From an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
From an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
Before leaving the glaciers, let me briefly relate an incident arising
from their slow but regular downward flow to the region where they
melt away and deposit, as a terminal moraine, the burden of rocks
they have received years before in regions far above. A young man of
five-and-twenty, on his honeymoon, visited the Alps, and ventured
alone on to a glacier. He fell into a deep “crevasse,” or ice-fissure,
and his body was not recovered. The exact spot where he fell into the
ice-chasm was recognised, and the mountain-folk, who knew their glacier
and its rate of movement well, told the broken-hearted young widow that
it would take thirty years before that region of the glacier would
have moved so far downwards as to reach the lowest limit, and in due
course melt away. She haunted the glacier in which her young husband
was entombed year after year, and at last, when she was now grey-headed
and withered by time, that special tract of ice had descended so far,
and was so near the thawing, thinned-out margin of the glacier that
they were able to break into it with axe and pole. Then she, an old
woman, had a wonderful experience. They led her to the glacier’s edge.
Her young husband, preserved these thirty years in the ice, which had
melted around him and re-frozen, lay there unchanged. His features were
not marred by the lapse of years, nor was his clothing rent or injured.
He seemed as one asleep, resting after a long day’s climb, and she,
poor soul, had, during a blissful interval, the conviction that all
those weary years of waiting were but a long, bad dream, that she, too,
still was young, and was waking, as she had loved to do long years ago,
in time to see him lift his lids and smile.
39. _Votes for Women_
Now that so many people placidly accept the notion that women are to
have votes in the election of members of Parliament, one is tempted
to ask whether science has any facts to put forward which should be
considered before so great a change in our national organisation is
made. There are various interesting facts as to the relations of males
and females in the animal world and as to the relative strength and
activity of the sexes--which are sometimes cited as arguments in the
matter. Speaking generally, it is clear enough that among animals
the female is endowed with qualities which bear exclusively upon her
function as the guardian of the eggs or germs of a new generation. She
nourishes those germs at the expense of her own substance before birth,
feeds them, tends them and protects them--after birth. The male in
many cases contributes to the feeding and protection of the young, but
is as often as not quite unconcerned with such matters. In the higher
animals the male is far more powerful than the female, and fights with
other males both for the possession of a mate or a harem, and for the
undisturbed occupation of feeding grounds for himself and family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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