The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-06-14
CONCERNING
POPULAR ERRORS.
Statements That Have No Foundation,
But Are Generally Believed.
The Popular Fiction About Halleable Glass
Setting the River on Fire The Five
Senses of savages.

Wendell Phillips is chiefly responsible for
the popular fiction about malleable glass
In his lecture on the Lost Arts" he tells Of
a Roman who had been banished, and on
his return to Rome exhibited q wonderful
cup. During his exile in the reign of Ii
berius the Roman had come across a glass
cup which could be dashed upon the mar
be pavement; it was crushed but not
broken by the fall. Denied with the blows
Of a hammer, it could be bent into shape
again. This magic cup Of malleable glass
was brilliant, transparent, but not brittle.
There is also another kind of glass spoken
of by the writer's Of that age; if he'd by
its own weight on one end, in days time
It would wlther down to a thread, so that
it could be curved around ones wrist like
bracelet.
Now all this sounds nice and quite Won
derful, but fine words butter no parsnps.
Briefly stated, glass is from its very nature
a brittle substance. You can no more re-
move this quality from glass than you can
take it away from the diamond which, al
though the hardest of all known substances,
is also one Of the most brittle. Any chem
ist OF mineralogist will unhesitatingly affirm
that the cup Of which Mr.. Phillips elO-
quently tells could not possibly have been
made Of glass, all Roman reports 20 the con-
traTy
When the wonderful things Of antiquity
are closely examined by the daylight" Of
modern science, they generally turn out TO
be deceptiOnS or else they never existed
outside of the Imagination of writer's who
did not know exactly what they were writ
ing about. The Lost Arts" 90 not COM
pare in subtlety and In skill with the arts
@und and invented in modern times The
luminous paintings said to have been known
10 the japanese centuries ago; the organ
like instrument, which under a warm sun
would play airs OF itself, but would not play
III the shade;
THE IMMENSE BURNING-GLAss
Reported to be of such strength that, at
great distance. it burned and destroyed the
feet Of ships that blOckaded ByZan tium;
the wonderful Damascus blades that cut
anything and eYerything-all these lost
ntions should be taken with big grain
OF allowance. Thus, the eYerburning
lamps" said to have been found lighted in
ancient t0nIds, may be nailed as a fairy
tale. a perpetual lamp is about as prob
able as perpetual notion
Another matter Of general belief may here
be exploded. 1t is frequent assertion that
every drop Of water swarms with thousands
Of ammalcula. We have been to exhibitions
where drop Of CrotOn water was shown to
be literally alive with small creatures,
which, when magnlhed on huge screen,
looked ike medieval dragons. We recently
saw man with microscope on a street
corner in New York, inviting pasSers-by to
take look % cents a peep at the wonder
ful animals people innocently swallowed
every day Of their lives. The whole thing
is greatly exaggerated. Confessedly, drop,
or even a gallon of ordinary lake water, con-
tains at the most only a few small animals,
but they are perfectly harmless. All forms
OF life are absolutely missing from rain,
spring and other pure waters On the other
hand, under certain conditions impure
waters develop bacteria, which are not by
any means regular inhabitants of ordinary
waters.
Again. the popular saying about "setting
the river on fire" may have arisen from the
general impression that by certain chemical
processes water can be made to burn. True,
when water is decOmpOsed into its con-
stituent gases, the phenomenon of combus-
tioN can be produced by rec0mbining them.
But always remember that, in such an ex-
pertinent, it Is the hydrogen gas which
burns. not the water. In other words,
when a certain number of molecules of n.y.
6Iogen combine with certain number Of