1. On the Food of the Herring and Salmon

1845 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 169-170
Author(s):  
John Stark

The author of this paper, after some preliminary observations, arranged his remarks under the following heads:—1. On the food and sex of the Vendace of Lochmaben. 2. On the food of the Herring (Clupea Harengus, Lin.) And, 3, On the food of the Salmon (Salmo salar, Lin.)1. As to the food of the Vendace (Coregonus Lavaretus, Fleming), he observed, that fishes in lakes, and feeding on animal food, must necessarily subsist on the small aquatic animals found in these lakes: That there is no reasonable analogy between the vendace and the herring, because they live in different mediums, the one in salt, the other in fresh water; and that their food cannot, therefore, be the same, none of the animals upon which fishes feed being common to both: That, besides, they are of different natural families: That writers on natural history state the animalcules which are found in the stomach of the vendace, and the other minute animals found in lakes, to form the food of fresh-water fishes generally; and that Leeuwenhoeck had even figured the identical animal found in the stomach of the vendace in 1833 more than 130 years before, stating that it and the other minute animals in similar localities, formed the food of the larger fishes.

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-47
Author(s):  
Mark Noble

This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's interest in the cutting-edge science of his generation helps to shape his understanding of persons as fluid expressions of power rather than solid bodies. In his 1872 "Natural History of Intellect," Emerson correlates the constitution of the individual mind with the tenets of Michael Faraday's classical field theory. For Faraday, experimenting with electromagnetism reveals that the atom is a node or point on a network, and that all matter is really the arrangement of energetic lines of force. This atomic model offers Emerson a technology for envisioning a materialized subjectivity that both unravels personal identity and grants access to impersonal power. On the one hand, adopting Faraday's field theory resonates with many of the affirmative philosophical and ethical claims central to Emerson's early essays. On the other hand, however, distributing the properties of Faraday's atoms onto the properties of the person also entails moments in which materialized subjects encounter their own partiality, limitation, and suffering. I suggest that Emerson represents these aspects of experience in terms that are deliberately discrepant from his conception of universal power. He presumes that if every experience boils down to the same lines of force, then the particular can be trivialized with respect to the general. As a consequence, Emerson must insulate his philosophical assertions from contamination by our most poignant experiences of limitation. The essay concludes by distinguishing Emersonian "Necessity" from Friedrich Nietzsche's similar conception of amor fati, which routes the affirmation of fate directly through suffering.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Doina-Cristina Rusu ◽  

This paper argues that the methodology Francis Bacon used in his natural histories abides by the theoretical commitments presented in his methodological writings. On the one hand, Bacon advocated a middle way between idle speculation and mere gathering of facts. On the other hand, he took a strong stance against the theorisation based on very few facts. Using two of his sources whom Bacon takes to be the reflection of these two extremes—Giambattista della Porta as an instance of idle speculations, and Hugh Platt as an instance of gathering facts without extracting knowledge—I show how Bacon chose the middle way, which consists of gathering facts and gradually extracting theory out of them. In addition, it will become clear how Bacon used the expertise of contemporary practitioners to criticise fantastical theories and purge natural history of misconceived notions and false speculations.


Two specimens of this curious animal, lately brought from New South Wales, the one male and the other female, and both full grown and perfect, having been submitted to the inspection and close examination of Mr. Home, by Sir Joseph Banks, this gentle­man has availed himself of the favourable opportunity to draw up the full account of all that is hitherto known concerning its habits, of its external appearance, and internal structure now before us. The animal has hitherto been only found in the fresh-water lakes, in the interior parts of the above-mentioned country. It does not swim upon the surface of the water, but comes up occasionally to breathe. It chiefly inhabits the banks of these lakes, and is supposed to feed in the muddy places which surround them; but the particular kind of food on which it subsists is not known.


1826 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-147
Author(s):  
W. Haidinger

The following paper contains the results of a series of inquiries, which lead to the conclusion, that the mineral called Smaragdite by Saussure, does not form a species of its own; but that this name has been given to a compound of certain varieties of two distinct species, Augite and Hornblende, the natural-historical species of paratomous and hemiprismatic Augite-spar.Owing in part to the slight degree of resemblance prevailing among its varieties, the authors who have described them differ so essentially in opinion, that I am obliged to go into various details, both respecting the external appearance of the mineral itself, and of the opinions of mineralogists, in order to afford a correct view of the natural-historical species, to which these varieties belong, since this is the basis upon which every system, and, indeed, all accurate information in natural history, is founded, and the fixed point to which the one and the other must be referred.


This paper contains the account of a great number of observations made by the author during the last summer, while he was at the southern coast of England, on several species of Sertulariæ , Plumulariæ , Tubulariæ , Campanulariæ , Flustræ , and other polypiferous zoophytes, and also on various Ascidiæ . Each specimen was placed for examination in a glass trough with parallel sides, before the large achromatic microscope of the author, directed horizontally; and care was taken to change the sea-water frequently, which was done by means of two syphons, the one supplying fresh water, while the other carried off the old; a plan which succeeded in keeping the animals in perfect health and vigour. The drawings which were taken of the appearances that presented themselves were traced with a cameralucida, slid over the eye-piece of the microscope. In a specimen of the Tubularia indivisa , when magnified 100 times, a current of particles was seen within the tube, strikingly resembling, in the steadiness and continuity of its stream, the vegetable circulation in the Chara . Its general course was parallel to the slightly spiral lines of irregular spots on the tube; on one side flowing from, and on the other towards, the polypus, each current occupying one half of the circumference of the tube. The particles were of various sizes, some very small, others larger, but apparently aggregations of the smaller: a few were nearly globular, but in general they had no regular shape. At the knots, or contracted parts of the tube, slight vortices were observed in the current; and at the ends of the tube the particles were seen to turn round, and pass over to the other side. Singular fluctuations were also observed in the size of the stomach and of the cavity of the mouth; the one occasionally enlarging, while the other contracted, as if produced by the passage of a fluid from the one into the other and its subsequent recession, thus distending each alternately. This flux and reflux took place regularly at intervals of 80 seconds; besides which two currents were continually flowing, both in the mouth and stomach; an outer one in one direction, and an inner one in the opposite direction.


Author(s):  
Frank E. Beddard

The Oligochæta form a division of the Annelida, of which the most familiar type is the common earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris); the group comprises also a great number of smaller worms, which are for the most part inhabitants of ponds and streams, such as the red River worm (Tubifex rivulorum). The Oligochæta were at one time believed to be entirely terrestrial or inhabitants of fresh water, and to be distinguished thus from the Polychæta, which were supposed to be exclusively marine in their habitat. Although the progress of research has not broken down the structural distinctions between these two divisions of the Annelida chætopoda, it has been provedthat no absolute line of demarcation can be drawn between the Oligochæta and the Polychæta as regards their habitat; on the one hand Polychæta have been found in fresh water, and, on the other hand, certain species of Oligochæta are now known to inhabit the mud and gravel of the seashore.


An important event of the present year has been the attainment of its centenary by the Societas Scientiarum Fennica, the Finnish equivalent of the Royal Society or the Académie des Sciences—though indeed of wider scope than these, including as it does a Humanistic section in addition to those concerned with Mathematics and Physical Sciences on the one hand and Natural History on the other. The Society, during the century of its existence, has been responsible for a large output of scientific literature, its main publications being subdivided, on very much the same plan as those of the Royal Society, into (1) Transactions (Acta), which of recent years (1930-38) have been arranged in separate volumes for the physico-mathematical and biological subjects; (2) Proceedings (Ofversigt), which from 1923 onwards are arranged in three parallel series of 'Commentationes’ corresponding to the main sections of the Society’s activities, and (3) an annual 'Arsbok' containing general information, reports of lectures, and obituary notices. The pages of these several publications provide impressive testimony to the importance of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica in the march of modern science.


1935 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Gordon Childe

This is the first Presidential Address to be delivered before our Society since it has become the Prehistoric Society without qualification. It seems therefore appropriate to choose in preference to any particular problem the general topic of the aims and methods of our science. The last ten years have witnessed an extraordinary increase in the data available to the prehistorian and a remarkable expansion in the field he must survey. For this very reason we have been led to a revaluation of the methods and concepts to be employed in the interpretation of our material. To arrange and classify data pouring in from every corner of the world parochial categories that worked well enough for local collections can no longer serve.Prehistoric archaeology has twin roots and a dual function; it tries on the one hand to prolong written history backward beyond the oldest literary records, on the other to carry natural history forward from the point where geology and palaeontology would leave it. In practice prehistoric remains were first systematically studied with a view to supplementing the information about Celts, Druids, Britons, Picts and Germans provided by ancient authors. But it was the union with geology after the acceptance of Boucher de Perthe's discoveries that made prehistory a science.


1810 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 89-122

Sect. I. General Observations. In undertaking the series of experiments, described in the following pages, I had not so much in view the discovery of novelties in science, as the determination, by the careful em­ployment of known processes, and by the improvement of methods of analysis, of a number of facts, the establishment of which (it appeared to me probable) might have an influence on an important branch of national revenue and industry. An opinion has for some time past existed, and I believe has been pretty general both in this and other countries, to the disadvantage of British salt as a preserver of animal food; and a decided preference has been given to the salt procured from France, Spain, Portugal, and other warm climates, where it is prepared by the spontaneous evaporation of sea water. In conformity with this opinion, large sums of money are annually paid to foreign nations, for the supply of an article, which Great Britain possesses, beyond almost any other country in Europe, the means of drawing from her own in­ternal resources. It becomes, therefore, of much consequence to ascertain, whether this preference of foreign salt be founded on accurate experience, or be merely a matter of prejudice; and, in the former case, whether any chemical difference can be discovered, that may explain the superiority of the one to the other.


10.1068/d359t ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 787-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Christian Risan

In this paper I explore some limits of the generalized symmetry of actor-network theory. The paper is based on a study on cows, farming technology, and farming science, and is empirically based on an anthropological fieldwork in modern, computerized cowsheds. By exploring differences in interactions between human beings and cows, on the one hand, and between human beings and computers, on the other, I argue that the partly common natural history of human beings and cows, and the lack of such a history in human–computer interactions, makes it impossible to be agnostic about where to find subjectivity in such a place as a cowshed. Animal bodies (including human beings) demand certain kinds of interactions, and thus produce certain distributions of subjectivities. The boundary of animality is not a purely ‘cultural’ distinction, and cannot be deconstructed as such.


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