Nature's teachings : human invention anticipated by nature / by J.G. Wood.

  • John George Wood
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nature's teachings : human invention anticipated by nature / by J.G. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Charybdis, and that the well-known tale of Edgar Poe is absolutely without foundation. Perhaps one of the prettiest legends in natural history is that of the Paper Nautilus, with which so much poetry is associated. We have all been accustomed from childhood to Pope's well-known lines beginning— Learn of the little Nautilus to sail, and some of us may be acquainted with those graceful verses of James Montgomery, in his Pelican Island : — Light as a flake of foam upon the -wind, Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell, Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled. Fraught with young life it righted as it rose. And moved at will along the yielding water. The native pUot of this little bark Put out a tier of oars on either side, Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail, And mounted up and glided down the billow In happy freedom, pleased to feel the aii-, And wander in the luxury of light. ***** * * It closed, sank, dwindled to a point, then nothing, While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy Through which mine eye stiU giddily pursued it. So deeply ingrained is the poetical notion of the sailing powers attributed to the nautilus, that many people are quite incredulous when they are told that there is just as much likelihood of seeing a mermaid curl her hair as of witnessing a nautilus under sail. How the creature in question does propel itself will be described in the course of the present chapter; and the reader will see that although one parallel between Nature and Art in the nautilus does not exist, there are several others which until later days have not even been suspected. It is, therefore, partially true that- science does destroy romance. But, though she destroys, she creates, and she gives infinitely more than she takes away, as is shown in the many late discoveries which have transformed the whole system of civiHsed life. Sometimes, as in the present instance, she discovers one analogy while destroying another, and though she shatters the legend of the saiHng nautilus, she produces a marine animal which really docs sail, and does not appear to be able to do anything else. This is the Yelella, a