The Fairy-Land of Science | Page 2

have running water caught
in the very act of falling and turned into transparent icicles, decorating
the eaves with a beautiful crystal fringe. On every tree and bush you
will catch the water- drops napping, in the form of tiny crystals; while
the fountain looks like a tree of glass with long down-hanging pointed

leaves. Even the damp of your own breath lies rigid and still on the
window-pane frozen into delicate patterns like fern-leaves of ice.
All this water was yesterday flowing busily, or falling drop by drop, or
floating invisibly in the air; now it is all caught and spell-bound - by
whom? By the enchantments of the frost-giant who holds it fast in his
grip and will not let it go.
But wait awhile, the deliverer is coming. In a few weeks or days, or it
may be in a few hours, the brave sun will shine down; the dull-grey,
leaden sky will melt before his, as the hedge gave way before the
prince in the fairy tale, and when the sunbeam gently kisses the frozen
water it will be set free. Then the brook will flow rippling on again; the
frost-drops will be shaken down from the trees, the icicles fall from the
roof, the moisture trickle down the window-pane, and in the bright,
warm sunshine all will be alive again.
Is not this a fairy tale of nature? and such as these it is which science
tells.
Again, who has not heard of Catskin, who came out of a hollow tree,
bringing a walnut containing three beautiful dresses - the first glowing
as the sun, the second pale and beautiful as the moon, the third
spangled like the star-lit sky, and each so fine and delicate that all three
could be packed into a walnut shell; and each one of these tiny
structures is not the mere dress but the home of a living animal. It is a
tiny, tiny shell-palace made of the most delicate lacework, each pattern
being more beautiful than the last; and what is more, the minute
creature that lives in it has built it out of the foam of the sea, though he
himself is nothing more than a drop of jelly.
Lastly, anyone who has read the 'Wonderful Travellers' must recollect
the man whose sight was so keen that he could hit the eye of a fly
sitting on a tree two miles away. But tell me, can you see gas before it
is lighted, even when it is coming out of the gas-jet close to your eyes?
Yet, if you learn to use that wonderful instrument the spectroscope, it
will enable you to tell one kind of gas from another, even when they are
both ninety-one millions of miles away on the face of the sun; nay

more, it will read for you the nature of the different gases in the far
distant stars, billions of miles away, and actually tell you whether you
could find there any of the same metals which we have on the earth.
We might find hundreds of such fairy tales in the domain of science,
but these three will serve as examples, and we much pass on to make
the acquaintance of the science-fairies themselves, and see if they are
as real as our old friends.
Tell me, why do you love fairy-land? what is its charm? Is it not that
things happen so suddenly, so mysteriously, and without man having
anything to do with it? In fairy-land, flowers blow, houses spring up
like Aladdin's palace in a single night, and people are carried hundreds
of miles in an instant by the touch of a fairy wand.
And then this land is not some distant country to which we can never
hope to travel. It is here in the midst of us, only our eyes must be
opened or we cannot see it. Ariel and Puck did not live in some
unknown region. On the contrary, Ariel's song is
"Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I
couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After summer,
merrily."
The peasant falls asleep some evening in a wood and his eyes are
opened by a fairy wand, so that he sees the little goblins and imps
dancing around him on the green sward, sitting on mushrooms, or in
the heads of the flowers, drinking out of acorn-cups, fighting with
blades of grass, and riding on grasshoppers.
So, too, the gallant knight, riding to save some poor oppressed maiden,
dashes across the foaming torrent; and just in the middle, as he is being
swept away, his eyes are opened, and he sees fairy water-nymphs
soothing his terrified horse and guiding him gently to the opposite