Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/375

Rh streets." And, finally, that profound philosopher, Swedenborg, says in his "True Christian Religion": "What would color be if only white were given and no black? The quality of the intermediate colors, from any other source, is but imperfect. What is sense without relation? and what is relation but things opposite? Is not the sight of the eye darkened by white alone, and enlivened by green, a color inwardly deriving something from black?"

These authorities and facts are entitled to serious consideration. They are all demonstrative of the positive injury, laceration, and destruction of the sight by the reflective dazzle of white; and to what else can we attribute the steadily increasing myopia of the children in our schools? Why not reform it altogether? Let our books be printed on green paper, and let our printers use red, yellow, or white ink for the noxious black. The reform would be revolutionary, and the interests of the trade would be at first hostile to the change. For thousands of years, from papyrus to superfine glittering note-paper, our eyes have been exposed to the deleterious influences of black and white. The change to green, yellow, and red, or to some other agreeable reflective tints, is eventually certain to take place. Science and common sense will compel it. The substitution can not, probably, be sudden nor immediate, for the stationery world must be turned up-side down in the process: old school-books, blank-books, and writing-books and inks, must be displaced; and publishers and paper-manufacturers will have to adapt their measures to the new dispensation. But, when it is consummated, everybody will rejoice, except the spectacle-makers. The eyes of the scholar and of the student will no longer be wearied with the myopian contrast of black and white, but strengthened and refreshed by congenial colors; and to pore over the pages of a book would be no more fatiguing to the eyes than gazing on a verdant prairie decorated with variously tinted flowers.



N my last I described generally the diffusion of liquids, and the actions to which the names of endosmosis and exosmosis have been given. It is easily seen that in extracting the juices of meat by immersion in water the work is done by these two agencies. This is the case, whether the extraction is effected by maceration (immersion in cold water) or by stewing.

Some of these juices, as already explained, exist between the fibers of the meat, others are within those fibers or cells, enveloped in the 