Science in Short ChaptersWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
Science in Short Chapters
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
There is no such gradation between the most rapid undulations or
tremblings that produce our sensation of sound and the slowest of those
which give rise to our sensations of gentlest warmth. There is a huge
gap between them, wide enough to include another world or several other
worlds of motion, all lying between our world of sounds and our world
of heat and light, and there is no good reason whatever for supposing
that matter is incapable of such intermediate activity, or that such
activity may not give rise to intermediate sensations, provided there
are organs for taking up and sensifying (if I may coin a desirable
word) these movements.
As already stated, the limit of audible tremors is three to four
thousand per second, but the smallest number of tremors that we can
perceive as heat is between three and four millions of millions
per second. The number of waves producing red light is estimated
at four hundred and seventy-four millions of millions per second;
and for the production of violet light, six hundred and ninety-nine
millions of millions. These are the received conclusions of our best
mathematicians, which I repeat on their authority. Allowing, however, a
very large margin of possible error, the world of possible sensations
lying between those produced by a few thousands of waves and any number
of millions is of enormous width.
In such a world of intermediate activities the insect probably lives,
with a sense of vision revealing to him more than our microscopes
show to us, and with his minute eye-like ear-bag sensifying material
movements that lie between our world of sounds and our other
far-distant worlds of heat and light.
There is yet another indication of some sort of intermediate
sensation possessed by insects. Many of them are not only endowed
with the thousands of lenses of their compound eyes, but have in
addition several curious organs that have been designated “ocelli”
and “stemmata.” These are generally placed at the top of the head,
the thousand-fold eyes being at the sides. They are very much like
the auditory organs above described—so much so that in consulting
different authorities for special information on the subject I have
fallen into some confusion, from which I can only escape by supposing
that the organ which one anatomist describes as the ocelli of certain
insects is regarded as the auditory apparatus when examined in another
insect by another anatomist. All this indicates a sort of continuity of
sensation connecting the sounds of the insect world with the objects of
their vision.
But these ocular ears or auditory eyes of the insect are not his only
advantage over us. He has another sensory organ to which, with all our
boasted intellect, we can claim nothing that is comparable, unless
it be our olfactory nerve. The possibility of this I will presently
discuss.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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