The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1891-07-31
COMING EVOLUTIONARY CHANCE.

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The consolation afforded by true sci
ence is one of its most beautiful attri-
butes: We of the latter end of the nine
teenth century can feel secure with the
fostering wing of science thrown around
us. If anything is going to happen to
us, science will warn us. Indeed, sci
ence warn us of many things that never
happen. The quality of science is some
what changed. But the edifYing results
of examining everything in truly sci
entific spirit must ever remain the same.
Perhaps there was never more striking
illustration of this than was afforded by
the deductions of famous Hartford
SCIENTIST, who, taking the official gov
eminent report concerning the rate at
which the Mississippi river had been
shortening itself for the last hundred
wears, readily showed by clear and YER
aclous figures that at the beginning of
the Christian era the Mississippi river
must have been over 5000 miles long,
and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico
like fishing pole.
But more weighty, though no less
interesting matter claims our attention
this morning. We need not pause to say
that with evolution nothing is impossi-
BILE. The distance from the early ape to
the higher type of man as exemphtied,
let us say, by the newspaper editor, is in
conceivably great, but the evolution did
not falter at it. Over two years ago
the Tribune pointed out that the con-
slant reaching up and clinging to straps in
cars as INDUCED in by the New Workers,
would eventually produce race OF men
with such long arms that they will be
able to tie their shoes without STOPPING.
Our note of warning was not uncalled
for. as the late census shows that the
arms of people living in New York aver
age one and one-tenth inches longer than
those people living in the country. But
long arms may yet be found to be a
blessing; more serious danger is i'm
ment. The constant climbing of stairs
which New Workers are forced to under
90 must in time produce its effect. 1t is
estimated by competent authority that
the resident of New York, on an aver
age, raises himself or herself about eight
hundred feet each day by stairs. In one
year he raises himself POP, 900 feet; in
twenty years 5,S40,000 feet, or over
eleven hundred miles. He, of course,
walks down as far; the individual times
that he falls down a flight not being
worthy of attention in a scientific in
curry. These figures are startling, but
it would be task by no means impossi-
to suppose person living here and
climbing the stairs forty, sixty, eighty,
or even hundred years. This is well
within the bounds of science. A few
physicians have already noticed that it
is beginning to produce changes IN peo-
pie. DR.. Jones, the well-known prac-
titioner, reports the case of a lady who
is incapacitated for walking on level
surface. She has lived all her life here,
first in a regular brownstone house, and
later in the top story of fiat building.
In both places are four or five flights
of stairs, not to mention, in case of the
house, flight outside leading up to the
front door, placed curiously, as is GUS
tomary, half way up to the front house.
She has also ridden great deal on the
elevated road. She now has to be as
sisted to walk ON the floor or the ground
though she runs up and down stairs
with great alertness. Her husband in
tends soon to build house adapted to
her, with the parlor on the first floor,
sitting-room on the second, reception
room on the next, drawing room on the
next, library on the next, the succeeding
four vertebrae each containing bed
room; then the dining-room above them,
over that nursery, billiard-room and
conservatory, followed by six more
floors of bedrooms, with the kitchen in
the penultimate story and the bathroom
under the roof. This will give the lady
twenty flights of stairs, not to speak of
the front steps, thirty-eight feet high,
carried up past an open-air cellar and a
hanging-garden basement. She is look
ing forward to the new house with a
great deal of pleasure, and proposes to
hang her canary-bird on the roof and
keep his seed and cuttle-fsh bone in the
sub-cellar.
How fortunate it is that we live in an
advanced scientific age, when approach
ing changes may be anticipated and
pointed out in scientific manner?-
N. Y. Sunday Tribune.