Word: darwinism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...that the earthworm is one of the world's most efficient farmhands: it does an enormous amount of soil conservation. Toiling underground, the hard-working worms in one acre can eat, pulverize, fertilize, aerate and move ten tons of earth in a year's time. Charles Darwin, who had a profound respect for the earthworm, doubted whether "there are many other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world...
Last week, on its 75th Birthday, Popular Science was hardly as intellectual as in Youmans' day, but it was much (circ. 1,000,000) more popular. Its 288-page anniversary issue proudly called the roll of such contributors as Henry George, Charles Darwin, William James, Havelock Ellis, John Dewey, Thomas A. Edison, Charles Kettering. By shrewdly aiming at the home mechanic who yearns for a speaking acquaintance with atomic physics, and the scientist who yearns for a handcraft hobby, PSM had become the giant in its oddly assorted field...
Ancient Lure. The musk deer's scent gland, according to Charles Darwin, is the product of an evolutionary runaround. Millions of years ago, the male, deer that smelled the nicest attracted the most females-and thus left the most descendants. A weakly scented male got nowhere as a progenitor...
...Darwin's atoll theory won fairly wide acceptance, but it was not checked conclusively until the Navy decided to explode two atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll last year. During the preliminary survey, scientists mapped the underground structure of the atoll by seismic methods: 126 depth charges exploded at various points on the bottom of the lagoon sent waves through the coral and underlying material. The denser the medium, the faster such waves travel. By measuring how long the waves took to reach listening instruments, the Navy's scientists could estimate the density of the rock at various depths...
...might be the hard core of a volcano or peak formed by above-sea erosion. Only deep drilling could give the details. But the mountain was there, far below the growing zone of coral. Darwin, from the deck of his windjammer, had guessed right...