Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/415

Rh "What is the correct pronunciation of the name of the German poet Goethe!" It is impossible to reproduce the sound of this name accurately through English letters. A partial approximation may be made, however. Try Gay-teh, and you will not be so very wrong.—Sun.

So Bagehot is Bah'-jote; and Quatrefages, Kah'-tre-fahj.

There seems to be more sentiment than science in objecting to the study of insects on account of the pain occasioned by their capture and preservation. Shakespeare says, "The poor beetle that we tread upon, in corporeal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies"—which shows that he did not understand the anatomy of insects. "Minute dissections and the closest anatomical examinations have proved that, though insects are possessed of nerves, they have no well-defined organs representing the brain, the seat of concentrated feeling, where all the nervous connections meet. They have, instead, a chain of ganglia or bundles of nerve-substance, from each of which nerves branch out to contiguous parts, so that the sensations are not all carried to one grand central focus of acute sensibility as with us; but form as it were separate systems, any one of which might be destroyed without disturbing the sensation of the others." It is well known that large moths, found asleep in the day-time, may be pinned to the trunks of trees without suffering pain enough to awaken them, and, only at the approach of twilight, do they seek to free themselves from what they doubtless consider an inconvenient situation. It is related that Mr. Haworth, the well-known English entomologist, being in a garden with a friend who firmly believed in the acute susceptibility of insects, struck down a large dragon-fly, and, in so doing, accidentally severed its long abdomen from the rest of its body. The mutilated insect, after this misfortune, felt so little inconvenience or loss of appetite that it greedily devoured two small flies. Mr. Haworth then contrived to form a false abdomen, to create such a balance to the rest of the body as would enable it to fly; after which, it devoured another fly, and on being set at liberty, flew away with the greatest glee, as if it had received no injury. But all dispute upon this point should be ended by the entomologist's simple expedient of dipping his pin in prussic acid before piercing the insect, so that the effect is instantaneous.

Sir Charles Bell, upon looking over a biographical sketch of himself made the following marginal comment on that part of it which spoke of his education: "Nonsense! I received no education but from my mother; neither reading, writing, ciphering, nor anything else. My education was the example set by my brothers. There was, in all the members of my family, a reliance on self—a true independence; and, by imitation, I obtained it. People prate about education, and put out of sight example, which is all in all."

A teacher in London, on being asked what moral education or training he gave to his scholars—what he did, for instance, when he detected a child in a lie his answer was this: "I consider all moral education to be a humbug. Nature teaches children to lie. If one of my boys lies, I set him to write some such copy as this: 'Lying is a base and infamous offense'; I make him write a quire of paper over with this copy, and he knows very well that, if he does not bring it to me in a good condition, he will get a flogging."

Xanthus, the historian, says that a man killed by a dragon will be restored to life by an herb which he calls balin. Democritus asserted and Theophrastus believed that there was an herb at the touch of which the wedge the woodman had driven into a tree would leap out again.