Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

17 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

CUTTK-IGS FROM BOOKS.

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

CUTTK-IGS FROM BOOKS. A HAEBESED SCEFTIC.—0»e day a man eama bo the house of the Hodja ami Hiked him for tbo Joan of his donkey. The Hodja leplieti Umt, tite donkey wsw not in the house. Bnt it so hap- j>ened that the donkey commenL-ed to bray within. The man then loUl the Hodja :— Oh, Hodja Efietnli, you say ili&l t!te donkey is 001. in the lmu"e, whilst he brays in it." The Hodja answered :— What, all exferiw>r:]inruy Uimii you iiiuAfc lye I You believe tlie donkey and j" Dot believe me with iuy grey bttard." SUKKIDIN i»so ui^ &,N TOM.—Sheridan hnd a great distaste to anything like meUqrliy^ieal diaoiifwions, whereas Tom bud taken a liking fur 1i¡8U1, Tom OIKS day trie to discus vvrbh hif father tlvedooU inc of necessity. Pray, my ^>od futiier," ,ai,j he, did you ever do any- thing in a <ta.te of jierfect indii/ereitco—witlvont muLive, I mean, of tulne kind or other?" SUeridau, who saw what was coming, and by no means relished such eubjoets, even from Tom, or a>iyot»e else, »aid, Yen, certainly Iu. deed ? Yes, ittdoed \V hat, total in. ditleretwje—total, entire, thorough indifference?" Yes, total indillereitce—toUtl, entire, thorough ijidiffer-eiice 1 My dear father, teit me nhab it i* that you can do witli-mitkil !—total, entire, thorough indiii'erence ? Why listen to you, Turn!' a&id Shctidan. Tide robuii, as Tons related, so disconcerted him, that he had never forgotten ib, nor lWld he eviy again troubled his father with any of his metaphysics. THE TRUR IMA(Hl'ATIoN.-bome people IiIpeak of tho imagination as if they undei Mtand it 1,0 ba merely the power of making preposterously iinjxissibie and marvellous inventions. Thi-l is fancy, not imagination. Imagination creates new forms of Ll-ut); and beauty; it invents new luodes of art, new lines of symmetry, new phrases of mbio(ly, new shades of colour. Ib put* heroism forth on a higher plane; it sets life under a broader sky and in a fresher air. Go to the bnoks of any great creat-ive mind, and you will discover in them every evidence of this over straining, over-l-eaching liberality, and of tliil- quality of avoiding the more distortions of fancy on one hand oil-! th-o dull d«'.ails of the commonplace on the other haud. For instance, Newton did 1101, catalogue every atom of tho universe in order to demonstrate the law of gravitation. Hemttw one example, and then hirt imagination lealJód to thl) end of its tether. "The world-* attract one another," he exclaimed and that, was tho vision of truth. He did not dally on any intermediate ground of common- place; the highest reach of possibility was the goal of iiis desire. This led him, even iu mathematics, to I)am.. to the limit in inventing calculus. So what. a reach baoUwatd ttti-I for. ward had the imagination of Darwin. "But Darwin was prosy," you will say; "lie was not imaginative. There is whore you make you fatal mistake. Simply because Darwin used few adjectives, and was all the time in deadly earnest, you take it for granted th«t his mind is as the diiffc of the Pharaohs. But look again, and you will see how lie leaps to the limit oj every suggestion of nature. Only the conscien tious stti-lerit know how slender and hrokex is the chuiu of facts upon which evolution is ewung; and yet how can we escape Darwin's theory": When we pas-a ont into the open air, bearin g our imagination with its. we see viion that waver and shimmer just beyond the reach of expression. But. next year a poet will rise who will set these in immort.al verse. Every day thought goes a step larther and sight goes a line deeper. DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS.—When poor Edmund Kean was acting in barns to country bumpkins, barely (hiding bread for his wife and child, he was just as great a genius as when he was crow ling Drury-lane. When Brougham presided in the House of Lord?, he was not a bit, better or ?:eater than when he hung about I in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, a I-iet- less and suspected junior barrister. When all London crowded to lOOt) the hippopotamus, lie was just the animal he was a couple of years later, when no one took the trouble of looking at him. And when George Stephenson died, amid the applause and gratitude ol all the in- telligent men in Britain, ho was the same man, maintaining the same principle, as when men of science and law regarded as a mischievous lunatic the .individual who declared that some day the railroad would be the king's highway, uliti mail coaches would be drawn by steam. How GUN-BAKUEI.S AUK MADK.—Among the most interesting processes of the Entield Small Arms Factory, says a writer in the Daily Aeivs, is the drilling of gun- barrels. They are cast, in solid bar- of meta!, and have to be bored through from end to eivd. This is performed by swiftly revolving the solid bar and thrusting into both ends an extremely hard drill. This steel drill is a round bar flattened a little on its under side. Tliid fattening permits a little braas Capillary tube to be thrust underneath the drill as the boring proceeds, and through this capil- lary tube is (toured a stream of water under high pressure. As the drill [teels o f minute shreds of metal from the centre of tho solid bar strong eL (If water M ashes the shreds out and keefis tlie drill cool and unclogged. The drill- ing is carried on at both until the two drills meet in the ;iddlo and the solid bar has been converted into a tube. There are further processes for eliminating any imper- fections in the boring and for polishing the inferior, and then eon.es the straightening—a very delicate, and, one would think, a very diiiicult proceta. As watciiod at Enfield, how- ever, it looks like simplicity itself. There are rows of men standing on one of the floors lighted by windows looking out to the north. Each of these men hold", a gun-barrel to the light and peeps along it. He can fell by the gleam of tt o polished interior whether it is straight or 11<i\ If ho detects any curve in it he lays it down on the bench before him and gives it a smart tap, and then peers again, and so keeps on peeping and tapping till tlie barrel is quite true. Every barrel has to be tested after the straightening has been performed. There are two methods of doing this. By one method the barrel is placed on an apparatus which per- mits of its being revolved on its centre while the eye of t.he examiner glances through it. It the reflections on its jtolished interior are per- fectly steady the barrel is perfectly true; if they flicker about it* shows the contrary, and the barrel has to be returned for correction. Another process is one that cannot be made very easily intelligible without illustrations but it is ex- tremely simple iuid ingenious, and shows in a mechauical way, by means of a winter on a graduated scale under a magnifying-glaas, exactly the degree of divergence fioin a straight line presented l>y tlve interior of any gun-bai tel. Anyone interested in mechanics might very well spend n week in prying into only the mora striking and ingenious contrivances to bo found here, such, tor instance, as t he riiiiug of a gun, or the method of determining the velocity of a bullet. Tlai" would of course strike the un- scientific nliud aH an exceedingly puzzling prob- lem. Nothing can bo simpler than the process vyhen actually seen. Here in this little cut)- board like romti hangs a bar of metal, tho sur- face of which has been smoked over by a candle or a lamp. lb is suspended from a migite.. Out on 1,1.0 range there they are going to test the speed of a builot by measuring how IOJlg it takes to go from the gun totlrataiget. Things are so arranged that when the bullet, leaves tbe muzzle it cuts through the wiro nnd breaks an electric circuit. The illm,unt, this circuit ia broken the mwlal bar suspended by one end from a magnet drops perpendicularly. Of course ittukesameasurabletimetodrop ita own length, and meanwhile the bullet is S[KM» ling on. Ib reaches the target, aud breaks another circuit, and by so doing drojts another bar, which thrusts out a little metal point, and makes a scratch on the smoky surface of the firel, one. The position of this scratch will of course de- pend upon the length of the interval between the dropping of the two bars—in other words, it (1epcmiti upon the time taken by tlve buileb in its flight. It is only necessary to take the scratched bar and lay it, on a graduated scale, and the velocity of the bullet. may be read oiL

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I DR. BARNARDO.I ♦——

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