

Fig. 23. Fig. 24.

ground, and in Fig. 24 a white spot is placed on a black
ground ; which is the larger, the black spot or the white
one ? To every eye the white spot will appear to be the
largest, but as a matter of fact they are both the same size.
This curious effect is attributed by Helmholtz to what is
called irradiation. The eye may also be greatly deceived
even in regard to the length of lines placed side by side.

ILLUSIONS OF THE SENSES

153

Thus, in Fig. 25 a thin vertical line stands upon a thick hor-
izontal one; although the two lines are of precisely the
same length, the vertical one
seems to be considerably longer
than the other. i

In Figs. 26 and 27 a series
of vertical and horizontal lines
are shown, and in both forms the
space that is covered seems to
be longer one way than the other.
As a matter of fact the space in
each case is a perfect square,
and the apparent difference in
width and height depends upon whether the lines are ver-
tical or horizontal.

Advantage is taken of this curious illusion in dec-
orating rooms and in selecting dresses. Stout ladies of
taste avoid dress goods having horizontal stripes, and

Fig- 25.

Fig. 26.

Fig. 27.

ladies of the opposite conformation avoid those in which the
stripes are vertical.

But the greatest discrepancy is seen in Figs. 28 and 29,
the middle line in Fig. 29 appearing to be much longer
than in Fig. 28. Careful measurement will show that they
are both of precisely the same length, the apparent differ-

154

THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

ence being due to the arrangement of the divergent lines
at the ends.

Converging lines have a curious effect upon apparent
size. Thus in Fig. 30 we have a wall and three posts, and

A

V

V

A

Fig. 28. Fig. 29.

if asked which of the posts was the highest, most persons
would name C, but measurement will show that A is the
highest and that C is the shortest.

A still more striking effect is produced in two parallel
lines by crossing them with a series of oblique lines as seen

Fig. 31.

in Figs. 31 and 32. In Fig. 31 the horizontal lines seem to
be much closer at the right-hand ends than at the left, but

ILLUSIONS OF THE SENSES

155

accurate measurement will show that they are strictly
parallel.

By changing the direction of the oblique lines, as shown
in Fig. 32, the horizontal lines appear to be crooked although
they are perfectly straight.

Fig. 3*.

All these curious illusions are, however, far surpassed by
an experiment which we will now proceed to describe.

OBJECTS APPARENTLY SEEN THROUGH A
HOLE IN THE HAND

HE following curious experiment always excites
surprise, and as I have met with very few persons
who have ever heard of it, I republish it from
"The Young Scientist," for November, 1880.
It throws a good deal of light upon the facts connected
with vision.

Procure a paste-board tube about seven or eight inches

Fig. 33-

long and an inch or so in diameter, or roll up a strip of any
kind of stiff paper so as to form a tube. Holding this tube

156

APPARENTLY SEEN THROUGH THE HAND 157

in the left hand, look through it with the left eye, the right
eye also being kept open. Then bring the right hand into
the position shown in the engraving, Fig. 33, the edge op-
posite the thumb being about in line with the right-hand
side of the tube. Or the right hand may rest against the
right-hand side of the tube, near the end farthest from the
eye. This cuts off entirely the view of the object by the
right eye, yet strange to say the object will still remain
apparently visible to both eyes through a hole in the hand,
as shown by the dotted lines in the engraving ! In other
words, it will appear to us as if there was actually a hole
through the hand, the object being seen through that hole.
The result is start lingly realistic, and forms one of the
simplest and most interesting experiments known.

This singular optical illusion is evidently due to the sym-
pathy which exists between the two eyes, from our habit of
blending the images formed in both eyes so as to give a
single image.

LOOKING THROUGH A SOLID BRICK

VERY common exhibition by street showmen,
and one which never fails to excite surprise and
draw a crowd, is the apparatus by which a person
is apparently enabled to look through a brick.
Mounted on a simple-looking stand are a couple of tubes
which look like a telescope cut in two in the middle. Look-

Fig. 34.

ing through what most people take for a telescope, we are
not surprised when we see clearly the people, buildings,
trees, etc., beyond it, but this natural expectation is turned
into the most startled surprise when it is found that the
view of these objects is not cut off by placing a common
brick between the two parts of the telescope and directly
in the apparent line of vision, as shown in the accompany-
ing illustration, Fig. 34.

LOOKING THROUGH A SOLID BRICK 159

In truth, however, the observer looks round the brick
instead of through it, and this he is enabled to do by means
of four mirrors ingeniously arranged as shown in the en-
graving. As the mirrors and the lower connecting tube
are concealed, and the upright tubes supporting the pre-
tended telescope, though hollow, appear to be solid, it is
not very easy for those who are not in the secret to dis-
cover the trick.

Of course any number of "fake" explanations are given
by the showman who always manages to keep up with the
times and exploit the latest mystery. At one time it was
psychic force, then Roentgen or X-ray s ; lately it has been
attributed to the mysterious effects of radium !

This illustration is more properly a delusion ; there is no
illusion about it.

CURIOUS ARITHMETICAL PROBLEMS

THE CHESS-BOARD PROBLEM

N Arabian author, Al Sephadi, relates the follow-
ing curious anecdote :

A mathematician named Sessa, the son of
Dahar, the subject of an Indian Prince, having
invented the game of chess, his sovereign was highly
pleased with the invention, and wishing to confer on him
some reward worthy of his magnificence, desired him to
ask whatever he thought proper, assuring him that it should
be granted. The mathematician, however, only asked for
a grain of wheat for the first square of the chess-board, two
for the second, four for the third, and so on to the last, or
sixty-fourth. The prince at first was almost incensed at
this demand, conceiving that it was ill-suited to his liberal-
ity. By the advice of his courtiers, however, he ordered
his vizier to comply with Sessa's request, but the minister
was much astonished when, having caused the quantity of
wheat necessary to fulfil the prince's order to be calculated,
he found that all the grain in the royal granaries, and even
all that in those of his subjects and in all Asia, would not
be sufficient.

He therefore informed the prince, who sent for the mathe-
matician, and candidly acknowledged that he was not rich
enough to be able to comply with his demand, the ingenuity
of which astonished him still more than the game he had
invented.

It will be found by calculation that the sixty-fourth term
of the double progression, beginning with unity, is

163

164 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

9,223,372,036,854,775,808,

and the sum of all the terms of this double progression,
beginning with unity, may be obtained by doubling the
last term and subtracting the first from the sum. The
number, therefore, of the grains of wheat required to sat-
isfy Sessa's demand will be

18,446,744,073,709,551,615.

Now, if a pint contains 9,216 grains of wheat, a gallon
will contain 73,728, and a bushel (8 gallons) will contain
589,784. Dividing the number of grains by this quantity,
we get 31,274,997,412,295 for the number of bushels nec-
essary to discharge the promise of the Indian prince. And
if we suppose that one acre of land is capable of producing
in one year, thirty bushels of wheat, it would require
1,042,499,913,743 acres, which is more than eight times
the entire surface of the globe ; for the diameter of the
earth being taken at 7,930 miles, its whole surface, in-
cluding land and water, will amount to very little more
than 126,437,889,177 square acres.

If the price of a bushel of wheat be estimated at one
dollar, the value of the above quantity probably exceeds
that of all the riches on the earth.

THE NAIL PROBLEM

GENTLEMAN took a fancy to a horse, and the
dealer, to induce him to buy, offered the animal
for the value of the twenty-fourth nail in his
shoe, reckoning one cent for the first nail, two
for the second, four for the third, and so on. The gentle-
man, thinking the price very low, accepted the offer. What
was the price of the horse ?

A QUESTION OF POPULATION 165

On calculating, it will be found that the twenty-fourth
term of the progression i, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., is 8,388,608, or
$83,886.08, a sum which is more than any horse, even the
best Arabian, was ever sold for.

Had the price of the horse been fixed at the value of all
the nails, the sum would have been double the above price
less the first term, .or $167,772.15.

A QUESTION OF POPULATION

HE following note on the result of unrestrained
propagation for one hundred generations is taken
from "Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects,"
by Sir John F. W. Herschel :

For the benefit of those who discuss the subjects of
population, war, pestilence, famine, etc., it may be as well
to mention that the number of human beings living at the
end of the hundreth generation, commencing from a single
pair, doubling at each generation (say in thirty years), and
allowing for each man, woman, and child, an average space
of four feet in height and one foot square, would form a
vertical column, having for its base the whole surface of
the earth and sea spread out into a plane, and for its height
3,674 times the sun's distance from the earth ! The num-
ber of human strata thus piled, one on the other, would
amount to 460,790,000,000,000.

In this connection the following facts in regard to the
present population of the globe may be of interest :

The present population of the entire globe is estimated
by the best statisticians at between fourteen and fifteen

166 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

hundred millions of persons. This number would easily
find standing-room on one half of Long Island, in the State
of New York. If this entire population were to be brought
to the United States, we could easily give every man,
woman, and child, one acre and a half each, or a nice little
farm of seven acres and a half to every family, consisting
of a man, his wife, and three children.

This question has also an important bearing on the
preservation of animals which, in limited numbers, are harm-
less and even desirable. In Australia, where the restraints
on increase are slight, the rabbit soon becomes not only a
nuisance but a menace, and in this country the migratory
thrush or robin, as it is generally called, has been so pro-
tected in some localities that it threatens to destroy the
small fruit industry.

HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE

jjANY plans have been suggested for getting rich
quickly, and some of these are so plausible and
alluring that multitudes have been induced to
invest in them the savings which had been accu-
mulated by hard labor and severe economy. It is needless
to say that, except in the case of a few stool-pigeons, who
were allowed to make large profits so that their success
might deceive others and lead them into the net, all these
projects have led to disaster or ruin. It is a curious fact,
however, that some of those who invested in such "get-
rich-quickly " schemes were probably fully aware of their
fraudulent character and went into the speculation with their
eyes open in the hope that they might be allowed to become

HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE 167

the stool-pigeons, and in this way come out of the enter-
prise with a large balance on the right side. No regret
can be felt when a bird of this kind gets plucked.

But by the following simple method every one may
become his own promoter and in a short time accumulate a
respectable fortune. It would seem that almost any one
could save one cent for the first day of the month, two cents
for the second, four for the third, and so on. Now if you
will do this for thirty days we will guarantee you the pos-
session of quite a nice little fortune. See how easy it is
to become a millionaire on paper, and by the way, it is only
on paper that such schemes ever succeed.

If, however, you should have any doubt in regard to your
ability to lay aside the required amount each day, perhaps
you can induce some prosperous and avaricious employer
to accept the following tempting proposition :

Offer to work for him for a year, provided he pays you one
cent for the first week, two cents for the second, four for
the third, and so on to the end of the term. Surely your
services would increase in value in a corresponding ratio,
and many business men would gladly accept your terms.
We ourselves have had such a proposition accepted over
and over again ; the only difficulty was that when we in-
sisted upon security for the last instalment of our wages,
our would-be employers could never come to time. And we
would strongly urge upon our readers that if they ever
make such a bargain, they get full security for the last
payment for they will find that when it becomes due there
will not be money enough in the whole world to satisfy the
claim.

The entire amount of all the money in circulation among
all the nations of the world (not the wealth} is estimated at

168 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

somewhat less than $15,000,000,000, and the last payment
would amount to fifteen hundred times that immense sum.

The French have a proverb that " it is the first step
that costs" (dest le premier pas qui coute] but in this case
it is the last step that costs and it costs with a vengeance.

While on this subject let me suggest to my readers to
figure up the amount of which they will be possessed if
they will begin at fifteen years of age and save ten cents
per week for sixty years, depositing the money in a savings
bank as often as it reaches the amount required for a
deposit, and adding the interest every six months. Most
persons will be suprised at the result.

THE ACTUAL COST AND PRESENT VALUE OF
THE FIRST FOLIO SHAKESPEARE

EVEN years after the death of Shakespeare, his
collected works were published in a large folio
volume, now known as " The First Folio
Shakespeare." This was in the year 1623.
The price at which the volume was originally sold was
one pound, but perhaps we ought to take into consideration
the fact that at that time money had a value, or purchasing
power, at least eight times that which it has at present ;
Halliwell-Phillips estimates it at from twelve to twenty
times its present value. For this circumstance, however,
full allowance may be made by multiplying the ultimate
result by the proper number.

This folio is regarded as the most valuable printed book
in the English language — the last copy that was offered

THE FIRST FOLIO SHAKESPEARE 169

for sale in good condition having brought the record price
of nearly $9,000, so that it is safe to assume that a perfect
copy, in the condition in which it left the publisher's hands,
would readily command $10,000, and the question now
arises : What would be the comparative value of the present
price, $10,000, and of the original price (one pound) placed
at interest and compounded every year since 1623 ?

Over and over again I have heard it said that the pur-
chasers of the " First Folio " had made a splendid investment
and the same remark is frequently used in reference to the
purchase of books in general, irrespective of the present in-
tellectual use that may be made of them. Let us make
the comparison.

Money placed at compound interest at six per cent, a
little more than doubles itself in twelve years. At the
present time and for a few years back, six per cent is a high
rate, but it is a very low rate for the average. During a
large part of the time money brought eight, ten, and twelve
per cent per annum, and even within the half century just
past it brought seven per cent during a large portion of
the time. Now, between 1623 and 1899, there are 23
periods, of 12 years each, and at double progression the
twenty-third term, beginning with unity, would be
8,388,608. This, therefore, would be the amount, in pounds,
which the volume had cost up to 1899. In dollars it would
be $40,794,878.88. An article which costs forty millions
of dollars, and sells for ten thousand dollars, cannot be
called a very good financial investment.

From a literary or intellectual standpoint, however, the
subject presents an entirely different aspect.

Some time ago I asked one of the foremost Shakesperian
scholars in the world if he had a copy of the " First Folio."

I/O THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

His reply was that he could not afford it ; that it would
not be wise for him to lose $400 to $500 per year for the
mere sake of ownership, when for a very slight expenditure
for time and railway fare he could consult any one of half-
a-dozen copies whenever he required to do so.

ARITHMETICAL PUZZLES

GOOD-SIZED volume might be filled with the
various arithmetical puzzles which have been
propounded. They range from a method of
discovering the number which any one may
think of to a solution of the "famous" question: "How
old is Ann ? " Of the following cases one may be con-
sidered a " catch " question, while the other is an interest-
ing problem,

A country woman, carrying eggs to a garrison where
she had three guards to pass, sold at the first, half the
number she had and half an egg more ; at the second, the
half of what remained and half an egg more ; at the third
the half of the remainder and half an egg more ; when she
arrived at the market-place she had three dozen still to
sell. How was this possible without breaking any of the
eggs ?

At first view, this problem seems impossible, for how
can half an egg be sold without breaking any ? But by
taking the greater half of an odd number we take the
exact half and half an egg more. If she had 295 eggs
before she came to the first guard, she would there sell
148, leaving her 147. At the next she sold 74, leaving
her 73. At the next she sold 37, leaving her three dozen.

ARCHIMEDES AND HIS FULCRUM I/I

The second problem is as follows : After the Romans
had captured Jotopat, Josephus and forty other Jews
sought shelter in a cave, but the refugees were so fright-
ened that, with the exception of Josephus himself and one
other, they resolved to kill themselves rather than fall into
the hands of their enemies. Failing to dissuade them from
this horrid purpose, Josephus used his authority as their
chief to insist that they put each other to death in an
orderly manner. They were therefore arranged round a
circle, and every third man was killed until but two men
remained, the understanding being that they were to
commit suicide. By placing himself and the other man
in the 3ist and i6th places, they were the last that were
left, and in this way they escaped death.

ARCHIMEDES AND HIS FULCRUM

|EXT to that of Euclid, the name of Archimedes,
is probably that which is the best known of all
the mathematicians and mechanics of antiquity,
and this is in great part due to the two famous
sayings which have been attributed to him, one being
"Eureka" — "I have found it," uttered when he dis-
covered the method now universally in use for finding the
specific gravity of bodies, and the other being the equally
famous dictum which he is said to have addressed to Hiero,
King of Sicily, — " Give me a fulcrum and I will raise the
earth from its place."

That Archimedes, provided he had been immortal, could
have carried out his promise, is mathematically certain, but
it occurred to Ozanam to calculate the length of time which

172 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

it would take him to move the earth only one inch, suppos-
ing his machine constructed and mathematically perfect ;
that is to say, without friction, without gravity, and in com-
plete equilibrium, and the following is the result :

For this purpose we shall suppose that the matter of
which the earth is composed weighs 300 pounds per cubic
foot, this being about the ascertained average. If the di-
ameter of the earth be 7,930 miles, the whole globe will be
found to contain 261,107,411,765 cubic miles, which make
1,423,499,120,882,544,640,000 cubic yards, or 38,434,476,-
263,828,705,280,000 cubic feet, arid allowing 300 pounds
to each cubic foot, we shall have 11,530,342,879,148,611,-
584,000,000 for the weight of the earth in pounds.

Now, we know, by the laws of mechanics, that, whatever
be the construction of a machine, the space passed over by
the weight, is to that passed over by the moving power, in the
reciprocal ratio of the latter to the former. It is known
also, that a man can act with an effort equal only to about
30 pounds for eight or ten hours, without intermission,
and with a velocity of about 10,000 feet per hour. If
then we suppose the machine of Archimedes to be put in
motion by means of a crank, and that the force continually
applied to it is equal to 30 pounds, then with the velocity
of 10,000 feet per hour, to raise the earth one inch the
moving power must pass over the space of 384,344,762,-
638,287,052,800,000 inches; and if this space be divided
by 10,000 feet or 120,000 inches, we shall have for a quo-
tient 3,202,873,021,985,725,440, which will be the number
of hours required for this motion. But as a year contains
8,766 hours, a century will contain 876,600 ; and if we
alvide the above number of hours by the latter, the quo-
tient, 3,653,745,176,803, will be the number of centuries

AN INTERESTING EGG PROBLEM 173

during which it would be necessary to make the crank of
the machine continually turn in order to move the earth
only one inch. We have omitted the fraction of a cen-
tury as being of little consequence in a calculation of this
kind. The machine is also supposed to be constantly in
action, but if it should be worked only eight hours each
day, the time required would be three times as long.

So that while it is true that Archimedes could move the
world, the space through which he could have moved it,
during his whole life, from infancy to old age, is so small
that even if multiplied two hundred million times it could
not be measured by even the most delicate of our modern
measuring instruments.

AN INTERESTING EGG PROBLEM

PARTY of young people going on an excursion
proposed to take with them some cold, hard-
boiled eggs for lunch. Just as they were about
to set out, an addition was made to their number
and more eggs were needed. A young boy was sent to
the cellar to bring some, which he did, but unfortunately
he carelessly placed the raw eggs amongst the boiled ones,
and as they were all cold and about the same temperature
an interesting problem arose: How could they distinguish
and separate them?

One of the party solved the puzzle very easily and
quickly. He placed one of the eggs on a table and taking it
between his thumb and fingers he tried to twirl it as one
would twirl a teetotum. It would not spin and v •* pro-
nounced it raw. Taking another and treating it in the same

174 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

way he found that it would spin like a top and he said it
was boiled. Testing all the eggs in this way he soon picked
out the raw ones, and when they came to use them his
companions found that he had not made a single mistake.

This is a very pretty experiment and one that does not
seem to be generally known. It is easily tried at the
breakfast table whenever boiled eggs form part of the bill
of fare.

And a good deal of fun may be had by providing two or
three eggs, some boiled hard and some raw and all cold
and asking some one to pick out the boiled from the raw.
Very probably the candle test will be the one that first
suggests itself, and it is amusing to watch how many fail-
ures result. When the simple method here described is
shown it always causes a good deal of surprise to those
who have not seen it before.

The reason why the raw egg will not spin is obvious:
The time during which the fingers act on the egg is not
long enough to impart motion to the contents if they are
liquid; when the contents are solid, the movement of the
fingers is imparted to the whole egg from the very start,
and when let go, the entire mass continues to rotate like
a top.

SOME NOTES

ON

POPULAR FALLACIES AND
COMMON ERRORS

NOTES ON A FEW POPULAR FALLACIES AND
COMMON ERRORS

]HEN a fallacy or an error becomes embodied in a
proverb or woven into the texture of a language,
its vitality and power of diffusion seem almost
inexhaustible. It will require a long course of
education to destroy the force of the proverb, " Lightning
never strikes twice in the same place," or to eradicate
from the popular mind the idea that black lead is related
to the metal lead. Nevertheless the time will surely come
when such crude notions will be abandoned by even the
least educated. Of course there will always be errors and
mistakes which will have a vogue amongst the unthinking,
but such gross fables as were accepted by our forefathers
are now entirely abandoned and no one can be found who
now believes in the vampire, the phoenix, the salamander,
the centaur, or any of the other fabulous products of the
human imagination. But even down to the time of
Shakespeare it was generally held that such creatures did
exist or might have existed, the most elementary principles
of biology not being generally known and even not yet
discovered. Shakespeare's works . are full of erroneous
statements in regard to matters of natural history, and it
is not long since a writer for the press published an elabo-
rate article accusing him of ignorance or faking, the truth
of the matter being that Shakespeare took his natural
history from those works which in his time were considered
standard authorities, just as the writer of the article in ques-

177

178 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

tion takes ninety-nine per cent of his information from the
generally accepted books of the day. When Shakespeare
speaks of things which come within the sphere of his own
observation he is almost always correct, but when he
accepts the ideas and beliefs which prevailed amongst the
authors of his time he is frequently wrong. Like all the
men of his time he believed in a king bee, and his descrip-
tion of the government of the hive ("King Henry V," Act I,
Scene 2, line 188), as he understood it, is one of the most
beautiful and most frequently quoted passages in his
works, though as a statement of the true natural history
of the bee and the economy of the hive it is pure fiction.
So too the reference to "the kind life-rendering pelican,"
in " Hamlet" 1 (Act IV, Scene 5, line 145), as well as in other
plays, was in strict accord with the notions that were then
accepted and that were portrayed in numerous pictures
and engravings as well as in the crest and scutcheon of
many noble families. This matter has been well discussed
by Professor Dowden of the University of Dublin in the
Introduction to "The Shakespeare Cyclopedia."

Even Izaac Walton, who from his many opportunities
for observation in country fields and by riversides might
have been expected to be accurate in his knowledge of
facts, accepts many of the crude notions and erroneous
statements made by the writers who preceded him.

1 Some of our readers will no doubt be surprised when told that in the
first collected edition of Shakespeare's works, generally known as the
" First Folio," the words are " Kinde Life-rendering Politicean," — a curious
typographical mistake which has given rise to some interesting lucubrations.
If this were the true reading the politicians of Hamlet's time must have
been very different from those of our day. But the word is pelican in the
quartos, and the same alleged characteristic of the pelican is referred to in
Richard II and King Lear so that there can be no doubt that the modern
text is correct.

POPULAR FALLACIES AND COMMON ERRORS 179

It is now rather more than two centuries and a half
since Sir Thomas Browne published his " Pse^udodoxia
Epidemica," or " Vulgar Errors," a curious and interest-
ing work which throws much light on some of the extraor-
dinary beliefs of his day. The last edition that was issued
during his life now lies before me, and it is interesting to
note the absurdities which seem to have been generally
accepted by even the best educated people of his time.
But most of them have been discarded owing to the in-
crease and diffusion of knowledge in natural history and
the physical sciences. A few, however, still remain, and
some brief notes on those which are most prominent can
hardly fail to interest the readers of this book.

THAT MOST GREAT DISCOVERIES HAVE BEEN
MADE BY ACCIDENT

|OTHING appeals more strongly to the mind
of the average man than accounts of great
results which have been achieved by means
which were apparently totally inadequate to
effect the purpose intended. When he is told that Sir
Isaac Newton made some of his great discoveries by means
of a child's toy — the soap bubble — he is not only inter-
ested but amazed, forgetting the long course of deep
mathematical study which enabled Newton to derive such
important conclusions from such apparently trivial phenom-
ena. And there is a good story told of two old ladies who
lived opposite the great mathematician and who after
watching him for some time came to the conclusion that

l8o THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

he was weak-minded. One day they mentioned the matter
to their physician, a well-informed man, and expressed
their pity and sympathy for the poor old gentleman. They
were much astonished when they were told that the sup-
posed imbecile was none other than the great philosopher
Sir Isaac Newton, who was then deeply engaged in the
study of certain abstract problems in regard to light and
was using the soap bubbles to verify practically his purely
mathematical deductions. This particular story may not
be true (very few such stories are), but it has an air of
probability about it and there have been hundreds of actual
cases just like it.

Very few great discoveries or inventions were ever made
by mere accident and when such has apparently been the
case, the mind that was able to seize the new idea and adapt
it to the required conditions must have been prepared to
recognize its significance and the relation which it bore
to these conditions. The discovery of phosphorus seems
to have been made by accident; the discoverer, Brandt,
was looking for something entirely different. He thought
that in certain liquids derived from the human organism
he ought to find the philosopher's stone ; he did not find the
stone, but he did find phosphorus. But it is very certain
that he would not have obtained the phosphorus if he had
not been prepared to do so by long experience in earnest
chemical work.

A few years ago an article on this subject went the rounds
of the press and in it we were told that among other acci-
dental discoveries "the attraction of gravitation was sug-
gested to Sir Isaac Newton by the fall of an apple; that
Galileo got his first hint of the pendulum from the swinging
of a chandelier in a cathedral; that Madame Galvani, being

MOST GREAT DISCOVERIES MADE BY ACCIDENT l8l

an invalid, had frog soup prescribed for her, and while the
frogs were being prepared she noticed certain twitchings
in the dead animals and called the attention of her husband
to the matter, and that owing to this accident Galvani was
led to make his great discoveries. Also that the power of
steam was first discovered by the oscillations of the lid of
a teakettle; and to these instances were added numerous
other historic fables which have long been exploded.

In the case of Newton, he did not discover " the attraction
of gravitation"; what he did discover was that the same
force which caused stones, etc., to fall to the earth when
left unsupported, also retained the moon in her orbit; and
this he proved by comparing the rate of falling bodies on
the earth, as determined by Galileo, with the rate at which
the moon deviated from the straight line which she would
have pursued if no extraneous force had acted on her. The
story of the falling apple had no foundation in fact; this was
amply proved by Sir David Brews ter in his life of Sir Isaac
Newton.

Galileo had long been engaged in investigations relating
to falling bodies and had fully proved the absolute regularity
of their motion when he suggested the use of the pendulum
as a time measurer. Very probably he may have watched
the swinging chandelier and used it as an illustration, but
it was his previous studies and earnest thought and not the
mere swinging of the chandelier that pointed to the utility
of the pendulum.

The story about Madame Galvani and her frog soup,
as given in popular books on electricity and in many old
textbooks, is a fabrication of Alibert, an Italian writer of
no repute. It is completely disproved by the fact that at
the time his wife's health failed Galvani had been engaged

182 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

for eleven years in a series of experiments in which he had
used frogs' legs as electroscopes.

The power of steam was known long before teakettles
had come into use; and as the case of Watt and his inven-
tions affords a very good example of the erroneous ideas so
generally entertained on such subjects, it may be well to
consider it at length.

THAT THE IDEA OF THE STEAM ENGINE WAS
SUGGESTED TO JAMES WATT BY THE AC-
TION OF THE STEAM ON THE LID OF HIS
MOTHER'S TEAKETTLE

HERE is a large and elaborate engraving of
James Watt as a boy standing before a fire on
which a teakettle is boiling while he watches
the lid jump up and down. On one side is an
elderly woman (mother or grandmother) earnestly watching
the boy. Young Watt is dressed in the height of the fashion
of the period — knee breeches, powdered wig, and other
habiliments such as no Scottish lad of his station in life
ever wore. This engraving has had a large circulation
and has no doubt impressed the minds of many with the
truth of the story that Watt's great invention was due to
the accident of his watching the motion of the kettle lid
as the steam rose from the boiling water.

The incident which the engraving is supposed to repre-
sent is pure fiction. The power of steam was well known
long before the days of Watt. Hero of Alexandria, 130
years before the Christian era, had applied steam to the pro-

STEAM ENGINE SUGGESTED BY THE TEAKETTLE 183

duction of motion, and the number of the inventors who had
devoted themselves to the improvement of the steam engine
was very large — Battista della Porta, Branca, Solomon
de Caus, the Marquis of Worcester, Savery, and many
others had all invented engines of various types. Indeed
the engines of Newcomen were then in practical operation
in the mines and had in many cases displaced horses. So
that Watt was not the inventor of the first steam engine
that did practical work, and that such engines were in use
was known to every intelligent mechanic.

But that Watt was the inventor of the first engine that
was commercially successful as a motive power for ma-
chinery is true beyond all question, and this success was not
due to any happy a.rn'Hent.3 hvrhjyas thp re^ilf nf long-rpntin-
ued and earnest study and investigation. This is not the
place for even a brief history of Watt and his inventions,
but as the prominent incidents which led to his final success
afford a most valuable illustration of the great truth that
almost all inventions and discoveries are the result of hard
and earnest work and not of mere accident, we may be
pardoned for glancing at them.

Owing to the failure of his father in business, Watt was
early thrown upon his own resources. He went to London
and engaged as apprentice with a philosophical instrument
maker, but as his health failed he was obliged to return
home at the end of a year. During this year, however,
he seems to have acquired unusual skill in the use of tools
and a very thorough insight into the construction of appa-
ratus, and through the influence of some of the .professors
in the University of Glasgow, with whom he had formed a
friendship, he was employed to repair and adjust the appa-
ratus used by them in their lectures. He even attempted

1 84 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

to open a shop in the city of Glasgow, but the guilds refused
their permission. Fortunately for Watt and for humanity
the University authorities had complete control within
their own grounds, so they assigned him a workroom and
enabled him to set the guilds at defiance.

Amongst the apparatus which was sent to him to repair
was a model of Newcomen's engine. Watt succeeded in
putting it in working order, but was disgusted with the
small result which it gave for the combustion of a large
amount of fuel. Just about this time his friend Dr. Joseph
Black, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow
and the discoverer of carbonic acid, had made his cele-
brated investigations into latent heat, and this gave Watt
accurate ideas in regard to the practical relations of steam.
After much study and many experiments he worked out
the condensing engine, which did an equal amount of
work with less than one-fourth the fuel required by New-
comen's engine. This enabled the Cornish mine owners to
carry on work in mines which otherwise must have been
abandoned as unprofitable. Other improvements followed,
and while the old engines were never used for any other
purpose than pumping, the new engines of Watt were
capable of being profitably employed for driving machinery
and other kinds of work.

But at no stage of this progress could any advancement
be said to have been due to mere accident; it was all the
result of deep study and hard work.

THAT WHETSTONES ARE OILED TO LESSEN
THE FRICTION OF THE METAL UPON THE
STONE

HIS fallacy has become popular owing to a state-
ment made by Professor Tyndall in his cele-
brated work, "Heat a Mode of Motion." In
paragraph 9 occurs the following passage: "When-
ever friction is overcome, heat is produced, and the heat
produced is the exact measure of the force expended in
overcoming the friction. The heat is simply the primitive
force in another form, and if we wish to avoid this con-
version, we must abolish the friction. We put oil upon
the surface of a hone, we grease a saw, and are careful to
lubricate the axles of our railway carriages."

Now since the application of grease to rubbing surfaces
for the purpose of lessening friction has been practiced
from time immemorial, it is not to be wondered at that
Tyndall in his dragnet for instances should have caught
the hone or whetstone amongst other things, because the
application of oil to hones and whetstones is almost uni-
versal. And as his book is a standard authority in its
department, this mistake has been quoted over and over
again, the latest instance that has come to my notice
being found in a most interesting and instructive book by
the late Professor Tidy, "The Story of a Tinder-Box."

Those who are practically familiar with the use of hones
and whetstones know that the chief use of the oil is not to

185

1 86 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

lessen the friction but to prevent the metal from forming a
glaze on the surface of the stone. When a steel" blade is
rubbed on a dry whetstone the minute particles that are
torn from the metal attach themselves to the surface of
the stone and are then burnished to a smoothness which
greatly lessens the friction and prevents further abrasion.
So that in reality the application of the oil to the whet-
stone actually increases the friction instead of lessening it.

Of course this does not apply to coarse-grained grind-
stones where the particles of metal that are removed from
the tool are of considerable size and are torn off with
great rapidity. In that case the combined friction and
abrasion quickly heat the article to a degree which de-
stroys its temper if it is made of steel, and to counteract
this a stream of water is applied, but not for the purpose
of lessening the friction.

It is a popular impression that friction is only a source
of evil. It is regarded as the great agent in wasting power
and destroying machinery which, if there were no friction,
would last forever. But friction has its advantages as
well as its disadvantages, and the former are quite as im-
portant as the latter. If it were not for friction no nail or
screw would hold, and our buildings and machines, unless
constructed after methods very different from those at
present in use, would all fall to pieces. No knot could be
made to hold; the first strain would cause it to slip. With-
out friction no locomotive could drag its train along, and
even the horses would be unable to pull their loads. A
striking example of this may be seen any day when the
roads are covered with sheets of ice and men and horses
are falling in every direction. Even while writing these
lines I have received a notable object lesson in this direc-

LIGHTNING NEVER STRIKES TWICE IN SAME PLACE 187

tion, for I am held a close prisoner in the house of a friend
because the whole region is coated with a sheet of ice over
which it would be impossible for an elderly person to
walk with safety. And all owing to the absence of fric-
tion between opposing surfaces.

THAT LIGHTNING NEVER STRIKES TWICE IN
THE SAME PLACE

YLOR, in his ''Researches into the Early History
of Mankind," traces this proverb to the mythol-
ogy of India and notes a very curious connec-
tion between it and the old ceremonies of Easter
eve, when new fire was obtained from flint and hallowed
against all great dangers, and particularly against the
lightning stroke, for the new fire was supposed to be akin
to lightning, " which strikes no place twice."

But in these days it undoubtedly owes its general ac-
ceptance to a feeling that the place where lightning strikes
is a matter of mere chance or at least as much a matter of
chance as would be the location of a bullet fired by a poor
shot at a large target from a considerable distance.

In purely mechanical or physical operations there is no
such thing as chance. The poet very truly tells us:

All nature is but Art unknown to thee;

All Chance, Direction which thou canst not see.

In the toss of a penny or the throw of a die the result
depends upon immutable laws; and if we could but know
the action of the various forces at work, that is to say the
direction, intensity, and the point of application of each,

1 88 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

we could predict with absolute certainty which side of the
penny or the die would turn up. In the case of lightning,
conditions are liable to change; and while in former times
lightning may have struck a given spot several times, the
erection of lightning conductors, the growth of trees, and
other changed conditions may have so altered the relation
of a given spot to the clouds that the path of the discharge
will be entirely changed. But that particular buildings
and places have been struck by lightning time and again
is a matter of unquestionable record, the following instances
being well authenticated.

The Cathedral of St. Peter in Geneva, although so ele-
vated as to be above all other buildings in the neighbor-
hood, has for three centuries enjoyed perfect immunity
from damage by lightning, while the tower of St. Gervaise,
although much lower, has been frequently struck. Another
instance is that of a church on the estate of Count Orsini,
in Carinthia. This building is placed upon an eminence,
and had been struck so often by lightning that it was deemed
no longer safe to celebrate divine service within its walls.
For two or three years after its erection the church of St.
Michael's in Charlestown had been frequently damaged
by lightning; a conductor was attached to it, and during
the following fourteen years it was not injured. The steeple
of St. Mark's in Venice has a height of 340 feet, and was
frequently struck by lightning until a proper lightning
conductor was attached to it, after which it remained
uninjured.

THAT THE FIRST FIRE WAS PRODUCED BY THE
FRICTION OF BRANCHES OF TREES MOVED
BY THE WIND

HIS legend has been adopted from the works
attributed to Sanchoniathon but now generally
considered forgeries. The account is as follows:
"And when there were violent storms of rain
and wind the trees about Tyre, being rubbed against each
other, took fire, and all the forest in the neighborhood was
consumed." And then the unknown writer goes on to
tell us that Usous consecrated two pillars to fire and wind
and worshiped them.

This statement has been accepted as true by almost
all modern writers, and even some of our recent scientific
authors, who certainly ought to have known better, have
quoted it as the origin of the primeval method of obtaining
fire by rubbing two sticks together. We know that fire
has been obtained in this way, for it was a common method
amongst savages and was practiced by the Indians of this
continent in early days. But that two branches moved
by the intermittent action of the wind and cooled by both
wind and rain could ever attain the temperature of the
ignition point of wood is simply incredible. Almost all
violent storms of wind and rain are accompanied by thun-
der and lightning, and it is quite possible that the lightning
may have set fire to the dry rubbish lying at the foot of
the tree that was struck. This has actually occurred in the
forests of Maine.

189

1 90 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

This is not the place for a general discussion of the origin
of fire, but it seems to me more than likely that man obtained
his first practical knowledge of fire from the burning wells
which abound in the neighborhood of the Caspian Sea, the
acknowledged cradle of the human race. These wells
could scarcely escape being struck and set on fire by light-
ning, and some of them have been burning for ages. The
wonderful spectacle and the pleasant warmth of these
burning wells would be sure to attract those who came
near them, and this was no doubt the source from which
men obtained their first knowledge of fire, an agent with-
out which civilization would have been impossible.

THAT VOLCANOES ARE " BURNING" MOUNTAINS

HE term " burning mountain" is very apt to
convey a wrong impression to the ordinary
person; he thinks of it as he does of a fire in a
stove or as a burning forest where combustible
materials combine with the oxygen of the air to produce
heat, flames, gas, and dust. In the eruption of a volcano
none of these phenomena are caused to any considerable
extent by combustion. The red-hot matter which is thrown
out was probably "burned" ages ago, indeed long before
this earth had taken on its present characteristics of oceans
and continents with their mountain ranges, rivers, and
lakes. The substances which are thrown out by a volcano
are the ashes of long-past fires, and we might as well think
of burning the ashes beneath our grates as to burn them.

The red-hot and sometimes white-hot material thrown
out by the volcano is merely a sample of the internal con-

THAT VOLCANOES ARE " BURNING " MOUNTAINS 191

tents of the globe, which is covered with a comparatively
thin crust (from thirty to fifty miles thick) that has cooled
off during past ages and is now in a condition in which
organic beings can live upon its surface. A volcano is
simply a hole in this crust through which the melted matter
of the interior and the steam produced by the infiltration
of water are ejected. Several causes may contribute to
the ejection of this volcanic material, amongst the prin-
cipal being the following:

1. The access of sea water through one or more fissures,
thus producing enormous pressure, a pressure so great
that dust and cinders have been projected to a height of
10,000 feet. That sea water is the cause of at least some
eruptions is rendered probable by the large proportion of
chlorides present in the ejected matter.

2. The pressure of deposits at the bottom of the ocean,
these deposits consisting of material washed down from
mountain ranges and other regions through which large
rivers flow. For while the average pressure over the entire
globe would not be disturbed by this action, it is very
evident that large local deposits over a limited area might
easily cause the comparatively slight disturbance which
would be necessary to produce volcanic phenomena. These
phenomena, when compared with the vast amount of ma-
terial carried out to sea by some of our large rivers, are
small. Of the amount of this material few people have
any conception. The greatest works of man in moving
rocks and earth are insignificant when compared with it.
The weight of this material might easily cause a local sink-
age of the crust quite sufficient to set a volcano in action
or to open up a new vent at some distant point along the
line of least resistance.

192 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

3. The gradual cooling of the earth and the consequent
contraction of the crust, which would proceed more rapidly
and to a greater extent than the contraction of the liquid
interior. That the earth is gradually cooling is a fact
which is generally accepted by scientific men. In other
words, the earth radiates into space an amount of heat
greater than that which it receives from the sun and stars.
Consequently the crust becomes too small to contain the
liquid contents of the globe and a portion of the latter is
ejected at the point of least resistance, which may be
either an old vent or a new opening. Cordier has calculated
that a contraction of only the one-twenty-fifth of an inch
would suffice to force out to the surface lava enough for
500 eruptions, allowing 1300 million cubic yards for each
eruption. This cooling process is, however, very slow,
so slow that it may not have been recognizable during the
historic period. But we must remember that an amount
which would be quite imperceptible by our most delicate
instruments would be sufficient to produce all the volcanic
phenomena with which we are familiar.

THAT THE FORCE OF DYNAMITE IS ALWAYS
EXERTED IN A DOWNWARD DIRECTION

is a well-known fact that if a charge of dyna-
mite be laid on the ground and exploded, it
will make a deep hollow, and if it be placed on
a slab of stone, even without any covering or
tamping, as it is called, the stone will be broken into
shivers. It was these facts that led to the belief that
dynamite acted only in a downward direction, and as there

THE FORCE OF DYNAMITE ALWAYS DOWNWARD 193

were no visible effects above the charge (as, indeed, how
could there be?) the theory was believed to have been
proved beyond doubt.

But every engineer and miner knows that if the slab of
stone were raised from the ground and supported on
pillars, the dynamite if placed under it would shatter it as
effectually as if it were laid on the top of it. The truth is
that the expansive force of dynamite has no tendency to
act in any one direction rather than in another. Numer-
ous experiments prove this beyond any question.

The explanation of the apparent downward action of
dynamite is quite simple. The destructive power of dyna-
mite and similar explosives is due to the tremendous rapid-
ity with which the resulting gases expand in every direction
when exploded; indeed so rapid is this explosive action
that neither solid nor aerial matter can get out of its way
fast enough. Black gunpowder when burned on a stone
slab (unless the quantity be very large) simply gives a
slow puff and passes off in smoke. A little of it burned
on the palm of the hand burns so slowly that it will scorch
the flesh. But if we place a little fulminating mercury on "^
the palm of the hand and touch it with a spark of fire it /
goes off with a sharp puff and burns so rapidly that there (
is no time for it to impart a perceptible amount of heat to-^
the hand. It may even be burned on a pile of common
black gunpowder without setting the latter on fire. If,
however, we should select a still more rapidly expansive
explosive, such as dynamite, and set that off on the hand,
the hand would probably be torn to shreds.

Even when there is no solid material placed over the
dynamite to concentrate the action of the expanding gases,
there is always present the enormous pressure of the atmos-

IQ4 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

phere, which, as a resisting medium, under some condi-
tions, is almost as effective as so much sand. On a stone
slab three feet square there rests a load of air weighing
nearly nine tons. Now this air, if moved slowly, does not
offer much resistance to the moving agent. The most
delicate fan, if moved very slowly in the air, does not even
bend. But if moved rapidly it bends very perceptibly,
and if moved with great velocity it will be broken. We
can easily see, therefore, that when an effort is made to
move nine tons of air with the velocity of the gases evolved
by exploded dynamite, the air will offer almost the resist-
ance of a solid body, and a stone slab, though hard and
strong, breaks under the blow.

THAT THE ART OF HARDENING COPPER
IS LOST

T short intervals there appears in our different
periodicals an article telling us that somebody
has found a lot of old copper tools hard enough
to cut the hardest stone and bewailing the fact
that the process by which these tools were hardened by
some prehistoric race is now unknown and must be classed
amongst the so-called "lost arts."

That the Egyptians and some other peoples knew how
to harden copper is unquestionably true, but a chemical
analysis of their tools quickly revealed the secret, #nd there
has never been a time since then when we could not pro-
duce copper tools quite as good as those of the ancients,
and probably better. During his investigations into metal-
lic alloys suitable for cutlery, Faraday produced an alloy

THE ART OF HARDENING COPPER LOST 195

of copper which took an edge as keen and showed an
endurance as great as that of anything left behind them
by the ancients. Of this alloy a razor was made which
proved quite serviceable but was not equal to finely tem-
pered steel and consequently it offered no attraction to the
modern artisan.

The art of hardening copper is not lost, but it has fallen
into desuetude for two reasons: In the first place it is not
as efficient as good steel, and, secondly, copper is too costly
ever to take the place of the cheaper metal, iron, while the
latter can be made to do equally good work. While copper
is worth several cents per pound, iron is worth only a
fraction of a cent. This fact is reason enough for driving
copper out of use as a material for making cutting tools.

Careful observation shows that much of the fine stone-
cutting work of the ancients was done by grinding rather
than by cutting. I doubt very much if any tool made
prior to the Christian era could stand the hard work to
which the picks used by the miller in dressing his mill-
stones are subjected.

This matter of the hardening of copper is a very fair
sample of the erroneous ideas prevalent in regard to the
"Lost Arts," a subject in regard to which the late Wendell
Phillips was charmingly eloquent and woefully ignorant.
All the arts which have fallen into disuse and so are said
to have been lost, have been merely abandoned because
they have been superseded by something greatly better.

THAT STEAM CAN BE SEEN

those who have not given special attention
to the subject see a cloud of vapor floating away
from a locomotive in action, the feeling is irre-
sistible that they see the steam which causes
the piston to move in the cylinder. This, however, is far
from being the case What they really see is a collection
of fine particles of water. If these particles had been in
the state of steam they would have been in the form of an
invisible gas.

The truth of this is easily proved. Pour a little water
into a thin glass flask or a test tube and plug the mouth
with a cork having a small hole passing through it. The
hole should not be more than an eighth of an inch in diam-
eter. Heat the water in the flask or test tube over a spirit
lamp or gas flame until the steam rushes out of the hole
in the cork with some force. The flask or test tube, al-
though filled with steam, will be quite transparent; the
steam will not be visible.

Or watch a jet of steam issuing from the cock of a steam
boiler or the spout of a teakettle when the latter is boiling
briskly; as the steam issues from the cock or jet it will be
quite invisible for a short distance, but when cooled a little
by contact with the air it becomes vapor and is easily seen,
but then it is not steam.

196

THAT HANNIBAL USED VINEGAR TO CUT A PAS-
SAGE FOR HIS ARMY ACROSS THE ALPS

HIS alleged fact forms a staple illustration in the
literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, and I have recently seen an allusion to
it in the work of an author from whom I should
have expected better things. When we consider the enor-
mous quantity of vinegar which would be required to re-
move even a few cubic yards of limestone or similar rock,
the absurdity of the suggestion becomes apparent. Where
could Hannibal have obtained enough vinegar to enable
him to perform this feat?

A great deal of ink has been shed in the effort to explain
and enforce this alleged historical fact and to prove that
it might have been done, but the only satisfactory expla-
nation is that it is a fiction pure and simple.

THAT LARGE LENSES ARE MORE POWERFUL
THAN SMALL ONES

N the mind of the ordinary person the idea of
comparative power is almost always associated
with that of comparative size. The largest
and heaviest locomotive is always the most
powerful and so, as a general rule, are the largest animals
of the same species. And too often this same idea is applied
to lenses or magnifying glasses.

197

198 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

Of course those who have even the slightest knowledge
of optics and the construction of optical instruments can
never make this mistake, but a very large majority of those
whom we meet in daily life know nothing of these things,
and unfortunately it does not follow because a boy at
school has gone over the section on optics in his Natural
Philosophy, that therefore he understands these things.

If by power we mean the extent to which a lens magnifies
any object, then it will be found that the smallest lenses
are the most powerful.

It is a very elementary truth that of two lenses composed
of the same material that which has the sharpest curvature
to its surfaces will magnify most. Now, on reflection it
will be evident to even the least mathematical mind that
lenses which have very sharp or '"quick" curves must of
necessity be small. Suppose that the curve which bounds
the figure of a lens has a radius of half an inch; then it is
evident that the largest lens which could be made with
this curve would be one inch in diameter and then it would
either be a perfect sphere or approaching a plano-convex.
Most lenses, however, resemble thin slices cut off the spheres,
either making a plano-convex lens or two such slices joined
together, making a double convex lens, so that the diameter
of the lens is in general much less than the diameter of
the curves which form its surface. Therefore we see that all
lenses of high power are of necessity small, and when lenses
are required of very high power they become so minute that
they can be handled only with great difficulty. Indeed,
before the modern improvements in the microscope many
of the lenses used by scientific men were nothing more than
small globules of glass brought to a round form by fusion.
And they were the most powerful microscopes then known.

THAT THE SERPENT HAS A STING IN ITS TAIL 199

The idea that large lenses are the most powerful is so very
prevalent that "Send me one of your largest and most
powerful magnifiers," is an order with which every optician
is familiar, and yet such an order contains a positive con-
tradiction in terms. A lens cannot possibly be very large
and magnify greatly at the same time.

THAT THE SERPENT HAS A STING IN ITS TAIL

HIS curious belief, the falsity of which must
have been known to every country boy, seems
to have permeated our literature down to a period
well along in the nineteenth century, and I do
not know but that it prevails yet amongst the litterateurs
of the day. In Shakespeare we find more than half a dozen
passages in which the " sting" of the serpent is spoken of,
and the Bible tells us that wine "stingeth like an adder."
That the general impression derived from these expressions
was that adders, snakes, and serpents had stings in their
tails, is very evident, and this view is corroborated by a
passage in Scott's novel "The Monastery"1 in which the
peddler says: "Now let us hurry down the hill; for to tell
the truth a Scottish noble's march is like a serpent — the
head is furnished with fangs, and the tail hath its sting;
the only harmless point of access is the main body. "

And as that which is unknown is generally more dreaded
than that which is seen, the sting of the tail seems to have
been more feared than the fangs of the head.

1 Vol. II, Chap. XVIII. In some of the bastard editions where the
chapters of both volumes are numbered consecutively this would be
Chap. XXXV.

200 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

No snake or serpent has a sting in its tail. Its only
offensive weapons (exclusive of its crushing power) are
the fangs which are connected with certain poison glands
in the head. All the other parts and organs of the animal
are perfectly harmless.

THAT THE FORKED TONGUE OF THE SERPENT
OR SNAKE IS A WEAPON OF OFFENSE

HE tongues of snakes and serpents are cleft at
the end and have always been an emblem of
double dealing, treachery, and falsehood. As a
mere simile for a human being with a deceitful
tongue, this is well enough and may pass without comment,
but it will not serve as a suggestion for a truth in natural
history, since it has no foundation in fact.

Nevertheless in all ages the tongue of the snake or
serpent seems to have impressed humanity with a feeling
of danger, and from the fact that when snakes are irritated
they thrust out their forked tongues, these tongues have
been regarded as a weapon of offense, something to be
feared and avoided, so that when, in " Measure for Meas-
ure " (Act III, Scene i, line 15), the Duke says:

Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm,

Shakespeare puts into his mouth words which no doubt
reflected a common feeling and belief. And in several
other passages the forked tongue of the snake is referred
to as a thing of danger. It was a popular fallacy. The
serpent's tongue is quite harmless in comparison with the
poisonous fangs of a venomous and treacherous poet.

THAT A HORSEHAIR WHEN PLACED IN A POOL
OF WATER TURNS TO A SNAKE

T would seem that this was formerly a very
general article of belief among the country
people of Great Britain and Ireland. Even
Shakespeare seems to have accepted the current

notion, for in " Antony and Cleopatra" (Act I, Scene 2,

line 200) we find the following:

Much is breeding,

Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life
And not a serpent's poison.

Even Sir Thomas Browne in his elaborate work on the
"Vulgar Errors" of his time (u Pseudodoxia Epidemica")
does not allude to this error in natural history, though we
can scarcely believe that he was not familiar with the cur-
rent notions on the subject, and therefore we are led to sus-
pect that he accepted the popular view as being correct.

The error arose out of two very interesting facts. In
the first place there is a species of threadworm (the Gor-
dius aquaticus) which at one stage of its existence is para-
sitic but which develops in stagnant pools and so closely
resembles an animated horsehair that it gave rise to the
idea that it was really a horsehair which had fallen into
the water and had become alive.

The other fact was that when a dry horsehair is placed
in water it frequently moves, just as a thin shaving of wood
will curl and move when laid on a damp surface or as the

202 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

well-known toy called the artificial fish will flop its tail
when after being well dried it is laid on the moist hand.
In these cases we know that there is no animal life either
in the shaving or in the fish, and the cause of the phe-
nomenon is obvious and easily explained; but in the case
of the hair, associated as it is with a real living worm of
almost identical appearance, the ordinary mind is more
easily deceived. The general impression amongst those
who have not made a special study of the subject is that
voluntary movement on the part of any organism implies
the presence of animal life, and for a long time several
microscopic plants which are now known to be true vege-
tables, were believed to be animals because they were
seen to move about in the still water in which they floated.
This was the case with many diatoms and desmids, and
the beautiful volvox globator, which is unquestionably a
vegetable, was long known as the "globe animalcule''
and was believed to be an animal because it seemed to
have the, power of voluntary motion. Few sights are
more strikingly beautiful than the appearance of a well-
developed volvox passing across the field of view of a
microscope with a steady rolling motion, thus giving one
the impression of a large green globe obeying the instincts,
of animal life.

This free motion from place to place was of course seen
to be very different from the movement of the sensitive
plant or the movement of flowers under the action of the
sun, and it was thought that it could only be attributed to
animal life.

Of course in the present state of biological knowledge it
would be futile to offer any arguments against this old
belief. The microscope gives us ample assurance that it is

THAT HAIRS ARE TUBES 203

false and the life history of the Gordius has been fully
traced.

It may interest some of our younger readers to learn
that these worms get the name Gordius because of their
curious habit of coiling themselves into complicated knots.
— veritable " Gordian knots."

THAT HAIRS ARE TUBES

[EN we look through a strong magnifying glass
at a human hair it appears to the uneducated
eye to be tubular and consequently the impres-
sion very generally prevails that hairs, like quills,
are tubes. This fallacy is due to the fact that since the
hair is nearly cylindrical there is generally a bright line
of light reflected from the upper part of the surface, and
as the edges are in shade and consequently dark, the re-
semblance to a tube is very strong. But if we place a.
bright metallic wire under a microscope and examine it
as a dry and opaque object, the same bright central line
and dark edges will appear and the wire will seem to be a
tube, although we know that such is not the case. Of
course the decisive test is to make a cross section of the
hair and examine this under the microscope after it has
been properly mounted. The interior substance of the
hair will then be found to consist of a peculiar fibrous ma-
terial with sometimes a central medullary portion composed
of spheroidal cells.

The hairs of different mammals vary greatly in their
structure. Those of the cat, squirrel, mouse, rabbit, and

204 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

some others present very characteristic appearances. The
large hairs of the deer are very peculiar when viewed as
an opaque object. Indeed there are few more interesting
objects for microscopical study than hairs with their
various forms and structures.

THAT WORMS SHALL EAT OUR BODIES AFTER
WE ARE DECENTLY BURIED

HIS is a very old belief. In the Book of Job
(Chap, xix, v. 25) the prophet exclaims: "And
though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God."

And Shakespeare makes Hamlet say (Act IV, Scene 3,
line 28): "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat
of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm."

Rosalind also boldly avers that "men have died from
time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love "
("As You Like It," Act. IV, Scene i, line 107).

And all through our literature the same idea prevails.
No wonder then that the popular mind is firm in the belief
that it is the fate of humanity to be eaten by worms if not
consumed by fire or consigned to the fishes. And the
worm that is usually thought of in this connection is the
common earthworm or angleworm as it is usually called.

Now in the first place the earthworm does not feed upon
undecomposed flesh; I have never met them in a putre-
fying carcass. Their food consists chiefly of decaying
vegetable matter; consequently the site of an old manure
heap is a choice place to dig for them. And, secondly, earth-
worms are scarcely ever found at the depth to which a nor-

WORMS SHALL EAT OUR BODIES AFTER BURIAL 205

mal grave is sunk, that is, six feet. So that no one need
fear that he will fall a prey to the ordinary garden or earth
worm.

That an uncared-for corpse, left exposed on a summer
day, would soon be flyblown and that the eggs deposited
by the flies would develop into larvae which would soon
devour the body, is quite true. Linnaeus tells us that the
progeny of three blowflies would devour the carcass of an
ox as quickly as would a lion. So that it is pretty certain
that they would make quick work with an unprotected
corpse. But such a condition never occurs in civilized
life where death takes place amongst relatives and friends.

But while we do not stand in much danger of being
eaten by earthworms or the larvae of insects, it is very
certain that every man carries into his grave those devour-
ing agents which though invisible to ordinary sight will
accomplish the destruction of his body quite as effectually
as could those grosser creatures of which so many stand
in dread. Unless destroyed by powerful embalming
agents the microbes which cause putrefaction and which
are always present in inconceivable numbers will sooner
or later cause the materials of this worn-out garment
which we call our body to return to the elements whence
they came. From birth to death we have been contin-
ually borrowing, continually paying back. Part of our
physical organization may have come from the fruits
of the tropics, part from the mosses and lichens of the
frozen north. We may hold in our bones, muscles, and
brains, materials which once formed part of the gentle
sheep or the ravenous wolf, and in all the millions of years
during which the composition and decomposition of organic
matter has gone on, it is quite probable that some portion

206 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

of our physical system may have previously formed part
of the material organization of thousands of other animals,
men included. The imbecile may have in his body atoms
which once formed part of Homer, of Plato, or of Archi-
medes. Into the wretched frame of the beggar may be
built material which once formed part of Solomon in all
his glory or of Croesus with all his wealth, and some of the
atoms which by their changes enabled such generals as
Alexander, Caesar, or Bruce to achieve their fame, may
now form part of the body of a lazar. For all power is
due to the energy derived from the change of material.

Even among the corporeal atoms which now make up
our own bodies may be particles which helped to incarnate
the person of Jesus Christ or which lent physical energy
to the burning eloquence of Saint Paul.

Organic life has gone on unceasingly for untold ages in
ever-recurring cycles and it will continue to go on while
the earth endures. Not a single moment passes in which
some part of every living organism does not die. We
cannot move a muscle or give way to an emotion or even
think a thought without burning up some part of our cor-
poreal frame and the used-up material is speedily ejected
and then transformed into the clothing of a new life.

THAT A DECAYING CARCASS BREEDS WORMS

HIS erroneous belief was much more prevalent
half a century ago than it is to-day. In the
olden time it was commonly held that all kinds
of creatures might be " genera ted," as it was
termed, out of decaying matter, and it was supposed that
animals of even such a high degree of development as birds
might be evolved in a single generation out of some lower
form. Thus the barnacle goose was said to be a metamor-
phosed barnacle, the latter being a marine animal of no very
high grade.

And Virgil in his poem on country matters gives minute
directions for raising a swarm of bees out of a dead carcass.
It is very certain, however, that no swarm was ever raised
in this way.

So too Shakespeare makes Lepidus say: "Your serpent
of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of
your sun; so is your crocodile" ("Antony and Cleopatra,"
Act II, Scene 7, line 29).

And his audiences probably did not doubt the state-
ment even in regard to such a highly developed animal
as the crocodile. But it is no wonder that such opinions
should prevail generally amongst the people at large, for
everywhere we see life developing under conditions and
in ways which hide their origin from the ordinary observer
because he has not been taught to direct his attention to
them. He sees the larvae or worms which are devouring
the dead carcass, but he did not see the minute eggs from

207

208 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

which the larvae were developed simply because he did
not look for them. Consequently it was the most natural
thing in the world for him to suppose that they owed
their origin to the putrefying action of the carcass itself.
As we examine other forms of animal life the difficulty of
ascertaining their origin becomes in many cases very great
and in the case of some parasites it has required the labo-
rious efforts of the ablest biologists to make out their life
history. Until a few decades ago the different life stages
of certain marine animals were regarded as entirely differ-
ent species and each stage was. classified as being an en-
tirely distinct animal. And it is within the memory of
living men that the parr, a small fish which swarms in all
salmon rivers, was considered a distinct species and was
allowed to be slaughtered without limit, whereas it is now
known beyond the possibility of a doubt that it is the
young of the salmon and is carefully protected.

And it is now very certain that no creatures which show
distinct animal characteristics ever appear except as the
progeny of animals of the same kind.

J THAT SMALL FLIES ARE THE YOUNG OF
LARGE FLIES

VERY observing person must have noticed that
the flies which infest our houses differ greatly in
size, some being very small while others of simi-
lar general appearance are quite large. And it
is a very common idea that these small flies are small
simply because they are young and that if they are allowed
to live they will grow larger. It is very natural that this

THAT DRAGON FLIES STING MEN 209

mistake should be made by those who have never given
special attention to the manner in which insects are de-
veloped from the egg. But it is a curious fact that flies,
bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, etc., are as large at the
time they emerge from the cocoon or cell as they ever are
afterwards. All their growth is made while in the larval
condition — that is as caterpillars or " worms." Hence
the voracity of the caterpillar and the so-called " worms"
of clothes moths. After the insect becomes mature it
never changes, and the difference of size in the flies with
which we are familiar is due to the fact that they are
different kinds or species.

THAT DRAGON FLIES STING MEN AND OTHER

ANIMALS

)T is an old saying, "You might as well hang a
dog as give him a bad name." This is eminently
true of the dragon fly, of which there are a vast
number of species and to which many evil names
have been given. Thus it has been called "the devil's
darning needle," "the horse stinger," "the snake-feeder,"
and other vile names. And amongst children whose edu-
cation in natural history has been neglected there is a very
prevalent belief that the devil's darning needle can go in
at one ear, pass through the head and come out at the
other ear, and that various dire diseases are the result of
this action on its part.

Now it is a well-ascertained fact that the dragon fly is
one of our best friends; it has no sting and its biting appa-
ratus is so feeble that one may be safely caught in the
bare hand and held without injury to the captor.

210 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

The dragon fly lives entirely on flies, mosquitoes, and
other insects which it captures on the wing, and when a
room is so fortunate as to have a dragon fly for a visitor,
all mosquitoes and flies are quickly removed. And yet,
notwithstanding this well-known fact, let a dragon fly
appear in an assembly of young people (or old ones either,
for that matter) and there will be an intense commotion
and every young man in the party will be put on his mettle
in an effort to kill the terrible beast.

So well known to naturalists are the good offices of the
dragon fly that some years ago an effort was made to propa-
gate them as an enemy of the mosquito. It was found,
however, that while the dragon flies were active destroyers
of the mosquito they retired early in the evening, while the
late evening and night is just the time when the mosqui-
toes are most active. In addition to this the larvae of the
dragon fly are very destructive to small fish, and these are
well known to be the most efficient destroyers of the larvae
of the mosquito. A dozen small fish will clean out all
the mosquito larvae in a small pool of water, and what is
more, they will keep it clear of these pests. And as the
larvae of the mosquito are almost always bred in stagnant
pools, this is the most effective mode of getting rid of them.

The larvae of the larger species of dragon fly are fierce,
carnivorous creatures of which the common name is "the
water-devil." They spare nothing that comes within their
reach and that they can overcome — not even weaker
individuals of their own species. But the mature insect
is a harmless and indeed a beneficent creature and it never
stings, for it has no sting.

THAT POWDERED GLASS IS A SECRET AND
DEADLY POISON

HIS is a very old fallacy. It figures in the
"Vulgar Errors" of Sir Thomas Browne and
it survives even to this day amongst a certain
class of pseudo-scientific writers. Even within
two or three years a man was charged with committing
murder by means of powdered glass and was tried for a
capital offense. Of course the physicians who went on
the witness stand scouted the idea of powdered glass
acting as a virulent poison and one of them offered to
swallow a tablespoonful of the stuff in open court. Sir
Thomas Browne experimented with it on dogs and tells
us that he gave "unto dogs above a dram thereof sub-
tilely powdered in butter and paste, without any visible
disturbance." Nevertheless he tells us that "glass grossly
or coarsely powdered is mortally noxious, and effectually
used by some to destroy mice and rats."

This idea that powdered glass is an efficient poison for
rats and mice is quite prevalent, but it has been proved
by recent experiments made under the direction of the
United States Department of Agriculture that glass,
whether coarsely or finely powdered, has no ill effects
upon rats. Rats were fed for some time on food mixed
with the glass and they did not seem to be injured by it.
And when examined after being killed, the alimentary
canal was found to be in normal condition. So that we
may safely relegate the belief in powdered glass as a
poison to the list of popular fallacies.

THAT A MAN BECOMES OF AGE ON HIS
TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

HIS might be regarded rather as an error of
speech than as a fallacy of thought were it not
that the same erroneous idea has been carried
into other conceptions and has given rise to
serious error which has sometimes been of a practical
nature.

When a man reaches his twenty-first birthday it is
evident that he has lived only twenty full y&ars. Oh his
first birthday he was just beginning life and it was only
on his second birthday that he reached the age of one
year. The same difference between the number of his
birthdays and the number of his years continues all his
life, and it is only on his twenty-second birthday that he
has lived out the twenty-one 'years which entitle him to
vote in this country and which confer upon him all the
rights and privileges of adolescence.

The same discrepancy appears -in the numbering of the
centuries and it is no uncommon thing to hear the seven-
teenth century spoken of as the sixteenth because it ran
from 1 0oi to 1699, only the last year (1700) having 17
before the other two figures. Indeed I have seen in print,
under the authorship of one who must certainly have
known better, the seventeenth century named when the
eighteenth was what was intended.

It was not until the close of 1900 that the nineteenth
century rounded out its full quota of years, and it was

212

THAT "THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE" 213

with the beginning of 1901 that the twentieth century
commenced its run. And although the attempt was
actually made, yet all the edicts and laws of kings and
Kaisers could not alter this mathematical fact.

THAT "THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE"

HIS very common expression is a singular mis-
conception as to the meaning of an old Latin
proverb, Exceptio probat regulam. The word
probat used here really means to test, but it
may be translated proves, since the word prove also means
to test, as is seen in its use in relation to the proving of
cannon, the place where the guns are fired being called
"proving" grounds, or in other words, testing grounds.
Therefore the expression quoted at the head of this note
does not mean that the exception confirms or ratifies the
rule, but that it tests or tries it, and if the exception cannot
be easily explained away, the rule breaks down.

For example: a somewhat positive person asserted that
the only case in which the letter s had the sound sh when
it preceded the vowel u was in the word sugar, and was at
once met with the question: "Are you sure?" His rule,
if rule it could be called, broke down on being proved or
tested.

THAT CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER WAS OF
GLASS

OST people would think that glass as we know
it, whether blown or cast, would not make a
very serviceable slipper, and we have no reason
to believe that it was made of spun glass. But
all doubt in regard to the material of which the slipper
was made is set at rest by referring to the original French
version of the story, of which ours is a translation. There
we are told that it was a slipper of vair, the French for
fur. This word the translator mistook for verre, which
means glass, and so it has come to pass that all English-
speaking people believe that Cinderella's slipper was made
of glass. In the German version the slipper is of gold.

The story is very old and a similar legend is told of
Rhodope, the famous Egyptian courtesan who was said to
have built the third pyramid. While she was bathing,
her slipper was carried off by an eagle and dropped in
the lap of the Egyptian king, who was so struck with its
beauty that he sought out the owner and made her his
queen. See " The Shakespeare Cyclopedia," page 258.

214

THAT GLASS IS VERY HARD

E are led to believe that this error is very preva-
lent because the expression "as hard as glass"
is used as a comparison by some manufacturing
firms in their advertisements of goods in which
hardness is a specially desirable quality. And we are
confirmed in this view by the fact that the editor of one
of our mechanical journals actually defended the implied
statement on the ground that glass is very brittle!

Hardness, as we all know, is a comparative term. Copper
is hard when compared with lead; it is soft when compared
with brass, and brass is soft when compared with common
iron. The latter is soft when compared with steel, and
steel itself is soft when compared with iridium or with the
diamond.

Glass, however, according to all the scientific tests
used by the mineralogist and the physicist, is quite soft.
It is easily scratched by flint and by several minerals of
that grade, while flint is easily scratched by carborundum,
ruby, and some other substances — the hardest material
known being the diamond.

It is a curious fact that, next to the diamond, the hardest
substance should be an artificial product — carborundum.
It readily cuts the hardest materials, and is invaluable as
an abrasive.

Different kinds of glass vary greatly in hardness, but
they are all comparatively soft and may be cut by a good
steel tool. It is a common practice amongst amateur

215

2l6 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

opticians to shape pieces of glass into lenses in the turning
lathe just as they would shape a piece of iron or steel.
An ordinarily hard steel graver will cut glass as if the
latter were cheese, and a bit of fine glass may soon be
brought so nearly to the proper curve that it will require
merely a little polishing to make a good magnifier. I have
three or four lenses which were thus made and which are
very convenient and serviceable.

It has been argued that glass must be hard because it
is so brittle. But sugar is quite as brittle and it is cer-
tainly very much softer. Hardness and brittleness have
no necessary relation to each other, although substances
which by the usual process of hardening are made as
hard as possible frequently become very brittle. This is
true of steel and glass, both of which when unannealed
are harder than usual and very brittle. But even the
most brittle glass is comparatively soft.

If our advertising friends would say "as smooth as glass''
their claims would probably be much more attractive and
certainly far more accurate. Their goods being made of
hardened steel are far harder than any glass that ever
was produced.

THAT FRANKENSTEIN WAS A MONSTER

HIS atrocious literary blunder has become so
common and has been so frequently accepted
as true by writers of notable reputation that a
correspondent of one of our literary journals
actually defended the use of the expression, "the
monster Frankenstein," on the ground that the idea had
now become part of the mental furniture of the majority

THAT FRANKENSTEIN WAS A MONSTER 217

of literary men! The assertion that the majority of
fairly well-read men, not to speak of men whose profession
is literature, are ignorant of the general outlines of the
story of Frankenstein is certainly incorrect, and to say
that if we only give a mistake or a falsehood circulation
enough it will be converted into a truth is to propound a
system of ethics which few will be willing to accept.

" Frankenstein," as many of the readers of this page know,
is the title of a romance written by Mrs. Mary Wolls tone-
craft Shelley, the wife of the famous poet. It was written
under very peculiar circumstances, which Mrs. Shelley
herself has detailed in the first and second prefaces to the
book and which have been so frequently quoted that it
is unnecessary to do more than allude to them here. Mrs.
Shelley was but nineteen when she began this story, one
of the most remarkable in the literature of the nineteenth
century. The substance of it is as follows:

Frankenstein was a student of science at Ingolstadt,
and the question " Whence did the principle of life pro-
ceed?" occupied his thoughts beyond any other. At
length he thought he had solved it and he set about con-
structing a human being into which he could infuse life.
To avoid the great difficulty of working on very minute
organs he made his man eight feet high and large in pro-
portion. After two years' hard work he finished the con-
struction of this being and succeeded in vitalizing it.
When he had accomplished his task and the creature
showed signs of life he was horror-struck at the sight of
the fearful monster he had created and he fled from it in
terror. The monster escaped to the woods and was the
terror of those who saw it, and the account which the
creature afterwards gave to Frankenstein of the way in

2l8 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

which he subsisted and how he learned to speak and to
understand French showed wonderful imagination on the
part of the authoress. And the account which the monster
gave of the way in which he was treated by everybody
and his woeful sense of isolation is very pathetic. But
this expulsion from all association with any other being
led him to entertain bitter and vengeful feelings against
men in general and his creator in particular. He murdered
the younger brother of Frankenstein and contrived to
fix the crime on an innocent young girl who was executed
for it. He found Frankenstein in the mountains and made
him promise that he would create a mate for him, a female
with whom he might associate in love and sympathy.

Frankenstein made the promise and set about the work,
but before it was completed he repented and destroyed
the creature he was making. Thereupon the monster ap-
peared and threatened him with the most dire vengeance.
He killed the dearest friend that Frankenstein had and
swore that he would be with him on his wedding night.
When that night came the monster murdered the bride
of Frankenstein and then departed for the region of the
north pole. Frankenstein attempted to follow for the pur-
pose of destroying the demon, but in the northern seas he
was picked up in an exhausted condition by a ship on
board of which he expired after giving a full account of all
that had happened. The monster fled towards the north
with the expressed intention of immolating himself on an
immense funeral pyre.

From this the reader will see that Frankenstein was not
the monster and to the latter no name is given in the
romance.

WORDS WHICH CONVEY ERRONEOUS IDEAS

T is an unfortunate fact that many of the words
in common use actually convey erroneous state-
ments of fact. This arises partly from the cor-
ruption to which all words in common use are
liable and partly from the changes which are constantly
going on in every living language. A change of this kind
is seen in the word admire, of which the old meaning was
simply to wonder, and in this sense it was used by Shake-
speare and Milton. But it carries a very different sig-
nification now. Again, take the word vulgar, which now
conveys the idea of something offensive. Formerly it
merely meant common, as when in " Twelfth Night" Shake-
speare makes Viola say: "for 'tis a vulgar proof " (Act III,
Scene i, line 135). And in this sense it is still used in
France, where they have a journal for the vulgarization of
science (" Vulgarisation Scientifique ")> or what we would
call the popularization of science. As a matter of fact,
however, the words vulgarization and popularization both
come from roots which signify the common people.

So too the word fond, which now means loving or affection-
ate, formerly meant foolish, and is so used by Shakespeare
in several passages, notably in "The Merchant of Venice/'
Act III, Scene 3, line 9, and other places in that play.

Perhaps the most curious transformation of meaning
occurs in the word telescope, which literally means an in-
strument for seeing things afar off, and in this sense it is
still used when speaking of the optical^ instrument. But
from the fact that the mechanical portion of telescopes

219

220 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

was generally made of two or more tubes sliding into
each other the word came by analogy to be applied to any
combination in which this mere mechanical feature was
present, and now we speak of railroad cars " telescoping "
when, in a collision, they slide one into the other. In
this case optics or any of the features of seeing are entirely
absent and the mere mechanical motion alone is considered.

Numerous instances might be cited where changes in
the arts and in our customs give an apparently absurd
meaning to old words. Thus in the olden time distances
were marked by stones set up at regular intervals and
called milestones; to-day these markers are sometimes of
wood and sometimes of metal, but we still retain the old
term, milestone, and then we have wooden milestones and
iron milestones.

Again: The old-time pens were all made from the quills
of geese, swans, and crows, and were called pens because
that, in its Latin form, was the word for feathers. Now
quills have gone out of use and we have gold and steel
pens, — literally, gold and steel feathers.

Before the introduction of steel pens almost all writing
in ink was done by means of quills. These wore out quite
rapidly and upon the writing master and some of his most
skillful pupils devolved the task of mending the pens used
in the writing lessons of each day. This was done by
means of an exceedingly sharp knife, and by practice
some of the boys became very expert at the work. The
knife used for this purpose was called a pen-knife, and we
still retain the name though the term has entirely lost its
significance. I remember well the time when steel pens
were almost unknown, and when a boy I have made and
mended hundreds if not thousands of quill pens.

WORDS WHICH CONVEY ERRONEOUS IDEAS 221

The old alchemical nomenclature introduced several
words which now are stumblingblocks to the ordinary
reader of modern times. For example, silver nitrate got
its old name of lunar caustic from the fact that the old
alchemical name of .silver was luna or the moon, and its
compounds were known as lunar salts. The ancients were
acquainted with seven metals and also with seven planets,,
for in their system the sun and moon were classed with the
planets. This led to the theory that each metal had
special associations with its own planet — iron with Mars,
copper with Venus, lead with Saturn, and so on. This
explains why salts of iron were called martial salts; salts
of copper, venereal salts; compounds of lead, saturnine
preparations, and so with the others.

The following list contains a few words which convey
erroneous ideas; the number might be greatly enlarged.

BLACK LEAD. — This well-known substance has no lead
at all in its composition; it is simply a form of carbon,
charcoal and the diamond being other forms. Another
name for it is plumbago, but this is just as bad, for this
word is derived from the Latin name for lead (plumbum)..
The proper name is graphite, or writing "material. Black
lead no doubt got its name from the fact that pencils were
originally made of lead or of one of its alloys, and when
graphite was substituted for the metal it was quite natural
to call it black lead from its color. But nevertheless it is a
misnomer.

BLIND WORM. — Although not found in this country,
the name of the creature is so often mentioned in English
literature that it is worth while to note the fact that it is
neither blind nor poisonous, qualities which are generally
attributed to it by the ignorant. It is really a small lizard.

222 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

Its eyes are small but very bright and provided with
lids.

CAMEL'S-HAIR BRUSHES are not made from the hair of
camels but from hair from the tails of Russian and Sibe-
rian squirrels. Did any one ever try to use the hairs of
any of the large American or Canadian squirrels for this
purpose?

CATGUT. — This is never made from the intestines of
cats but from those of sheep and sometimes of horses. It
is a curious fact that the highly fed and fat sheep of the
best farming countries do not yield materials that are
fit for making catgut. The lean, hardy sheep of the north
of Italy seem to furnish the best article.

CODDINGTON LENS. — This very valuable improvement
in magnifying glasses was invented by Sir David Brews ter
and it ought to be called the " Brews ter lens" It is an
inexpensive form of simple microscope, and although not
equal to a well-made achromatic magnifier, it is very much
cheaper and is greatly superior to the ordinary double convex
lens. Coddington, who wrote several books on optics, never
claimed to be the inventor of this form, but like many other
inventions it has been credited to the wrong person.

GALVANIC BATTERY. — This is a singular misnomer
which for a time was applied to what really ought to be
called the voltaic battery, since the combination of two
metals and an acid (or their equivalents) was really in-
vented by Volta. Galvani had been dead some years
before the voltaic pile or battery was given to the world.

FOXGLOVE. — The syllable fox in this word is a corrup-
tion of the word folks, meaning the fairies or " little folks."
It should be folks' glove.

HYDROPHOBIA is a very misleading term as applied to

WORDS WHICH CONVEY ERRONEOUS IDEAS 223

so-called mad dogs. A dog that is rabid does not dread
water; he will lap it or even swim in it.

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE. — This is a curious corruption of
the Italian name, girasole articiocco, which means sunflower
artichoke. It has no relation to the city of Jerusalem.
The plant is a native of this continent.

RICE PAPER. — The well-known Chinese rice paper, as
it is called, is not a paper at all but a thin slice of the pith
of a herbaceous Chinese plant (the Aralia papyrifera).
The pith forms a cylinder, and with a long and very sharp
knife a slice is cut from the surface, the cut going round
and round in a spiral. The moist slice of tissue is thus
unrolled from the cylinder of pith and dried under slight
pressure — just enough to cause it to remain flat. It
cannot be written on with an ordinary pen and ink. The
Chinese use fine brushes, and I have in my possession some
beautiful water-color paintings done by a Chinese artist
on this material. This "rice paper" forms a beautiful
object under the microscope, as it shows the form and
arrangement of the cells very clearly under a low power.
Paper may be made and has been made from rice straw,
but it is an article very different from the real Chinese
"rice paper."

SEALING WAX. — Good sealing wax, as used now, con-
tains no wax. But originally it consisted of almost pure
wax, and the seal was not affixed to the document as is
now done. The old seals were huge lumps of wax on which
the seal was impressed, and they were attached to the
document by means of a ribbon which passed through the
seal. Our modern sealing wax is composed largely of
shellac.

SPARROWGRASS. — This word is obviously a corruption

224 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

of asparagus, but it has obtained such a hold upon the
speech of the uneducated that the market gardeners actu-
ally contract it to " grass" and when speaking of asparagus
they call it " grass " for short. It has no affinity to the
true grasses, and sparrows do not seem to be particularly
fond of it, though they will occasionally eat it as they do
peas and many other green things in the spring.

WHALEBONE is not bone at all but a peculiar horny
substance of which the scientific name is baleen.

WORMWOOD. — This is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon
wermod or wermode, which means the keeper or strengthener
of the mind. It has nothing to do with worms or wood.
The plant (absinthe) furnishes a powerful tonic. The
word vermuth seems to be a form of wermod.

"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER'1

proverb ever received more emphatic confirma-
tion than that given to the above during the
century just past. Whether the power be for
good or for evil, knowledge is its source. A
single modern battleship would be more than a match for
all the fleets in existence three hundred years ago. And
when we turn to the triumphs of peace we find ocean liners
that can brave any storm; while such well-known inven-
tions as railroads, telegraphs, telephones, fast printing
presses and others which have changed all our social con-
ditions, are all due to increased knowledge.

A few pages back we quoted the saying of Archimedes:
"Give me a fulcrum and I will raise the world." There
is a modern saying which has become almost as famous
amongst English-speaking peoples as is that of Archimedes
to the world at large. It is that which Bulwer Lytton
puts into the mouth of Richelieu, in his well-known play
of that name:

" Beneath the rule of men entirely great
THE PEN is MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD."

About thirty years ago it occurred to the writer that
these two epigrammatic sayings — that of Archimedes and
that of Bulwer Lytton — might be symbolized in an alle-
gorical drawing which would forcibly express the ideas
which they contain, and the question immediately arose -
Where will Archimedes get his fulcrum and what can he

use as a lever?

225

226 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE

And the mental answer was: Let the pen be the lever
and the printing press the fulcrum, while the sword, used
for the same purpose but resting on glory, or in other
words, having no substantial fulcrum, breaks in the attempt.

The little engraving which, with a new motto, forms a
fitting tailpiece to this volume, was the outcome.

It is true that the pen is mighty, and in the hands of
philosophers and diplomats it accomplishes much, but it is
only when resting on the printing press that it is provided
with that fulcrum which enables it to raise the world by
diffusing knowledge, inculcating morality, and providing
pleasure and culture for humanity at large.

When assigned to such a task the sword breaks, and
well it may. But we have a well-grounded hope that
through the influence of the pen and the printing press
there will soon come an era of universal

peace on jEartb and <3ooD "Mill toward Men,

INDEX

PAGE

Absurdities in perpetual motion . . 42
Accuracy of modern methods of

squaring the circle 17

Adams, perpetual motion 71

Age, when a man becomes of ... 212

Ahaz, dial of 133

Air, liquid 65

Alchemical names 221

Alkahest, or universal solvent ... 104

Altar of Apollo 30

Angelo, Michael, finely engraved

seal 136

Angle, trisection of 33

Apollo, altar of 30

Approximations to ratio of diameter

to circumference of circle ... 17

De Morgan's illustration of ... 18

New illustration of 19

Archimedean screw 49

Archimedes, area of circle 13

Ratio of circumference to diameter 14

Archimedes and his fulcrum .... 171

Arithmetic of the ancients .... 15

Arithmetical problems 163

Chess-board problem 163

Nail problem 164

A question of population .... 165

How to become a millionaire. . . 166

Cost of first folio Shakespeare . . 168

Arithmetical puzzles 170

Archimedes and his fulcrum ... 171

Army Medical Museum 142

Artichoke, Jerusalem 223

Ball, Prof. W. W. R. . . 39, 129, 133, 134

Balloons for conveying letters ... 147
Balls — proportion of weight to

diameter 32

Bastard editions of Scott 199

Bean jumping 128

Bee, king 178

Bees bred in decaying carcass ... 207

PAGE

Bells kept ringing for eight years . 41

Bible in walnut shell 136

Bible, written at rate of 22 to square

inch 141

Black, Professor Joseph 184

Black lead — a misnomer 221

Blind worm not blind 221

Boat-race without oars •. 129

Bodies, our, made of materials of old

organisms 205

Bolognian phosphorus 102

Boots — lifting oneself by straps of 128

Boyle and palingenesy 107

Bramwell, Sir Frederick 38

Brandt discovered phosphorus . 101, 180

Brick, to look through 151

Browne, Sir Thomas 179

Buckle and geometrical lines ... 119
"Budget of Paradoxes," De Morgan

6, 18, 118

Camel's hair brushes 222

Capillary attraction $3

Carbon bisulphide for perpetual mo-
tion 67

Carborundum as an abrasive ... 215
Carpenter, Edward — fourth dimen-
sion 122

Catgut, not from cats 222

Catherine II 118

Centuries, mistakes in naming ... 212

" Century of Inventions " 74

Chess-board problem 163

Child lifting two horses 131

Perpetual motion by a 64

Cinderella's slipper not glass ... 214

Circle, squaring the 9

Supposed reward for squaring the 9
Resolution of Royal Academy of

Sciences on 10

What the problem is 12

Approximation to, by Archimedes 14

227

228

INDEX

PAGE

Circle, ratio accepted by Jews ... 13

Ratio accepted by Egyptians . . 14
Symbol for ratio introduced by

Euler 14

Graphical approximations .... 22
Circumference of circle, to find, when

diameter is given 22

Clock that requires no winding. . . 38

Columbia College seal 140

Column of De Luc 40

Compass, watch used as a .... 134

Congreve, Sir William 53

Copper, art of hardening not lost . 194

Cube, duplication of 38

Crystallization seen by microscope . 108

Mistaken for palingenesy .... 106

Dancer — microphotographs ... 144

Dangerous, fascination of the ... i

Declaration of Independence ... 145

De Luc's column 40

De Morgan — Legend of Michael

Scott 6

Ignorance v. learning 8

Illustration of accuracy of modern

attempts to square the circle . 18
"Budget of Paradoxes" ... 6, 18

Trisection of angle 34, "8

On powder of sympathy .... 112

Anecdote of Diderot 118

DialofAhaz 133

Diderot, anecdote of 118

Digby, Sir Kenelm, and palingenesy 109
Sir Kenelm and powder of sym-
pathy . . . .' in

Dircks 56, 71, 75

Discoveries (great) rarely made by

accident 179

Discoveries, valuable, not due to per-
petual-motion-mongers .... 36

Dragon flies don't sting 209

Duplication of the cube 30

Dynamite acts in all directions . . 192

Egg problem — interesting .... 173

Elixir of life 95

Energy of organic life due to change 206

Engineering, insect 130

Euler 14, 118

Exception proves rule 213

PAGE

Fallacies in perpetual motion ... 65

Fallacies, popular — notes on ... 177

Falstaff and the philosopher's stone 97

Faraday's discovery 93

Farrants, Prest. Royal Mic. Soc. . . 140

Figure, a, enlarged by cutting ... 126

Fire, how first produced 189

First folio Shakespeare, cost of . . 168

Fixation of mercury 92

Flies, small, are not young .... 208

Follies of Science, The Seven ... 2 .

D 'Israeli's list 2

An inappropriate term 3

Fourth dimension — conception of . 117

Flatland 120

Kant and Gauss 121

Spiritualists 121

Edward Carpenter on 122

Possibility of a new sense .... 123

Foxglove should be folks' glove . . . 222

Frankenstein, not a monster ... 216

Frauds in perpetual motion .... 69

Freezing of mercury 93

Friction, advantages and disadvan-
tages of 186

Froment, micrographs 139

Galileo and the pendulum 180

Galvani, Madame 180

Galvanic battery, a misnomer ... 222

Gases, liquefaction of 93

Geiser's clock 7i

Geometrical quadrature impossible . 21

Gibberish, origin of word 96

Glass is not hard 215

Glass, powdered, not a poison ... 211

Glass slipper, mistake in translation 214

God, demonstration of existence of . 118

Gordian knots 203

Gordius aquaticus 201

Hair turning to snake 201

Hairs are not tubes 203

Hammer made of solid mercury . . 93

Hand, to look through 156

Hannibal's use of vinegar 197

Heat and cold, illusions 15°

Hesse, Landgrave of 77

Hindoos, ratio accepted by .... 16
Holmes, O. W., and powder of sym-
pathy in

INDEX

229

PAGE

Homer's Iliad in nutshell 136

Honecourt, Wilars de 42

Horsehair turning to snake .... 201

Horses lifted by child 131

Hydrofluoric acid 104

Hydrophobia a misleading term . . 222

Hydrostatic paradox 46

Iliad of Homer in nutshell .... 136

Impossible, fascination of the ... I

Insect engineering 130

Inventions, great, rarely made by

accident 179

Irradiation 152

Jews, ratio accepted by the .... 13

Keeley gold cure 97

Keeley motor 69

Kircher and palingenesy 106

Knowledge is power 225

Lacomme, on squaring circle ... 27

Lamps, ever-burning 100

Lens, Coddington 222

Lenses, largest not most powerful . 197

Library, Congressional, in hand-bag 145

Light from electric earth-currents . 103
Lightning often strikes more than

once in the same place .... 187

Lines, geometrical 119

Lines, direction of, deceptive . . . 154

Length of, deceptive' 153

Liquid air 65

Lodge, Sir Oliver, on conservation of

energy 5

Longitude, relation of squaring the

circle to 10

Lost arts 195

Me Arthur, on arithmetic of ancients 15

Machin 16

Magnetism for perpetual motion . . 61

Man lifting himself . 128

Mathematicians — how they go to

heaven 8

Mercury, fixation of 92

freezing of 93

fulminating, exploded on hand . 193
Metals. See Transmutation.

PAGE

Metius, Peter . 16

Micrography, or minute writing . . 136

Homer's Iliad in a nutshell . . . 136

Michael Angelo's seal 136

Ten Commandments 136

Bible in a nutshell 136

Earliest micrographic engraving . 139
Micrographic copy of seal of Co-
lumbia College 139

Peter's machine 141

Lord's Prayer written at rate of 22

Bibles to square inch 141

Webb's fine writing 142

Calculation in regard to .... 143

Microphotographs by Dancer . . 144
Pigeon-post in Franco-Prussian

War 146

Millionaire, to become a 166

Miracle — • dial of Ahaz 133

Morgan. See De Morgan.

Morton, President Henry 66

Motion, perpetual. See Perpetual

motion.

Muir, Professor, on Archimedes . . 14

Musitanus, Carolus g6

Nail problem 164

Newcomer's engine 183

Newton, Sir Isaac 179, 180

Nicomedean line 29

Oil, why applied to whetstones

Orffyreus — his real' name . .

His fraudulent machine . . .

Overbalancing wheels . . . .

185
77
77
43

Paint, luminous 102

Palingenesy 106

Paper, rice 223

Patent office U. S. and perpetual

motion 42

Pelican — error in first folio Shake-
speare 178

Pen, a misnomer 220

mightier than the sword .... 173

Penknives 220

Perpetual lamps 100

Perpetual motion 36

What the problem is 37

Clock that requires no winding. . 38

Watch wound by walking .... 39

230

INDEX

PAGE

Perpetual motion, clock wound by

tides '....... 41

By electricity 41

Absurdities 42

Overbalancing wheels 43

Dr. Young, on 44

Bellows action 45

Hydrostatic paradox 46

Bishop Wilkins 48

Archimedean screw 49

Archimedean screw, by mercury . 51

Congreve's, by capillary attraction 53

Tube and balls 56

Tube and rope 59

Magnetism 61

Self-moving railway carriage . . 63

A child's perpetual motion ... 64

Fallacies 65

Liquid air 65

Bisulphide of carbon 66

Frauds 69

Keeley motor 69

Geiser's clock 71

Adams 71

Redhoeffer 72

Lukens 72

How to stop the machine .... 73

Marquis of Worcester 74

Dircks' model 75

Orffyreus 77

Possibility of 78

Peters' micrographs 141

Philosopher's stone 97

Phosphorus, discovery of

101, 180

Pigeon-post 146

Population, a question of 165

Power, the, of the future 40

Ptolemy, on the circle 15

Puzzles, arithmetical 170

Railway carriage, self -moving ... 63

Ramsay, Sir William 89, 98

Ratio of diameter to circumference

carried to 127 places 17

Redhoeffer 's perpetual motion ... 72

Rice paper 223

Rosicrucius 100

Rule, exception proves 213

Rutherford . 16

PAGE

Sanchoniathon 189

Schott, Father, and palingenesy . . 107

Schweirs, Dr 52

Scott, Michael, and his slave demons 6
Scott, Sir Walter, bastard editions . 199
Legend of the great Wizard Mi-
chael Scott 6

Powder of sympathy 112

Sealing wax 223

Self-moving railway carriage ... 63

Sense, possibility of a new .... 123

Senses — illusions of 148

Taste and smell 149

Heat and cold 150

Hearing . 150

Touch 150

Sight — size of spot 152

Length of lines 153

Direction of lines 154

Objects seen through hand ... 156

Looking through a brick .... 158

Serpent, forked tongue not a weapon 200

Serpent, has no sting in tail .... 199

Shadow going backward on dial . . 133

Shakespeare, cost of first folio . . . 168

Philosopher's stone 97

Witchcraft 114

Shakespeare's errors 177

Shanks — value of ratio carried to

707 places 16

Sharp, Abraham 16

Shelley, Mrs 217

Sight, sense of, deceived 152

Smith, James, on squaring circle . . 28

Snake from horsehair 201

Snake lifted by spider 130

Soap bubbles 179

Solvent, universal 104

Space enlarged by cutting 126

Sparrowgrass 223

Spider lifting a snake 130

Steam is invisible 196

Sun-dial — shadow going backward. 133

Taste and smell — illusions .... 149

Tides, clock moved by 40

Will be the great source of power

of the future 40

Tidy, Professor 185

Time it would take Archimedes to

move the world 171

INDEX

231

PAGE

Tongue of serpent 200

Touch, sense of, deceived 150

Transmutation of the metals ... 79

Ancient fables 79

Hermes Trismegistus 80

Treatises not allegorical .... 81

Seven metals 82

Metals named after planets ... 82

Methods of cheating 83

"Brief of the Golden Calf" ... 84

Story of unknown Italian .... 87

Possibility of effecting 88

Sir William Ramsay 89

Effect of such discovery on our

currency system 90

" Tribune," New York 29

Trisection of angle 33

Tube and balls 56

Tube and rope 59

Tyndall, Professor John 185

Universal medicine. See Elixir of
Life.

PAGE

Van Ceulen, Rudolph 16

Vinegar, Hannibal's use of .... 197

Virgil — on raising bees 207

Volcanoes not burning mountains . 190

Wallich, Dr 35

Walton, Isaac 178

Watch that is wound by walking . 39

Used as a compass 134

Watt, James, and the steam-engine 182

Wax, sealing 223

Webb micrographs 142

Whalebone not bone 224

Whetstones — why oiled 185

Whewell's refutation of 3$ ratio . . 28

Wilkins, Bishop ^ 48

Witchcraft or magic 113

Worcester, Marquis of 74

Words, changes in 219

Worms bred in decaying carcass . . 207

Worms shall not eat us 204

Wormwood 224

Writing, fine 139

Young, Dr. Thomas 44

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