Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — POPULAR SCIENCE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POPULAR SCIENCE.

BY PROF. J. F. ELSOM.

A FEW MILES BENEATH THE SEA.

WRITERS of travels and adve n t u r e, yy. ' the lecturer Eg. ' from so rei g n lands, and the stere o p t i c o n lit carry us along | | step by step *j| I qmid the soliJOltudes of the loftiest moung tains, the sandy L-O? desert plains, |i the sterile frigfes tej id zones, among HKWJ- populo u s empires, amid the '7SO n ?i sy - clang ? r /IT fflr °t business, the / '/ |V|deafening roar of ponderous

machines, visit with us prophets, priests, and kings; but the treasures and beauties of the fathomless depths of water remain ae a sealed book to we terrestrial mortals, and for grandeur and sublimity, awe inspiring wonders and horrors on horrors, all things seen above are not to be compared to what old ocean can show. At the bottom of shallow oceans it seems like one vast plain, whose surface is unbroken by knolls or any undulations whatever. Down deep we must crawl, we cannot walk; no danger of projections or steppes here; no diversity of peak, and gorge, and plateau. On the top of the sandy surface is a slime not unlike what we see on the gravel of the slow-running inland streams. If we are not cautious we will be mired in the Gfobigerina and the Pieropod ooze—these are rather long-legged words, I’ll admit, but one cannot well avoid them occasionally—the results of a precipitation from infinitesimal population which have spent their brief lives, long to them, of course, in the sunshine on the surface, perhaps gladdening the eyes of naturalists and tickling the palates of their rapacious superiors, a chalky ooze, the accumulations of countless centuries, perchance a time that will belittle by comparison the dim cycles of eternity, itself so long foretold. Oh, what a study! what means of developing the perceptive faculties of the human race, to cipher, without analogy, these vast problems of life and nature! The continuation of the chalk cliffs of England—dear old merrie England—with its accumulation of wealth, power, and aristocracy —once an abysmal sea bottom like the one to which you are invited to visit in your imagination on this occasion. Away down in these profound depths the ooze had changed to a reddish clay. The results of a chemical reaction modern scientists are unable to approach in nicety and accuracy, but what is going on ceaselessly in the gigantic laboratories of nature, and this very remarkable product is world-wide in its distribution. Paradoxical and inconsistent though it may seem, and wonderful to contemplate, on this sandy, slimy and level plain may be seen the dust blown down the throats of volcanoes and floated by the trade winds around half the circumference of the globe. Here we find the dust from Krahatva, after floating a year in the upper air, and painting a ruddy glow in a hundred sunset skies that painters have vied with each other to produce. Here falls the meteoric dust—the ashes of burnt-out meteors that flew swiftly for a thousand years through the interplanetary spaces—dust that flashed upon the vision of man in the days of the earliest empires; aye, “when the morning stars sung together” in auld lang syne—mingled with the cosmic dust newly arrived from its slow journey down through the dark and silent and motionless depths of this mighty ocean, now teeming with its varied forms of organic life. We are enraptured, awe-stricken. We stand and gaze out into the impenetrable blackness and chill which rest against us like bodies imbedded in a wall of masonry. Days may pass, months and years, and not a sound comes out of these oceanic solitudes which encompass us. No gleam reminds us that nature is not dead. We stand a thousand years and nothing stirs; nothing in these voiceless depths, these vast plains of death, though above us sweep the still majestic currents which bring frosts from the pole. This mud which impedes our footsteps is the dust of centuries, which has been gathering since the ocean descended to take possession of its mysterious bed, an act which shut threefifths of the world’s surface from the observation of man. Mingled with this mud are the relics of larger creatures which have lived in the sea where the sunlight cheers its population—teeth of sharks, ear bones of whales, not the accumulations of yesterday, or of a century. These are the relics of creatures whose race have died out—tertiary whales, the representatives of past cycles of geological history. No changes take place here. Cold and darkness prevent decay. Here by the side of the wrecks of the last winter are the hard parts of the creatures which dwelt somewhere in the ages before man appeared. Dead ruins of extinct types, I said—nay, these forms are not all dead;.the realm is still inhabited. Here are crinoids—paleozoic crinoids which have come down through all the ages of geologic history, lying here, sleeping here like inanimate organisms through the centuries; * chilled into changelessness like mammoth carcasses encased in ice, still dreaming of the middle ages of the world. Here are grotesque articulates, perpetuated portraits of the quaint ancestors of the lobster and the crab, -archaic fishes whose retarded development has left them ages behind in the march of progress. Few and widely scatered are these wanderers tat of the world’s antiquity,, and

they have not strayed to greater depth* than three and one-third miles. I said before no ray of light could enter here. But a phosphorescent gleam breaks through the wall oi night. In yon distant corner is a fishlike form bearing a curious appendage which seems to serve him as a lantern. It sheds a ghastly glow in the thickness of this solitude. This creature, then, has use for eyes. Shut out from nature’s sunlight, he has a feeble star to himself. His lantern glow reveals the presence of other grotesque forms', without starlight and without eyes. Fishes they are, but stranger than fancy ever pictured. One has a mouth of five times the length of the body’s diameter. The mouth of another opens to twice the length of the animal’s bodv, with a bag-like pouch that would hold six bodies like his. Another has glaring eyes like a teasaucer strained to take in the thin phosphorescence from his neighbor’s lantern. Life is, even here, antique, obsolete life, which the ages have sent by a devious path astray, arriving at our time a million years behind its date.

VINES TO BE SHUNNED. How to Distinguish Poisonous from Harmless Shrubs—Poison Ivy and Polson Oak.

T this season of picK id Dies, vacations, and a li/* ram^les in the country ’ thousands of women and children, <4 and some men, become poisoned by CgayniH contact with or the A BO exhalations from poiL/ Hl 80n poison \ oak. Apropos of this M " subject, Dr. E. M. Hale, of Chicago, »contributes the fob l '\/ r lowing to the InterOcean: “The poi-

sonous effects of both the ivy h and oak (rhus tox. and R. / ven.) are often very distress- % o ing, and so severe as to disable the victim from work for w a long time. People could easily distinguish these poisonous shrubs and vines if they would learn the difference in appearance. Children should be early taught to tell the harmless woodbine from the ivy. They have but to remember that the woodbine or Virginia creeper has five leaves, while the poison ivy has but three. I send you drawings of all three: This vine (the leaf in illustration one-third actual size; is not poisonous.

Old and young leaves of poison ivy (rhus tox.). The older leaves are bluntly serrated; the young leaves have their edges smooth. This illustration shows the leaves and stem of poison oak or poison sumach (rhus venenata). The edges of

these leaves are not notched. The stem is bright red and the leaves are much smaller than those of the common sumach. The rhus aromatica resembles rhus tox. so nearly that it is difficult for a novice to see the difference. This species emits a pleasant odor when

bruised and the berries are very sour. It has no poisonous effects. Not all the wisdom of the world is contained in books. If you doubt this, go and listen to a nineteen-year old youth while he instructs his pa. Procrastination may be the thief of time, but it was never known to get anything else.

LEAF OF WOODBINE (AMPELOPBIB).

POISON IVY.

POISON OAK.