The morning call., 1890-12-27
WONDERS OF NATURE.
A Cable Made Up Of Strands
Finer Than Can Be Seen.
Shooting Stary-A Meteoric Bombardmsnt Of
the Earth That Does Not Hurt Us-Ths
Air Acts as an Armor Plate.

'.As fine as silk" Is common phrase to
| typify extreme fneness or delicacy Of tex
ture. But If you want simile that
will discount that one say, "As fine as
a spiders web" There is nothing of tex
tile kind so fine as that. The strand spun
| by spider is as much smaller than thread
of silk as the latter is smaller than a tele-
graph pole. This seems like eXaggerati0n
when you casually look at the spiders work.
manship and then at the silkworm. But
you never saw a single strand in the spiders
thread. The strands are SO fine that you
couldn't see them with the naked eve.
What you really see when you look at the
spiders delicate thread is cable composed
of thousands of strands. and the way the
| little animal makes this cable is one of ma
lures greatest wonders.
If you look closely at a spider during
its business hours you will see that its
thread comes from circular spot near the
extremity. In this spot are from four TO
six knobs, the number depending upon the
kind of spider. If you happen to have
particularly good pair Of eyes you can dis
tinguish these knobs. Each of the knobs is
full of minute holes. so small that good
microscope is necessary in order to see them.
are spun. About an eighth of an inch from
the holes the strands are joined together,
and the result is the spiders thread, with
which all of us are SO familiar.
MAKING A CABLE.
The little spinner attends to business
as closely and as carefully as does the wea-
yer of the finest silk fabric. Il has on each
foot three claws, one Of which is sort Of
thumb, while the others are toothed like
comb. These claws are constantly used to
keep the strands from taDgling before they
are joined in the thread. The material from
which the thread is made is seereted in the
animals body. 1t is glutinous substance,
and the strands dry while they are passing
from the little arertures to the point where
they are luined together. One authority on
this subject, Reaumur, calculated that it
would take 1000 spider strands to occupy a
| space equal to the point OF needle. while
another, Leuwenweek, estimated that it
would take 100000 of them to make
thread as large as hair.
But while the spiders work is the more
delicate that of the sllkworm is the more
useful Nearly half OF all the people in the
world live in China and India. and all Of
| them, except the very o0reSt, wear silky
| goods as commonly as we wear cotton AS
| 1t takes the labor of nearly a thousand silk
| worm to make one pound of silk, you can
| see what an enormous industry results from
this tiny thread spinning. Unlike the spider,
| W hose spinning works are at the lower ex-
tlGiuity Tic DIN Wuluio ltCLOIy is near llS
mouth. The crude material is seemingly
much alike IN the two classes of spinners-a
| gummy or glutinouS pulp. The spinning ap-
| purtenances, however, are entirely differ
| ent, the silkworm making only two strands
| for its thread, while the spider makes thou
sands.
ADVENTURES OF A SILKwORM.
The lie and adventures of sikworm
| made an interesting story The first stage is
| an egg laid by butterfly. This egg pro-
duces what we call grub or maggot. The
| animal is quite small in infancy. but its
| growth is so rapid that its clnthes are con-
| tinually getting too small. When it is few
| days old Its growth makes the skin too tight,
| this covering splits open on the back. the
| animal comes out like the 0utgrown trousers
| Of boy. This change occurs four or five
times before the maggot becomes full
grown caterpillar. Then after short stage
| of maturity, the caterpillar finds the infirn-
tiles OF age coming on, and it makes ar
rangemeIts 10 literally shuttle off this NOR
| tai coil" BY this tiihe it has Secreted in its
| body the raw material from which 1t spins
its silk.
After selecting some scaffold-Iike place
the caterpillar first spins some tiossy silk
which attaches to whatever is convenient
Then it begins to wind its threads round
and round until it has enveloped itself. as
the carpet-mOth grub does. in what is called
La cocoon, generally little larger than a
/ pigeons egg. When the cocoon is completed
TIC worm SHouS us ldSJ suit OIL Clothes anu
carefully tueks them down at the lower end
of its house. Then it goes to sleep. While
1t sleeps new and very thin skin forms,
wonderful changes take place in the ami
mails appearance, soon the head end of the
cocoon breaks open. and out comes not the
caterpillar but a beautiful butterfly
COMMANDMENT OF THE EARTH.
All the cannon shots that have been fired
since the first cannon was cast do not equal
in point of number the bombardment that
our earth undergoes every twenty-fOur
hours. If you will look at the sky one of
these clear December nights you will soon
see one or more Of the familiar Shooting
stars" so called, darting through q portion
of the heavens. They are not stars, but
small particles of the material out Of which
stars and worlds are made They are COM
posed OF the same elements that exist in the
stars, in the comets and in all the nebulous
matter that is distributed throughout the
universe.
Meteors and aerolites, which are the cor
rect names of these luminous little bodies,
are fired into the earth's atmosphere at the
computed rate of 100000 coo in twenty-four
hours. The b0mbardment Is perpetual,
though We Can see the missiles only at
night But the earths defensive works ara
perfect They are not made Of stone or of
earth entertainments, but of air. Yes, the
earth'S atmosphere is a perfect delense
from all the shots fired at us from outer
space, for il not only stops the missiles but
burns them up. OF all the meteors shot at
the earth not one reaches the ground, the
friction produced by theiI great velocity
through the upper air acting on them like
blast furnace on sheet of paper, and only
minute remains fall harmlessly.
THOSE THAT DO NOT BURN.
Occasionally one of these missiles is so
large that it escapes total destruction by the
atmosphere. That is, the terrible heat gen.
Grated by the friction does not reach the
center oil the missile, and therefore the heart
of 1t, so to speak, reaches the earth. This
class OF bodies are called aerolites. Not one
in million OF the fiery little bodies safely
runs the gauntlet of the atmosphere. reaches
the earth and thus earns the name Of aero
lite, meaning air-stOne.
There are a few; but very few, well au-
thenticated cases OF large aer0lites reaching
the earth. One was found in Siberia,
mass Of iron and nickel. which weighed
nearly a ton. There is one in Buenos Ayres
partly buried in the ground, whose weight is
estimated at 16 tons, and another in brazil,
weighing about half as much. But there is
no case on record of lersOn being struck
by an aer0lite, and with the practically in
vulnerable defense that even atmosphere
affords we needn't care if thrice four hun
bred million meteors be fired at us every
day.
THE AERIAL OCEAN.
Thus it seems. that on the surface of the
earth we are living at the bottom of an
ocean more than 100 miles deep. 1t is the
aerial ocean, and in some respects it is sim
liar to the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. 1t
is thought by some of our foremost scien-
fists that there is well-defined surface to
this ocean, on which are great aerial waves,
exaggerated forms of what we see on the
surface OF water. Other scientists, how
ever. be lieve that the density of the air
gradually diminishes in proportion 10 the
distance from the earths surface, and that
the extreme upper limits is iniistinguislIa-
bic.
However this may be, we know that the
elasticity, and that every square inch of it
weighs fifteen pounds. This means the
weight of one square inch at the bottom,
reaching up to the top Of the aerial ocean.
There is, consequently, an immense air
rraceura nm pvprv porc,n lint dontt fa.l