A GLANCE at almost any page of this work will denote its object. It is to show the close connection between Nature and human inventions, and that there is scarcely an invention of man that has not its prototype in Nature. And it is worthy of notice that the greatest results have been obtained from means apparently the most insignificant.

There are two inventions, for example, which have changed the face of the earth, and which yet sprang from sources that were despised by men, and thought only fit for the passing sport of childhood. I allude, of course, to Steam and Electricity, both of which had been child’s toys for centuries before the one gave us the fixed engine, the locomotive, and the steamboat, and the other supplied us with the compass and the electric telegraph.

In the course of this work I have placed side by side a great number of parallels of Nature and Art, making the descriptions as terse and simple as possible, and illustrating them with more than seven hundred and fifty figures. The corollary which I hope will be drawn from the work is evident enough. It is, that as existing human inventions have been anticipated by Nature, so it will surely be found that in Nature lie the prototypes of inventions not yet revealed to man. The great discoverers of the future will, therefore, be those who will look to Nature for Art, Science, or Mechanics, instead of taking pride in some new invention, and then finding that it has existed in Nature for countless centuries.

I ought to mention that the illustrations are not intended to be finished drawings, but merely charts or maps, calling attention to the salient points.

NAUTICAL.
CHAPTER I.

Table of Contents

Poetry and Science.—The Paper Nautilus and the Sail.—Montgomery’s “Pelican Island.”—The Nautilus replaced by the Velella.—The Sailing Raft of Nature and Art.—Description of a Velella Fleet off Tenby.—The Natural Raft and its Sail.—The Boats of Nature and Art.—Man’s first Idea of a Boat.—The Kruman’s Canoe and the Great Eastern.—Gradual Development of the Boat.—The Outrigger Canoe a Mixture of Raft and Boat.—Natural Boats.—The Water-snails.—The Sea-anemones.—The Egg-boat of the Gnat.—The Skin-boat of the same Insect.—Shape and Properties of the Life-boat anticipated in Nature.—Natural Boat of the Stratiomys.

The Raft.

Table of Contents

IT has been frequently said that the modern developments of science are gradually destroying many of the poetical elements of our daily lives, and in consequence are reducing us to a dead level of prosaic commonplace, in which existence is scarcely worth having. The first part of this rather sweeping assertion is perfectly true, but, as we shall presently see, the second portion is absolutely untrue.

Science has certainly destroyed, and is destroying, many of the poetic fancies which made a part of daily life. It must have been a considerable shock to the mind of an ancient philosopher when he found himself deprived of the semi-spiritual, semi-human beings with which the earth and water were thought to be peopled. And even in our own time and country there is in many places a still lingering belief in the existence of good and bad fairies inhabiting lake, wood, and glen, the successors of the Naiads and Dryads, the Fauns and Satyrs, of the former time. Many persons will doubtless be surprised, even in these days, to hear that the dreaded Maelström is quite as fabulous as the Symplegades or Scylla and 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 pilot 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 air,

And wander in the luxury of light.

* * * * *

It closed, sank, dwindled to a point, then nothing,

While the last СКАЧАТЬ

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PREFACE.

NAUTICAL. CHAPTER I.

The Raft.

Nature's Teachings: Human Invention Anticipated by Nature. J. G. Wood
Чтение книги онлайн.

NAUTICAL.
CHAPTER I.