The size of a thing is not always the measure of its destructiveness. We look at a big battleship and exclaim what a huge instrument of destruction. Yet the tiny germ called the tubercle bacillus is so small that it is said that 900 can find room on the point of a small sewing-needle, and these germs destroy more lives each year than the mightiest warship could possibly do in action.
(751)
Sins and faults gradually ruin character, once they begin to ravage, as the bee-moths ruin the hive of bees:
Death and destruction of the community
follow in the train of the bee-moth. From
the eggs hatch little sixteen-footed grubs
that keep well hidden in the cracks, only venturing
out to feed on the wax of the comb
nearest them. As they grow they need more
and more wax, but they protect themselves
while getting it by spinning a silken web
which prevents the bees from getting at
them. Wherever they go they spin silken
lines and little webs until, if several bee-moths
have managed to lay their eggs in the
hive and several hundred of their voracious
wax-eating grubs are spinning tough silken
lines and webs through all the corridors and
rooms of the bees' house, the household
duties get so difficult to carry on that the
bee community begins to dwindle; the unfed
young die in their cells, the indoor workers
starve, and the breakdown of the whole hive
occurs.—Vernon L. Kellogg, "Insect
Stories."
(752)
Character, like corn, may be destroyed, not by the assault of a single great evil, but by many minute sins and faults. Vernon L. Kellogg writes thus of corn-root aphids:
I forget how many millions of bushels of
corn were raised in the State of Illinois last
year, but there were very many. And that
means thousands and thousands of acres of
corn-fields. Now in all these corn-fields
there live certain tiny soft-bodied insects
called corn-root aphids. Their food is the
sap of the growing corn-plants, which they
suck from the roots. Altho each corn-root
aphid is only about one-twentieth of an inch
long and one-twenty-fifth of an inch wide,
and has a sucking-beak simply microscopic
in size, yet there are so many millions of
these little insects, all with their microscopic
little beaks stuck into the corn-roots, and
all the time drinking, drinking the sap, which
is the life-blood of the corn-plants, that they
do a great deal of injury to the corn-fields
of Illinois and cause a great loss in money
to the farmers.—"Insect Stories."
(753)
See Vandalism.
Detachment—See Absent-mindedness.
DETAILS, PERIL OF
It is said of General Grant, when he was
approaching Vicksburg, that his officers,
brave enough and willing enough, had so
little military experience that his orders to
them were not mere directions as to what
they should do, but instruction in detail as
to the manner in which it should be done. It
is said that a collection of those orders would
form a compendium or hand-book of the
military art. The man of liberal training
with us has always much of that experience.
The sculptor in America can confide nothing
to his workman. The editor often needs
to know how to set type. Many a time will
you have to instruct your bookbinder. Wo
to you if you expect to hire a competent
translator! The educated man in America
is only a helpless Dominie Sampson if he
can not harness his own horse, and on occasion
shoe him. He must in a thousand
exigencies paddle his own canoe. And the
first danger which comes to him is that in
all these side duties he will forget the great
central object to which his life is consecrated.—Edward
Everett Hale.
(754)
Detected, Loss—See Theft, A Check on.
DETECTION
One M. Le Roux demonstrated the value of the X-ray in detecting smuggled goods recently at the New York custom-house:
With every country using the X-ray at
the custom-house and post-office smuggling
would soon cease, for there seems to be no
way to fool this little agent. Every means
of baffling it were tried at M. Le Roux's
test. Articles were wrapt in many thicknesses
of paper and woolen fabrics, and they
were hidden in all sorts of queer places, but
once the X-ray got busy they might just as
well have shouted out their whereabouts.
