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Show THE SPARROW AMD THE CLOCK. A Straus Btory Told at the ParU IHly-teehulc IHly-teehulc School. A French paper tells the following strange story of a sparrow and the clock at tha Polytechnic aejiool of Paris: In 1819 the Swedish scientist, Ber-zelius, Ber-zelius, during- his stay in Paris, went to the school to malte some experiments experi-ments in physics and chemistry before the pupils. To show the necessity of air in the respiration of animals he placed a sparrow under the receiver of the air pump and created a vacuum. At the moinent when the bird was about to die for want of oxygen, the cry of "Mercy! Mercy!" echoed from all sides of the amphitheater. Berzelius acquiesced in the decision of his humane hu-mane audience and released the bird, ; which Hew at once out of the hull. After that day a strange thing happened hap-pened and kept on happening. Every Wednesday and Sunday, at the moment when the great hand of the clock was within one minute of ten, and would in sixty seconds mark the fatal hour of leaving the playground and entering school, an obstacle seemed to stop it, and the astonished doorkeeper noticed that this last minute had an inconceivable inconceiv-able length. The fact wm noted again and again, and a watch wai act to discover the cause. Then it was ascertained that the happy delay was caused by a sparrow spar-row which, at the precise second, had lighted on the hand of the clock. Of course it was Berzelius' sparrow! Now cornea the Had and unnecessary part of the story. Tha doorkeeper one day covered the hands with some sticky substance, caught the grateful bird and put it to death. The school gave it a superb funeral and it was buried in a corner of the great court. That day the clock, which had evidently evident-ly been a party to the conspiracy, received re-ceived the name of Berzelius. |