Scientific and Literary Exposition

Both science and literature make use of exposition, as the two following illustrations will show. Scientific ex¬position uses the same motives as literary exposition, but does not employ the minor and fundamental devices which give the xsthetic touch to writing or speaking. These two kinds of exposition may be distinguished in the following examples, which differ in spirit and purpose as well as in treatment:
I.
Few people know how to make a wood fire, but everybody thinks he or she does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest on the andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat all day, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, like the last days of a good man, whose life is the rich¬est and most beneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap of youth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, bright elements of char¬acter. Then you want a forestick on the andirons ; and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In this way you have at once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solid mass, sinking down: with increasing fervor ; coals drop below, and delicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of the forestick Build your fire on top. Let your light shine.
- CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, Backlog Studies.
A volcano is an opening in the crust of the earth through which molten rock or lava and other stones, along with great quantities of steam, are thrown out with great violence into the air. This steam is heated far above the boiling point of water ; up, indeed, to the melting point of rock, and escapes with such force that it drives the rocks before it, as by an explosion of gun powder. Sometimes these pieces of rock are so pulver¬ized that they are but dust, that floats away in the form of a cloud, and has been known to drift more than a
thousand miles before. it falls to earth ; but the most of this rock falls near the mouth, and makes a hill called the volcanic cone.
— NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER, First Book in Geology.
SUGGESTIONS.—Which of these examples contains minor de¬vices ? What minor devices? How does the tone of the two differ ?