Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/92

84 highest place. Its use implied the personal courage of the individual at close quarters. The arrow might slay at a distance, and be discharged by a coward. The spear, again, if long enough and deftly



held, could kill without risk to the holder thereof, unless the adversary were similarly armed. But the sword meant personal conflict, where the victory was not always to the strong. Rightly it is the sign of might and governance, for it implies both the will and the power to execute the behests of its holder. It is one of the insignia of authority, because it is the sign of courage and skill.

 

HE following paragraph is similar to others I have occasionally seen going the rounds of the papers for the last twenty-five or thirty years:

It is said that a grain of musk is capable of perfuming for several years a chamber twelve feet square without sustaining any sensible diminution of its volume or its weight. But such a chamber contains 2,985,984 cubic inches, and each cubic inch contains 1,000 cubic tenths of inches, making in all nearly three billions of tenths of an inch. Now, it is probable, indeed almost certain, that each such cubic tenth of an inch of the air of the room contains one or more of the particles of the musk, and that this air has been changed many thousands of times. Imagination recoils before computation of the number of the particles thus diffused and expended. Yet have they all together no appreciable weight and magnitude.—Moseley's Illustrations of Science. 