Various

“ The effects of the Reformation was deeply felt in Icelandic literature, both prose and verse. The name of Hallgrim Petursson, whose Passion-hymns, “the flower of all Icelandic poetry,” have been the most popular composition in the language, is foremost of all writers since the second change of faith. The gentle sweetness of thought, and the exquisite harmony of wording in his poems, more than justify the popular verdict. His Hymns were finished in 1660 and published in 1666, two great Protestant poets thus being contemporaries. ”

“ The Different States of a Substance or Matter.—All substance in nature falls into one of the two classes, solid and fluid; a solid substance, the land, for instance, as contrasted with a fluid, like water, being a substance which does not flow of itself.
A fluid, as the name implies, is a substance which flows, or is capable of flowing; water and air are the two fluids distributed most universally over the surface of the earth.
Fluids again are divided into two classes, termed a liquid and a gas, of which water and air are the chief examples. ”

“ They range from the rough and noble pathos of Egil, the mystic obscurity of Kormak, the pride and grief of Hallfred, and the marvellous, fluency of Sighvat, to the florid intricacy of Einar and Markus.
The art of poetry stood to the Icelanders in lieu of music; scarcely any prominent man but knew how to turn a mocking or laudatory stanza, and down to the fall of the commonwealth the accomplishment was in high request. In the literary age the chief poets belong to the great Sturlung family, Snorri and his two nephews, Sturla and Olaf, the White Poet, being the most famous “makers” of their day. ”

“ Hydrostatics is a science which grew originally out of a number of isolated practical problems; but it satisfies the requirement of perfect accuracy in its application to phenomena, the largest and smallest, of the behaviour of a fluid. At the same time, it delights the pure theorist by the simplicity of the logic with which the fundamental theorems may be established, and by the elegance of its mathematical operations, insomuch that hydrostatics may be considered as the Euclidean pure geometry of mechanical science. ”

“ If on straw the dog scatters and pulls it about with its paws, and if in a room it scratches and tumbles the cushions or rugs on which it usually lies. It is incessantly on the move, rambling about, scratching the ground, sniffing in corners and at the doors, as if on the scent or seeking for something. It indulges in strange movements, as if affected by some mental influences or a prey to hallucinations. When not excited by any external influence it will remain for a brief period perfectly still and attentive, as if watching something, or following the movements of some creature on the wall ”

“ The Medusa.—In the Hydromedusae the medusa-individual occurs, as already stated, in one of two conditions, either as an independent organism leading a true life in the open seas, or as a subordinate individuality in the hydroid colony, from which it is never set free; it then becomes a mere reproductive appendage or gonophore, losing successively its organs of sense, locomotion and nutrition, until its medusoid nature and organization become scarcely recognizable. ”

“ Obviously therefore, in many instances, hypertrophy cannot be regarded as a deviation from health, but rather on the contrary as indicative of a high degree of nutrition and physical power. Even in those cases where it is found associated with disease, it is often produced as a salutary effort of nature to compensate for obstructions or other difficulties which have arisen in the system, and thus to ward off evil consequences. ”

“ While shrewdness, plain straightforwardness, and a certain stern way of looking at life are common to both, the Icelandic school adds a complexity of structure and ornament, an elaborate mythological and enigmatical phraseology, and a regularity of rhyme, assonance, luxuriance, quantity and syllabification, which it caught from the Latin and Celtic poets, and adapted with exquisite ingenuity to its own main object, that of securing the greatest possible beauty of sound. ”

“ The snake invariably attempts to escape, but, finding it impossible to evade the rapid onslaught of the mongoose, raises his crest and lashes out fiercely at his little persecutor, who seems to delight in dodging out of the way just in time. This goes on until the mongoose sees his opportunity, when like lightning he rushes in and seizes the snake with his teeth by the back of the neck close to the head, shaking him as a terrier does a rat. ”

“ In his doctrine of man Iamblichus retains for the soul the middle place between intellect and nature which it occupies in the universal order. He rejects the passionless and purely intellectual character ascribed to the human soul by Plotinus, distinguishing it sharply both from those above and those below it. He maintains that it moves between the higher and lower spheres, that it descends by a necessary law (not solely for trial or punishment) into the body, and, passing perhaps from one human body to another, returns again to the supersensible. ”

“ In classifying methods of generation it is usual to make use of the sexual or non-sexual nature of the reproduction as a primary difference, but a more scientific classification is afforded by the distinction between tissue-cells 146 (histocytes) and germinal cells, actual or potential (archaeocytes) , amongst the constituent cells of the animal body. In this way we may distinguish, first, vegetative reproduction, the result of discontinuous growth of the tissues and cell-layers of the body as a whole, leading to (1) fission, (2) autotomy, or (3) vegetative budding ”

“ Poetry.—Iceland has always borne a high renown for song, but has never produced a poet of the highest order, the qualities which in other lands were most sought for and admired in poetry being in Iceland lavished on the saga, a prose epic, while Icelandic poetry is to be rated very high for the one quality which its authors have ever aimed at—melody of sound. ”

“ The organs and instincts for egg-laying and food-providing are perhaps the most remarkable features in the economy of the Hymenoptera. Gall-fly grubs are provided with vegetable food through the eggs being laid by the mother insect within plant tissues. The ichneumon pierces the body of a caterpillar and lays her eggs where the grubs will find abundant animal food. A digging-wasp hunts for insect prey and buries it with the egg, while a true wasp feeds her brood with captured insects, as a bird her fledglings. Bees store honey and pollen to serve as food for their young. ”

“ There is, however, no doubt that subjects retain even in deep hypnosis a very considerable power of resistance to any suggestion that is repugnant to their moral nature; and it has been shown that, on some cases in which a subject in hypnosis is made to perform some ostensibly criminal action, such as firing an unloaded pistol at a bystander or putting poison into a cup for him to drink, he is aware, however obscurely, of the unreal nature of the situation. ”

“ To become a medusa, the actinula grows scarcely at all in the direction of the principal axis, but greatly along a plane at right angles to it. Thus the body becomes umbrella-shaped, the concave side representing the peristome, and the convex side the column, of the polyp. Hence the tentacles are found at the edge of the umbrella, and the hypostome forms usually a projecting tube, with the mouth at the extremity, forming the manubrium or handle of the umbrella. ”