Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/715

Rh whom his closer friendship was given prized it highly. From his isolation as a boy and young man, he was diffident, even to his own embarrassment, in going out to meet others; but to those who came to him he was generous and sympathetic in giving assistance. He never pushed himself forward, and all his official positions came unsought. His earlier essays were inconspicuously published, and never had a wide circulation, even in separate pamphlet form. Many who have received them must have passed them by hardly noticed. The attention of scientific men turned slowly to his work; only in later years than 1870 is his name often mentioned abroad. His preference was always for original methods, in his college demonstrations as well as in later investigations. He did little in the way of restatement of the conclusions of others, but liked better to give his time to original researches in which there was a prospect of discovering something new or of explaining facts that had not been explained before. When his interest was aroused in such work, he devoured everything that he could find about it, "studying almost day and night," and never giving up a problem until it was solved, or until he was satisfied that his labors could not solve it. His conquest of physical problems was not the result of intuitive perceptions alone, but followed patient and persevering work. This appears in his boyhood when he pondered over geometrical problems in the barn, and in later years when his meteorological theories gradually developed.

Ferrel was a man whose teachings reach slowly through the world. Many of the problems that he solved bear only remotely on the lives of the millions of unmarked men from among whom he won his way to eminence; but all who read of him may understand the lesson of his courageous perseverance, of his earnest work and of his simple life. They will do well if, even without adding much to the world's store, they can say as he did at the close of life, "I regret to leave my friends, but that is all I regret."

was drawn by Miss Buckland, at the British Association, to nnmerous points in which the Navajo myth entitled "The Mountain Chant" reproduces customs and beliefs of the Old World. Among them were mentioned the singular prohibition of food in the abode of spirits, such as appears in the classical story of Persephone, and in modified shape in the fairy folk lore of Europe, in Aino and Japanese tales, and in New Zealand. The author pointed out the great contrast between the bloodless Navajo rites and the sanguinary ceremonies of the ancient Mexicans, and the great dissimilarity in the forms of the Navajo and Mexican gods, as denoting entirely different origins for the two religions, incompatible with the belief commonly entertained of the wholly indigenous character of American culture, and she urged that the Navajo rites point unmistakably to an Eastern origin.