Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/413

Rh she flew away through the air; and then the Lord created Eve from his rib, brought her to Adam in the most beautiful dress, and angels descending from heaven played on heavenly instruments; sun, moon, and stars dancing. He blessed the pair and gave them a feast upon a table of precious stones. Angels prepared the most costly viands. But Adam's glory was envied by the angels, and the seraph Sammael succeeded in seducing him. The pair were driven out of paradise into the place of darkness, and wandered through the earth."

Jérôme de Guise, the "champion lady-killer" of the eighteenth century, left among his trophies eight billets-doux, framed like pictures, and displaying eight different signatures under as many different petitions for immediate—elopement. Yet the triumphs of that charmer are far eclipsed by the record of Abdallah-ben-Abdol, the father of the Prophet Mohammed. On the eve of his nuptials, says the chronicle of Abulfeda, not less than two hundred virgins attested the poignancy of their chagrin by committing suicide.

Anaxagoras, the Rhodian, held that Earthquakes are nothing but a sort of cosmic flatulence winds which have strayed into caverns, where they can not find an outlet. Aristotle ascribes them to vapors generated by the infiltration of water through the fissures of a rocky sea-bottom; and Pliny, to the pressure of air confined in deep caves, and reacting against the collapse of superincumbent rock-strata. But the most ingenious explanation is offered by St. Thomas of Aquinas. Earthquakes, he suggests, may be caused by the struggles of defunct misbelievers trying (by a simultaneous stampede, perhaps) to escape from the pit of torment.

An Accomplished Vandal.—Some of the "truculent and turbaned Turks" of the fifteenth century were very far from being barbarians. Mohammed II, the destroyer of Constantinople, spoke fluently five Asiatic and two classic languages, had mastered the Arabian system of astronomy, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the theogony of the Sufist mystics, and achieved distinction as a poet and a national historian.

A Vegetable Monument.—The oldest tree on earth is probably the cypress of Santa Maria del Tule, in the Mexican State of Oaxaca. It is still growing, and, when Humboldt saw it, in 1851, it measured 42 feet in diameter, 146 in circumference, and 282 feet between the extremities of two opposite branches.

And so Mr. Darwin has given us a new philosophy of angle-worms. We had supposed that this "humble creature" was created chiefly for the use of country-boys as bait when they go a-fishing, and so were always to be conveniently found in the garden; but our indefatigable naturalist says that this despised earth-worm is nothing less than an ameliorator on the surface of the globe—a forerunner and coadjutor of the agriculturist in promoting the conditions of life. This is another revolution of ideas that is making our age so uncomfortable. "Worms of the dust" seems to be, after all, not so bad a thing. The sluggard is bidden to go to the ant and learn wisdom; but, while he is about it, he can profitably call also upon the worm. We give some poetry from "Punch" on this subject, and also "Punch's" portrait of the great Darwinian in his last rôle. He has not the elated expression of a triumphant discoverer. It was said of Agassiz that when he had found some new and long-sought marking or feature in a fish he waxed hilarious, and would dance about the room, but Mr. Darwin