“Injections of adrenalin at frequent intervals coupled with exposure to ultraviolet radiation furnished an acceleration of calcium metabolism far ahead of that found in animals simply exposed to ultraviolet without adrenalin injections.”

Butterflies Need No Taxidermist.

“A possible explanation for some sort of nighttime radiation that is not present in the daytime might be derived from Van Allen’s suggestion that solar winds, consisting of charged particles emitted continuously from the sun at velocities varying from 670,000 to 1,600,000 m.p.h., compress into a rounded thin layer on the daylight side of the earth and sweep into a long tail on the night side. Van Allen further suggests that the earth’s magnetic field causes a positive electrical charge on the morning side of the boundary and a negative charge on the opposite or evening side.”

“While both water and iron can be measured by a common standard of specific gravity, the floating of iron upon water depends on the shape of the iron, and the shape cannot be given in terms of specific gravity, nor does it alter the specific gravity of either the water or the iron. Yet the shape relationships can keep iron from sinking in water, and the standards of measurement are of another type than those for measuring specific gravity. Science will ever be plagued by those who insist upon understanding that which they do not understand in terms of which they think they do understand.”

“In former years crude potash was an important domestic product of wood ashes. It was obtained from the ashes by leaching and was used with the refuse fat from the kitchen in making the family soap. Pioneer settlers in the forest regions of our country sometimes used the potash which they carefully made from hickory ashes as a substitute for baking soda.”

“In the ninth century the use of the phallus as an amulet was so general that it was anathematised by the church, and the anathema was repeated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but even at the present day in some parts of Italy the peasants still hang the emblems on the necks of their infants, to protect them from the evil eye. Whatever goes on now, however, is as nothing compared with the state of things in former days, when the smiths’ forges and the bakers’ shops of Pompeii, and other parts of Europe, bore the emblem in front of them as a charm to keep away evil and ensure good luck. So numerous and so universal was the use of such things in ancient times that [Heinrich] Schliemann found them in abundance, at a depth of more than forty feet, in the debris of the supposed Troy.

“There is one thing connected with our own English customs, coming down to almost the present generation, and connected with this subject, which we would not pass over in silence before we turn to other parts of the world and the history of more remote times, viz., the May-day festival, in which the inhabitants of our villages, and formerly even of London, danced around a garlanded pole as a sort of welcome to the returning season.”