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ANNUAL REPORT OF THE
BOARD OF REGENTS OF

THE SMITHSONIAN
INS ELT UTION

SHOWING THE

OPERATIONS, EXPENDITURES, AND
CONDITION OF THE INSTITUTION
FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30

1918

(Publication 2549)

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1920

ADDITIONAL COPIES
OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT
75 CENTS PER COPY

V

IE yA Red pate

FROM THE

SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,

SUBMITTING

THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1918.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Washington, August 29, 1919.
To the Congress of the United States:

In accordance with section 5593 of the Revised Statutes of the
United States, I have the honor, in behalf of the Board of Regents,
to submit to Congress the annual report of the operations, expendi-
tures, and condition of the Smithsonian Institution for the year end-
ing June 30, 1918. I have the honor to be,

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Cuartes D. Watcort, Secretary.
m1

CONTENTS.

Letter from the Secretary submitting the annual report of the Regents

LOM OI ROSS eee ee aE ee a ee ee
WaMNbenESsO Pete yep) 0 ae ae Se a
TRS Orgs Gh a i eee fe ee ener a ee
General subjects of the annual report
Ofeialsvor theunstitutionsandsits, branches == as es ee ee

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY.

The Smithsonian Institution
Seaciite Establishment ee a ee tee Wee ee Ly eee eee
BEES IS OATS O is ECCS CNN eae ee ae a ea gee ee
GenerdlGeconsiG Ghat Onset on ae eee ee ee ee
MINAN CES Sas = ae ee
Researches and explorations:
Geological explorations in the Rocky Mountains________________
Researchesson. the StLuclurenoL thllObiteS=a=—=——— == eee
Geological work in the Appalachian and Ohio Valleys____-----~
Geolovicaleworkuins Maryland =") 5 se ee
Geolociealt worl Central wemty Ckye sea ee eee
Grasses of the Adirondack and White Mountains___________-__-

SIS en TNT SUD TD Gerry C0 Wa eras ee eo ee rae een
Ethnological explorations in Colorado and Utah________---_____
National Parks Educational Committee

TENT OU EF2 9 10) 0S pe ra ee SA el ae p< a ae RS eee
ANOS A Tee sy ee ee we a eras SS es ee iat Re ead aes Bo
BINED UG OKT EN! I ee VLU Ue eee eer eee oR Re ee ab ee en woe
JBAUTRSL OL OPEN EN GYSN FI EEN avend Del ov 0 VO) Oya eee ae oe ee eee
INGTON ZOOL O 21 Callie bea Tet ret ee ee ee
J NSGETOS OD ayy STK CEE leek OY OFS CEN 03) 10 esol SA a pe ae eee

iMpernatoOnal, HixXcC hay Ose ee = ee en ae ee ee Spine S
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature
NCCT LO yee eee cra a eee ee ee RE Se en a eee
Appendix 1. Report on the United States National Museum________--~_
. Report on the Bureau of American Ethnology
Report on the International Exchanges
Report on the National Zoological Park___--____________--
Report on the Astrophysical Observatory__________________
Report onthe Wibrary see ene
Report on the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_
“Report on publications

DAR AS wh

XZXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND REGENTS.

Page.

vI

ole oo be

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(oe)

15.
. The Law of Irreversible Evolution, by Branislav Petronievics___-__-~_
. The Fundamental Factor of Insect Evolution, by S. S. Chetverikov___
» he Psychic WitevoL Insects bya sue OUI == ss == ee
. Sexual Selection and Bird Song, by Chauncey J. Hawkins___------_-
. Marine Camoufleurs and Their Camouflage: The Present and Pros-

CONTENTS.

GENERAL APPENDIX.

. The Discovery of Helium, and What Came of It, by C. G. Abbot_____
. An Account of the Rise of Navigation, by R. H. Curtiss______________

The Tornadoes of the United States, by Prof. Robert DeC. Ward____

2 Wind! Power; by James: Carlill==- 22. ote eS ee eee
. A Tribute. Samuel Pierpont Langley: Pioneer in Practical Aviation,

ony LES ara) Dev au wae ya ee er

Pe Dwentaechn©enuUry, Ly SLCSs) Wy yack te ce IV Tere
. The Experiments of Dr. P. W. Bridgman on the Properties of Mat-

ter When Under High Pressure. Introductory Note by C. G.
INDDOt Me See ee ee ee ee

. The Problem of Radioactive Lead, by Theodore W. Richards__----~~
. Sphagnum Moss: War Substitute for Cotton in Absorbent Dress-

ings, by, Prof. ‘George HeeNiChols22= == ee ee eee

. History of Military Medicine and its Contributions to Science, by

Cole W- PB: ‘Chamberlain Se ae a eae eee

. Some preblems of International Readjustment of Mineral Supplies as

Indicated in Recent Foreign Literature, by Eleanora F. Bliss__---~

. Reptile Reconstructions in the United States National Museum, by

Charles: W2(Gilmore= t= 2S er ee

. A Pleistocene Cave Deposit in Western Maryland, by J. W. Gidley___
. Paleobotany: A Sketch of the Origin and Evolution of Floras, by

Kdward. W.. Berry. 2222s ee eee
The Direct Action of Environment and Evolution, by Prince Kropotkin_

pective Significance of Facts Regarding the Coloration of Tropical
Rishes, by WH. Loneley = Se ee ee ee

~ Woot-Plow Agriculture in eens by.Oy lh. COuke ==
. Sun Worship of the Hopi Indians, by J. Walter Fewkes___-_---__--_
. A Constitutional League of Peace in the Stone Age of America: The

League of the Iroquois and Its Constitution, by J. N. B. Hewitt____

= The: Problem ot. Decenera cyan bya Hake D ned 20) eas ae eee
» Ehistory) in) Loolss bys Weevine lind ers see hr Cas a ae eee
. The Background of Totemism, by E. Washburn Hopkins_____------__
. A Great Naturalist: Sir Joseph Hooker, by Sir E. Ray Lankester____

is, OH

Tornadoes (Ward):

1 2A Few piel Wee pete SR sinc Pema taeeaes Ra
Langley (Leffmann) :

El aites cVeaeee 38 es

EAGT eS een See ie ea ee

Plates 24 4 ee ae a ate ie

RIAtESIG Sipe ee eee

RIAtESES 0 Ss. = = eee
High Pressure (Bridgman) :

Jey eyes Sane ae ee ee
Sphagnum (Nichols)

Jel eleva bs Coe Ee eee ee, ee

DEE rn ee Sie vee eee a

RTE CGT epee ee eee eee ae ee

lateness setes =e) FO Se
Reptile Reconstruction (Gil-

more) :

Plates pal] Gis aS a
Cave Deposit (Gidley) :

late Sael— Geen eee et ee
Paleobotany (Berry) :

1] SAIC eee Se ee

Pate gee ae ea

PLATES.

Paleobotany (Berry )—Contd.
Platew Ga 02) 2a eee

Insect Evolution (Chetverikov) :
Plate 1
Marine Camoufleurs (Longley) :
Pilates, ahs eee 4 sees
Foot Plow (Cook) :
Plates: 14. ee
Sun Worship (lewkes) :
Plate 1
Plate 2h eats ae ees
Plate
Plate
Plate 5
Plate. Gr. 2 Se satay wae eee ee
Plate y (ee. ee Pe
Plates (S22 ee ee
Plate 9222=
Rlaterl Oe eee Se =
Plater Ti: Aries oe ee ee

Page.

342
378
382
402

446
486

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ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONTAN
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1918.

SUBJECTS.

1. Annual report of the secretary, giving an account of the opera-
tions and condition of the Institution for the year ending June 30,
1918, with statistics of exchanges, etc.

2. Report of the executive committee of the Board of Regents,
exhibiting the financial affairs of the Institution, including a state-
ment of the Smithsonian fund, and receipts and expenditures for the
year ending June 30, 1918.

3. Proceedings of the Board of Regents for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1918.

4, General appendix, comprising a selection of miscellaneous mem-
oirs of interest to collaborators and correspondents of the Institution,
teachers, and others engaged in the promotion of knowledge. These
memoirs relate chiefly to the calendar year 1918.

Ix

oe eee
rtifessoth 4

whi pO

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.

June 30, 1918.

Presiding officer ex officio.—Woovrow Wison, President of the United States.
Chancellor —EpwarpD Douctass Wuitr, Chief Justice of the United States.
Members of the Institution:
Wooprow WILSON, President of the United States,
THOMAS R. MARSHALL, Vice President of the United States.
EpwaArD DoucLAss WuitTe, Chief Justice of the United States.
RoBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.
WILLIAM Gripes McAnpoo, Secretary of the Treasury.
NEWTON DIEHL Baker, Secretary of War.
THOMAS WATT GREGORY, Attorney General.
ALBERT SIDNEY BURLESON, Postmaster General.
JOSEPHUS DANIELS, Secretary of the Navy.
FRANKLIN KNIGHT LANE, Secretary of the Interior.
Davip FRANKLIN Houston, Secretary of Agriculture.
WILLIAM Cox REDFIELD, Secretary of Commerce.
WILLIAM BAucHop WILSON, Secretary of Labor.
Regents of the Institution:
EDWARD DoUGLASS WHITE, Chief Justice of the United States, Chancellor.
THomAS R. MARSHALL, Vice President of the United States.
HeENRky Casor Lopcr, Member of the Senate.
CHARLES S. THoMAS,, Member of the Senate.
Henry FRENCH Horiis, Member of the Senate.
Scorr Ferris, Member of the House of Representatives.
LEMUEL P. PADGETT, Member of the House of Representatives.
FRANK L. GREENE, Member of the House of Representatives.
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, citizen of Washington, D. C.
GrorGE GRAY, citizen of Delaware.
CHARLES IF. CHOATE, Jr., citizen of Massachusetts.
JOHN B. HENDERSON, Jr., citizen of Washington, D. C.
Henry WHITE, citizen of Maryland.
Eerecutive committee—GrorcE GRAY, ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, ERNEST W.
ROBERTS.
Secretary of the Institution.—CHARLES D. WaALcort.
Assistant Secretary.—RicHARD RATHBUN.
Chief Clerk.—Harry W. Dorsey.
Accountant and disbursing agent.—W. I. ADAMS.
Editor—A. Howarp CLARK.
Assistant librarian.—PatuL BROocKETT.
Property clerk.—J. H. Hitt.

X11 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.

Keeper ex officio —Cuartes D. WALcoTT, Secretary of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution.

Assistant secretary in charge.—RIcHARD RATHBUN.

Administrative assistant.—W. DE C. RAVENEL.

Head curators.—WiLiiAM H. HoLMES, LEONHARD STEJNEGER, G. P. MERRILL.

Curators.—PAvuL BaArtTSscH, R. S. BASSLER, T. T. BELOTE, A. HOWARD CLARK,
F. W. CLARKE, F. V. CoviLLe, W. H. DALL, CHESTER G. GILBERT, WALTER HOUGH,
L. O. Howarp, ALES HRDLIGKA, FREDERICK L. LEWTON, GEORGE C. MAYNARD,
Gerrit 8. MILLER, Jr., ROBERT RIDGWAY.

Associate curators.—J. C. CRAWFORD, C. W. GILMORE, W. R. Maxon, J. N.
Rosk, DAvip WHITE.

Curator, National Gallery of Art—W. H. HoLMEs.

Chief of correspondence and documents.—H. S. BRYANT.

Disbursing agent—W. I. ADAMS.

Chief of exhibits (Biology)—JAMES E. BENEDICT.

Superintendent of buildings and labor.—J. S. GOLDSMITH.

Editor—Marcus BENJAMIN.

Assistant librarian.—N. P. SCUDDER,

Photographer.—L. W. BEESON.

Registrar.—s. C. Brown.

Property clerk.—W. A. KNOWLES,

Engineer.—C. R. DENMARK.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY.

Chicf—J. WALTER FEWKES.

Bthnologists—JoHn P. Harrineton, J. N. B. Hewitt, FRANCIS LA FLESCHE,
TrUMAN MICHELSON, JAMES MOOoNEY, JOHN R. SWANTON.

Honorary philologist—FRANZ BOAs.

Hditor.—STANLEY SEARLES.

Librarian.—ELLa LEARY.

Tllustrator.—Dr LANCEY GILL.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES.

Chief clerk.—C. W. SHOEMAKER.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK.

Superintendent.—NEp HOLLISTER.
Assistant Superintendent.—A. B. BAKER.

ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY.
Director.—C. G. ABBOT.
Aid.—F. EK. Fow Le. Jr.

Agssistant.—L. B. ALDRICH.

REGIONAL BUREAU FOR THE UNITED STATES, INTERNATIONAL
CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

LEONARD ©. GUNNELL.

Assistant in charge.

REPORT
OF THE
SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

Cuartes D. Watcotr

FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1918.

To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to submit herewith the customary
annual report by the secretary on the present condition and the
operations and activities of the Institution and its branches during
the year ending June 30, 1918. The first portion of the report is
devoted to the Institution proper and the summaries of the work
of the National Museum and other branches, while the appendices
give detailed accounts by those in direct charge of the activities of
the Museum, the Bureau of Ethnology, the International Exchanges,
the Zoological Park, the Astrophysical Observatory, the Library,
and the Catalogue of Scientific Literature.

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
THE ESTABLISHMENT.

The Institution was created an establishment by act of Congress
approved August 10, 1846. Its statutory members are the President
of the United States, the Vice President, the Chief Justice, and the
heads of the executive departments.

THE BOARD OF REGENTS.

The Board of Regents, which is charged with the administration
of the Institution, consists of the Vice President and the Chief Justice
of the United States as ex officio members, three Members of the
Senate, three Members of the House of Representatives, and six citi-
zens, “two of whom shall be residents of the city of Washington
and the other four shall be inhabitants of some State, but no two of
them from the same State.”

There were changes in the personnel of the board during the year,
as follows: Senator Charles S. Thomas to succeed Senator William
J. Stone, died April 14, 1918; Representatives Lemuel P. Padgett

al

2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

and Frank L. Greene to succeed Ernest W. Roberts and James T.
Lloyd whose terms expired December 26, 1917. The roll of regents
on June 30, 1918, was as follows: Edward D. White, Chief Justice
of the United States, Chancellor; Thomas R. Marshall, Vice Presi-
dent of the United States; Henry Cabot Lodge, Member of the
Senate; Charles 8. Thomas, Member of the Senate; Henry French
Hollis, Member of the Senate; Scott Ferris, Member of the House
of Representatives; Lemuel P. Padgett, Member of the House of
Representatives; Frank L. Greene, Member of the House of Repre-
sentatives; Alexander Graham Bell, citizen of Washington, D. C.;
George Gray, citizen of Delaware; Charles F. Choate, jr., citizen of
Massachusetts; John B. Henderson, citizen of Washington, D. C.
(Charles W. Fairbanks, of Indiana, died June 4, 1918, vacancy not -
filled at close of fiscal year) ; and Henry White, citizen of Maryland.

The board held its annual meeting on December 13, 1917. Mr.
Henry White was elected a member of the executive committee to fill
the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Ernest W. Roberts,
whose term of office would expire on December 26, 1917. The pro-
ceedings of that meeting, as also the annual financial report of the
executive committee, have been printed, as usual, for the use of the
regents, while such important matters acted upon as are of public
interest are reviewed under appropriate heads in the present report
of the secretary. A detailed statement of disbursements from the
Government appropriations under the direction of the Institution
for the maintenance of the National Museum, the National Zoological
Park, and other branches will be submitted to Congress by the secre-
tary in the usual manner in compliance with the law.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS,

The routine operations of the Institution and its branches were
carried on as usual during the year, but a number of activities were
held in abeyance until after the war. The time and energy of mem-
bers of the scientific staff were devoted, as far as practicable, to re-
searches bearing on the effectiveness of certain devices and materials
for the Army and Navy, and 24 employees were eeautes furloughs to
enter active military service.

Through my connection with the National Research Council and
other commissions and boards I have been able personally to render
some war service to the Government.

The work of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,
of which the secretary of the Institution is a member and chairman
of the executive committee, has greatly broadened. At its suggestion
the Council of National Defense appointed a committee, now known
as the Aircraft Board, to consider all questions of aircraft produc-
tion and to make recommendations to the military departments for

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 3

the production and purchase of aircraft and aircraft appliances. The
experimental laboratory of the advisory committee has been erected

~at Langley Field, near Hampton, Va.

The original Langley man-carrying flying machine has been brought
back from Hammondsport, after several successful flights, and is ex-
hibited in the National Museum. This is the first heavier-than-air
man-carrying machine built, although it did not have a successful
flight until more than 10 years after its construction. It is also an im-
portant historical relic, as it confirms the claim that Secretary Langley
was the first to design and construct a heavier-than-air machine capa-
ble of carrying a man in flight. There has never been any question
that he was the first to successfully fly a heavier-than-air machine
propelled by its own power.

In February the War Department allotted to the Smithsonian
Institution the sum of $10,000 for experimental work in aviation in
connection with the Signal Corps, which work is being successfully
carried on. Upon the invitation of the War Industries Board,
Mr. C. G. Gilbert, of the National Museum, was appointed a member
of the Joint Information Board of Minerals and Derivatives, in
which capacity he has done work of unusual value. In April the
Secretary offered to the Government the services of Dr. Ales
Hrdlicka, who has since prepared important reports upon eth-
nography for the National Research Council and for a congressional
committee of investigation into the effect of language on nationality.

The Smithsonian chapter of the Red Cross has done commendable
war work. Early in the year an ambulance was given for service in
Russia and later the funds were raised to defray for one year the
expenses incidental to the maintenance of a bed in the American
Red Cross Hospital at Neuilly.

Bequests—Among the bequests to the Museum during the past
year is that of Miss S. J. Farmer, who willed to the Museum all the
remaining models of her father, Moses G. Farmer, inventor of elec-
trical apparatus.

The Institution has been made the Beitr legatee of the estate
of Rev. Bruce Hughes, of Philipsburg, Pa. (died March 20, 1916),
under the following terms of his will ed March 27, 1916:

All the balance and residue of my estate of which I may die seized shall be
paid to the Smithsonian Institute of the city of Washington, District of Colum-
bia, the sum to be invested and the income alone used to found the Hughes
Alcove of the said Smithsonian Institute.

The final share of the Institution in the estate has been estimated
at about $11,500. It is proposed that the “alcove” referred to in
the will shall be established in and as a part of the National Gallery
of Art and that the fund be devoted to the amassing of a reference
library of art works.

4. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Gifts —Dr. Frank Springer has given the Institution the title and
custody in perpetuity of his large collection of fossil crinoids and
related groups of Echinoderms and has arranged for a fund of
$30,000, the income of which is to be devoted to the administration
of the collection.

Dr. W. L. Abbott has continued his generous gifts of collections
and his support of an expedition in Celebes under H. C. Raven.

FINANCES.

The invested funds of the Institution consist of the following:

Deposited in the Treasury of the United States under authority
OfM@ONETess= sass ==. 2 NL = So Ee eer. Bere eee $1, 000, 000. 00

CONSOLIDATED FUND.

Brooklyn Rapid Transit 5 per cent notes due July 1, 1918, cost___ $5, 040. 63
Province of Manitoba 5 per cent gold debentures due April 1, 1922,
COSt 2a 22s a a rr 1, 935. 00
American Telephone and Telegraph Company 4 per cent collateral
trust bonds due sully ay1929 cos tae 15, 680. 00
West Shore Railroad Co. guaranteed 4 per cent first mortgage
bonds;due January, /1,, 23615 market wales eee ee ee 37, 275. 00
59, 930. 63
Excess: cost of bonds redeemed at) pars= aos ae 93. 75
Mota’ 2 ee ee eee ee ee 1, 060, 024. 38

The combined interest-bearing investments, aggregating
$1,060,024.38, are represented by the following funds:

Smithson) fund; <%=. -..t (4.5 ee ee ee eee $728, 291. 00
Habel Gund: 22225. f > 2 k= eee ee ee eee 500. 00
iftamilton fund 2252-22. eee eee ee 2, 500. 00
Hodgkins: general funds ==... ee eee 158, 275. 00
Hodekins’ specific fund! 2") 2 ees eel ees Ue eS ES HOOT ODOR OO:
IRHeeS hung Saas FS be eet eh eee eee ee 627. 00
Avery cfuindhsAsee scorers ily ea ee eee i 24, 020. 38
Addison 0. Reid fund-2. 2-2... > 2 2 eee 11, 672. 00
mucyu and George W.,Peoore fund. eee = 27, 965. 00
Georzei< Sanford funda 2 2 ey 1, 174. 00
@hambenlain: hund? 22s = St ee A 10, 000. 00

Ota == 2830 68 oo So 1, 060, 024. 38

One piece of improved real estate in the District of Columbia, be-
queathed to the Institution by the late Robert Stanton Avery, was
sold during the year; the net amount realized from this sale was
$8,721, which amount has been invested in bonds forming a part
of the Consolidated Fund.

The practice of investing surplus funds in certificates of deposit
paying 3 per cent per annum has proved most satisfactory; the in-
come from this source amounting to $1,275 during the year.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 5

Instead of investing all surplus cash in certificates of deposit, the
Institution purchased $10,000 of the United States Third Liberty
Loan, which will be carried on the books temporarily as a special
asset and later will be transferred to the Consolidated Fund.

The income of the Institution during the year, amounting to
$165,135.02, was derived as follows: Interest on permanent invest-
ments and other sources, $63,552.02; repayments, rentals, publica-
tions, etc., $13,503.13 ; contributions from various sources for specific
purposes, $24,358.87; bills receivable, $55,000; proceeds from sale
of real estate, $8,721.

Adding the cash balance of $9,232.56 on July 1, 1917, the total
resources for the fiscal year amounted to $174,367.58.

The disbursements, which are given in detail in the annual report
of the executive committee, amounted to $173,077.68, leaving a balance
of $1,289.90 in cash and on deposit in the Treasury of the United
States and in bank.

In addition to the above disbursements by the Institution, there
was included under the general appropriation for printing and bind-
ing an allotment of $76,200 to cover the cost of printing and bind-
ing the Smithsonian annual report and reports and miscellaneous
printing for the Government branches of the Institution.

The Institution was charged by Congress with the disbursement
of the following appropriations for the year ended June 30, 1918:

PALGEn eon leexchan ees ye sis es Users Sct Abe poe opel | De yrs $35, 000. 00
AINETICHNMCEIN OLO Lye 2 =e = Sashes meee ee Ee Se es 42, 000. 00
International catalogue of scientific literature_______________ Se ,,005,00
PASEROD MVS CAs OUSCEVALOLY) aaa 2 ae ee ee ee 138, 000. 00
Observations, eclipse of the sun of June 8, 1918___________________ 2, 000. 00
National Museum:
Kurnigure cand aiixburessser eae io eet eee ee ae ts 25, 000.00
beatin Ser ig i hatin oe ee et ee eb 46, 000. 00
Ipresery atl OnioLaCOllectlOnsi a= BE eee Te 300, 000. 00
HS UN TCT aN See ae eee ee ee 10, 000. 00
ESO 0 Giese Renee Caer me eet LA AP YS TORE PACT IONE ARS POSE 2, 000. 00
Sta ae AIRS s EE RE LOLS Stine Fa ryae a 500. 00
INationaleZoologicalyiPark iver A tae ea ial ANUS lees OP lla yoo 100, 000. 00

inereasevorcomnensatonmdnd efinite)iaa= "eee er! Tee ee Sa

RESEARCHES AND EXPLORATIONS.

The researches and explorations by the Institution were greatly
limited in their scope during the past year on account of war condi-
tions. There was unusual activity, however, by members of the
scientific staff in investigations which related to the operations of
the Army and Navy, and it is believed that the results have been of
great benefit to the service.

136650 °—20——2

6 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Several biological and ethnological expeditions to various parts of
the world have been held in abeyance, although some already in the
field have continued in operation on a limited scale. It is expected
that after the war there will be greater activity in these lines than
ever before.

Accounts of some of the more important researches are given here
and others are reported upon in the Appendix.

GEOLOGICAL WORK IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

Geological field work has been carried on by me in the Rocky
Mountains for several years past, particularly in the study of Cam-
brian and pre-Cambrian formations. The more important results
of this work have been described in my paper on “ Evidences of
Primitive Life” in the Smithsonian Report for 1915 and in various
pamphlets of the Institution. Investigations during the summer and
early fall of 1917 were carried on at the now well-known “ Burgess
Pass” fossil quarry, discovered by me in 1910. Fifty days were spent
at the Burgess Pass camp, 3,000 feet above Field, British Columbia,
where a section in the quarry of about 180 square feet was taken out.
This practically exhausts a quarry which has given the finest and
largest series of Middle Cambrian fossils yet discovered and the
finest invertebrate fossils yet found in any formation in any country.
More than one and a half tons of specimens were trimmed out at
the quarry, carried by pack horses to camp, and thence by rail to
Washington.

A few days were taken to verify a geologic section near Lake Me-
Arthur, and then the Vermilion River trip was begun. Following
down the Bow River, we crossed to the south side near Mount Castle
and camped at Vermilion Pass. Lower down the valley on the east-
ern side near the mouth of Ochre Creek, Syncline Peak shows rem-
nants of the compression and folding that accompanied the uplift
of the mountain massif, now cut by erosion into hundreds of moun-
tains, ridges, and canyons.

From Vermilion River the party followed a new forest ranger
trail up Tumbling Brook to a small, beautiful glacier beneath the
great eastward facing cliffs of Gray Peak.

Wolverine Pass is a broad, rolling area at about timber line. On
its southwestern slope the northeast branch of Moose Creek begins,
on the north slope the headwaters of Ochre Creek, and on the south-
east the drainage is to Tumbling Brook, a branch of Ochre Creek.
The views from the upper slopes northeast of the Pass are among
the finest in the Canadian Rockies. Mount Drysdale, on the right,
rises 2,200 feet above the Pass, and Mount Gray, on the left, 1,800
feet, the altitude of the Pass being 7,200 feet. Tumbling Glacier,
on the left of Mount Gray, is formed from snows blown over the

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 7

cliffs from the westward. On the right of Mount Drysdale the east-
ern side of the great Washmawapta snow field may be seen; in the
distance, through the Pass, the dark Beaverfoot Range, and beyond
it, in the extreme background, the snowy peaks of the Selkirk Ranges.

A late September storm drove us back from Wolverine Pass to the
Vermilion River, where below Ochre Creek a search was made for
moose. On October 1 a great bull, a cow, and young were brought
down and their skins, skulls, and horns secured for the National
Museum collections.

RESEARCHES ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE TRILOBITES.

In my laboratory work for the past 45 years I have been on the
watch for evidence bearing on the structure and organization of
fossil trilobites. The study of a small and unique series of speci-
mens secured at Burgess Pass since 1910 has so greatly increased
our knowledge of these interesting animals that a special paper, ac-
companied by 28 plates of illustrations, is now in press, to appear in
the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.

GEOLOGICAL WORK IN THE APPALACHIAN AND OHIO VALLEYS.

During the summers of 1916 and 1917 Mr. Frank Springer con-
tinued his researches upon the fossil echinoderms of the Ohio. Valley
with a view to obtaining further material and information for the
completion of a monograph upon the Silurian crinoids of that area
which he has now in preparation. His assistant, Dr. Herrick E.
Wilson, collected in the vicinity of St. Paul and of Madison, in
Indiana, proving for the first time the presence in the latter locality
of the crinoidal faunas of both the Waldron and the Laurel forma-
tions. One object of the present field investigation is to obtain
further light on the relations of the Silurian faunas of the Chicago
and southern Indiana areas with those of western Tennessee. Mr.
Springer acquired by purchase all the echinoderms in the large col-
lection of Mr. John F. Hammell, of Madison, Ind., which included
that made by A. C. Benedict from the Indiana Silurian, containing
the types of a considerable number of species. This material has
been added to his collection of fossil echinoderms now deposited in
the National Museum.

GEOLOGICAL WORK IN MARYLAND.

Dr. Bassler, of the division of invertebrate paleontology in the
National Museum, reports that, in company with Assistant Curator
Dr. C. E. Resser, he made some investigations in the Frederick and
Hagerstown valleys of Maryland with the object of securing for the
exhibition series large examples illustrating the various types of
conglomerate. Two fine, large masses of the well-known Triassic

8 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

limestone conglomerate were obtained with little difficulty, but
equally good examples of the siliceous variety were secured only
after much hard labor, owing to the ready disintegration of the rock
on exposure. Efforts were finally successful, however, and there was
also secured a mass of the so-called “ edgewise ” conglomerate several
feet in diameter, which will well illustrate the phenomenon of intra-
formation conglomerate described by me a number of years ago.
This last was obtained where the steeply dipping lower Ordovician
beds outcropped in such a manner that the desired material could be
blasted without fracturing. All of such conglomerates are the result
of ancient mud deposits of tidal flats becoming sun cracked when
exposed to the air. The dried edges of the sun-cracked areas become
tossed about by the wind and the fragments finally accumulate in
layers which ultimately are hardened into rocklike conglomerate.
Conglomerates usually indicate the base of a formation, but this
particular kind may occur at any place within a formation, whence
I applied the specific name “ intraformational ” to them.

GEOLOGICAL WORK IN CENTRAL KENTUCKY.

After the conclusion of geologic work in the Appalachian Valley in
the early summer of 1917, Dr. Bassler proceeded to central Kentucky,
where he spent several weeks in explorations for suitable exhibition
specimens covering the general subject of stratigraphic paleontology.
It was especially desirable that such phenomena as stratification, the
occurrence of fossils, and unconformities should be illustrated in the
Museum, and especial efforts were made to secure specimens exhibit-
ing these features. Much discrimination was necessary in the selec-
tion of these objects, as it was essential to obtain specimens of such
size as to be appreciated by the public and still not too large for the
available space, which is somewhat limited. This difficulty compli-
cated the work, but the selection finally made was extremely satisfac-
tory. In his account of the work Dr. Bassler says:

The early Paleozoic coral reef near Louisville, Ky., from which a section
6 by 10 feet in dimensions had been quarried and placed on exhibition during
the summer of 1916, was revisited and several additional layers of highly fos-
siliferous shale and limestone were secured. These have now been added in
their proper position to the coral-reef mount, so that this single exhibit now
illustrates the subjects of stratification in general, horizontal strata, change of
lithology from limestone to shale, the occurrence of fossils in these types of sedi-
ment, and the phenomenon of fossil coral reefs for which the exhibit was pri-
marily planned.

The most valuable result of the summer’s work was achieved at Eikin, Ky.
Here a single limestone slab, 6 feet long and several feet wide and thick, show-
ing an unconformity distinct enough to be appreciated by the layman, was
quarried out and shipped to the museum without breakage, where it now forms
a most instructive exhibit. The outcropping limestone ledge, several feet in
thickness, is composed of a distinctly white lower portion and a dark-colored

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 9

upper part, the head of the hammer marking their line of contact. This line
also marks an unusually clear unconformity. Both of these layers are rich
in fossils, those of Early Black River (Lowville) age occurring in the lower
white rock and those of Early Trenton in the upper dark material. Since at
other places in the United States 500 or more feet of strata of Middle and
Late Black River age intervene between these two layers, it is shown that
Kentucky was a land area during the deposition of the Middle and Upper Black
River strata. This is also evidenced by numerous worm burrows extending
downward from the top of the white limestone. When the material was in the
condition of soft mud and exposed at the surface, the worms burrowed into it,
as they do in the soil to-day.

The phosphate localities near Wallace, Ky., were next visited, in order to
obtain illustrations of the gradual phosphatization of limestone and the types
of fossils in phosphatic strata. Here it was discovered that phosphate rock
occurs only along the joint planes of the limestone. Surface water passing
along these joint planes leaches out the calcium carbonate of the phosphatic
limestone, leaving the calcium phosphate content behind. i

GRASSES OF THE ADIRONDACK AND WHITE MOUNTAINS.

During the month of August, 1917, Mr. A. S. Hitchcock, systematic
agrostologist in the Department of Agriculture and custodian of the
section of grasses of the division of plants in the United States Na-
tional Museum, visited the Adirondacks in New York and the White
Mountains in New Hampshire for the purpose of studying their flora,
especially the grasses of the alpine summits. Mr. Hitchcock reports
as follows:

In the Adirondacks headquarters were at Lake Placid, from which point ex-
cursions were made to the summits of Whiteface and McIntyre, the highest
peaks in the group with the exception of Mount Marcy. It was impracticable to
reach Mount Marcy without the use of a camp outfit. This peak rises to a
height of 5,344 feet, but Mount McIntyre is nearly as high (5,112 feet). Both
McIntyre and Whiteface extend above the timber line and support at the sum-
mit an alpine flora.

The White Mountains reach a somewhat greater altitude than the Adiron-
dacks, Mount Washington, the highest peak, being 6,293 feet. In the Mount
Washington group there are several peaks whose summits are above the timber
line. The alpine flora of these peaks and of the peaks of the Adirondacks are
similar, and include plants that farther north are found at a lower altitude or,
in the Arctic regions, even at sea level.

Four days were spent investigating the flora of the peaks. The ascent was
commenced at Crystal Cascade on the east side, whence the trail led up Tucker-
man Ravine to the Summit of Mount Washington, thence down to Lakes-of-the
Clouds where there is an Appalachian Mountain Club hut for the accommoda-
tion of climbers. From here the head of Oakes Gulf was explored. The second
day was spent along the trail from Lakes-of-the-Clouds to the Mount Madison
hut, going by the way of the Westside and Gulfside trail, which passes near the
high peaks of Clay, Jefferson, and Adams. The return trip to Lakes-of-the
Clouds hut was made on the third day, descending 3,000 feet through the Great
Gulf by the Buttress trail and ascending again by the Six Husbands trail to the
Alpine Meadow. On the fourth day the descent was made by way of Hunting-
ton Ravine over a little-used and difficult trail.

10 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

There are nine species of grasses that may be considered to be alpine. A few
others extend from the lower zones into the alpine region. Most of the alpine
species are circumpolar and extend southward in the mountains, one to the
high peaks of western North Carolina and two through the Rocky Mountains
even in South America. One species, Poa laxa, is abundant on the upper cone
of Mount Washington, extending quite to the summit, and comprises almost the
only vegetation of this area. This is a Huropean species which is found in
North America only in the region of Mount Washington and on a few of the
higher peaks of New England.

The forest flora of the mountains consists mainly of white pine, white spruce,
larch, aspen, and white birch. Toward the summits of the peaks the dominant
tree is the balsam fir, which near timber line becomes a straggling shrub.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES ON OLD AMERICAN FAMILIES.

In continuation of his researches on old American families, Dr.
Hrdlicka, of the National Museum, in 1917, visited Yale, Virginia,
and Harvard Universities. The last two were visited on the occa-
sion of the “ Teachers’ Course,” which brings to these institutions
many adult individuals of old American parentage from a large
territory. The total number of subjects examined, mainly for pig-
mentation of hair, and eye and skin color, amounted to over 1,000,
all of whom were Americans of at least three generations on both
the paternal and maternal sides of the family. Dr. Hrdlicka says:

The results which are now being elaborated for a report are of uncommon
interest. They show a number of important facts of which we had no previous
reliable knowledge. One of these is, in brief, that there is no increase in the
proportion or grade of pigmentation as we proceed from New England south-
ward, and no increase in blondness as we proceed northward from the Caro-
linas and Virginias. Another striking result shows that there are localized
peculiarities in pigmentation, especially that of the hair, but that in every case
these can be traced to the ancestry rather than to the environmental conditions.
The latter nevertheless appear to have been active in general in reducing the
total proportions of blondness.

So far as the color of the eyes is concerned there were found unexpectedly,
in all the areas, a large proportion of ‘‘ mixed” colors; in other words, eyes in
which more or less marked traces of brown coexist with various shades of blue,
green, or gray.

Three cases were encountered in which the color of the two eyes was mark-
edly different. Pure beautiful blues and browns were few in number.

THE MOUNTAINEERS OF TENNESSEE.

During the latter part of July, 1917, Dr. Hrdlicka made a trip to
eastern Tennessee, for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the
characteristics of the population of these regions, which in large part
is of old American stock but has long existed under disadvantageous
environment, remaining as a result backward in education and in
other respects. He reports as follows on the results of his studies:

The work commenced at Bristol, Tenn., extended to Mountain City, and
farther on into the hills: and its success was very largely due to the kind

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 11

offices and direct personal help of an old friend of the Smithsonian Institution,
Mr. Samuel L. King, of Bristol. For additional help the writer is indebted to
Mr. John Caldwell, of the same city.

The work extended mainly to the men called for examination by the first
draft for the United States Army, and comprised 150 individuals. Both meas-
urements and observations were taken. Some of the men came from the lower
lands of the Bristol district and were kept apart, but a good number represented
the real mountaineers.

It is too early to speak of the results of this interesting piece of research,
the data not having as yet been properly reduced and analyzed; but it is
safe to say that these mountaineers represent no separate type of Americans.
In many cases they still show strong indications of their respective pre-Amer-
ican ancestry. Among the men there were seen some fine examples of
physique—willowy, clean-cut six-footers; but there were also others of rather
feeble mental powers or nervous stability, which conditions, to some extent
possibly, are due to hereditary effects of alcoholism or to defective heredity of
other nature. .

The families of the mountaineers are remarkable in many cases for their
large size, and there were seen examples of longevity and virility which it
would be hard to find in our cities.

There are all grades of ‘mountaineers ” and no line of demarcation separates
them from the people in the lower lands, who are mostly of similar derivation
and sometimes of the same families. But as one proceeds into the wilds of the
mountains the population becomes sparser and more backward, the cultivated
patches of ground smaller in area, and the habitations poorer, until some of the
latter come to resemble the shacks of the southern negro.

The poorer class of mountaineers frequently show characteristics partly due
to their backwardness in education and their isolation and partly, perhaps, to
hookworm disease or other abnormal conditions. Some of the young men are
types of slouchiness, such as would delight the artist, while the women disfigure
themselves by chewing snuff and frequently show uncouthness in dress, move-
ments, and behavior. But the people are hospitable and interesting. In the
course of a short ride of less than 2 miles through a sparsely settled gorge the
writer and his local companion had no less than four invitations to lunch—in
the other places there was no one at home. Their language and intonation are
characteristic and quaint, and the people seem to be full of old and local folk-
lore, the study of which would probably prove most delightful. Being largely
dependent on themselves and their few neighbors, they have also many anti-
quated and strange curative practices which would repay investigation.

Their worst enemies are the isolation, “‘ moonshine” whisky, and, in not a
few cases, undoubtedly a poor heredity. The Army draft will be a godsend to
many of the young men, some of whom can not even read or write; but probably
few of those who will return will remain mountaineers.

THE VANISHING INDIAN.

Through the cooperation of the Institution and the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Hrdlicka in August,
1917, made some interesting investigations of the Shawnee and other
Indian tribes. Concerning his work he says: |

The progress of miscegenation among many of the Indian tribes has progressed
to a degree that is surprising even to those who for many years have been
studying the Indian. While the total number of ‘ Indians” as recorded by the

12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

census increases from decade to decade, the fact is that this increase is due
wholly to that of mixed bloods; the full bloods of pure strain in most localities
are rapidly disappearing and in a considerable proportion of the tribes have
become actually extinct er are on the point of extinction.

Two remarkable examples of this fact have just been experienced by the
writer. For years a growing necessity in American anthropology has been to
determine the physical type of the Shawnee, once a large tribe and one of con-
siderable historic importance. No great difficulty was apprehended in this task,
as the tribe is still well represented. The most promising part of the tribe was
that of the so-called ‘“‘ absentee”? Shawnee, on the Shawnee Agency in eastern
Oklahoma. They count 569 individuals, quite a few of whom are generally re-
garded as “full bloods.” To his great disappointment the task of finding some
pure bloods became exceedingly difficult. Quite a few of the Indians were
found to be “ full bloods,” but on inquiry into the family history it was gener-
ally learned that the subject was a mixture of Shawnee with the Oneida, Dela-
ware, Créeks, or some other tribe. In conclusion, there were found but three
individuals who so far as they or their friends knew were full-blood Shawnee.
Two of these were old women and one an old man, all near or over 70 years
of age, and two of the three were sister and brother.

The next tribe visited was the Kickapoo, the main body of which to the
number of 211 is settled about McLoud, Okla. They were said by the old Shaw-
nee to be practically the same people as themselves, having at some time in
the past had but one camp fire, and it was generally believed that they would
show some full bloods of pure strain. This proved to be a vain hope. On close
inquiry all sorts of mixtures were discovered, even among the oldest men and
women of the tribe, but no pure bloods. Only one single woman of middle age
was believed to be possibly a full Kickapoo, but there was no real certainty.
Some visiting Kickapoo from Mexico proved no better than the rest, and no
hope was given that any pure strain Kickapoo could be found anywhere else.

Thus two tribes, one of which of considerable importance, may be regarded
as lost to science, so far as pure bloods are concerned. Only a few years ago,
according to local information, there were still a number of old men and
women living in both tribes who represented the pure strain. The genuine In-
dian is rapidly passing away and the work of the anthropologist who endeavors
to record the physical type of the various tribes is becoming increasingly difficult.

ETHNOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN COLORADO AND UTAH.

One of the most important results of field work by the Bureau of
American Ethnology during the past year was the investigation of
little-known towers, castles, and great houses in southwest Colorado.
In conjunction with the Department of the Interior, the Smith-
sonian Institution has been engaged for a decade in the excavation
and repair of large ruins situated on what is called the Mesa Verde
National Park. The educational value of this work can hardly be
overestimated, and in recent years over 2,500 people have visited the
locality yearly to see these largest of all prehistoric ruins in our South-
western States. In his field work during the summer of 1918 Dr. J.
Walter Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, investi-
gated equally instructive groups of ruins in the valleys in sight of
the Mesa Verde Park and found there many well-preserved build-

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. iS

ings of which little has been hitherto known; the most striking of
these were finely constructed towers, castles, and great houses, the
walls of which have fine masonry, rising in some instances 25 feet
high. They may be instanced as the best-preserved examples of
Indian stone houses north of Mexico. Three clusters of these re-
markable constructions in southwestern Utah are specially note-
worthy, containing in all 11 different buildings, the majority of
which are still, after centuries of wear, in nearly the same condition
as when deserted by the aboriginal builders. Many evidences of their
prehistoric character were gathered. The name of the race to which
their builders belonged is no longer known, but the memory of them
still survives in dim legends of descendants living many miles away.
A visit to these towers well supplements one to the Mesa Verde, and
broadens one’s knowledge of the variety of buildings which stood in
the desert during the most flourishing epoch of North American
architecture of the past. As a sequel to the explorations carried on
by the Smithsonian in these remarkable monuments, the Director of
the Public Park Service of the Department of the Interior, recog-
nizing their educational value for scholars and tourists, has taken
steps to have them set aside from the public domain and placed under
the care of the Superintendent of the Mesa Verde Park for per-
manent preservation.

NATIONAL PARKS EDUCATIONAL COMMITTHER.

On June 26, 1918, at a meeting held at the Smithsonian Institution
there was organized the National Parks Educational Committee.
Dr. Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
was chosen chairman, former Representative William Kent, of Cali-
fornia, vice chairman, Henry B. F. Macfarland, of Washington,
chairman of the executive committee, and Robert Sterling Yard,
secretary. The membership includes representatives of universities,
institutions, and public-spirited associations East and West, through
whose cooperation it will present a front of many influential units.

The need of this organization grew out of the rapid growth of
public interest in our national parks, due to the recent realization
of their supreme qualities. It is a safe statement that there is no
other cause so popular in America to-day that is not a war cause.
The limitation of governmental functions practically to the physica)
development of the national parks leaves the gathering of their
enormous potential harvests of education and appreciation to the
people themselves; it is to organize these departments of higher en-
joyment, to give impetus to the art and literature of outdoors, to
popularize natural science, and to encourage outdoor living that the
committee is established.

14 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The committee will support a plan of systematic selection and
development to secure for American national parks the recognized
first place in world scenery, thus realizing their value as a national
economic asset. Its educational plans are based upon views of national
parks as popular classrooms and museums of nature. It will seek
the cooperation of public schools and universities in the interpreta-
tion of natural scenery in terms of popular science. Among its first
acts was the passage of a resolution, offered by Leonidas Dennis, of
New Jersey, favoring the bill which has passed the Senate and is now
before the House to make the Grand Canyon a national park.

The committee will enlarge itself so as to become representative
of every section and State in the country. It is the initial stage in
a broad national organization to be perfected after the war under the
title of the National Parks Association. The members at present are
as follows:

Wallace W. Atwood, department of physiography, Harvard University.

Arthur E. Bestor, president of Chatauqua Institution.

Belmore Browne, explorer, author, artist.

Henry G. Bryant, president Geographical Society of Philadelphia, explorer.

John B. Burnham, president American Game Protective and Propagation
Association.

William E. Colby, president Sierra Club.

Leonidas Dennis, conservationist, lawyer.

J. Walter Fewkes, chief Bureau of American Ethnology.

John H. Finley, president University of State of New York.

William B. Greeley, chairman conservation committee Camp Fire Club.

George Bird Grinnell, Boone and Crockett Club, pioneer of Glacier National
Park.

William H. Holmes, curator of National Gallery of Art, head curator anthro-
pology, United States National Museum.

William Kent, former United States Representative, donor of the Muir Woods
National Museum.

George F. Kunz, president of American Scenic and Historic Preservation
Society.

i. M. Lehnerts, department of geology, University of Minnesota; pioneer in
national parks geology classes.

Henry B. F. Macfarland, publicist ; lawyer.

J. Horace McFarland, president American Civic Association.

La Verne Noyes, president board of trustees, Chicago Academy of Science.

George D. Pratt, conservation commissioner, State of New York; president
Camp Fire Club.

D. W. Roper, director Prairie Club; engineer.

Edmund Seymour, president American Bison Society.

Charles Sheldon, Boone and Crockett Club; explorer, author.

Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, conservation chairman, General Federation
of Women’s Clubs.

Charles D. Walcott, secretary Smithsonian Institution.

Robert Sterling Yard, Chief Educational Division, National Park Service.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 15
PUBLICATIONS.

The Institution and its branches published during the year 91
volumes and separate pamphlets. The total distribution was 134,284
copies, which included 1,591 volumes and memoirs of Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge, 26,412 volumes and separates of the
Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 19,815 Annual Reports and
separate papers, 75,800 volumes and pamphlets of Museum Pro-
ceedings, 7,344 Bureau of American Ethnology publications, 2,929
special publications, and others relating to the Astrophysical Obser-
vatory, the Harriman Alaska Expedition, and the American His-
torical Association.

War conditions naturally greatly delayed the issuance of publica-
tions by the Government Printing Office, so that there is a large
accumulation of material in proof and manuscript awaiting com-
pletion.

Allotments for printing—The allotments for the printing of the
Smithsonian Report and the various publications of the branches of
the Institution were practically used up, a small balance remaining
in one or two cases owing to the impossibility of getting certain
publications off the press before the close of the year.

The allotments for the year ending June 30, 1919, are as follows:

For the Smithsonian Institution: For printing and binding the annual
reports of the Board of Regents, with general appendices, the editions

of which shall not exceed 10,000 copies_____-_-_-- ee. — $10, 000
For the annual reports of the National Museum, with general appen-
dices, and for printing labels and blanks, and for the bulletins and
proceedings of the National Museum, the editions of which shall not
exceed 4,000 copies, and binding, in half morocco or material not
more expensive, scientific books, and pamphlets presented to or ac-
quired by the National Museum library________— SRE TET 37, 500
For the annual reports and bulletins of the Bureau of American TEth-
nology and for miscellaneous printing and binding for the bureau___ 21, 000
For miscellaneous printing and binding:
Internationale xChan Ges Ss ese erst ey ey iyee eee eye Pe fos ee 200
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature___.-______- 100
ING tLOT ele AO O1O SCH) ele aie eens ks ee ee 200
Astrophysical Observatory. — 22 asl Be Bear etiologies 200
For the annual report of the American Historic aa NSSOCIAUON=== === 7, 000
Totals ae abn pe OE See SRE aR SPR eee Se 76, 200

Committee on printing and publication—The Smithsonian ad-
visory committee on printing and publication considers all manu-
scripts offered for publication by the Institution or its branches.
During the past year 13 meetings were held, at which 68 manuscripts
were considered and acted upon. The membership of the commit-
tee is as follows: Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, head curator of biology,
National Museum, chairman; Mr. N. Hollister, superintendent of
the National Zoological Park; Mr. A. Howard Clark, editor of the

16 “ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Institution, secretary of the committee; Dr. George P. Merrill, head
curator of geology, National Museum; and Dr. J. Walter Fewkes,
chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, who succeeded Mr. F. W.
Hodge, resigned.

LIBRARY.

The library of the Smithsonian Institution is divided into (1) the
main library, consisting chiefly of journals and transactions of learned
societies and institutions throughout the world, which are in the cus-
tody of the Library of Congress and administered as the Smithsonian
deposit; (2) the National Museum library; (8) the library of the
Bureau of American Ethnology; (4) the National Zoological Park
library; (5) the library of the Astrophysical Observatory; and (6)
the office reference library. Some of these are subdivided into sev-
eral sectional libraries.

The report of the assistant librarian in the appendix presents de-
tails of accessions. Mention should here be made of one exceptional
and important addition to the Museum library, consisting of a large
number of botanical and horticultural publications brought together
at Biltmore, N. C., by the late Mr. George W. Vanderbilt and pre-
sented by Mrs. Vanderbilt.

NATIONAL MUSEUM.

The detailed account of the operations of the National Museum is
recorded in an appendix to this report by Mr. Ravenel, the adminis-
trative assistant who had chiefly conducted the affairs for several
months during the illness of Assistant Secretary Rathbun, whose
death occurred shortly after the close of the fiscal year. It is there-
fore unnecessary here to do more than to review some of the prin-
cipal activities of the Museum and to refer to the appendix for fur-
ther information.

The exhibits are now housed in three buildings: (1) the arts and
industries collection in what is known as the old Museum building,
(2) the natural history collections and the National Gallery of Art in
the large new building, and (8) the graphic arts and National Her-
barium in the original Smithsonian building.

During the year 69,286 square feet of room in the Natural History
Building were turned over to the Secretary of the Treasury for use
of about 3,000 clerks of the War Risk Insurance Bureau. I may
mention here that a few weeks after June 30 the building was closed
to the public, the exhibition cases were crowded into the least pos-
sible quarters, and all available space was temporarily given over to
the Insurance Bureau. This course was gladly taken, in order to put
into immediate effect the financial assistance provided by Congress
for the families of our soldiers and sailors.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 17

About 1,300 accessions to the Museum were recorded during the
year, aggregating nearly 143,000 specimens and objects, including
11,000 pertaining to the department of anthropology, 61,500 to zool-
ogy, 38,000 to botany, 11,300 to geology and mineralogy, and 17,900
to paleontology; 168 paintings and other art objects were lent for
exhibition in the gallery of art.

Among the most interesting additions of anthropological objects
were over 400 specimens from Celebes, East Indies, illustrating agri-
culture and household economy in that region collected through the
generosity of Dr. W. L. Abbott. A collection given by Mr. Alfred M.
Erskine represented implements and costumes of the Dyaks of
Borneo. A noteworthy addition to the division of American arche-
ology was a collection of 83 specimens, mostly stone implements,
also relics from the cliff and cavern dwellings of New Mexico, Indian
relics from the Virgin Islands, and a large number of relics from
Utah. By an exchange with the Royal Ontario Museum of Toronto
there were acquired about 200 specimens of Babylonian tablets and
prehistoric stone implements from Egypt, France, and England.

The division of mechanical technology was enriched by the addi-
tion of a large number of firearms and firearm appliances. Among
the historical objects received were two flags pertaining to the present
war, one of which belonged to Zeppelin 49 at the time of its capture
in 1917; the other was the flag used at the funeral of the American
soldiers lost on the transport Tuscania in 1918. A most interesting
object is the original letter written by Gen. Grant demanding the
unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson. There are also large
numbers of souvenirs of American soldiers and statesmen, among
which may be mentioned a number of personal relics of Maj. Gen.
George B. McClellan, United States Army, consisting of swords,
uniforms, and other objects owned by him during the Mexican and
Civil Wars; also the well-known Robert Hewitt Collection of Me-
dallic Lincolniana made up of some 1,200 medallions, medals, tokens,
and badges. To the collection of musical instruments were added
five American pianos and one organ, seven English pianos, two Aus-
trian grand pianos, and a number of other instruments. To the
numismatic collection was added a large number of replicas of United
States service medals and to the collection of philatelic material,
3,186 stamps, 2,706 of which were received from the Post Office De-
partment. In the appendix the administrative assistant enumerates
important additions in the departments of anthropology, biology,
geology, and to the arts and industries collections which need not
be repeated here.

In previous reports I have called attention to the rapid develop- -
ment since 1912 of the collection of textiles, woods, and medicines.
The additions to the collection, showing the methods of making tex-

18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tiles and finished products, are most instructive, likewise the collec-
tion of materia medica, which has been largely increased.

The division of mineral technology during the year has published
a number of unusually important pamphlets on the resources of the
United States, power, petroleum, nitrogen, and coal. Some interest-
ing objects added to the exhibits in the division include models show-
ing the occurrence and recovery of gold and the manufacture of lead
and exhibits of coal-tar products.

The construction of the building for the Freer collection has pro-
gressed as rapidly as could be expected under present war conditions.
The exterior walls have been erected to entablature height. Nine
hundred and twenty-eight items have been added to the Freer col-
lection, including 159 oriental objects. The National Gallery of Art
received a bequest comprising 12 paintings, a number of miniatures
and other objects, 140 items in all, from the estate of Mrs. Mary
Houston Eddy, to be known as the A. R. and M. H. Eddy donation.
It has also received from the Russian artist, Ossip Perelma, a portrait
by himself of M. Boris Bahkmeteff, first ambassador of the Russian
Republic to the United States.

The number of visitors to the Natural History building during the
year 1917 aggregated 306,003 on week days and 95,079 on Sundays,
and to the Arts and Industries building the number was 161,298. The
number of visitors to the old Museum building since it was opened
to the public in 1881 has been 8,000,000; to the new building since
1909, 2,643,654; and to the Smithsonian building since 1881, 4,734,492.
Many meetings of various scientific societies were held in the Museum
auditorium during the year. Special exhibits have also been shown,
among the most interesting of which were the collection illustrating
the united organizations of the United States Food Administration
and the exhibit of etchings of war industries by Pennell.

Following the custom of many years there was a distribution of some
8,000 duplicate specimens to schools and colleges for educational pur-
poses, all properly classified and labeled. These included sets of mol-
lusks, ores, minerals, and objects of ethnology and archeology.

The Museum publications of the year comprised 6 volumes and
40 separate papers, including the annual report for 1916, volume 51
of the Proceedings, and 5 bulletins. Bulletin 102, on the mineral
industries of the United States, is of particular interest to the public,
the four parts so far issued being devoted to coal products, fertilizers,
sulphur, and coal.

Additions to the Museum library amounted to 3,230 volumes and
1,571 pamphlets, making the present aggregate of 52,534 volumes and
84,491 pamphlets and unbound papers. To the Biltmore collection
of botanical works, presented by Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, 2,000
volumes were added.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 19

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY.

The activities of the Bureau of American Ethnology are limited
to the study of the past and present conditions of the North Amer-
ican Indians. Their main purpose is to perfect the existing classifica-
tions of the various stocks of these aborigines based on their language
in order to discover their relationship, and to gain a clearer insight
into the origin, history, and migration of man on this continent.
The languages of the Indians are doomed to disappear in the near
future; some have already gone and others will become extinct in a
few years. Through intense, patient research the bureau is under-
taking the task of recording these vanishing tongues before they dis-
appear forever.

The bureau is also, through archeological work, resurrecting from
the night of the past hitherto unrecorded chapters of the history of
aboriginal Indian life that reached a high development and disap-
peared before recorded history began. One evidence of a prehistoric
phase of Indian life is indicated by the pueblos and cliff dwellers.
Through erosion by the elements and vandalism due to man these re-
markable houses are rapidly falling into decay. The Bureau of
Ethnology is cooperating with the Department of the Interior in the
excavation and repair of these remains in order that they may be of
educational value and preserved for posterity.

The field researches of the bureau the past year have been particu-
larly important, both from ethnological and historical points of view.
Hitherto unknown prehistoric monuments have been discovered and
surveyed, while others previously known have been excavated and
permanently preserved. The advances made in ethnological knowl-
edge, although often slow, are always important and have opened up
new problems pleading for solution, indicating that the work of the
bureau has barely begun, and that much available information re-
garding our aborigines still remains to be gathered.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK.

Increasing popular interest in the Zoological Park is manifest by
the number of visitors, which aggregated 1,593,337 in 1918 as com-
pared with 564,634 in 1909 and 633,526 in 1913. The park is an edu-
cational center as well as a place of resort for recreation and pleasure.
This is shown by the fact that 78 schools and classes visited the park
in 1918, with a total of 4,945 individuals. It is likewise a center
for the life-history study of animals, for they are placed as nearly
as practical in conditions of their natural environment, and as the
collection increases in numbers or in kinds so does its value become
of more importance as a source of scientific information.

20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

There is now in the park a total of 1,247 animals, representing 345
distinct species. These include 483 mammals, 706 birds, and 58
reptiles. The several species are enumerated in detail in the superin-
tendent’s report in the appendix.

A most interesting recent accession is the first specimen of the
glacier bear or blue bear ever known to have been captured alive.
It has a very limited distribution in the region of the St. Elias
Alps, near Yakutat Bay, Alaska. Being one of the rarest and least
known of the great game animals of America, specimens have been
eagerly sought for zoological gardens. Among other accessions may
be noted keas, or sheep-killing parrots, and some flightless rails from
New Zealand, and a large boa constrictor, 11 feet long, from Trinidad.

For several years I have urged the purchase of certain parcels of
land along the western boundary of the park and in 1913 an appro-
priation was made by Congress for that purpose, but as the purchase
could not be completed before the time limit of the appropriation,
further legislation becomes necessary for renewal of the allotment.

The superintendent calls attention to a number of important needs,
including roads, bridle paths, automobile parking space, grading and
filling, a new aviary building, a reptile house, and outdoor quarters
for mammals.

A striking mark of the appreciation and interest of the children of
Washington in the National Zoological Park is the tablet placed in
the elephant house to the memory of the elephant “ Dunk,” through
subscription to a popular fund by the children of Washington,
“ whose favorite Dunk was for more than a quarter of a century.”

ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY.

The general direction of the work of the Observatory has continued
under Dr. C. G. Abbot, who, in addition to these duties, has been
occupied during the year with a number of scientific investigations
directly connected with the war.

The investigation of the absorption of long-wave rays by long
columns of air containing known quantities of water vapor, refer-
ence to which was made in my last report, have been continued and
the results to date published in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections. In describing his work Mr. Fowle says:

The main purpose of this research was to determine the transparency of
water vapor, under atmospheric conditions, to radiation such as the warm
earth sends toward space. Upon the absorptive property of water vapor rests
in part the virtue of the atmosphere as a conservator of the heat which
the earth receives from the sun. Radiation from the sun reaches the earth’s
surface diminished by a certain portion scattered toward space and certain

other portions absorbed in the gases and vapors of the atmosphere. The re-
turn of the energy of this radiation back to space is an indirect process. The

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 91

warmed earth is cooled partly by convection currents playing over its surface
and partly by direct and indirect radiation through the constituents of its
atmosphere. Of these the principal hindrances to free radiation are aqueous
vapor and carbonic acid gas.

Mr. Fowle’s investigations have fixed the dependence of the trans-
mission of the atmosphere on humidity for all wave lengths up to 17
microns. Thiscovers a region of spectrum about fifty times as long as
that which is visible to the eye. At about 17 microns rock salt, which
is used in preference to glass for optical work on long-wave rays
because glass is opaque, itself becomes opaque. Further progress in
the important region between 17 and 50 microns depends on finding
a new transparent medium. Experiments by Mr. Aldrich have
shown that potassium iodide is suitable. But hitherto this substance
has yielded no crystals bigger than buckshot. Fortunately, new
methods devised for war purposes seem likely to furnish large crys-
tals of this substance and there is great hope that the investigation
of atmospheric transparency may soon be carried further.

The total solar eclipse of June 8, 1918, was observed at Lakin,
Kans., by Mr. Aldrich, of the Observatory, with two assistants. Some
good photographs of the solar corona and other phenomena were
secured. Throughout the afternoon and early night hours of June
8 and 9 observations were made with the pyranometer. The results
“measure the gradual diminution of the radiation of the sun and
of the brightness of the sky as the eclipse progressed, the outgoing
radiation of the earth’s surface during totality, the gradual increase
of sun and sky radiation afterwards, their decline toward sunset,
and the outgoing radiation from the earth’s surface after nightfall.”

Investigations at Mount Wilson of the variability of the sun have
been continued and improved. Observations were also made at
Hump Mountain, N. C., but that station was abandoned as too
cloudy, and in June, 1918, a station believed to be exceptionally well
located was established near Calama in Chile at an altitude of 2,250
meters where meteorological records indicate 300 days per year
favorable for solar constant work. This station is supported by a
grant from the Hodgkins fund. It is in charge of Mr. A. F. Moore
and is exceptionally well equipped.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES.

The total number of packages handled by the International Ex-
change Service during the year was 266,946, weighing 182,825 pounds,
as compared with 399,695 pounds in 1917, the decrease being due
almost entirely to war conditions.

The operations of the exchange service have been somewhat cur-
tailed during the past year by the impossibility at times of obtaining

136650°—20—_3

22 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

cargo space. This condition and the excessively high freight rates
necessitated shipments by mail where this could be done advan-
tageously. Notwithstanding the scarcity of shipping, it is significant
that governmental licensing boards for imports and exports, both of
this country and of Great Britain, have recognized the importance of
keeping open the interchange of scientific information by granting
licenses to the Institution and its agents for the transmission of this
material. Only three consignments of exchanges have been lost
through hostile action since the beginning of the war.

In the interchange of Government publications 91 sets of United
States governmental documents were received for distribution to
designated depositories in foreign countries.

INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC
LITERATURE.

The United States Bureau of the International Catalogue of Scien-
tific Literature is carried on by the Smithsonian Institution by means
of a congressional appropriation. The central bureau is in London,
where data from regional bureaus are assembled and published in
series of annual catalogues. The war has very greatly interfered
with this work, some countries being so much in arrears in their con-
tributions toward its support as to necessitate unusually large sub-
scriptions from several institutions.

As its name ‘indicates, the catalogue is made up of bibliographical
references to scientific literature in various countries. The United
States bureau since 1910 has collected data for this country, aggregat-
ing more than 350,000 reference cards. The 17 annual volumes issued
in London are sold at an annual subscription price of $85, chiefly to
large reference libraries and important scientific institutions, the
aes covering in part the cost of the publication.

At the yan | convention in London in 1910 a committee was
authorized to secure cooperation with other similar organizations in
the preparation of the catalogue and to broaden its scope to include
technical industries closely allied to researches in pure science. This
would not only lead to economy of labor but would provide a uniform
reference to the literature of all sciences.

NECROLOGY.

WILLIAM JOEL STONKH.

William Joel Stone, A. B., LL. D., United States Senator, regent
of the Smithsonian Institution, was born in Madison County, Ky.,
May 7, 1848, and died April 14, 1918. Mr. Stone was educated at
Missouri University, which later conferred upon him the degree of

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. mae

LL. D. He was admitted to the bar in 1869, after which he was
successively prosecuting attorney of Vernon County, Mo., Repre-
sentative in the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth, and Fifty-first Congresses,
and governor of Missouri. He was a member of the Democratic
National Committee from 1896 to 1904, vice chairman of the com-
mittee from 1900 to 1904, and in 1903 was elected to the United
States Senate, to which office he was twice reelected. He was regent
of the Smithsonian Institution from 1913 until his death.

CHARLES WARREN FAIRBANKS.

Charles Warren Fairbanks, A. B., A. M., LL. D., twenty-sixth
Vice President of the United States, regent of the Smithsonian In-
stitution, was born in Union County, Ohio, May 11, 1852; died
June 4, 1918. Mr. Fairbanks was educated at Ohio Wesleyan Uni-
versity, was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1874, and established prac-
tice at Indianapolis, Ind. He was delegate and chairman in several
national political conventions, United States Senator from Indiana
from 1897 to 1905, Vice President of the United States from 1905
to 1909. During his term as Vice President he was ex oflicio regent
of the Smithsonian Institution, and was again regent by resolution
of Congress from 1912 until his death.

Respectfully submitted.
Cuarues D, Waxcort, Secretary.

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APPENDEX 1.

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.

Sir: Owing to the death on July 16, 1918, of Mr. Richard Rathbun,
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the
National Museum, the duty devolves on me of submitting the follow-
ing report on the operations of the United States National Museum
for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918:

WAR ACTIVITIES.

During the trying conditions that have prevailed in the United
States since it entered the war, the National Museum has demon-
strated its value as a national asset in many ways. Members of its
staff of experts, its great collections, its laboratories, and all the in-
formation in its possession, have been placed unreservedly at the serv-
ice of the executive departments and other Government agencies, and
have been freely used by a number of them. Some of its exhibition
halls have been closed to visitors and turned into office quarters for
one of the important war bureaus of the Government. Facilities for
the comfort and recreation of officers and men stationed in the vicinity
and drilling on the Mall have been provided in the buildings, and the
reading rooms of the libraries have been equipped with tables and
writing materials for all men in uniform.

Its department of geology has been frequently called upon to fur-
nish the Bureau of Standards, Naval Experiment Station, Depart-
ment of Agriculture, Geological Survey, the Carnegie Institution, and
various arsenals, materials for experimental work. A single call from
the Bureau of Standards embraced 27 varieties of minerals, many of
which were rare. To meet all of these demands, it has been neces-
sary to make trips into the field to secure additional supplies. At the
request of the National Research Council the head curator of this
department has taken over the entire work of securing optical quartz
for the needs of the United States and of Great Britain, involving a
large volume of correspondence and travel to different points.

The division of mineral technology has concentrated its activities
for the year upon the interrelationships, and consequent interdepend-
ence, existing in the industries sustained by mineral resources. In
addition to instructive exhibits, the curator and his assistants, in the
solution of the problems connected with the fertilizér, sulphur, fuel,
and power situations, have prepared for publication pamphlets which

25

26 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

have been not only in great demand by publishers of technical papers,
engineers, and business enterprises interested, but of particular value
to the Government bureaus handling these matters. They have fur-
nished, also, a large amount of data to the Shipping Board, the fuel
and fertilizer administrations, and the War and Navy Departments,
including suggestions for insuring a sustained source of oil, and for
the systematic assemblage of industrial data as a basis for reconstruc-
tional work in man power.

The division of physical anthropology has furnished a large
amount of information on raeial questions, particularly relating to
the Balkans, to the National Research Council, and the Army and
Navy Intelligence Bureaus.

In the conservation of food, the curator of the division of textiles,
having charge of food and animal products, cooperated with the
Food Administration in planning graphic exhibits for use through-
out the country on the subject of conservation. He was also ap-
pointed exhibits director in the District of Columbia and served as
chairman of the campaign committee to carry out food conservation
in the District. Incidentally he has prepared and placed on exhibi-
tion an instructive exhibit of foods in the National Museum. Infor-
mation was also furnished by him to the United States Shipping
Board on raw commodities, and assistance in working out a system
for classifying commercial data on vegetable fats and oils.

The Museum photographer has rendered valuable assistance in
connection with the organization of laboratories in the War and
Navy Departments, and also in confidential matters.

Other lines of work in which the Museum was active included geo-
logical and biological problems arising in gas warfare, peat investi-
gations, questions in connection with the construction of concrete
ships and other similar problems, the translating of communica-
tions, etc.

Since the war commenced 24 employees of the Museum have been
granted furloughs to enter the military service of the country.

Bureau of War Risk Insurance.—In October, 1917, at the request
of the President of the United States, space in the natural history -
building of the Museum was placed at the disposal of the newly or-
ganized Bureau of War Risk Insurance of the Treasury Department,
the foyer on the ground floor and the adjoining rooms being con-
verted into offices for the preliminary stages of the work. By re-
arranging some exhibition halls and by closing others, additional
space was given for the purpose from time to time as the force of the
bureau increased, so that at the close of the fiscal year the bureau
occupied 69,286 square feet in the foyer, adjoining rooms, auditorium,
and ranges on the ground floor, and in the rotunda and the exhibi-
tion halls on the first floor, extending from the center of the north

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 2G

hall around east through the southern section of the west hall, pro-
viding accommodations for 3,059 employees. This occupancy nec-
essarily involved many changes and inconveniences, including the
closing of the auditorium, with the cancellation of meetings and
congresses. The importance of the work with which the bureau
is charged—not only of providing insurance for the soldier and sailor,
but of paying to their dependent families the allotments made by
them and by the Government—more than justified any and all sac-
rifices required, and the heartiest cooperation and assistance was
cheerfully rendered by the entire staff of the Museum.

On July 16, 1918, at the further request of the President, the
Board of Regents closed the natural history building to the public,
in order to make every foot of space in the exhibition halls available
for the Bureau of War Risk Insurance.

COLLECTIONS.

The additions to the collections, received in 1,288 accessions, aggre-
gated approximately 142,902 specimens and articles, classified by sub-
jects as follows: Anthropology, 11,058; zoology, 61,537; botany,
38,123; geology and mineralogy, 11,370; paleontology, 17,896; tex-
tiles, woods, medicines, and other miscellaneous animal and vege-
table products, 1,532; mineral technology, 308; and National Gallery
of Art, 1,078. Seven hundred and eighty-one lots of material were
received from various parts of the country for examination and
report.

Space here permits the mention only of some of the important
additions of the year.

Anthropology.—tThe ethnological collections were increased by
some 400 specimens collected in Celebes by Mr. H. C. Raven and pre-
sented by Dr. W. L. Abbott; examples of the work of the Dyaks of
Borneo, donated by Mr. Alfred M. Erskine; African, Chinese, Fili-
pino, and Porto Rican ethnologica from Miss Josephine A. Rohrer;
baskets from the Koasati Indians, a pottery-making series of the
Catawba Indians, Sioux and Chippewa objects, and Voodoo drums
and charms from Haiti.

Through explorations under the Smithsonian Institution came
relics from ancient cliff and cavern dwellings in New Mexico col-
lected by Dr. Walter Hough, and archeological objects from Utah
gathered by Mr. Neil M. Judd. The Museum of the American
Indian, Heye Foundation, sent an exchange of ancient Indian relics
from the Virgin Islands, including stone implements and pottery.
Stone implements were also received from Mr, J. G. Braecklein, and
prehistoric implements gathered in Mexico from the Bureau of
American Ethnology. Effigy earthen vessels from the Casas
Grandes, Mexico, were donated by Miss Edith Symington, and an-

28 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

tique pottery with glaze color designs from Arizona by Mr. Victor J.
Evans. The Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology, Toronto, con-
tributed, by exchange, important Old World archeological objects,
including Babylonian inscribed cuneiform tablets, stone implements
from Egypt, France, and England, bronze and iron implements
from Greece and Italy, besides Egyptian pottery, beads, coptic cloth,
and arrowheads. A unique roasting spit found near the Colosseum,
a marble head of Hercules, and some Roman coins were among the
objects donated by Capt. Clarence Wiener of the British Army;
of particular interest also were a bronze lamp, a rosary of Ken-
tucky coffee beans, and a prayer book and selections from the Scrip-
tures arranged for Jews serving in the Army and Navy of the
United States.

The division of physical anthropology was enriched by Indian
skulls and other bones from Alaska, Florida, Illinois, and the Navaho
Reservation, a skull from the French Congo, an interesting cranium
from the Malay Archipelago, a skull and part of the skeleton of an
Eskimo, various other skeletal specimens, and plastic restorations of
certain supposedly early man.

The original full-sized Langley flying machine of 1903 and a dupli-
cate set of cylinders for the engine were deposited in the Museum
by the Institution. Begun by former Secretary S. P. Langley for the
War Department in 1898, in the interest of national defense, this
machine has been demonstrated to be the first aeroplane constructed
capable of sustained free flight carrying a man.

To the mechanical collections were added also revolvers and swords
of Santo Domingo manufacture; modern firearms of English and
American make, including a British Enfield rifle, model of 1914, and
an up-to-date high-power sporting rifle; three guns which belonged to
the late William Cost Johnson, Member of Congress from Maryland,
1833-1843; primitive appliances used with sporting rifles from 1840
to 1870; a crude iron box with flintlock attachment designed for firing
an explosive; molds for casting lead bullets; a signal pistol used by the
United States Navy in 1884; and a blunderbuss said to have been
used in defending mail coaches running between Baltimore and
Washington in the olden time.

Mr. Hugo Worch added 26 pieces to his previous munificent dona-
tion illustrating the history and development of the pianoforte, and
including dulcimers, spinets, clavichords, harpsichords, and organs,
increasing the extent of this notable collection to 143 instruments.

The J. Lewis Ellis and Olive M. Ellis Memorial Collection was
increased by an extensive series of articles in glass, porcelain, silver,
and embroidered handkerchiefs and other textiles. Examples of
Venetian glass, showing miniature portraits and landscapes by the
famous glassworker, Jacopo Franchini, were received from Cavaliere

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 29

Salvatore Arbib through the American consul at Venice, Mr. B.
Harvey Carroll, jr. Two bronze vases presented by the Government
of Japan in 1884 to Commander John B. Bernadou, United States
Navy, reached the Museum through bequest of his widow. Among
loans were period china and Dresden groups and Japanese and Chi-
nese ivory carvings.

To the division of graphic arts came woodcut blocks and progres-
sive proofs from them, the work of Gustave Baumann; specimens
of intaglio color printing from Miss Gabrielle De V. Clements; illus-
trations of the new process “brulegravure,” from the inventor, Mr.
John Williams Robbins, and an akrograph portrait made by Lord
Kelvin.

The historical relics included a flag flying on the Zeppelin Z-49 at
the time of its capture at Bourbonne les Bains, France, October 17,
1917, by Lieut. Lefevre, of the French Army, which reached the
Museum by transfer from the United States Marine Corps, through
Maj. Gen. George Barnett, commandant. This was accompanied by
small fragments of the gas bag and of the outer envelope of the Z-49.
Another trophy, received through President Wilson, was the Ameri-
can flag made at Islay House, Islay, Scotland, for use at the funerals
of American soldiers lost with the transport Tuscania, February 5,
1918.

The original note written by Gen. U. S. Grant to Lieut. Gen.
Simon B. Buckner, Confederate States Army, demanding the un-
conditional surrender of Fort Donelson, was contributed by Mrs.
Glenn Ford McKinney, and a large collection of relics pertaining to
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, United States Army, including a
number of swords, came as a gift from his son, Hon. George B.
McClellan.

Among other historical relics received were a gold watch owned
by Maj. Gen. C. C. Washburn; uniform chapeaux, epaulets, military
insignia, and uniform buttons worn by Col. John N. Macomb,
United States Army; a uniform coat of Gen. Samuel Jones, Con-
federate States Army; a fragment of the Confederate military bal-
loon made in Richmond, Va., of silk dresses; relics of the War of
1812-1815, the War with Mexico, and the Civil War, brought together
by Bvt. Maj. Gen. Edward D. Townsend, United States Army; a
sword carried by Col. William Dudley during the War of 1812-1815;
and a snuffbox given by Rear Admiral Charles Stewart, United
States Navy, to Coxswain William C. Parsons, who in turn pre-
sented it to Rear Admiral George H. Preble, United States Navy.
The naval service was further represented by relics relating to Ad-
miral David G. Farragut, from the estate of his son Loyall Farra-
gut, augmenting the large collection received a year ago. A sword
and pair of flintlock pistols owned by Brig. Gen. Daniel Roberdeau

30 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

during the Revolution, and a spyglass and steel tape measure used
by Lieut. Col. Isaac Roberdeau, when assisting in laying out the
city of Washington, were among objects lent to the Museum, as was
also a portion of the set of chinaware presented by Gen. Lafayette
to Mr. and Mrs. George Graham, of Virginia.

To the historical costumes were added knee breeches and waist-
coat worn during the Revolution by Col. Tench Tilghman; the
official costume and sword of William L. Dayton, American minister
to France in 1861-1864; the official costume and sword of William L.
Dayton, jr., secretary to the American Legation in Paris during that
period; and a satin dress worn by Mrs. Annette Henry Alger, wife of
Russell A. Alger, Secretary of War, 1897-1899.

Particularly noteworthy is the collection of medallic Lincolniana
assembled through many years by Mr. Robert Hewitt, of New York
City, and presented by Mrs. Hewitt, consisting of 1,200 medallic
souvenirs, including medallions, plaques, medals, coins, tokens, and
badges. The Robert Hewitt collection is remarkable for the very
wide range of subjects and types of numismatic material which it
covers, and constitutes an epitomized medallic record of the career
of President Lincoln. The United States Mint contributed a large
series of bronze replicas of United States military and naval service
medals, commemorative medals, and medals of award.

The philatelic material in the Museum was augmented by 3,186
specimens. Of the 2,706 transferred from the Post Office Depart-
ment, 1,506 represented new issues received by the Department from
the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union.

Biology—While the various divisions of this department report a
decrease both quantitatively and qualitatively in the additions of the
year, it is notable that they relate in most instances to the floras and
faunas of foreign lands remote from the scene of war and war
preparations.

Another trip to Haiti by the indefatigable collector and generous
friend of the Museum, Dr. W. L. Abbott, resulted in important
material for the Museum from that and adjoining islands, including
new and rare forms of birds and reptiles. Mr. H. C. Raven, operat-
ing under the auspices of Dr. Abbott, continued collecting birds and
mammals in Celebes, moving toward the middle of the island and
visiting one or more of the high peaks. He obtained interesting
species and genera not found at lower levels, some of the species
apparently new to science and several genera new to the Museum
collection. Coming from the border country between north and south
Celebes, the faunas of which differ considerably, the full significance
of the series can only be appreciated when the entire Celebes
collection has been carefully studied.

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 31

The Bureau of Science at Manila contributed a large lot of plants
from Amboina, Borneo, and the Philippines. From the Philippines
came also an important collection of named chaetognaths transferred
by the Bureau of Fisheries, and land shells donated by Mr. Walter F.
Webb; and butterflies from the Philippines and Yucatan were con-
tributed by Mr. B. Preston Clark. “Hawaii sent a large lot of plants
collected by Mr. A. S. Hitchcock, besides algae and mollusks.

South America was represented by the important collections of
mammals, amphibians, and reptiles collected by the Peruvian expe-
dition of 1914-15, under the auspices of Yale University and the
National Geographic Society, adding the first fully representative
series in these groups received by the Museum from any large area
of South America. The Museum has been and is even now extremely
deficient in material from that continent, and the collections pre-
sented by the authorities responsible for this expedition are therefore
of the utmost value as forming the basis of future work by American
zoologists in that long-neglected field. A collection of fishes from
western Colombia, received by exchange from the Carnegie Museum,
Pittsburgh, supplements material obtained a few years ago in connec-
tion with the Smithsonian biological survey of the Isthmus of Pan-
ama, as did also a series of plants from Panama contributed by Mr.
Ellsworth P. Killip. From Argentina, Venezuela, Curacao, and the
Galapagos Islands came large lots of plants.

South and Central America, as well as western United States, were
represented in the donation by Dr. Harrison G. Dyar, custodian of
Lepidoptera, of personal collections aggregating some 35,000 insects
and including some 15,000 named Lepidoptera, 1,000 named sawflies,
and large series of mosquitoes and miscellaneous Diptera.

A new genus and species of river dolphin from Tung Ting Lake,
China, afforded a remarkable novelty in the increment to the mammal
collection, belonging to a group of porpoises which includes nu-
merous extinct forms found fossil in Europe and the eastern United
States, its only known living relative occurring in the large rivers
of South America.

In northern China interesting series of birds, mammals, fishes, rep-
tiles, and insects were collected for the Museum by Mr. Arthur de C.
Sowerby, who has lately returned to England for war duty. These
supplement collections made by him in that country for the Museum
during the past 10 years. From China came also some 1.200 plants
from the Canton Christian College, and Chinese and Japanese plants
were obtained from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

The Collins-Garner Congo expedition, on which the Museum is rep-
resented by Mr. C. R. W. Aschemeier, sent large lots of well-prepared
mammals and birds and smaller numbers of insects, plants, and shells
from the French Congo, greatly needed for comparison with the

32 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

remarkable East African series in the Museum. Of birds alone this
contains 10 or more species hitherto not possessed by the Museum
and at least 1 genus.

The Public Library Museum and Art Gallery of Western Aus-
tralia, at Perth, supplied in exchange a number of particularly de-
sirable mammals, birds, reptiles, aid batrachians from Australia.

Even the Arctic contributed to the additions of the year. Nearly
700 crustaceans and mollusks collected by the Canadian Stefansson
Expedition to the Arctic, 1913-1916, were presented by the Dominion
Commission of Fisheries, Department of Naval Service, Ottawa, in
recognition of services rendered by members of the Museum staff in
identifying material.

During his explorations in British Columbia, Secretary Walcott
collected for the Museum a number of large mammals, including a
family of moose, which form a valuable addition to the North Amer-
ican series of mammals. The activities of various Government agen-
cies, mainly the Bureau of Fisheries and the several bureaus of the
Department of Agriculture, resulted in much material for the
Museum from the United States, representing practically every
branch of biology and including particularly large series of grasses
and insects. Of North American material mention should also be
made of especially well prepared bird skins and skeletons from
southern California presented by Mr. Edward J. Brown; marine
invertebrates collected in Magdalena Bay by the donor, Mr. C. R.
Orcutt; a killer whale from Florida representing a genus new to the
coasts of the United States contributed by Mr. Lawrence S. Chubb,
and plants from Alaska and California from Prof. W. L. Jepson.

Various localities, both domestic and foreign, were represented in
an exchange from the Boston Society of Natural History of over
2,300 crustaceans and mollusks, and some 12,000 specimens of Ameri-
can and foreign bird eggs were lent to the Museum by Dr. T. W.
Richards, U. S. Navy.

Geology.—Special attention was paid to building up the collection
of minerals heretofore classed as rare earths and rare metals, which
have become of importance through the outbreak of the war. A
group of exhibition specimens secured mainly through the efforts of
Mr. F. L. Hess consists of a large mass of scheelite ore weighing
2,614 pounds, showing the full width of the vein and said to be the
largest mass of tungsten ore yet mined; about 100 pounds of molyb-
denum-copper ore showing the interesting geological associations of
molybdenite; partly oxidized tungsten showing the atmospheric
alteration of the common tungsten ore mineral wolframite; scheelite
ore replacing limestone and showing unusually large cleavage sur-
faces of the ore mineral; a sawn mass of brecciated ferberite ore—
the so-called “ peanut ore;” a specimen of molybdenite; molybdenite

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 33

and molybdite in altered rhyolite; a mass of the newly discovered
sulphide tungstenite; crystallized ferberite; and a collection of 15
ores and minerals, including molybdenite from Canada, carnotite
replacing wood, ferberite in the form of iridescent crystals, and a
specimen of the rare uranium-vanadium mineral uranite impreg-
nating friable sandstone.

The exhibit of steel-hardening metals was further augmented by
specimens of vanadium ores with incrustations of crystals of the
ore minerals vanadinite and descloizite. Other gifts of interest in-
clude a series of specimens from the famous nitrate deposits of
Chile showing the caliche and its natural associations, a cross-fiber
vein of asbestos showing unusually long pure fibers, and sandstone
impregnated with the blue molybdenum sulphate, ilsemannite.

Collections made for the division by members of the staff included
large exhibition specimens illustratmg unconformities, conglom-
erates, rock phosphate, and phosphatic limestone secured by Dr. R. S.
Bassler; albite crystals of unusual type, columbite, black mica, stau-
rolite, bauxite, and quartz, the last named mainly for use by the Sig-
nal Corps of the Army, collected by Dr. George P. Merrill; rocks to
illustrate weathering, obtained by Dr. J. C. Martin; sphalerite with
associated minerals and brecciated chert, and apatite and hematite,
collected by Dr. Edgar T. Wherry.

A mass of graphite, showing an unusual columnar structure, was
transferred from the United States Geological Survey, as were also
blocks, fragments, and pebbles from an Alaskan glacial ground mo-
raine of Silurian age, and a choice figured specimen of arborescent
calcareous sinter from the Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone
National Park.

Of meteorites there were added a newly found stone from Eustis,
Fla.; a slice of the Carleton siderite; 280 grams of an undescribed
stone from Kansas City, Mo.; and an 826-gram specimen of the
Burkett (Tex.) meteoric iron.

In the division of mineralogy and petrology gifts of exceptional
value from Mr. C. S. Bement included particularly fine exhibition
specimens of hetaerolite, crystals of rhodonite, zincite, leucophoeni-
cite, manganosite crystals, a cut gem, a free crystal and an embedded
erystal of willemite, and willemite with friedelite and white zeolite,
all from Franklin, N. J.; calamine, pyrite, and milky quartz, from
Colorado; free crystals of scheelite and scheelite crystals attached to
chalcopyrite, from Mexico; an exceptionally fine, large twinned crys-
tal of quartz and an unusual crystal of danburite, from Japan; the
rare mineral achtaragdite and a variety of vesuvianite—wiluite—
from Siberia.

The American consul at Changsha, China, Mr. Nelson T. Johnson,
donated a specimen of twinned cinnabar crystals from China, show-

34 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ing seven groups of crystals more than half an inch in diameter, and .
as far as known the finest of its kind in the United States.

Other additions included crystals of tetrahedrite embedded in
quartz, galena with crystals of anglesite, gem stones of variscite,
opalized shells from the Cretaceous of South Australia, beryl, milky
quartz crystals, crystals of selenite, large pyrites, aragonite crystals,
besides type specimens presented by Dr. Henry 8S. Washington, of the
Geophysical Laboratory, and minerals described by Prof. A. S.
Eakle, of the University of California, and by Dr. W. F. Hillebrand,
of the Bureau of Standards.

Specimens illustrating the geology and ore deposits of the Tintic
district, Utah, the basis of Professional Paper 107, of the Geological
Survey, by Prof. Waldemar Lindgren and Dr. G. F. Loughlin, were
received as a transfer from the Survey, and an interesting series of
rocks collected in the Orient by Dr. J. P. Iddings, in 1910. was
formally turned over to the Museum.

Of the increment to the collections of invertebrate paleontology
mention should first be made of about 10,000 specimens of Middle
Cambrian fossils obtained by Secretary Walcott from the celebrated
locality at Burgess Pass, British Columbia, comprising the study
and reserve material of this wonderful fauna, the types of which
were previously received as were these, by deposit from the Smith-
sonian Institution.

A number of large fossils, mainly corals, and fossiliferous limestone
slabs were collected by Dr. Bassler for enlarging the coral reef in-
stalled in the exhibition series last year.

Well preserved invertebrate fossils from the Cretaceous formation
of Tennessee constituted the most important addition to the Mesozoic
collections. Of interest both for exhibition and study were fossil
insects preserved in copal resin, collected by Prof. D. S. Martin by
searching the gum copal from the Pleistocene deposits of East
Africa shipped in large quantities to the varnish factories in the
vicinity of Brooklyn.

Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossils especially selected to round out the
study series of European forms, and ammonites from the Jurassie
rocks of France needed in the revision of the exhibit of these forms,
were secured by exchange. To the study series were added Tertiary
fossils from the Pacific coast, and the Devonian stratigraphic series
was increased by a rather complete representation of fossils from
the Hackberry and Hamilton groups of Iowa. Small lots of well-
preserved Eocene insects and a fossil fish collected in Colorado were
of interest because of their rarity.

The section of vertebrate paleontology secured from the United
States Geological Survey, the most important collection of fossil
turtle remains ever brought together from the southwestern part of

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 35

the United States, many specimens being suitable for exhibition and
no less than 49 are sufficiently well preserved to be identified specifi-
cally. Other well-preserved turtles acquired included the type of a
box turtle described by Dr. O. P. Hay, and an example from the
Cretaceous of Georgia, valuable chiefly on account of its locality.

Fossil bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and horse collected for
the Museum in Siberia by Mr. John Koren to supplement the ma-
terial obtained by the Koren expedition in 1914-15, included a beau-
tifully perfect mammoth humerus over 3 feet in length, indicating
an animal of magnificent proportions.

Type material comprised the important additions in paleobotany.
Fossil plants from Wyoming, the basis of a paper by Dr. F. H.
Knowlton, were transferred from the survey; two lots from South
America were contributed by Prof. E. W. Berry, the first from the
Tertiary rocks of Bolivia, valuable not only as type specimens, but in
furnishing data for additions to the geologic history of that country,
the second from the Miocene of Peru; and specimens from Beaver
County, Okla., described by Prof. Berry, were donated at his re-
quest by Prof. E. C. Case.

Textiles—tThe efforts of domestic manufacturers to take advan-
tage of the opportunity afforded by the war is shown by upholstery
velvets and velours manufactured in this country from mercerized
cotton, mohair, or silk, or combinations of these, including antique
venetians made of mercerized cotton in imitation of old French and
Italian fabrics and intended to take their place at a reasonable price.

The silk goods series was augmented by new figured novelty silk
representing beautiful effects in the cross-dyeing of combinations of
cotton, wool, artificial silk and spun silk, brocaded piece-dyed satins,
figured cross-dyed crépe georgette, crépe meteore, and fabrics printed
in designs suggesting water movements, silk poplins, georgette crépe
printed in spiderweb-like design called “camouflage,” and suggest-
ing Japanese batik work, “* Moon-Glo” crépe, a novelty crépe weave
fabric with metalliclike surface, and a rough surface fabric printed
with an all-over oriental design.

Fine silk fabrics ornamented with attractive designs by means of
discharge printing are believed to be among the best examples of this
method of printing fabrics that have been produced in the United
States. These included Luxor taffeta, in Persian, Saracenic, and
Italian designs of the eighth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries,
copies from ancient Peruvian fabrics, and Wedgwood prints which
carry out remarkably the relief effect copied from Wedgwood
pottery.

Woolen fabrics of the worsted type, woven from combed wools, are
well represented in the Museum collections, but the carded woolen
industry has not been adequately covered heretofore. Particularly

36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

welcome therefore were some excellent examples of this type of fab-
ric, comprising broadcloth, beaver, zibeline, chinchilla, flannels, over-
coatings, and a strong corkscrew-weave fabric used for shoe tops.
Owing to the need of conserving wool for use in the manufacture of
military clothing, new types of fabrics for civilian use have been put
on the market by manufacturers. One of these reaching the museum,
“ Honey cloth,” is a cotton warp worsted having the weft threads
composed of one-fourth mohair and three-fourths wool.

To the series of implements used in preparing and weaving textile
fibers were added an old flax breaker and two small looms of the
types employed in producing Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries, to-
gether with a repairing board used in mending such fabrics. Some
of the first embroidery machines brought to the United States from
Europe are doing war work by embroidering service insignia for the
Government. A contribution of 107 specimens of such official emblems
of the United States Army, the United States Navy, the Food Admin-
istration, and the Boy Scouts of America, on standard uniform fab-
rics, makes a popular exhibit.

In emphasizing the importance of food conservation a large series
of foodstuffs received as gifts from manufacturers or as transfers
or loans of Government property enlarged the old section of foods
and permitted an exhibit along the line of the Food Administration.
Besides series of wheat substitutes, examples of the conservation of
surplus fruits and vegetables by dehydrating and by canning were
secured, and material to show the high food value of soy beans and
peanuts. An exhibit of 74 models of ordinary articles of diet, each
one representing a quantity of food sufficient to produce a heat value
of 100 calories, shows graphically the relative heat value of the vari-
ous articles in a manner easily comprehended by everyone.

Hand samples of woods produced by 344 trees indigenous to North
America, carefully determined in the preparation of the Tenth Census
Report as to value as fuel and for construction, reached the Museum
from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the New
York State College of Forestry contributed a collection of wood
specimens representing the more important species in use in the in-
dustries of New York State. Other additions to the section of wood
technology included log sections cut from trees felled in Smithsonian
and Seaton Parks in recently clearing the ground for the erection of
temporary buildings for the War Department; an elaborate display
of “ Korelock ” doors; a standard aeroplane propeller and an impeller
also of laminated wood construction; specimens showing steps in the
manufacture of a baseball bat, of a wagon wheel, of an automobile
wheel, of a saw handle, of a billiard cue; and various specimens of
California redwood.

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 37

In the division of medicine efforts were concentrated on obtaining
exhibition material of educational rather than scientific value. Illus-
trating organotherapy was a series of fresh specimens of glands and
glandular tissues together with finished products of the different
forms in which they are administered. Specimens illustrating the
manufacture of pepsin and the finished product in various forms in-
cluded a sample of pure pepsin with a standardized strength of
1:20,000, that is, it has the power to dissolve 20,000 times its own
weight of freshly coagulated and disintegrated egg albumen. Other
exhibits of crude vegetable drugs, synthetic medicinal chemicals, in-
organic chemicals, plant constituents, opium and its products, cin-
chona bark, aloes, and cascara sagrada were secured.

Mineral technology—tIn assembling collections representative of
mineral technology, comprehensive popular exhibits had been ar-
ranged at the beginning of the year, comprising abrasives, asbestos,
asphalt, cements, coal, copper, glass, gold, graphite, iron, lead, lime,
mica, petroleum, plaster, salt, sulphur, and tin. Under existing con-
ditions it was decided to confine activity to enhancement of what
was already established, deferring for the time being the various
projects for numerical expansion. Accordingly an exhibit was added
to the coal series showing the scope of recent American enterprise
in the direction of coal product manufacture. It consists of a 200-
pound lump of bituminous coal with derivatives in the form of dye-
stuffs and other chemicals to the number of 233. The series treating
of gold was enriched by a large panoramic model showing the occur-
rence and the various methods employed in winning the metal. The
magnificent panoramic model of the Bingham Canyon Copper Min-
ing operations was completed, as was also the model, in part placed
on display a year ago, showing the operations of lead manufacture.

In an effort to be of service in the present emergency of war five
lines of investigation, which have been under consideration for sev-
eral years in assembling exhibits, have been developed in the course
of the year. These comprised fertilizer materials, sulphur, coal
products, power, and petroleum. To mobilize the economic forces
of production and to fill in their gaps is as necessary as that of
effecting the requisite military organization, and far more intricate.
The difficulty in building up deficiencies as they become apparent
lies in the complexity of interrelationship. Especially is this true
among the chemically conducted industries. First, there is the group
relationship of progressive segregation, notably instanced in the
coal-product series, wherein the isolation of any one product entails
the work leading to the isolation of many others. Then comes the
group relationship of recombination into usable form, as in the case
of fertilizer manufacture, where an entirely different. basis of inter-

136650°—20——4

38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

dependence is established drawing variously upon the other groups
and linking them together. Thus to build up a deficiency in any one
specific direction it often becomes necessary to carry the work of
reconstruction far afield.

As applied to mineral derivatives, the question of interrelationship
has been a subject of special study in the division of mineral tech-
nology from the time of its establishment, and it was felt from the
outset that here lay the chief opportunity to render service. When
the country’s deficiency in fixed nitrogen came up for consideration
some two years ago occasion was taken to point out* that a nitrogen
situation as a thing apart and to itself did not and could not exist—
that it was inextricably involved with the coal-product situation
and fertilizer situation, and that the only remedy lay in giving heed
to this interrelationship. So it is with the work of mobilizing the
various other chemically conducted industries on a war-time basis.
The need of giving advance heed to this question was appreciated
by our enemies—Germany entered the war as fully prepared in this
field as in the military branches. It was inadequately appreciated
by those who eventually came to be our allies, however; while in
the United States, up to the actual outbreak of hostilities, it was
entirely disregarded as a national issue. Paramount among the
problems thus entailed are those presented by the industrial groups
having to do with the fertilizer materials necessary to an adequacy
of foodstuffs, and with the energy resources requisite to the work of
manufacture. In contributing to the solution of these two basic
problems, investigations projected by Mr. Chester G. Gilbert, com-
prising fertilizer materials, sulphur. coal products, power, and petro-
leum, have resulted in the publication of pamphlets on the inter-
pretation of the fertilizer situation, industrial independence in sul-
phur, an object lesson in the resource administration in coal products,
and the coal resource and its full utilization. Papers on power and
petroleum were completed but not published at the end of the year.
In view of the tendency toward duplication in the scientific work
in Government departments, it is of special note that it is not pur-
posed to initiate any new scientific or technical lines of work, but
merely to interpret technical facts in popular form. This is not only
of vital importance but it is peculiarly the function of the National

Museum.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART.

In the last report it was stated that foundations had been laid for
a granite structure on the Smithsonian Reservation to house the
Charles L. Freer Collection. Though some delays were encountered

1Sources of nitrogen compounds in the United States, by Chester G. Gilbert, Smith-
sonian Institution Special Publication No, 2421, June, 1916.

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 39

in procuring materials and labor, the construction of this building
has progressed during the year as rapidly as could be expected, con-
sidering the vast undertakings of the Government in constructional
enterprises in Washington due to the war. By June 30,1918, all of
the exterior walls were erected to entablature height and about half
of the architrave and frieze courses of the entablature were set.
Four-fifths of the interior walls had risen to gallery ceiling height
and all others were well advanced. The marble walls of the court
were completed to about two-thirds of their ultimate height. The
basement and first floor construction were completed, the drainage
system below the subbasement floor finished, and 10 per cent of the
heating and ventilating duct work in the subbasement installed.

During the year Mr. Freer increased the extent of his collection to
over 6,200 items by 928 additions, of which 20 are paintings by the
American artists Whistler, Tryon, Dewing, Melchers, Metcalf, Sar-
gent, and Brush; while the oriental objects, numbering 908, consist
of paintings, pottery, fabrics, jewelry, and objects of jade, bronze,
wood, stone, glass, and lacquer.

By bequest of Mrs. Mary Houston Eddy, of Washington, the gal-
lery received a collection of 12 paintings, 12 miniatures, 9 ivory
carvings, a Limoges enamel, a marble bust, a bronze statue, and mis-
cellaneous art objects, 140 items in all, to be known as the “A. R. and
M. H. Eddy Donation.” Other permanent acquisitions were por-
traits by Ossip Perelma of M. Boris Bakhmeteff, first ambassador to
the United States from the Russian Republic, and of Mr. Frank B.
Noyes, president of the Associated Press and editor of the Washing-
ton Star; a portrait of Vinnie Ream (Hoxie), by G. P. A. Healy; a
marble statue of Puck, by Harriet Hosmer; two miniatures by Isa-
bey, one of Napoleon I, the other of Marie Louise; two old English
silver snuff boxes and two large plaster landscape models made in
1902 of the park system proposed for the city of Washington by the
commission appointed by the Senate Committee on the District of
Columbia.

The special loan exhibitions consisted of a collection of Joseph
Pennell’s lithographs of war work in Great Britain and the United
States, displayed from November 1 to 24, 1917, with a special view
on the evening of the 1st; and a series of architectural drawings by
Charles Mason Remey, being preliminary designs showing varying
treatments in different styles of architecture of the proposed Bahai
Temple for Chicago, exhibited during March, 1918.

As elsewhere stated, the natural history building is, under normal
conditions, greatly overcrowded with the collections of its depart-
ments of biology, geology, and anthropology and of the art gallery,
nearly one-fourth of its space being given over to art in its various

40 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

forms. The need of considering the erection of a building exclu-
sively for the National Gallery of Art is pressing and should early
receive attention. The gallery has already failed to acquire many
rich gifts of art works because of the impossibility of caring for them
in the present buildings, and other cities are being enriched at its ex-
pense. Because of this unpreparedness, treasures of art of great
worth well within its reach have gone elsewhere. Art works more
than any other national possession typify advanced civilization, and
the public demands means of acquiring and keeping and facilities
for utilizing such. Most modern nations have made their capital
cities principal centers of art development and art accumulation, and
progress in this respect may well be regarded as an index of the de-
gree of advancement of the people.

MEETINGS AND CONGRESSES.

The facilities afforded by the Museum for meetings were in greater
demand than usual for governmental and scientific gatherings and
were fully utilized until the latter part of October, when the com-
mittee rooms were temporarily given over to the Bureau of War Risk
Insurance. Meetings continued to some extent to be held in the audi-
torium until the last of December, when all engagements of accomo-
dations were canceled, and the auditorium was also placed at the dis-
posal of that bureau.

The Washington Society of the Fine Arts, as customary, was
granted the auditorium for its lecture courses for the season, but held
only five at the Museum. One of the committee rooms was assigned
to the Anthropological Society of Washington and to the Federal
Photographic Society for their regular meetings for the winter.
The former used it but once, holding four other assemblies in the
auditorium, and the Photographic Society went elsewhere, though it
used the auditorium twice in July for exhibitions of motion pictures.

The American Public Health Association held a three-day session
in the auditorium, on health problems and opportunities of the war,
with a reception on the opening night, and the Medical Society of the
District of Columbia celebrated its centennial anniversary by an
afternoon meeting there.

The facilities of the Museum were used by various Government
departments for conferences (1) to formulate plans for the produc-
tion and conservation of the live-stock industry of the United States,
(2) in the interest of fall wheat and rye planting, (3) of State agents
on home demonstration work in the South, and (4) on home eco-
nomics; for the pathological seminar of the Bureau of Plant Indus-
try; for a lecture on horticultural work in China; for a meeting
of the women employees of the Department of Agriculture to discuss

REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 4]

participation in war activities; for a second liberty loan meeting
of Post Office Department employees; for two exhibitions of motion
pictures relating to Army aeronautics for the Signal Corps of the
United States Army; for a three-day school of instruction in the
furtherance of the work of the United States Food Administration;
and for lectures, on two occasions under the auspices of the National
Council of Women, on one under the District of Columbia Chapter
of the American Red Cross, and another under the Women’s Liberty
Loan Committee.

Before the auditorium was turned over to the Bureau of War Risk
Insurance, that bureau frequently made use of it for instructing and
organizing the field parties of officers and enlisted men who were to
be sent to the various camps to attend to the details relating to the
issuance of life insurance.

For two days the auditorium was given over to the annual meeting
of the Potato Association of America, and the Bureau of Commercial
Economics made use of it three times showing motion pictures of the
war, to Army officers, on the first two occasions, and to members of
the National Council of Defense on the last.

Besides the reception to the American Public Health Association
on the evening of October 18, there was a reception in the National
Gallery of Art on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of
lithographs of war work by Joseph Pennell on the evening of No-

vember 1.
MISCELLANEOUS.

Over 8,000 duplicate specimens, included in 8 regular sets of mol-
lusks, 5 regular sets of fossil invertebrates, and a number of special
sets, were distributed to schools and colleges. Exchanges for secur-
ing additions to the collections involved the use of about 23,227 dupli-
cates, while more than 11,000 specimens, chiefly botanical and zoologi-
cal, were lent to specialists for study.

The attendance of visitors at the natural history building agere-
gated 306,003 persons for week days and 95,097 for Sundays, being a
daily average of 977 for the former and 1,828 for the latter. At the
arts and industries building and the Smithsonian building, which are
open only on week days, the totals were, respectively, 161,298 and
67,224, and the daily averages 515 and 214.

The publications of the year consisted of the annual report, one
volume of proceedings, one volume of the contributions from the
National Herbarium, and three bulletins, besides 40 separate papers.
The latter comprised 28 from the proceedings, 4 from the contribu-
tions, 7 parts of bulletins, and a catalogue of a special Joan collection
in. the National Gallery of Art.

42 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The library obtained, by purchase, gift, and exchange, 6,162 vol-
umes, 42 parts of volumes, and 1,541 pamphlets. The more impor-
tant donations were the library of Biltmore Herbarium, and a large
series of pharmaceutical works transferred from the Hygienic Lab-
oratory.

Respectfully submitted.

W. ve C. Ravenet,

Administrative Assistant.
Dr. Cuartes D. WaAxcorrt,

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Ocrober 31, 1918.

APPENDIX’ 2.
REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY.

Sir: Pursuant to your request of July 3, I have the honor to sub-
mit the following report on the operations of the Bureau of Ameri-
can Ethnology during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1918, conducted
in accordance with the act of Congress approved June 12, 1917,
making provisions for the sundry civil expenses of the Government,
and in accordance with a plan of operations submitted by the ethnolo-
gist-in-charge and approved by the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution. The act referred to contains the following item:

American ethnology: For continuing ethnological researches among the
American Indians and the natives of Hawaii, including the excavation and
preservation of archzologic remains, under the direction of the Smithsonian
Institution, including necessary employees and the purchase of necessary books
and periodicals, $42,000.

The administrative affairs of the bureau prior to March 1, 1918,
were conducted by Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist-in-charge, when he
resigned to accept a position in the Museum of the American Indian
(Heye Foundation). On that date Dr. J. Walter Fewkes was ap-
pointed chief, and continued the administrative duties of the office to
the close of the year.

As the American Indian is rapidly losing many of his instructive
characteristics in his amalgamation into American citizenship, new
features of the future work of the bureau stand out prominently
pleading for investigation. Among these is the urgent necessity to
rescue linguistic, sociological, and mythological data of aboriginal
Indian life before its final extinction. When data now available
disappear, unless recorded, they are lost forever.

The excavation and repair for preservation of archeologic remains,
by no means a new activity of bureau work, is in the same condition.
Both anthropology and popular approval call for the advancement
and diffusion of knowledge by the bureau along this line.

In addition to their duties in “ continuing ethnological researches ”
among the American Indians the members of the staff have devoted
much time to matters germane to their work. Answers to many let-
ters received by the bureau can not be written offhand, but demand
investigation and often considerable consultation of authorities in
the library. Their requests are not confined to Indian ethnology, but
include a wide variety of questions on race mixture in the United

43

44 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

States, Old World anthropology, and the like. Although the staff
is made up of experts in the study of the American Indians and the
appropriation is limited to the study of our aborigines, the chief
has not shrunk from the necessity of contributing what information
he could on these related subjects, recognizing the need in the near
future of a Bureau of Ethnology.

The “ethnological researches” of individual members of the staff
the past year are outlined in the following pages.

At the close of the last fiscal year Mr. F. W. Hodge had begun
excavations at Hawikuh, one of the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” situ-
ated near the present pueblo of Zuni, N. Mex. This work was con-
tinued in the summer months and yielded a large and varied collec-
tion of artifacts, which are now in the Museum of the American
Indian (Heye Foundation).

The excavations were confined to the great refuse heaps that cover
the western side of the elevation on which the ruins are situated, the
maximum height of the hillock being 60 feet above the eastern valley.
It was believed that this refuse would be found to follow the config-
uration of a gradual slope, but this proved not to be the case, for the
farther the excavation was carried toward the ruined walls on the
summit the deeper the refuse was found to be, and continuous work
for nearly three months in this direction failed to reach a natural
slope or escarpment.

The removal of the refuse, which had reached a depth of 15 feet
when the work was suspended for the season, brought to light many
features of interest, for, as was expected from the character of the
surface soil, this great deposit of débris, consisting: largely of ash
and other refuse from the dwellings, interspersed with quantities of
broken pottery and other artifacts, strata of drift sand, building
refuse, etc., formed one of the cemeteries of the pueblo, or, one might
say, the western area of a single great cemetery that surrounded the
pueblo which, with its appurtenances, covers an area of approxi-
mately 756 by 850 feet, or nearly 15 acres. Excavation of perhaps
a fifth of the cemetery area resulted in uncovering 237 graves.

Excavation had not proceeded very far before remains of walls of
dwellings much older than those of historic Hawikuh were encoun-
tered on the floor of the original surface, 15 feet below the maximum
deposit of refuse; yet, as the work progressed, it was found that
these walls had been built over and across the walls of other and
more ancient houses that had been erected, occupied, abandoned, and
filled in to afford space for the construction of the dwellings which
in turn preceded Hawikuh probably by many generations. The ma-
sonry of these earlier structures, on the whole, was much cruder than
that of Hawikuh proper; but if allowance be made for disturbance
caused by the burial of the dead through several generations, which

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 45

included more or less comparatively recent pottery in the lower
levels, the earthenware of the earliest inhabitants of the site is of
finer quality and of finer decoration than that manufactured by the
historic Hawikuh people not long before the abandonment of their
settlement.

Although the study of the archeology of Hawikuh has been barely
commenced, the results of last season’s work give promise of a
material addition to our knowledge of an important phase of Pueblo
culture, and it is hoped will ultimately open the way to the solution
of related problems in southwestern archeology.

Besides the routine work of his desk Mr. Hodge gave what spare
time he could while in Washington to continuing his work on the
bibliography of the Pueblo Indians.

During July and August Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, ethnologist, com-
pleted his report on the Heye collection of West Indian antiquities
and in the autumn made a brief archeological reconnoissance in south-
western Colorado, returning to Washington the middle of November.
His plan of operations was to visit the ruins in the McElmo district
and determine their architectural features in order to define with
greater exactness the characteristics they share with the cliff dwell-
ings and pueblos of the Mesa Verde National Park. The object was
to gather material that would enable him to construct a classification
of the prehistoric buildings of the Southwest from structural data.
The Mesa Verde cliff dwellings and pueblos belong to a type or group
of ruins distinguished by the structure of the roof and other feat-
ures of the ceremonial room or kiva. The aim of the field work in
1917 was to investigate the distribution of this form of kiva and to
discover other peculiarities of the Mesa Verde type or group at points
remote from the plateau and thus enlarge our knowledge of the
geographical distribution of the types.

It was found that the ruins in Montezuma Valley and the McElmo
and its tributaries show extensions westward of the Mesa Verde type,
and as the field work progressed much was added to our knowledge of
the characteristics of great houses and towers, the examples of which
on the Mesa Verde have been little investigated.

The most noteworthy group of the ancient ruins visited in the
course of his field work were three clusters of great houses, castles,
and towers situated a short distance over the State line on the north-
ern tributaries of the canyons of the McElmo.

The most important result of the field work in 1917 is the conclu-
sion that the ruins of the McEImo region indicate a people allied to
those of Mesa Verde, who reached a high degree of architectural
technique, surpassing any in America north of Mexico. Evidence was
gathered that it was preceded by a stage indicated by one-house con-
struction, and the suggestion is made that it antedated pueblos, on

: *
46 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

which account it has been designated a middle phase in the Southwest.
A considerable number of small ruins of the same structural type
but with only one room were discovered in the tributaries of the
McElmo and Dolores Rivers.

As a sequel to the exploration of the great houses, towers, and
pueblos of Square Tower, Holly, and Hackberry Canyons, at the
suggestion of Dr. Fewkes, the Director of the Public Park Service,
Department of the Interior, has taken steps to have the ruins on these
and adjacent canyons set aside from the public domain as a reserve,
to be called the Hovenweep National Monument.

During the year Mr. James Mooney, ethnologist, remained in the
office, engaged, as impaired health permitted, in the elaboration of
his Cherokee sacred formulas. Throughout the winter and spring
months much of his time was given to assisting the various delega-
tions from the tribes of his working acquaintance, in the West, in
their efforts before Congress, particularly in regard to their native
Peyote religion, of which he has made a special study. The proof of
friendship in the assistance thus given has completely won the hearts
of the tribes concerned, and has opened the door to successful investi-
gation along every line of inquiry.

On June 28 he left Washington for an extended stay with the
Kiowa and associated tribes, among whom he is now at work.

During the past year, Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, has de-
voted the greater part of his time to a study of three languages
formerly spoken on and near the lower course of the Mississippi
River—the Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa (or Attacapa). The
results of this study have been embodied in four papers—sketches of
the grammars of the three languages in question, and a comparative
study. A sketch of the Tunica language, covering about 70 type-
written pages, has been accepted for publication in the International
Journal of American Linguistics. The sketch of Atakapa, of 40 or
50 pages, is practically complete and is designed for publication in
the same journal; that of Chitimacha covers about 100 pages. The
latter is withheld from publication for the present so that more
material may be added. Finally, the paper in which the three lan-
guages are compared and the conclusion drawn that they belong in
reality to but one linguistic stock, is to be published as a bulletin by
this bureau. This covers about 70 typewritten pages.

During the latter half of April and all of May Dr. Swanton was
engaged in field work in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
In the first-mentioned State he continued his investigation of the
Chitimacha language. His visit to Mississippi was principally for
the purpose of inquiring into the social organization of the Choctaw
still living there. In South Carolina he began a study of the Catawba
language, with the help of manuscript material left by Dr. Gatschet,

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 47

and he plans to continue this study during the coming year. It is
important as the only well-preserved dialect of any of the eastern
Siouan peoples and that upon which must be based most of the rela-
tionship of the eastern Siouans to the other divisions of the stock.
A small amount of ethnological material along other lines was also
collected from the Chitimacha and the Catawba.

Dr. Swanton has also added some material to his history of the
Creek Indians.

In July, 1917, Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist, began a critical and
comparative study of the Cayuga texts relating to the Iroquois Fed-
eration, which he had recorded during the two previous field trips.
This manuscript matter aggregates more than 500 pages and treats
of more than 40 topics or features of the Federation of the Iroquois,
dealing with the principles and structure of this institution of the
Five “ Nations” or tribes.

This comparative study was carried to tentative completion and
involved not only the critical reading of the 500 pages of Cayuga text,
but also an equal number of pages of Mohawk and Onondaga texts.

Mr. Hewitt also read 200 galleys of proofs of the Seneca myths
and tales of the Thirty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ameri-
ean Ethnology, of which 20 were of native texts with interlinear
translations; he added to them nearly 200 numbered explanatory
notes and read also 632 pages of the first and second revises for this
same report, of which 100 pages are in native text with interlinear
translations.

During May and June, 1918, Mr. Hewitt was engaged in field
work in Ontario, Canada, among the Indians of the Six Nations of
Troquois. He took up the work in textual and literary criticism of
the many texts he has recorded relating directly to the institution of
the Federation cr League of the Five Tribes or Nations in earlier
field operations.

By far the largest, and also the most trustworthy, part of these
texts was recorded from the dictation of one of the best-informed
ritualists and expounders of the league, but much additional and sup-
plementary matter in the form of texts was recorded from the dic-
tation of other informants who had the reputation in the community
of being authorities in regard to the motives and plans of the found-
ers of the federation or league and the decrees and ordinances pro-
mulgated by them; but as these texts were given from memory it
was Inevitable that some of the most important details of the struc-
ture and working apparatus of the league have not been remembered
with the same fidelity by different persons, and so various views and
statements concerning the same subject matter are found. The prob-
lem for the student, then, is to ascertain by an adequate investiga-
tion upon what facts these conflicting views and statements were
originally based. The vocabulary of the national terms employed is

48 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

that of statecraft and ritualism—the utterances of the statesmen and
stateswomen of that earlier time, who had clear visions of institu-
tions which are to-day being formulated and written into the statutes
of our great republic. Among these may be mentioned the recall,
the initiative, the referendum, a full-fledged colonial policy, and
woman suffrage (limited to mothers), men having no voice in the
body which nominates their chiefs.

It is well-nigh impossible to find an interpreter among the Iroquois
who is such a master of both the English and the native Iroquoian
languages as to be able to translate correctly a large number of |
the most important native terms into the English tongue. The fol-
lowing may be taken as a typical example. Dekanawida, in detail-
ing the work of the founders in his “ farewell address,” used the
following term frequently, and it also occurs elsewhere. This word
is “ We’dwéfni’kera‘da’nyon’.” The literal meaning is “ We have
made types or symbols of things.” This is the only rendering known
to most native interpreters. But its technical signification is “ We
have made ordinances, or laws, or regulations.”

Another form of criticism is the discovery of the reasons which led
to the variation of the ritual as used by the father and mother sides
of the league. As an example the following may be cited. One or the
other of these sides is the mourning side in the council of condolence
and installation. The side which is not the mourning side employs
all fourteen of the sections of the “ Requickening address.” But it
is customary for the mourning side, in replying, to employ only thir-
teen, omitting the ninth, which refers to the caring for the grave
of the dead chieftain. This omission may seem to be a small matter
to solve, but it is one which brings out the intense esoterism and meta-
phoric use of terms that characterize terminology of the institutions
of the federation or league of the five nations or tribes of the Iroquois.

This definition or meaning shows that the rules of procedure
among the Iroquois Five Tribes were not the commands of an auto-
crat or tyrant, but rather the formulated wisdom of a body of peers,
who owed their position to the suffrages of those who owned the titles
to them, and that the form of government was a limited democracy,
or, strictly speaking, a limited gynecocraey.

At the beginning of the year Mr. Francis La Flesche, ethnologist,
took up the task of putting together his notes on the “ Wa-sha-be
A-thi®,” a composite and intricate war ceremony of the Osage tribe.
The name signifies the determination of the warrior Who becomes a
member of the ceremonially organized war party to show no mercy
to the enemy and that he shall be even as the fire—a power that con-
sumes all things that happen to be in its destructive course.

The literal translation of the name, Wa-shi-be Athi’, is Wa-sha-be,
a dark object; A-thi", to have in one’s possession to carry. The word

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 49

“Wa-sha-be” is here used as a trope for the charcoal that symbolizes
the merciless fire. The making of the symbolic charcoal forms an
important part of the great ceremony and each warrior is required to
carry with him a piece of this charcoal tied up in a little buckskin
pouch. When he is about to attack the enemy he must blacken his
face with this charcoal. If he happens to neglect this he will not be
permitted to recount the strokes he may deliver the enemy in the
attack and to count his war honors.

Originally there was only one “ Wa-sha-be A-thi"” ceremony and
this ceremony pertained strictly to defensive and aggressive war-
fare. Later this ceremony was employed for organizing a war party
to be sent out to slay some member of an enemy tribe in order to send
the spirit of the slain man to overtake and accompany the spirit of
the deceased member of the tribe and to be his companion to the
realm of spirits.

The original ceremony was described by Wa-xthi-zhi, who belongs
to the great division of the tribe which represents the earth and is
called Ho®-ga. The ceremony, when it is used as a mourning rite,
was described by Xu-thé-wa-to?-i", a member of the great division
representing the sky, and called Tsi-zhu.

The account of these two ceremonies, the text, the songs, with
their music, the recited parts of the ritual, and the illustrations and
diagrams cover 253 pages.

It required much time as well as the exercise of patience to secure
the details of these war ceremonies. Particularly was this true of
the wi-gi-es (the recited parts), which relate to the traditions of the
people, on account of their religious character and the superstitious
awe with which the men and women of the tribe regarded them.
Deaths have occurred during the study of these rites, and these deaths
have been by the people attributed to the reciting of the rituals
without regard to the traditional and prescribed rules.

In May, 1918, Mr. La Flesche visited the Osage Reservation for
the purpose of completing his investigations of the tattooing rite,
which he had started some time ago, and succeeded in securing 22
of the wi-gi-es (the recited parts) from one man at a continuous
sitting of two days—a remarkable feat of memorizing. Each of these
wi-gi-es belongs to a gens of the tribe, the male members of which
recite it at an initiation into the mysteries of the rite or at the cere-
mony of the actual tattooing. All of these wi-gi-es are recited simul-
taneously by their owners, and the volume of sound is like that of a
responsive reading in a church, with the difference that the reciting
is not in unison, as each man recites for himself independently of
the others. Fourteen of these wi-gi-es have been transcribed and
translated, and they cover about 100 pages of hand-written manv-
script.

50 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

Besides these 22 wi-gi-es, Mr. La Flesche secured the penalty
wi gi-es owned exclusively by the Thunder gens. He also obtained
the penalty wi-gi-e owned in common by the various gentes of the
Tsi-zhu division and the one owned by the gentes of the Wa-zha-zhe
and Ho"’-ga subdivisions of the Ho*’-ga great division. These pen-
alty wi-gi-es are recited by their owners to the man who offers him-
self as a candidate for initiation into the mysteries of either the
fasting or the shrine degree of the tribal rites. Like the “sword of
Damocles,” the penalty hangs over the head of the candidate and
drops upon him the moment. he violates his initiation obligations,
and punishment comes to him by supernatural means. These two
wi-gi-es have been transcribed, but are yet to be translated.

While in the office Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, was en-
gaged in correlating the Indian texts of the White Buffalo Dance
with the English translation, and revising the latter. He left Wash-
ington near the middle of July and, arriving at Tama, Iowa, re-
sumed his field work among the Sauk and Fox. His attention was
mainly directed to the esoteric meaning of the songs of the White
Buffalo Dance, and to verifying sociological work of the previous
season.. He obtained the names of nine-tenths of the Fox Indians
and obtained information regarding the gens and dual divisions to
which their owners belong. A number of ceremonies of these Indians
were witnessed and he also learned some facts on Fox eschatology.
During his work he purchased a number of sacred packs for the
Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation), receiving the
right to publish by the bureau the information pertaining to them.
On leaving Tama, Dr. Michelson proceeded to Mayetta, Kans., to .
conduct a preliminary survey of the Potawatomi, as it was very clear
that the dual divisions of the Sauk and Fox could only be thoroughly
understood after that of the Potawatomi was unraveled. Although
unable to completely work out the regulations governing member-
ship in the Potawatomi dual divisions, he determined definitely that
this division was for ceremonial as well as athletic purposes, as
among the Sauk and Fox. He successfully studied the gentile organ-
ization of the Potawatomi and obtained a number of folk tales in
English which show very clearly that a large body of European
(French) element have been absorbed by the Potawatomi and that
certain elements of the Plains Indians are present. To account for
the distribution of the surviving tales we must assume an early asso-
ciation with the Ojibwa and a later one with the Sauk and Fox group,
which is quite in line with what would be expected on linguistic and
historic grounds. Dr. Michelson returned to Washington in October
and prepared manuscript on a number of miscellaneous topics apper-
taining to the Fox Indians, to serve as an introduction to the pro-
posed memoir on the White Buffalo Dance, which, with the excep-

_REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 51

tion of typewriting the Indian texts and the addition of a vocabu-
lary, is now ready to submit for publication. During the winter
Edward Davenport, a Fox pupil of the United States Indian School
at Carlisle, spent a week in Washington, assisting in a number of
points regarding the memoir.

In the spring Dr. Michelson made a preliminary translation of a
Fox text of the “owl sacred pack.” In June he went to Carlisle
and worked out the dubious points in the translation with this
informant, who dictated the Indian text twice from that in the
current syllabary, so that the entire text is phonetically restored.
The punctuation (with a few exceptions, added later at Tama) of
the Indian text and English translation was harmonized.

Dr. Michelson edited Part I of Jones’s Ojibwa Texts, containing
about 50 pages, which were published by the American Ethnological
Society, and collected the author’s proofs of Part II, numbering 750,
for a sketch of an Ojibwa grammar which will be offered for publi-
cation by the bureau.

Dr. Michelson has now in press an article in the Journal of
Linguistics showing that the Pequot-Mohegan belong to the Natick
group of the central division of the Algonquian language.

The beginning of the fiscal year found Mr. J. P. Harrington,
ethnologist, in the field engaged in linguistic studies among the
Mission Indians of Ventura County, Cal. At the close of this work,
near the end of September, Mr. Harrington returned to Washington
and spent the following months in the elaboration of recently col-
lected material and his Tanoan and Kiowa notes.

Mr. Harrington has discovered a genetic relationship between the
Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan, and Kiowa languages. The last two are so
closely related that if the Kiowa had been spoken in New Mexico
it would have been classed without hesitation by early writers as a
Tanoan language. The Uto-Aztecan is more remotely but not less
definitely related to the Kiowa genetically. The Kiowa sketch,
amounting to 850 typewritten pages, now includes a complete
analysis of all the important features of the language.

On June 9, 1918, Mr. Harrington proceeded to Anadarka, Okla.,
where he remained until June 26 revising for publication his entire
sketch of the Kiowa language, after which he proceeded to Taos,
N. Mex.

From July to August 15, 1917, Dr. Leo J. Frachtenberg was en-
gaged in confidential war work for the Department of Justice
(Bureau of Investigation). On his return to the bureau he con-
tinued his preliminary work on the grammar and mythology of the
Kalapuya Indians of central Oregon begun during the previous fiscal
year. He also continued his work of extracting, typewriting, and
editing all Kalapuya texts collected by Dr. Gatschet. The myth-

52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. -

ology of these Indians, who are almost extinct, constitutes a connect-
ing link between the tribes of the coast and those east of the Rocky
Mountains. While we possess numerous works dealing with the
mythology of the Indians of the northwest coast and of the Great
Plains, nothing has yet been published on the folklore of the tribes
that inhabit the area between the Coast Range and the Rocky Moun-
tains. Hence a volume on the mythology of the Kalapuya (and also
Molala) Indians will be a welcome contribution to our knowledge
of the folklore of the North American Indians.

SPECIAL RESEARCHES.

Dr. Franz Boas, honorary philologist, has been engaged in the cor-
rection of the proof of part 1 of his volume on the Kwakiutl-English,
which has been assigned to the Thirty-fifth Annual Report.

For various reasons part 2 of the Handbook of American Indian
Languages has been delayed.

Good progress has been made by Dr. Boas on the dialects and dis-
tribution of the Salish Tribe, much work having been done on the
maps. This work, which is based on field work supported by Mr.
Homer E. Sargent, was almost completed by Dr. Haeberlin, whose
unfortunate death has somewhat curtailed the work on these tribes.
A very important work on the basketry of the Salish Tribes, funds
for which were also provided through the generosity of Mr. Sargent,
has made good progress.

Prof. W. H. Holmes, of the National Museum, accompanied by
Mr. DeLancey Gill, of the bureau, made a brief visit to the Aberdeen
Proving Station, Maryland, where Indian remains had been reported
in excavations for Government buildings. He also continued the
preparation of the Handbook of American Antiquities, part 1 of
which will soon be published as Bulletin 60 of the bureau.

Provision was made out of the appropriations of the Bureau of
American Ethnology for a brief archeological reconnaissance in the
Walhalla Plateau overlooking the Grand Canyon, from the last of
April to the end of the fiscal year. Mr. Neil M. Judd, of the United
States National Museum, was detailed for this work. He found
remains of prehistoric buildings plentiful along the route of Kanab,
Utah, southeastward, in the northern portion of the Kanab forest, at
House Rock Valley, and in North, South, and Saddle Canyons.
These remains consist usually of one, two, and three room structures
constructed of unworked stone blocks. In many instances the foun-
dations of the walls were stones placed on edge, their tops separating
the masonry of the roof. Clusters of circular rooms, measuring from
4 to 10 feet in diameter, also occur. The floors of these rooms are
generally covered with burnt earth or ashes, mingled with clay that
bears impressions of willows and grass, as if parts of roofs similar

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 53

to those of prehistoric rooms observed along the Colorado River in
the San Juan drainage.

Cliff houses also exist in the breaks bordering the Walhalla Pla-
teau, but these are as a rule small single rooms, apparently cists for
storage like those built by the people who inhabited the single-room
houses in the open, somewhat. back from the rim of the canyon.
Many small artifacts were found on the cliffs but few fragments of
pottery were reported.

Dr. Walter Hough was detailed from the National Museum to
begin a study of the ruins in the Tonto Basin, a country of great
archeological possibilities, situated between the valleys of the Little
Colorado and the Gila. The result of a brief examination of the
northern part of this region was encouraging, showing the existence
of large ruins in the open as well as cliff houses of considerable size.
Dr. Hough also made an examination of several important collec-
tions of artifacts, some of which are unique, and enumeration of the
ruins visited by him indicates a promising field for future research,
which it is the intention of the bureau to prosecute in coming seasons.

Mr. D. I. Bushnell, jr., continued the preparation of the manu-
script for the, Handbook of Aboriginal Remains East of the Mis-
sissippi. The introduction, containing much matter treating of sites,
has been completed and will be published in advance of the hand-
book. It contains a valuable discussion of village sites and ceme-
teries, treated in a historical manner, with reproductions of old
prints and maps.

Dr. A. L. Kroeber has elaborated certain portions of the Handbook
of the Indians of California and little remains to be done before it is
ready for publication.

The study of Indian music was continued by Miss Frances Dens-
more throughout the year. She has completed a report on the Ute
music, consisting of about 375 pages, and has submitted new material
on Ute, Mandan, and Chippewa music. Her account of the Mandan
Hidatsa songs contains 400 pages. A new feature has been introduced
in the study of the Ute melodies, where she has devised diagrams
consisting of curves on a background of coordinate lines. Miss Dens-
more’s main studies have been on ethnobotany of the Chippewa, and
include plants used in treatment of the sick and other subjects. The
general economic life and the industries of the people were also
studied, during which she made an extensive collection, which she
has photographed for use in her publications. She has likewise
adopted the method of tone photographs designed by Dr. Dayton C.
Miller, of the Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio.

136650°—20-—_5

54 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,
MANUSCRIPTS.

The following manuscripts, exclusive of those submitted for publi-
cation by the bureau, were purchased:

Unique copy of the Journal of Frederick Kurz’s Travels through
the Western States (in German). In addition to the text (in Ger-
man) there are two jackets of photographs of original drawings of
great historical value.

Six letters on British Guiana written by J. Henry Holmes to his
wife, Mary Jane Holmes.

EDITORIAL WORK AND PUBLICATIONS.

On June 30, 1917, Mr. J. G. Gurley resigned his position as editor
and Mr. Stanley Searles was appointed to the vacancy July 1. Both
editors were assisted by Mrs. Frances S. Nichols. <A report of the
publication work of the bureau during the fiscal year follows:

Publications issued.

Bulletin 63.—Analytical and Critical Bibliography of the Tribes of Tierra del
Fuego and Adjacent Territory, by John M. Cooper. 233 p., 1 pl.

Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai.—By Martha Warren Beckwith. An advance
separate from the Thirty-third Annual Report. 3884 p., 5 pl.

Publications in press.

Thirty-second Annual Report—Accompanying paper: Seneca Fiction, Legends,
and Myths (Hewitt and Curtin).

Thirty-third Annual Report.—Accompanying papers: (1) Uses of Plants by
the Indians of the Missouri River Region (Gilmore) ; (2) Preliminary Account
of the Antiquities of the Region Between the Mancos and La Plata Rivers in
Southwestern Colorado (Morris); (8) Designs on Prehistoric Hopi Pottery
(Fewkes) ; (4) The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai (Beckwith). ~

Thirty-fourth Annual Report.——Accompanying paper: West Indian Antiqui-
ties in the Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation) (Fewkes).

Thirty-fifth Annual Report.—Accompanying paper: Ethnology of the Kwakiutl
(Boas).

Bulletin 59—Kutenai Tales (Boas).

Bulletin 60.—Handbook of Aboriginal American Antiquities—Part 1 (Holmes).

Bulletin 61—Teton Sioux Music (Densmore).

Bulletin 64.—The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British
Honduras (Gann).

Bulletin 65.— Archeological Explorations in Northeastern Arizona (J<idder
and Guernsey ).

Bulletin 66—Recent Discoveries of Remains Attributed to Early Man in
America (Hrdlicka).

Bulletin 67.—Alsea Texts and Myths (Frachtenberg).

DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLICATIONS,

The distribution of the publications has been continued under the
immediate charge of Miss Helen Munroe, assisted in the opening

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 55

months of the year by Miss Ora A. Sowersby, stenographer and type-

writer, and later by Miss Emma B. Powers, Miss Sowersby having

been transferred to the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Publications were distributed as follows:

Copies.

/NSoTAT MTR TORY Haye PS oR eS ee ee eee 1, T66
Bulletin Swan msep anaes ase = ae en ne ee ee re 5, 460
Contributions to North American Ethnology (volumes and separates) —___ 1
TE ROC C HOTS eee Na AS eee Ee Ee 0 NL eee ee 5
Miscelianeousspublications: 2-4 ss~ ha ahs ae ee fee err gy Lye es" 106
2S 0 21 ee ee a eee Le AN 2 32 ee a RY arte 7, 344

As compared with the fiscal year 1917, there was a decrease of
4,640 in the total number of publications distributed. This was due
to the fact that during the fiscal year 1917 four publications were
sent out to the mailing list, whereas in the fiscal year 1918 only Bul-
letin 63 was distributed to the list. Twenty addresses have been
added to the mailing list during the year and 15 dropped, making a
net increase of 5.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Mr. De Lancey Gill, with the assistance of Mr. Albert E. Sweeney,
continued the preparation of the illustrations required for the pub-
lications of the bureau and devoted the usual attention to photo-
graphing visiting Indians. A summary of this work is as follows:

Negatives of ethnologie and archeologic subjects________________________ Paral
BhoLosrapnic prints tor distribution andy omce USel2—) = 2 eee 525
Bho Lostaie prints eeromy books, andemanuseriptss = === == ee 300
AGH ATES ASO e Sa eid ales ropes So ee Os ey eee eee ee RES Te 800
Drawings and photographs prepared for publication as illustrations______ HIG
Si Tationmeproors= reads +s 2 See che). ee oa 2) a eee 400
Borhraltenesacives; Of visiting, Tndidnsss a= se Se ee Se a ee 15
LIBRARY.

The reference library of the bureau continued in the immediate
care of Miss Ella Leary, assisted by Mr. Charles B. Newman.

There was presented to the library by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes the
Codex Hopiensis, consisting of three bound volumes of colored
pictures of Hopi Katcinas made by a Hopi Indian in 1900. This
is the material on which was based the article “ Hopi Katcinas” in
the Twenty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Eth-
nology.

During the year 430 books were accessioned, of which 148 were
acquired by purchase, 84 by binding periodicals, and 198 by gifts and
exchanges. The periodicals currently received number about 760, of
which 16 were received by subscription and 744 by gifts and ex-
change. We have also received 200 pamphlets, giving us at the close
of the year a working library of 22,180 volumes, about 14,048 pam-
phlets, and several thousand periodicals.

56 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

During the year there were sent to the bindery 142 volumes, and
84 bound volumes were received.

In continuance of the policy of increasing the library by exchange
and filling in incomplete sets, letters were written for new exchanges
and for completing series already in the library. We have been able
to secure by this means many valuable and important acquisitions.

In addition to the regular routine of cataloguing, classification,
ordering from book dealers, making up for binding, and keeping the
serial and accession records, the efforts of the librarian were devoted
to making a subject, author, and analytical catalogue of books that
are represented in the old catalogue under the author only.

During the year there was an increasing number of students not
connected with the Smithsonian Institution who found the library
of service in seeking volumes not obtainable in other libraries of the
city. The library was used also by the Library of Congress and offli-
cers of the executive departments, and out-of-town students have
called upon the library for loans during the year.

In addition to the use of its own library it was found necessary to
draw on the Library of Congress from time to time for the loan of
about 450 volumes. Numerous typewritten bibliographic lists have
been made for correspondents of the bureau and the Smithsonian
Institution.

The Monthly Bulletin for the use of the bureau staff has been
continued throughout the year.

COLLECTIONS.

The following collections acquired by members of the staff of the
Bureau, or by those detailed in connection with its researches, have
been transferred to the U. S. National Museum:

Seven baskets made by the Koasati Indians BP LASTEST collected
by Dr. John R. Swanton. (61315.)

A roughly chipped implement of gray limestone from British
Guiana, presented by Dr. Walter E. Roth. (61825.)

Six ethnological specimens of the Mandan Sioux, Ute, and Chip-
pewa Indians, purchased from Miss Frances Densmore. (61573.)

A loom of the Osage Indians, collected by Mr. Francis La Flesche.
(62013.)

Twelve specimens of plants from Minnesota, collected by Miss
Frances Densmore. (62190.)

Twenty-five stone objects from the Huastec region, Mexico, pre-
sented to the bureau by Mr. John M. Muir, Tampico, Mexico.
(62253.)

Arrowpoints, spearheads (18) collected by Dr. John R. Swanton
in the vicinity of Rock Hill, 8. C. (62577.)

REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. 57

PROPERTY.

Furniture was purchased to the amount of $167.02; the cost of
typewriting machines was $175, making a total of $282.02.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Quarters—Two rooms on the third floor of the north tower of the
Smithsonian Building, occupied by the bureau, were painted; also the
office of the chief. A glass partition was erected on the south front
of the space occupied by the librarian as an office, in order to render
the office more comfortable during the winter months. Three en-
larged photographs of Spruce-tree House, Mesa Verde National
Park, before and after repair, were painted and hung in the office of
the chief.

Personnel.——Changes in the personnel of the bureau during the
last fiscal year were as follows:

' Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist in charge, resigned February 28,
1918, and Dr. J. Walter Fewkes succeeded him, with the title of chief,
March 1, 1918. Dr. Leo J. Frachtenberg’s official connection with
the bureau terminated October 30, 1917. Mr. Stanley Searles was
appointed editor July 1, 1917. Miss Florence M. Poast, clerk to Mr.

Hodge, resigned October 15, 1917; Miss Ora A. Sowersby, a ste-
-nographer and typewriter in the service of the bureau, was assigned
to that position November 1, 1918. The vacancy created by this
change was filled by the appointment of Miss E. B. Powers, Novem-
ber 5, 1917.

Clerical——The correspondence and other clerical work of the office,
including the copying of manuscripts, has been conducted with the
aid of Miss Florence M. Poast and Miss Ora A. Sowersby, clerks to
the ethnologist in charge, and later by Miss M. 8. Clark, serving as
private secretary to the chief. Mrs. Frances S. Nichols assisted the
editor.

Respectfully, yours, J. WaAurer FEwKEs,
Chief.
Dr. Cuartes D. Watcort,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

APPENDIX 3.
REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES.

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the opera-
tions of the International Exchange Service during the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1918:

The estimate submitted by the Institution for carrying on the
service during the year was $35,000. This amount was granted by
Congress, and, in addition, an allotment of $200 was made for print-
ing and binding. The various governmental departments and other
establishments paid the Smithsonian Institution for the transporta-
tion of exchanges $2,345.18, thus making the total available resources
for carrying on the system of exchanges $37,545.18.

The total number of packages handled during the year 1918 was
266,946. The weight of these packages was 182,825 pounds.

The number and weight of the packages of different classes are
indicated in the following table:

Packages. Weight.
Sent. |Reccived.| Sent. |Received.
Pounds. | Pounds.
United States parliamentary documents sent abroad........-.- TSOS9GT Ponce see 645,906) |Eooeweeecte
Publications received in return for parliamentary documents..-|....-...-- T)OQS, {25.55 caer 2,499
United States departmental documents sent abroad..........-- SE 506 berm niaeaee 50,1634 | o<2seeeerm'e
Publications received in return for departmental documents... -.!.....-..-.- 1 O8T 4 ee amet aan 3, 373
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications sent abroad..| 23, 026 |....-....- A0\ 5090 EB oeeseeeee
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications received from
abroad for distribution in the United States...............--.|-...--.--- SiS7Silkeee~aeeoe 29, 904
Total ee Bosh SSP as Ee ebiosae sicjanecciee sesiecaces cme en ones 255, 499 11,447 |} 156, 049 26, 776
Grand totalestie oe sectctsie ane tes cere eee Cee eee eens 266, 946 182, 825

The disparity between the number of packages dispatched and
those received is not so great as indicated by the figures in the fore-
going table. Packages sent abroad usually contain only a single
publication each, while those received in return often comprise sev-
eral volumes. It is also a fact that many returns for publications
sent abroad reach their destinations direct by mail and not through
the exchange sérvice.

So far as the Institution has been advised, only three consign-
ments of exchanges have been lost through hostile action since the

58

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 59

beginning of the war. Information has been received from the
Portuguese exchange service to the effect that the three boxes for-
warded to that service in September, 1916, per steamship Balto
were lost when that vessel was wrecked at sea. In reporting this
loss the Portuguese exchange service does not state whether the ves-
sel was sunk by the enemy.

The box of exchanges for the Jewish Agricultural Experiment
Station, Haifa, Palestine, which the Egyptian Government publica-
tions office at Bulaq kindly agreed to hold until the cessation of
hostilities, has been forwarded to its destination by that office. The
attention given to this matter by the Government publications office
and the trouble taken to reforward the consignment to its destina-
tion are much appreciated by the Institution.

New regulations adopted by the United States War Trade Board
governing importations into the United States from Great Britain
made it necessary for the Smithsonian agents in London to take out
a consular invoice for shipments sent to the Institution, giving the
full title of cach book. The matter was brought to the attention of
the Director of the Bureau of Imports of the War Trade Board,
who very kindly issued a general license to cover the importation of
international exchanges from the United Kingdom when consigned
to the Smithsonian Institution. This action has not only resulted
in expediting shipments from England, but has relieved the depleted
force of the London Exchange Agency of a great deal of labor in
connection with the forwarding of shipments to this country.

Aid has, as in previous years, been rendered to various govern-
mental and scientific establishments in this and foreign countries
in procuring desired publications. One instance in this connection
may be referred to here. A request was received through diplomatic
channels from the recently created French War Museum-Library, at
Paris, for copies of American documents and other material relating
to the war for deposit in a section of that library to be devoted to
the part taken by the United States in the conflict. The Institution
has taken the matter up with the several governmental establish-
ments, and has received a number of publications for the above-
mentioned library. Prof. Adolphe Cohn, of Columbia University,
New York, is the American representative of the French War
Museum-Library, and will take steps to procure publications and
material from organizations outside of the Government.

Only 443 boxes of exchanges were forwarded abroad during the
year. This does not represent an actual falling off in the number
of packages distributed abroad, as many were sent to their destina-
tions direct by mail. This method of transmission was adopted be-
cause it was found much cheaper to mail the packages than to for-
ward them in boxes, owing to the great advance in ocean freight

60 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

rates. Of the total boxes transmitted 103 contained full sets of
United States official documents to authorized depositories. The
shipment of boxes containing the series of governmental documents
was suspended during the latter half of the fiscal year, and will not
be resumed until regular consignments are again forwarded to the
distributing agencies.

The dates of transmission of the 448 boxes forwarded to foreign
countries is shown in the following table:

Consignments of exchanges for foreign countries.

Country. pel Date of transmission.
INEGI TOR. = -gaotieasceccos 25006 18 | Sept. 5, Nov. 3, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
BON Wier ene eee se scene == 1 | Sept. 8, 1917.
[BiPVA he reeacancrcanaDasoDadae 15 | Sept. 5, Nov. 7, 1917; Apr. 8, 1918.
British colonies......-..------ 4 | July 28, Aug. 25, Oct. 3, Dec. 22, 1917.
IB TAUGISM GARaNe sare nieieteteriete eer 1 | Sept. 11, 1917.
Canadarenc eect ete eens 16 | Aug. 30, Nov. 21, 1917; Feb. 12, May 31, 1918.
Ghileee esas nes seein sca oe 11 | Sept. 6, Nov. 9, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
Ching 2232 s-c8 scenes sseee eee 13 | Aug. 17, Oct. 5, Nov. 22, 1917; Mar. 31, 1918.
GColompide-sqsesese-ecueeeaaee = 9 | Sept. 7, Nov. 12, 1917.
CostahiCte sereceeser sentient 2 | Nov. 14, 1917.
Cubaetesecsce-beeisa-eieiaaeaa= 4] Aug. 30, Nov. 21, 1917; Feb. 12, May 31, 1918.
Denmarker sees eseceSeeseea see 4] Aug. 4, 1917.
TYGIE OOP Soncsacdarcccosscasee 2 | Sept. 8, 1917.
IRAs) So asnSaaosapasocaddenss 32 | Aug. 2, Sept. 27, 1917.
Great Britain and Treland, --.. 104 | July 28, Aug. 25, Oct. 3, Dec. 22, 1917.
Guatemalasineese == sec 1 | July 28, 1917.
RAG e cecee saicaseisc ste esis as 3 | Sept. 7, Nov. 14, 1917; Apr. 1, 1918.
Honduraseaa-eeeeeeee ose aees 1 | Sept. 8, 1917.
Imdianyes$25s.. s2est estes. ss! 11 | July 28, Aug. 25, Oct. 3, Dec. 22, 1917.
Mtalyjsec cascmeaonmectte sence cc 26 | Aug. 23, Oct. 20, Dec. 28, 1917.
Jamaica see acces aces oe 1 | Sept. 14, 1917.
AB OR Teas aaocecdpaetaacoasec 34 | Oct. 10, 1917; Jan. 8, May 7, 1918.
IMoxiCO! 228 ce oes seies aa 4 | Aug. 30, Nov. 21, 1917; Feb. 12, May 31, 1918.
New South Wales.......------ 18 | Sept. 16, Nov. 13, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.

New; Zealand se sccem science ce Sept. 28, 1917; Nov. 21, Apr. 2, 1918.

INI CANAL se seeleciceisie === ee 1 | Sept. 8, 1917.

IPATAPUAY Setecb oes == seer 2 Do.

ON Ue stsetalet slate olcie ae eelaiaane 8 | Sept. 8, Nov. 10, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
ORG Pa ees ease eee 4| Aug. 4, Oct. 16, 1917.

@Queenslandete a. .Acce~= c= 4 | Sept. 20, Nov. 21, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
Salvadorttesesect= eee rere er | 1 | Sept. 8, 1917.

Riitidl apes anccbebce Baeeono BeSoe _ 1| Sept. 12, 1917.

South Australia.......---.---- 11 | Sept. 19, Nov. 17, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
STORMS = oo acoopgQoccoacbedoadee 12 | Aug. 13, Oct. 12, 1917; Jan. 9, 1918.
Switzerland s<-2 sceceetiaseeeeete: 5 | Aug. 10, 1917.

Pasmanigye seat ets sece 5 | July 28, Aug. 25, Dec. 22, 1917.
Union of South Africa--...---- 9 | Aug. 18, Dee. 7, 1917.

OMI SUB Ase aces caccene cee ese 10 | Sept. 6, Nov. 10, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
Wenezuela==a-5ee a- ee 6 | Sept. 6, Nov. 12, 1917; Apr. 2, 1918.
Wictoria.<.25.s205 scecns--e sce 14 | Sept. 18, Noy. 16, 1917; Apr. 15, 1918

Western Australia..........--.- 6 | July 28, Aug. 23, Dec. 22, 1917.

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 61

FOREIGN SE EEGs OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENTAL
DOCUMENTS.

Ninety-one sets of United States governmental documents were
received during the year for distribution to the following deposi-
tories:

DEPOSITORIES OF FULL SETS.

ARGENTINA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Buenos Aires.

AUSTRALIA: Library of the Commonwealth Parliament, Melbourne.

Austria: K. Kk. Statistische Zentral-Kommission, Vienna,

BADEN: Universitiits-Bibliothek, Freiburg. (Depository of the Grand Duchy of
Baden. )

BAVARIA: )MGnigliche Hof. und Staats-Bibliothek, Munich.

3ELGIUM: Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels.

Brazit: Bibliotheca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.

Burnos Arres: Biblioteca de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. (Deposi-
tory of the Province of Buenos Aires.)

CANADA: Library of Parliament, Ottawa.

CHILE: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Santiago.

CHINA: American-Chinese Publication Exchange Department, Shanghai Bureau
of Foreign Affairs, Shanghai.

CoLtoMBIA: Biblioteca Nacional, Bogota.

Costa Rica: Oficina de Depdsito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, San
José.

CuBA: Secretaria de Estado (Asuntos Generales y Canje Internacional), Ha-
bana.

DENMARK: Kongelige Bibliotheket, Copenhagen.

FINGLAND: British Museum, London.

FRANCE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris.

GERMANY: Deutsche Reichstags-Bibliothek, Berlin.

GLascow: City Librarian, Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

GREECE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Athens.

Harrr: Secrétaire d’Etat des Relations Extérieures, Port au Prince.

HuneAary: Hungarian House of Delegates, Budapest.

InptA: Imperial Library, Calcutta.

TRELAND: National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

ITaty: Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele, Rome.

JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo.

Lonpon: London School of Economics and Political Science. (Depository of
the London County Council.)

MANITOBA: Provincial Library, Winnipeg.

Mexico: Instituto Bibliografico, Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico.

NETHERLANDS: Library of the States General, The Hague.

NEw SoutH WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

NEw ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington.

Norway: Storthingets Bibliothek, Christiania.

OnTARIO: Legislative Library, Toronto,

Paris: Préfecture de la Seine.

PERU: Biblioteca Nacional, Lima.

PorTUGAL: Bibliotheca Nacional, Lisbon.

Prussia: K6nigliche Bibliothek, Berlin.

QUEBEC: Library of the Legislature of the Province of Quebec, Quebec.

QUEENSLAND: Parliamentary Library, Brisbane.

62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

Russia: Imperial Public Library, Petrograd.

Saxony: Konigliche Oeffentliche Bibliothek, Dresden.

SersiA: Section Administrative du Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Belgrade.

SoutH AUSTRALIA: Parliamentary Library, Adelaide.

Sparin: Servicio del Cambio Internacional de publicaciones, Cuerpo Facultativo
de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arquedélogos, Madrid.

SWEDEN: Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.

SWITZERLAND: Bibliothéque Fédérale, Berne.

‘TASMANIA: Parliamentary Library, Hobart.

TURKEY: Department of Public Instruction, Censtantinople.

UNIon oF SoutH AFricA: State Library, Pretoria, Transvaal.

UruGuAyY: Oficina de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Montevidio.

VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas.

Victoria: Public Library, Melbourne.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.

WURTFEMBERG: KoOnigliche Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart.

DEPOSITORIES OF PARTIAL SETS.

ALBERTA: Provincial Library, Edmonton.

ALSACE-LORRAINE: K. Ministerium fiir Elsass-Lothringen, Strassburg.

Bo.iviA: Ministerio de Colonizaci6n y Agricultura, La Paz.

BREMEN: Senatskommission fiir Reichs- und Auswirtige Angelegenheiten.

BritisH CotumBiA: Legislative Library, Victoria.

BritisH Guiana: Government Secretary’s Office, Georgetown, Demerara.

BureartaA: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sofia.

Cryton: Colonial Secretary’s Office (Record Department of the Library), Co-
lombo. :

Ecuapor: Biblioteca Nacional, Quito.

Heyer: Bibliothéque Khédiviale, Cairo.

FINLAND: Chancery of Governor, Helsingfors.

GUATEMALA: Secretary of the Government, Guatemala.

Hameburc: Senatskommission fiir die Reichs- und Auswiirtigen Angelegenheiten.

Hesse: Grossherzogliche Hof-Bibliothek, Darmstadt.

Honpuras: Secretary of the Government, Tegucigalpa.

JAMAICA: Colonial Secretary, Kingston.

LIBERIA: Department of State, Monrovia.

Lovurenco Marquez: Government Library, Lourengo Marquez.

Lusrck: President of the Senate.

MapraAs, ProvINcE oF: Chief Secretary to the Government of Madras, Public
Department, Madras.

Matra: Lieutenant Governor, Valetta.

Monvrenecro: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Cetinje.

NEw Brunswick: Legislative Library, Fredericton.

NEWFOUNDLAND: Colonial Secretary, St. John’s.

Nicaragua: Superintendente de Archivos Nacionales, Managua.

NorTHWEST TERRITORIES: Government Library, Regina.

Nova Scorra: Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, Halifax.

PaNnaMA: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama.

ParRAGuAyY: Oficina General de Inmigracion, Asuncion.

PrRINcE Epwarp ISLAND: Legislative Library, Charlottetown.

RouMANIA: Academia Romana, Bucharest.

Satvapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador.

Sram: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok.

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 63

STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: Colonial Secretary, Singapore.

UNITED PROVINCES OF AGRA AND OupDH: Under Secretary to Government, Alla-
habad.

VIENNA: Biirgermeister der Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt.

INTERPARLIAMENTARY EXCHANGE OF OFFICIAL JOURNALS.

A complete list of the countries which have entered into the Inter-
parhamentary Exchange of Official Journals with the United States
is given below. The Congressional Records for those countries to
which it is not possible to forward consignments at present are being
held at the Institution.

Argentine Republic. France. Prussia.

Australia. Great Britain. Queensland.
Austria. Greece. Roumania.

Baden. Guatemala. Russia.

Belgium. Honduras. Serbia.

Bolivia. Hungary. Spain.

Brazil. Italy. Switzerland.
Buenos Aires, Province of. Liberia. Transvaal.

Canada. New South Wales. Union of South Africa.
Costa Rica. New Zealand. Uruguay.

Cuba. Peru. Venezuela.
Denmark. Portugal. Western Australia.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE AGENCIKES.

Consignments for India, instead of being forwarded through the
India Office in London as formerly, are now sent directly to the Su-
perintendent of Stationery at Bombay, which has been designated as
the establishment to undertake the distribution of exchanges in that
country. This change was made at the request of the Under-Secre-
tary of State for India in London.

Below is given a complete list of the foreign exchange agencies

and bureaus:

ALGERIA, via France.

ANGOLA, via Portugal.

ARGENTINA: Comisi6én Protectora de Bibliotecas Populares, Santa Fé 880,
Buenos Aires. :

Austria: K. K. Statistische Zentral-Kommission, Vienna.

AZORES, via Portugal.

Beracium: Service Belge des Echanges Internationaux, Rue des Longs-Chariots
46, Brussels.

Borry1a: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica, La Paz.

Brazit: Servico de Permutacdes Internacionaes, Bibliotheca Nacional, Rio de
Janeiro.

BritisH CoLtonres: Crown Agents for the Colonies, London.

BriTISH GUIANA: Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, Georgetown.

BritisH Honpuras: Colonial Secretary, Belize.

Butearta: Institutions Scientifiques de S. M. le Roi de Bulgarie, Sofia.

Canary ISLANDS, via Spain.

64 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

CHILE: Servicio de Canjes Internacionales, Biblioteca Nacional, Santiago.

CHINA: American-Chinese Publication Exchange Department, Shanghai Bureau
of Foreign Affairs, Shanghai.

CoLtomBtaA: Oficina de Canjes Internacionales y Reparto, Biblioteca Nacional,
Bogota.

Costa Rica: Oficina de Depésito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, San
José.

DENMARK: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen.

DutTcH GUIANA: Surinaamsche Koloniale Bibliotheek, Paramaribo.

Ecuapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Quito.

Heyer: Government Publications Office, Printing Department, Cairo.

FRANCE: Service Francais des Echanges Internationaux, 110 Rue de Grenelle,
Paris.

GERMANY: Amerika-Institut, Berlin, N. W. 7.

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND: Messrs. William Wesley & Son, 28 Essex Street,
Strand, London.

GREECE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Athens.

GREENLAND, via Denmark.

GUADELOUPE, via France.

GUATEMALA: Instituto Nacional de Varones, Guatemala,

GUINEA, via Portugal.

Hartt: Secrétaire d’Etat des Relations Extérieures, Port au Prince.

HonpuraAs: Biblioteca Nacional, Tegucigalpa.

Huneary: Dr. Julius Pikler, Municipal Office of Statistics, Vaci-utca S80, Buda-
pest.

ICELAND, via Denmark.

InpdIA: Superintendent of Stationery, Bombay.

Iraty: Ufficio degli Secambi Internazionali, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio .
Emanuele, Rome.

JAMAICA: Institute of Jamaica, Kingston.

JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo.

JAVA, via Netherlands.

KorEA: Government General, Keijo.

Lizerti: Bureau of Exchanges, Department of State, Monrovia.

LourENCO Marquez: Government Library, Lourengo Marquez.

LUXEMBURG, via Germany.

_ MapaGascar, via France.

Maperra, via Portugal.

MonvteNEGRO: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Cetinje.

MozaAMBIQUE, via Portugal.

NETHERLANDS: Bureau Scientifique Central Néerlandais, Bibliothéque de l’Uni-
versité, Leyden.

New GuInea, via Netherlands.

New SoutH WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

New ZEALAND: Dominion Museum, Wellington.

NIcARAGUA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Managua.

Norway: Kongelige Norske Frederiks Universitet Bibliotheket, Christiania.

PANAMA: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama.

ParaAcuay: Servicio de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Seccién Consular
y de Comercio, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Asuncion.

Persia: Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, New York City.

Peru: Oficino de Reparto, Depésito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones,
Ministerio de Fomento, Lima.

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES. 65

PorRTUGAL: Servico de Permutacdes Internacionaes, Inspecgio Geral das Biblio-
thecas e Archivos Publicos, Lisbon.

QUEENSLAND: Bureau of Exchanges of International Publications, Chief Sec-
retary’s Office, Brisbane.

RouMANIA: Academia Romana, Bucharest.

Russta: Commission Russe des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Impé-
riale Publique, Petrograd.

SALvApor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador.

Sersra: Section Administrative du Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Belgrade.

Sram: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok.

SoutH AustrALiA: Public Library of South Australia, Adelaide.

Spain: Servicio del Cambio Internacional de Publicaciones, Cuerpo Facultativo
de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arquedélogos, Madrid.

Sumatra, via Netherlands.

SWEDEN: Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Akademien, Stockholm.

SwitzerLanp: Service des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Fédérale
Centrale, Berne.

Syria: Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, New York.

TASMANIA: Secretary to the Premier, Hobart.

TRINIDAD: Royal Victoria Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, Port-of-Spain.

TUNIS, via France.

TURKEY: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Boston.

UNION oF SouTH AFRICA: Government Printing Works, Pretoria, Transvaal.

Uruauay: Oficina de Canje Internacional, Montevideo.

VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas.

Victoria: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.

WINDWARD AND LEEWARD ISLANDS: Imperial Department of Agriculture, Bridge-
town, Barbados.

Respectfully submitted.
C. W. SHoEMAKER,
Chief Clerk, International Exchange Service.
Dr. Cuartes D, Watcort,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Avucust 26, 1918.

APPENIDX 4.
REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK.

Str: I have the honor to present the following report on the opera-
tions of the National Zoological Park for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1918:

The sum of $100,000 was provided by Congress in the sundry civil
act for all expenses except printing and binding, for which an addi-
tional allotment of $200 was made. Virtually the entire appropria-
tion was needed for actual maintenance, the cost of which continues
to increase from year to year, and only small sums could be expended
on necessary repairs or minor permanent improvements. There has
been difficulty throughout the year in keeping the required number
of employees in all departments of the force, while the resources of
the park have been taxed to the utmost to care properly for the
greatly increased number of visitors. Notwithstanding the diffi-
culties of the wild-animal trade and the great reduction in the num-
ber of specimens reaching this country from abroad, the collections
have been kept up to a fair standard in numbers without serious gaps,
and the popular and scientific value of the exhibition has not been
impaired,

ACCESSIONS.

Gifts—There were added to the collection by gift a total number
of 103 animals. The list includes many valuable and important ac-
cessions, among them several species not previously exhibited in the
park.

The first specimen of the glacier bear (Ursus emmonsii) ever
known to have been captured alive was received at the park July 25,
1917, as a gift from Mr. Victor J. Evans, of Washington, D. C., who
has made many donations to the collection in past years. The glacier
bear, or blue bear as it is sometimes called, has a very limited distri-
bution in the region of the St. Elias Alps, near Yakutat Bay,
Alaska. It was first described in 1895 and since that time only one or
two skins have been brought into Yakutat by the Indians each year.
The specimen secured by Mr. Evans was captured as a small cub by
an Indian at the head of Disenchantment Bay, a continuation of
Yakutat Bay, about the middle of May, 1916, and was soon after sold
to a trader in Yakutat. As one of the rarest and least known of the

66

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 67

great game animals of America, the glacier bear has, since its dis-
covery, been watched for eagerly by the officials of zoological gardens.

The New Zealand Government, through Mr. Ben Wilson of the
Department of Tourist and Health Resorts, made to the park the
most valuable gifts of birds received during the year. These in-
cluded six keas, or sheep-killing parrots (Nestor notabilis), and
eight wekas, or flightless rails (Ocydromus) from South Island, New
Zealand. The keas are beautiful and interesting parrots of large
size which inhabit the high mountains of New Zealand. Some indi-
viduals of the species have developed the habit of killing sheep,
and as a consequence the birds have been greatly reduced in numbers
by the stockmen. <A large outdoor cage with shelter attached was
constructed near the bird house and the keas have attracted great
attention. They are utterly unmindful of the cold, and during the
unusually severe weather of last winter they played in the snow and
bathed in icy water. The wekas, of which three species are repre-
sented in the collection, are members of the group of rails notable
for their imperfectly developed wings. They are of the size of a
well-grown pullet and are mischievous and quarrelsome even among
others of their kind. Unlike their relatives in North America they
are not aquatic, but inhabit dry woods and scrub.

Two interesting collections of Trinidad snakes were received from
Mrs. James Birch Rorer and from Hon. Henry D. Baker, Trinidad,
British West Indies. Included in the lot from Mr. Baker was a
large boa constrictor nearly 11 feet in length.

Among the miscellaneous donations for the past year were some
valuable parrots from individuals as noted below. Not less than
sIx species of amazons, of which the white-fronted (Amazona albi-
frons), yellow-cheeked (Amazona autumnalis), and Santo Domingo
(Amazona ventralis) were new to the collection, were received in
this manner. The Brazilian green macaw and Haitian paroquet
were also previously unrepresented.

The complete list of donors and gifts is as follows:

Mr. Norman Anderson, Washington, D. C., alligator.

Mr. G. Gordon Bailey, Washington, D. C., red-tailed hawk.

Hon. Henry D. Baker, Trinidad, British West Indies, boa constrictor, tree
boa, three lora snakes, and three water coral snakes.

Mrs. Barefield, Washington, D. C., Cuban parrot.

Mr. J. Barnes, Washington, D. C., alligator.

Maj. E. R. Beadle, Paris Island, S. C., peacock.

Miss Pearl Beard, Herndon, Va., American crow.

Mr. William Blum, Chevy Chase, Md., opossum.

Mr. 8S. Howe Bonar, Moundsville, W. Va., great horned owl.

Mr. C. F. Borden, Brookland, D. C., white-fronted parrot.

Mr. J. T. Boston, Washington, D. C., American coot.

Mrs. J. Bourke, Washington, D. C., two alligators.

Mrs. C. V. Brooks, Del Ray, Va., alligator.

68 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Mr. Bobby Bulkley, Chevy Chase, D. C., alligator.
Mr. Willard Burton, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Camp Meigs Band, Quartermaster Corps, United States Army, Washington,
D. C., turkey.
Mr. James L. Chase, Washington, D. C., yellow-cheeked parrot.
Mr. Waldo A. Clarke, Washington, D. C., opossum.
Miss Pauline Corson, Guinea Mills, Va., raccoon.
Mrs. M. B. Crawford, Washington, D. C., yellow-headed parrot and two
double yellow-head parrots.
Mr. Ernest W. Davis, Asheville, N. C., Margarita capuchin.
Department of Tourist and Health Resorts, New Zealand Government,
through Mr. Ben Wilson, six kea parrots and eight weka rails.
Mr. Victor J. Evans, Washington, D. C., glacier bear.
Mr. L. R. Grabill, Takoma Park, D. C., alligator.
Miss Catherine N. Hinton, Petersburg, Va., white-throated capuchin.
Mr. A. B. Hodges, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. A. V. Hoffman, Washington, D. C., Brazilian green macaw.
Lieut. C. D. Holland, Washington, D. C., two double yellow-head parrots.
Mr. J. M. Horton, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. C. E. Hunt, Washington, D. C., two mourning doves.
Mr. T. A. James, Augusta, Me., two black ducks.
Mr. F. H. Johnson, Washington, D. C., two alligators.
Mr. E. S. Joseph, Sydney, Australia, dingo, two Tasmanian phalangers, two
stump-tailed lizards, and three blue-tongued lizards.
Mr, C. Herbert Kreh, Frederick, Md., copperhead.
Krey, Price & Co., Washington, D. C., bald eagle.
Miss F. I. Latham, Brookland, D. C., bobwhite.
Mr. G. GC. Lets, Chevy Chase, D. C., water snake.
Mrs. Macklehaney, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. R. H. Macneil, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. William M. Mann, Washington, D. C., crocodile.
Mrs. John H. McChesney, Washington, D. C., Haitian paroquet and Santo
Domingo parrot.
Mrs. F. McManamy, Chevy Chase, Md., screech owl.
Mrs. Thomas P. Morgan, Washington, D. C., Philippine macaque.
Mr. H. A. O’Dwyer, Washington, D. C., barred owl.
Mrs. Charles Parks, Washington, D. C., albino squirrel.
Mr. A. H. Peterson, Washington, D. C., screech owl.
Mr. J. S. Rector, McLean, Va., barred owl.
Mrs. C. 8. Rockwood, Washington, D. C., ring-necked duck.
Mrs. James Birch Rorer, Trinidad, British West Indies, anaconda, lora
snake, and slug-eating snake.
Mr. Charles E. Schaffner, Washington, D. C., canvasback duck.
Mr. Milford Schwartz, Washington, D. C., barred owl.
Mrs. J. V. Shipp, Chevy Chase, D. C., Cuban parrot.
Miss Marjorie Smith, Fort Meyer Heights, Va., alligator.
Mrs. T. K. Smith, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. J. E. Taylor, Oxford, Md., red fox.
Mr. Joseph Turner, Washington, D. C., black bear.
Mrs. Frank Walter, Washington, D. C., yellow-headed parrot.
Mr. F. L. Waters, Washington, D. C., two alligators.
Mr. Alexander Wetmore, Washington, D. C., American crow.
Mr. Walter L. Whitney, Takoma Park, D. C., coyote.
Mr. Bertram Wills, Washington, D. C., two alligators.

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK, 69

Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C., turkey.

Mr. Nelson R. Wood, Washington, D. C., cedar waxwing.

Mr. E. 8. Wright, Lassiter, Va., black-crowned night heron.

In addition to the vertebrate animals listed above and regularly
catalogued in the collection, a most interesting exhibit of crabs was
maintained throughout most of the year. The specimens were pre-
sented by the collector, Dr. Paul Bartsch, of the National Museum,
and comprised 69 West Indian hermit crabs (C@nobita clypeata)
from Bush Key, and 37 West Indian land crabs (Gecarcinus mater-
alis) from Loggerhead Key, Dry Tortugas, Fla. Some specimens
of the work of beavers, stumps and cuttings made by the animals in
the construction of dams and lodges, were collected in the Adiron-
dacks, and presented to the Park by Mr. W. E. Talmage, of Cleve-
land, Ohio. Arranged on a stand constructed for the purpose in the
beaver inclosure, they have added greatly to the interest. of the public
in this animal and its work.

Births.—Sixty-three mammals were born, and 45 birds were
hatched during the year. The births include 1 Brazilian tapir, 1
yak, 2 bison, 2 Rocky Mountain sheep, 2 nilgais, 1 black buck, 2
guanacos, 3 llamas, 1 black-tailed deer, 1 Virginia deer, 1 Manchurian
deer, 2 American elk, 5 red deer, 1 fallow deer, 4 axis deer, 2 hog
deer, 4 Japanese deer, 1 barasingha deer, 4 great red kangaroos, 1
brush-tailed rock kangaroo, 1 rufous-bellied wallaby, 1 common pha-
langer, 2 Tasmanian phalangers, 4 raccoons, 9 coypus, 1 paca, 2
Peruvian wild guinea-pigs, and 2 rhesus monkeys. The birds
hatched include Canada geese, wood ducks, mallards, East Indian
black ducks. American coots, cormorants, night herons, and _pea-
fowls. |

The tapir, born February 22, is the ninth young reared in the park
since 1903 from a single pair of animals.

Hechanges.—In exchange for surplus animals born in the park
there were received during the year 11 mammals, 25 birds, and 6
reptiles. Some valuable additions were made to the collections from
this source, including a female Manchurian tiger, a young Himalayan
bear, a blesbok, two striped hyenas, and a number of Australian
mammals, birds, and reptiles. A pair of straw-necked ibises (Car-
phibis spinicollis) , the first of the species ever shown in the park, was
received in May.

Purchases ——The only mammals purchased during the year were
12 prairie-dogs to restock the “ dog town,” the population of which
had been greatly reduced in numbers, and one specimen of the Ari-
zona mountain sheep. Birds to the number of 104, mostly waterfowl
and small aviary species, were added to the collection by purchase.
Perhaps the most noteworthy accession by purchase among the birds

136650°—20——6

70 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

is a pair of thick-billed parrots (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) from
the Chiracahua Mountains of Arizona. This species is the only
member of the order of parrots, excepting the almost extinct Caro-
lina paroquet, known to occur within the United States. At inter-
vals a number of years apart flights of thick-bills appear in the
mountains of southern Arizona, coming from Mexico. The birds
obtained for the park were captured in January in the pine forested
Chiracahuas, when the ground in the higher altitudes where the
birds occur was covered with snow. A single reptile, a rattlesnake,
was purchased during the year. .

Transfers.—The Biological Survey of the Department of Agricul-
ture, as in the past, contributed to the collection by the transfer of
a number of specimens captured by field agents of the bureau.
Seven plains wolves, including one black wolf, were received from
Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. From New Mexico the Biological
Survey sent a specimen each of the western horned owl, ferruginous
rough-leg hawk, and Abert’s squirrel.

Captured in the park.—Three* mammals, five birds, and one rep-
tile captured within the boundaries of the park were added to the col-
lection.

Deposited —Mr. E. 8. Joseph, of Sydney, New South Wales, de-
posited with the park in September, 1917, a specimen of the brown
hyena (Zyena brunnea) of South Africa. The species is one of the
rarest of mammals and had not heretofore been exhibited in Wash-
ington. It is now possible for the first time to compare in the col-
lection living examples of the three distinct types of hyenas—the
spotted, striped, and brown. Birds received on deposit and not
otherwise represented in the collection are the Panama parrot
(Amazona farinosa inornata) from Mrs. M. W. Gill, Washington,
D. C., and the blue-winged parrotlet (Psittacula passerina) from Mr.
W. J. La Varre, jr., Washington, D. C. Fur-bearing animals from
the Biological Survey and eight alligators from the Pan-American
Union were received on deposit during the year.

REMOVALS.

The following surplus animals were exchanged to other zoological
gardens: Five aoudads, 1 tahr, 2 bison, 2 llamas, 2 guanacos, 1 Ara-
bian camel, 5 red deer, 6 fallow deer, 2 Japanese deer, 2 axis deer,
1 Kashmir deer, 4 baboons, 1 monkey, 1 tiger, 1 raccoon, 13 coypus,
6 East. Indian black ducks, 4 Canada geese, 3 peafowl, and 6 alli-
gators. A few specimens on deposit were returned to owners.

Among the specimens lost by death were a few of the oldest ex-
hibits in the park—animals that had been here for many years. The
female Steller’s sea-lion died of gastroenteritis on January 22. This
fine specimen was received October 23, 1900, and had therefore been

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 71

in the park, in good health, for over 17 years. Its age at the time
of arrival was uncertain, but it was probably over 2 years old.
The Somaliland lioness, Duchess, which was received at the park
December 17, 1902, when about 3 years old, from Hon. E. S. Cun-
ningham, United States consul at Aden, died June 15, 1918, at an
age of about 19 years, 15} years of which had been spent in the
park. It is extremely doubtful if a wild lion ever reaches so advanced
an age. A male Brazilian tapir received from Commander C. C.
Todd, United States Navy, May 19, 1899, died September 17, 1917,
after a period of 18 years and 4 months of life in the park. Among
the birds, a yellow-throated caracara (/bycter ater) received from
Hon. E. H. Plumacher, United States consul at Maracaibo,
Venezuela, October 19, 1904, after 13 years and 4 months of hfe
in the bird house, died on February 22, 1918. A male cassowary
died October 21, 1917, of aspergillosis; it had been in the collection,
in excellent health, for eight years. Others of the more serious
losses were a wombat, a Japanese bear, the sable antelope, an eland,
and a Cape Barren goose.

Through cooperation with the Department of Agriculture, post-
mortem examinations were made, as usual, by the pathological
division of the Bureau of Animal Industry.t

Of the animals lost by death, all specimens of aeranetre importance
or needed for museum work, 19 mammals, 20 birds, and 16 reptiles,
were transferred to the United States National Museum for study
and permanent preservation.

ANIMALS IN THE COLLECTION JUNE 30, 1918.

MAMMALS.

MARSUPIALIA, Dusky phalanger (Trichosurus fulig-
TWVOSWS)\ as oe Se ee 4

Virginia opossum (Didelphis virgini- Brush-tailed rock kangaroo (Petro-
(UN) aa ee ee ee eee 6 GUL MDERICHLLLEO) == ee “18

Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus har- Great gray kangaroo (Macropus
FOS) ee a ee 2 Giganteus) = 22 ee eee 7
Phalanger (Trichosurus vulpecula) — 3 | Red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) ———- 8

1 The following list shows the results of autopsies, the cases being arranged by groups:
CAUSES OF DEATH.

Mammals.—Marsupialia: Pneumonia, 2; gastroenteritis, 1; peritonitis, 1. Carnivora:
Pneumonia, 4; tuberculosis, 1; gastroenteritis. 2; enteritis, 1; septicemia, 1; cystic
chondroma on head, 1. Pinnipedia: Gastroenteritis, 2. Rodentia: Pneumoenteritis, 1.
Primates: Pneumonia, 1; tuberculosis, 1; gastroenteritis, 4; severe constipation, 1.
Artiodactyla: Pneumonia, 3; tuberculosis, 2; gastroenteritis, 2; pyaemia, 1. Perisso-
dactyla: Tuberculosis, 1.

Birds.—Ratite : Aspergillosis, 1. Ciconiiformes: Digestive disorder, 1; enteritis, 1:
impaction of crop, 1. Anseriformes: Tuberculosis, 3; aspergillosis, 3; enteritis, 8:
catarrhal gastritis, 1; pericarditis, 1; avian gout, 1; anemia, 2; internal hemorrhage, 1;
no cause found, 4. Falconiformes: No cause found, 1. Galliformes: Tuberculosis, 2;
enteritis, 8; coccidial enteritis, 1; peritonitis, 1; no cause found, 4. Gruiformes:
Exposure, 1; no cause found, 3. Charadriiformes: Enteritis, 5; ulcerative enteritis, 4
caseous tumor in peritoneal cavity, 1; no cause found, 1. Cuculiformes: Enteritis, 1;
no cause found, 2. Coraciiformes: Hepatic hematoma, 1; septicemia, 4. Passeriformes :
Enteritis, 1; inflammation of mucosa of duodenum, 1; anemia, 1; no cause found, 5.

Reptiles.—Serpentes: Parasitism, 1.

(e ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Kangaroo Island kangaroo (Macropus
Melanops) ——~2-—- == See ee
Wallaroo (Macropus robustus)_____
Black-tailed wallaby (Macropus uala-
OG0LS) = ee ee ae ee
Rufous-bellied wallaby (Macropus
btlliar diet) aa ae Se eae ee
Parma wallaby (Macropus parma) —_~
Nail-tailed wallaby (Onychogale
RENO) FS Sa Teeter Peg
Wombat (Phascolomys mitchelli) ——

CARNIVORA,

Kadiak bear (Ursus middendorffi) ——
Alaska Peninsula bear (Ursus gyas) —
Vakutat bears (Ursus: datit) =
Kidder’s bear (Ursus kidderi)__--~~
BHuropean bear (Ursus arctos)——~~~~
Grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis) ____~
Himalayan bear (Ursus thibetanus) —
Black bear (Ursus americanus) ~~~
Kenai black bear (Ursus americanus

DOVNIG CL) 2 ee
Cinnamon bear (Ursus americanus

Gnnamomum) === See
Glacier bear (Ursus emmonsii) ———_~
Sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) ~~~
Polar bear (Thalarctos maritimus) ——
DingOn(CQ118) d1NG 0) ee ee
Eskimo dog (Canis familiaris) _-~-~
Gray wolf (Canis nubilus)__~_______
Southern wolf (Canis floridanus) ———
Woodhouse’s wolf (Canis frustror) ——
Coyote (Canisilai;ans)) = ee
Red fox (Vulpes fulva) _.__________
Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargen-

CEUS) p= ee ee 2 ee ee
Raccoon (Procyon totor)
Gray coatimundi (Nasua narica) ___—
Kinkajou) (Potos fiavws)\-===— ==
Kerret (Mustetavjuro) =.
Tayra (Layra barbara) ===
Skunk (Mephitis nigra)
American badger (Taxidea tarus) —__—
European badger (Meles meles)—__~
Florida otter (Lutra canadensis

UCC) === 2 oat See eee
African civet (Viverra civetta) ____
Genet (Genetta genetta) __________
Spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta)_—_~—
Brown hyena (Hyena brunnea)___~—
Striped hyena (Hy@na hyena) _—____
African cheetah (Acinonya jubatus) —
Tone (Hes ileo) ee ee eee
Zengal tiger (Felis tigris) ———-_=-_=
Manchurian tiger (Felis tigris longi-

DLS) er eee SS ee eres
Leopard (Felis pardus)_____-_____
Hast African leopard (Felis pardus

Suahenea) Ee Se eevee
JASUAAMens) onca) ea ee eee
Mexican puma (felis azteca)____-~
Mountain lion (Felis hippolestes) ——
Canada lynx (Lynaw canadensis) ~~~
Bay lynx *(Lynw ffs) ==
California lynx (Lynw californicus)_—

WRrwWRN Eee

pat

NNR EHE ERROR TOWN RONKRNHEDN

BRYN BREE

to bo

Co 0s bo ee

Bo

PINNIPEDIA,

California sea-lion (Zalophus cali-
Orns eae eee
Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina)__~____

RODENTIA,

Patagonian cavy (Dolichotis pata-

gomicr) is ea ee ee
Peruvian guinea pig (Cavia tschudii

DALOLOn) Poca se
Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) —_______
Coypu (Myocastor coypus) —_—________—
Mexican agouti (Dasyprocta meai-

Azara’s agouti (Dasyprocta azara) —
Crested agouti (Dasyprocta cris-
tat@)! 2a eee ee eee Re eS
Paca> (Gumeulus paca) ==
Viscacha (Lagostomus maximus) —__
Crested poreupine (Hystrig cris-
(OCG) 2s 2= 2 = ee eee
Woodchuck (Marmota monar)—_~_~
Dusky marmot (Marmota flaviven-
b718) SOUSCULG) he ee
Prairie-dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) —
Albino squirrel (Sciurus carolinen-
SILS)) ie a eT, Se Se
American beaver (Castor canaden-
SUS) es Ses es A SS ee ee

LAGOMORPHA,

Domestic rabbit (Oryctolagus cunic-
AUS) ee ee ee

EDENTATA,.

Hairy armadillo (Huphractus villo-

PRIMATES.

Black lemur (Lemur macaco)__~_~~~
White-throated capuchin (Cebus ca-

pucimis) So. ee 2sse ees
Margarita capuchin (Cebus marga-
wite)\ S25 eee ee ee
Chacma. (Papio porcariws) ——_______
Hamadryas baboon (Papio hama-
OY 0S) Se ie, SE ee eee

Mandrill (Papio sphing) _—_-__--_-
Drill (Papio leucopheus) —- ~~ == ===
Moor macaque (Cynopithecus mau-

TUG) 2 Bee Al A ee
};rown macaque (Macaca speciosa) —
Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata) —
Pig-tailed monkey (Macaca neme-

STriNG) 22S Tera 2 ee ea
Rhesus monkey (Macaca rhesus) —-~
sonnet monkey (Macaca sinica) ~~~
Javan macaque (Macaca mordaz) —_—
Philippine macaque (Macaca sy-

TICK) 2SSLE BSS eee
Sooty mangabey (Cercocebus fuligi-

NOSsUS) SEES ee see

e bo

bo

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK,

Green guenon (Lasiopyga callitri-
(6) OOH) pS oh AE aie head iy, see ae nee
Vervet guenon (Lasiopyga pygery-
CTC) ae ee Ee ee te

Mona (Lasiopyga mona) __________~
Roloway guenon (Lasiopyga_ yrolo-

AOGY)) yt oS ee
Patas monkey (Hrythrocebus patas) —
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) _____

ARTIODACTYLA.

Collared peccary (Pecari angulatus) —
iWiAldibosri(Sws: scrofa) — =e
Wart-hog (Phacocherus ethiopicus) —
Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus am-

FN ODOC IS yeaa Bele op ene nO Tee
Batrician camel (Camelus bactrian-

Guanaco (Lama huanachus) —~~~~--~
Inlamas (ama qlama)-= =
Alpaca (Lama pacos) ———--—- ae ES
Vicufia (Lama vicugna)_________~-
Fallow deer (Dama dama)_—~~—--__—~
xd gudeere@Al ais aris) Ee _ ee ee
Hog deer (Hyelaphus porcinus) —__—-_~
Sambar (Rusavwmnicolor) ===" 2222—s=
Luzon deer (Rusa philippinus) ———_~
Barasingha (Rucervus duvaucelii) ——
Japanese deer (Sika nippon) —~___~—
Red deer (Cervus elaphus)________
Kashmir deer (Cervus hanglu)__—__—
Bedford deer (Cervus xanthopygus) —
American elk (Cervus canadensis) __
Virginia deer (Odocoileus virginian-

AUS) eee: Se Sarre a Seen
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) ~~~
Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus colum-

(QIGR COTS) oes Sea ee

RATITA,

South African ostrich (Struthio aus-
CT LLES) ene baat Serene te ee
Somaliland ostrich (Struthio molyb-
OGDILANICS) re ene ee ee
Rhea (Rhea americana)_____-____
Emu (Dromiceius novehollandie) ——

CICONIFORMES.

American white pelican (Pelecanus
CrYULVTOTRYN Choos) = a
European white pelican (Pelecanus
ONUO CHOU LIALS meee te era
Roseate pelican (Pelecanus roseus) —
Australian pelican (Pelecanus con-
SDICI Lys) ee ee 2 ee Se
Brown pelican (Pelecanus occiden-
TAIT ATCT) WsaP a Ss oe
Florida cormorant (Phalacrocoragr
auritus floridanws) ~~~

Blesbok (Damaliscus albifrons) —-_~

1 | White-tailed gnu (Connochetes
Gib) a= tae ee oe ee he eee
2 Oefassa water-buck (Kobus defassa)
8 | Indian antelope (Antilope cervi-
CODY) pe ee Oe es SG ae
1 | Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) _-
3 | Congo harnessed antelope (Tragel-
il CONUSAOLOLUS) a ee eee
Hast African eland (Taurotragus
OGYRIUBINGSTON) =
Tahr (Zemitragus jemlahicus) ~~~
ul Aoudad (Ammotragus lervia)__~____
1 | Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis cana-
2 CENSUS) a ea a ee
Arizona mountain sheep (Ovis cana-
3 GGnSis Gaillard)
Barbados sheep (Ovis aries) —_~~~_~~
Zl) Zebu (BOS! dCs) =a
Anoa (Anoa depressicornis) __~—~___ _—
2 | Yak (Poéphagus grunniens) _______
5 American bison (Bison bison) __~____
9
2 PERISSODACTYLA,.
1
2 Brazilian tapir (Tapirus terrestris) —
6 | Mongolian horse (Hquus przewal-
i¢ CS eee ee eee ee ee
2 | Grant’s zebra (Hquus _ burchelli
il GRAN) a Teed EEE DS
2 | Grevy’s zebra (Hquus grevyi) —____-
10 | Zebra-horse hybrid (Hquus grevyi-
16 COUGTUS ee * ees Oe ae
4 | Zebra-ass hybrid (Hquus grevyi-asi-
5 (OK) | oe Ee eee
a
PROBOSCIDBA.
ial
4 | Abyssinian elephant (Loxvodonta afri-
CONMUNODY OTS) aa ee eee
+
BIRDS.
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) —
Snowy egret (Hgretta candidissima) —
Black-crowned night heron (Nycti-
4 corax nycticoraxr nevius) _——_____
Boatbill (Cochlearius cochlearius) _—
1 White stork (Ciconia ciconia)_____
2 | Black stork (Ciconia nigra) _—~______
2 | Straw-necked ibis -(Carphibis spini-
GOULTAS yh PR na a Be i
Sacred ibis (Threskiornis cethiopi-
CUS) RES Se ws far al ts Se eee
White ibis (Guar@ alta)22— 2 = =
9 Scarlet ibis (Guara rubra) ______ _-__
Roseate spoonbill (Ajaia ajaja)____
2 | European flamingo (Phanicopterus
2 POSCUS) i Seater a, a
2 ANSERIFORMES.
3 Black-necked screamer (Chauna tor-
Ghia) |) ee
18 | Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) ~~~

13

i)

wt)

Lo Si od

74 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

East Indian black duck (Anas

DULY TRY TUCHIOS Vivi)
Black duck (Anas rubripes)_—~___~
Gadwall (Chaulelasmus streperus) —_—
Baldpate (Mareca americana) ______
Green-winged teal (Nettion caroli-

TUCTES Ch) pr ee en ee ee

COTS) peer a at ee nae
Cinnamon teal (Querquedula cyan-
Cy ELOY) yeaa Sey he nt ae baa a oe
Ruddy sheldrake
UTE) ee ee ee eee
LENA EI (UO NEH IATA KE HAGA) a oe ry
Wood duck (Avan ‘sponsa)
Mandarin duck (Dendronessa gale-
ME CULUGLUG)) We eee ee ee
Canvasback (Marila valisineria) ____
Redhead (Marila americana)_____~
Lesser scaup duck (Marila affinis)_—
Ring-necked duck (Marila collaris) _—
Rosy-billed pochard (Metopiana pe-
DO SACU) a en ee ee ee
Snow goose (Chen hyperboreus) ____
Greater snow goose (Ohen hyper-
GOT-CURRIELRCIUDS) ae eee
Blue goose (Chen cw@rulescens) _____
Ross’s goose (Chen rossit) _________
White-fronted goose (Anser albi-
TOTS) ee ee ee ee ee
American white-fronted goose (An-
ser albifrons gambeli)___________
Toulouse goose (Anser cinerus do-
ANESTLCUS \ re ee ee er ee ae
Bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) __
Canada goose (Branta canadensis) __
Hutchin’s goose (Branta canadensis
hUtChinsi) eee
Cackling goose (Branta canadensis
TEL IUUITCCN) ee ee nee ee oe
Brant (Branta bernicla glaucogas-
GE) See ee ae ee ee
Barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis) —
Upland goose (Chloéphaga leucop-
COND) oe Se ee ee ree eee
Spur-winged goose (Plectropterus
CTO CTUSTS| ree ee a ee
Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis no-
BE OULU OLE) ere eee ee
Wandering tree duck (Dendrocygna
CE CUOTO) ta a ee ee eee
White-faced tree duck (Dendrocygna
ROLL LD) sn re es Cee
Mute swan (Cygnus gibbus)_______
Whistling swan (Olor columbianus) —
Trumpeter swan (Olor buccinator) —
Black swan (Chenopis atrata)_~-___

FALCONIFORMES.

South American condor (Vultur

STUDS) ee ee ee eee
California condor (Gymnogyps cali-

fOTNLANUS) ae ee ee ee
Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) _——~
Black vulture (Coragyps urubu)___—
King vulture (Sarcoramphus papa) —

(Casoara ferru-

aN Oe

bo

Ww

=

bo a

wt)

C2 bo Ol

>
2

bom ©

i)

Secretary bird (Sagittarius sepenta-
PLAS) aS Ee ee
ariffon vulture (Gyps fulvus)_ —~—~_—__
Cinerous vulture (Aegypius mona-
GRAS ee ang en ee pee
Caracara (Polyborus cheriway)___~
Crowned hawk eagle (Spizaétus cor-
ONGUUS) 2 = =e eee
Wedge-tailed eagle (Uroaétus au-

Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaétos) ___
Bald eagle (Haliwetus leucocepha-

US) year a ee ae
Alaskan bald eagle (Haliwetus leuco-

cephalus alascanus))—— =
Sparrow hawk (falco sparverius)__
Ferruginous rough-leg (Archibuteo

LervUugineus)), ao ee ees
Red-taiied hawk (Buteo borealis) __
Swainson’s hawk (Buteo swainsoni) —

GALLIFORMES.

Mexican curassow (Craxz globicera) —
Daubenton’s curassow (Craxv dauben-
OVE) oa a a i ee
Domestie turkey (Meleagris gallo-
9D O13 0) ae eee ee
Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo sil-
MOS UTS) areas et ee eee ee
Peafow!l (Pavo cristatus) ————-——-—_—
Peacock pheasant (Polyplectron bi-
COLCONCLUM) ya ee eee
Silver pheasant (Genneus nycthe-
4 CUES) ese ee ee
Lady Amherst’s pheasant (Chrysolo-
DRUSTOMBRCESTUD)) ee
Golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pic-
TAGS) yore eR ie a,
Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) —___
Sealed quail (Callipepla squamata) —
Gambel’s quail (Lophortyx gam-
Celli ee oo 2a ee
Valley quail (Lophortyz californica
VOWICCLO) 2 ee

GRUIFORMES.

American coct (Fulica americana) __
South Island weka rail (Ocydromus

CUUSEN GUYS) \ ee ee pe
Short-winged weka (Ocydromus bra-

CRAY UCEUES) ee ee er
Earl’s weka (Ocydromus earli)_——__
Whooping crane (Grus americana) __
Sandhill crane (Grus mewicana) ___
White-necked crane (Grus_ leucauc-

Indian white crane (Grus leucoge-

POLO US) fe a meee ee
Lilford’s crane (Grus lilfordi)______
Australian crane (Grus rubicunda) _—

Demoiselle crane (Anthropoides
OURO OW ae ee ee ae ere nae
Crowned crane (Belearica pavo-
TUT) er er

Cariama (Cariama cristata) _-~______

He

= Oe

= bo

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK,

CHARADRIIFORMES.

Great black-backed gull (Larus ma-
AAT Bi) Jee ee eo Ne eee
Herring gull (Larus argentatus)__——
Laughing gull (Larus atricilla)____
Australian crested pigeon (Ocyphaps
LGDTOLES ret 2 ee ee

Wonga-wonga pigeon (Leucosarcia
DUCOlG) eee eS BE ae ek
Speckled pigeon (Columba pheo-
NOC ra ea ea ee oe SS

Snow pigeon (Columba leuconota)_—
White-crowned pigeon (Pdatagiwnas
LEUCOCER ICL) ee eee
Land-tailed pigeon (Chlorenas fas-
CULE) Wag ee a a ag a
Red-billed pigeon (Chlorenas flavi-

HOES) Ree ee es OE ad
White-winged dove (Melopelia asi-
(ELC C)) a ee
Mourning dove (Zenaidura macro-
LT) ee ee ee

Zebra dove (Geopelia striata) _—_____
Cape masked dove (Oena capensis) —
Inea dove (Scardafella inca) __~_____
Blue-headed quail-dove (Starnenas

CYHOMOCEDROLG) ys a ee ee ee
Ringed turtle-dove (Streptopelia ri-

soria)

CUCULIFORMES.

White-crested touraco (Turacus co-
TULLE ONS ee eee
Grass paroquet (Melopsittacus un-
QUVOLUS Se Se a eee
Black-tailed paroquet
TIRE LOCTUUT Oe ae ee PE
Sanded paroquet (Palwornis fasci-
CLO Seat ae es. ee eee |
Lesser vasa parrot (Coracopsis ni-
gra)
Gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus)_—

Haitian paroquet (Aratinga chio-
DOM ECT) tae = a ha a
LBlue-winged parrotlet (Psittacula
DOSSEVING) hase es AS
Cuban parrot (Amazona leuco-
COD CU) eee ae ee

Yellow-shouldered parrot (Amazona

Darvadensis)\; sees Se ee
Festive parrot (Amazona festiva) ——
White-fronted parrot (Amazgona al-

OUT ONS eee ae ae Oe eee
Orange-winged parrot (Amazona
NTO CONACC,) pea ee ee eee
Santo Domingo parrot (Amazona
CeEntralis)). 22 eee A ee

Yellow-headed parrot (Amazgona och-
MOCEDINGUG) ie a
Yellow-naped parrot (Amazona au-
TODUUAGLO) Be eee
Double yellow-head parrot (Ama-
LOM a OV GLITD)) =e oe et Se EE
Yellow-cheeked parrot (Amazona au-
CALNETULUSS) apes ee ee ee

NRE

bo

HO

Plain-colored parrot (Amazgona fari-
MOS SUN ONTO) =a
Quaker parrot (Myiopsitta mo-
OCHS) Ce ee ee
Thick-biled parrot (Rhynchopsitta
DOCITNYIUCHO) = =e ee a ee
Brazilian macaw (Ara severa)_____
Red-and-blue macaw (Ara _ chlorop-
UCT, Cl) ee ee ey ee
Red-and-blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara
MEKSOL) eh ae ee ee
Blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara ara-
TOIL) ee ee ee
Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatoes
COURT RHO Ss en RA os IS
Great red-crested cockatoo (Caca-
BOCSEILOUECCEIUS LS) ) eee era
White cockatoo (Cacatoes alba)____—
Leadbeater’s cockatoo (Cacatoes lead-
VEMCCNt) 2.23 = ee ee ek
Bare-eyed cockatoo (Cacatoes gym-
NOP Sis!) 2222 Seo LE
Roseate cockatoo (Cacatoes roseica-
pilla)
Kea (Nestor notabilis) ____________

CORACIIFORMES.

Giant kingfisher (Dacelo gigas) _— ~~
Concave-casqued hornbill (Dichoceros
OLCOTNiS) pie ee
Barred owl (Striz varia) _—___--__=_—
Sereech owl (Otus asio)_—_________
Great horned owl (Bubo_ virgini-
anus)
Western horned owl (Bubo. virgini-
UNUSSDALESCENS) =

PASSERIFORMES.

Ked-billed hiil-tit (Liothri« luteus)_
Australian gray jumper (Struthidea
(COLGRG OD i ee ee
Green jay (Xanthoura luxwosa) ___~
Australian crow (Corvus coronoides)
European raven (Corvus coraz)___~
Malabar starling (Spodiopsar mala-
bancits) 2. ee
Napolean weaver (Pyromelana afra)
Crimson-crowned weaver (Pyrome-
lana flammaceps) _=—
Madagascar weaver (Foudia mada-
OAS COTLCNSIS)) B= ee
Paradise weaver (Steganura para-
CLUS CG) eee
Cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata)
Zebra finch (Teniopygia castanotis)
Black-faced Gouldian finch (Poéphila
SOULMATE) EE See ee ess st See
Red-faced Gouldian finch (Poéphila
ATA LO TUS (PREF apes are Shey ee eee eee
Strawberry finch (Amandava aman-
COO) ans ae
Black-headed finch (Munia atri-
GOD UG BE ie 2 Pe a Be
Nutmeg finch (Munia punctularia) —_
Java finch (Munia oryzivora) _---~-~

a

te

=

Bean

“1 lo

76

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

White Java finch (Munia oryzivora) — 4 , Saffron finch (Sicalis flaveola)______ 9
Vera Cruz red-wing (Agelaius phani- Canary (Serinus canarius) —~—-_-___ 3
ceus richmond) ——-.--__________ 2 areen singing finch (Serinus icterus) 2)
Seng sparrow (Melospiza melodia) __ 3 | European chaffinch (Fringilla calebs) 4
Tree sparrow (Spizella monticola) __ 1 | Red-crested cardinal (Paroaria cu-
White-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia CULE CD) ie ee pe 2
albvicollis) iS eee eee 1 | Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) ____ il
REPTILES.
Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)____~ 1 , Water snake (Natria sipedon)_____ 2
Alligator (Alligator mississipiensis) — 31 | Coach-whip snake (Coluber fiagel-
Mena Island iguana (Cyclura stejne- TUN) oe 3 terete on a
GOT) es et oe i aS 3 Dod ee oe ES 1 | Chicken snake (Hlaphe quadrivit-
Gila monster (Heloderma suspec- C0td) a Se ee eee eS ee 2
GAUITD) in aie ee a ew ee en eee 6 | Slug-eating snake (Petalognathus
Blue-tongued lizard (Tiliqua_ scin- NEUILOLUS) oe a ee 1
C0ides) pee 2 ees et See 1 | Duncan Island tortoise (Testudo
Rock python (Python molurus)_——__ 3 CDIUD DIL) eee il
Diamond python (Python spilotes) __ 1 | Albemarle Island tortoise (Vestudo
Anaconda (Hunectes murinus) _____ 2 VICTIG) i SD ee 1
Boa constrictor (Constrictor con-
SUNICTOT) |. wes ee eee 4
STATEMENT OF THE COLLECTION.
‘ACCESSIONS DURING THE YEAR.
Presented : Transferred from other Govern-
Memmi aly aes = eee eae 14 ment departments:
IBIAS) Se Oe on, Pak 50 Mamie sass Sea 8
Reptile)... ate Saray 39 Birds: = eet Gigs 2
108 10
Born and hatched in the National Captured in National Zoological
Zoological Park: Park;
NOOBS) (Rae ee 63 Mammals sane eee 3
SLC Se Sees ee eee 45 Bitds poets. eee oe 5
: : 108 Reptilesws- = eee 1
Received in exchange: we PHO
Mammals! 22k st ipl Deposited :
Bird ses) 2h Sah eee 25 Mammals ___ 3
Reptiles: 2h aka 6 BIRO Si aes oe eee ae 6
caitmelaaa Reptiles eG okie ace 9
Purchased: — 18
Mammals (2:5 2a er 18 ae
Birds: ° 2 ae es 104 Total seeessions* —_ iste 408
Reptiles! aa al
— 118
SUMMARY.
Animal sion hand duly Oi ee pea es ee eee a ae
A'ecessionsiduringythe years S225 hee ee ee on Se ee 408
1, 6381
Deduct loss (by exchange, death, and return of animals on deposit) ______ 384
Animalson hand June; 30 mi OlS= 22) a eee eee 1, 247

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. Te

«

Class. Species. Pe
VESTA TL LSU ee ee Se Se ie Se ae ean tee ies lalaiale = claciene ea ciicices cams eise cele ni | 149 | 483
ledhis Sate. aa COLES 2 SaRe Ee ee 5 Sees See see bese ose ase = een er | 190 706
EVOWULLOSe eee eee a ee eee ae rae elem n ieee weal ete ae n= mee wietele wine elaia = =i = 15 58
TUE sets ae te ae Se ERR eee Ee ee SE eae ee a eeite sone ron sham See 354 1, 247
VISITORS.

All records for the numbers of visitors to the park have been ex-
ceeded during the past year. The total number of people admitted
to the grounds, as determined by count and estimate, was 1,593,227,
a daily average of 4,365. The greatest number in any one month was
202,793 in March, 1918, an average per day of 6,542. The attendance
by months was as follows:

In 1917: July, 76,100; August, 157,700; September, 195,350; Octo-
ber, 175,350; November, 158,600; December, 70,850. In 1918: Janu-
ary, 35,850; February, 56,300; March, 202,793; April, 139,934; May,
187,300; June, 137,600.

These numbers exceed the attendance records for last year by 486,-
427, and are 436,117 over the attendance.for 1916—the record year
up to that time. Heretofore there has usually been a falling off in
the number of visitors during the heat of summer; but, with the
population of Washington so increased by war workers, the attend-
ance throughout the past heated season has hardly diminished from
that of spring and autumn.

The great increase in the number of visitors to the park in the
past three years is graphically shown in the following statement of
attendance records for the last 10 years:

TUG) tks 2 Se ie so EE ee ee ged De ee re ee NE ee eee ee een eee. 564, 639
TCS ye She Sap en le CO eee agile hd eo Oda hea ete sy YT, Sale eay meer (A515 15)
TTL T hot Sie eh at a ey I a ei ei Ey eee ee eee. 521, 440
HLL) Seen oe eR eee Sa en Tae es Mere e ee enh eect See ee 542, 738
TPQ ae PTs. SRAM: Os er OCT i Bl PEPER | AOE RMP Lee 8 hers 633, 526
pO iAstere RE. teehee OSA bo Sees rete ai (tel €t8 5. ey yea el Pere. Ties CUCL
101s eee Sea A Rees Cael 2a ak ee ere: 0 een bei baa raipere Sg Se 2 794, 530
TIO Gat ee ER a OE ee ee eee ae eee. es al, Tse JNO
THO UGG Seat Se a age Te a a LY seal aa ire ae eel SING Pee ye han ae 1, 106, S00
GNA ee aE Ce) ETE. MEL SANE PAU ED Bes EEE) BL PERRIN R NSS 9 ve ER eae H9S, 220

Seventy-eight schools and classes visited the park in 1918, with a
total of 4,945 individuals.

IMPROVEMENTS.

Owing to a lack of sufficient funds for any substantial improve-
ments, only minor repairs or additions were made during the year
to the buildings and equipment of the park. New boiler tubes and
some other fittings in the central heating plant were provided at a

78 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

cost of about $800. The restaurant building was repaired, the kitchen
enlarged, and new counters provided. The old slippery and badly
worn pavement was removed from the large elephant house and was
replaced with a floor of concrete. The old and smaller elephant house
was fitted up for winter quarters for certain of the waterfowl. Much-
needed repairs were made to the lion-house roof, the western half of
the north extension and the adjoining portion of the main roof were
covered with new paroid-felt roofing, and a ventilator was placed in
the main building over the public space. Minor repairs were also
made to the bird house, the antelope house, and the Henderson out-
door parrot cage.

A large concrete bathing pool was constructed in the yak’s in-
closure and the tanks in the bear yards were all repaired. The
fences of the bear yards, antelope yards, and some others of the out-
door cages and inclosures were painted. An outdoor cage 16 feet
square, with shelter attached, was constructed for the kea parrots re-
ceived as a gift from the New Zealand Government. The indoor
chimpanzee quarters, in the lion house, were reconstructed with
gratings of three-fourths inch iron pipe, which provide a much
better hold for the animal’s hands and feet than did the old three-
eighths inch bars. Concrete walls and bases for shelter houses were
built at some of the deer paddocks, the cinder footpaths were ex-
tensively repaired, and a concrete walk and stairway was built lead-
ing up the west hill side from the suspension bridge and connecting
with the walk around the eland yards. Part of the stable building
near the office was rebuilt for a chicken house and, in a further
effort to lessen the cost of food for animals, the garden acreage
was again materially increased.

THE FLORA OF THE PARK,

In addition to an extensive native flora, the park contains many
exotic trees and shrubs. It is important that records be kept
of all introductions. During the past year Mr. William Hunter,
gardener, who has been in the service since the inception of the park,
has prepared an annotated list of all the trees and shrubs found
growing within the boundary fence. The list has been copied on
cards for filing, and will be carefully edited and revised during the
present season. Information is given as to the abundance and loca-
tion of native species and, in the case of exotics, the source, date
of introduction, location, or any additional information likely to be
needed for future reference. Efforts will be made to secure speci-
mens of trees properly belonging to the flora of the District of
Columbia and not represented in the park, in order that all the
native species may be found within this reserve. A similar list of
herbaceous plants, prepared several years ago, will be brought un

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK, 79

to date, thus furnishing a complete catalogue of the flora of the park,
which, it is to be hoped, may later be published in some form as part
of a guide to the natural features of the park. Lists of the native
mammals, birds, and reptiles of the park, with pertinent data, are
also in preparation for some similar purpose.

ALTERATION OF THE WESTERN BOUNDARY.

By an act approved June 23, 1913, Congress appropriated $107,200
for the purchase of certain lots and parcels of land between the west-
ern boundary of the National Zoological Park and Connecticut Ave-
nue, from Cathedral Avenue to Klingle Road, this land, together
with the included highways, to become a part of the park. The ap-
propriation was not a continuing one and lapsed at the end of one
year, before legal proceedings for the purchase were completed.
Ttems for the reappropriation of this sum and for the additional
amount necessary to meet the figures fixed by the court in proceed-
ings of condemnation have since been submitted to Congress in the
estimates each year, but have not been favorably considered.

The principal entrance to the park will always be from Connecti-
cut Avenue, and the importance of a frontage on that thoroughfare
at and bordering the gate can not be overestimated. The necessary
land should be acquired before it is too late, in order that when the
time comes a dignified entrance gate can be constructed and the near-
by land penerolled by the park authorities.

IMPORTANT NEEDS.

Roads, bridle paths, and automobile parking.—As mentioned in
the report for last year, the question of providing space for the
parking of automobiles near the main buildings is serious. The
enormous increase in the number of cars visiting the park makes it
difficult to care for the safety of the public without adequate park-
ing space. More than 4,500 automobiles sometimes pass through
the park in a single day, and many of the large sight-seeing cars
regularly visit the Zoo. During the coming year it will be neces-
sary to make extensive repairs to roads and walks, and some change
should be made in the bridle path in order that riders would not
be forced to use the bridge and main road from the Harvard Street
gate to the crossroads.

Grading and filling—As soon as practicable the work of grading
and filling, commenced two years ago but discontinued for lack of
funds, should be completed. As left, it makes an unsightly and
unfinished-looking place in one of the most conspicuous points in
the park bordering the main road. The further cutting away of
the irregular hill in the center of the western part of the park and
the filling in of the near-by ravine will level nearly 70,000 square

80 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

feet of ground which is now of little use and make available a
further 25,000 square feet of ground at the ravine. This will elimi-
nate a dangerous curve in the automobile road.

Repairs to antelope house——Practically the whole west side of the
antelope house needs reconstruction. The building is over 20 years
old and the timbers and other woodwork on the west side are almost
beyond repair. When the work is undertaken the walls should be
fixed properly with concrete and the cages considerably enlarged.
It is estimated that an expenditure of about $2,000 will be necessary
to put this building in good condition.

Adams Mill Road grade and stairway—The work of grading
Adams Mill Road between Clydesdale Place and Harvard Street,
recently commenced by the District, will make necessary some ex-
penditure on the part of the park to care for the resulting fill above
the stairway and walk leading into the park from the Adams Mill
Road gates. At present it is impossible to estimate the exact amount
of work that will be needed, but it is probable that a new bridge
and walk will have to be built at one point, with a substantial re-
taining wall at the base of the fill for the safety of the public. A
very narrow strip of land between Adams Mill Road and the park,
from Clydesdale Place to Ontario Road, still in private ownership,
should be added to the park for the protection of this point.

Additional lake for waterfowl—Exhibits of waterfowl are among
the most popular and instructive features of the park. An additional
lake, to be used for the birds in summer and for skating in winter,
could be built at comparatively small expense on the open flat near
the Harvard Street entrance.

Aviary building—The need of a new house for the exhibition of
birds has been felt for some years and is becoming more pressing
because of the greatly increased numbers of visitors now cared for
in the park. Such a building should be provided with commodious
public space. The aisles in the old bird house are far too narrow
for the crowds of the present day, and the exhibition of birds,
important and valuable as it is, can not be properly displayed.

Reptile house-—A public exhibition building, properly constructed
and equipped for the display of reptiles and amphibians, would be
greatly appreciated by visitors. The small collection of reptiles now
kept in inadequate and wholly unsuited quarters in the lion house
is very popular. The reptile house should be planned to show in
natural environment the various types of reptiles of economic im-
portance, those sought and used for food, and those feared by man
in many countries. The educational value of such a building could
be developed to a point of great importance.

Outdoor quarters for mammals.—Many species of mammals, espe-
cially some of the larger carnivores, now kept in cages in heated

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. sl

buildings, could be much better shown and more pleasantly and
healthfully located in outdoor quarters with warm but unheated
shelters. A large African lion, kept in the park for two winters
without artificial heat, has shown marked improvement from such
treatment. Such provision should be made for the exhibition of
certain of the lions, the Siberian tigers, and other mammals. Out-
door cages, adjoining the winter quarters, should be constructed on
the east side of the lion house for the leopards, jaguars, and hyenas.
The unsightly row of cages along the crest of the hill north of the
bird house should be replaced by new sanitary yards with comfort-
able but unheated retiring quarters attached.

Owing to the great increase in the number of people who take
advantage of the recreational and educational features of the park,
the necessity for a substantial increase in the appropriation for
regular maintenance expenses is apparent. For the safety and com-
fort of the public the number of policemen, attendants, keepers, and
caretakers must be augmented, as the force now maintained is not
greater than was considered necessary when the attendance was
barely half its present figures.

Respectfully submitted.

N. Hotuisrer, Superintendent.

Dr. Cuartes D. Watcort,

Secretary Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.

APPENDIX 5.
REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY.

Sir: The Astrophysical Observatory was conducted under the fol-
lowing passage of the sundry civil act approved June 12, 1917:

Astrophysical Observatory: For maintenance of Astrophysical Observatory,
under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, including assistants, pur-
chase of necessary books and periodicals, apparatus, making necessary observa-
tions in high altitudes, repairs and alterations of buildings, and miscellaneous
expenses, $13,000.

For observation of the total eclipse of the sun of June eighth, nineteen hun-
dred and eighteen, including purchase of necessary apparatus and supplies,
transportation of equipment to and from observing station, hire of temporary
assistance, transportation and subsistence of observers, and miscellaneous
expenses, $2,000.

The observatory occupies a number of frame structures within an
inclosure of about 16,000 square feet south of the Smithsonian Ad-
ministration Building at Washington, and also a cement observing
station and frame cottage for observers on a plot of 10,000 square
feet, leased from the Carnegie Solar Observatory on Mount Wilson,
Cal.

Its equipment comprises special optical, electrical, and other appa-
ratus adapted to measure radiation of the sun, the sky, and terrestrial
sources. Much of the apparatus has been built at the observatory
instrument shop on the Smithsonian grounds in Washington ac-
cording to designs of the director. The instrument maker, Mr. A.
Kramer, has been employed by the observatory nearly 30 years
in this experimental construction work, and his experience and
skill, added to his natural ability, render him invaluable. New
designs are continually being worked out as new experiments are
being made.

The present value of the buildings and equipment is estimated at
$50,000. This estimate contemplates the cost required to replace
the outfit for the purposes of the investigations. Owing to the
highly specialized character of the apparatus no such value could be
obtained at public sale.

WORK OF THE YEAR.

At Washington—As heretofore the work of measuring and com-
puting from the records obtained in the field on Mount Wilson has

82

REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 83

gone on steadily in charge of Mr. F. E. Fowle, aided by Miss F. A.
Graves, computer, and Mr. R. Eisinger, messenger.

Mr. Fowle completed and published? his investigation of the ab-
sorption of long wave rays by long columns of air containing known
quantities of water-vapor. His results give the relations between ab-
sorption and atmospheric humidity, wave-length by wave-length,
from the visible spectrum down to waves of more than 20 times the
maximum visible wave-length, and for quantities of water ranging
from z}, to three times that which prevails in the vertical thick-
ness of the atmosphere above Washington in clear spring weather.
Many difficulties which were met required tedious subsidiary investi-
gations which are described in the paper.

Notwithstanding the greatness of this contribution to meteorologi-
cal science the subject of the relations of water-vapor and terres-
trial radiation demands yet more investigation adapted to cover the
range of wave-lengths from 16 microns to 50 microns, where Mr.
Fowle was forced to give over the investigation temporarily, because
no substance suitable to make a prism for forming the spectrum of
these rays was known.

Mr. Aldrich has since investigated at the observatory a great num-
ber of natural crystalline and other substances, including many pure
chemical preparations. None was found appreciably more trans-
parent than rock salt, which was used by Mr. Fowle, except potassium
iodide. Apparently this substance, if it could be procured in large
crystals, or fused into a noncrystalline structure, would be suitable
to carry the work to much longer wave-lengths. Efforts have been
made, as yet unsuccessfully, to procure blocks of this substance of
suitable proportions and inner structure for making large prisms.

Mr. Aldrich has carried on a number of investigations on the ab-
sorption and reflection of atmospheric-water-vapoc, liquid water,
lampblack, gelatin, and other substances to rays emitted by a black-
ened reservoir filled with boiling water. In these experiments he
has employed rock salt transmission plates to roughly separate the
total radiation into two parts, whose wave-lengths are respectively
greater and less than about 20 microns, where rock salt ceases to be
transparent. The results on water-vapor agree well with what Mr.
Fowle’s spectrum work would tend to indicate. They also show
that an atmospheric layer about 50 meters deep, containing water-
vapor equal to 0.05 centimeters of precipitable water, would probably
absorb all the rays sent out by the 100° C. radiator which are non-
transmissible to rock salt, that is above the wave-length 20 microns.
This is in harmony with observations of the sun and of nocturnal
radiation made by Mr. Aldrich on Mount Wilson, to which reference

1 Water Vapor Transparency to Low-temperature Radiation. Smiths. Mise. Coll., Vol.
68; Now 8.1917.

84 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

will be made below. The results on liquid water show it to be com-
pletely opaque in layers of 1 centimeter or more thickness to all rays
of the above described 100° C. radiation. The reflecting power of
water surfaces to these rays varies with the angle of incidence as fol-
lows:

AB YONG LS) 1X2), VERN, NS ee a ee ae! O°= 30°. 55 2
Reflection 0/o________ és Opty Loh di tena Se 2 2 3 ea AO ee,

From this it follows that though perfectly opaque in layers ex-
ceeding 1 cm. thickness, water is not a perfect absorber or a per-
fect radiator for long-wave rays. It may be regarded as emitting
about 90 per cent as much radiation as the perfect. radiator at
temperatures from 0° to 100° C.

Lampblack paint proved partially transparent and partially re-
flecting. Further experiments are required before publishing defi-
nite results, but evidently those who employ lampblacked surfaces
in experiments with long-wave rays should consider these imperfec-
tions of radiating and absorbing power.

An investigation was made on possible regularities of periodicity
in the short-interval variability of the sun? observed at our Mount
Wilson station. Dr. H. H. Clayton had made such an investigation
for the year 1913 and found indistinct tendencies toward a repetition
of “solar constant” conditions after intervals of 12 and 22 days.
Computations were made here to extend the investigation to the other
years from 1908 to 1916, excepting 1912.

Well marked relatively hot and cold hemispheres of the sun seem
to have prevailed for several months in 1915, giving a “solar con-
stant” periodicity of about 27 days. In 1916 an extraordinary
regular periodicity of 34 days seemed to be indicated. In other
years tendencies to periodicities of other intervals were found, and
generally more marked than in 1913, but not as prominently seen
as In 1915 and 1916. On the whole the irregularity of period of the
fluctuations of solar radiation would seem to be the most outstanding
result of the inquiry.

In accordance with the wish expressed by Secretary Walcott, the
facilities of the observatory have been employed whenever possible
to assist in military investigations. This is not the time to detail
the results of this effort further than to say that a large part of the
work of the director and of Mr. Aldrich has been devoted to several
such investigations, and with highly appreciated results. Naturally
this has diminished the astrophysical output of the observatory.

Chilean expedition.—Preparations and arrangements for a South
American solar-radiation expedition occupied much of the time of
the director and that of the instrument maker. As stated in last

——

On Periodicity in Solar Variation, Smiths, Mise, Coll., Vol. 69, No. 6, 1918.

REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 85

year’s report, a proposed expedition under the auspices of the Hodg-
kins fund to observe the solar radiation in the most cloudless region
of Chile was temporarily postponed on account of the entry of the
United States into war, and the expedition was diverted for a time to
Hump Mountain in western North Carolina. Observations of the
solar constant of radiation were made there, when weather permitted,
until March, 1918. By that time it had grown to be certain that the
site was too cloudy for the work, and, notwithstanding grave difficul-
ties brought about by the war, the expedition was sent to Chile as
originally proposed.

Director A. F. Moore and Assistant L. H. Abbot landed at Anto-
fagasta, Chile, on June 16, 1918, with a large equipment of apparatus
and supplies suitable to the investigation. They were greatly aided
by the governor of the Province, the United States consul, and others,
and the Chile Exploration Co. generously gave them the use of build-
ings and other valuable facilities at their disused mine at Chorillos,
near Calama. Calama is a station on the railroad east of the nitrate
desert, on the bank of the River Loa, at latitude N. 22° 28’, longitude
W. 68° 56’, altitude 2,250 meters. Manuscript of daily meteorologi-
cal records of two years, most kindly copied by Dr. Walter Knoche,
former director of the Chilean Meteorological Service, lead us to hope
for as many as 300 days per year favorable to solar-constant. work
there. The experiments are to be continued daily, as far as possible,
for several years. They should furnish meteorologists with a firm
basis for estimating the effects of the solar variability on the terres-

trial climate.
TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE.

Owing to the pressure of military investigations our preparations
for observing the total solar eclipse of June 8, 1918, were not exten-
sive. The observations proposed were confined to observing the
eclipse phenomena visually, photographing the solar corona, and de-
termining the sun and sky radiation during the partial phase, and
the “nocturnal” radiation during the total phase by means of the
pyranometer.

Necessary apparatus was prepared at the observatory shop. It
comprised parts for two 11-foot focus cameras, each of 3 inches aper-
ture with equatorial mounting and driving clockwork, and two pyra-
nometers. The observations were in charge of Mr. L. B. Aldrich,
who was assisted by Mr. A. Kramer and by Rev. Clarence Woodman,
a volunteer observer who had aided us in 1900.

The station selected was near Lakin, Kans., not because it was the
most favorable, but because the more favorable parts of the eclipse
track farther west would be occupied, it was known, by many eclipse
parties, so that the chances of having clear weather at some station

136650°—20——7

86 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

were materially increased by the choice of one so far east as Kansas.
Magnetic observers sent out by Dr. Bauer were also at Lakin, and,
being already on the ground, aided materially in establishing Mr.
Aldrich’s party.

The observers chose the site on Monday, June 3, and were hospitably
entertained at the home of Mr. Pittenger, a rancher. The cameras
were set up in a barn looking out westward through a slot cut away
for the purpose. Unfortunately cloudy and rainy weather hindered
the preparations and prevented the rating of the clock and the photo-
graphic focusing of the lenses on the stars, so that the adjustment
could be made but roughly.

On eclipse day, Saturday, June 8, no hope was felt of fair weather
during the forenoon, but fo pharistely the sky became nearly free from
clouds about 1 Peace and continued so until after nightfall and dur-
ing Sunday. All times of contact were observed by Rey. Fr. Wood-
man, who also exposed the cameras, as follows:

Patitude {=== PSPS LIS eT ARGS ALOE Sage Se che SELES St BBE IOLs222ENe
Koncitude. 282s" = pretrtel Pte herd ert Oe ees 101 Sel ac bl 2S We
Contacts (Greenwich mean time) :
ey cin: Ss
IMESGL ASN 9 BR VAR EEN UG) NL eee eee eee 10 19 48.5
Second: 4: 0at sannietaet 1a peered OF cl sieol £20) eee ral re alias; ak
ih i ns ane a eS ee ee = plea 2opolao
DENBY ai 0 ds i le ARS a a a a ee 12 29 45.4

The observers regarded the eclipse as unexpectedly dark and the
phenomenon as more than usually grand.

Very good photographs of the corona were obtained, showing ex-
tensions to about 3 diameters of the sun in some directions. Owing
to lack of opportunity to rate the clock there was some evidence of
imperfect following. The negatives were developed, with the kind
permission and advice of Director E. C. Pickering, by Mr. King at
Harvard College Observatory.

Messrs. Aldrich and Kramer observed successfully throughout the
afternoons and early night hours of June 8 and June 9 with the
pyranometer. The results obtained measure the gradual diminution
of the radiation of the sun and of the brightness of the sky as the
eclipse progressed, the outgoing radiation from the earth’s surface
during totality, the gradual increase of sun and sky radiation after-
wards, their decline toward sunset, and the outgoing radiation from
the earth’s surface after nightfall. Numerical values will be pub-
lished later.

WORK AT MOUNT WILSON.

Mr. L. B. Aldrich occupied the Mount Wilson station until Octo-
ber 11, 1917, and again after June 14,1918. He continued the usual
solar constant determinations and the determinations of the distribu-
tion of radiation over the sun’s disk. Two improvements were intro-
duced in the apparatus.

REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY. 87

The coelostat used in solar constant work was provided with stel-
lite mirrors in place of silver on glass, so that now the optical train
of the spectrobolometer for solar constant work contains exclusively
nontarnishable mirrors. This allows us to compare as never before
the distribution of radiation in the solar spectrum from day to day.
We hope now to determine surely whether the variations of solar
radiations are uniform over the whole spectrum or predominate in
certain wave lengths.

A specially designed vacuum bolometer like the one employed at
Hump Mountain and in Chile and wholly sealed in glass so as not
ever to require attention to renew the vacuum has been substituted.
This bolometer was constructed to exact specifications as to length,
breadth, and thickness of strips in accordance with completely
worked-out unpublished theory of the bolometer. We are sure that
it is the last word on the subject as regards adaptability to our in-
vestigation. All expected results are obtained in its actual use.

The sky was more cloudy than usual on Mount Wilson both in 1917 °
and 1918, during the time of our expeditions. In the winter, in
November, December, and January of 1917-18, the Carnegie Institu-
tion observers reported unusually good weather for the season.

Mr. Aldrich carried on in 1917 some investigations to determine
whether long-wave rays, not transmissible by rock salt (that is, ex-
ceeding 20 microns in wave length), occur in the solar beam at the
earth’s surface. The experiments indicated that they do not. He
also investigated the transmissibility of the atmosphere for rays of
more than 20 microns in wave length by means of the pyranometer
with and without a rock-salt cover. The experiments showed that
even toward the zenith these rays are wholly cut off by the lower
layers of the atmosphere. Hence we may conclude from both the
solar and nocturnal observations that our atmosphere is opaque to
rays exceeding 20 microns in wave length, such as are emitted in
recognizable quantities by bodies at terrestrial or solar temperatures.
This result is in harmony with Mr. Aldrich’s laboratory experiments
above mentioned.

In June, 1918, experiments were begun at Mount Wilson to deter-
mine the distribution of solar radiation along that diameter of the
solar image which is at right angles to the east and west diameter
investigated in our usual tower telescope work. A special apparatus
was arranged to slowly rotate the second mirror of the coelostat, and
thus produce a regular drift of the solar image along any desired
diameter. Preliminary results obtained show that the differences, if
any, between the distribution of radiation along different solar di-
ameters do not amount to 1 per cent.

88 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.
PERSONNEL.

R. Eisinger resigned from our service in June, 1918, and after
service in the Treasury Department enlisted in the Army.

SUMMARY.

During the year covered by this report, great advance has been
made in the study of very long wave-length rays and their trans-
missibility in our atmosphere. Solar constant work at Mount Wil-
son has been continued and improved. An expedition under the
auspices of the Hodgkins Fund of the Smithsonian Institution, but
equipped and directed from the Astrophysical Observatory, has ob-
served the solar constant at Hump Mountain, N. C., and now is lo-
cated for a term of years in exceptionally favorable circumstances at
Calama, Chile. The total solar eclipse of June 8, 1918, was success-
fully observed. The variability of the sun is shown to have vestiges
of periodicity, though predominantly irregular. <A great deal of
‘attention has been given to war problems.

Respectfully submitted.
C. G. Assort,
Director Astrophysical Observatory.
Dr. C. D. Waucort,

Secretary Smithsonian Institution.

APPENDIX 6.

REPORT ON THE LIBRARY.

Sr: I have the honor to submit the following report on the activi-
ties of the library of the Smithsonian Institution during the fiscal
year ended June 30, 1918:

Conditions abroad have curtailed exchanges to a great extent.
Notwithstanding, a large number of foreign publications are being
received regularly and the sets on file are up to date. Special atten-
tion has been given to exchanges with South American countries, with
very gratifying results, and the same can be said of the domestic
exchanges.

There were received during the year 27,212 packages, an increase
of 2,920 over the year preceding. Of these, 26,230 were received by
mail and 928 through the international exchanges. Correspondence
connected therewith amounted to 1,087 letters and 2,725 acknowledg-
ments on the regular printed forms.

SMITHSONIAN LIBRARY.

Main library—Publications for the Smithsonian Main Library,
after entry on the records, are forwarded to the Smithsonian deposit
in the Library of Congress. During the fiscal year 2,773 were acces-
sioned, consisting of 2,369 complete volumes, 419 parts of volumes,
954 pamphlets, and 88 charts. The accessions numbers were ex-
tended from 527,151 to 529,924.

The cataloguing included 3,331 volumes, 95 charts, and the addi-
tion of 1,334 new titles; 1,925 volumes were recatalogued; 1,050 cards
were typewritten, and 4,086 printed cards from the Library of Con-
gress, for publications deposited by the Institution, were filed in the
catalogue. In accordance with the established policy, the public
documents presented to the Smithsonian Institution, numbering
3,442, were transferred to the Library of Congress without stamping
or recording.

Dissertations were received from the Universities of Pennsylvania,
Johns Hopkins, Kénigsberg, Toulouse, Lund, and Breslau, and the
technical schools of Dresden and Berlin.

The securing of exchanges in return for Smithsonian publications
and missing parts to complete sets has been continued. Two hundred
and twenty want cards for series in the Smithsonian Division at the
Library of Congress were considered, and 168 volumes and 389 parts

89

90 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

of volumes were secured. Ninety-eight wants were completed. Ac-
tion on the 85 want cards received from the periodical division re-
sulted in the securing of eight volumes and 240 parts of volumes. The
order division obtained, in response to 19 cards, 19 volumes and 18
parts of volumes. The total number of wants completed was 142.

Office reference library.—The accessions for the office library, which
includes the Astrophysical Observatory and the National Zoological
Park, amounted to 555 publications, distributed as follows: Office
library, 278 volumes and 164 pamphlets; Astrophysical Observatory,
58 volumes and 49 pamphlets and parts of volumes; National Zoolog-
ical Park, 91 volumes and 1 pamphlet.

Aeronautical library.—The importance and value of books relating
to aeronautics has been manifested through their use by the student
who has returned day after day to follow up a subject. There have
been added during the year 128 volumes. The bibliography of aero-
nautics, which I have had in preparation for the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics, has been completed and, with the close
of the year, it is ready for the printer. The appropriation for print-
ing was approved just at the close of the year.

Reading room.—The frequent use of the reading room is especially
worthy of note. There were in circulation 3,520 periodicals, an in-
crease of 153 over the year preceding.

During the summer months the use of the library was extended
to the soldiers who drill each day on the Mall. Adequate facilities
for letter writing were provided, and the room has been filled with
soldiers daily during their rest periods.

Employees’ library.—The number of volumes circulated in the
employees’ library has increased to 336. There has been practically
no addition to the number of volumes, as the greater portion of the
reading wants of employees can be supplied through the reading
room and the war library of the Museum.

NATIONAL MUSEUM LIBRARY.

There has been one exceptional and important addition to the
library of the United States National Museum, and that is a part
of the botanical and horticultural publications brought together by
the late Mr. George W. Vanderbilt on his estate at Biltmore, N. C.
This collection formed the working library of the Biltmore Herbar-
ium and was presented by Mrs. Vanderbilt. In 1916 the building
on the Biltmore estate was inundated by a local flood which destroyed
the larger part of the library, but fortunately many valuable vol-
umes were saved. Some of these are distinct editions of works not
heretofore available.

The museum received by transfer a collection of pharmaceutical
works from the hygienic laboratory, May 15, 1918. This collection,

‘

REPORT ON THE LIBRARY. 91

brought together by Dr. M. G. Motter, the librarian, consists of 932
volumes, 12 pamphlets, and 2,060 periodicals.

The continued interest of Dr. William H. Dall in books for the
sectional library of the division of mollusks has resulted in the
further enriching of this collection by gift from him of 2387 titles
during the year. Other contributions to the library were received
from Dr. Charles D. Walcott, Dr. O. P. Hay, Dr. C. W. Richmond,
Dr. W. H. Holmes, Mr. W. R. Maxon, Dr. G. C. Maynard, Mr. Wil-
liam Palmer, Mr. J. M. Flint, Mr. G. S. Miller, jr., Mr. B. H. Swales,
Dr. Ale’ Hrdlicka, Mr. J. P. McLean, and Mr. R. C. Paine.

Accessions——There were accessioned during the year 3,230 vol-
umes, including 1,010 completed volumes of periodicals, 42 parts of
volumes, and 1,529 pamphlets. The number of books in the library
is now 137,008, consisting of 52,513 volumes, 124 manuscripts, and
84,371 pamphlets.

Cataloguing.—The cataloguing covered 1,436 volumes, 48 parts of
volumes, and 1,938 pamphlets. Four thousand four hundred and
twenty section cards were made.

Loans.—Eleven thousand two hundred and thirty-seven books were
loaned during the year, of which 2,658 were borrowed from the
Library of Congress and 122 from other libraries. The number of
books consulted in the reading room is estimated at 6,110.

Binding—With the additions to the library from the Library of
the Biltmore Herbarium and the collection of works from the Hy-
gienic Laboratory, the binding needs have become more acute, but
everything is being done to relieve the situation in so far as the
funds will allow. One thousand seven hundred and six books were
sent to the Government binder during the year, and 841 have been
returned.

Technological series—Additions to the Technological Library, ex-
clusive of duplicates, numbered 281 volumes, 3,863 parts of volumes,
454 pamphlets, and 4 maps. Periodicals entered on records and
shelved number 35 volumes and 2,663 parts of volumes. Two hun-
dred and thirty-one cards for books catalogued were filed in the li-
brary’s catalogue. In the scientific depository catalogue 1,880 author
cards were filed and, to 3,762 additional cards, subject headings were
added and filed, making a total addition to the catalogue of 5,642
eards.

Duplicates received number 28 volumes, 278 parts of volumes, and
105 pamphlets. These were arranged and filed with the collection of
duplicates.

The books and periodicals loaned during the year number 225
volumes and 157 parts of volumes and pamphlets, making a total
circulation of 382; 142 completed volumes of periodicals were sent
to and returned from the bindery during the year.

92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Biltmore Herbarium.—Of the collection of 2,000 volumes of works
on botanical subjects, 404 titles and 37 files of periodicals have been
checked and made ready for cataloguing and entry. Fifty of these
volumes had not been represented before in any Washington library.
They were accordingly catalogued in detail and it is expected that
cards will be printed for them by the Library of Congress.

Pharmaceutical series—The collection received by transfer from
the Hygienic Laboratory numbered 932 volumes and 12 pamphlets.
For these, 194 accession cards and 160 catalogue cards were made.
There were catalogued 78 volumes and 5 pamphlets. Two thousand
and sixty periodicals were entered and 324 cards written.

Sectional libraries —Sectional libraries have been created for the
registrar’s office and for the war library and the Division of Wood
Technology. Following is a complete list of sectional libraries:

Administration. Mesozoic fossils.
Administrative assistant’s office. Mineral technology.
Anthropology. Minerals.

Biology. Mollusks.

Botany. Oriental archeology.
Comparative anatomy. Paleobotany.

Editor’s office. Parasites.

Ethnology. Photography.

Fishes. Physical anthropology.
Food. Prehistoric archeology.
Geology. Property clerk.

Graphic arts. Registrar’s office.
History. Reptiles and batrachians,
Insects. Superintendent’s office.
Invertebrate paleontology. Taxidermy.

Mammals. Textiles.

Marine invertebrates. Vertebrate paleontology.
Materia medica. War library.
Mechanical - technology Wood technology.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY LIBRARY.

This library is administered under the direct care of the chief of
the bureau, and a report of its operations will be found in the report
of that bureau.

ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY LIBRARY.

The collection of reference works relating to astrophysics has been
in constant use. Fifty-eight volumes, 6 parts of volumes, and 48
pamphlets were added during the year.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK LIBRARY.

The library of the National Zoological Park is not extensive, being
a strictly working library. Ninety-one volumes were added during
the fiscal year.

REPORT ON THE LIBRARY. 93
SUMMARY OF ACCESSIONS.

The accessions during the year, with the exception of the library
of the Bureau of American Ethnology, may be summarized as fol-
lows:

To the Smithsonian deposit in the Library of Congress, including parts

LOvCompletes Sets sss et See EK BD ee ee ER eh ES 2, 108
To the Smithsonian office, Astrophysical Observatory, and National Zoo-
LOPI Calera Tlceaees Sees eee Ree ee eee eee Pe ie 4d 641
RoriheyUnitedeStatessNational Museuml 2: 91 ese ieee By
LINO) SE ge ll ep ap ee ge A AeA ent oe a 6, 644

Respectfully submitted.
Paut Brockert,

Assistant Librarian.
Dr. Cartes D. Watcort,

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

APPENDIX 7.

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the opera-
tions of the United States Bureau of the International Catalogue of
Scientific Literature for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918.

The war in Europe, which has now lasted four years, is throwing
ever-increasing difficulties in the way of satisfactorily carrying on
the work of the International Catalogue. A number of the countries
now engaged in hostilities are falling behind in their subscriptions
and the Central Bureau and all of the regional bureaus are having
difficulty in obtaining suitable aid to compile and publish the index.
The Governments of the countries taking part in the enterprise ob-
viously have prior claims on all services needed in carrying on the
war and on this account the Catalogue work has fallen somewhat in
arrears. However, it is gratifying to be able to state that approxi-
mately two-thirds of the normal number of volumes, which would
have been published in time of peace, have been published since the
war broke out. .

When hostilities began in 1914 the tenth annual issue of the Cata-
logue had just been completed and in addition 10 volumes of the
eleventh issue and one of the twelfth issue. Since the outbreak of
war the eleventh and twelfth issues have been completed, together
with the greater part of the thirteenth issue and part of the four-
teenth issue, the actual figures being as follows:

Eleventh. tissiie 28 107 ae
Twelfth pissnesse* 200 cvs alee Tee 16
Thirteenths issue. 42 ie ee 14.
Fourteenth 1cciles525- 256222 oe ee 4.

i 5) ie ee eee ee eee ees 41

The London Central Bureau of the Catalogue, whose duty it is to
edit and publish the references sent in from the various regional bu-
reaus, is dependent entirely for its support on the receipts derived
from the subscribers to the Catalogue throughout the world, and as
six of the regional bureaus, namely, Germany, Austria, Hungary,
Poland, Belgium, and Russia, are in arrears to the extent of almost
$9,000 per annum, it will be necessary to obtain a subsidy from some

94

REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE. 95

source to finance the fifteenth annual issue of the Catalogue as was
done in 1916 when grants from the Royal Society of London and
from the Carnegie Foundation of New York enabled the Central
Bureau to make up the first deficit caused by the war and provided
funds for the publication of the fourteenth annual issue.

It is felt that every effort should be made to continue the organiza-
tion as it now stands in spite of present and temporary difficulties
caused by the war, for even if the work is delayed and also to some
extent incomplete it is obvious that it would be a much simpler and
more satisfactcry method to continue this great international under-
taking until the war is over with the present organization than it
would be to reorganize the work should it be allowed at any time to
cease or fall too far in arrears. The task of indexing much of the
literature being published in the countries mentioned above, whose
regional bureaus have closed, has fallen on the London Central
Bureau, and already 15,000 reference cards for the German literature
of 1915 have been prepared there. Whether it will be possible when
peace is restored to resume the former cordial cooperation with all
of the now hostile countries is a matter open to serious question,
. but if this can not be done for some years to come the literature pub-
lished in those countries could be indexed by the Central Bureau,
as is evidenced by the fact that the Central Bureau has already put
this plan into operation. These and other questions will, however.
have to be finally decided by another international convention after
the war.

As has been pointed out a number of times before, the International
Convention in London in 1910 authorized a committee to take all
necessary steps to obtain further assistance and cooperation from
other similar organizations in the preparation of the Catalogue in
order to prevent duplication of work. This would not only lead to
economy of labor, but would provide scientific workers with a com-
plete and uniform reference to the literature of all sciences. Much
is yet to be done in order to completely carry out the intent of the
convention, and it can not be too strongly urged that as soon as war
conditions allow the complete activities of the Catalogue to be re-
sumed every effort be made to obtain such cooperation.

Not only is it strongly advisable to consolidate and cooperate
with the publishers of scientific bibliographies, but also to so broaden
the scope of the Catalogue as to include many of the technical in-
dustries whose investigations and methods of production are so
closely allied with the progress of research in pure science as to
render it practically impossible to draw a line of demarcation be-
tween pure science and many of the applied sciences.

Many difficulties have arisen to interfere with the work of this
Regional Bureau, not only in having the classification properly done,

96 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

but also in obtaining sufficient clerical assistance to ‘carry on the
regular routine.

This in addition to difficulties of forwarding manuscript to
London on account of dangers from submarines has reduced some-
what the number of index cards normally issued, but the methods of
work have been so readjusted as to meet requirements in spite of
temporary chaotic conditions.

Very respectfully, yours,
Lronarp C. GUNNELL,

Assistant in Charge.
Dr. Cuartes D. Watcort,

Secretary Smithsonian Institution.

: APPENDIX 8.
REPORT ON THE PUBLICATIONS.

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the publi-
cations of the Smithsonian Institution and its branches during the
year ending June 30, 1918:

The Institution proper published during the year 13 papers in the
series of Miscellaneous Collections, 1 annual report, pamphlet copies
of 27 papers from the general appendices of these reports, and 5
special publications. The Bureau of American Ethnology published
1 bulletin and 1 advance separate belonging to a report now in press.
_ The United States National Museum issued 1 annual report, 1 volume
of the proceedings, 39 separate papers forming parts of these and
other volumes, and 5 bulletins.

The total number of copies of publications distributed by the In-
stitution and its branches was 134,284, which includes 1,591 volumes
and separate memoirs of Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,
26,412 volumes and separate pamphlets of Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections, 19,815 volumes and separate pamphlets of Smithsonian
Annual Reports, 75,300 volumes and separates of National Museum
publications, 7,344 publications of the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy, 2,929 special publications, 14 volumes of the Annals of the
Astrophysical Observatory, 44 reports of the Harriman Alaska Expe-
dition, and 676 reports of the American Historical Association.

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS.

Of the Miscellaneous Collections, volume 66, the title-page and
table of contents was published; volume 67, 1 paper; volume 68, 7
papers; volume 69, 3 papers; in all, 11 papers, as follows:

VOLUME 66.
Title-page and table of contents. 5 pp. (Publ. 2478.)
VOLUME 67.

No. 8. Cambrian Geology and Paleontology. IV, No. 3. Fauna of the Mount
Whyte formation. By Charles D. Walcott. May 9, 1917. 59 pp.

(Publ. 2480.)
VOLUME 68.

No. 6. Meliaceae Centrali-Americanae et Panamenses. C. de Candolle. July 238,
1ST Sepp. a Ceubis 24 79>)
No. 7. Descriptions of two new birds from Haiti. Charles W. Richmond. July
12,1917. 3 pp. (Publ. 2481.)
97

98 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

No. 8. Water-vapor transparency to low-temperature radiation. Frederick E.
Fowle. October 27, 1917. 68 pp. (Publ. 2484.)

No. 9. A new river dolphin from China. Gerrit S. Miller, jr. March 30, 1918.
12 pp. (Publ. 2486.)

No. 10. New rodents from British Hast Africa. N. Hollister. January 16,
1918. 3 pp. (Publ. 2489.)

No. 11. The Marine Algae and marine Spermatophytes of the Tomas Barrera
Expedition to Cuba. Marshall A. Howe. April 9, 1918. 13 pp.
(Publ. 2491.)

No. 12. Exploration and field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1917. 134
pp. (Publ. 2492.)

VOLUME 69.

No. 3. Atmospheric scattering of light. Frederick EK. Fowle. May, 1918. 11
pp. (Publ. 2495.)

No. 6. On periodicity in solar radiation. C. G. Abbot. January, 1918. 8 pp.
(Publ. 2499. )

No. 7. Report on aircraft supply of Great Britain and a discussion of the difli-
culty involved in production. June, 1918. 8 pp. (Publ. 2500.)

SMITHSONIAN ANNUAL REPORTS.

The completed volume of the Annual Report of the Board of Re-
gents for 1916 was received from the Public Printer in December,
1917.

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing
operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution for the year ending
June 30, 1916. xii, GOT pp., 148 pls. (Publ. 2449.)

The general appendix contained the following papers, small edi-
tions of which were printed in pamphlet form:

Administration and activities of the Smithsonian Institution. By A. Howard
Clark. 19 pp. 22 pls. (Publ. 2450.)

News from the stars. By C. G. Abbot. 12 pp. 5pls. (Publ. 2451.)

The distances of the heavenly bodies. By W. 8S. Hichelberger. 11 pp. (Publ.
2452.)

A census of the sky. By R. A. Sampson. 12 pp. 6pls. (Publ. 2453.)

Gun-report noise. By Hiram P. Maxim. 6 pp. Tpls. (Publ. 2454.)

Molecular structure and life. By Amé Pictet. 13 pp. (Publ. 2455.)

Ideals of chemical investigation. By Theodore W. Richards. 11 pp. (Publ.
2456. )

The Earth: Its figure, dimensions, and the constitution of its interior. By T. C.
Chamberlin, Harry Fielding Reid, John I. Hayford, and Frank Schlesinger.
30 pp. (Publ. 2457.)

Dry land in geology. By Arthur P. Coleman. 18 pp. (Publ. 2458.)

The petroleum resources of the United States. By Ralph Arnold. 15 pp.
(Publ. 2459. )

_ The outlook for iron. By James Furman Kemp. 21 pp. (Publ. 2460.)

The origin of meteorites. By Fr. Berwerth. 10 pp. (Publ. 2461.)

The present state of the problem of evolution. By M. Caullery. 15 pp. (Publ.
2462.)

Some considerations on sight in birds. By J. C. Lewis. 9 pp.. 5 pls. (Publ.
2463. )

REPORT ON THE PUBLICATIONS. 99

Pirates of the deep: Stories of the squid and octopus. By Paul Bartsch. 29 pp.
19 pls. (Publ. 2464.)

The economic importance of the diatoms. By Albert Mann. 10 pp. 6 pls.
(Publ. 2465.)

Narcotic plants and stimulants of the ancient Americans. By W. E. Safford.
38 pp. 17 pls. (Publ. 2466.)

New archeological lights on the origins of civilization in Europe. By Arthur
Kvans. 21 pp. (Publ. 2467.)

The great dragon of Quirigua. By W. H. Holmes. 14 pp. 10 pls. (Publ. 2468.)

A prehistoric Mesa Verde pueblo and its people. By J. W. Fewkes. 27 pp.
15 pls. (Publ. 2469.)

The art of the great earthwork builders of Ohio. By Charles C. Willoughby.
12 ppsedle pls Ceuble 24705)

A half century of geographical progress. By J. Scott Keltie. 21 pp. 2 pls.
(Publ. 2471.)

The relation of pure science to industrial research. By J. J. Carty. 9 pp.
(Publ. 2471.)

Mine safety devices developed by the United States Bureau of Mines. By
Van H. Manning. 12 pp. 7pls. (Publ. 2472.)

Natural waterways in the United States. By W. W. Harts. 34 pp. 9 pls.
(Publ. 2473.)

Theodore N. Gill. By William H. Dall. 8 pp. 1 pl. (Publ. 2474.)

The life and work of Fabre, by E. L. Bouvier. 11 pp. (Publ, 2475.)

: REPORT FOR 1917.

The report of the executive committee and proceedings of the
Board of Regents of the Institution and report of the secretary, both
forming part of the annual report of the Board of Regents to Con-
gress, were issued in pamphlet form in December, 1917:

Report of the executive committee and proceedings of the Board of Regents of
the Smithsonian Institution for the year ending June 380, 1917. 17 pp. (Publ.
2488. )

Report of the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for the year ending
June 30, 1917. 110 pp. (Publ. 2487.)

The general appendix of the report for 1917, which is now in press,
contains the following papers:

Projectiles containing explosives, by Commandant A. R.

Gold and silver deposits in North and South America, by Waldemar Lindgren.

The composition and structure of meteorites compared with that of terrestrial
rocks, by George P. Merrill.

Corals and the formation of coral reefs, by Thomas Wayland Vaughan.

The correlation of the Quaternary deposits of the British Isles with those of
the continent of Europe, by Charles E. P. Brooks.

Floral aspects of the Hawaiian Islands, by A. 8S. Hitchcock.

Natural history of Paradise Key and the near-by everglades of Florida, by
W. FE. Safford.

Notes on the early history of the pecan in America, by Rodney H. True.

The social, educational, and scientific value of botanic gardens, by John Merle
Coulter.

Bird rookeries of the Tortugas, by Paul Bartsch.

100 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

An economic consideration of orthoptera directly affecting man, by A. N.
Caudell.

An outline of the relations of animals to their inland environments, by Charles
C. Adams.

The National Zoological Park: A popular account of its collections, by N.
Hollister.

Ojibway habitations and other structures, by David I. Bushnell, jr.

The sea as a conservator of wastes and a reservoir of food, by H. F. Moore.

National work at the British Museum—Museums and advancement of learning,
by F. A. Bather.

Leonhard Fuchs, physician and botanist, by Felix Neumann.

In memoriam: Edgar Alexander Mearns, by Charles W. Richmond.

William Bullock Clark.

SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS.

The following special publications were issued in octavo form:

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and
March 31, 1917. 1p. (Publ. 2448.)

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and
June 30, 1917. 1p. (Publ. 2482.)

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and
September 30, 1917. 1p. (Publ. 2485.)

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and
December 31, 1917. 3 pp. (Publ. 2490.)

Publications of the Smithsonian Institution issued between January 1 and

March 31, 1918. 3 pp. (Publ. 2496.)

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.

The publications of the National Museum are: (a) The annual
report to Congress; (0) the Proceedings of the United States Na-
tional Museum; and (c) the Bulletin of the United States National
Museum, which includes the Contributions from the United States
National Herbarium. The editorship of these publications is vested
in Dr. Marcus Benjamin.

During the year the Museum published an annual report, one vol-
ume of the Proceedings, 39 separate papers forming parts of this
and other volumes, and five bulletins.

The issues of the Proceedings were as follows: Volume 51 complete.

The issues of the Bulletin were as follows:

Bulletin 39. Parts A and D, Directions for collecting birds, and Directions for
collecting, preparing, and preserving birds’ eggs and nests.

Bulletin 67. Directions for collecting and preserving insects.

Bulletin 95. The fishes of the west coast of Peru, by Barton Warren Evermann.

Bulletin 97. The Grapsoid crabs of America, by Mary J. Rathbun.

Bulletin 101. The Columbian Institute for the promotion of arts and sciences.

A Washington society of 1816-1838, which established a museum and botanic

garden under Government patronage, by Richard Rathbun.
Bulletin 102. Part 1, Coal products; Part 2, Fertilizers; Part 3, Sulphur; Part 4,

Coal.

REPORT ON THE PUBLICATIONS. 101
PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN HTHNOLOGY.

The publications of the bureau are discussed in Appendix 2. The
editorial work of the bureau is in charge of Mr. Stanley Searles,
editor.

During the year one bulletin and one advance separate from the
Thirty-third Annual Report were issued, as follows:

Bulletin 63. Analytical and Critical Bibliography of the Tribes of Tierra del

Fuego and Adjacent Territory, by John M. Cooper. 233 pp. 1 pl.

Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai, by Martha Warren Beckwith. An advance
separate from the Thirty-third Annual Report. 384 pp. 5 pl.

There are at present four reports and seven bulletins in press.
REPORT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

The annual reports of the American Historical Association are
transmitted by the association to the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution and are communicated to Congress under the provisions
of the act of incorporation of the association.

The annual report for 1915 was published during the year, and the
second volume of the 1914 report. The report for 1916 was in press
at the close of the fiscal year.

REPORT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The manuscript of the Twentieth Annual Report of the National
Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution for the year
ending October 11, 1917, was communicated to Congress on June 4,
1918.

THE SMITHSONIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PRINTING AND
PUBLICATION.

The editor has continued to serve as secretary of the Smithsonian
advisory committee on printing and publication. This committee
passes on all manuscripts offered for publication by the Institution
or its branches, and considers forms of routine, blanks, and various
other matters pertaining to printing and publication. Thirteen
meetings were held during the year and 68 manuscripts were acted
upon.

Respectfully submitted.

A. Howarp Crark, Lditor.

Dr. Cartes D. Watcort,

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

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REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF
REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FOR THE
YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1918.

To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:

Your executive committee respectfully submits the following report
in relation to the funds, receipts, and disbursements of the Institu-
tion, and a statement of the appropriations by Congress for the
National Museum, the International Exchanges, the Bureau of Ameri-
can Ethnology, the National Zoological Park, the Astrophysical Ob-
servatory, the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, etc.,
for the year ending June 30, 1918, together with balances of previous
appropriations:

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
: Condition of the fund July 1, 1918.

In addition to the total sum of $1,000,000 deposited in the Treasury
of the United States and authorized under section 5591, Revised
Statutes, the details of which were given in our last report, there has
accumulated from incomes, bequests, and by transfer the sum of
$60,024.88, which has been invested in bonds of approved character
for the following specific accounts and carried on the books of the
institution as the consolidated fund, viz:

Hodekansy cenera liestuin cliseseeseseerr ty seeersy ies ee ee eee $37, 275. 00
ON ee sei iia dS === Ak sen et eos Se eee ie HAD Meera eres 8 37. 00
Je Spe TEU NG Ea i a py RU Sern Se 10, 020. 38
Addison a Reid=tunds==s====== Pere Sees Ss Ser es 672. 00
Lucy T. and George W. Poore fund___._- Door ai einige owt niet g 4 he Wie net 1, 295. 00
Georcenher Sanrord stun dase seer sa tee ee ee ese ah 74. 00
Sinithsonetunds== ee byl eps eres eek eh oe i abet De Ss 651. 00
Chamber! ainestun dias er ess evet Ser te SE ee 10, 000. 00

NO tess Seas ee eee eek See eee eee. GOLOZLIES

The guaranteed bonds of the West Shore Railroad Co., previously
reported by your committee at their par value, have now been trans-
ferred to the consolidated fund with specific credit to the Hodgkins
general fund at their market value.

One of the three pieces of real estate bequeathed to the Institution
by the late Robert Stanton Avery has been sold, and the proceeds
reinvested in bonds comprising the consolidated fund.

103

104 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Statement of receipts and disbursements from July 1, 1917, to June 30, 1918.

RECEIPTS.
Cash on deposit and in safe July 1, 1917_-------------------------- $9, 282. 56
Interest on fund in United States Treasury_— %60, 000. 00
@themeinteres tees eee ay ay?
$63, 552. 02
Repayments, rentals, publications, ete___-----_----____ 13, 5038. 18
Contributions for specific purposes____—-----------_____ 24, 358. 87
Billismreceiva eae eee ik oe RE ore, SAD OOO NOU
Proceeds from sale of real estate______--------__-_____- 8, 721. 00
165, 135. 02
174, 367. 58
DISBURSEMENTS.
Buildings, care and repairs_——--------___------------------------ $6, 216. 39
Furniture and fixtures__--__-----__---+-----+----+--_-_+--=----== 1, 395. 14
General expenses:
Seniesa eee be eee CG Bn
MGCEINES nt ee ee 20. 00
Stationery____- URES GEIL IN Oe ee 646. 57
Postage, telegraph, and telephone_-—--—~ ------______ 625. 29
1Qiget tet pee ee eee ee Seas = 24, 13
Imcidentals fuelsand pict Sa ee 930. 00
G@araven == eee See BERS Peas a ee 2, 042. 64
————— ._ 21, 861. 42
Tabrary == 0 3 eS Eto e ath oem 2, 160. 86
Publications and their distribution :
Miscellaneous: Collechions me. == == 2, 040. 69
Contributions sto knowled¢e EEE 120. 00
Reportsa 2. Satoutessss iste 2 oars). _ see 46. 45
Special publications 186. 09
Publication supplics==2— = see 185. 32
GALATICS= = — soo op es SS eS 6, 525. 37
—_———— _ 9, 103. 92
Explorations, researches, and collections__—_----_-______+_____---__ 4, 229. 10
Hodgkins specific fund, researches, and publications__-__-_---_____ ’ 4, 836. 47
Tntiernational Wxchanses: = 2 ee ee ee 614. 00
Gallery of2An ===> ee hs 1 es Ee 22.52
Consolidated fund: (invested) 22222 we ee eee 12° 725500
Bills sreceivable—timescertitie sites ae meee ee eee 50, 000. 00
Interest accrued—consolidated tund= 22222225 eee 58. 78
United. States third Wiberty, loan=]22" 2s) eee 10, 000. 00
Advances for field expenses. ete iat a See ee AO SSO) aS
1738, O77. 68
Deposited with Treasurer of the United States___________ 1, 089. 90
Cashion) hand) =~ S24 23 421 a Cee ee eee eee 200. 00
———_ 1,289.90

174, 367. 58

REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 105

The itemized report of the auditor confirms the foregoing state-
ment of receipts and expenditures and is approved. A summary of

the report follows:
CAPITAL AUDIT Co.,
METROPOLITAN BANK BUILDING,
Washington, D.C,

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, BOARD OF REGENTS, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.

Sirs: We’ have examined the accounts and vouchers of the Smithsonian In-
stitution for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1918, and certify the following to
be a correct statement :

otal disbursements === = eeu dees $173, OTT. 6S
PROT ee COM) ies ate ee ee ee ee ee Shed ere 165, 185. 02
Excess or Gispursements over receipts2 222 eee 7, 942. 66
AMOUMEGCLOMg ID yeas LON (2 se Sees es Se ee eel 9, 232. 56
Balancevonsnang sone ios ONS es ee eee eee ee 1, 289. 90
Balance as shown by Treasury statement as of June 30, 1917______ 5, 794. 38
essHoutstamadine@ne@cksS== ==. 2s EE 4, 806. 25
1c U by 0vG oe ees aenen, Be eg reed oy eee ee oe Fee 988. 13
Balances AamenricansNational: 1s vnlcs = os 22 a ee 101. 77
WaSHEOU SH a =e xe Peet es res eres a Rees Sv as Pes pe Pe 200. 00
Balances unersO Oli S eae ees Se ee ee a ee 1, 289. 90

The vouchers representing payments from the Smithsonian income during
the year, each of which bears the approval of the secretary, or, in his absence,
of the acting secretary, and a certificate that the materials and service charged
were applied to the purposes of the Institution, have been examined in connec-
tion with the books of the Institution and agree with them.

CapitaL Avupit Co.,
By WILiiAM L. Yarcer, President.

All payments are made by check signed by the secretary on the
Treasurer of the United States, and all revenues are deposited to the
credit of the same account, except in some instances small deposits are
now made in bank for convenience of collection.

The practice of investing temporarily idle funds in time deposits
has proven highly satisfactory. During the year the interest derived
from this source has amounted to $1,275.

Your committee also presents the following summary of appro-
priations for the fiscal year 1918 intrusted by Congress to the care
of the Smithsonian Institution, balances of previous appropriations
at the beginning of the fiscal year, and amounts unexpended on June
30, 1918.

106 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Available Balance
after June 30,
July 1, 1917. 1918.

Internati onaliexchanpes101G 22 eee. |: ooh oo a ecco co eae ee eens eee eee eee
‘Internationaliexchanges 1007-2 eo a ee oe = 5 Se ee $4,957.76 $859.93
imternationshexchanees Olsson. fae nee cee ee Ae aa een ee ee 35, 000. 00 5, 296. 80
iAvripricanshGnnelocyel GIG ee ee tee ee ee eee 334.97 1314. 87
Americans innolory sd 00.2 5. sho 425 8 once. eae eae eee eee 1, 523.28 138.31
American Bihnolopy 1918. = . 5-0 52-t he Se es ee eee ee 42, 000. 00 3, 817.51
InternationsliCatalague, §916. oo o< 3 s+ foes se eee se + One ee ee eee 282.96 1139.65
International Catalogue, $007. 52.2.3 oo. Soles a sees oe ee no eee ee 466. 00 226.77
international’ Catalopue 191825. 22+. 2109) ae | Pep deees eee 7, 500.00 963. 64
‘Astrophysical'Observatory; 1916. 2. ~ 22-252 ses seen n= ee ee oe eae 38. 06 138.06
Astrophysical Observatory, d9tl 2 5-2 22s as oe eee ee eee eee 1,051.32 570. 46
Astrophysical (Observatory, 1918o = 2 oe ere on ee oe ee ee nee 13, 000. 00 1,771.14
Bookstacks for Government bureau libraries, 1915-16........-.-....---.----.-- 62.12 | 162.12
Observations; eclipse ofisuny 1918.2 - = 6. ne se ee ene ce See ee meee 2, 000. 00 1,929.88
National Museum: :
urmiCureandsfixtures :1916--- = 8 2-3) 255) See eee eae eee 11.36 | 111.36
Mumiture'and fixtures; JOU7 > <2 52 eae a eee re Fe ee ae ene 2, 246.79 | 18.97
MUTMCUre ANG fx CULES: AQIS ee eee ten eee eo eee oe ee 25,000.00 | 6, 845.77
Heating and lighting 11632 5252s 8e 2 See ie Se ee eee 202. 67 | 1 202. 67
Heating and Hehtine IO /asoss 2 esa eae een se ee ee ee eee 5,374.93 699. 24
Heating and lighting sIO1g. oo) eee 2 46, 000. 00 6, 103.7
IPTESARVatlOn GL COMechiOns; 91622 o 205 ee e= ener ens eee eee ee eee 1,777.93 1 430.34
iPresenvationior collections; JOU7l25. S222 Saye a fe ee er eemene 6,371.60 | 647. 87
PTESELVALION. OL CONECHONS: 1018 Ser sea pee ee ee eee eee 300, 000. 00 12, 903. 59
Rooks; 1916 2-5-2. =ee eee See Sea. Be See eae Sees 235. 31 1159.48
(BOOKS, AQU Dee wcscs cote cto ee ee eee ee ae ee ee 911.13 | 450. 60
ROOKSS 19180 = oo casa seman eee eece cere eee See ee ee ee 2,000.00 | 1, 227.60
Postape i OIS ste oe on. soc cc seca cae sata See ee eee eae 900:(00))|-2< se -ee = cee
Building repairs; VIG oso ee es ee ee eee ee eee 3. 63 13.63
Bnildingmepainss VOU ss eee Nee ee eee ee eee ee 2, 120. 83 195. 59
Building repairs 1918) oo cont soos cos oat ee Me emcee eee eens 10, 000. 00 2,174.38
National Zoological Park, W916 a crsge mice ere Socata ee cst eae 9.38 13.38
National ZoologicalyPark: 1917) U2 e eR a one ae eee 2, 402. 35 &3. 30
National Zoological Park. IOI 82a" Saases soar ee ete ne een eee eee eee 100, 000. 00 9, 743.24
TncreaseiOnCoMmpensaions 1918 ser see eee eee ee eee ee ae ae eee 27, 246.40 |..... es
1 Carried to credit of surplus fund. 2 Supplemental appropriation, $5,674.

Statement of estimated income from the Smithson fund and from other sources,
accrued and prospective, to be available during the fiscal year ending June
80, 1919.

Balance, June.o0; VOUS 7s 2 ee $1, 289. 90
BUS ECOL Cee eee a ee $20, 000. 00
Interest on fund deposited in United States Treasury due
July 1, 1918 ond yjanqd 31919 -ste e ee 60, 000. 00
Interest from miscellaneous sources_______-___________ 3, 422. 10
Exchange repayments, sale of publications, refund of ad-
Vancess etcseeiit= 2M ee hh sy EU TE a eel ee Sis S[k
Deposits for specific purposes ____ __ ELS Spread #0004 17T ED Ey 12, 000. 00
——_—__—— 127,075. 81

Total available for year ending June 30, 1919_______________ 128, 365. 71
" Respectfully submitted.
Gro. Gray,
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BEL,
Henry White,
Executive Committee.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITH-
SONTAN INSTITUTION FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE
30, 1918.

° ANNUAL MEETING DECEMBER 13, 1917.

The board met at the Institution at 10.15 a. m.

Present: The Hon. Edward D. White. Chief Justice of the United
States, chancellor, in the chair; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator
Henry F. Hollis, the Hon. E. W. Roberts, the Hon. George Gray, Mr.
John B. Henderson, the Hon. Henry White, and the secretary, Dr.
Charles D. Walcott.

APPOINTMENT OF REGENTS.

The secretary announced the following appointments of regents
of the Institution: On March 4, 1917, the Hon. Thomas R. Marshall,
Vice President of the United States, ex officio; on March 4, 1917, by
the President of the Senate, the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, to succeed
himself; on January 15, 1917, by joint resolution of Congress ap-
proved by the President, the Hon. Henry White, a citizen of Mary-
land, to succeed the Hon. Andrew D. White, resigned: on January 19,
1917, by joint resolution of Congress approved by the President, Mr.
John B. Henderson, a citizen of Washington, D. C., to succeed himself
at the expiration of his present term, on March 1, 1917.

RESOLUTION RELATIVE TO INCOME AND EXPENDITURE.

Mr. Roberts, of the executive committee, offered the following
resolution, which was adopted:

Resolved, That the income of the Institution for the fiscal year ending June 30,
1919, be appropriated for the service of the Institution, to be expended by the
secretary with the advice of the executive committee, with full discretion on
the part of the secretary as to items.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

The secretary submitted the annual report of the executive com-
mittee, showing the financial condition of the Institution for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1917, stating that it had been supplied to the
regents in printed form.

On motion, the report was adopted.

107

108 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

VACANCY IN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Mr. Roberts said that his term as a regent expired in a few days,
and tendered his resignation as a member of the executive committee,
which was accepted.

On motion, Mr. Henry White was elected to fill the vacancy thus
created.

ANNUAL REPORT OF PERMANENT COMMITTEE.

Tlodgkins fund.—In its last report, the committee gave a state-
ment of the allotments and expenditures under a yearly grant of
$5,000 to the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory for three years,
showing the termination of this grant, with approved outstanding
liabilities amounting to $4,725.53. These liabilities included an allot-
ment of $2,000 for tests with the Langley machine and one of $2,500
made to the United States Weather Bureau for investigations which
would result in the mapping of the atmosphere up to 20,000 feet over
the United States and adjoining area. Of these, the first has been
paid and the second has been relinquished by the Weather Bureau
as funds for this and other research have been provided by congres-
sional action. There remains as liabilities, therefore, the small sum
of $225.53.

An allotment of $5,000 per annum for three years was made to
Dr. Charles G. Abbot, director of the Astrophysical Observatory of
this Institution, for the establishment of an astrophysical station
in the Argentine Republic. Owing to conditions brought about by
the war, the location has been abandoned for the present, and the
station has been established at Elk Park, N. C. Of the two allot-
ments already made, $6,261 have been expended.

No changes have occurred in the other bequests in which the Insti-
tution is interested, and which have been the subject of previous
reports.

Freer Art Building—The funds originally placed with the Insti-
tution by Mr. Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, for the construction of
the building for his art collections, amounted to $1,000,000 in cash
and 2,000 shares of the capital stock of Parke, Davis & Co., of De-
troit. At present the condition of the fund is as follows:

Balance sheet.

Bul dimgerhum ct (Cash) = ees ee eee ee eee eee ee ee ______ §1, 000, 000. 00
Stock (book value). 22-0 2 2 ee a ee en 250, 000. 00
Imterest “and "dividends ss. = 225 fas a Seer eee 50, 779. 05
Construction. . 222 223 ee ee ee $159, 462. 10
AT ChHItCCES) CSCL VICES 2s os Bae ee ee 30, 000. 00
Ar ChITCCHSYeXPCNSCGi a. a Se ae ee eee 11, 852. 95
Swern COnStEICtlOM =e ae ea ne es 1, 500. 00
IRGC TORING Ta tteal le aT ype 5, 526. 02
sills receivable (certificates cf deposit) _________ 810, 000. 00
S(COCKS 2 2 25 ae ee ee ee ee ee 250, 000. 00
Cash: 2 2 sae hh a Es ds ie eal 32, 437. 98

1, 300, 779.05 1, 300, 779. 05

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 109

Smithsonian fund—yY our committee is pleased to report that the
Smithsonian fund in the United States Treasury has reached the
maximum sum authorized by law of $1,000,000.

On motion, the permanent committee’s report was accepted.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY.

The secretary presented his report of the operations of the Insti-
tution for the year ending June 30, 1917, which was accepted.

THE SECRETARY'S SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT.

The secretary made the following statement in relation to recent
operations in the various lines of the Institution’s activities:

National Musewm.—Attention is called to the necessity for in-
creased appropriations for the Museum. Under heating and light-
ing a deficiency of $5,824 has been requested for this year, due to
the increased cost of coal—which is about 66 per cent greater than
last year—and to the additional amount of coal required for properly
heating and lighting the spaces occupied by the Bureau of War
Risk Insurance. Under preservation of collections, Congress has
been requested unsuccessfully to give sufficient funds not only for
additional members of the staff for the department of arts and
industries, but for some additional assistance in ethnology and bi-
ology. Particular stress, however, should be laid on the fact that
the salaries for the watchmen, laborers, and certain classes of clerks
and preparators are inadequate in view of the extremely high cost
of living. The Museum is constantly losing members of its staff
to the new bureaus of the Government where salaries are much
larger, and also to private firms. It is urged that Congress take
steps to increase the salaries of the watchmen and laborers, as well
as to continue the 5 per cent and 10 per cent increases granted for
the present fiscal year to employees receiving $1,800 and less.

There are two notable historical acquisitions. One consists of a
number of personal relics of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, United
States Army, including swords, uniforms, and other military para-
phernalia owned by him during the war with Mexico and the Civil
War, presented to the Museum by his son, Maj. George B. McClellan,
U.S. R. The second is the well-known Robert Hewitt Collection of
Medallic Lincolniana, donated by Mrs. Robert Hewitt. This contains
some 1,200 medallions, medals, tokens, and badges commemorating
the life and services of President Lincoln, and is an exceptionally
complete aggregation of medallic souvenirs of that President, dating
from the period of the Civil War to the early part of the twentieth
century. nits

In biology several hundred mammals and birds have been received
from the Collins-Garner expedition in Africa, and by gift of Dr.

110 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

William L, Abbott important collections in anthropology aud zool-
ogy have come from the Celebes, collected by his representative, Mr.
H. C. Raven, and from Haiti, collected by Dr. Abbott personally.

In geology mention should be made of an almost complete skeleton
of the unique fossil Dimetrodon, a carnivorous reptile distinguished
for the extraordinary length of its spinal processes; one of the best-
known crystal aggregate of cinnabar (mercury sulphide) from Hu-
nan Province, China, as a gift from United States Consul Nelson T.
Johnson, of Changsha; a meteoric stone from Eustis, Fla., of interest
as being but the second find of meteoric stones within the State
limits; besides some 16,000 specimens of invertebrate fossils from
various sources.

Among the normal activities carried forward by the Division of
Mineral Technology may be mentioned:

The practical completion of a large model showing occurrence
and recovery of gold. A complete model of lead manufacture, cost-
ing $7,500, received and being set up. Donation from the National
Lead Co. A supplementary exhibit of lead, costing about $3,000,
planned for and promised by the National Lead Co. and others. A
coal-tar products exhibit of products now being made in this coun-
try. This has been assembled.

Under special war emergency activities there have been published:

A résumé of the fertilizer situation in the country, and needs in
the way of remedial action. A similar résumé for sulphur. The
same for coal products, this latter being strictly an interpretation
of the coal-products exhibit. A résumé, under preparation and
nearly ready for the printer, on the fuel situation, including coal,
oil, and hydroelectric power.

In further connection with the activities of this division, it may
be mentioned that a tentative offer has been made by the fertilizer
industry of $80,000 to $50,000 for use in the assembling of an exhibit
for the museum in that field.

A recent paper by the assistant secretary, entitled “The Columbian
Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences,” is of particular
moment, since the museum of the institute was the nucleus of the
United States National Museum, some objects in the latter being
clearly traced to the earlier establishment. This is true of the uni-
form worn by Washington in resigning his commission.

National Gallery of Art—The exhibition of a large collection of
paintings, by Ossip Perelma, was continued from the preceding half
year. The gallery is indebted to this artist for excellent portraits
of Secretary Walcott, Mr. Frank B. Noyes, and Boris Bakhmeteff,
the Rusian ambassador. An excellent portrait of the American sculp-
tress, Vinnie Ream (Vinnie Ream Hoxie), by G. A. P. Healy, was
presented by Brig. Gen. Richard L. Hoxie.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 111

In November a most interesting collection of 100 lithographs of
war-work subjects in Great Britain and in the United States, by
Joseph Pennell, was exhibited in the central room of the gallery,
and attracted much attention. This exhibition was formally opened
on the evening of November 1, by the Secretary of the Navy.

A number of important loans of art works have been recorded by
the gallery.

Museum space taken up by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance.—
Through inability to find appropriate quarters elsewhere in the city,
the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, at the request of the President
of the United States, was given headquarters on the ground floor
of the new building of the National Museum—consisting of the foyer
with adjoining rooms, two rooms on the south side of the east north
range, and the whole clear space in the west north and west ranges
between the laboratories and the north and west walls—in all, aggre-
gating over 25,000 square feet. This area, part of which furnished
space for meetings, special exhibitions, etc., and a passage to the audi-
torium from the north entrance of the building will, for a time, there-
fore, be closed to the public.

Urgent requests have been received for a great deal of additional
space, and the correspondence on the subject was submitted for the
information of the board. After a full discussion the ‘following
resolution was offered by Mr. Roberts and was adopted:

Resolved, That there shall be a committee of the board of regents
on the use of the National Museum buildings by the departments of the Govern-
ment, and the erection of structures on the Smithsonian grounds, which com-
mittee shall act for the board with full power on all matters comprehended by
this resolution.

Resolved, That such committee shall be appointed by the chancellor, who
shall be ex officio a member thereof.

The chancellor thereupon appointed the following committee :

The Hon. Henry White;

The chancellor (Chief Justice White) ;
Senator Lodge;

Senator Stone;

Representative Ferris;

Mr. Henderson.

The secretary will act as the secretary of the committee.

On motion of Mr. Roberts the board approved the action of the
secretary in assigning to the Bureau of War Risk Insurance the
amount of space mentioned.

Freer Gallery of Art.——Progress on the construction of the build-
ing for the Freer collections has proceeded as planned.

In this connection it may be remarked that at the last meeting the
board was informed of the project to bring about the cancellation by
Congress of the assessment of $13,252.21 against Mr. Freer as an

112 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

income tax on profit on a sale of certain shares, $1,000,000 of which
had been presented to the Institution for the purpose of erecting a
building to house his great gift of art objects. I am glad to report
that the sundry civil act of June 12, 1917, carried a provision author-
izing the cancellation.

The Springer collection—For some years past office and exhibi-
tion space has been allotted to Dr. Frank Springer, a valued col-
laborator of the Museum, for his comprehensive and _ instructive
collection of fossil crinoids and related groups of echinoderms.
Recently Dr. Springer decided to give the Smithsonian Institution
the title and custody of these collections in perpetuity. He has exe-
cuted an indenture providing for this, reserving their use to himself
during his lifetime, and arranging for a fund of $30,000, the income
of which is to be devoted solely to the administration of the collec-
tions under the specified conditions. The terms of the gift were
placed before the permanent committee, which approved its accept-
ance.

On motion the board approved the action of the permanent com-
mittee in accepting the gift of Dr. Frank Springer on the terms as
laid down in the indenture.

Bureau of American Ethnology.—Field researches of the Bureau
of American Ethnology were continued in New Mexico, where im-
portant excavations were conducted in the ruins of the great pueblo
of Hawikuh, and an archeological reconnaissance was made in west-
ern Colorado, which brought to light the remains of many interest-
ing prehistoric tower-like structures of excellent masonry, many of
which had not hitherto been known to science.

Ethnological investigations were continued among the remnants of
various tribes in southern California which are on the verge of ex-
tinction; also among the Iroquois of Canada, the Fox Indians of
Towa, and the Chippewa of Minnesota.

National Zoological Park.—The readjustment of the western
boundary, a matter of vital importance to the park, is still pending,
efforts to have the necessary appropriation made at the last session of
Congress having failed. The amount necessary for the purchase of
the land to be taken, including the cost of the proceedings, is $175,-
641.48. The matter is urgent, because the area of active improve-
ment on Connecticut Avenue has reached the border of this land and
is likely to extend in the near future. A marked increase in the num-
ber of visitors to the park has been noted. During the first four
months of the present fiscal year the attendance was 604,500, an
increase of 230,450 over the corresponding months of last year and
greatly in excess of the figures for the same period in the record year.
This is no doubt due to the great number of strangers and troops in
the city.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. PES

Astrophysical Observatory.—Solar constant observations were con-
ducted by the Astrophysical Observatory at Mount Wilson, Cal., dur-
ing the past summer and autumn. Results were obtained showing that
the earth’s atmosphere is entirely opaque to rays of more than 20
microns in wave length and that all such rays were found cut off in
a path of 12 feet in air. This is important to meteorology, because
about one-fourth of the rays emitted by the earth’s surface are above
20 microns wave length.

Expeditionary observations at Hump Mountain, N. C., under a
grant from the Hodgkins fund are progressing and will be continued
all winter. The work includes measures of the solar constant of radi-
ation, measures of the brightness of the sky, measures of nocturnal
radiation, and experiments bearing on frost prediction.

The Astrophysical Observatory is continuing the study of the trans-
parency of the air to long-wave rays such as the earth sends out.
The atmosphere on clear days appears to transmit only about 20 to
30 per cent of the earth’s rays outward to space, the quantity trans-
mitted decreasing as humidity increases.

The reduction of the Mount Wilson observations is nearly up to date.
An investigation of the periodicity of solar radiation is under way
and is about to yield interesting results. A periodicity attending the
period of the sun’s rotation is found in 1915 when there was much
sun-spot activity.

A determination of the constant of the formula for total radiation
is In progress.

Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory—tin the report of the secre-
tary of the board at its meeting on December 14, 1916, a brief state-
ment was made on the development that had taken place in connection
with the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory.

In this statement attention was called to an allotment of $2,500
for the investigation of problems of the atmosphere in relation to
aeronautics in cooperation with the United States Weather Bureau of
the Department of Agriculture. Through the representations of the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Congress appropri-
ated $100,000 for work in this important field by the Weather Bureau,
and the $2,500 allotted by the Institution have been credited back into
the fund of the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory.

The work of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
has enlarged rapidly during the past year. At its suggestion the
Council of National Defense appointed a Committee on Aircraft Pro-
duction, which was later reconstituted under an act of Congress
the Aircraft Board, with power to consider all questions of aircraft
production and to make recommendations to the military departments
for the production and purchase of aircraft and aircraft appliances.

114 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The experimental laboratory of the Advisory Committee is now
in process of erection at Langley Field, near Hampton, Va. In the
meantime experimental work is being conducted under the direction
of the committee at several laboratories.

The original Langley man-carrying flying machine has been
brought back from Hammondsport after its successful trials, and
soon will be placed on exhibition in the old National Museum build-
ing. It is the first heavier-than-air, man-carrying machine ever
built, although it did not have a successful flight until more than 10
years after its construction. It is also an important historical relic,
as it confirms the claim that Secretary Langley was the first to de-
sign and construct a heavier-than-air machine capable of carrying a
man in flight. There has never been any question that he was the
first to successfully fly a heavier-than-air machine propelled by its
own power.

Borneo and Celebes expedition—Owing to the generosity of Dr.
W. L. Abbott, a valued collaborator of the National Museum, an ex-
tensive expedition has been in operation in these islands for several
years, under the leadership of Mr. H. C. Raven. Collecting is now
being carried on in central Celebes, and the Museum has received a
new lot of objects which is especially, rich in ethnological material.
Previous mention has been made of the results of this expedition
and of the gifts of Dr. Abbott, who has contributed the sum of
$21,000 for this purpose since 1912.

Santo Domingo and Haiti expedition—Dr. Abbott is now per-
sonally continuing his collections in Santo Domingo and Haiti, from
which he has secured for the National Museum many interesting
mammals and birds.

Biological work in North China—Mr. A. de C. Sowerby is con-
tinuing his exploration work in northeastern China, and a small col-
lection was received from him in May, 1917. His work has been
attended with considerable difficulty, however, owing to the unsettled
condition of the country. It will be remembered that this expedition
is being financed by a friend of the Institution, who declines to
allow his identity to become known.

Collins-Garner Congo expedition—In November, 1916, Mr. A. M.
Collins, of Philadelphia, asked the Museum to participate in an ex-
pedition to the French Congo which he was organizing in conjunc-
tion with Mr. R. L. Garner, Mr: Collins assuming the main financial
burden of the expedition. It was arranged that the Smithsonian
Institution should send a zoological collector, pay his salary and
transportation, and in addition turn over $1,200 to Mr. Collins, for
which sum he agreed to give our representative the privileges of the
expedition until the end of September, 1917. Mr. Garner and our

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 115

representative, Mr. C. R. W. Aschemeier, sailed about the middle of
December, but were unable to reach “the collecting grounds until
March. They encountered many difficulties along the way, but these
were finally overcome, so that serious work began in April. One
shipment of material has already been received and another is on
the way. Both mammals and birds from West Africa are of great
importance to our collections for comparison with the East African
material brought together by the Smithsonian African expedition
and the Rainey expedition.

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GENERAL APPENDIX

TO THE

SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1918.

136650°—20——9 117

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ADVERTISEMENT.

The object of the Genera Appenprx to the Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institution is to furnish brief accounts of scientific dis-
covery in particular directions; reports of investigations made by
collaborators of the Institution; and memoirs of a general character
or on special topics that are of interest or value to the numerous
correspondents of the Institution.

It has been a prominent object of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution, from a very early date, to enrich the annual
report required of them by law with memoirs illustrating the more
remarkable and important developments in physical and biological
discovery, as well as showing the general character of the operations
of the Institution; and this purpose has, during the greater part of
its history, been carried out largely by the publication of such papers
as would possess an interest to all attracted by scientific progress.

In 1880 the secretary, induced in part by the discontinuance of an
annual summary of progress which for 30 years previous had been
issued by well-known private publishing firms, had prepared by com-
petent collaborators a series of abstracts, showing concisely the
prominent features of recent scientific progress in astronomy, geol-
ogy, meteorology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology,
and anthropology. This latter plan was continued, though not alto-
gether satisfactorily, down to and including the year 1888.

In the report for 1889 a return was made to the earlier method of
presenting a miscellaneous selection of papers (some of them origi-
nal) embracing a considerable range of scientific investigation and
discussion. This method has been continued in the present report
for 1918,

119

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THE DISCOVERY OF HELIUM AND WHAT
CAME OF IT.

By C. G. ABBoT,
Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

This story is about a chemical element that was discovered in the
sun, confirmed in the stars, recognized long after upon the earth,
was instrumental in realizing the dreams of the alchemists, and
finally found a useful place in the great war. It came upon our
stage at the time of one of those wonderful natural phenomena called
total solar eclipses.

About once every year the moon comes exactly between the sun
and the earth, and as its apparent size is generally slightly greater
than that of the sun, although in reality far smaller, it covers over
the brilliant disk of the sun and allows us to see those objects which
are so close to the sun in their apparent position as ordinarily to
be obscured by the brilliant glare of the sky in the solar neighbor-
hood.

On August 18, 1868, a very notable total solar eclipse was visible
in India. Many astronomers journeyed there to observe it, among
them the French astronomer, Janssen. It was only a few years before
this that the spectroscope began to reveal the inmost nature of
substances when these are heated sufficiently to give off ight. Many
astronomers employed the spectroscope at the Indian eclipse and all
made substantially the same report. They found that the bright
prominences which shot out to different heights about the sun’s disk,
and which had been seen in many previous eclipses, revealed spectra
consisting of bright lines. Conspicuous among these lines were the
lines of hydrogen, but other bright lines were seen in the prominence
spectrum, among them one of yellow, which they mistook for the
characteristic bright line of sodium. Their observations completely
demonstrated the fact that the prominences are enormous masses
of highly heated gaseous matter shot up to immense distances above
the surface of the sun, and that of these gases hydrogen is among
the most prominent. So far all were agreed, but Janssen went beyond
this. The lnes were so brilliant during the eclipse, as seen in his
spectroscope, that he believed he could see them also in full sun-

121

122 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

light. Clouds prevented him from trying the experiment that after-
noon, but the next morning he completed the necessary adjustments
and drawing his spectroscope toward that portion of the sun’s edge
where the day before the most brilliant prominences had been seen
during the eclipse, he found that the same lines came out again
clear and distinct. Now he could study them at his leisure, not
hurried by the quick rush of the eclipse phenomena, and he de-
termined accurately the positions of the lines in the spectrum. He
immediately confirmed his first conclusion that hydrogen is the
most conspicuous of the prominence materials, but found that the
vellow line which had been attributed to sodium was slightly dis-
placed from the position of the real sodium lines and must probably
be the revealed characteristic radiation of a new chemical element.

Messrs. Lockyer and Frankland confirmed the results of Janssen,
and proved definitely that the yellow line could not be ascribed to
the spectrum of any known terrestrial element. Frankland pro-
posed for the new discovery the name of “ helium,” from the Greek
“helios,” the sun, and this name has been universally accepted for it.

After some years the yellow line of helium and some others which
appeared to be associated with it were detected in the spectra of
some of the stars. These lines are found as dark absorption lines in
the spectra of the Orion stars, but bright in the spectra of certain
others, and both bright and dark in the spectra of some of the so-
called new stars.

Much searching was done to find this new element upon the earth,
but, until 1895, without success. In that year Dr. Ramsay, a collabo-
rator with Lord Rayleigh in the discovery of argon in the atmos-
phere, made an examination of the gas given off on digesting with
acid specimens of Norwegian cleveite. He found in this spectrum
the conspicuous yellow line of helium as theretofore known in the
sun. Associated with helium he found also argon and other gases.
Cleveite is a species of pitch-blende and is one of the ores of uranium.
It was soon found that the gas helium was quite widely distributed
upon the earth, though in minute quantities, and was found in other
ores of uranium and also in the gases given off by certain mineral
springs, even found free in the atmosphere in traces, and was also
to be found associated with natural gas in the gas wells of the United
States. It was also found in meteoric iron.

Of course the spectrum and all the properties of the new element
were carefully studied, and it was found to be an inert chemical.
Its molecule contains but one atom, whereas hydrogen and oxygen
molecules have two. The greatest efforts have been made to cause
it to combine with other chemical elements. Every device known to
science has been employed, but without success. No combinations
whatever can be made between helium and any other known chemi-

HELIUM—ABBOT. bs

cal elements. This is a property which it shares with some of the
other rare gases discovered about the same time—argon, neon, xenon,
and others.

Readers will admit that up to this point the history of helium had
been one of surprises. Found originally in the sun, 90,000,000 miles
away ; traced to the stars, thousands of times as far away as the sun;
over a quarter of a century elapsed before it was found upon the
earth, and when found, although a chemical element, it differed from
almost all chemical elements in being wholly indifferent to all other
constituents of the world. But the wonders of the story had hardly
begun.

In 1898 the discovery of radium, another chemical element, sur-
prised the world, for the properties of radium were found more
strange than those of helium. Radium was found to be continually
giving off portions of itself. It was found to be capable of fogging
photographic plates through solid sheets of metal entirely opaque
to light. It was found to be continually giving up heat, and some
persons thought that here at last was a violation of the well-known
second law of thermodynamics, which maintains that heat can not
continually flow by a self-acting process from a cooler body to a
warmer one. This paradox was later understood, for it was found
that the shooting off of a part of itself by the radium made available
those stores of inner chemical energy which could be continually
converted into heat energy almost inexhaustibly in point of time.
With the discovery of this extraordinary property of radium the
mystery of the long existence of life upon the earth and the next
corollary to it, the long existence of the sun as a source of radiation,
became less puzzling. For although no sources of energy known up
to that time had been suggested which were competent to maintain
the sun’s radiation for the hundreds of millions of years demanded
by the geologist and the zoologist to account for the phenomena they
study, yet if there be chemical elements which decompose their
inmost atoms with a continual evolution of heat, here may be an
almost unlimited source from which to draw for all demands of
geology and biology, as far as they relate to the sun.

But what became of the particles shot off by radium? They were
found to consist of gases, and some of these gases themselves were of
short life and eventually split up into others. Two stable products
of the decomposition of the atoms of radium and its immediate prod-
ucts were at length recognized. One of these is the well-known metal
lead, the other is our friend helium. Not only does radium break
up with the evolution of helium, but also uranium, thorium, and
possibly also other chemical elements. Thus was explained the
tendency of helium to be associated with uranium ores, for un-

124 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

doubtedly the uranium comprised in these ores is continually de-
generating and forming the helium as it does so.

Thus the dreams of the old alchemists had almost come true. For
centuries they had endeavored to transmute the chemical elements,
thus to produce the precious metals, such as gold and silver. In this
they had always failed. But nature, that more powerful alchemist,
had now revealed its secret that the chemical elements are not im-
mutable but may be transmuted one into the other. Unfortunately
for commercial applications, no processes have ever been discovered
by means of which the change of radium and its associates into
helium and other metals can either be hurried or retarded. Nature
retains full control of the apparatus. Hitherto man has been unable
to usurp the government of it.

Among the properties of helium has been noted its chemical inert-
ness. In other words, no combinations of helium with other chemical
elements can be made. This means that helium can not be burned.
We well know that hydrogen burns with tremendous energy in
oxygen or in air, but nothing of the kind takes place with helium.
By no process whatever can helium be burned. Another most inter-
esting physical property of helium gas is the extreme difficulty of
liquefying it. During the nineteenth century almost all of the so-
called permanent gases were liquefied. Hydrogen resisted the attack
the longest, but even hydrogen was at last liquefied and even solidi-
fied. Helium, however, resisted that degree of cold and pressure to
which hydrogen had yielded itself as a liquid, and it was only in
1908 that Kamerlingh Onnes, the distinguished Dutch physicist, suc-
ceeded actually in liquefying helium. The temperature at which he
arrived in this process was but 4° C. above absolute zero, that unique
beginning of all motion of the molecules and of properties of many
kinds. Measured on the absolute centigrade scale, the temperature of
the sun is about 6,000° to 7,000°; that of the earth about 285°;
freezing water, 273°; liquid oxygen, 90°; liquid hydrogen, 20°; and
liquid helium, 4°.

Onnes was able to reach almost to 2° absolute by employing helium
in a special way, and employed this new extreme of cold to test the
electrical and other properties of metals. Very extraordinary results
were found. Tin, lead, and mercury (which is a solid, of course, at
these temperatures) suddenly lost their properties of electrical re-
sistance. Thus a thread of mercury that measured several hundred
ohms at room temperatures, at 2245 Abs. C. had so little electrical
resistance that it could not be detected, and certainly less than
roaoeoowee «(Of what it had at the temperature of freezing water.
Probably this curious sudden change of electrical behavior occurs
with other metals, too.

HELIUM—ABBOT. 135

Here, then, we have read two new chapters of the wonderful his-
tory of helium, its relation to the dreams of the alchemists, and its
approach to the extreme limit of the realm of cold. The last chap-
ter of the story deals with the great war.

For two decades previous to the invasion of Belgium the Germans
had been constructing their Zeppelins, and the possibilities of this
new war weapon were variously estimated. Their employment of it,
however, to scatter destruction over undefended towns had not been
dreamed of, and the horror which their earlier raids across the
Channel into England roused will not soon be forgotten. However,
this diabolical engine of destruction proved not to be invulnerable.
The hydrogen gas with which these great ships were filled in order
to make them lighter than air was in tle highest degree inflammable,
and when the airplanes reached their high degree of efficiency the avi-
ators were able to destroy the Zeppelins by means of inflammatory
bullets. Experiments made in the United States have shown that
about one in four of the inflammatory projectiles which pierce a
hydrogen filled balloon is apt to set it on fire. In this way the Ger-
mans lost several Zeppelins, and recognizing the danger of their em-
ployment and the comparatively meager results achieved, they at
length discontinued the employment of them. But they continued
their devilish raids by the use of airplanes, which had reached such
large dimensions and such degrees of adaptability for maneuvering
that long trips could be made with them to scatter death and destruc-
tion over civilian populations.

At length the Allies retaliated. They also sent their airplanes
to give the Germans some realization of that kind of warfare. Their
aerial fleets outnumbered the Germans, and with the entrance of the
United States into the war probabilities of still further aerial attacks
upon Germany became far stronger. But it occurred to allied officers
that if a noninflammable gas could be used, then the Zeppelins them-
selves, which were far more capable of carrying great weights of
guns and bombs, and were capable of making long flights into enemy
territory, would be even more suitable for this kind of warfare.
Ammonia and hot air were suggested and tested for such purposes,
but owing to their comparatively considerable weight as compared
with hydrogen they were not altogether satisfactory. But some
enthusiast suggested that if helium, which is next lightest to hydrogen
of all the gases, could be used the problem would be solved. Noth-
ing apparently was more absurd. Kamerlingh Onnes had spent an
enormous amount of time to collect for his experiments on liquefac-
tion of helium so little as 2 cubic meters of gas. A terrible misfor-
tune occurred to him, for an accidental leakage in his apparatus
caused the loss of much of this precious store

126 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The cost of producing helium at the outbreak of the war was
about $1,600 per cubic foot, and Zeppelin balloons would require
many hundreds of thousands of cubic feet. Apparently the sugges-
tion was merely a wild dream absolutely incapable of realization.
However, there are in Texas and Oklahoma certain gas wells which
yield as much as nine-tenths of 1 per cent of helium. Plants were
constructed to recover helium from the natural gas by means of
liquefaction. As the temperature and pressure are properly adjusted
and the temperature reduced, the natural gas first liquefies and runs
away; after this the nitrogen and oxygen which may be present, and
so on, one after another of the various gases of which the mixture is
composed, until at length helium stands alone. In this way it was
found possible to recover about 60 per cent of the helium in the mix-
ture, so that a yield of about one-half per cent was obtained from the
original natural gas. Of course, no waste of the natural gas itself for
combustion occurred, for the liquefied gas could be warmed and could
be quite as useful as before for purposes of combustion.

Several large plants were operated by the Government in Texas
for the recovery of helium. The matter was, however, kept a well-
guarded sceret. Even the name was hidden. Photographs of the
plant taken, were labeled “argon” manufacturies. The idea was
spread that the purpose of the experiments was to produce a new va-
riety of poisonous gas for warfare, or perhaps a special variety of
gasoline for use in airplanes. Al sorts of camouflage were adopted
to prevent the enemy from learning the true purpose of the experi-
ments. So far had the work progressed that at the time the armis-
tice was signed a consignment of 150,000 cubic feet of helium was
on the dock at New York, waiting to be sent to France to be used
by the Allies for their balloons. Plans were on foot for increasing
the output of helium enormously, so that it is probable that had the
war lasted until the summer of 1919 the Allies could have employed
helium gas for observation balloons and for Zeppelins with entire
immunity from all possibility that they could be shot down with
incendiary bullets.

It seems a far cry from the peaceful sun, 90,000,000 miles away,
and the still more peaceful stars that dot the summer night, at more
immeasureable distances, to the horrible war which has just been
ended upon our little earth, but yet who knows when he goes about
an investigation to increase the bounds of knowledge, however re-
mote his subject may be from the ordinary walks of life, what apph-
cations the future may have in store for the results he gains?

AN ACCOUNT OF THE RISE OF NAVIGATION.’

By R. H. Curtiss.

One of the most obvious practical benefits directly traceable to
astronomical research is found in the application of celestial observa-
tions to the solution of the problems of navigation. Though other
sciences have contributed their quota, it is mainly astronomy that has
made the ocean safe for the navigator.

The fundamental problem of navigation is: Given the position on
the earth of the port to be reached, to determine the ship’s positions
and the best courses to be steered at suitable intervals from the begin-
ning to the consummation of the voyage. This problem, so important
commercially, is, strictly speaking, one of science, for it depends
chiefly for its accurate solution on the application of the principles
and methods of practical astronomy.

For obvious reasons the accuracy attainable in determinations of
position and direction at sea is much inferior to that possible on
shore. The unsteadiness of the platform of a ship, the uncertainties
of atmospheric refraction near or on the horizon, and the intervention
of cloudy periods while the ship is progressing through disturbing
currents and winds are formidable difficulties which the navigator
must meet. But the results attainable with care leave only a small
element of risk affecting modern transportation at sea.

Quite different was the position of the navigator in early times.
‘The compass was introduced generally into Europe about 1400 A. D.
Before this time the only practical means of navigating a ship on
the Atlantic and Mediterranean was to keep in sight of land, or
occasionally, for short distances, to direct the ship’s course by refer-
ence to the sun and stars. But this latter rough method failed in
cloudy weather, and even during short voyages on the Mediterranean
in such circumstances the navigator became hopelessly bewildered as
to his position. Frequently on the China Sea and the Indian Ocean
vessels were able to traverse long distances out of sight of land
by running directly before the steady winds, called the monsoons,
which prevail in those localities. But the compass was an important

1Reprinted by permission from Popular Astronomy, Vol. XXVI, No. 254, April, 1918.
The author expresses acknowledgements especially to the United States Hydrographic
Office and the Encyclopedia Brittanica for material used in this article.

127

128 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

adjunct even there, and such methods of navigating were makeshifts
at best.

The general adoption of the mariner’s compass, about 1400 A. D.,
was followed by a period of progress in navigation, particularly
among the Portuguese, whose exploring expeditions during the fif-
teenth century led to important discoveries in the Atlantic. Prior
to this time the methods in use were very rude, uncertain, and dan-
gerous. When a fleet of merchant vessels was sent to distant ports
the trader was content if one or two returned and he fixed the prices
on his precious imports accordingly.

But even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, navigation
was still in a very backward state. That the compass needle does not
point true north had been noticed early ; that the amount of variation
from north was different for different localities had been noted by
Columbus or Cabot about 1490; but that the variation of the com-
pass changes from year to year at the same base was not known
until 1635,

At this time (about 1600) a navigator’s equipment included a com-
pass for directing the course; a rough weight and line for making
soundings; a cross-staff or astrolabe for measuring angles; a fairly
good table of the sun’s distance north or south of the equator; and
corrections for the altitude of the pole star. The last four appliances
were used solely to determine the latitude or the distance on the
earth’s surface north or south of the terrestrial equator. Occasion-
ally a very incorrect chart helped determine the ship’s position. In
this connection the motion of the ship was usually determined by
estimating the speed every two hours or so, or, in some cases, by
throwing out a float from the bows of the ship and noting the inter-
val of time between its passage abeam of two observers standing on
the deck at known distances apart.

By observations with the cross-staff and astrolabe on the sun or the
pole star, latitude could be measured at sea with sufficient accuracy
to fix the observer’s position north or south of the equator within 20
miles or so, but no method was available for finding longitude or
position east or west on the earth, except the rough expedient of esti-
mating the run of the ship, taking wind, tide, and current into ac-
count. The only mode of arriving at a port of destination was to
steer so as to get into the latitude of such a port either to the east-
ward or westward of its supposed position, and then to approach it
on its parallel of latitude by steering a course due east or west. Ob-
viously this method, though the best then available, might prove
fatal if the error in longitude were too great.

The advice on longitude finding given by a nautical authority of
repute at this time illustrates well the status of the problem up to
the eighteenth century. He observes:

NAVIGATION—CURTISS. 129

Now there be some that are very inquisitive to have a way to get the
longitude, but that is too tedious for seamen, since it requireth the deep
knowledge of astronomy, wherefore I would not have any man think that the
longitude is to be found at sea by any instrument; so let no seamen trouble
themselves with any such rule, but (according to their accustomed manner)
let them keep a perfect account and reckoning of the way of their ship.

Such a record of the way of a ship appears to have been made
with chalk on a wooden board called a log board which folded like
a book and from which each day a position for the ship was deduced.

But while the longitude problem at sea remained unsolved, con-
tributions to progress in navigation were being made in other direc-
tions. Mercator and Wright developed a correct sailing chart about
1600. Gunter’s tables in 1620 made possible the application of
logarithms to navigation. In 1631 a device, called the vernier, for
accurate reading of scales became known. In 1635 Gellibrand pub-
lished his discovery of the annual change in the variation of the com-
pass needle. In 1637 Norwood helped remove one of the greatest
stumbling blocks in the way of correct navigation by determining
improved values of the length of a minute of are on the earth’s
surface, or the true nautical mile. His value was about six-tenths
of 1 per cent too large. In 1699 Halley constructed the first com-
pass variation chart.

In the meantime some progress was being made with the longitude
problem. It was recognized that the only accurate method of
determining the longitude is by knowing the difference at the same
instant between the time at the meridian of Greenwich and that of
the observer. The determination of the local time for the observer
by astronomical observations of the altitude of suitably situated
heavenly bodies was an old, well-known and frequently practiced
operation. But the simultaneous determination of Greenwich time
presented great difficulties. Obviously if the ship were near enough
to a station on the Greenwich meridian a rocket or a loud explosion
could be used as a signal at some stated Greenwich time. The ship’s
time for the same instant could then be observed and the difference
between these two times for the same instant would be the longitude
of the ship east or west of Greenwich. But for ships out of signal
range from Greenwich observations of celestial phenomena had to
be employed. At present chronometers are carried on board ship
which, after being corrected and rated at departure, keep accurate
Greenwich time throughout the voyage and thus render longitude
determination relatively easy. But chronometers of satisfactory
accuracy were not available till late in the eighteenth century.

The best method known for determining Greenwich time at sea
by observation before the chronometer became available was that
depending upon the measurement of the distance of the moon from

130 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

selected stars. For the moon makes a rapid circuit of the sky once
each month and in so doing passes close to a number of bright stars.
Hence if the navigator can be provided with tables giving the
Greenwich time when the moon should be found to be distant from
a given star by a given amount which he has measured, then the
Greenwich time of the instant of that observation becomes known
and may be kept by an hour glass or watch for a few minutes while
the ship’s time is being found.

This method for determining longitude was foreseen as early as
1514, but its practical application was attended with difficulties, not
surmounted indeed before another and better method had been de-
veloped through the invention of the accurate chronometer. The
difficulties in the way of the lunar distance determination of longi-
tude were imperfect knowledge of the moon’s motion and the crude
character of the instruments for measuring angles, together with
some inferiority inherent in the method.

The study of the longitude problem was stimulated by a prize of
1,000 crowns offered by Philip III of Spain, followed by another of
10,000 florins by the states-general for the discovery of a method of
finding longitude at sea. Asa result it was brought out that methods
depending on the moon’s position offered the best solution at that
time, but that the lunar tables extant were useless, and that much
study and observation would be necessary to make them available.
Primarily to attack this lunar problem England established her
national observatory in 1675. Fifty-six years later the astronomer
royal in charge of the Greenwich Observatory announced that he
hoped to be able to compute the moon’s position within such limits
that longitude errors would be reduced to 60 geographical miles
at the equator. Apparently progress had been slow.

In 1714 England’s commission for the discovery of longitude at
sea had been constituted with power to grant large sums in prizes.
For a method of determining the longitude within 60 geographical
miles, to be tested by a voyage to the West Indies and back, £10,000
was offered; within 40 miles, £15,000; within 30 miles, £20,000.

The importance of further progress in methods of navigation at
this time is brought out by accounts of actual casualties showing
what the dangers were. Admiral Wheeler’s squadron, in 1694, leav-
ing the Mediterranean, ran on Gilbraltar when it was thought the
strait was safely passed. Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s squadron, in 1707,
was lost on the rocks off Scilly, by erring in the latitude. Several
transports in 1711 were lost near the St. Lawrence River, having
erred 45 miles in their reckoning. Lord Belhaven was lost on the
Lizard in 1721, the same day on which he sailed from Plymouth,
England.

NAVIGATION—CURTISS. 13t

At this point two most vital discoveries making for advancement in
navigation were made. The rise of modern navigation may fairly be
dated from the invention of the sextant by Hadley in 1731 and of the
chronometer by Harrison in 1735, The sextant is an instrument for
the measurement of angular distances. As such it replaced the cross-
staff and the astrolabe, than which it is far more convenient and ac-
curate. The cross-staff required the observer to sight in two direc-
tions at once, while the sextant forms two images of the object or
objects observed as near together as desired in a small telescope. The
astrolabe was suspended and was supposed to be kept plumb by grav-
ity, but the movement of the ship rendered accuracy impossible.
Three observers were required to manipulate it. The sextant is easily
handled by one observer, who, with practise, soon acquires great pro-
ficiency and accuracy in the measurement of angles although his posi-
tion may be on the unsteady deck of a ship at sea.

The chronometer is a timepiece like a watch in that it is actuated
by a spring and depends upon a balance wheel for the measurement
of time. It is however much larger and usually much more accurate
than a watch, and it is mounted on gymbals so that it may by its own
weight remain face up when its case is tipped.

Tn early times mariners used the compass as a rough sundial for the
determination of time- Waterclocks and sandclocks were employed
for rough purposes of keeping time on board ship, and it is curious to
note that hour and half-hour sand glasses were used in the British
navy until 1839. When watches were introduced in 1530 they were
not accurate enough to supersede even the primitive devices then in
use. The practical difficulty arose from their very irregular rates,
owing to change in temperature and the motion of the ship. Har-
rison’s great invention, which made possible the chronometer and
greatly improved the watch, was the principle of compensating the
balance wheel by the use of two metals with different coefficients of
expansion, together with a device by which the Sea retains
its motion while being wound.

Harrison was eager to try for the longitude prizes with the help of
his new invention. He believed that his timepiece, if set and rated
carefully before embarking, could be relied upon to keep Greenwich
time for a voyage of several months with such accuracy that greatly
improved longitude determinations at sea could be effected. In 1735
he was allowed to test one of his first watches on a voyage to Lisbon,
with a result so satisfactory that he received a grant of £500 to carry
out further improvements. The official trial journey to the West
Indies was begun in November, 1761, with an improved chronometer ;
and during the whole voyage of five months the total error unallowed-
for was 1 min. 54.5 sec. or the equivalent of 18 geographical miles in

132 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

the latitude of Portsmouth, an amount well within the limit of 30
miles specified for the grand prize of the longitude commission.

Apparently Harrison had won the prize of nearly $100,000.00; but
the invention of the sextant, which had helped Harrison by facilitat-
ing the determination of local time, had been especially favorable to
certain powerful competitors who hoped to gain the reward by meas-
urement of lunar distances from stars. Much improved lunar tables
had been submitted by Mayer in 1755. These were pronounced gen-
erally correct within a minute of arc; and Maskelyne, after a trial
voyage to St. Helena in 1761, during which he determined longitudes
within 90 miles or so, prepared a guide, issued in 1763, in which he
asserted his belief that the lunar method would determine longitudes
always within 60 geographical miles on the equator and generally
within 30 miles, if applied to careful observations. Encouraged by
this progress, though the process involved was too laborious for sea-
men to undertake, the House of Commons withheld the prize from
Harrison and left an open chance for a lunarian during four years
from 1768.

In March, 1764, on another trial voyage to the West Indies, Har-
rison’s watch made a record even better than before, running four
months with an error not greater than 10 geographical miles in
longitude. Accordingly in the following year he was awarded one-
half of the prize of £20,000; but at the same time, authority and
funds were given for the publication of the Nautical Almanac, con-
taining among other things tables of the moon’s distance from the
sun, when suitable, and from seven fixed stars at intervals of three
hours. Apparently the longitude commissioners were still in doubt.

The tables of lunar distances in the Nautical Almanac, together
with Maskelyne’s auxiliary tables, facilitated greatly the lunar
method for finding longitude. But steady progress toward the per-
fection of the chronometer maintained the superiority of the chrono-
meter method of longitude determination, and soon after 1800 the
longitude controversy may be considered to have been settled in favor
of the accurate timepiece.

The marvelous accuracy of the modern chronometer—of even the
cheaper chronometers used in the mercantile marine—is illustrated
by the steamship Orellana sailing from London to Valparaiso. Ina
voyage of 63 days the mean accumulated error of her three chrono-
meters was only 2.3 seconds of time, or six-tenths of a mile in longi-
tude at the equator, and less in higher latitudes.

At the present time, since the Greenwich time can be sent out by
wireless from shore stations, in the problem of longitude determina-
tion even less dependence need be placed on the chronometer, and the
accuracy of such determinations is not necessarily appreciably dif-
ferent from that of latitudes.

NAVIGATION—CURTISS. 33

Equipped with the compass and log, sextant, chronometer, lead,
Nautical Almanac, and the Requisite Tables the navigator was ready
to sail with comparative safety over long voyages early in the nine-
teenth century. The crying need was for more and better charts and
for better knowledge of tides, winds, and currents. The establish-
ment of the Admiralty Hydrographic Office of Great Britain in 1795
marked a great step in advance in these directions. The first official
catalogue of the Admiralty, issued in 1830, listed 962 charts. And
in 1832 official tide tables were issued also by the Admiralty. At
present the navigator’s charts cover all the important coasts and
seas, with very full data of tides, winds, and currents.

In the United States, marine chart work began in the Navy De-
partment in 1837. From 1844 to 1861 the United States Observatory
and Hydrographic Office under Lieut. M. F. Maury devoted itself
not only to astronomical and hydrographic work but also to im-
portant research in marine meteorology. This period is notable for
the issuance of Maury’s famous “ Wind and Sailing Charts” and
“Sailing Directions.” It was Maury’s wish that the wind and sail-
ing charts should be an exclusively American contribution to world
navigation. In 1866 the hydrographic and meteorological branches
were disconnected from the Naval Observatory and given to the
present Hydrographic Office, and in 1904 the work of marine meteor-
ology was transferred to the Weather Bureau. The United States
Hydrographic Office conducts marine surveys, collects information
for nautical publications, and prepares manuals, charts, sailing direc-
tions, and nautical tables for the use of navigators generally. In
a single year it prints about four hundred thousand charts and
many more pamphlets and bulletins. It sells about one hundred
thousand charts and books to navigators each year. The United
States Coast and Geodetic Survey, as part of its activities, prepares
and distributes tide tables and also charts and pilots of our coasts.

In recent times the great development of modern ships in both
size and speed has increased enormously the demands on those who
command and navigate them and has led to careful study and im-
provement of methods in navigation. Simplified procedure, better
tables, and a higher standard of preparation of the navigator have
been realized. On the instrumental side the sextant and chronometer
have been carried toward perfection, the sounding machine much
improved, and the gyro-compass introduced. The original model
of one of the best modern types of magnetic compass was patented
by Lord Kelvin in 1876. The gyro-compass is used side by side
with the magnetic compass, but can not be said to have superseded
it. The rotary or patent log came into general use about 1836, but
was introduced in the form usually employed at present in 1878. It

136650°—20-——10
e

134 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

records the revolutions of a small screw towed by the ship and,
like a speedometer, registers the speed of the ship and the distance
run at any instant.

The important features of modern practice in navigation may be
brought out by a brief account of methods now employed. In plan-
ning out in advance a long ocean voyage the navigator would first
lay down on a chart the track from port to port. For ‘this purpose
the monthly Pilot Chart, which is a Mercator projection, would be
preferred. It would be the navigator’s object to adopt the shortest
route available, taking into account currents, winds, ice and other
undesirable features of high latitudes, as well as specified lanes of
traffic, and the intervention of land. Since the great circle route
is always shorter than any other, especially between ports far apart
in longitude and in high latitudes of the same name, a great circle
chart is often used, for on such charts a great circle appears as a
straight line. But since the track will be transferred finally from
the great circle chart to one on a Mercator’s projection, which is
more convenient for purposes of navigation, the course may be.
entered in the beginning on a Mercator’s chart using the method
proposed by Airy for drawing approximate great circles. On a
Mercator’s chart the track followed by a ship steering a continuous
course is a straight line (technically known as a rhumb line), and
since ships rarely, if ever, steer on great circles and, instead, follow
a series of rhumb lines like chords of the great circle track, differ-
ing successively one or two degrees in direction, it is desirable to
use a Mercator’s chart upon which each such course appears as a
straight line. a iem

Having thus planned the most advantageous general track to fol-
low, three methods are used to determine the position of the ship
at any time during the voyage. These are (1) projecting the track
on charts, (2) simple trigonometrical calculations based upon the
course steered and distance run as shown by compass and log, and
(3) astronomical observations with sextant and azimuth circle.

Of these the first is generally least trustworthy owing to the un-
avoidably small scale of the charts. But when a ship approaches
or leaves a coast, chart sailing becomes obligatory and large scale
charts are available for the purpose.

On leaving harbors, the so-called point of departure is found,
possibly by astronomical observations but preferably by sighting on
objects on shore as mapped on the chart of the port. In hazy weather
especially, a continuous line of soundings at fairly even distances
apart affords an additional control on one’s position, and for this
purpose the sounding machines invented by Lord Kelvin, permitting -
satisfactory soundings at speeds of 15 or 16 knots, are most useful.

While in sight of land the course can be followed best by land
sights and soundings, a metho@ of navigation usually referred to as

NAVIGATION—CURTISS. 135

piloting. Before losing sight of land the longitude and latitude of
the last well-determined position found by methods of piloting is
taken from the coast chart and transferred to the ocean or small
scale chart and is considered as the point of departure.

The point of departure is the starting point of the ocean voyage;
and from that point the course and distance are laid down, being
rectified whenever astronomical observations are available. More
accurately, though less vividly than on the chart, the changes in
longitude and latitude involved in each change of course are com-
puted by plane trigonometry, using so-called traverse tables for the
solution of the right-angled triangle involved. Such a method of
keeping account of a ship’s position on the basis of the course as indi-
cated by the compass and the distance as indicated by the log, al-
lowing for wind, current, and tide, is called dead reckoning. As
bearing upon the accuracy of the log, it is interesting to note that
some authorities, in the case of steam vessels, consider that the revo-
lutions of the ship’s propeller, taking into account the ship’s draught
and the condition of the ship’s bottom, afford the best means of esti-
mating speed.

Astronomical reckoning affords the most accurate means of ascer-
taining positions at sea, dead reckoning being carried along partly
as a check but also to be relied on when weather does not permit
observations of the heavenly bodies.

Navigators will generally prefer to determine position from ob-
servations of the sun, measuring the altitude of that body above the
sea horizon. But simillar observations of the planets and brighter
stars in twilight, when the horizon is well defined, afford even better
determinations of positions at sea. In such a case the careful navi-
gator, by observing for latitude two stars, one north and one south
of the zenith, and for longitude two stars, one east and one west of
the zenith can depend on a good result, especially if the stars in each
pair are about at the same altitude and not too low in the sky. Since
the moon also may be used when occasion arises, it is evident that the
navigator seldom needs.to go along without a good fix or determina-
tion of position.

The chief astronomical observations made at sea are those for
ascertaining (1) latitude, (2) time and longitude, (3) compass error,
and (4) latitude and longitude simultaneously.

The plan of many navigators is to observe with a sextant the
altitude of the sun in the morning when that body is nearly above
the east point, to determine local time and longitude. In the com-
putation of local time it is necessary to adopt a latitude obtained by
dead reckoning, but if the sun is well placed errors in the assumed
latitude will introduce relatively small errors in the resulting ship’s
time. The longitude is obtained by taking the difference between the

136 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ship’s time and the corresponding Greenwich time recorded by the
ship’s chronometers. This longitude is carried forward to the fol-
lowing noon by dead reckoning. The latitude at noon is determined
by measuring the altitude of the sun on or very near the meridian.
Another time sight may be made before sunset. Or if stars are
used at twilight one is observed east or west for longitude and an-
other north or south for latitude. A longitude by dead reckoning
may be used first to derive the latitude and then with the observed
latitude the longitude may be obtained, though in unfavorable cases
more trials may be necessary.

The newer methods, which are rapidly superseding other modes
of ascertaining a ship’s position, are based upon the use of the Sum-
ner line of position. In these methods each sextant altitude of a
heavenly body is used to determine all it ever can actually give,
a line on the sea on which the ship must be situated. Such a line,
though in practice nearly always sensibly straight, is in reality an
are of a small circle on the earth’s surface having its center im-
mediately under the celestial object observed with a radius equal to
the zenith distance of that object. The Sumner line may be defined
by two points, in which case two longitudes or two latitudes are as-
sumed or based upon dead reckoning and the other coordinate com-
puted from the celestial observation. Or the line may be defined
by one point derived in this or a similar way from the celestial ob-
servation, together with the direction of the line, which will be at
right angles to the direction of the body observed at the time of
the observation. If the Sumner point, thus used in defining the
Sumner line, is to be adopted as a point of departure, it is important
that it should be a probable position, taking advantage of the evi-
dence furnished by dead reckoning. In the Marc St. Hilaire method,
which is generally preferred, this point is the intersection of the
Sumner line with the vertical plane of the celestial object observed,
assuming for the observer the position obtained by dead reckoning.
Or, in other words, it is the point of the Sumner line nearest to the
dead reckoning position.

Some help toward an understanding of Sumner’s method will be
found in an account of its discovery. Sumner sailed from Charles-
ton, South Carolina, in November, 1837, bound for Greenock, Eng-
land. After passing longitude 21° W, about 800 miles west of Lon-
don, no observations could be made until soundings had indicated
that the ship was near land. About midnight of December 17, dead
reckoning indicated that the ship was within 40 miles of Tuskar
light off the Irish coast opposite Wales, and the ship stood off the
supposed shore to await developments. About 10 o’clock the next
morning an altitude of the sun was observed and the chronometer
time noted, but, having run so far by dead reckoning, it was plain

NAVIGATION—CURTISS. 13%

that the knowledge of the latitude was not sufficiently reliable to
afford a determination of longitude. Nevertheless Sumner computed
his longitude, using the latitude by dead reckoning, and got a po-
sition 15 minutes east of that by dead reckoning. Then in order to
determine how far errors in his assumed latitude would affect the
computed longitude he assumed a second latitude 10 minutes farther
north and got a position 27 miles east northeast of the former posi-
tion and toward the danger. <A third assumed latitude still farther
north gave a third point 27 miles still farther east northeast of the
first point. Upon plotting these positions on a chart they were seen
to be on a straight line and this line passed through Small’s light
off the coast of Wales. Credit is due Sumner because he realized
then that anywhere on the line he had determined the altitude of
the sun at the time of observation would have had the value he
measured, and that such would be the case only on that line. He
therefore assumed that he was on that line and, keeping his course
east northeast along it, made Small’s light in less than an hour.
After hours of uncertainty off a rocky lee shore in the midst of a
winter gale what must have been Captain Sumner’s relief when the
lighthouse appeared ahead. Later it developed that at the time of
his uncertainty his latitude by dead reckoning was 8 miles too far
south and his longitude 45 miles too far west. The result to the
ship might have been disastrous had this wrong position been
adopted.

In using Sumner’s method in its simplest form, altitudes are
measured of two suitable objects in quick succession or of the same
object at two suitable times. Each observation gives a line upon
which the ship must be situated. The intersection of these two lines
of position gives the position of the ship. If the two observations
are separated in time and the ship is moving, dead reckoning must
be used to allow for the ship’s change in position between obser-
vations.

Important advantages of the line of position methods are not hard
to find. Every observation for position is treated in the same way.
The method makes clear to the navigator how much information
his observation actually yields. With available tables, including
Lord Kelvin’s Sumner Line Table, the calculations may be com-
pleted entirely without logarithms and with a minimum amount of
work. When the value of the newer methods is realized by navi-
gators it is not to be doubted that calculations for position will be
based universally on the Sumner line.

Tn considering the foregoing methods of fixing astronomically the
position of a ship it is evident that, always when the two elements
of latitude and longitude are determined at different times and fre-
quently when they are determined by Sumner’s method, the navi-

138 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

gator has to depend partly on dead reckoning; also during cloudy
weather out of sight of land he has to depend entirely on this method
for his knowledge of the ship’s position. Clearly then frequent de-
termination of the error of the compass is a most important duty.
In practice this error is found very simply by comparing the com-
pass bearing or direction of a heavenly body with its bearing, de-
termined by calculation if necessary, but usually taken from a table.

The total error of the compass includes that due to actual known
variation of the needle and also that due to deviations caused by the
attraction of the iron of the ship. The former error can be found
from charts and easily allowed for, but the latter is variable and un-
certain and thus makes necessary the frequent determination of com-
pass correction. It is customary to reduce the deviation error as
much as practicable by the use of artificial magnets, as well as
spheres and bars of soft iron, mounted about the compass before the
ship leaves port, but no arrangement known effects a permanent
correction.

A careful record of everything pertaining to the navigation of
the ship with the results of all observations and calculated positions
is kept in an official book, called the ship’s log. Each day at noon the
ship’s position is computed by dead reckoning from the previous
noon and also by astronomical observations when such are available.
The course and distance made good from the previous noon are then
computed using astronomical position if available. Finally the
course and distance are computed from the position of the ship at
noon to either the port of destination or some prominent position or
danger near which the vessel must pass.

The needs of our rapidly expanding naval forces and the demand
of our new merchant fleet for thousands of officers have centered at-
tention in instruction for the preparation of navigators. The ship-
ping board schools, the naval schools and colleges, and also our uni-
versities are making a creditable effort to meet the situation. The
concrete result in trained men will undoubtedly fill all important
requirements. But in addition it is reasonable to think that progress
in the improvement of the art of navigation, in this country at least,
will be stimulated. Awkward relics of former times may be hurried
aside. Such obstacles as the astronomical day may be removed.
Certainly beneficial cooperation will follow in greater measure
among navigators on vessels of the Navy and the Merchant Marine
and those who are experts in related fields on shore.

THE TORNADOES OF THE UNITED STATES.’

By Prof. Roserr DreC. Warp,

Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

[With 1 plate. ]

NATURE OF A TORNADO.

The relation of a tornado to human life and property depends
upon its nature. What it does is determined by what it 7s. Briefly
stated, a tornado is a very intense, progressive whirl, of small diam-
eter, with inflowing winds, which increase tremendously in velocity
as they near the center, developing there a counter-clockwise, vorticu-
lar, ascensional movement the violence of which exceeds that of any
other known storm. From the violently agitated main cloud-mass
above there usually hangs a writhing, funnel-shaped cloud, swinging
to and fro, rising and descending. With a frightful roar comes the
whirl, advancing almost always toward the northeast with the speed
of a fast train (20 to 40 miles an hour or more), its wind velocities
exceeding 100, 200, and probably sometimes 300 or more miles an
hour; its path of destruction usually less than a quarter of a mile
wide; its total life a matter of perhaps an hour or so. It is as
ephemeral as it is intense.

Fortunately for man, tornadoes are short-lived, have a very narrow
path of destruction, and are by no means equally intense throughout
their course. Their funnel cloud, which indicates the region of
maximum velocity of the whirling winds, ascends and descends
irregularly. Where it descends, the destruction is greatest; where it
rises, there are zones of greater safety. The whirl may be so far
above the ground that it does no injury whatever. It may descend
low enough to tear roofs and chimneys to pieces. It may come down
to the ground and leave nothing standing.

DAMAGE AND LOSS OF LIFE IN TORNADOES.

The central low-pressure core of the tornado is surrounded by
radially inflowing winds of moderate strength, and then, closer to the

1 Reprinted by permission from Nature, vol. 101, July 18, 1918, pp. 395-899; abridged
by the author from Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 63, No.
183, July, 1917.

139

140 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

center, by spiraling and ascending winds of terrific violence; strong
enough to crush and wreck the strongest buildings; ascending with
sufficient velocity to carry aloft objects so heavy that for wind to
lift them seems almost impossible. The surface winds which take
part in the vorticular inflow and ascent seem to be chiefly responsible
for the damage and loss of life. There is, however, an additional
factor. The central “ core,” surrounded by its whirling winds, has its
pressure greatly reduced by the centrifugal force of the whirl. It
therefore exerts a powerful explosive effect upon near-by air at ordi-
nary pressures, within buildings or in other more or less well-inclosed
spaces. This curious but very widely-attested explosive effect ac-
counts for many tornado “ freaks” which can not be explained by
any controls, either of radially or spirally inflowing winds, whatever
their velocity.

The damage done by tornadoes may be roughly classified as fol-
lows: (1) That resulting from the violence of the surface winds, blow-
ing over buildings and other exposed objects, crushing them, dashing
them against each other, etc.; (2) that caused by the explosive
action; and (3) that resulting from the uprushing air movement
close around the central vortex. Carts, barn doors, cattle, iron chains,
human beings, are carried through the air, whirled aloft, and dashed
to the ground, or they may be dropped gently at considerable dis-
tances from the places where they are picked up. Iron bridges have
been removed from their foundations; beams are driven into the
ground; nails are forced head first into boards; cornstalks are driven
partly through doors; harness is stripped from horses; clothing is
torn from human beings and stripped into rags. The damage is
greater and extends farther-from the center on the right of the track
than on the left, for the wind velocities are greater on the right, as
in the “dangerous semicircle” on the right of the track of tropical
cyclones. ;

The explosive effects are many and curious. The walls of build-
ings fall out, sometimes letting the roof collapse onto the founda-
tions; or the roof may be blown off, leaving the walls standing. The
accompanying photograph (pl. 1) illustrates some of the damage
which was done by the St. Louis, Mo., tornado of May 27, 1896.
The surface of the ground may be swept clean, as if with a broom.
Articles may be blown out of houses and carried to great distances.
Empty bottles are uncorked; feathers plucked from barnyard
poultry; doors and windows blown out; soot rises from chimneys;
mud penetrates clothing.

Property damage in the United States due to tornadoes varies
greatly from year to year, depending, as it does, upon the “acci-
dental” passage of tornadoes through well-populated or through
sparsely settled districts. In half an hour the St. Louis tornado

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TORNADOES—-WARD. 141

(May 27, 1896) destroyed property to the amount of $10,000,000
in iSt. Louis alone. In some years the damage for the whole
United States falls to but a few hundred thousand dollars.

Figure 1 illustrates the tragic fate of one family in a tornado
(May 30, 1879).1. A house was moved entirely from its foundation
to the southeast, then broken to pieces and scattered along the
tornado track to the northeast for more than a mile. The members
of the household, consisting of father, mother, and four children,
ran outdoors as the storm came. They first turned northwest, but,
thinking that the tornado was coming toward them, they turned
toward the east. One by one they were caught up and carried by
the wind. The father and baby were carried 150 yards into a field
to the northeast, and found in the agonies of death. The mother
was carried eastward 75 yards, and dashed against a tree, around
which she was partially
twisted; her skull was Sarhcaiite
crushed and her clothing Bauy
was stripped from her
body. <A girl was found
dead 50 yards northeast
of the house, in the
direct path of the storm.
A boy was blown into
a haystack 45 yards to
the northeast, and a
girl was found 80 yards
to the northeast lying
in the tornado track.
Neither of these two
children was_ seriously
injured. Disasters simi-
lar to this one come all too frequently in the American tornado
belt.

Finley listed some 600 tornadoes, of which 40 were fatal to human
life, causing a loss of 466 lives and injuring 687 persons.? In the
case of the St. Louis tornado (May 27, 1896) the loss of life was
306. In fact, in this one storm the fatalities and the damage to
property were greater than in any other single tornado on record.
Prof. Mark W. Harrington, formerly chief of the United States
Weather Bureau, estimated that the chance that a tornado may, in
any year, cross the particular locality where any individual may

Fig. 1.—Tornado, May 30,1879. From the Quarterly Journal
of the Royal Meteorological Society.

1J, P. Finley, ‘‘ Report of the Tornadoes of May 29 and 30 in the States of Kansas,
Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa.”’ Professional Papers, United States Signal Service, No. iv,
(Washington, D. C., 1881.)

2J. P. Finley, ‘Report on the Character of Six Hundred Tornadoes,” Professional
Papers, United States Signal Service, No. vii. (Washington D. C., 1884.)

142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

happen to be is 1 in 625,000, and “not worth worrying about.”
The late Prof. Cleveland Abbe concluded that even in the so-called .
“tornado States” the probability of tornado destruction is less than
that of lightning or fire.*

DISTRIBUTION OF TORNADOES IN PLACE AND TIME.

The real home of the tornado is over the great lowlands east and
west of the central and upper Mississippi and of the lower Mis-
souri valleys, and, to a less marked degree, over some of the South-
ern States. Tornadoes are rare west of the one hundredth meridian,
and very rare or unknown in the mountain areas. They have been
reported from all States east of the Plains, but decrease markedly
in frequency toward the north. They are rare in the Appalachian
Mountains, and also infrequent along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
The widespread impression that tornadoes are increasing in number
in the United States is without foundation of fact. Tornadoes are
reported with greater accuracy than formerly, and they are likely
to do more damage than they used to do because the country is more
densely populated.

Tornadoes may appear in any month and at almost any hour of
the day or night. Like thunderstorms, however, they distinctly pre-
fer the warmer months, and the hours closely following the warmest
part of the day. Thus spring and early summer (April to July) and
3 to 5 p. m. are their favorite times.

TORNADO WEATHER TYPES.

Tornadoes have much in common with thunderstorms. In fact,
they are, in reality, special local developments, of greater violence,
in connection with severe thunderstorms. The general conditions
which produce these two phenomena are, to a large extent, identical.
The essential difference comes in the formation of the vorticular
whirl in the tornado. Thus, like the largest and most severe Ameri-
can thunderstorms, tornadoes occur as attendants of the parent
cyclones of which they are the offspring. They are born, in the
large majority of cases, in the area of warm, damp southerly winds
flowing northward from the Gulf of Mexico in front of a general
cyclonic storm. This storm is usually more or less elliptical or
V-shaped, its major axis extending north to south or northeast to
southwest from the Great Lakes, across the central lowlands well into
the Southern States. The “wind-shift line” or “critical axis” is
usually well marked. North and west of the wind-shift line northerly
to westerly winds are blowing with relatively low temperatures, and

1M. W. Harrington, “About the Weather,” p. 164 (N. Y., 1899).
“Cleveland Abbe, ‘ Tornado Frequency per Unit Area,’ Monthly Weather Review, vol.
xxv, p. 250. (Washington, D: C., June, 1897.)

TORNADOES—WARD. 143

not infrequently with rain or snow. South and east of the critical
axis there is a great flow of southerly or southwesterly winds with
higher temperatures, usually sultry and oppressive weather, and
often with rain squalls. When conditions are favorable, tornadoes
are likely to occur in a district some 300, 400, 500, or more miles to
the southeast, south, or southwest of the cyclonic center, near, but
usually to the east of, the wind-shift line. Here the contrast be-
tween the warm, damp southerly and the cool, dry northerly and
westerly winds is sharp. Here is inevitably a zone of great dis-
turbance; of overrunning, underrunning, and mixing; of turbulence;
of instability; of local whirls. Here, aided by the local warming
due to sunshine, are favorable conditions for breeding thunder-
storms and, fortunately much less often, for developing tornadoes.
The parent cyclone may travel many thousands of miles, a good
part of the way round the world, yet in only one portion of its long
course, in-the Mississippi Valley region of the United States, and
usually only at one time of the year, in spring and summer, is just
the right combination of conditions attained for developing the
dreaded tornado, ;
PROTECTION OF LIFE.

The possible protection and preservation of human life in tor-
nadoes are very real and vital questions over large areas of the
United States. From a long and intimate study of tornadoes, Finley
deduced certain rules for the protection of life which have over and
over again proved their accuracy and value. If a tornado is ap-
proaching from west or southwest, and the observer is on or very
near its probable path, the best thing to do, if there is time, is to run
north. “ Dugouts” or tornado-cellars should be provided near the
house. The safety secured by means of “ dugouts” is that they re-
move persons who seek refuge in them from risk of injury from
flying débris; also from the danger of being picked up by the winds.

If there is no time to escape, the safest place is to stand, face for-
ward, against the west or south wall of the cellar, as near the south-
west corner as possible. The reason for these precautions is this, that
the débris of the house will, if the building is destroyed, be more
likely to be carried toward the northeast. Hence northeast or east
rooms and walls are least safe. If caught outdoors, and otherwise
unable to escape, the best thing to do, as a last resort, is to lie flat
on the ground in an open space, face downwards, the head to the
east, and the arms placed over the head for protection.

PROTECTION OF PROPERTY: TORNADO INSURANCE,

In regard to the protection of property certain things are fairly clear.
Tornadoes can not possibly be prevented, and no buildings, certainly

144 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

none of any practical use, can be built to withstand the violence of
the wind in the vortex of a well-developed tornado. Hence the only
resource left is to protect life and property to the best of our ability
and with a knowledge of the facts which have been brought to hght
by a sane, unprejudiced, scientific study of the phenomena. Owing
to the varying intensity of tornado violence and of the velocity of
the surface winds, the damage done to different sorts of buildings
varies greatly. If the intensity of the storm is not sufficiently great
to destroy everything in its path, the damage done by the less violent
winds will obviously depend largely upon the strength of construc-
tion and upon the building materials. It was Finley’s advice to
build “as you would without the knowledge of a tornado.” He
found, however, that, other things being equal, a frame building
seems to resist destruction better than one of brick or stone. The
modern steel-construction buildings have some of the “elastic”
quality which renders frame structures safer than the more stable
and solid ones of stone or brick of the older style. It makes little or
no difference in the end whether a building is in a valley or on a
hill.
In view of the property loss occasioned by tornadoes it is natural
that tornado insurance has become a widespread and popular method
of financial protection. So far, however, the business has not been
carried on upon a thoroughly scientific basis. Tornado insurance to
the amount of several hundred millions of dollars is carried, largely
by general fire insurance companies, and partly by local mutual
insurance companies. The definition of a tornado is usually crude
and unscientific, and there is much unnecessary confusion. It is true
that the more conservative companies do prohibit some “risks,”
such as windmills, old and frail buildings, large plate-glass windows,
and the like. It is interesting to note the marked rise and fall of
the amount of tornado insurance with the occurrence in any year of
severe or destructive tornadoes. Closely following the St. Louis
tornado of May, 1896, there was an increase of tornado insurance of
nearly $10,000,000, and after the Omaha (Nebraska) tornado of
Easter Sunday, 1913, several million dollars’ worth of tornado in-
surance was written in Omaha and the surrounding districts, which
were at once thoroughly canvassed by insurance agents. Many new
dugouts and cellar caves were built at the same time. As Prof. H. E.
Simpson? has pointed out, tornado insurance risks differ from
others in several ways, notably in the fact that there is no criminal
hazard present; for people can not remove, or explode, or destroy
their buildings for the sake of the insurance, on the plea that the
damage was done by a tornado. It is obviously wise to scatter

1H, LE. Simpson, “Tornado Insurance.’’ Monthly Weather Review, vol. xxxiii., pp.
534-539. (Washington, D. C., December, 1905.) <A short bibliography is appended.

TORNADOES—WARD. 145

tornado risks across, not along, the usual path followed by tornadoes.
The complete destruction often caused by a single tornado makes it
extremely unsafe for any local mutual insurance company to insure
over a small area only, where the loss occasioned by one tornado
may ruin the company. On the whole, general tornado insurance
in the “tornado belt,” and buildings erected without regard to the
possibility of tornado occurrence, seem to be the best policy. The
present status of tornado insurance in the United States is an ex-
cellent illustration of the mistakes which are made when thoroughly
well-established scientific facts, which are easily accessible to the
public, are disregarded.

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WIND POWER.’

By JAMES CARLILL.

There used to be windmills; why have they gone? Those who
watched their gradual disappearance probably looked upon it as a
sign that the age of steam had superseded the age of wind. But
the explanation is inadequate. There were a great many factors
involved in the decay of the old windmills. They were, in the first
place, costly to build, involving the erection of a lofty tower stand-
ing on a considerable area of land; then they were difficult to
manage, the process of reefing in bad weather being attended with
many accidents and not seldom with loss of life; again, they were
uneconomical in working, utilizing but a small fraction of the avail-
able wind energy; they were seldom erected in the most favorable
positions, and were most numerous in those parts of the country
in which our wind power is least exhibited. But the most potent
cause of the decay was a growing preference on the part of the
public for a white loaf made of blended flour; this it was which
finally gave an overwhelming advantage to the steam mills situate
near the ports of entry for foreign grain.

Still, the windmill never quite ceased to exist; it continued to
do pumping work in the Cornish mines and in the Lincolnshire
fens; and its great utility as a pumping agent led to its revival in
an altered form for this particular purpose. Small mills on steel
frames, of what is known as the American type, began to appear
in our nursery gardens, in private estates, in farmsteads, and even
in public undertakings, until, at the present day, there are more
windmills working in England than there were 60 years ago. No
doubt their use for public water works would have been more exten-
sive but for the regulation of the local government board which
practically forbade district councils to use them unless accompanied
by auxiliary steam power. The regulation seems a little difficult
to justify, except on the principle that it is better to have no water
at all rather than to have it for six days out of seven. Those
councils who have complied with the stipulation of the board have
usually found that the auxiliary plant has not been required.

Two instances will suffice to show the very substantial nature of
the work accomplished by these pumping engines. One windmill,

1 Reprinted by permission from The Edinburgh Review, October, 1918.

147

148 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

40 feet in diameter, erected by a private firm on an estate in York-
shire, raises during a steady breeze 3,000,000 gallons of water
through a height of 10 feet in 24 hours. Another mill of similar
dimensions installed by a district council to supplement a steam
pumping plant has saved the council 200 tons of coal per annum
and has cost nothing in upkeep. It may seem strange that a power
showing such substantial results should not have been applied to
other purposes. But it may be remembered that for many years
after Watt’s inventions the steam engine still continued to be used
for no other purpose than pumping. And in the case of the wind-
mill there are certain specific drawbacks which have militated
against its genera] adoption as a prime mover.

The first defect is that the power hitherto obtained has been but
a small fraction of the available wind energy. The old corn mill
probably did not extract more than 5 per cent of the energy
theoretically obtainable from wind pressure on its sail area. The
modern or American type does better, perhaps to the extent of 10
or 12 per cent of the available energy, but not more. The figures
quoted above (30,000,000 foot-gallons a day) sound large, but they
do not represent more than 7 horsepower, as against 40 horsepower
which might be obtained from a thoroughly efficient wind engine of
equivalent area.

In the second place, the speed of the sails at their circumference
is greater than the speed of the wind, and it increases without
limit, so that in violent storms the disruption point is reached. In
the old type that was avoided only by reefing; in the American
type it is avoided by adjusting the inclination of the vanes; but
in neither case is safety assured. The chance of being wrecked by
storms has led to a preference for small mills.

In the third place, the variability of the power, while it does not
matter for pumping, is a stumbling block in the way of direct ma-
chine driving. So long as the mill is pumping only it does not matter
whether it is pumping faster or slower; but if it were driving a
circular saw or a loom some provision would have to be made for
adjusting the speed to tolerable uniformity.

Three things are therefore desirable in a really efficient engine:
First, the devising of a motor which would utilize more of the wind
energy; secondly, the invention of means of regulating speed; and
thirdly, the devising of some means of storing power. All these re-
quirements have now been met.

In 1881 Lord Kelvin (then Sir W. Thomson) referred to the sub-
ject of wind-power utilization at the meeting of the British associa-
tion. He pointed out that since the invention of storage batteries
there was no longer any need to neglect such an important natural
source of energy since the surplus power of a period of high winds

WIND POWER—CARLILL. 149

could be accumulated and utilized in a period of calms. Acting upon
this hint, one of Lord Kelvin’s pupils, James Blyth (afterwards pro-
fessor at Glasgow Andersonian College) made a series of experiments
which led to the construction of a very efficient and economical wind
motor. Bernoulli and Maclaurin had shown that in theory the most
efficient form for a windmill would be a cup or box consisting of
half a sphere or half a cylinder revolving in the line of the wind.
Robertson adopted this type for his anemometer, the four cups of
which are familiar objects at our observing stations. These four cups
constitute a body revolving in a resisting medium, and can not ex-
ceed a certain limiting speed. In the usual form of anemometer
‘that speed is one-third that of the wind.

Upon this sound theoretical foundation Professor Blyth saw the
possibility of designing a wind motor which would develop more
power than the old sails, while it would be more economical in con-
struction and free from their defects in working. For the cups of
the anemometer he substituted boxes, semicircular in section, which
he mounted on arms extending at right angles from the shaft. Using
boxes 10 by 6 feet, he found that his motor developed eight horse-
power in a very moderate breeze, and, moreover, it justified his ex-
pectations in other respects, and could be left free to run by itself
in the strongest gales without suffering injury. After using his mill
for some years for the purpose of electric lighting, Professor Blyth
was sanguine enough to prophesy that before long electric light and
power would be supplied over a large part of Great Britain by the
use of wind engines on his model.

Possibly the inventor’s early death led to the oblivion which his in-
vention has suffered. More probably the neglect is due to our pre-
occupation with the ideas of coal and steam, which lead us to con-
template any alternative source of power with a smile of derision.
We have grown accustomed to regard the hewing and carrying and
burning of coal as the first essential of industry and even of life, and
have regarded the multiplication of railway sidings with their miles
of laden or empty trucks as signs of material prosperity. But the
war has opened our eyes on this subject as on others, and in some
measure we are prepared for the conclusion that the internal trans-
port of coal is a wasteful and disagreeable necessity which in a well-
ordered community would be reduced to a minimum. And when, in
addition, we are confronted with a rise in price to at least double
its pre-war quotation, the question of an alternative source of power
which does not need railway transport and storage, and does not
require the assistance of highly paid middlemen and brokers, be-
comes a question of truly practical politics. There ought, therefore,
to be a chance for the element which has so often befriended us.

136650°—20——11

150 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The first consideration is whether we have a sufficiency of wind-
power presented to us by Nature in these islands. It is the firm
conviction of the land dweller that nothing is more uncertain or in-
constant that the wind; and even the yachtsman would agree with
him that there are times of provoking calm and seasons of needless
activity. But neither the pedestrian nor the yachtsman is an ade-
quate authority. Calm as it may seem on land or on the surface of
the water, there is almost always a movement of the upper air. The
records of the too short-lived observatory on Ben Nevis disclosed
many occasions on which the observers had to struggle, roped to-
gether, against an 80-knot breeze at a time when scarcely a ripple
disturbed the surface of Loch Linnhe below. The records of Amer- ’
ican observatories confirm the conclusion that wind speed uniformly
increases with the elevation at which it is recorded.

Even near the ground a condition of absolute calm is rarer than
would be anticipated. The longest continuous records that we
have are those of Greenwich Observatory, and they show an average
of 15 days calm in a year. But the Greenwich anemometer is not
favorably placed, being unduly sheltered from the south and south-
west, and it is quite certain that if it were 50 feet higher its record
of calm would be diminished. It seems probable that at a height
of 100 feet from the ground the existence of absolute calm is an
event of extreme rarity, and that if we could place a wind motor at
a height of 1,000 feet above the surrounding land we could rely on
its working for nineteen-twentieths of the time.

The records of the meteorological office furnish us with actual
experience of the wind movement at different observing stations for
several years past. Some of these stations are, it is true, badly
placed, and their instruments are not so favorably situated as a
windmill would be; but they are for that reason a safe guide to the
minimum of expectation. The following facts emerge clearly from
the records. Our prevalent winds are southwesterly, or a few points
on each side; these occur on 188 days in each year. It is therefore
obvious that the area in which the best windpower is developed lies
on or near our western coasts. On the other hand, the easterly
breezes which are felt most strongly on the eastern coasts do not lose
quite so much of their force in passing over the midlands as do the
southwesterly winds, which are partially intercepted by the higher
ground of our western counties. There are, therefore, three zones
of decreasing wind strength, the western coasts being the highest,
next, the eastern coasts, and last, the midlands. Taking the average
of seven observatories near the western and southern coasts, it ap-
pears that a wind velocity of 4 miles an hour and upward is ex-
perienced during 7,450 hours out of the 8,760 hours in a year, and
the wind velocity most frequently recorded is from 15 to 17 miles

WIND POWER—CARLILL. 151

an hour. Again, taking the average of nine observatories on the
eastern coasts and inland, a wind velocity of 4 miles an hour and
upward is experienced for 7,106 hours in 12 months, and the most
usual velocity experienced at these stations lies between 11 and 13
miles an hour. In both areas there are certain stations at which
these figures are much exceeded, some places recording a working
breeze for more than 8,000 hours, and one or two stations giving
a most usual wind speed of 19 miles an hour. For the reason already
given the average both in duration and intensity may safely be
taken as an underestimate.

It is clear that a power which is presented to us in such quantity
is worth using for purposes other than pumping, and that wind-
power stations might with great economical advantage be established
in all those parts of our islands which are remote from the coal-
fields. The objection from an engineering poimt of view would
doubtless be that such power would have to be developed in small
units. If the only object in generating power were to use it on a
large scale such an objection would be conclusive. We are never
likely to construct a wind engine which would develop even a
thousand horse-power at one spot; and there are of course certain
specific objects for which a larger power than this is required, such,
for instance, as the extraction of nitrogen from the atmosphere, or
the preparation of aluminum. But if the power at the generating
station 1s required simply for the purpose of distribution in small
units over a large area, then the object might equally be attained by
local generation in small quantities. It becomes purely a question
of economy, in ‘which the determining factors are the original cost
of construction, the expense of maintenance, and the loss of power
through leakage in transmission.

It is these factors which distinguish the case of electric generation
in industrial districts. Here there is power required which must be
got from coal; it is required, moreover, in different quantities, for
different purposes, and in different parts of a certain well-defined
area. It would be wasteful in the extreme—or, rather, we should
say it is wasteful in the extreme—to have a number of generating
stations working on different systems, serving adjoining portions
of the area. The committee which has been investigating this sub-
ject has presented a report in which there is no trace of doubt, reser-
vation, or hesitation whatever. It shows that our existing system
of electrical generation involves an absolute waste of 50,000,000
tons of coal a year. There are 600 electrical undertakings in Great
Britain, and their average size is one-thirtieth of the size of a really
economical power-station unit. In only one part of England has
an ideal electrical station been established, and that is on the north-
east coast, with Newcastle as its headquarters. Electrical power is

152 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

available all over this area for less than a halfpenny a unit. Com-
pare this with Lancashire, a larger and more densely populated area—
in fact, the greatest industrial area in the world. In Lancashire
there are 23 borough generating stations, and the charges per unit
vary from three times to six times the charge in the Newcastle area.
There can be no doubt that if the Lancashire district were supplied
from one center the cost of electric power in the county would in-
stantly sink to even less than the price in Newcastle.

The attention of our engineers has very naturally been directed to
the generation of power from coal or falling water. Nor can any-
thing be more completely satisfactory than a water-power station in
a situation where nature has provided the necessary head. But in
our islands such opportunities exist only in small and isolated units,
and the fluctuating character of our waterfalls is sufficient to convince
us that the construction of a large installation is at the best a doubt-
ful experiment. The amount of our rainfall is easily exaggerated.
Figures of 130 inches taken from one locality in Cumberland, and
100 inches from one locality in Inverness, seem to show that the
quantity is sufficient to justify a large experiment. But as a fact the
areas over which such a fall occurs are exceedingly circumscribed.
There are only five small patches of ground in which an average fall
of more than 80 inches is recorded—one in the lake district, one in
the Snowden range, one in Ross, and one in Inverness; there may be
a sixth not yet identified. But even including those isolated patches
there are only nine stations in Great Britain in which an average
fall exceeding 60 inches has been recorded. It is therefore evident
that in order to secure a steady head of water for a large installation,
an extensive area has to be inclosed and converted into a water-tight
reservoir. The recent project of the aluminum company involved
the inclosure of 250 square miles of country, and the expenditure of
2,500,000 sterling. And, after all, it would have given employment
to but a handful of people; whereas the expenditure of the same
capital on 2,000 separate wind-power stations might conceivably
double the productive capacity of a considerable section of the
population.

There is, however, a possibility of providing water power on a
large scale on the coasts of these islands, provided only that we use
sea water and employ windmills to pump it. There are on the
western coasts certain inlets with narrow entrance and considerable
internal capacity. If the entrance were closed, up to the summit
of the cliffs, a windmill or two on the top of the sea wall would
suffice to maintain a head of 150 feet of water. The cost of construc-
tion would be trifling when compared with the cost of an inland
power station, while the cost of upkeep would be very small. There

WIND POWER—CARLILL. 153

is one such fjord which, so treated, would furnish a power station
comparable with any in Europe, but for the sake of our dwindling
scenes of peaceful beauty we may hope that it will escape the notice
of the large-power enthusiasts; for all England is not yet an in-
dustrial area, and we need something which, without involving the
extension of the industrial areas, will render our handiwork more
productive in the village and the countryside which yet remains
unspoilt.

Let us imagine one form which a wind-power station might
take. A steel shaft with four semicylindrical boxes at right angles,
the shaft revolving in a cup which is itself secured by four chains
extending to the ground, would constitute the motor, and it would be
entirely unconnected with the main building except by the belting
from the flywheel below to the shafting in the machinery annex.
The millhouse would consist of the central hall through which the
shaft rises and in which the flywheel revolves. The four annexes
would diverge from this central hall. One would contain dynamo
and gear, accumulator cells, and other electrical equipment; a second
would contain circular saw, planing machine, and other woodwork-
ing appliances; a third would be devoted to chaff cutters, grindstone,
root-pulpers, and other agricultural machinery ; and the fourth would
be reserved for looms, heavy sewing machines, or any other ma-
chinery likely to be in special demand in the district. When there
was a working wind, power could be communicated direct to the
shafting in one or other of the machine rooms; and when the
machines were not in actual use it could be communicated through
the dynamo to the accumulator cells, or else could be utilized to pump
water into an elevated reservoir. If both reservoir and batteries
were fully charged the belting could be withdrawn and the shaft left
to revolve by itself.

The ground space occupied by such an installation need not ex-
ceed 2 acres; the building would require little strength or solidity,
and might be constructed of the partition blocks with which neces-
sity has recently made us familiar; the whole installation, of dimen-
sions capable of giving 40 horsepower with a 15 mile breeze, could be
erected for a few hundred pounds. If such a powerhouse were
built in. a suitable locality, it would not take many months to out-
live the first period of ridicule and neglect, and within two years many
parish and district councils would desire to become possessed of their
own stations, from which they could supply electric hght and power
in their own neighborhood, and in which they could let the use of
specific machinery at so much per unit or per hour.

There is even a possibility of the employment of windpower on a
larger scale. In Denmark, where small wind installations have been

154 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

at work for some years and where they have lately increased rapidly
in number, a station intended to develop 200 horsepower is now in con-
templation for the use of a bacon factory. The project may be too
ambitious, but that it should be in contemplation is proof that the
plan has been a commercial success in a country in which the average
windpower is decidedly less than in Great Britain. And it may be
added that certain devices recently invented by Prof. La Cour of
Copenhagen have completely solved the mechanical difficulties in
the way of adjusting the variable power of the motor to the work-
ing of a dynamo without injury to the accumulators from any sud-
den drop in wind energy.

Meanwhile the winds have another call upon us—a call from the
sea, no less insistent than that on land. They are constantly re-
minding us that we are an island people with vast dominions across
the seas, and that our home is not only these islands but also these
possessions and the ocean which hes between. In the Crown colonies
there are territories which have been in our possession for 150 years—
territories teeming with produce awaiting our handling, and yet in
whose ports a British ship is rarely seen. Trade has not followed the
flag, and one reason is that the sailing vessel has been neglected
to the point of disappearance.

Here, again, as in the case of the windmill, it is advisable to con-
sider the specific causes of disuse. Let us carry our minds back to
the year 1830. A committee of the House of Commons was then
sitting to consider the possibility of sending the Dublin and Holy-
head mail by steamer. This, be it remembered, was nearly a genera-
tion after Fulton and Symington, and at a time when steamers had
been plying on the Mississippi for 20 years. It was the time, more-
over, when the experts, headed by Doctor Lardner, had demon-
strated to their own satisfaction that useful as a steamer might be
on a river it could not possibly undertake a long ocean voyage.
Up to that time the winds had not merely ground our corn, but hac
borne all our ocean traflic, maintained our colonial connections, con-
ducted our commerce, won our naval victories, and established our
position in the world. “Sea power,” to use Mahan’s phrase, then re-
solved itself into capacity for utilizing wind power. It is largely
the truth that our Empire was created, preserved, and sustained by
our skillful use of the wind. But that era was already drawing to a
close. With the improvement of marine engines, and especially with
the great economy in fuel following the introduction of compound
engines, Dr. Lardner’s prediction that the steamer could not pro-
vide cargo space was falsified, although it was a perfectly reasonable
objection at the time it was uttered.

There followed a period in which the sailing ship was so far de-
veloped and improved that it frequently distanced the steamer bound

WIND POWER—CARLILL. 155

on the same voyage. But the screw and the compound engine to-
gether decided the issue of the duel. Then came the question whether
the new power could not be used in combination with sails. Many
experiments, now forgotten, were tried with this object. The navy
was very unwilling to part with the power which had so long been
its prime mover. Even merchant shipowners were reluctant to part
with the clippers which had built up their commerce. But in the
course of experiments to combine sail and steam it became apparent
that the space demanded by engine and boilers and bunker coal, to-
gether with the quarters of an engineering staff in addition to the
large number of hands required by a full-rigged ship, were too great
a tax on the cubic capacity of the hull and left little space available
for cargo.

Now, if we consider the conditions of the problem we shall see
that they have much altered since the days when it was dismissed
as impracticable. The invention of the internal combustion engine
with oil as fuel has reduced the space taken up by the engines by
nine-tenths. It is now possible to fit a sailing ship with auxiliary
screw and oil engines without interfering materially with her carry-
ing capacity, and experimental voyages undertaken by the firm of
Preuthout le Bland, of Havre, have demonstrated the commercial
economy of the sailing ship so equipped. Moreover, for certain voy-
ages—routes in which the trade winds play an important part—it
has been demonstrated both by German and French shipowners,
before the war, that it is actually cheaper to tow a sailing vessel to
the trades than to employ steam for the whole voyage. A fortiori
with coal at double the price the advantage will be greater.

It has now become a matter of importance to us that our coal re-
serves should not be wasted in work which can be done equally well
by power which is supplied to us gratuitously. Of the 20,000,000
tons of coal which we annually export to our coaling stations abroad,
a considerable portion might be carried by the wind, just as well as
by steam. Part also of our annual imports might without dis-
advantage be carried by the same agency. But an even more im-
portant consideration is the opening up of trade routes to certain of
our crown colonies which are neglected by the steamship because
they do not afford sufficient opening for regular periodical voyages.
In these smaller trades to out-of-the-way places there is undoubted
scope for sailing ships fitted with auxiliary petrol engines. Here is a
considerable field of enterprise which is open to the sailing ship with-
out challenging by direct competition the lines of traffic already occu-
pied by steamship companies, And it is moreover a field in which
the ancient spirit of the merchant adventurer may be revived.

Ever since the complete triumph of steam the tendency of mer-
chant shipping has been toward consolidation. combination, amalga-

156 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

mation of rival companies, and the like forms of monopoly. Compe-
tition and commercial rivalry are becoming extinct, and the ocean,
like the land, is parcelled out into spheres of influence and zones of
exclusive dealing. The sailing vessel alone furnishes the chance for
the small capitalist. It can be built at a more moderate outlay, its
upkeep costs far less, it deteriorates less rapidly, and may still keep
the water long years after the steamer has been broken up for scrap
iron. <A sailing vessel gives a chance to cooperative enterprise, for
there is no reason why the profit sharing, which was the basis of
the old whaling voyages, should not be applied to every trading voy-
age. Just as the ship may be owned by 64 individuals, so the profits
of the voyage may be shared by the adventurers, the master, and the
hands, every one having his personal profit in the success of the voy-
age. Under such a system the merchant service would receive a
great impetus. It would attract a higher type of recruits and it
would call forth and educate their best qualities. After all, Great
Britain is and will be what her seamen make of her and what she
makes of her seamen. So long as her young men desire to go to sea,
and so long as she treats them well when they have entered on her
service, be it naval or mercantile, so long is Great Britain’s position
among nations secure, even against the enhanced rivalry with which
we are threatened after the war.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Leffmann. PLATE I.

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY.

A TRIBUTE. —SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY:
PIONEER IN PRACTICAL AVIATION.’

By Henry LEFFMANN, Member of the Franklin Institute.

[With 9 plates. ]

It may be safely assumed, I think, that mankind from its earliest
period of self-consciousness had aspirations of flying. In primitive
times birds were more abundant and varied than at present, at least
in civilized countries, and the ease and grace of their flight must have
profoundly impressed the rudest races. The legend of Icarus and his
waxen wings is one of the expressions of this feeling. Among the
world-wide and very ancient witchcraft legends we find the gift of
flying a usual feature. In the later phases of these superstitions,
especially as they appear in English-speaking nations, the highly un-
romantic method of broomstick flight is eminently characteristic.

Notwithstanding all aspirations, no practical method of flight by
human beings can be demonstrated until 1783, when the brothers
Montgolfier sent up a hot-air balloon. Hydrogen gas was soon after
substituted for air, and the balloon in substantially its present form
was produced. The standard form of balloon, however, does not fly
in the full sense of the word; it simply floats in the air, subject to the
currents thereof. Its modification, the dirigible, which has acquired
such prominence in recent years, especially in the form known as the
Zeppelin, has solved some of the problems of flight, but it is an ex-
pensive, complicated, and untrustworthy form, and has very limited
practical application.

All creatures that fly are heavier than air, and this leads to the
view that it will be by the method they use—namely, reaction upon
the air as a material substance—that true flight will be obtained.

This was Langley’s view, and it is to his honor that he insisted on
this principle, and pointed the way, both in theory and practice, to its
accomplishment. It is the purpose of this paper to summarize his
main work, and to present his claims to the gratitude and admiration
of the American people. The history of the later years of his life,

1Presented at a meeting of the Alumni Association of the Franklin Institute, held
Thursday, Oct. 31, 1918. Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the Franklin
Institute, vol. 187, No. 1, January, 1919.
157

158 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

when he was approaching the solution of the problem, in fact, had
attained it, is one of the tragedies of science, and a painful reminder
of the gap that still exists between the true scientist and the mass of
the community, even in highly civilized lands.

It would, however, be inaccurate to claim for Langley absolute
priority for the idea that a heavier-than-air machine can be made to
fly. To think of an invention is a simple mental effort, and there are
few of the great inventions or discoveries of the modern time that
can not be found foreshadowed in the records of the past. A Greek
poet describes in set terms the invention of submarine warfare, when
Seyllus and his daughter, expert swimmers, dived at the sides of
Xerxes’ ships, cut the mooring cables, and thus caused many ships
to drift to their destruction.

About the time of the discovery of America that remarkable and
versatile genius, Leonardo Da Vinci, wrote an essay on the flight of
birds, and referred to the possibility of human flight. I have not
been able to consult the original essay, but notes thereon, by Da Vinci,
have been translated,t and from this text I make a few selections:

I have divided the Treatise on Birds into four books: of which the first treats
of their flight by beating their wings; the second of flight without beating the
wings, and with the help of the wind; the third of flight in general, such as
that of birds, bats, fishes, animals, and insects; the last of the mechanism of this
movement. * * *

Remember that your bird should have no other model than that of the bat,
because its membranes serve as armor, or rather as a means of binding to-
gether the pieces of its armor, that is the framework of the wings. * * *
The bat is aided by the membrane which binds the whole together, and is not
penetrated by the air.

Dissect the bat, study it carefully, and on this model construct the machine.

The bird I have described ought to be able by the help of the wind to rise to a
great height, and this will prove to be its safety; since even if all the above-
mentioned revolutions were to befall it, it would still have time to regain its
equilibrium; provided that its various parts have a great power of resistance,
so that they can safely withstand the fury and violence of the descent, by the
aid of the defences which I have mentioned; and the joints should be made
of strong tanned hide, and sewn with cords of very strong raw silk. And let no
one encumber himself with iron bands, for these are soon broken at the joints,
or else they become worn out, and consequently it is well not to encumber one’s
self with them.

Tt will be seen from these quotations that Da Vinci’s plan was to
equip a man with wings to be operated by his muscles, probably
those of both legs and arms, for in another note he states that the
muscles of the legs are much more powerful than the ordinary work
done by them requires. He did not contemplate the use of machinery

.
“

It must be borne in mind that in that day, no powerful, portable

prime mover was known.

1Leonardo Da Vinci’s Note Books. Translated by Edward McCurdy, A. M. London,
Duckworth & Co., 1906.

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Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Leffmann. - PLATE 3.

THE QUARTER-SIZE MODEL FLYING OVER THE POTOMAC RIVER ON AUGUST 8,
1903.

This machine was built in 1900-1901, principally to test certain features of balancing, etc., for the large
machine, and flights were first made with this model as early as June, 1901.

LANGLEY—LEFFMANN. 159

Attempts have been made to credit Da Vinci with the anticipation
ef the modern aeroplane, but there is nothing in his essay which can
justify this claim. He made a study of the flight of birds, but his in-
ferences were not correct in some important respects, and while we
may give him credit for scientific method, it is apparent that he
“thought of” rather than “thought out” the problem of human
flight. Langley does not appear to have been acquainted with Da
Vinci’s work, at least it is not quoted in any of his writings that I
have consulted, and in the article in the ninth edition of the Ency-
clopedia Britannica, which is given among his references, there is no
mention of Da Vinci’s investigations, but these are briefly noted in
the eleventh edition (article on “ Flight and Flying”).

Claims have been made for many experimenters and investigators,
as having made flights with small machines, but definite data have
carely been furnished, and it is probable that Langley is justified in
his claim that until the experiments in May, 1896—to be later de-
scribed—no true flight of a heavier-than-air machine had been made.

Machines based on the principle that Da Vinci discussed have been
built and operated by several investigators. These have been mostly
“ oliders,” enabling the person to make a slow, inclined descent from
a high point, but not conferring the power of rising from the ground
or alighting at a given place at a considerable distance from the
starting point. A glider of this type was constructed by Otto Lilien-
thal, and operated many times in the year 1896. He was killed by
the upsetting of his machine in a gust. Percy Pilcher made many
such flights in 1899, but also lost his life in an accident. Octave
Chanute, however, made over a thousand flights without injury to
himself. These operators sometimes made their flight by running
the machine, or having it pulled, against the wind and thus rising
from the ground much the same way as a kite is flown. It is obvious,
however, that these machines do not solve the problem of flying in
its important practical applications. It is also obvious that modern
flying machines, whether the dirigible balloon or the aeroplane, do
not act wholly on the principles of flight by the bird or insect.

It is interesting to note that in animals the ratio of wing area to
weight diminishes as the weight increases. Thus, according to the
Encyclopedia Britannica, the wing area of the dragon fly is, in pro-
portion to its weight, nearly 25 times that of the pigeon.

Langley began his investigations in 1887 at the Allegheny Ob-
servatory. At that time he was not aware that any other investigator
had accomplished anything along the lines that he was working, but
he subsequently found out that A. Pénaud, an ingenious French
mechanician, had made in 1872, a machine about 20 inches long
resembling some of the simpler modern aeroplanes, using twisted
rubber as a motive power. He had described this in a journal called

160 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

L’Aéronaute. No copy of this journal is accessible to me, but the
details of Pénaud’s machine, with pictures, are given in the memoir
quoted below. Pénaud stated that he had obtained a flight of 60
meters during 13 seconds. Langley was never able to obtain such
results, but states that twisted rubber has a very high potential, be-
ing much more efficient than any steel spring he tried.

From the start Langley proceeded in a truly scientific manner,
studying the mathematics and physics of the problem preliminary
to construction of apparatus. His results are set forth in two pub-
lications, The Internal Work of the Wind and Experiments in Aero-
dynamics. He discovered that the law laid down by Newton, and
accepted by most mathematicians and physicists—namely, that at-
mospheric resistance to inclined surfaces is proportionate to the square
of the sine of the angle of inclination, is not founded in fact, the
resistance being really proportionate to the angle directly. The in-
teresting story of the invention of the practical aeroplane is to be
found in the ponderous quarto of over 300 pages, entitled The Lang-
ley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, published by the Smithsonian
Institution, and consisting of two papers, one mostly by Langley him-
self, the other by his faithful and efficient assistant, Charles M.
Manly. It is from this publication that I have drawn most of the
material for this essay.

Notwithstanding that the problem of flight had engaged human
attention for many centuries, and had attracted all classes of per-
sons, ranging from such a profound genius as Da Vinci to mere
cranks and dreamers, yet when Langley took up the matter there
were but few data available, and there was almost no one disposed
to give him encouragement, tangible or sentimental. Distinguished
scientists deprecated investigations into the subject. As late as
1900 a prominent astronomer and mathematician declared that it
would be impossible to construct a machine capable of sustaining
the weight of the largest known birds, not knowing that two of
Langley’s machines had already accomplished more than this. “The
truly blind are those who will not see.”

After several years’ assiduous labor he was able to announce that
it is possible to give such velocity to inclined surfaces that bodies
indefinitely heavier than air could be driven through it with great
velocity. As a concrete instance he states that a plane surface, 76.2
centimeters by 12.2 centimeters (about 1 square foot) weighing 500
grams, could be driven through air in absolutely horizontal flight
at the rate of 20 meters per second with 0.01 horsepower. This is
equivalent to a weight of 200 pounds driven through air by 1 horse-
power at 40 miles per hour.

Following up this conclusion, a number of machines were con-
structed and tried out, some of them, of course, quite small, others of

LANGLEY—LEFFMANN.,. 161

considerable size. For all the machines he made Langley coined
the word “ Aerodrome,” from two Greek words meaning “ air run-
ner.” This word is now often used as the name for the shed in
which the flying machine is stored.

In passing from very small machines in which twisted rubber or
steel springs can be used, which are mere toys, to large machines
which can make reasonably long flights, the question of motor be-
came of great importance. Questions of stability, both lateral and
longitudinal, also required answer. I will not enter into a considera-
tion of stability problems. They were most carefully investigated
by Langley, and involved mathematical as well as mechanical
methods. It is now well known that the stability of aeroplanes has
been satisfactorily attained.

When Langley began his experiments the only motor that seemed
to offer practical application was the steam engine. This had been
for a long while the only one applicable to a moving object, as is
indicated by its extensive use in both land and water transportation.
The steam engine is heavy, and also requires fuel and water, so
that the total weight is considerable. In the ordinary uses of it in
land transportation this is not a very serious matter, for the locomo-
tive draws best when it presses strongly on the rails, and even in
water transportation the weight of engine, fuel, and water are
probably of less importance than the space they occupy. Langley,
in 1891, canvassed the portable motors then known. These were, in
addition to steam, compressed air, liquid carbon dioxid, electric
batteries, gunpowder, and the internal-combustion engine. The last-
named, which is now the only motor used in flying machines, was
at that time but little developed, and was rejected, as were all the
others except the steam engine. The requirements were that the
apparatus should be hght, capable of developing steam rapidly and
at considerable pressure, and using a fuel of high heating efficiency.
Water-tube boilers were alone suitable, alcohol or gasoline as the
fuel. Oscillating engines were used at first. Many experiments
were made with boilers and with burners, and much difficulty was
experienced in getting and maintaining sufficient pressure. Langley’s
accounts of the failures and disappointments make painful reading,
but space does not permit a summary of these matters, especially as
the steam engine has ceased to be important in the field with which
we are now concerned.

After many months of weary working it was finally thought to
be possible to secure a flight in the open air, and preparations were
made for this. The story of the failures, disasters, and disappoint-
ments that preceded the actual flight—told with much vividness in
the “ Memoir ”—is a striking instance of the will power and self-

162. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

reliance of the inventor, and of his possessing to a high degree that
characteristic of genius, “the infinite capacity of taking trouble.”

After succeeding in the construction of a power-driven flying ma-
chine, two problems were presented in connection with open-air
trials; a suitable locality and a method of launching. It was decided
that it would be safest to launch the machine over water, as in case
of a fall it would be not seriously damaged and be readily recovered.
It was, of course, also advisable that the location should not be far
from Washington, at which place the construction was being carried
on, and should not be in a populated district. The spot chosen was
a small island in the Potomac River, about 30 miles below
Washington.

For launching the machine a sort of house boat was built by put-
ting a frame room on a scow, and on the roof of this a horizontal
track with releasing apparatus. The room served for storing the
machine and was fitted with apparatus for repair work.

In the later part of 1893 an aerodrome, designated as No. 4, was
taken to the trial ground, but though eight trips were made for trials,
none was successful, and the year closed without any demonstration
of the capacity of the machine. The year 1894 was also passed with-
out any successful flight, although a few short movements had been
secured, and the machine seemed to be less erratic and the power was
shown to be sufficient for the work. Little better results were ob-
tained during 1895, but much information as to the defects of con-
struction were obtained, so that with the opening of the following
year this problem was much nearer solution, in fact, was solved.

In the early part of 1896 two aerodromes, 5 and 6, were available,
and on May 6 of that year, Langley with A. Graham Bell and several
assistants were at the trial ground. The wind was so high during
the morning that no attempt at flight was made, but at 1 p. m. it had
become much less active,and at 1.10, aerodrome No. 6 was launched,
but owing to some entanglement with the launching apparatus, it
settled directly into the water. Aerodrome 5 was then tried. At
3.05 it was launched with a steam pressure of 150 pounds, and started
directly into the gentle breeze that was blowing.

The height of the launching track above the water was about 20
feet ; the machine first descended about 3 feet, but immediately began
to rise until the midrib made an angle of about 10° with the hori-
contal, and maintained this mostly through the entire flight. After
leaving the boat, it circled to the right and moved with great steadi-
ness, making a spiral path of two complete turns and part of a third.
During the first two turns the apparatus was constantly ascending,
and at’ the end of the second turn had reached a height esti-
mated at over 75 feet. The power then began to give out and the
machine slowly descended, striking the water in approximation to a

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LANGLEY—LEFFMANN. 163

“nose dive,” having been in the air 80 seconds and traveled about
3,300 feet, which would mean a rate of about 20 miles per hour. The
machine was recovered at once, and being found not injured, a sec-
ond trial was made, with somewhat similar result, making three
turns at a height of about 60 feet, during 91 seconds, over a path esti-
mated as carefully as possible at 2,300 feet. Several photographs
were taken during these flights.

These flights, of course, meant much to the patient inventor and
his friends. For the first time in the history of the world a heavier-
than-air machine had actually flown through the air and preserved
its equilibrium without the aid of a guiding intelligence. Moreover,
a second trial had been made, thus showing that the first was no
mere accident.

It seems somewhat curious that these striking results were not
immediately followed up. No explanation of the suspension of the
experiments is given in the “Memoir,” except to say that the inven-
tor left for Europe, intending to be away until fall. Instructions
were given to the mechanicians to remedy certain small defects in
the machines.

On November 27 a trial was made of aerodome 6, but owing to
the breaking of a pin, the trial was a failure. In the afternoon of
the next day, a successful flight was made, the machine going in a
curved path of about three-quarters of a mile in 105 seconds, a rate
of about 30 miles per hour. “ints coronat opus.”

Obviously the success of the aerodromes led to the thought of the
construction of a man-carrying machine. Langley hesitated on ac-
count of the many duties in connection with his official relations with
the Smithsonian Institution, yet the longing to take the final step was
too attractive to his scientific mind and soon took possession of him.
Ten years had been passed in laborious experiment, full of disheart-
ening difficulties, and he thoroughly realized that the construction of
a machine large enough to carry a man would be a mighty labor,
but his spirit was no flickering flame like that of light straw, but
determined and devoted to the object of science—the discovery of
truth.

In undertaking the construction of a large aerodrome, Langley
was much influenced by President McKinley, who had become im-
pressed with the value of the instrument in war. It will not be
necessary to set forth here the official procedures which led up
to the work, but merely to state that in the latter part of 1898, an
appropriation of $50,000 was made for the purpose through the
Board of Ordnance and Fortification.

Langley had always recognized that one of the most important
problems in a fiying machine is the motor, which should be light,
powerful and capable of maintaining its action for a long time on

164 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

a small volume of fuel and other supplies (such as water). The
internal-combustion engine, then coming into notice, was obviously
the most promising form, but as he was not familiar with this appa-
ratus, he deemed it proper to delay definite action until a satisfactory
engine could be secured. After much searching, a contract was
placed on December 28, 1898, for a 12 horsepower engine to weigh
not more than 100 pounds, and the construction of an aerodrome
for use with this engine was at once begun. Notwithstanding the
amount of research that had been given to the mathematics and
physics of flight to heavier-than-air machines, it was felt that the
new problem eed much more investigation and research, and
of course, a new element entered into it, namely that of preventing
the injury or death of the operator.

The great complexity of the problem induced Langley to seek the
services of a mechanical engineer, and on the recommendation of
Professor Thurston, Mr. Charles M. Manly was appointed, and
proved to be a most efficient and faithful worker. It was hoped that
the engine could be obtained and the frame-work of the new aero-
drome completed by the early part of 1899, but this was not to be.
The engine builder though he exerted himself to the utmost and,
indeed, lost much money in his effort, was not able to produce an
engine which would give anything like the desired horsepower within
the allowable weight. Another series of disheartening failures and
disasters followed. As a preliminary, an aerodrome one-quarter size
of the proposed man-carrying one was constructed and trial. flights
made with success, but this small machine could not, of course, carry
an operator. In addition to the problem of the construction of the
large machine, a new apparatus for launching was devised and a
new location, about 40 miles below Washington on the Potomac was
selected. It became necessary here to have a tug-boat and housing
for the workmen, who could not come and go from Washington every:
day.

Nowadays, when aeroplanes are among familiar objects and almost
everyone has seen them start and land, it seems that a serious mistake
was made in the elaborate launching apparatus, and in the principle
of launching over water, but it is easy to be wise after the event,
and we must always keep in mind that Langley was working in a
field in which there was no definite guidance, save his own studies
and experiments.

The engine builder having finally given up the problem, efforts
were made to get some European builder to manufacture the appa-
ratus, Europe being, it was thought at that time, ahead of America
in the application of the internal combustion motor. No one could
be found willing to undertake the contract. Under these circum-
stances, Mr, Manly undertook the work. He obtained the parts of

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Leffmann. PLATE 6.

Fic. |L-—FIVE-CYLINDER GASOLINE ENGINE OF 52 HORSEPOWER AT 9850
REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE.

This engine, which was used in the full-size machine, was built in the Smithsonian shops under
Prof. Langley’s direction and is now on exhibit in the National Museum.

Fic. 2.—THE LARGE LANGLEY FLYING MACHINE AS AT PRESENT ON
EXHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.
Near it (directly above the John Bullengine) is the quarter-sized model.

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LANGLEY—LEFFMANN. 165

the engine which the American builder had made and in the latter
part of 1900 began his work. He was able in September of that year,
to construct an engine weighing 108 pounds which gave on the
Prony brake, 18.5 horsepower at 750 revolutions per minute. The
cylinders were, however, without water jackets, being cooled with
wet cloths, which, of course, would permit only short runs.

The details of the development of the engine, of the difficulties
with sparking apparatus, carburetors, pistons, packing, lubrication,
and all the other vexations that go to make up what are collectively
known as “engine troubles” are described vividly and fully in the
“Memoir,” but space does not permit of even a brief summary here.
Not the least of the troubles in the history of the affair was the
weather, which was very often exceedingly unfavorable.

Finally, however, an engine was built which recorded 52.4 horse-
power at the average speed of 950 revolutions per minute, with an
approximate weight for the engine proper of 124.17 pounds, or, in-
cluding the improved water jackets, fly-wheels, spark coil, batteries,
etc., complete, a total of 187.47 pounds.

Mr. Manly volunteered to be the operator for the first trip of the
aerodrome. His chief consented to this, though with much reluc-
tance. Every possible precaution was taken to prevent serious acci-
dent, and on October 7, 1903, about 16 years after the work had be-
gun at the Allegheny observatory, the machine was launched with
Manly in the aviator’s chair. It was a little after noon that the
machine glided down the launching track. The operator soon felt
the sensation of being free in the air, when he noted that he was plung-
ing downward at a very sharp angle, and instinctively grasped the
wheel which controlled the Pénaud tail, intending to throw it up
so as to depress the rear, but the effort failed, the machine crashed
into the water and it was with some difficulty that the operator was
saved from drowning. The machine was recovered from the water
and certain slight defects discovered as the cause of the mishap.
Arrangements were made to remedy these and the party returned
to Washington, after giving out a brief statement to the press. For-
tunately, an excellent photograph had been secured just as the ma-
chine left the launching platform, and also another taken close to
the wings, from which certain important facts can be easily estab-

‘lished.

Examination showed that the machine was not seriously injured
and it was decided to make another attempt, but for convenience a
spot much nearer to Washington was chosen. On account of the
lateness of the season, favorable weather was unusual, and it was
December 8 before conditions were satisfactory. Some delay oc-
curred in getting the machine taken to the place of trial, and dark-

136650°—20 12

166 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ness was setting in and the wind had become strong and gusty.
Nevertheless, Manly took his station at the wheel, and the machine
was launched, but something happened that has never been clearly
determined. The machine shot upward and then fell into the water,
entangling the pilot, who again narrowly escaped drowning. Owing
to the darkness the official photographer got no pictures, as his
shutters were set to too high speed, but a representative of the
Washington Star secured a small photograph, which on enlargement
showed some points of importance, principally that the accident
was due to the rudder becoming entangled in the launching track,
owing to the breakage of some part of the mechanism by which it
was connected to the main frame.

The situation became very distressing. The inventor felt that he
could not ask for further funds from the Smithsonian Institution,
and the Board of Ordnance and Fortification having been severely
criticized on the floor of Congress for its original allotment for the
work, it was deemed inexpedient to ask for further aid, as it might
incur a curtailment of the funds placed at the disposal of the board.

In 1904 Manly made efforts to secure assistance from wealthy
Americans, but all whom he approached declined to aid unless ar-
rangements would be made for later commercialization. Langley
had years before tempting offers of this character, but had always
declined and he again declined to accept these conditions. In 1906
he died. Had he been spared a few years he would have seen all
his hopes realized as the sequel shows.

THE SEQUEL.! c

May 6 is celebrated in Washington, informally, as Langley Day,
being the anniversary of the first satisfactory flight of a heavier-
than-air machine. In March, 1914, Glenn H. Curtiss, aviator and
inventor, was invited to take part in the ceremonies on the next
occasion. He replied: “I would lke to put the Langley aerodome
itself in the air.” Secretary Walcott, of the Smithsonian Institution,
at once granted the request, and in April the machine was taken to
the Curtiss plant on Lake Keuka, Hammondsport, N. Y. It was over-
hauled but not materially changed, except to put hydroplane floats
on it. On May 28, 1914, two months before the great war broke
out, and 18 years after the successful flight of the first aerodrome,
the craft of 1903 was lifted into the water with Curtiss at the wheel,
and many eager camera men waiting with loaded weapons. Pointed
somewhat across the wind, the machine automatically headed into it,
rose in level poise, soared steadily for 150 feet and landed softly in
the water. After a few more flights, the engine and propellers were

1Vor most of the data of this paragraph I am indebted to an article by Dr. A. F, Zahm,
in Ann. Rep. Smithson. Inst. for 1914.

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LEFFMANN. 167

LANGLEY

replaced by an 80-horsepower Curtiss motor, and direct-connected
tractor propellers. In the absence of Mr. Curtiss, a pupil of his
school, Mr. Doherty, took the wheel. Beginning September 17, a
number of flights were made, which demonstrated that the general
principles of Langley’s construction were perfectly sound, and to him
must be given the credit of being the pioneer in practical aviation,
and of having, by his devotion and persistence, helped to bring into
a field of scientific inquiry what had been previously almost entirely
in the possession of visionaries or charlatans. In this connection
we must not overlook the services of Manly, to whom is due largely
the construction of a satisfactory gasoline engine, then first used in
an aeroplane, and who twice risked his life in trials of the large
machine.

The following paragraphs are copied verbatim from the article
indicated in the footnote on page 166:

Dr. Langley’s aerotechnic work may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. His aerodynamic experiments, some published and some as yet unpublished,
were complete enough to form a basis for practical pioneer aviation.

2. He built and launched, in 1896, the first steam model aeroplane capable
of prolonged free flight and possessing good inherent stability.

3. He built the first internal-combustion motor suitable for a practical man-
earrying aeroplane.

4. He developed and successfully launched the first gasoline model aeroplane
capable of sustained free flight.

5. He developed and built the first man-carrying aeroplane capable of sus-
tained free flight.

TWENTIETH CENTURY PHYSICS.’

By R. A. MILnrkan.

My position to-night is somewhat reminiscent of a story which my
father used to be fond of telling of a Scotch preacher who thought
that all of the italicized words in the Holy Writ were meant to be
emphasized, and so he read “ And Abraham said unto his servants,
saddle me an ass, and they saddled him.” When one of his parish-
loners expostulated with him and told him that he didn’t think that
was really what was meant, being a Scotchman, the preacher kept
his own opinion, but being endowed also with a certain amount of
worldly wisdom, he said he would change it, and so the next time he
read, “And Abraham said unto his servant, saddle me an ass, and
they saddled him.”

The point of the story is that it doesn’t make any difference where
the emphasis is placed, the situation remains entirely unchanged. I
am, however, really glad to be saddled tonight, because TI
should like to do a little bit, if I can, towards bridging the chasm
which we have foolishly—I had almost said idiotically—allowed to
grow up between the physicist and the apphed physicist, who com-
monly is called an engineer. The chemists have been very much
more sensible; they have not split up into two groups, called chem-
ists and applied chemists, and there is absolutely no more reason why
we should have done so, for obviously the physicist is merely the
vanguard in the army of engineers, the scout, the explorer, who is
given the task of trying to open up new paths for human progress, of
prospecting for new leads to nature’s gold, and it is just as important
that the engineer know where the scout is and what he is doing as it
is that the scout know where the army is which is behind and which
supports him.

If you have any respect for my subject or any respect for me you
will not expect me to outline in the space of one brief hour the work
of modern physics. It is utterly impossible to do, and I can say that
without affecting an inordinate egotism. I had the good fortune to

1A lecture delivered at the Fifth Midwinter Convention of the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers, New York, Feb. 15, 1917. Copyright 1917, by A. I. E. E. Reprinted
by permission from the Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
September, 1917.
169

170 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

listen a little while ago to a series of lectures by our honored ex-
President, Mr. Taft, on “ The Executive Power,” and he said in those
lectures that his friend, Mr. Roosevelt, had somewhere classified the
Presidents of the United States into two groups—the first, the group
that had interpreted the executive power broadly and exercised it
largely, and the second, the group that had interpreted it narrowly
and exercised it sparingly, and, said Mr. Taft, “ Mr. Roosevelt began
the first group with Lincoln and closed it with himself, and he began
the second group with Buchanan and closed it with myself.” Then,
with his inimitable chuckle, Mr. Taft said, “ That reminds me of a
story about a little boy who came home from school and said, ‘ Papa,
did you know I was the brightest student in the class?’ His father
replied, ‘ No, I didn’t know it. When did the teacher tell you so?’
The boy answered, ‘ The teacher didn’t tell me so at all, I just noticed
it myself.’ ”

If I appear at all, in what I say, to have just noticed it myself, I beg
of you at any rate to believe me that the appreciation is an apprecia-
tion of the subject, of the method which it uses, of the spirit which
underlies it, and of the results which have actually flowed from it,
and not an appreciation of any individual or group of individuals.

The spirit of modern science is something relatively new in the
world’s history, and I want, as an introduction to the main address,
to give an analysis of what it is. JI want to take you up in an
airplane which flies in time rather than in space, and to look down
with you upon the high peaks which distinguish the centuries, and
let you and me see together what is the distinguishing character-
istics of this century in which we live. I think there will be no
question at all, if you get far enough out of it so that you can see
the woods without having your vision clouded by the proximity of
the trees, that the thing which is characteristic of our modern civil-
ization is the spirit of scientific research—a spirit which first grew
up in the subject of physics and has spread from it to all the
other subjects of modern scientific inquiry.

That spirit has three elements. The first is a philosophy, the
second is a method, and the, third is a faith. Look first at the
philosophy. I say that is new for the reason that all primitive
peoples, and many that are not primitive, have held a philosophy
that is both animistic and fatalistic. Every phenomenon which is
at all unusual, or for any reason not immediately intelligible, used
to be attributed to the direct action of some invisible personal
being. Witness the peopling of the woods and streams with spirits
by the Greeks, the miracles and possession by demons of the Jews,
the witchcraft manias of our own Puritan forefathers, only two or
three hundred years ago.

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. saa

Now, that a supine fatalism results from such a philosophy is to
be expected, for according to it everything that happens is the will
of the gods, or the will of some more powerful beings than ourselves.
And so, in all the ancient world, and in much of the modern also,
three blind fates sit down in dark and deep inferno and weave out
the fates of men. Man himself is not a vital agent in the march
of things, he is only a speck, an atom which is hurled hither and
thither in the play of mysterious, titanic, uncontrollable forces.

Now, the philosophy of physics, a philosophy which was held at
first timidly, always tentatively, always as a mere working hypothe-
sis, but yet held with ever-increasing conviction from the time of
Galileo, when the experimental method may be said to have had its
beginnings, clear up to the present time, is the exact antithesis of
the above. Stated in its most sweeping form it holds that the uni-
verse is ultimately rationally intelligible, no matter how far from a
complete comprehension of it we may now be, or indeed may ever
come to be. It believes in the absolute uniformity of nature. It views
the world as a mechanism, every part and every movement of which
fits in some definite, invariable way, into the other parts and the
other movements; and it sets itself the inspiring task of studying
every phenomenon in the confident hope that the connections between
it and other phenomena can ultimately be found. It will have
naught of caprice in nature. It looks askance at mysticism in all its
forms whether put forth by Dionysius in Greece in 300 B. C. or by
the devotees of Bergson in Paris in 1915. That is the spirit, the
attitude, the working hypothesis of all modern science, and let me
say that this philosophy is in no sense materialistic, because good,
and mind, and soul, and moral values, which is only another word
for God, these things are all here just as truly as are any physical
objects, and with that kind of a creed they must simply be inside and
not outside of this matchless mechanism.

Second, as to the method of science, it is a method practically
unknown to the ancient world, for that world was essentially sub-
jective in all its thinking and built up its views of things largely
by introspection. The scientific method, on the other hand, is a
method which is completely objective. It is the method of the work-
ing hypothesis which is ready for the discard the very minute it
fails to work. It is the method which believes in a minute, careful,
wholly dispassionate analysis of a situation; and any physicist or
engineer who allows the least trace of prejudice or preconception to
enter into his study of a given problem violates the most sacred duty
of his profession. This present cataclysm which has set the world
back a thousand years in so many ways, has shown us the pitiful
spectacle of scientists who have forgotten completely the scientific

172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 1918.

method, and have been controlled simply by prejudice and by pre-
conception. This is no reflection on the scientific method; it merely
means that these men have not been able to carry over the methods
they use in their science into all the departments of their thinking.
The world has been controlled by prejudice and emotionalism so long
that reversions still occur, but the fact that these reversions occur
after all does not discredit the scientist, nor make him disbelieve in
his method. Why? Simply because that method has worked, it is
working to-day, and its promise of working to-morrow is larger
than it has ever been before in the world’s history.

Do you realize that within the lifetime of men now living, within a
hundred years, or 180 years at most, all the external conditions under
which man lives his life on this earth have been more completely
revolutionized than during all the ages of recorded history which
preceded? My great-grandfather lived essentially the same kind of
a life, so far as external conditions were concerned, as did his Assy-
rian prototype 6,000 years ago. He went as far as his own legs or the
legs of his horse could carry him. He dug his ditch, he mowed his
hay, he did all the operations of his industrial life, with the power
of his own two arms, or the power of his wife’s two arms, with an oc-
casional lift from his horse or his ox. He carried a dried potato in
his pocket to keep off rheumatism, and he worshipped his God in
almost the same superstitious way. It was only in the beginning of
the nineteenth century that the great discovery of the ages began to
be borne in upon the consciousness of mankind through the work of a
few patient, indefatigable men who had caught the spirit which
Galileo perhaps first notably embodied, and passed on to Newton, to
Franklin, to Faraday, to Maxwell, and to the other great architects
of the modern scientific world in which we live—the discovery that
man is not a pawn in a game played by higher powers; that his ex-
ternal, as well as his internal destiny is in his own hands.

You may prefer to have me call that not a discovery but a faith.
Very well. It is the faith of the scientist, and it is a faith which
he will tell you has been justified by works. ‘Take just this one
illustration, suggested by the opening remarks of your president.
In the mystical, fatalistic ages which preceded, electricity was simply
the agent of inscrutable Providence; it was Elijah’s fire from Heaven
sent down to consume the enemies of Jehovah; or it was Jove’s thun-
derbolt hurled by an angry God; and it was just as impious to study
so direct a manifestation of God’s power in the world as it would be
for a child to study the strap with which he is being punished, or
the mental attributes of the father who is behind the strap. It was
only 150 years ago that Franklin sent up his famous kite, and showed
that these thunderbolts were identical with the sparks which he
could draw on a winter’s night from his cat’s back. Then, 30 years

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. 173

after that Volta found that he could manufacture these same thun-
derbolts artificially by dipping dissimilar metals into an acid. And
30 years farther along Oersted found that those same thunderbolts
when tamed and running noiselessly along a wire would deflect a
magnet, and with that discovery the electric battery was born, and
the erstwhile blustering thunderbolts were set the inglorious task of
ringing house bells, primarily for the convenience of womankind.
Then 10 years later Faraday found that all he had to do to obtain
a current was to move a wire across the pole of a magnet, and in that
discovery the dynamo was born, and our modern electrical age, with
its electric transmission of power, its electric lighting, its electric
telephoning, electric toasting, electric foot warming, electric milk-
ing—all that is an immediate and inevitable consequence of that dis-
covery—a discovery which grew out of the faith of a few physicists
that the most mysterious, most capricious and the most terrible of
natural phenomena is capable of a rational explanation and _ ulti-
mately amenable to human control.

In that statement I have revealed the taproot of the civilization
of the nineteenth century. Add to it a bit to cover the harnessing
of steam, and the development of the principle of the conservation
of energy, and you have an epitome of the progress of the century
just passed. It all grew out of the application of an extraordinarily
small number of discoveries as to the way in which nature works.

And at the end of the nineteenth century there were many of us
physicists and engineers who thought that all the great discoveries
had been made. It was a common statement that this was so. I
heard it publicly made in 1894; and yet within a year of that time
I happened to be present in Berlin at the meeting of the physical
society at which Roentgen showed his first photographs, and since
that time we have had a whole new world, the very existence of which
was undreamed of before, opened up to our astonished eyes. We
have found a world of electrons which underlies the world of atoms
and molecules with which we had been familiar, and the discoveries
in that world have poured in so rapidly within the last twenty years
that there are no two decades in human history that compare at all
with them in the rapidity of the advance. And these discoveries
have been made too for the most part by groups of men interested
merely in finding out how nature works. They have been made al-
most exclusively by college professors; and for 10 years they re-
mained the exclusive property of these professors.

But what has happened in the last 10 years? The industrial
world has fallen over itself in the endeavor to get hold of these ad-
vances, and by their aid it has increased tenfold the power of the
telephone, it has obtained four or five times as much light as we got
a few years ago out of a given amount of electrical power it has de-

174 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

veloped new kinds of transformers the existence of which was never
dreamed of before—all these things are coming now, it is not in the
distant future, that we are going to find the applications; we have
found in the last five years a great quantity of them, and how many
more are going to come, no man can tell.

And yet we must not focus our attention too intently upon the
utility of a discovery. Did you ever hear the story of what happened
when Faraday was making before the Royal Society in 1831 that
experiment to which your chairman referred? He performed his
experiment, and then explained it. It was simple, it did not look
particularly interesting. One saw only a deflection of a needle. And
some woman in the audience said, “ But Prof. Faraday, of what use
is it?” His reply was, “ Madam, will you tell me of what use is a
new born babe?”—and what a reply it was! Infinite possibilities—
possibilities which may indeed not be realized, but at any rate some-
thing altogether new. Faraday did not care of what immediate use
that new thing was, for he was one of the great souls who had caught
the spirit of Galileo. He knew that human progress depends pri-
marily upon the growth of the human mind, the ability of man to
get hold of nature. The utilities might come, they always do come,
but they generally crop out as by-products, and the man who has
got his mind fixed merely on utilities is simply the man who kills
the hen to get the golden egg. I have just as much respect for utili-
ties as you or anybody has; I believe that nothing is worth while ex-
cept as it contributes in the end to human progress, but the difficulty
is that you can not tell, nor can I nor anybody else tell, what is going
to contribute to human progress. The thing that is important is
that the human mind should grow. That is the sine qua non of
progress. At the capitol in Harrisburgh there is a picture by Sir
Edwin Abbey, which is entitled, “ Wisdom, or the Spirit of Science.”
It consists of a female veiled figure with the forked hghtnings in
one hand, and in the other the owl and the serpent, the symbols of
mystery; and beneath is the inscription:

“T am what is, what hath been and what shall be.
My veil has been disclosed by none.
What I have brought forth is this: The sun is born.”

Tt is to lighten man’s understanding, to illuminate his path through
life, and not merely to make it easy, that science exists. Hence, if
you ask me what are the utilities of the particular category of dis-
coveries which I am going to run over here very rapidly, I may be
able to tell you of a good many of them, but I shall not try to
catalogue them all, because that is not where our immediate interest
lies. It is “ where there is no vision” that “the people perish.”

Finally, before launching upon the sea of recent, discovery, I
wish to make one more remark about the method of science—namely,

.

PHYSICGS—MILLIKAN. 175

this: The progress of science is almost never by the process of
revolution. You see a great deal in your newspaper headings about
revolutionary discoveries. They almost never happen. ‘Thus when
the atom was found not to be an ultimate but a divisible thing, there
was no revolution, there was not a single law that had to be given
up. We had simply opened up a new field, tapped a new lead, found
an unexplored region, a sub-atomic region, and all that was above
it remained just exactly as it had been, and no chemist had any
oceasion to be disturbed, for the chemists’ laws were just as precise
as they had been before. Sometimes we do indeed find that we
have generalized too far, and that some law which we had sup-
posed to be of universal application is limited in its scope, but this
does not alter the fact that the growth of science is in general by a
process of accretion, almost never by that of revolution. Once in
a while we have something revolutionary but not often.

Let me now run over a list of 10 discoveries which I will call
the 10 most important advances of the last 20 years. I will not keep
you long upon them; I will just touch upon them, because I could
spend the whole. evening on any one of them.

We may aptly characterize the physics of the last 20 years as the
physics of atomism, and the first discovery on my list of 10 ad-
vances is the recent verification of the adumbrations of the Greeks
regarding the atomic and the kinetic theories—the proof that, as
Democritus had imagined 500 B. C., this world does indeed consist,
in every part of it, of matter which is in violent motion.

Up to within six years there were not a few distinguished scientists
who withheld their allegiance even from these atomic and kinetic
theories of matter. The most illustrious of them was Prof. Wilhelm
Ostwald, but in the preface to a new edition of his Outlines of
Chemistry he now says frankly:

I am convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evi-
dence of the discrete or grained nature of matter for which the atomic
hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The isolation
and counting of gaseous ions on the one hand * * * and on the other the
agreement of the Brownian movements with the kinetic hypothesis * * *
justify the most cautious scientist in now speaking of the experimental proof of
the atomic theory of matter. The atomic hypothesis is thus raised to the posi-
tion of scientifically well-founded theory.

I think you all know what the Brownian movements are, but I
wish especially to call attention to the fact that this advance was
made not by a practical man, but by a man who.never did any ex-
perimental work in his life, Einstein, a mathematician, a man who
was capable of analyzing a theory and predicting results, and the
experimentalists have checked those results. The results consist in
predicting how far a given particle that you can see in an ultra

176 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

microscope will drift in a given time, and our own experiments
have checked this prediction to within one-half per cent. It is
that sort of evidence that has convinced Ostwald of the correctness
of the kinetic and the atomic theories.

The second advance is the proof of the divisibility of the atom,
a proof which grew out of the discovery of X-rays. Let me
tell you how. If you have here two plates with an electric field
between them, and nothing else but a monatomic gas like helium,
then it is found that when the field is thrown on, the helium is
perfectly stagnant, but when a beam of X-rays is shot between the
plates some of the molecules become electrically charged and begin
to jump, a part of them toward the upper plate and a part toward the
lower plate, where their presence can be detected by an electrical
measuring instrument. What does that show? It shows that the
thing which we call an atom has electrical charges as its constituents ;
and the history of the last 20 years in physics has consisted pretty
largely in determining what are the properties of these electrical
constituents.

The third is the discovery of radio-activity, which occurred just
a little after the discovery of X rays. And here again we found
matter doing things we had never dreamed it was doing—viz., shoot-
ing off from itself both negatively and positively charged particles,
the negatives with a speed which may approach close to the velocity
of hght, 186,000 miles per second, and positives with a speed of one-
tenth of that, or 18,000 miles. The fact that such speeds could be
imparted to projectiles of any kind was undreamed of 20 years ago.

The fourth discovery that I wish to mention is the discovery of
the atomicity of electricty, the proof that the thing we call electricity
is built up out of a definite number of specks of electricity, all exactly
alike, and that what we call an electrical current consists simply
in the journey along the conductor of these electrical specks, which
we may call with perfect justice definite material bodies. Now, I
can give you in just a word the proof of that statement. There are
half a dozen ways in which it could be appreached. TI will mention
the one with which I am most familiar, because it is the particular
proof which we worked out at our laboratory. We took these plates
with a field of 10,000 volts between them, with a little hole in the top
plate, and we blew an oil spray above the top plate so as to get an
electrically charged body just as small as we could, for we expected
that the frictional process involved in blowing the spray would
charge the drops, which it was found to do. We let one of these
drops come into the space between the plates and then moved it up
and down by an electrical field, throwing on the field as it came close
to the bottom plate, and throwing it off as it approached the upper
one, and so we kept that oi! drop going up and down between the

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. 177

plates, in the hope that it would capture some of the ions which we
knew existed in the air, put there by radium or other agencies. The
drop met our fullest expectations as a police oflicer, capturing ions
frequently and signaling the fact of each capture to the observer by
the change in its speed in the field. For the oil drop is an electrically
charged body, and in a given field it moves with a definite speed. If,
however, it captures an ion, its charge increases or decreases, and
hence its speed increases or decreases. If the charges on ions are all
alike, then we can only get one particular change in speed. If the
charge that is already upon it, put there by the frictional process, is
built up out of these same units, then the total speed which the field
will impart must be an exact multiple of the change in speed which
the capture of an ion produces. In other words, if electricity is
atomic in structure, then in a given field it should be impossible to
obtain any except a definite number of speeds which will make an
arithmetical series—that is, will come up by steps, one, two, three, etc.
That is exactly what we found to be the case. We have experi-
mented with thousands of drops and scores of different substances,
and they always work in exactly the predicted way. Both posi-
tively and negatively charged drops are found to act in quite the
same way, showing that both positive and negative electrical charges
are built up of specks of electricity. Further we can count the
number of those specks (which we will call electrons) on a given drop,
_with the same certainty with which you can count the number of
fingers that are before you now. And again since Rowland showed
that an electrical current is nothing but a charge in motion, you
have here the proof that the electrical current that goes through
these lamps, for example, is nothing except the motion of a certain
number of electrical specks through or over the filament of the lamp.
Add to that J. J. Thomson’s discovery made in 1881, that an elec-
trical charge possesses inertia, the only distinguishing property of
matter, and you have made it perfectly legitimate to say that an
electrical current in a wire is a definite, material, granular something
which is moving along that wire.

The fifth great discovery of modern physics is the bringing for-
ward of evidence for the electrical origin of mass. I have just said
that electricity is material. Can we turn it around, and say that
all matter is electrical in origin? The last is not exactly the same
as the first, and it needs evidence. When we have proved that an
electrical charge possesses inertia or mass we have not shown that
there is no inertia in matter which is not electrical in its origin.
Now we have a certain amount of evidence upon this point and I
wish to state what that evidence is.

We can measure the inertia of the negative electron and it is
found to be zs4¢5 of the inertia of a hydrogen atom, but the positive

178 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

electron is never found with an inertia less than the inertia of a
hydrogen atom. Let us consider the inertia of the negative. So
long as it is moving slowly compared with the speed of light its
inertia remains constant because the shape of its electromagnetic
field is not appreciably distorted by its motion. But as soon as
you imagine it to be moving with a speed which is close to the
speed of hght, that is with a speed which is nearly as great as the
speed with which its own electromagnetic field can travel forward,
then further change in speed will distort the field and hence change
the inertia. In other words, the inertia of a charge ought to be a
function of speed only when the speed approaches the speed of
hight. As a matter of fact, when it is from 0.1 up to 0.9 of the speed
of light, you can compute just how it ought to vary. Now, by some
happy chance the physicist has found negative electrons, namely
those shot off by radium, which are going with these speeds, and
hence it is possible to test our theory for these particles and see
whether the rate of change of their inertia with the speed checks
with the theoretical value. It is found that there is such a check.
This means that there isn’t any inertia in those particles which does
not obey the electromagnetic laws. Therefore, we have good reason
for assuming that the negative electron is nothing but a disem-
bodied electrical charge, and that its inertia is wholly of electrical
origin.

Now, with respect to the positive electron, we have not that evi-
dence as yet, but it is obviously in the interest of simplicity to
assume one kind of inertia rather than two. Further, we have a
little bit of evidence upon this point, and I wish to mention what it
is, because that will furnish an introduction to my sixth important
modern discovery. We have good reason to think, at any rate,
that there is only one positive electron in the hydrogen atom, but
that the mass, or inertia of that positive is almost the mass of the
hydrogen atom—at any rate we never find it any less. Now if this
inertia is all electrical, then we know from theory that the charge
must be more condensed in the case of the positive than in that of the
negative. Consequently, if we are going to make the observed inertia
of the positive hydrogen nucleus all electrical, that nucleus must be
an even more dense charge, that is 1t must be a smaller body than is
the negative electron. It was in this way that we first got the pic-
ture of an atom which has an extraordinarily minute single positive
nucleus, with negative electrons around the outside. But although
we first got this picture by that kind of a theory, we do not need to
depend upon that theory now, because we know that the conclusion is
correct. We know that the atom does consist of a body with a posi-
tive nucleus which is extraordinarily minute, and we can tell just

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. 179

how large it is, provided we define the nucleus as the part of the
atom that is impenetrable to the alpha rays of radium.

This brings me to the sixth of our discoveries—namely, the dis-
covery of the nucleus atom. Let me give you just a brief statement
of how we know that the atom is somewhat like a miniature solar
system, with an extraordinarily minute nucleus, the size of the nu-
cleus never being more than one one-hundred thousandth part of the
diameter of the atom, with a certain number of subsidiary bodies—
negative electrons—which we should liken to the planets, somewhere
around the outside. How do we know that that is the case? We have
this direct ‘evidence. Nature takes a helium atom which is going
with a speed of 18,000 miles per second, and nature shoots that atom
right through a glass wall without leaving any hole behind, and
without in any way interfering with the structure of the molecules
of the glass. I can show you photographs that make the thing so
clear that the wayfaring man can see it; you don’t need to be a
physicist. I will do so at the end of the hour, if there is time. This
obviously means that the positive nucleus itself must be extraordi-
narily minute. Indeed the fact that the negative electron actually
shoots through those hundreds of thousands of atoms without ever
going near enough to any constituent of those atoms to knock any
one of them out, and the fact that the positive nucleus of helium, viz,
the alpha particle, shoots through even more molecules without being
deflected at all from its course, causes one to wonder whether there is
anything at all that is impenetrable in the atom. Why then do we say
that there is a nucleus there at all? Because direct experiment says
there is. There is a certain portion of the atom which the alpha par-
ticle itself can not penetrate. If the impact is head on, the alpha par-
ticle goes right up to the atom and then it backs straight back again,
or if it comes up to the atom at an angle like this it goes off that way.
(Illustrating.) It is only rarely that that happens, but Rutherford
and Geiger and Marsden counted the percentage of alpha particles
which go straight on, and the percentage which go off here, and in
that manner, by perfectly simple algebraic analysis that any one of
you can understand, without any assumption at all except the law of
inverse squares, which can hardly be called an assumption, since we
can prove that it holds, at the distance involved, for the attrac-
tion between the positive nucleus and the negative electron, we find
how big that nucleus is. | By the size of the nucleus—I mean the size
of that portion of the atom which is impenetrable to the alpha parti-
cles. It comes out something lke 10-' centimeters. The diameter
of the atom is 10-* centimeters. Furthermore, by counting how the
deflections of the alpha particles are distributed around this sphere,
which we can do directly with the aid of zine sulphide spread over

180 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the inside of the sphere, we can obtain the number of alpha particles
deflected through any given angle, and then with a little analysis
of unquestionable correctness, we can find how many unit charges,
positive electrons, there are in this exceedingly small nucleus, and
this number comes out approximately one-half of the atomic weight.

Now, I come to another extraordinary discovery which did not
merely tell us approximately how many electrons there are in the
nucleus, but it told us exactly how many there are, and the result
checked too with the number obtained by the foregoing approximate
method. This brings me to the recent discoveries in the field of
X rays, and I will call the seventh of the modern advances the dis-
covery of the nature of X rays, which was virtually made by Barkla
in 1904; for Barkla and others had proved that there are two types
of X rays, first X rays which consist of simple ether pulses pushed
off from an electron when it changes its speed; and second so-called
characteristic X rays which are formed thus: When the electrons
bump into a target they set something in the target into vibration,
and this something sends off perfectly definite characteristic X rays,
which are like monochromatic light. So, we have two types of
X rays, pulse X rays, like white ight, and monochromatic X rays
hike monochromatic ght, such as comes from a mercury-vapor
lamp. That is the seventh of our great modern discoveries and it
must be credited chiefly to Barkla.

The eighth I will call the discovery of crystal structure by the
study of X rays, which is due to Laue in Munich, and Bragg, in
England. The method is simply this. You know that we analyze
light by a grating which consists of a series of equally spaced lines
on a reflecting or transmitting surface. With such a device we can
split hight up into a spectrum, but we can not thus split it up unless
the width of the grating space is comparable with the wave length of
the light. In the case of X rays, we had no knowledge of gratings
whose grating spaces were anything like as small as the wave length
of X rays, in fact such gratings were unknown until Laue had the
bright idea of using the regular arrangement of the atoms in a
crystal for a grating to see whether that would not do the work, and
it did the work marvelously well. It was found that we could com-
pute the grating space of certain crystals from the density and the
atomic weight and then from the observed spectrum find the wave
length of the X rays used. And now knowing this wave length we can
work backward and find the grating-space for other crystals. We
are now using this method for finding the positions and the arrange-
ments of the atoms in crystalline bodies. Professor Bragg in his
recent book on X rays and crystal structure has described this work
very beautifully. Thus a whole new field of experimentation has
been opened up and is being pursued in a great many laboratories,

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. 181

and with particular success by A. W. Hull at the laboratory of the
General Electric Co. There are almost unlimited possibilities for
the chemist in the discovery by this method of the exact positions of
the atoms in any kind of a crystal.

But the results of this discovery, as of most of the others which I
have mentioned, are rather insignificant when compared with those of
the ninth which I am going to mention, namely the discovery of the
relations between the elements, and the extension of our knowledge
of the radiations emitted by different substances. This discovery
was made by a young Englishman only 26 years old, Moseley, who
has already, unfortunately, fallen a victim to this juggernaut which
is at the present time crushing out some of the finest scientific brains
in the world. Moseley was killed at the age of 27, a year after he
made his epoch-making discovery, and all the lives and all the inter-
ests of the eternally infamous men who made this war are not to be
compared in value to the world with a hair of Moseley’s head. Yet
he had to be sacrificed to save a threatened civilization. A double
honor to Moseley.

His discovery was this: He was analyzing the characteristic
X rays which are given off when any kind of a substance is bom-
barded with cathode rays. The experiment was in my judgment as
brilhantly conceived, as carefully and skillfully carried out, and
as illuminating in its results as any which has been done in the last
50 years. What he found was this, that the atoms of all the different
substances emit radiations or groups of radiations which are extraor-
dinarily similar, but that these radiations differ in their wave lengths
as we go from substance to substance.

The whole discovery can be stated in this fashion: If you take the
highest frequency emitted by a given atom, and if you lay down on a
table a length which is equal to the square root of this frequency,
and if on top of that you lay down the square root of the frequency of
the atom which has the next lower frequency, and so if you con-
tinue to lay down, with one group of ends together, the measured
square root frequencies of all the elements that you can study, then
what have you got? You find that you have a flight of stairs, with
perfectly definite equal treads; that is, the frequencies change by
definite steps as you go from element to element. And there are only
four vacant treads between the lightest element which Moseley could
study, namely aluminum, and the heaviest one, namely, lead, thus
indicating that there are only four elements in this range which we
have not already found.

An extremely interesting question is, what is the greatest common
divisor of this series of steps, that is, what is the top step? There
are two ways to get at it. One is by filling all the spaces up to

136650°—20——13

182 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

aluminum with known elements in the order of their weights—we
can not investigate the lighter ones by the X-ray method because their
frequencies are too low; at least we have not yet found how to investa-
gate them. Now, there are just 12 lighter elements than aluminum,
so we may put them all in, starting with hydrogen. That would
make hydrogen correspond to the top step. The second way is to
find arithmetically the greatest common divisor of the square root
frequencies. This gives us a frequency which is within a few per
cent of the highest frequency which hydrogen can produce, according
to Lyman’s measurements of optical radiations in the ultraviolet
region. This indicates again that hydrogen is the element corre-
sponding to the first step. All of this seems to mean three things,
it means first that the X rays of hydrogen are just its ordinary visible
radiations; second it means that Moseley opened up a whole new
field of radiation, beginning with the radiations of hydrogen, and ex-
tending up to a frequency (92)? or 8464 times as high as that given by
hydrogen. I have squared 92 because 92 is the number of the step
corresponding to uranium, the heaviest known element, and the one
having the highest frequency in its characteristic X rays.

Moseley’s discovery means in the third place, almost certainly, that
the elements are built up one from another by successively adding
the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. The probable reason for the change
in frequency as the nucleus takes on a stronger and stronger charge
is that the electron sending off say the highest characteristic fre-
quency is in a stronger electrical field in the helium atom, for ex-
ample, than in the hydrogen atom, and so, as the charge on the nu-
cleus goes up by successive steps in going from element to element,
the characteristic frequencies go up by corresponding steps.

We may then picture with considerable confidence this whole
physical world as built up out of one positive and one negative
electron. The positive electron is the nucleus of the hydrogen
atom. It is very minute in comparison with the negative, but much
more massive. When two free positive electrons are tied together
we have the nucleus of the helium atom. We don’t know why these
positives cling together. We can assume, as an hypothesis, that there
are four positives in helium which are held together by two negatives,
thus leaving but two free positives as experiment indicates is the case.
The assumption here is that in the nucleus one negative is capable
of holding two positives. This assumption would make the nucleus
of any atom contain a number of negatives equal to the atomic num-
ber and a number of positives equal to twice the atomic number. So
much for a very brief and incomplete sketch of Moseley’s contribu-
tion to modern physics.

My last of the great discoveries of modern physics is one that I
will just touch upon. It is the discovery of quantum relations in

PHYSICS—MILLIKAN. 183

photo-electricity, in X rays, and in optical spectra. But here I am
coming to a field which we do not know very much about, which
we do not yet understand, and my main motive in introducing it
is to convince you that the physicist, in spite of all he knows, or
thinks he knows, is a fairly modest fellow, because there are some
things he knows he doesn’t know, and one at present is the nature
of radiation. However, we know some things about it that are new.
For example, it is an extraordinarily interesting fact that when
light of the X-ray type, or, indeed, light of any frequency, falls
upon, say, a lithium or sodium surface, or upon almost any surface,
it has the property in some way of taking hold of a negative electron
in one of the atoms of that surface and of hurling that electron out
with a perfectly definite speed, a speed which we can measure and
which we find to be exactly proportional to the frequency of the ght.
That is an extraordinary phenomenon, and it is one that we explain
on a kind of quantum theory, which I will not attempt to enter into
here because of the fact that we have not yet worked it out fully, so
that I can not give you anything very definite about it; but at any
rate the quantum constant comes out of the photo-electric effect, as
shown in my own work, out of X-ray work as shown by Duane and by
D. L. Webster at Harvard, and out of spectroscope work, as shown
by Bohr in the beautiful theory of the atom which he has developed
within the last three or four years.

I think I have brought you in this brief survey to the very out-
most boundaries of our present knowledge. Bring me back 10 years
from now, and we will know more about these quantum theories, but
for the present I will stop, and close this hasty survey of the prob-
lems and successes of modern physics with a few reflections which
are based upon historical studies.

At the University of Chicago I have a friend by the name of
Dr. Breasted, who is an Egyptologist. Now Dr. Breasted tells me
that he and his fellow Egyptologists have proof that less than 100
years elapsed from the time when, about 5,000 years ago, the Egyp-
tians knew so little about building that the best they could do was to
pile crude rows of uncut stone around their dead, to the time when
some of the great pyramids were built, structures which represent in
some ways the height of the builder’s art, structures on which the
surfacing is so perfect that huge granite blocks 18 feet on a side are
joined together without cement, and with not as much as one one-
hundredth of an inch of space anywhere between them. That kind
of engineering we do not do now, luckily we do not have to do it, but
it is doubtful if we could do it if we would. I am mentioning this to
bring out the fact that Egypt, at that time, got the key to a certain
kind of development, and pushed that development to a marvelous

184 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

degree of perfection. Indeed there was in that century, so Professor
Breasted says, an industrial progress which has never been equaled
at any time in the world’s history until within the last 100 years,
when the modern industrial revolution set in.

Go now to Greek history, and we find the same sort of a situation.
About 500 B. C. the Greeks got the key to a certain type of progress,
and they developed a civilization which on the intellectual side, and
on the artistic and esthetic side, has never been equaled. The
Greeks, like the Egyptians, got the key to a certain kind of civiliza-
tion and they worked it out to marvelous perfection. But in neither
case did these men or these races go on; they did not open up new
fields; they did not tap new mines. Their civilization came to an
apex, and then decayed; and the question has often arisen in your
minds, as it has in mine, Is this age in which we are living going to
follow in the same way? Have we risen to a maximum? Have we
had a period of marvelous development which is going to be fol-
lowed by one of decay and stagnation, or are we going to ascend to
higher and higher levels? No man can answer that question; but
this I know and this you know, that it was wholly unnecessary that
Greek civilization, or that Egyptian civilization, should have stopped
when it did. If the Egyptians and the Greeks had developed the
modern scientific spirit, the spirit of search for new phenomena and
new methods, they could have found them. There were plenty of
new mines for them to tap, plenty of unexplored fields to search out.
But they did not do it. As for us I feel just as sure as Shakespeare
did that “there are still more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in our philosophy,” and if we stop, it will be because we
have forgotten the lesson which Galileo first tried to teach, and
which we have been learning in the last 100 years, and that is the
lesson of research. It is the lesson, the philosophy, the method, and
the faith of modern physics. That is our hope, and if we keep that,
if we do not call in our scouts because the rewards are larger in
the applications, then I have no doubt that our civilization will
go on; but if we do call in our scouts here in this country, then
our civilization will give place to that of some other country which
does not do so, but which learns the value for the human race of
the spirit of modern scientific research.

THE EXPERIMENTS OF DR. P. W. BRIDGMAN ON
THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER WHEN UNDER
HIGH PRESSURE.

Introductory note by C. G. Axpsor.

[With 1 plate.]

We live in a world in which the ordinary temperature hes between
the freezing and the boiling points of water, and the ordinary pres-
sure is that of the atmosphere, or 15 pounds to the square inch.
We accustom ourselves to the properties of matter under these cir-
cumstances and forget that under others the same substances might
behave differently. For instance, we think of water as existing
under three forms, steam, liquid, and ice, according as the tempera-
ture is a little above normal or a little below what we are accustomed
to. We think of mercury as always a liquid which, on account of
its very slight volatility, its heavy weight, and its being a fluid
metal, though conducting electricity like other metals, is especially
valuable in the laboratory, to contain gases, to enclose in _ther-
mometers and in barometers, and to use for electrical purposes.
But if the temperatures prevailing in the laboratory were those of
liquid air the mercury would be found to be solid like other metals
and perhaps could even be used to make nails of to fasten the
laboratory floors. The extraordinary electrical properties of metals
at very low temperatures, as found by Dr. Kamerlingh Onnes in his
experiments with the gas helium, have been mentioned in this report
in an article entitled “The Discovery of Helium and What Came
of It.”

The properties of substances of many kinds at enormous pressures
have been investigated of late years by Doctor Bridgman, and the
following extracts from his published works will give the reader
some impression of the difficulties of such research and the extraor-
dinary results achieved.

The value of such researches is increased by the thought that in
the formation of the earth materials which compose its crust, includ-
ing minerals of many kinds, have been subjected to enormous pres-
sures, owing to their burial miles below the surface. Without such
laboratory experiments as those which Doctor Bridgman has made

185

186 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

it would be impossible to draw conclusions as to the effects which
such tremendous compression would have, influencing the character
of the geologic strata with which we are familiar. This point of
view is fully recognized by geophysicists, and similar experiments
at very high pressures are being carried on at the geophysical
laboratory of the Carnegie Institution at Washington, where the
effects of high pressures and high temperatures on terrestrial ma-
terials are principal objects of study.

HIGH PRESSURES AND FIVE KINDS OF ICE.*

The experiments which I am about to describe are experiments
in the field of very high pressures, which is a practically new field.
Under conditions of high pressure many of the ordinary properties
of matter are changed; and the bursting strength of vessels in which
such pressures are produced is found to bear no relation to their
strength under ordinary conditions. In conducting the following
investigations on the effect of very high pressures on water it was
found necessary to make many preliminary experiments on the .
strength of the containing vessels before accurate measurements of
pressure could be made. In the course of this preliminary work
many interesting facts concerning the behavior of materials under
high pressure were disclosed. In this paper will be given, firstly,
some of the results of the preliminary experiments on the strength
of the containers, and then a description of the experiments made
to ascertain the effect of high pressures on water. The paper will
be, in large part, a record of my own experimental work.

By way of introduction it is perhaps desirable to give some idea
of the magnitude of the pressures involved. The highest pressures
which are ordinarily familiar to us are probably those of modern
high-power artillery; the average firing pressure exerted in many of
our large guns is about 2,000 atmospheres, or 30,000 pounds per
square inch. The highest pressures reached in the experiments
which I am about to describe are 10 times this amount; that is,
20,000 atmospheres, or 300,000 pounds per square inch. The pressure
exerted at the bottom of the ocean at, say, a depth of 6 miles is about:
1,000 atmospheres; a pressure of 20,000 atmospheres would, therefore,
be exerted at the bottom of an ocean 120 miles deep. If the average
density of the rocks of the earth’s crust is taken as 2.5, 20,000
atmospheres is the pressure which prevails at a depth of 50 miles
below the surface of the earth.

Tt should be borne in mind that in all the experiments made the
pressures were produced in a liquid, which must be held in a con-
tainer. It is a comparatively simple matter to produce pressures

1Ry P. W. Bridgman, Ph. D., Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard University.
Abstracted from Journal of the Franklin Institute, March, 1914.

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 187

as high as 800,000 pounds per square inch in a solid piece of steel,
but it is another matter to maintain such a pressure in a liquid and
prevent all leaking of the latter from the container.

The most essential part of ‘the preliminary work was to design
a packing that would keep the vessel in which the pressures were to
be produced absolutely tight, and prevent the liquid from leaking
from it. The feature of the form of packing finally designed is that
it is made tighter and tighter by the pressure in the vessel itself;
the greater the pressure in the vessel, the less can the liquid leak.

The second part of the preliminary work consisted in finding
what limits of pressure steel apparatus will support, steel being
selected as the best material of which to make the pressure im-
plements. In all the experiments the pressures were produced by
pushing a piston, by means of an hydraulic press, into a cylinder
containing the liquid. In the piston the strain is one of compres-
sion, while in the cylinder it is one of bursting, or tension.

It was found by experiment that the best material for the piston
was glass-hard steel. The compression that a piece of glass-hard
steel will support when it is held rigidly so that it will not bend is
surprisingly large. Several grades of steel were found that would
support a compression of 600,000 pounds per square inch, and one
gerade supported as high as 750,000 pounds per square inch.

The strength of the steel cylinders was also a factor which had
to be settled by experiment, since it was found that no theory of
the strength of a cylinder is of any value for very high pressure.
All ordinary theories predict that no cylinder can be stressed to
more than the tensile strength of the steel, no matter how thick are
its walls. A few rough experiments showed the actual pressure
‘that a cylinder can support to be much in excess of that predicted
by the ordinary theory; this is on account of the fact that when
the pressure reaches a certain value the inner layers do not break
but stretch, and thus allow the outer layers to assume some of their
share of the load. It was found that the most efficient way to make
a cylinder support a high pressure was first to stretch it on the
inside by applying a much higher pressure than it was intended to
maintain in practice, and then to machine it to its final diameter.
A cylinder treated in this way is in a state of internal strain, exactly
as is a gun which has hoops shrunk on it from the outside, the
tension in the hoops inducing initial compression in the interior of
the gun. When pressure is produced in such a gun, it removes the
compression from the inner layers of the material and the tension
of the outer layers is increased. But it has been shown that the
tension in the inner layers increases more rapidly than that in the
outer, and it can be seen, therefore, that, in time, the increasing

188 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tension in the inner layers neutralizes the compression which existed
there initially and eventually equals the increasing tension of the
outer layers, with the result that finally the stress throughout the
mass of the cylinder is one of uniform tension. In an ideal con-
dition all parts of the cylinder would be ready to break at the same
time, and then the maximum possible strength would result; in any
actual case it is, of course, impossible to reach this ideal, but, with
the cylinders subjected to a preliminary stretching, it can be ap-
proached much more nearly than even in a built-up gun.

The best steel to use for the cylinder is found to be a steel which
will stretch considerably before breaking, but which has, at the
same time, a high tensile strength. The best of all was a steel made
in this country by the electric furnace method; this steel is a chrome
vanadium steel, and has, when hardened in oil, a tensile strength
that may reach as high as 300,000 pounds per square inch. The
highest pressure that I have ever found it possible to reach in a
cylinder has been 40,000 atmospheres, or twice the highest pressures
at which I have made accurate measurements.

In the preliminary work on steel cylinders many cylinders were
broken. This gave opportunity for interesting observations on the
manner of rupture at high pressures, and two facts not to be ex-
pected according to ordinary theories were noted. The first was
the enormous amount of stretch that the steel at the inner layer of
a cylinder will support without rupture; this is well shown in plate 1,
figures 1, 2, and 3. In the first figure the cylinder was originally
one-half inch in diameter, but it stretched to one and one-fifth
inches before breaking. ‘The second observation was that in all
the cylinders tested the break started at the outside, where the stress
and the strain are both least: this was observed in all the steels
used. There is reason to believe, however, that very brittle sub-
stances like glass would break at the inside, as predicted by the
ordinary theory. The fact seems to be that if the substance is brit-
tle it will break at the inside first, but that if it is at all plastic it
will break at the outside first, the crack traveling into the inside.

In addition to the data obtained regarding the manner in which
materials break at high pressures, many other peculiar facts were
noted during these preliminary tests. Perhaps the most interesting
of these is the increase in rigidity experienced in substances ordi-
narily soft and pliable. <A striking example of this is afforded in
the case of paraffin, which under pressures as high as 20,000 atmos-
pheres becomes more rigid than soft steel, so that if paraffin is
forced to flow by the application of a very high pressure, and a
piece of soft steel is imbedded in it, the steel will flow with the
paraffin and will become distorted and twisted with the latter. Soft
rubber also becomes very hard and brittle under high pressure; in

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Bridgman. PLATE |.

Fig. |.—ONE OF THE HALVES OF A CYLINDER OF TOOL STEEL SPLIT BY THE
APPLICATION OF INTERNAL PRESSURE.

The inner hole has stretched from 4 inch to 13 inches. The maximum pressure withstood by this
cylinder was 30,000 atmospheres.

FiG. 2.—CROSS SECTION OF A CYLINDER OF BESSEMER STEEL RUPTURED BY
THE APPLICATION OF INTERNAL PRESSURE.

This cylinder was originally 2 inches outside and 4 inch inside diameter. The inner hole has been
stretched to 1} inches.

Fig. 3.—VIEW OF THE OUTSIDE OF THE CYLINDER SHOWN IN Fia. 2, TAKEN
BEFORE THE SECTION WAS MADE.

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 189

one experiment a soft rubber washer became so brittle that it
cracked like glass, and a soft steel washer in contact with the rub-
ber was forced by the pressure in ridges into the cracks in the rub-
ber, thus showing that the rubber had become harder than the steel.

Another all-important task in the preliminary experiments, in

addition to that of finding what pressures the steel vessels could
tand, was to devise some way of accurately measuring the pressure.
he very simplest method that can be conceived proved to be the

‘st in this case. It consists in inserting a steel piston through a
ole in the wall of the cylinder and measuring the force necessary to
prevent it from being blown out by the pressure within. There are
many mechanical difficulties in realizing such a method as this, the

10st obvious being to overcome leakage. To do this the piston must
it the hole tightly, but at the same time must fit so freely that there
is not enough friction to destroy the accuracy of the readings obtained
by its means. It was found possible, by using a small-diameter pis-
ton fitting into a comparatively long hole, to take care of both
these factors. With the gauge as finally constructed, pressures up
to 13,000 kilograms per square centimeter were measured with an
aecuracy of one-tenth per cent. After high pressures had been suc-
cessfully measured with such a gauge, it was found possible to con-
struct gauges of a much more convenient form for actual use, and
to calibrate them against this, which became an “absolute” gauge.
One gauge that I have used in most of my later work is a manganin
resistance gauge, which consists of a coil of manganin wire placed
in the pressure cylinder and connected through insulated leads with
apparatus for measuring the resistance. The electrical resistance
of this coil is found to change directly proportionally with changes
of pressure in the cylinder. Manganin is a very much more conven-
ient material to use than any pure metal, since the resistance of all
pure metals decreases as the pressure increases, and the decrease is
moreover, not proportional to the increase of pressure.

After the completion of the preliminary work, in which the meth-
ods of producing and accurately measuring high pressures had been
decided upon, it was decided to obtain, first of all, measurements of
compressibilities. The first substance chosen for the measurement
of compressibility was water, chiefly as it is so common a substance,
and because many measurements had been made on it previously at
low pressures. Water is not absolutely incompressible, as is com-
monly supposed, but its volume may be very appreciably diminished
by the application of sufficiently high pressures. Under 12,000 at-
mospheres a decrease of volume of about 20 per cent is produced.
The measurements of the compressibility of water by the new method
were found to be satisfactory at comparatively low pressures, but at

190 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

higher pressures there were, quite frequently, discrepancies which
could not be explained by errors in the apparatus. The tempera-
ture of these measurements was that of the room, about 20° C.

Apparently the only possible explanation of the irregularities
shown was that the water had been frozen by the high pressure, so
that measurements of the volume at high pressures were sometimes
being made on the liquid and sometimes on the solid. This explana-
tion, if it were the true one, indicated a very remarkable state of
affairs, as the application of ordinary pressures to ice causes it to
melt. One would expect to be able to melt ice by high pressure,
therefore, and not to freeze water.

However, the discoveries of Tammann materially assist in provid-
ing an explanation of the irregularities found in the compressibility
measurements referred to above.

Tammann had discovered that at high pressures there are two modi-
fications of ice, each of which is denser than water. It would be
expected that the freezing point of the modified form would be
raised by the application of pressure, so that possibly the irregulari-
ties could be explained by the freezing of water to this new form of
ice at 20° C. under the very high pressures reached in this work,
which were about five times those reached by Tammann. But the
fault in this explanation is that Tammann had predicted from meas-
urements on this new kind of ice that no pressure, however great,
could possibly raise the freezing point of water higher than about
—17°, and a temperature of +20°C. was being employed. Care-
ful investigation of the whole matter was therefore called for, and
special apparatus had to be designed to attack the new problem.

To state that it is possible in the experiments to ascertain whether
the water has frozen to ice or not may appear strange, when it is
considered that the ice is inclosed in a cylinder and can never be
seen, because as soon as the pressure is removed and the cylinder
opened the ice immediately liquefies. As a matter of fact, this can
not be ascertained, except indirectly. When the water freezes to
ice, there is a decrease in volume, and this is shown by a drop in
pressure. Conversely, too, when ice melts to water the volume in-
creases, which is indicated by an increase of pressure.

In the actual measurements the temperature of the water was kept
constant. In order to increase the pressure, the piston was pushed
into the cylinder, the distance being measured, and the displacement
of the piston plotted against the increase of pressure produced. The
pressure at first Increased regularly as the displacement, but when
the pressure reached a value high enough to freeze the water at the
particular temperature of the experiment the volume suddenly ‘de-
creased without the pressure rising at all. Then, after freezing was
completed, so that there was only solid ice in the apparatus, the pres-

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 191

sure resumed its regular rise with the displacement. This is illus-
trated by the curve in figure 4, in which the abscissae represent pres-
sures and the ordinates displacements.

The pressure at which the piston falls into the cylinder without
producing a rise of pressure (that is, the vertical part of the curve in
fig. 1) is the pressure at which the water freezes to ice at the particu-
lar temperature of the experiment. For every temperature the pres-
sure at which the water freezes is different. When the ice is denser
than water the freezing temperature increases as the pressure in-
creases. In this way it is possible to find at what pressure water

Fia. 1.

freezes for any given temperature, and so to construct so-called
“melting curves.”

It will be noted that the method given above, besides determining
the pressure at which water freezes at a given temperature, deter-
mines another factor. The amount by which the piston is pushed in
while the pressure remains constant evidently indicates the change of
volume in the water while freezing, from which the difference in
volume between the water and the ice can be computed. If we know
the density of the water, we can calculate immediately the density
of the ice. This is important data, since if both the temperature and
pressure at which the ice melts are known, together with the change
of volume, the amount of heat necessary to melt the ice can also be
computed.

The method of experiment outlined above is not original with the
writer, and has, in fact, been employed by many other previous ex-

192 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

perimenters. The only important difference is that the new packing
which I devised makes it possible to obtain a piston which has ab-
solutely no leak, even at the highest pressures, and so renders possible
accurate measurements of the change of volume. This has, I believe,
not been possible before. In all previous experiments there has been
some leakage around the piston, which made it impossible to obtain
accurate measurements of the change of volume.

To return now to the compressibility measurements and the dis-
crepancies found at high pressure, the application of the present
method of experiment to the study of water showed that there did
exist a new variety of ice at the high pressures, as had been sus-
pected. It was found that the new variety of ice was not one of those

Temperature, degrees C.

2 4 6 & 10 12 14 16 18 20
Pressure, kgm. per sq. cm. x 10°

The equilibrium diagram between the liquid and the five solid modifications of water,

Fie. 2.

two kinds previously discovered by Tammann, but was, instead, con-
siderably denser than either of the varieties found by him. In ad-
dition to this new kind, which is stable at high temperatures and pres-
sures, I discovered still another kind, not previously known, inter-
mediate between the new high-pressure ice and the two varieties
found by Tammann, making four varieties of ice denser than water.
There are, therefore, in all at least five different kinds of ice, only one
of which we are ordinarily familiar with.

Figure 2 shows more clearly the relation between these different
kinds of ice. It will be noted that in this figure there are five
regions, numbered according to the kind of ice to be found within
the region. Thus, for example, if in an experiment the pressure be
raised to 10,000 or 10* kgm. and the temperature maintained at 0°,

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 193

these corresponding to the point 10 on the diagram, the water sub-
stance will be found to exist in the form of ice VI. Or, again, it
the pressure is 2,000 or 210° kom. and the temperature +-20° (point
on the diagram 2, 20), then the water substance is in the form of
ordinary liquid water; or, thirdly, if the pressure is 1,000 or 10° kgm.,
and the temperature — 20° (point on the diagram I, — 20), then
the water substance is in the form of ice I, the form we are ordinarily
familar with.

On any of the boundary lines of the regions in figure 2 the two
adjacent forms of water substance are in equilibrium with each other,
but if the state of the mass be changed slightly so that it is repre-
sented by a point within either of the regions, the kind of ice in
that region prevails and the other disappears. Thus, let us suppose
that there is ordinary ice, ice I, at say — 10° and atmospheric pres-
sure, in the apparatus at the beginning of an experiment, then if
the pressure be increased (keeping the temperature constant at
— 10°) at about 1,000 or 10° kgm, (point I, — 10), the ice melts to
water. But if now we continue to increase the pressure, at about
4,400 or 4.4X10° kgm. (point 44, —10), the liquid water freezes
again to a new kind of ice, ice V, which is denser than water. If
we still further increase the pressure, at about 6,300 or 6.3 10° kgm.
(point 6.3, — 10), the ice V suddenly changes to ice VF, the volume
again decreasing during the change. Or, if we commence at atmos-
pheric pressure and — 30° (point 0, —30), and increase the pres-
sure, we first change ice I (ordinary ice) into ice IIT, then, on still
further increasing the pressure, ice IIT changes to ice IL; on further
increase, II changes to V, and finally V changes to VI. The high
temperature to which the curve between ice VI and the quid runs
is of interest; by the application of 20,000 or 20X10* kgm. we may
freeze water, although it-is nearly boiling hot.

The manner in which one ice changes into another is truly remark-
able. We know that water freezes slowly or that ice melts slowly, but
some of these kinds of ice will change into another kind so rapidly
that the reaction reminds one of an explosion. For instance, if ice I
is changed to ice III at —25°, the reaction takes place so suddenly
that it is impossible to follow the change of pressure which takes
place after the reaction. On several occasions I have heard a click
in the apparatus when the transformation took place, so rapid was it.
Still another remarkable thing is that the effect of temperature on
the velocity of the reaction is very great indeed. Tf ice I is cooled to
about —50°, the reaction occurs so slowly that it takes hours for its
completion. Similar behavior is found also on the curves ITI-V and
V-VI; the reaction from one solid form to another is very rapid
indeed at temperatures near the melting temperature, but as the tem-
perature is reduced the speed of the reaction becomes very much less,

194 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

This is the reason that the curves separating the domains of the
different kinds of ice could not be followed to lower temperatures
than are shown in the diagram. At lower temperatures the reaction
becomes so very slow that it would have taken days to obtain a single
point. It is to be expected that the curves separating II and V and
V from VI will continue to run to lower temperatures, that they will
finally meet, and that from the point of intersection a new equilib-
rium curve, the curve between II and VI, will start. The point at
which any three curves meet in the diagram is called a triple point.
It will be noticed from the figure that two curves never meet without
a third curve starting from the point of intersection of the other two.
This is always true, provided that on two of the curves there is a
phase in common; it may be proved mathematically that such is the
case, but to prove this here would take us too far afield.

The fact that ice I gives place to ice II at a certain pressure has one
practical application. We have often heard of the immense pressures
developed when water is allowed to freeze in a closed vessel. Burst
water pipes are a familiar example of this, and there are also well-
known experiments in which cannon balls have been split open by
freezing water. It is of interest to inquire how much pressure might
be reached in this way. The diagram furnishes an answer to the
question, as it shows that if the pressure on the ice during freezing
should rise too much over 2,000 or 210? kem., corresponding to
30,000 pounds per square inch, the ordinary ice would change to ice
III, which has a much less volume, so that the ice would tend to
shrink and the rise of pressure would be arrested. Thirty thousand
pounds per square inch is, therefore, the highest pressure that can be
obtained by freezing water in a closed space.

A word as to the possibility of proving that the various new forms
of ice that have been described are really solids. All that has been
shown in the experiments is that at certain pressures and tempera-
tures there is a sudden change of volume. This must mean a change
of some kind in the molecular structure of the substance, but on what
grounds can it be said that the change is a change to solid form?
May not there conceivably be two modifications of the liquid? The
answer is, first, that no substance is known which has two modifi-
cations of the liquid, but that many are known which have two solid
forms. None of our ideas of the molecular structure of solids or of
liquids would lead us to think that two liquid forms of a substance
are possible. Secondly, Tammann has given direct experimental
proof that the two forms of ice, II and III, are really solid. He did
this by cooling the cylinder containing the ice to the temperature of
liquid air, and then opening the cylinder after pressure had been re-
lieved, still keeping the temperature at that of liquid air. Of course,
as soon as pressure was relieved, the ice II or III, whichever it hap-
pened to be, became unstable, but at this low temperature the reac-

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 195

tion from the unstable to the stable, or ordinary ice, runs very slowly
indeed, so that there was time enough to examine the contents of the
cylinder, after opening it, before all the unstable variety had disap-
peared. It was found that the new substance was indeed a solid,
and that as it changed into ordinary ice it increased greatly in vol-
ume. Tammann performed this experiment for both the varieties II
and III. It might perhaps be possible to repeat the experiment for
the other two varieties, V and VI, but the chances of success are very
much less, because atmospheric pressure is so much further removed
from the equilibrium pressure for these two varieties that the reac-
tion would be expected to run very much more rapidly. What is
more, the behavior of these new varieties is in all respects like that of
the two varieties which we know to be solid; that is, under some con-
ditions the reaction velocity is much greater than it ever is when a
liquid passes toa solid. Also, in some cases when one variety changes
to another, enough pressure is exerted on the thin steel vessel contain-
ing the ice to rupture it. It is difficult to conceive how a liquid would
develop enough pressure to rupture a steel vessel; one would expect
instead that it would flow away, relieving the pressure as fast as it
was formed. The overwhelming probability from all the evidence is,
therefore, that the other two varieties, V and VI, are solid also.
THE COAGULATION OF ALBUMEN BY PRESSURE.*

If the white of an egg is subjected to hydrostatic pressure at room
temperature it becomes coagulated, presenting an appearance much
like that of a hard-boiled egg. In my experiments the albumen was
inclosed in a nickel-steel case and pressure transmitted to it by mer-
cury. Pressure may be applied so slowly that the rise of temperature
due to the compression is inappreciable. At room temperature (20°)
the limits of pressure necessary to produce the coagulation were
fairly well marked. A pressure of 5,000 atmospheres (75,000 pounds
per square inch) applied for 30 minutes produced a perceptible stif-
fening of the white, but little more; 6,000 atmosphere for 30 minutes
produced a coagulation in appearance like curdled milk; while 7,000
for 30 minutes resulted in apparently complete coagulation, the white
being capable of standing under its own weight.

T have made no attempt to determine whether the nature of the
coagulation produced by pressure is the same as that produced by
heat. If one can judge by appearances the two may be different. - In
the course of 24 hours there separates from the pressure-coagulated
white a small quantity of some watery fluid, in which the coagulated
part remains insoluble.

TWO NEW MODIFICATIONS OF PHOSPHORUS.’

The two modifications of phosphorus to be described here were

obtained during an investigation of the effect of high pressure on the

2 Extracted from the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. XXXVI. No. 7.
July, 1914. —

196 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

melting point of ordinary white phosphorus. The two new forms
have perfectly distinct characteristics; in this they are different from
the questionable modifications of red phosphorus often announced.
The first of these modifications is a new form of white phosphorus,
which changes into the ordinary white modification reversibly under
the proper conditions. The second is a form obtained irreversibly
from white at high pressures and moderate temperatures, which is
15 per cent more dense than Hittorff’s “ metallic ” red phosphorus.

WHITE PHOSPHORUS II.

The new modification of white phosphorus was first produced by
increasing pressure on ordinary white phosphorus to about 11,000
kg./em.? at 60°. The existence of the new form was shown by a dis-
continuous change in the volume at this pressure. A number of
points on the transition curve of these two modifications were then
obtained at temperatures down to 0°, and the corresponding changes
of volume, when one modification passes to the other, were measured.

The appearance of this new form in bulk is much lke that of ordi-
nary white phosphorus. It may possibly be a trifle yellower, and
there are likely to be cracks formed because of the volume contraction
of about 2 per cent when the transition occurs.

An attempt to obtain the crystalline form was partially successful.
A solution of white phosphorus in carbon disulphide was allowed to
crystallize at the temperature of a mixture of carbon dioxide snow and
gasoline. The phosphorus separates out as a slush composed of fine
crystals. Microscopic examination showed that the usual crystalline
habit is in needles, about five times as long as broad, with pointed ends
of about 60°. It was not possible to specify further the shape of the
needles. Scattered among the needles, however, there were occa-
sional plate-like forms of unmistakable hexagonal shape; several
nearly perfect hexagons were found. The great probability 1s,
therefore, that this new modification belongs to the hexagonal system.
The crystalline form of the usual modification is regular.

BLACK PHOSPHORUS.

Black phosphorus was discovered during an attempt to force ordi-
nary white phosphorus to change into red phosphorus by the applica-
tion of high hydrostatic pressure, at a temperature below that at
which the transformation runs with appreciable velocity at atmo-
spheric pressure. Pressure up to about 6,000 kilograms per square
centimeter was applied at room temperature to the phosphorus
through the medium of the kerosene; the cylinder was raised to 200°
in an oil bath controlled by a thermostat, and the pressure was then

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 197

raised to from 12,000 to 13,000 kilograms. The transition from
white to black phosphorus occurs under these conditions in from 5 to
30 minutes. The pressure drops at. first very slowly, then more
rapidly, until apparently a critical point is reached somewhere be-
tween 11,000 and 12,000, at which it drops suddenly to about 4,000
kilograms. Pressure may then be increased again (with the form
of apparatus used this secondary increase could not be carried
beyond 11,000 kilograms) with no further drop of pressure. On
cooling the lower cylinder and relieving pressure, the white phos-
phor is found transformed into a black substance of very much
smaller volume than the original white phosphorus. Proof will be
given presently that this is a modification of phosphorus, not a com-
pound. This experiment has been repeated successfully every time
that it has been tried, now five times in all. About 50 grams of
black phosphorus may be formed at a time.

An attempt to form black phosphorus from white at 175° and
nearly 13,000 kilograms was without success. Also an attempt to
produce black phosphorus from commercial powdered red_phos-
phorus, which had been inoculated with a small piece of black phos-
phorus, was without result in 40 minutes at 12,900 kilograms and
200°. Another attempt to produce black phosphorus from the mas-
sive red phosphorus, to be described later, was also unsuccessful after
30 minutes at 12,900 kilograms and 200°.

The black phosphorus presents two distinct characteristic frac-
tures. In some places the fracture is coarsely granular like sugar,
apparently crystalline, but the grains under a low-power microscope
show no semblance of crystalline form. In other places where the
flow under pressure was great, the fracture is fibrous with a metallic
luster, very much like graphite in appearance. In spite of the high
pressure of formation, the mass of the black prosphorus is permeated
with pores, some of which may be several millimeters in diameter.
These pores may at first be filled with kerosene. The presence of
these pores doubtless accounts for the slight apparent increase in
weight of the specimen after the transformation.

In order to prove that the substance formed was really a new modi-
fication of phosphorus and not a compound, a colleague very kindly
made an analysis of two samples at the chemical laboratory of Har-
vard University, The results of the analysis are as follows:

Weight of

a 24 Per cent.
black phos- ee phos
phorus. B2t2\7- | phorus
0. 1622 0. 5669 97.5
- 1754 - 6182 98.3

136650°—20——_14

198 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

The most striking difference between the new black phosphorus
and previously known modifications is its high density. The density
of ordinary solid white phosphorus is 1.83, and that of red phos-
phorus may vary according to the method of preparation from 2.05
to a maximum of 2.34 for Hittorff’s “metallic” crystallized red
phosphorus. Nine determinations of the density of different speci-
mens of black phosphorus were made. We accept the value 2.691
as the true density of black phosphorus, a value 15 per cent higher
than that of the most dense variety of red phosphorus. The con-
clusion is inescapable that this is a new modification of phosphorus,
quite distinct from red phosphorus, and because of its higher density
presumably a more stable form.

Black phosphorus does not catch fire spontaneously, can be ignited
with difficulty with a match, and may be heated to perhaps 400° in
the air without spontaneous ignition. Unlike commercial red phos-
phorus, it can not be ignited by striking with a hammer on an anvil.
It is almost, if not entirely, stable in the air. A few simple tests
seemed to show that it is much like red phosphorus in chemical
properties; it is attacked by cold nitric acid, is not acted on appre-
ciably by sulphuric acid, and is not dissolved by carbon disulphide.

When black phosphorus is heated in a closed glass tube it vapor-
izes and condenses in the colder parts of the tube to red and white
phosphorus. The appearance under these conditions is exactly
the same as when red phosphorus is similarly treated. It would
seem, therefore, that the vapors of black and red phosphorus are, at
least in large part, identical.

Black phosphorus is a fairly good conductor of electricity, in dis-
tinction from white and red phosphorus, which in the pure state
seem to be nearly perfect insulators. The specimen of black phos-
phorus whose conductivity was measured here was selected from
all the available pieces for its great apparent compactness. It was
prepared by turning in a lathe, leaving for the final test a cylindrical
piece about 1.52 centimeters in diameter and 2.69 centimeters long.
The electrodes were attached by copper plating terminals on the
plane ends and soldering copper wires to the copper plating.

The value found for the specific resistance is 0.711 ohms per cen-
timeter cube at 0°. The temperature coefficient of resistance has a
large negative value, and between 0° and 75° the relation between
temperature and resistance is nearly linear. At 0° it is —0.00465.
This is an unusually high value, higher than for any substance usu-
ally listed. It is about 10 times higher than for carbon, and makes
it practically certain that the small amount of carbon known to be
present can not be taking a large share in the conduction. It should
be remarked that in respect to the sign of the temperature coefficient
black phosphorus is not like the metals.

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 199

It may pay to pause here to take thought of this conductivity of
black phosphorus. Here is a substance which in two modifications
possesses no electrical conductivity, but in some way, when the atoms
are rearranged more closely together, sets free electrons and becomes
a conductor. As we might expect from its electrical conductivity,
black phosphorus is also a rather good conductor of heat.

THE RELATION OF THE SEVERAL MODIFICATIONS.

The most important problem conected with this new modification
is the determination of its relation to the other known modifications
of phosphorus. It was hoped that the existence of this new modifi-
cation might offer some clue to the vexed question as to the true
nature of red phosphorus. Some facts of importance have been
found, but the exact nature of the relationship has not yet been
discovered. .

In the light of experiments [here omitted] the explanation is sug-
gested that red phosphorus is a transformation product from white
phosphorus to something else, in which the transformation has not
run to completion, but is prevented by friction.

With regard to the relation between black and red phosphorus
we can offer only conjectures. It does seem pretty certain, however,
that red and black can not stand in the relation of ordinary mono-
tropic solids. If they did bear this relation, the black must be the
more stable form, because of its lower vapor pressure, and in this
case we can not understand the failure of the red to condense as black
out of its vapor. The fact that the black apparently melts to the
same liquid as the red is puzzling. It may be that the relations
here are the same as in the vapor phase; that is, liquid black phos-
phorus may be unstable, and may transform itself irreversibly to
liquid red as rapidly as it is formed.

In a later paper? Doctor Bridgman gives by the aid of diagrams
the evidences of transformations of 30 substances. Some are solid,
others liquid in their ordinary forms, but like water and phosphorus
they each change into several solid modifications of new properties
when placed under different conditions of temperature and immense
pressure. In addition to these he has examined about a hundred
other substances which do not show such transformations. No
doubt all these facts will be made use of in the now rapidly pro-
gressing new theory of the internal structure of atoms and mole-
ecules which has been born out of the discovery of radio-activity.

Doctor Bridgman’s views in regard to the nature of the phenom-
enon are expressed as follows:

A crystal is supposed to be composed of units, atoms, or molecules, as the
case may be, which remain the same in different polymorphic forms. Poly-

1 Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. I, p. 518.

200 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

morphism is to be regarded in its most general aspect as due to regrouping
of these units in different arrangements. One of the units is to be thought of
as terminated by rigid boundaries; that is, each unit has shape as definite as
a brick has shape. Furthermore at different localities on the surface of the
units there are localized centers of ferce (attractive usually), so that two
units, ic free, will tend to come together with a definite orientation. A crystal
is to be regarded as a system in which a compromise has been affected between
the arrangement which the units would take in virtue of the action of the
localized centers of force, the arrangement into which the units would be
urged by external pressure or the mean internal pressure so as to occupy the
smallest possible volume, and the chaotic disarray which temperature agitation
tends to produce,

One implication of the view that regards crystals as built from blocks of
definite shape is especially insisted on. Only in exceptional cases will the
edifice constructed from the blocks be such that there will be no unfilled crevices
around the corners, and in no case where there are two possible structures
of different volumes will such empty spaces be absent in at least one of the
structures. These empty spaces are to be thought of as playing an essential
part in the phenomena of polymorphism.

THE ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE OF METALS UNDER PRESSURE.*

Tn this paper the effect of pressure combined with temperature on
the electrical resistances of 22 metals is investigated. The pressure
range is from atmospheric pressure to 12,000 kilograms per centi-
meter square and the temperature range from 0° to 100°. The ap-
paratus is in all essentials the same as that previously used. It
consists of two parts, an upper and lower cylinder connected by a
stout tube. In the upper cylinder pressure is produced by the descent
of a piston driven by aram. The upper cylinder is kept at constant
temperature and contains the coil of manganin wire which gives the
pressure by its change of resistance. The lower cylinders of two dif-
ferent lengths were used, according as the wire to be measured was
insulated and so could be coiled into a narrow space or was bare and
had to be wound in spiral grooves on a core.

It is essential that the method of winding be such that the pressure
is transmitted freely to all parts of the coil without any mechanical
hindrance from the frame on which it is wound. This object is ob-
viously at once obtained when the wire is wound on itself without
a core, but this method is feasible only when the wire can be covered
with silk insulation without damage. If the wire is soft like lead
it can not be covered without damage and must be wound bare on
some sort of a core. Several attempts were made before suitable
material for a core was found. ‘At first hard rubber was used, but
this is so compressible that at the highest pressures the wire drops
out of the grooves and is so expansible that at the highest tempera-
tures the wire is stretched.

1 Abstracted from Proceedings American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 52, No, 9,
Feb., 1917.

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 201

Finally, bone was found to be satisfactory from both points of
view.

Precautions relating to the freedom of constraint from the vis-
cosity of the transmitting medium, the purity of the substances
examined, the accuracy of the temperature determinations, and the
seasoning of coils by exposures to high pressures and various tem-
peratures were carefully attended to. Measurements of the change
of resistance were made at intervals of 1,000 kilograms at 0°, 25°,
50°, 75°, and 100°. Two readings were made at the maximum and
two zero readings, one before and one after the run. There is
usually no perceptible “hysteresis” or difference between the read-
ings on increasing pressure and those found later on decreasing
pressure. I had not expected results so favorable.

After every change of pressure some time is necessary before the
next reading can be made because of temperature disturbance due
to the heat of compression. This change of temperature is in many
cases so great as to entirely mask the effect of change of pressure.
The effect is very troublesome, as it may need as much as 30 or 45
minutes to reach temperature equilibrium for each change of pres-
sure. Without some trick of procedure, a run at a single tempera-
ture might occupy seven or eight hours and is excessively tedious.
This was avoided by running somewhat beyond the pressure desired
and then, after most of the heat of compression had been dissipated,
bringing the pressure back to the desired mark. With a little
practice temperature equilibrium is reached in five or seven minutes.
If the apparatus is in good running order a complete run on one
substance at one temperature could usually be made in about two
hours, and, including all manipulations, runs at two different tem-
peratures could easily be made on a single substance in a working
day.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF RESULTS.

The effect of pressure on all the metals tried, with the exception
of antimony and bismuth, is to decrease the resistance. To a first
approximation the relation between pressure and resistance is linear.
To a second approximation the relation is not linear, but the initial
rate of decrease of resistance is in all cases greater than that at
higher pressures.

In the case of some of the softer metals, unusual means were taken
both in the preparation of the wire and in its use, which may be
of interest to the reader. As, for example, consider indium. <A
sample of only 1 gram in amount was available. This metal is as
soft or softer than lead. It was extruded—that is, forced out—
into a wire of 0.006 inch diameter with a die of special construction.
Indium oxidizes much less rapidly than lead; after extrusion the

202 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

surface of the wire is brightly polished and remains so for several
weeks when exposed to the air. It was wound loosely on a bone
core. Connections were made by soft soldering with a miniature
copper, using a fusible solder of melting point slightly above 100°.
There is some difficulty in making a successful soldered connection
because of the low melting point of indium, which is about 155°.
It alloys very rapidly with any ordinary solder, forming an alloy
of much lower melting point than any of the constituents. It must
be caught by the solder with a single well directed touch.

Successful runs were made at 0°, 25°, and 50°, but at 75° the
soldered connections dropped off. Difficulty because of alloying
also made it necessary to omit the usual temperature seasoning.
This in any event is not so necessary for a low melting metal as
for a higher one.

Without going into the details of Doctor Bridgman’s measure-
ments, in which he follows the changes of the various phenomena
observed as they depend upon pressures and temperatures at differ-
ent magnitudes, it may be interesting to the reader to give a brief
summary of the behavior of a score of metals with regard to the
coefficient of change of resistance for varying temperature and vary-
ing pressure. I take this data from Doctor Bridgman’s publication
without intending to imply that it is altogether new.

Resistance coefficients.

For tempera-| For pressure
Metal ture at Okgr.| at 25°C.
MAE 0-100° C. per | 0-12,000 ker.

degree. per 1,000 kgr.
Indiuris gy 7e7 3B coe = eee Shee ee CE. eee cee ee eee ae ts 0. 00407 —0. 01051
Md Bs Ropes See es ate ete rt gr A es ee Se eee eee eS costs omic ee . 00447 — .00928
EASY eS UG Ci cpa ey a ae ee ee ae eB Se . 00517 — .01165
Cadmium ea. 12 S22 355s 32 oe re ae ee Sen aa eae - 00424 — .00910
Le 16 Ee oe eS ee ee St me eee ee he. ieee oo ae See . 00441 — .01222
ZING PAA the. ABIES ANAS LGR IEEE. CER Bene. aN Se eer eee - 00416 — .00463
Magnesivmis. 22's. . ese ted eR eae See ss ee eee . 00390 — .0055
AViminini eee Pees ses Ae ee pS RS ae SS eS ee ee - 00434 — .00379
STU eae ee eee ee Ss ee ee eee ee ae ee rate ain afore . 00407 — .00334
Golds’ Atet lila eA eee Bah es SSIES A ERED AEA ee ee . 00400 — .00288
Coppenzst 2: tei! $326 RRA tee ee rape Pit) okie es nae. oe . 00429 — .00181
Nickel; Sects 2 yee aS TERE ee PSE aE SEEING ee ee eee - 00487 — .00150
( Ofo) 07:5 | eae Sete oe ee ee: Brees OSes Se eat (er en Se BROT ee ee AC . 00365 — .00080
TOTES ais bck oc Sete ee ee ABEL, pea Ae ROP ee. Sere Se See . 00621 — .00228
Palladium. Sass face a ee ee EEE ee es ae a eo eee . 00318 — .00189
Plein $2 we Se eee 6 lS or er ee Le eS ee eee . 00387 — .00186
Moly bdentim. << s-\5 Sec cess Sos bose ae oe eee a eee eee ae eee . 00434 — .00128
Tantalum: 22200. FI See oe oS. Re Es sass. sepee oe . 00297 — .00144
Tumepsten = 824 suse ho Ee ee coe aE EE eine Cee Se ons PEE . 00322 — .00124
Amtim orys.', S20 5258 at Se Se aa eee ee nee wna eS a eehee mescbine Saat ees . 00473 + .01220
Tellurivim Jo sence owediawa ce ee oss oa a eee BEC RS SEE eae SES — .0063 — .12
Bismuthti222b2 fo Joc 3od Sees EA . Bae Seen . 00441 + .0198

HIGH PRESSURE—BRIDGMAN. 203

In regard to the details of the results, for which the reader should
consult the original paper, Doctor Bridgman says:

To sum up: Different metals show minor irregularities in behavior, but they
are alike in several general features which must be the first task of any theory
to explain. These general features are the approximate constancy of pressure
coefficient with temperature, and the accompanying constancy of temperature
coefficient with pressure; contrasted with this the pronounced decrease of in-
stantaneous pressure coefficient with rising pressure. It has been obvious
enough that the data have presented no spectacular features, and I must con-
fess to a sense of disappointment that an extension of the pressure range to
at least fourfold that of previous measurements has brought out no striking
new facts to reward the extra effort. When the magnitude of the change of
volume produced by a pressure of 12,000 kilograms is considered, however,
it does seem that the results acquire a physical significance great enough to
justify the extension of the range. The volume of many of the metals at 0° C.
and 12,000 kilograms is less than the volume at atmosphere pressure and 0°
Abs. The resistance of most metals tends toward zero at 0° Abs., but under
great pressure at 0° C., at the same volume as at the absolute zero, the resistance
is only a few per cent less than under normal conditions. Any valid theory
must explain the surprisingly little effect of the element of volume alone apart
from the element of temperature. It is furthermore known that at very low
temperatures the connection between resistance and temperature changes its
character; the relation ceases to be linear, and the resistance curve approaches
the origin tangentially to the temperature axis. Whether the abrupt dis-
continuity shown by several metals a few degrees above 0° Abs. is an effect
of a polymorphic transition does not yet seem to be settled. It is significant
that no trace of any’ such effect is to be found at room temperature as the
volume is decreased toward and beyond its value at 0° Abs. The question
whether there is a change in the character of the resistance curves as the
volume approaches that at 0° Abs. could not, of course, have been answered by
measurements Over a small pressure range; it is perhaps some justification of
the extension of range that this question can now be answered. Lie Be,

An estimation as to the comparative volumes at (12,000 kg., 0° C.) and
(0 kg., 0° Abs.) is given in the accompanying table. The values of compressi-
bility used in the computations have been taken from Richards, assuming con-
stancy over the pressure range, and the volume at 0° Abs. has been taken from
the data of Ch. Lindemann on linear expansion to 20° Abs. :

Comparison of changes of volume produced by temperature and pressure.

Change of Change of
volume be- | volume be-
Metal. tween 0° C. | tween 0 kg.
and 0° Abs. | and 12,000
at Okg. kg. at 0°C.

LNG ees ee ae Sat MATa eM cesar cea ave cia ale eee woh aat Gi aeiae pesca) ale xia 0.0189 0.0275
LILO Pee ae SE See, AA = oe RO ee see eae eos: semeeOe LA oc. Sat 0 Se a's . 0057 . 0200
PANLULT YALA UNA ee pete eo ce cer ne arenas pT sete aloes YS aR NES De Se ee . 0096 - 0173
Bilverts ees -o Boek geet. eee eee eS Roe eee oo a oo. Ee . 0108 - 0119
COpPeLe se erets oecse ces Dee ey ee Ee oe Be ee seis Goo ce one roe . 0078 . 0089

In general, the data are given for.the change of resistance of 22 metals be-
tween 0° and 100° C. over a pressure range from 0 to 12,000 kilograms. Three
of the metals are abnormal; bismuth and antimony both have a positive pressure

204 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

coefficient, and the pressure coefficient of tellurium has an abnormally large
negative value. The other 19 metals are of different behavior, but in broad
outline the behavior of all is alike.

In his last published investigation ? Doctor Bridgman has examined
the thermo-electric properties of 22 metals, including thermo-
electromotive force, Peltier heat, and Thomson heat:

The results of this paper, unlike those of the previous paper on resistance,
are almost entirely novel; the nature of the results to be expected was not
known, and accordingly these effects, so far as affected by pressure, were not
available for any theoretical considerations. Previous measurements on the
effect of pressure on thermo-electromotive force are very few in number, and
cover a very restricted range. The maximum pressure heretofore reached
has been by Wagner, 300 kilograms.

The range employed in this work covers 20 pure metals and 2 alloys and
all pressures up to 12,000 kg./em.? and all temperatures between 0° and 100°.
The nature of the results was unexpectedly complicated. The normal state
of affairs is apparently a positive effect of pressure on both Peltier and Thom-
son heats, but there are numerous examples of negative effects, and almost
none of the metals show regular variation of these quantities with pressure
and temperature within the range. Three metals, tin, iron, and aluminum,
show complieated variations of the thermo-electromotive force. The wnex-
pected complications found make these results disappointingly meager in their
suggestions as to the nature of the thermoelectric mechanism. The results
suggest most strongly that the thermoelectric mechanism must be complicated,
that it can not be at all of the simplicity imagined by the free electron theory,
and that most likely the effects which we measure are the resultant of different
effects, which sometimes, at least, work in opposite directions. What these
effects may be, we are not in a position at present to speculate.

It may not be too daring to say that it seems to me that much of my pre-
vious work on high-pressure effects at least suggests a direction in which we
may look for the explanation of these complications. I have shown in detail
that probably the properties of both liquids and solids are to be explained in
terms of the same agency, the effect of the characteristic shape of the atoms,
or, if one prefers to express it so, the nature of the field of force surrounding
the atom. It seems most probable that the electrons in passing from atom to
atom, or in playing about between the atoms, may be subjected to forces chang-
ing in a complicated way as the atoms are forced into positions of varying
degrees of adaptation to each other’s irregularities.

1 Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 53, 1918.

THE PROBLEM OF RADIOACTIVE LEAD.*

By THrEroporE W. RicHaArps, Harvard University.

We meet to-day with happiness which six months ago would have
seemed beyond the bounds of reasonable hope. After anxious months,
the confidently awaited victory, which last spring still seemed far
away, has crowned the cause of justice, truth, and liberty. We in
America rejoice that this cause is our cause, and that at the most
critical time we were able to render effective help to the staunch and
brave allied forces which had fought so long and so nobly.

The object of this address is not, however, to appraise the military
issues of the great war so fortunately ending, nor to deal with the
weighty international problems now faced by the world, but rather
to bring before you other considerations, having to do with the ad-
vancement of science.

The particular subject chosen, namely, the problem of radioactive
lead, is one of peculiar and extraordinary interest, because it in-
volves a readjustment and enlargement of many rather firmly fixed
ideas concerning the chemical] elements and their mutual relations,
as well as the nature of atoms.

Within the last twenty years the definition of these two words,
“ elements ” and “ atoms,” has been rendered somewhat uncertain and
bids fair to suffer even further change. Both of them are ancient
words, and both even a century since had acquired meanings different
from those of long ago. Thales thought of but one element, and
Aristotle’s elements—earth, air, fire, water, and the quintessence,
derived perhaps from yet more ancient philosophy—were not plenti-
ful enough to account for all the manifold phenomena of nature.
Democritus’s old idea of the atom was associated rather with the
philosophical conception of indivisibility than with the idea of chem-
ica] combination in definite proportions. To-day many chemists and
physicists think that the chemical atoms of the last century are no
longer to be considered as indivisible. In that case, the old Greek
name “atom” is no longer fitting, because it denotes indivisibility.
Some one has even facetiously suggested that the word “tom”—
indicating divisibility—would be more appropriate. Moreover, if

1 Address of the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Baltimore, December, 1918. Reprinted by permission from Science, N. S., Vol. XLIX, No.

1253, pp. 1-11, Jan. 3, 1919.
205

206 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

our so-called atoms are really divisible, we can not but be somewhat
doubtful as to our definition of the ultimate elements of the universe.
The reason for this new turn of thought is due, as you all know, to
the discovery of the unexpected and startling phenomena of radio-
activity.

To-night we have to deal with a substance directly concerned with
the iconoclastic radioactive changes—with the very phenomena which
cause us to stop and think about our definitions of atoms and ele-
ments. For the lead obtained from radioactive minerals appears to
have resulted, together with helium, from the radioactive decompo-
sition of elements of higher atomic weight. Skeptical at first, the
whole chemical world has now come to acknowledge that the well-
defined element, helium (discovered by Sir William Ramsay 23 years
ago), is one of the decomposition products of radium. Radium itself
is a substance which, in many respects, acts as an element, with 226
as its atomic weight, and must be considered as the heaviest member
of the well-known calcium family; but its atoms appear to be so big
and so complex as to disintegrate because of lack of stability. The
disintegration is slow, and not to be hastened or retarded by any
agency known to man; 1,670 years are demanded for the decomposi-
tion of half of any given portion of radium, according to the exact
measurements of Professors Boltwood and Gleditsch. Moreover,
we have reason to believe that this decomposition proceeds in a
series of stages, successive atoms of helium (five in all) being evolved
with different degrees of ease by any given atom of radium. In the
end most, indeed probably all, of the residual part of the radium
appears to have been converted into the peculiar kind of metallic lead
with which we are concerned to-night. The nature of the end-
product. was first suggested by Boltwood, who pointed out the in;
variable presence of lead in radium minerals. Thus we must accept
a kind of limited transmutation of the elements, although not of the
immediately profitable type sought by the ancient alchemists.

Interesting and significant as all of this is, nevertheless the whole
story has not yet been told. Radium itself appears to come from the
exceedingly slow decomposition of uranium, an inference drawn from
the fact that radium is found only in conjunction with the uranium,
which even after careful purification soon becomes radioactive and
gives every indication of suffering slow disintegration. Moreover,
uranium is not the only other heavy element which appears to be
capable of decomposing and yielding elements of lower atomic
weight. Another, thorium, has a like propensity, although the steps
in this case are perhaps not so fully interpreted, nor so generally
accepted. In the process of disintegration all these heavy atoms yield
strange radiations, some of them akin to; or identical with X rays,
which bear away that part of the colossal energy of disintegration

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. 207

not made manifest as heat. These facts have been proved beyond
doubt by the brilliant work of Professors Becquerel, Marie Curie, P.
Curie, Sir Ernest Rutherford, and others.

The nature of the rays, and of the highly interesting evanescent
transition products and their relation to one another, is too complex for
discussion now. We are concerned rather with the nature of the more
permanent of the substances concerned—especially with the starting
point, uranium (possessing the heaviest of all atoms), radium, and
the lead which seems to result from their disintegration. Omitting
the less stable transition products, the most essential outcomes are
roughly indicated by a sort of genealogical tree herewith shown:

HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE DISINTEGRATION OF URANIUM.

Uranium
) \3 Helium
Radium
\. 1 Helium 7 8 Helium
Emanation
‘i ) ‘\ 4 Helium
Lead (Isotopic)

Thus each atom of uranium is supposed to be converted into radium
by losing three atoms of helium, and each atom of radium is sup-
posed to be converted into a kind of lead by losing five more, as
already stated.

If uranium can thus disintegrate, should we call it an element,
and should we call its smallest particles atoms? The answers de-
pend upon our definition of these two words. If the word “ ele-
ment ” is supposed to designate a substance incapable of disintegra-
tion, apparently it should not be applied to uranium; neither should
the word “atom” be applied to the smallest conceivable particles of
this substance. But no one would now maintain that any element
is really incapable of disintegration. A method of still retaining
the terms in this and analogous cases is to define an element as “a
substance which has not yet been decomposed artificially,’ that is
to say, by the hand of man—and an atom as “ the smallest: particle
of such a substance, inferred from physicochemical behavior.” The
atom, then, is not to be considered as wholly indivisible, but only as
indivisible (or at least as not yet divided) by artificial means. For,
as in the case of radium, the disintegration of uranium can not be
hastened or retarded by any known earthly agency. So long as it
stays intact, the atom of uranium behaves quantitatively in the same
fashion as any other atom: Dalton’s laws of definite and multiple
combining proportions apply without exception to its compounds.
In this connection one should remember that the atomic theory, as a
whole, including Dalton’s and Avogadro’s generalizations, is not

208 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

in the least invalidated by the new discoveries of radioactivity. On
the contrary, the atomic theory is entrenched to-day more firmly than
ever before in its history.

Interesting speculations by Doctors Russell, Fleck, Soddy, and Fa-
jans and others have interpreted in extremely ingenious and plausible
fashion the several transitory steps of the changes, and indicate the
reasons why the end products of the decomposition both of uranium
and thorium should be very similar to lead, if not identical with it.
Therefore a careful study of the properties of lead of indubitably
radioactive origin became a matter of great interest, as a step toward
confirming these speculations, especially in comparison with the
properties of ordinary lead. Such investigations should throw light
on the nature of radium and uranium and the extraordinary changes
which those metals suffer. Moreover, by analogy, the resulting con-
clusions might be more or less applicable to the relations of other
elements to each other; and the comparison of this new kind of lead
with ordinary lead might afford important information as to the
essential attributes of elementary substances in general, in case any,
differences between the two kinds should be found.

Before the subject had been taken up at Harvard University, chem-
ists had already recognized the fact that the so-called uranium-lead
is indeed qualitatively very like ordinary lead. It yields a black
sulphide, a yellow chromate, and a white sulphate, all very sparingly
soluble in water, just as ordinary lead does. Continued fractional
crystallization or precipitation had been shown by Professor Soddy
and others to separate no foreign substance. Hence great similarity
was proved; but this does not signify identity. Identity is to be es-
tablished only by quantitative researches. Plato recognized long ago,
in an often-quoted epigram, that when weights and measures are left
out little remains of any art. Modern science echoes this dictum in
its insistence on quantitative data; science becomes more scientific as
it becomes more exactly quantitative.

‘One of the most striking and significant of the quantitative proper-
ties of an element is its atomic weight—a number computed from the
proportion by weight in which it combines with some other element,
taken asastandard. There is no need, before this distinguished audi-
ence, of emphasizing the importance of the familiar table of atomic
weights; but a few parenthetical words about their character is per-
haps not out of place. As has been more than once said, the atomic
weights of the relatively permanent elements, which constitute almost
all of the crust of the earth, seem to be concerned with the ultimate
nature of things, and must have been fixed at the very beginning of
the universe, if indeed the universe ever had any beginning. They
are silent, apparently unchanging witnesses of the transition from the
imagined chaos of old philosophy to the existing cosmos. The crystal

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. 209

of quartz in a newly hewn piece of granite seems, and probably is, as
compact and perfect as it was just after it was formed, eons ago. We
can not imagine that any of its properties have essentially changed
during its protracted imprisonment; and, so far as we can guess,
the silicon and oxygen of which it was made may have existed for
previous eons, first as gas, and then as liquid. The relative weights
in which these two elements combine must date at least from the
inconceivably distant time when the earth “was without form and
void.”

Although, apparently, these numbers were thus determined at the
birth of our universe, they are, philosophically speaking, in a differ-
ent class from the purely mathematical constants such as the relation
of circumference to the diameter of a circle. 3.14159 ... is a geomet-
rical magnitude entirely independent of any kind of material, and it
therefore belongs in the more general class of numbers, together with
simple numerical relations, logarithmic and trigonometric quantities,
other mathematical functions. On the other hand, the atomic
weights of the primeval elements, although less general than these,
are much more general and fundamental than the constants of as-
tronomy, such as the so-called constant of gravity, the length of the
day and year, the proper motion of the sun, and all the other incom-
mensurable magnitudes which have been more or less accidentally
ordained in the cosmic system. The physicochemical constants, such
as the atomic weights, lie in a group between the mathematical con-
stants and the astronomical “constants,” and their values have a
significance only less important than the former.

In the lead from uranium we have a comparatively youthful ele-
mentary substance, which seems to have been formed since the rocks
in which it occurs had crystallized. Is the atomic weight of this
youthful lead identical with that of the far more ancient common
lead, which seems to be more nearly contemporary as to its origin
with the silicon and oxygen of quartz?

The idea that different specimens of a given element might have
different atomie weights is by no means new—it far antedates the
discovery of radioactivity.

Ever since the discovery of the definite combining proportions of
the elements and the ascription of these proportions to the relative
weights of the atoms, the complete constancy of the atomic weights
has occasionally been questioned. More than once in the past in-
vestigators have found apparent differences in the weights of atoms
of a single kind, but until very recently all these irregularities have
been proved to be due to inaccurate experimentation. Nevertheless,
even 80 years ago the question seemed to me not definitively an-
swered, and careful experiments were made with copper, silver and
sodium, obtained from widely different sources, in the hope of find-

210 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ing differences in the atomic weights, according to the source of the
material. No such differences whatever were found. More recently
Professor Baxter has compared the atomic weights of iron and nickel
in meteorites (from an unknown, perhaps inconceivably distant
source) and the same terrestrial metals. In these cases also the re-
sults were negative. Thus copper, silver, sodium, iron and nickel all
appeared to be perfectly definite in nature, and their atoms, each
after its own kind, all alike.

The general question remained, nevertheless, one of profound in-
terest to the theoretical chemist, because it involved the very nature
of the elements themselves; and in its relation to the possible dis-
covery of a difference between uranium lead and ordinary lead, it
became a very crucial question.

Karly in 1913, when the hypothesis of radioactive disintegration
had assumed definite shape, Doctor Fajan’s assistant, Max Lembert,
journeyed to Cambridge, bringing a large quantity of lead from
Bohemian radioactive sources in order that its atomic weight might
be determined by Harvard methods. The Carnegie Institution of
Washington gave generous pecuniary assistance toward providing
the necessary apparatus in this and subsequent investigations.

The most important precautions to be taken in such work are
worthy of brief notice, because the value of the results inevitably
depends upon them. The operation consists in weighing specimens
of a salt of the element in question and then precipitating one of
the constituents in each specimen, determining the weight of the
precipitate, and thus the composition of the salt. In the first place,
each portion of substance to be weighed must be free from the
suspicion of containing unheeded impurities, otherwise its weight
will mean little. This is an end not easily attained, for lquids
often attack their containing vessels and absorb gases, crystals
include and occlude solvents, precipitates carry down polluting im-
purities, dried substances cling to water, and solids, even at high
temperatures, often fail to discharge their imprisoned contamina-
tions. Especial care was taken that each specimen was as pure as
it could be made, for impurity in one would vitiate the whole com-
parison.

In the next place, after an analysis has once begun, every trace of
each substance to be weighed must be collected and find its way in
due course to the scale pan. The trouble here hes in the difficulty
in estimating, or even detecting, minute traces of substances re-
maining in solution, or minute losses by evaporation at high tem-
peratures,

In brief, “ the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” is the aim.
The chemical side of the question is far more intricate and uncer-
tain than the physical operation of weighing. The real difficulties

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. 214

precede the introduction of the substance into the balance case.
Every substance must be assumed to be impure, every reaction must
be assumed to be incomplete, every measurement must be assumed
to contain error until proof to the contrary can be obtained. Only
by means of the utmost care, applied with ever-watchful judgment,
may the unexpected snares which always lurk in complicated proc-
esses be detected and rendered powerless for evil.

After all these digressions, made in order that the problems con-
cerned should be clearly recognized, let us turn to the main object
of our quest. In the present case each form of lead was first weighed
as pure chloride, and the chlorine in this salt after solution was
precipitated as silver chloride, the weight of which was determined.
Precautions too numerous to mention were observed. Thus, the
weight of chlorine in the salt was found, and by difference the weight
of the lead. From the ratio of weights, the atomic weight of. lead
was easily calculated. Since the question involved especially a com-
parison of the two kinds of lead, particular care was taken that
each sample should be treated in precisely the same way. Even if
a constant error had existed in the method, it could not have affected
the comparison, since each result would have been influenced in
identical degree.

The outcome of our earliest trials, published in July, 1914, brought
convincing evidence that the atomic weight of the specimen of
uranium lead from Bohemia is really less than that of ordinary lead,
the value found being 206.6 instead of 207.2—a difference of 0.3 per
cent, far beyond the probable error of experiment. Almost simul-
taneously preliminary figures were made public by Doctors Honig-
schmid and St. Horovitz and Maurice Curie, pointing toward the
same verdict.

This result, interesting and convincing as it was, was only a begin-
ning. Other experimenters abroad have since confirmed it, especially
Dr. Otto Hénigschmid; and many new determinations have been
made at the Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory, with the assist-
ance of Dr. Charles Wadsworth, 3d, and Dr. Norris F. Hall, upon
various samples of lead from radioactive sources in widely separated
parts of the world. Messrs. E. R. Bubb and 8. Radcliff, of the Ra-
dium Hill Co., of New South Wales, kindly sent a large quantity
of lead from their radium mines, and a particularly valuable speci-
men prepared from selected crystals of pure mineral was put at our
disposal by Dr. Ellen Gleditsch—not to mention other important
contributions from others, including Professor Boltwood and Sir
William Ramsay. Each of these samples gave a different atomic
weight for the lead obtained from them, and the conclusion was
highly probable that they contained varying admixtures of ordinary
lead in the uranium-radium lead. This was verified by the knowledge

212 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

that in at least some cases the uranium ore actually had been con-
taminated with lead ore. The purest Norwegian specimen contrib-
uted by Miss Gleditsch thus acquired especial importance and sig-
nificance, because it was only very slightly, if at all, vitiated in
this way. As a matter of fact, it gave 206.08 for the atomic weight
in question—the lowest of all. Here are typical results, showing the
outcome; many more of similar tenor were obtained.

Atomic Weights.

Syne

Womimion’ Tea’ 202. eet he Ce 0 se eee \ ie - }_.207. 19
206, 32

Australian radioactive lead containing probably 25 per cent] 206. 36 206. 84

ordinary, leadse ese aN aus crete ter ed ieee see 206: 83st

206. 36
: . f 206. 08

Purest turamiotend st GtOs 6 Sik). Jee EA Ae) ORR CET 4eht | 206. 09 |. _.-20 08

Honigschmid, from similar pure material, had found figures
(206.05) agreeing almost exactly with the last value. One can not
help believing that this last specimen of lead is a definite substance,
probably in a state almost pure, because of the unmixed quality of
the carefully selected mineral from which it was obtained.

A further question now arises: 1s it a permanent substance—really
an end-product of the disintegration? Soddy’s hypothesis assumes
that it is. The only important fact militating against this view is
the observation that uranium-lead is always radioactive, and hence
might be suspected of being unstable. In various impure specimens,
however, the radioactivity is not proportional to the change in the
atomic weight; hence the radioactivity is probably, at least in part,
to be referred not to the lead itself, but rather to contamination
with minute, unweighable amounts of intensely radioactive impuri-
ties—other more transitory products of disintegration.t If weigh-:
able, such impurities would almost certainly zncrease, not diminish,
the atomic weight; hence their presence could not account for the
low value.

Let us compare the actual result for the atomic weight of this
kind of lead with the theory of Soddy and Fajans. If this theory
is sound, the simple subtraction of eight times the atomic weight of
helium from that of uranium, or five times the atomic weight of
helium from that of radium, should give the atomic weight of the
lead resulting from the disintegration, as follows:

1For this reason the term ‘ radio-active lead” although it describes the fact, is per-
haps, from a theoretical point of view, not the best designation of either uranium or
thorium lead; but the term is convenient, because it distinguishes between these two
forms and common lead,

RICHARDS. 2138

RADIOACTIVE LEAD

Hypothetical calculation of atomic weight of wranium-lead.

INCOM Hs WeLe Lit O lee muscu (InN em sees ee ee ee ee = 238.18

SOX atomic welrlhtrof sWelinm: 2) sss Seo eee = 382.00

IREMCWS” (CER Te ee ee 206.18 = 206.18

ATONN CRAWLS OT mrad Une: Sel ek ie pew eee = 225.96

dX atomic weight of helium Sees ey = 20.00

Nesi dies Gendt: presses ea ee oe ee ee eee a 205.96 = 205.96
Averacenypotheticaleyalue for Weadss. tess eles teense es = 206.07
Observed: value for .uramimum-lead * ==) - 2 ee —— GOS
NOMEN Cen eee = ne et Like ADB ts Mik fe hry = a 0.01

The agreement is remarkably good. Each of the individual calcu-
lated values shows less than 0.05 per cent. deviation from the
average, and the average itself shows essential identity with fact—
a striking confirmation of the theory. This is perhaps the most suc-
cessful attempt on record to compute an atomic weight from hypo-
thetical assumptions. Usually we are wholly at a loss as to the
theory underlying the precise relationships, and must determine our
values by careful experiment alone.

The value 206.08 for the atomic weight of lead has further sup-
port in the fact that it is more nearly half way between thallium,
204, and bismuth, 208, the two neighboring elements in the periodic
system, than is the atomic weight 207.2 possessed by ordinary lead.
It appears, then, that 206, the value pertaining to uranium-lead, is
a very reasonable value.

But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, ordinary lead, consti-
tuting the vast bulk of the lead in the world, has without doubt a
much higher atomic weight, 207.2, not to be expected from either of
the lines of reasoning just given. In order to test the uniformity
of this circumstance, Professor Baxter, with the help of one of his
assistants, Investigated ordinary lead from the nonuraniferous ores
from many parts of the world, and discovered that the constancy
of its quantitative behavior is as striking as that of copper or silver.
His figures agreed very closely, within the limit of error of experi-
mentation, with those obtained as a part of the present comparison
of the two kinds of lead, so that there could be no question as to lack
of identity of methods or precautions.

Before leaving the subject of the relative atomic weights of these
two types of lead, it is not without interest to note the exact absolute
weights of the atoms. If, as we have excellent reason for believing
on the basis of the brilliant work of Professor Millikan, a so-called

1 This is the Harvard result. If Hénigschmid’s value is given equal weight, the average
observed value would be 206.07, exactly idenical with the hypothetical value.

136650 °—20——15

214 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

gram-atom (the atomic weight in grams) contains 606.2 sextillion
actual atoms, the weights of the atoms of the two kinds of lead must
be respectively 342 and 340 septillionths of a gram. Their extreme
smallness, as regards bulk, may perhaps best be inferred from the
consideration that the smallest object visible as a point in the com-
mon microscope has a diameter probably about one thousand times
as great as an atom of lead.*

Evidently, on the basis of the quantitative results just exhibited,
we must admit that there is at least one real difference between
radioactive lead and the common metal. Are there other differ-
ences?

A question as to the density of each substance, and, therefore, as
to the bulk occupied by the respective atoms, at once arises. Since
the atom of uranium-lead weighs less than the other, it must occupy
less space, supposing that it has the same density; or else it must
have less density, supposing that it should occupy the same space.
The identity of the chemical behavior of the two types of lead sug-
gests the probability of the latter alternative, and this was, there-
fore, assumed by Soddy; but experimental proof was evidently
desirable. Therefore, an extended investigation of the density of
the various kinds of lead was carried out likewise in the Gibbs
Memorial Laboratory. As a matter of fact, the densities of the
several specimens were found to be very nearly proportional to their
atomic weights; that is to say, the bulk of the atom of radioactive

lead is almost exactly the same as the bulk of the atom of ordinary

lead, although the weights of these atoms are so markedly different.

Densities and atomic volumes.

Atomic | ,,,4<; Atomic

weight. BSE volume.
PMT MUTADLO1O RG en 5 eee an eed a ta ny 296. 08 11.273 18. 281
Australian mixturers: poi siit Cys ot Sgr loge | ae bie RS ee eee are Be 2 206.34 11.289 18. 278
PUG COMMONER Gi rays che ess ee ee SUS ese or ne ore 207.19 IDWSSY/ 18.277

A distinctive property of elementary substances, which has always
been supposed to be concerned more or less definitely with the atomic
weight, is the spectrum, depending upon the wavelengths of light
emitted by the vapor. But, surprisingly enough, the spectrum lines
produced by these two sorts of lead, when heated to the high temper-
ature of the electric arc, are so precisely alike, both as to their wave-
lengths and their intensities, that no ordinary spectrum analysis
shows any difference whatever. This has been proved by careful

1If the smallest object visible in a microscope could be enlarged to the width of this
printed page, the atoms in it would appear about the size of the dots on the letters i,
or the periods in the type used in this footnote.

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. 215

experiments at Harvard and elsewhere. A‘ and B were from two dif-
ferent specimens of radioactive lead, C from ordinary lead, all very
carefully purified. The range covered is about from 3,000 to 2,000
wavelength—far in the ultra-violet. Very recently Prof. W. D.
Harkins, of Chicago, and two assistants, have detected, with a very
extended grating spectrum, an exceedingly minute shift (0.0001
per cent of the wavelength—an amount far too small to be shown by
the spectra exhibited) of one of the lines. The wonder is, not that
there should be a difference, but rather that they should be so very
nearly identical. Evidently the considerable difference in the atomic
weight produces only a barely perceptible effect on the wavelengths
of light emitted by the several isotopic forms of a given element,
although a less difference in atomic weight between two different
elements (for example, cobalt and nickel) is concomitant with utterly
divergent spectra.

Another very interesting question, involving the relations of
substance both to light and to weight (or rather density) is its re-
fractive index. All the formule relating to molecular refraction
involve the density of the substance concerned. In the case under
consideration, do the differing weights of the atoms, and therefore
the differing densities of the same compounds of the two kinds of
lead, affect the refractive indices of the salts? Is the refractive
index of a given salt of radioactive lead identical with that of the
same salt of ordinary lead? Evidence on this point would go far
to decide whether density or atomic volume is the more important
thing in determining refractive index. A very careful study car-
ried out with the help of Dr. W. C. Schumb at Harvard has within
the past few months shown that as a matter of fact the refractive
index of ordinary lead nitrate is identical with that of the nitrate
of radioactive lead within one part in nearly twenty thousand, a
result which shows that density is a less important factor in de-
termining refractive index than had been previously assumed.

Both of these conclusions concerning light—that drawn from the
spectra and that drawn from the refractive indices—have a yet more
far-reaching interest, for they give us a further clue as regards the
innermost nature of the atom. That part of the atom which deter-
mines its weight seems to have, at least in these cases, very little effect
on that part of the atom which determines its behavior toward light.

Immediately connected with the question of density of the solid
salts is the question as to the densities of their saturated solutions, as
well as to the extent of saturation. Fajans and Lembert had recently
obtained results probably indicating that the molecular solubility of
each kind of lead is the same, and that the densities of the solutions
are different, the density of the radioactive solution being less to an
extent consistent with the smaller molecular weight. ‘These results,

1 References are to photographs not reproduced here.

216 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

however, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy, and needed
verification. Therefore a very careful investigation, begun at Har-
vard with the assistance of Schumb, before the appearance of Fajan’s
publication, furnished valuable knowledge on this point.

Solubility of two kinds of lead nitrate.

Common |Uranium

lead. lead.
Percent /salt inisaturated! solution (25002) saseeeee ot mee eee = eee aoe cece eee ee 37.342 37.280
Gramsilead:per100-sramssvatert.: £22552 scenes aaa eae tecineen se -emenee see aee 37.281 37.130
Molecularsolubility pera, 000/eramsiwaterssss--- 5252 Sach ee eeeae eee esto recone s 1.7993 1.7989

1 The uranium lead used in these determinations was a specimen from Australia having the atomic
weight 206.41, not quite like the earlier sample, but not different in important degree.

Here, again, differences in weight alone are manifest, and these
are proportional to the differences in the atomic weights; the molec-
ular behavior is essentially identical in the two sorts.

The identity in solubility might also be inferred from the impossi-
bility of separating the two kinds of lead from each other by frac-
tional crystallization. This was predicted by Soddy, and tested by
him and by others. Various vain attempts have been made to
separate the different kinds of lead from one another, but apparently
when once they are mixed, no ordinary method can separate them,
since the properties of the different kinds are so nearly alike. The
latest attempt at the Gibbs Memorial Laboratory involved 1,000
fractional crystallizations of the Australian lead nitrate, which is
believed to contain both ordinary and uranium-radium-lead. The
extreme fraction of the crystals (representing the least soluble por-
tion, if any difference in solubility might exist) gave within the
limit of error the same atomic weight as the extreme fraction of the
mother liquor (representing: the most soluble portion), thus con-
firming the work of others in this direction.

When wires constructed of two different metals are joined, and the
junction heated, an electrical potential or electromotive force is pro-
duced at the junction. This property seemed, then, to be a highly
interesting one to test, in order to find out how great may be the
similarity of the two kinds of lead. In fact, wires made of radio-
active lead and ordinary lead tested in the Gibbs Laboratory gave
no measurable thermoelectric effect, the wires acting as if they were
made of the same identical substance, although the atomic weights
and densities were different. No other case of this sort is known,
so far as I am aware. The melting points of the two kinds of lead
were likewise found, with the assistance ef N. F. Hall, to be identical
within the probable accuracy of the experiment.?

1 Since this address was first published Prof. P. W. Bridgman has found that both the
electrical conductivity of the two kinds of lead, and the effect of pressure on this con-
ductivity, are likewise identical; and Prof. W. Duane has found that even the X-ray
spectra of the two kinds show no difference.

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. mally

Let us bring all these results together into one table, so that we
may better grasp their combined significance.

Comparison of properties of different kinds of lead.

Common aeena Uranio- | Percentage
lead. lian). lead. difference.

We aaee B C A=B | A-C

\
ATOMNIGRWEIP NGA 6 ae esas eae seen oe et oea Seo seek aa 207.19 206. 34 206.08 0.42 | 0.54
Toa A ER a etebag Tae eae se eee nee | 11.387°} 11.289 | 11.273 | 0.42] 0.56
ASLOMMIC HV. OLUING! face Rene set cee ie ace see oe scice sce sececccmers 18. 277 18. 278 18.281 | 0.01 | 0.02
Meliimespoints (absolute) s2- os sss-as--ee soe aoe tee ae eke | 600. 53 600559 Ne=52.o222 O01 S228).
SolabilityaG@netalasmitrate) 25-2 te eee a eee 37.281 Byki) Mleeceaaeres OFATE Petes.
Relrachhvennd ex: OfMUTaAt@s =. sais ties ee eens are eee isin = | 4.7815 1ag fake | See oeesoae OS019|55-54-
iMNhenmoelectneehect=-- 2c - aes tee= ee sets sesso ae eee A biennial OE tee oll he ds, Sere et O200) eases
Spectrum) wavelengthis:-e.s. -2icket yas PEARS LESTE Mo ie pokes Site: jacosaccees 0.00 | 0.00

Summed up in a few words, the situation appears to be this: At
least two kinds of lead exist—one, the ordinary metal disseminated
throughout the world, in nonuraniferous ores; another, a form of
lead apparently produced by the decomposition of uranium, radium
being one of the intermediate products. If we leave out of con-
sideration the probably inessential difference in radioactivity, the
two kinds are very closely, if not exactly, alike in every respect,
excepting atomic weight, density, and immediately related prop-
erties involving weight, such as solubility. Thorium. lead may
be a third variety, with similar relations. Shall we call these
substances different elements, or the same? The best answer is
that proposed by Professor Soddy, who invented a new name, and
called them “isotopes” of the same element.

Since every new fact concerning the behavior of the elements gives
a new possible means of discovering something about their nature,
and since these facts are of especially significant kind, the anomaly
is of more than passing interest, and may be said to constitute one
of the most interesting and puzzling situations now presented to the
chemist who looks for the deeper meanings of things.

Many new queries arise in one’s mind from a study of the data.
Among them is a question as to the nature of ordinary lead, which
possesses a less reasonable atomic weight than the radioactive variety.
Why should this state of things exist ?

Ordinary lead may be either a pure substance, or else a mixture of
uranium-lead with lead of yet higher atomic weight, perhaps 208.
The latter substance might be formed, as Soddy points out, if thorium
(over 232) lost six atoms of helium, and he and Hénigschmid have
found quantitative evidence of its existence in thorium minerals.

After reviewing all the data, Prof. F. W. Clarke has brought
forward an interesting and reasonable hypothesis explaining the

1 Tor the sake of better comparison, all the results given are those obtained at Harvard. No results of
experiments elsewhere are inconsistent with these,

218 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

difference between the several kinds of lead. He points out that
whereas we have every reason to believe that uranium and thorium
lead are the results of disintegration of heavier atoms, ordinary lead
may be imagined to be the product of a far earlier synthesis or evolu-
tion from smaller atoms. The hypothesis might be supported by the
analogy of the synthesis and decomposition of organic substances,
which by no means always follow similar paths; it seems to be con-
sistent with most, if not all, of the facts now known.

On the other hand, may not the uniformity of ordinary lead and
its difference from either of the radioactive leads be almost equally
capable of interpretation in quite a different fashion? Whenever,
in the inconceivably distant past, the element lead was evolved, it is
hardly to be supposed that uranium-lead and thorium-lead could
have been entirely absent. The conditions must have been chaotic and
favorable to mixture. When the two or more forms were mixed,
none of the processes of nature would separate them. Therefore they
must appear millions of years afterwards in an equably mixed state
on earth, constituting our ordinary lead. There may have been more
than two forms of lead; but two forms, one possessing an atomic
weight 206 and the other, an atomic weight over 208, would account
for all the facts. The identity in nature of all the common lead on
earth might indicate merely that at one time all the matter now con-
stituting the earth was liquid or gaseous in violent agitation, so that
all the kinds of lead were thoroughly commingled before solidifica-
tion. This explanation, if it could be confirmed, would furnish im-
portant evidence concerning the early history of planets. So far
afield may a difference of half a per cent in weight between two kinds
of atoms so small as to be far beyond the possible range of our most
piercing means of actual observation, carry the inquiring in-
vestigator !

The true answers to these questions are not to be found by specula-
tion, such as that just detailed, however suggestive such speculation
may be. They are to be found by careful observation. for exampic,
the doubt as to the nature of ordinary lead can only be decided by
discovering whether or not it may be separated into two constituents.
Since weight (or mass) is the only known quality distinguishing
between the several isotopes or kinds of lead, weight (or mass) must
be made the basis of separation. Hence the chief hope of separating
isotopes of lead lies in the method of fractional diffusion, as has been
already suggested by many other experimenters on this subject.
Promising preliminary experiments preparatory to such an under-
taking have already been begun at Harvard. and before long more
light may be obtained.

The idea that other elementary substances also may be mixtures of
two or more isotopes has been advanced by several chemists. Espe-

RADIOACTIVE LEAD—RICHARDS. 219

cially if ordinary lead should really be found to be thus complicated,
many, if not all, other elements should be tested in the same way.
The outcome, while not in the least affecting our table of atomic
weights as far as practical purposes are concerned, might lead to
highly interesting theoretical conclusions.

How can such remote scientific knowledge, even if it satisfies our
ever-insistent intellectual curiosity, be of any practical use? Who
can tell? It must be admitted that the practical value is apparently
shght as regards any immediate application, but one can never know
how soon any new knowledge concerning the nature of things may
bear unexpected fruit. Faraday had no conception of the electric
locomotive or the power-plants of Niagara when he performed those
crucial experiments with magnets and wires that laid the basis for
the dynamo. Nearly 50 years elapsed before his experiments on elec-
tric induction in moving wires bore fruit in a practical electric light-
ing system; and yet more years before the trolley car, depending
equally upon the principles discovered by Faraday, became an every-
day occurrence. At the time of discovery, even if the wide bearing
and extraordinary usefulness of his experiments could have been fore-
seen by him, they were certainly hidden from the world at large.

The laws of nature can not be intelligently apphed until they are
understood, and in order to understand them, many experiments
bearing upon the ultimate nature of things must be made, in order
that all may be combined in a far-reaching generalization im-
possible without the detailed knowledge upon which it rests. When
mankind discovers the fundamental laws underlying any set of
phenomena, these phenomena come in much larger measure than be-
fore under his control, and are applicable for his service. Until we
understand the laws, all depends upon chance. Hence, merely from
the practical point of view, concerning the material progress of hu-
manity, the exact understanding of the laws of nature is one of the
most important of all the problems presented to man; and the un-
known laws underlying the nature of the elements are obviously
among the most fundamental of these laws of nature.

Such gain in knowledge brings with it augmented responsibilities.
Science gives human beings vastly increased power. This power has
immeasurably beneficent possibilities, but it may be used for ill as
well as for good. Science has recently been blamed by superficial
critics, but she is not at fault if her great potentialities are sometimes
perverted to serve malignant ends. Is not such atrocious perver-
sion due rather to the fact that the ethical enlightenment of a part
of the human race has not kept pace with the progress of science?
May mankind be generous and high-minded enough to use the boun-
tiful resources of nature, not for evil, but for good, in the days to
come!

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SPHAGNUM MOSS: WAR SUBSTITUTE FOR
COTTON IN ABSORBENT SURGICAL DRESS-
INGS.'

By Prof. GrEorcr E. NIcHOLs,

Osborn Botanical Laboratory, Yale University.

[With 4 plates. ]
INTRODUCTORY.

Along in the late seventies of the last century a laborer at one of
the outlying peat moors in northern Germany accidentally sustained
a severe lacerated wound of the forearm. In the absence of any-
thing better to use his fellow workmen bound up the wound with
fragments of the peat which happened to be lying near, and it was
not until 10 days later that the man was able to secure surgical
attention. Imagine the surprise of the surgeon when, on removing
the improvised dressing, it was found that the injury had completely
healed.?

With this incident the use of sphagnum in present-day surgery
may be said to have originated. As a matter of fact, however, its
use in this connection is not a new thing at all; it is merely a modern
and scientific revival of a very ancient practice. In parts of Great
Britain, according to Porter,’ from time immemorial bog moss has
been used by country people in the treatment of boils and discharg-
ing wounds. In Scotland and Ireland it was employed many cen-
turies ago for practically the same purpose that it is being used
to-day; and moss was “at least recommended for use by army sur-
geons, both in the Napoleonic and the Franco-Prussian wars.”

We must acknowledge our indebtedness to the Germans, however,
for demonstrating the value of the sphagnum in the modern, anti-
septic methods of surgery. Following the incident which has been
mentioned above, investigations were set on foot as to the nature
and the properties beth of the sphagnum and of the peat to which it
gives rise, and a number of papers were published in German medi-

1Text in part taken from a paper entitled ‘‘Sphagnum Moss and Its Use in Surgical
Dressings,” published in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, Vol. 19, Septem-
ber, 1918.

2 This incident is related by Neuber (Arch. f. klin. Chir. 27: 757-788. 1882), a German
surgeon who at that time was connected with the surgical clinie at Kiel.

3Porter, J. B. Sphagnum surgical dressings. Internat. Jour. Surgery 80: 129-135,
f. 1-8. 1917. Reprinted as a separate by the Canadian Red Cross.

221

222 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

cal journals, in which the sphagnum, as related to surgical practice,
was discussed from various points of view; and within a very few
years this moss came to be accepted in Germany as a standard
material for surgical dressings, being used not only in private prac-
tice but in some of the largest hospitals. Outside of Germany the
sphagnum is known to have been used in this country by at least one
prominent surgeon fully 20 years ago, but in general its value for
use in surgical dressings has not been appreciated until quite recently.

USE OF SPHAGNUM SURGICAL DRESSINGS DURING THE RECENT WAR.

Sphagnum was probably first used on a large scale during the
Russian-Japanese war, when it was extensively employed by the
Japanese as a first-aid dressing. “ Many of the wounds thus dressed
with sphagnum were not inspected again until the patient reached
Japan, which often took 10 days, but almost invariably the wound
was in good condition; much better it is said than when cotton was
used.” ?

The history of its use in the recent war is somewhat as follows.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war it began to be feared in Eng-
land that there might be a serious shortage of cotton, and experi-
ments were made with various materials—oakum, wood pulp, and
even sawdust—in the hope of finding some satisfactory substitute.
It was at this time that attention was directed by C. W. Cathcart,
an Edinburgh surgeon attached to the British Army medical forces,
to the neglected possibilities of the sphagnum.’ In 1914 sphagnum
dressings were given a thorough try-out at one of the large war
hospitals in Scotland, and the results proved so satisfactory that
sphagnum was at once recommended for general use. In September,
1915, sphagnum dresssings were formally accepted by the British
war office. At this time the total British output of sphagnum sur-
gical dressings was barely 250 a month. But the work rapidly as-
sumed large proportions, and we are informed by the London
Graphic for September 2, 1916, that the collecting and drying of
sphagnum moss and making it up into surgical dressings “has be-
come a national industry ” in Scotland, and that “the work is being
extended all over England, Ireland, and Wales.” By the end of
1916 the monthly output of sphagnum surgical dressings from British
organizations had come to exceed 200,000.

On this side of the Atlantic the importance of the sphagnum en-
terprise was first brought into prominence early in 1917, by Professor
J. B. Porter, of McGill University. Largely through his efforts a

1 Hotson, J. W. Sphagnum as a surgical dressing. pp. 1-31. f. 1-78.° Bulletin issued
by the Northwest Division of the American Red Cross. Seattle, 1918. Reprinted in
Jour. Amer. Peat Soc. 11: 195-226. 1918.

2 See especially a paper by Catheart, C. W., and Balfour, I. B., in the Scotsman for
November 17, 1914, and one by Cathcart in Brit. Med, Jour, 88; 187-139, 1915.

SPHAGNUM MOSS—NICHOLS. 923

strong sphagnum organization was built up by the Canadian Red
Cross, which, during the summer of 1918, was turning out upwards
of 200,000 sphagnum dressings per month. The total British output
of sphagnum surgical dressings toward the end of the war is esti-
mated to have been in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 per month.

The sphagnum work of the American Red Cross was organized
under the leadership of the late Harry James Smith, brilliant New
York playwright, in the East, and of Professor J. W. Hotson, of the
University of Washington, in the West. Although the sphagnum
was not formally approved by the American Red Cross until March,
“1918, more than half a million sphagnum surgical dressings were
turned out in this country between this time and the cessation of
hostilities. Most of these were made by the Chapters in the Pacific
Northwest where abundant supplies of sphagnum suitable for use
in surgical dressings were early located, but many were made in the
East. It was not until the summer of 1918, however, that adequate
supplies of raw material were located in the East and the first car-
load of eastern sphagnum was being loaded (at Old Town, Maine)
the day the armistice was signed. Our sphagnum enterprise was one
of the many which the abrupt termination of hostilities nipped in

the bud.

ADVANTAGES OF SPHAGNUM OVER COTTON FOR USE IN SURGICAL DRESSINGS.

The introduction of the sphagnum as a substitute for cotton in
absorbent surgical dressings was not accomplished without consid-
erable protest on the part of Army surgeons. But, although they
were objected to on various grounds, the sphagnum dressings grad-
nally won their way, not merely as a necessary makeshift, but on
their actual merits; for there seems to be little question that for
war hospital work the sphagnum moss is not merely a satisfactory
substitute; in many respects, properly made sphagnum dressings are
superior to dressings made of cotton.

The advantages of the sphagnum for this purpose are as follows:

1. Sphagnum will absorb liquids much more rapidly than absorb-
ent cotton—about three times as fast.

2. Sphagnum will take up liquids in much greater amount than
in absorbent cotton. A cotton pad will absorb only five or six times
its weight of water, as compared with 16, 18, and even as high as 22
times for a sphagnum pad.

3. Sphagnum will retain liquids much better than cotton, which
means, of course, that sphagnum dressings need not be changed as
frequently as those made of cotton.

4. The better grades of sphagnum “have the valuable property of
distributing whatever liquid they absorb throughout their whole

1These observations are taken mainly from Vorter, op. cit.

224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

mass.” An absorbent pad of sphagnum will continue to suck up
fluid discharges until it is pretty uniformly saturated throughout,
whereas a cotton pad ordinarily ceases to function long before its
theoretical capacity has been reached.

5. When properly made, not only are sphagnum dressings fully
as soft as those made of cotton, but, owing to the loose, open struc-
ture of the moss, they are cooler and less irritating to the patient.

6. In times of emergency, sphagnum can be procured more cheaply
than cotton. Being a product of nature, all that is necessary is
to go and gather it, and with an abundance of volunteer workers
available, practically the only expense involved is the cost of trans-
portation.

Now, in ordinary hospital work, as Professor Porter has pointed
out, the comparative inferiority of cotton as an absorbent is not of
any great consequence. Here, for the most part, the wounds are
the result of operations, and they are made by the surgeon himself.
They are comparatively slight, and, what is particularly import-
ant, they are perfectly sterile. Discharging wounds are exceptional.
For ordinary surgical work it is doubtful whether sphagnum pos-
sesses any special superiority over cotton, if indeed, all things taken
into account, it is equal to it; and it therefore seems improbable that
the sphagnum dressings are destined to come into general use, now
that the war is over, except, perhaps, for special purposes. In war-
hospital practice, however, conditions are very different, for here
every wound may be taken as infected; discharging wounds are the
rule, not the exception. Furthermore, “the methods of treatment
recently so successfully developed by Carrel, Dakin, Wright, and
others deliberately increase these discharges to a very great extent.
For such cases, unless absorbent dressings are to be done away with
altogether, sphagnum is greatly preferable to any other available
material.”

RECOGNITION OF SPHAGNUM IN THE FIELD.

The genus Sphagnum is classed among the mosses. Unlike the so-
called “sea mosses,” or seaweeds, and the lichens, which are some-
times mistaken for mosses, the true mosses are leafy plants. Com-
paratively small, seldom being more than a few inches high, and
growing in all sorts of habitats, the mosses are conspicuous chiefly
on account of the great masses of vegetation which they commonly
form. The sphagnums (pl. 1) include some of our largest and
most conspicuous mosses.

Sphagnum differs from other kinds of moss in a number of im-
pnortant respects.

First of all, a sphagnum plant seldom exhibits the deep leaf-green
color of an ordinary moss. When wet, it commonly is a pale green;

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Nichols. PLATE lI.

Fic. I.—THREE REPRESENTATIVE SPECIES OF SPHAGNUM.

From left to right: S. fuscum, S. papillosum, S. Girgensohnii. The first and last are not suited to
surgical purposes.

FiG. 2.—SPHAGNUM OF SURGICAL QUALITY (S. PAPILLOSUM).
The specimens shown at the center are the best. From House and Garden Magazine.

SPHAGNUM MOSS—NICHOLS. 225

when dry, it may be almost white. Very frequently the green is
hidden almost completely by pigments of various colors, so that the
plants may be almost any shade from bright red and pink to russet
green and dark brown or almost black. These colors form a very dis-
tinctive feature of many sphagnums when they are fresh; in nature,
their mass effect is very striking, and they are of great help when
it comes to recognizing material in the field.

But color alone is hardly a sufficient test. Other distinguishing
marks are afforded by the peculiarities of the branches and of the
leaves. If a single sphagnum plant is examined it will be seen, first
of all, that it consists of a main axis, on which are borne numerous
short branches. It will be noted, further, that these branches are not
borne singly, but in clusters of from three to six. No other moss pro-
duces its branches in clusters, after the manner of the sphagnum.
Along most of the stem these branch clusters are scattered, but toward
the tip they usually grow so close together as to form a rather
compact rosette which sometimes is mistaken for a flower. It might
be added that the branches in each cluster are of two sorts: One
kind stands out at right angles to the main axis; the other kind
droops down alongside the stem and forms a sort of loose, spongy
matting around it.

And not only is the arrangement of the branches on the
stem distinctive. Quite as striking is the arrangement of the
leaves on the branches. Every ‘branch is completely covered
over by a series of tiny, more or less spoon-shaped leaves, which
loosely overlap one another, somewhat after the manner of tiles
on the roof of a house.

STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES TO WHICH SPHAGNUM OWES ITS EFFICIENCY
AS AN ABSORBENT.

To a limited degree certain of the features already described
adapt the sphagnum to absorb liquids—the overlapping of the
leaves around the branches, and the sponge-like matting of the
pendent branches around the stem. But the real secret of the
sphagnum’s efficiency as an absorbent lies in the remarkable micro-
scopic structure of its leaves.

Before discussing the somewhat complicated sphagnum leaf, I will
describe briefly the much simpler structure of an ordinary moss leaf
as it looks under the microscope (fig. 1). Such a leaf consists of a
single layer of tiny microscopic cells. Seen in surface view the in-
dividual cells are polygonal in outline, but in reality, considered as
solids, they are prismatic in shape. All the cells in the leaf are
essentially similar to one another; without exception they are green
and living, and they are all of approximately the same size and shape.

226 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

But in a sphagnum leaf (fig. 1) the structure is much more com-
plex. Here also there is just a single layer of cells, but these cells
are of two totally different kinds. First, as in the ordinary moss
leaf, there are the green, living cells. But these green cells, in the
sphagnum leaf, are very small and very much elongated, and they
are arranged to form a sort of open network which runs all through
the leaf. In the meshes of this network occurs the second kind of
cell. These cells are large, without color, dead, and perfectly empty.
It is to the presence of these large, colorless cells and to their remark-

A SIMPLE MOSS LEAF

Biock SECTION OF Surrace 2

Portion of Lear View oF
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LEAF

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DREAD

Brock SECTION oF = SuRFACE
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h
\

able structure, which I shall describe next, that the sphagnum owes
its wonderful power to take up liquids.

Now, to a certain extent, the cells of any moss leaf are able to
absorb liquids; but the ability of the ordinary green cells in this
respect is insignificant when compared with that of the large, color-
less cells of the sphagnum leaf. These, because of their capacity for
absorption, may well be referred to as the absorbing cells. There
are two features in these cells which especially adapt them to the
function of absorption: First, the wall of each and every one of

A SPHAGNUM LEAF

SPHAGNUM MOSS—_-NICHOLS. va ve |

the absorbing cells is punctured toward the outside by several
minute pores (fig. 2). It is through these pores that liquids are
sucked into the cells. Each cell, acting independently, sucks in
whatever liquid it comes in contact with until it is full. A sphag-
num plant, with its hundreds of leaves, each leaf containing hun-
dreds of these tiny absorbing cells, represents a highly efficient ab-
sorbing system. And this absorptive ability is not confined to plants
that are fresh; a dry, dead leaf is quite as efficient, when it comes
to taking up liquids, as a fresh one. This is due to the second
structural peculiarity of the absorbing cells; for inside of each

DIAGRAMMATIC CROSS. SECTION

SURFACE AND SECTIONAL
VIEWS OF
A SMALL PORTION OF ne

A SPHAGNUM LEAF

(HIGHLY MAGNIFIED) iain &

ACNE eee

H: Large, coLoRLess Oi
CELLS, DEAD, WITH
OUTER WALLS PER.
FORATED (P=PoRES),° H
AND WITH SPIRAL
BANDS OF THICKEN- 2 serch

Ina (T). Cis
eed 2

G: Smart , GREEN j Pun SS

CELLS, LIVING, AND D>

FORMING A NETWorK HH Tey

WHICH ENMESHES. Ree

THE COLORLESS TR,

GREE SI

one of these cells there is a spiral, spring-like coil of thickening (or
commonly a series of hoop-lke ribs of thickening) which presses
outward, as it were, against the walls of the cell and serves to keep it
from collapsing. Even after a leaf has become completely dried out,
this “ framework” serves to keep the cell cavity open.

Incidentally, while it is the leaves which are most efficient in
the absorption of liquids, in some varieties of sphagnum both the
stem and branches are enveloped by one or more layers of absorbing
cells, essentially similar to those found in the leaves.

Jt now becomes perfectly clear why it is that sphagnum is so
much superior to cotton as an absorbent. In cotton, liquids, for the

228 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

most part, are merely held within a tangle of threads. In the sphag-
num we find a highly specialized absorbing system, made up pri-
marily of a vast series of absorbing cells, but supplemented to a
high degree by various other structural peculiarities of the sphag-
num plant.

SURGICAL AND NON-SURGICAL SPECIES OF SPHAGNUM.

By no means all species of sphagnum are of equal value for use in
surgical dressings. Failure to appreciate this fact, and the indis-
criminate use of any and all species of sphagnum, without doubt, was
responsible for much of the dissatisfaction with sphagnum dressings
which was expressed by many surgeons in the early days of the
sphagnum enterprise. Some species of sphagnum (pl. 1), indeed,
are practically useless for this purpose and by far the larger number
are of little value. On the continent of North America there are at
least 40 different species of sphagnum; in the little State of Con-
necticut alone there are no less than 25; and of all these there are only
4 that have actually been used to any extent in making surgical
dressings. It is not enough, then, to be able to recognize sphagnum
as sphagnum. One must be able to differentiate between suitable
and unsuitable varieties.

Now, from a botanical point of view, the sphagnums are an ex-
ceedingly difficult group of plants to deal with. The accurate de-
termination of specimens is work for an expert. Fortunately, how-
ever, the recognition of material suitable or otherwise for surgical
purposes is not especially difficult, since all four of the species
which are most highly recommended belong to one well-marked sec-
tion of the genus, the so-called “ Cymbifolium” group. With a lit-
tle training and experience it is well within the ability of almost
anyone to at least distinguish with some degree of certainty between
sphagnum which very lkely will prove of surgical value and
sphagnum which quite certainly will not.

Without going too much into detail, then, we will consider next
just what qualities are desirable in sphagnum material which is to be
used in surgical dressings.

First of all, the highest possible capacity for absorbing liquids is
essential; and with reference to this qualification there is a wide
range of variation between different species. In general, the more
robust varieties of sphagnum are better than the more delicate;
forms with large leaves, dense foliage, and close-set branches are
much better than varieties with small leaves, skimpy foliage, and
scattered branches. In the second place, it is essential that the ma-
terial should be soft and flexible, and at the same time that it should
possess a considerable degree of tensile strength. Here, again, there
is great variation between different species. In general, coarse or

SPHAGNUM MOSS—NICHOLS. 229

stringy forms, or forms with stiff or brittle stems or harsh texture,
must be avoided.

The qualifications specified above are fulfilled in varying degree
by different members of the Cymbifolium group. - In eastern North
America, Sphagnum papillosum (pl. 1), to a greater degree than
any other species, exhibits the requisite absorbency, softness, and
strength and is generally regarded as being much more satisfactory
for use in surgical dressings than any other form. Locally, under
exceptional conditions of growth, S. palustre, S. magellanicum, or
S. imbricatum—especially S. palustre—may compare very favor-
ably with S. papillosum, but as a rule these tend to develop too much
stem in proportion to foliage or have too harsh a texture to make
ideal surgical material. In the humid climate of the Pacific North-
west, however, S. palustre appears to develop even more luxuriantly
than S. papillosum and is there regarded as the most desirable
species.?

In the field, S. papillosum can usually be distinguished by its very
robust habit and its coppery to brownish color; it is never red or
purple. The other three species ordinarily are less robust. S.
palustre commonly is pale greenish white in color; S. magellanicum
pink or purplish red; S. zmbricatum green or frequently tinged with
brown. These color distinctions are most pronounced in plants ex-
posed to the open sunlight; when growing in the shade all four
species are usually green.

In this connection it should be emphasized, not only that. different
varieties of sphagnum exhibit a wide range of variation when it
comes to their capacity for absorbing liquids, as well as in other
features which adapt them to surgical use, but also that the very same
species may vary greatly in different localities. Growing under
certain conditions it may acquire that soft, “ bushy” habit so desir-
able in material which is to be used for surgical dressings, while
growing under other conditions it will be harsh, stringy, and quite
unfit for surgical purposes. Even Sphagnum papillosum exhibits
considerable variation in this respect.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF SURGICAL SPHAGNUM.

The genus Sphagnum is cosmopolitan in its distribution, and all
. of the species which have been mentioned as being of surgical value
are widely distributed in Eurasia, as well as on this continent. In

1Mention might also be made here of S. compactum which, when well developed,
would appear to be even better adapted to surgical work than the forms more gen-
erally recommended. This species possesses an unusually soft texture and exhibits a
remarkably high capacity for absorbing liquids. Unfortunately, while very widely
distributed, it is only occasionally that it is found in sufficient abundance and luxuri-
ance to be of practical value.

136650°—20 16

230 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

general, it can be said that the sphagnums grow best in regions
where the climate is moist the year round, and where the summers
are not too hot. They develop most luxuriantly near the seacoast,
particularly along coasts where fogs are frequent. They are better
developed northward than southward.

In North America, Sphagnum papillosum ranges throughout
much of Canada, extending southward to New Jersey and Wisconsin
in the East and to Washington (probably to Oregon) in the West.
S. palustre, S. magellanicum and S. imbricatum range somewhat
farther south, but, so far as material of good surgical quality is con-
cerned, their geographic distribution may be taken as practically co-
extensive with that of S. papillosum. The finest development of
surgical sphagnum in North America, without question, is in the
Pacific Northwest, in the humid strip along the coast from Oregon
to Alaska. Hotson' even goes so far as to estimate that fully 90
per cent of the sphagnum in the United States, suitable for surgical
dressings, is located in the Pacific Northwest. The quality of the
material in this region is far superior to that of Eastern moss, and
it is from here that most of the sphagnum used by the American
Red Cross has been obtained... In the East, sphagnum of surgical
quality is extensively developed along the coast from eastern Maine
northward; most of the moss used by the Canadian Red Cross has
come from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Samples of good
surgical moss have been seen from southern Michigan and Minne-
sota, but, on the whole, material from the interior does not compare
at all favorably with material from along the seacoast.

LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF SURGICAL SPHAGNUM,

Taken as a class, the sphagnums are moisture-loving plants; they
are hydrophytes. In humid, northern regions, such as coastal British
Columbia and Nova Scotia, they are very widely distributed, oc-
curring not only in swamps but on uplands as well. But farther
south, in regions where the climate is drier and the summers hotter,
they are mostly confined to swamps. The sphagnums grow most
luxuriantly and most abundantly in bogs (pl. 2), and this unique
type of swamp therefore is worthy of special comment.

Bogs are perhaps most widely known on account of the deposits
of peat by which they are commonly underlain, and because of the
potential fuel value of these deposits the bogs of this country have
been the subject of Government investigations for several years past.
Bogs are characteristically developed in wet areas where the soil is
poorly drained. Throughout much of the eastern United ‘States
most of the areas which to-day are occupied by bogs formerly were

1Hotson, J. W. Sphagnum from bog to bandage. Puget Sound Biol. Sta. Bull. 2:
211-247. f. 1-48. 1919. :

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Nichols. PLATE 2.

Fic. |.—RAISED BOG IN EASTERN MAINE.

This bog covers an area of several square miles. From Geographic Review.

Fic. 2.—BoGGY “‘FLOWAGE”” SWAMP IN EASTERN MAINE.
An ideal habitat for surgical sphagnum.

SPHAGNUM MOSS—NIGHOLS. el |

occupied by lakes or ponds, and the same is true of many of the
bogs in eastern Canada and the Pacific Northwest. A pond may be-
come filled in and replaced by a bog wholly through plant activity.
The filling-in very commonly is brought about through the agency
of what is known as a floating mat: The vegetation along the edge
of the pond grows so vigorously that it spreads away from the shore,
out over the open water. In this way there is developed what is
commonly referred to as a quaking bog. This raft of vegetation,
floating on the surface, rising and falling with fluctuations in the
water level, may be underlain by clear water or by soft, bottomless
ooze. So firm, however, may the mat become that while the surface
trembles and quakes when you walk over it, nevertheless it is quite
capable of supporting the weight of a man. A quaking bog is an
ideal place to look for surgical sphagnum.

Bogs can be distinguished from other types of swamp primarily
by certain peculiarities in their vegetation, which in turn are attrib-
utable to peculiarities in the soil conditions. In certain respects the
plant population of all bogs is essentially similar, no matter what
section of the country they occur in. One of their outstanding fea-
tures is the nature of the bushy element in the vegetation, which, al-
most invariably, is made up very largely of members of the heath
family: Such plants as the bog laurel and bog rosemary, the cassan-
dra, the Labrador tea, and the cranberries. These are mostly absent
from swamps of the ordinary description. Bogs frequently are tree-
less, and when trees are present they are usually scattered and
stunted. In eastern Maine an open, bushy bog is commonly referred
to as a heath, in Europe similar areas are called heath or moor.

In the East the characteristic tree of bogs is the black spruce. In
the latitude of southern New England this tree is seldom encountered
except in bogs, while farther north, where it is much more generally
distributed, the dwarfed bog form of it is so distinct from the form
that grows on uplands that the two are commonly treated as distinct
species.t. In the Pacific Northwest there apparently is no tree which
is strictly comparable in its habits with the black spruce in the East,
but bog specimens of various trees, when compared with specimens
growing on better-drained soils, appear noticeably impoverished.

From our point:of view, however, the most significant feature of a
bog is the wonderful development here of the sphagnums. Almost
invariably these constitute one of the most prominent elements in the
vegetation. To a certain extent the sphagnums may grow in almost
any wet, springy swamp, whether it is open or wooded; but even in
regions such as Nova Scotia and western Washington, where climatic
conditions are most congenial to their development, the sphagnums

1See the writer’s comment on this point in Trans, Conn, Acad, Arts and Sciences 22,
p. 257, 1918.

232 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

grow best in the bogs. So abundant, as a rule, are the sphagnums in
this particular type of swamp that many bogs are popularly referred
to as moss bogs.

Bogs do not always originate from ponds. In the Pacific North-
west, in northern New England and eastern Canada, and to some
degree in less humid regions, they may develop in flat, poorly drained
situations of almost any description, wherever the ground is wet
enough to favor the growth of the sphagnums; and in this connec-
tion there is one remarkable type of bog that is of particular interest,
namely, the so-called raised bog (pl. 2). These are met with only
in regions where the climate is exceptionally congenial to the sphag-
nums, for they owe their formation almost wholly to the activity of
these plants. The raised bog of North America corresponds to the
“ Hochmoor” of northern Europe. Sometimes they are referred to
as hanging bogs or climbing bogs.

A raised bog may originate on any flat, sphagnum-covered surface
where the slope is not too steep. Ordinarily, it starts as a bog of the
usual type. The mass of sphagnum, absorbing the water that falls in
the form of rain or snow, slowly grows upward, and eventually the
mossy surface of the bog, underlain by a spongelike mass of peat,
may come to lie 10, 15, and even 20 feet above the original flat sub-
stratum. Raised bogs are so termed from the fact that commonly
they are much higher near their centers than at their margins, their
surface contour, in typical cases, resembling an inverted saucer.

Because of their dependence on atmospheric moisture, raised bogs
are confined to regions of copious precipitation and high atmospheric
humidity. Their presence in any region is significant, in the present
connection, because it indicates climatic conditions suitable to the
growth of surgical sphagnum. In Nova Scotia and coastal New
Brunswick, where sphagnum of surgical quality is widely distrib-
uted, for example, raised bogs are a frequent type. The same is
true of eastern Maine. South and west of these regions (in the
east), however, raised bogs are practically absent and sphagnum of
surgical quality 1s of very local occurrence.t But it should be added,
in this connection, that the absence of raised bogs from a region does
not necessarily indicate an absence of surgical sphagnum; singularly
enough raised bogs are not developed to any extent in the Pacific
Northwest,? a fact which I am not prepared to definitely explain. It
is further important to note that, while their presence in a region
indicates that climatic conditions are congenial to sphagnum de-
velopment, the raised bogs themselves, except locally in wet depres-
sions, do not afford edaphic conditions suitable to the development

1In this connection, see Nichols, G. E., Raised bogs in eastern Maine, Geog. Rey.
7:159-167. f. 1-2. 1919.

*See Rigg, G. B., Early stages in bog succession. Puget Sound Biol. Sta. Bull. 2: 195-
210. pl. 29, 30. 1919.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Nichols. PLATE 3.

Fic. |.—BALING SPHAGNUM IN WESTERN WASHINGTON.

From Puget Sound Biological Station Bulletin.

FIG. 2.— PICKING OVER SPHAGNUM AT McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL.

From Journal of the New York Botanical Garden.

SPHAGNUM MOSS—NICHOLS. was

of surgical qualities of moss; most of the bog surface is too dry. The
best surgical material, and by far the largest quantities (this is par-
ticularly true of Sphagnum papillosum) is to be found in the wet,
flat, quaking bogs which border lakes and ponds, and which usually
abound in the regions of raised bogs.

PROSPECTING FOR SURGICAL SPHAGNUM.

In surveying any district for surgical sphagnum, there are a few
practical points which it is well to bear in mind. A wooded bog
may contain plenty of sphagnum, but for our purpose it is rarely of
any value. The good moss almost invariably grows in open bogs.
Again, an open bog all overgrown with bushes, where the sphag-
num forms great soft cushions a foot or so high, is apt to afford
pretty poor picking. There may be plenty of moss, but most of
it will prove to be of the wrong variety; or if it is of the right
variety it will be of poor quality. For that matter, it should be
said that in almost any bog there is sure to be a large proportion of
undesirable material; commonly the bulk of the sphagnum will
consist of species that are of no use at all for surgical purposes.

The best qualities of moss always grow in the wetter parts of a
bog. A dry bog is apt to contain no material whatever of surgical
value; a wet one may be full of it. The best kind of a bog for
surgical moss is a wet cranberry bog: not a bog of the artificial
variety that is so common in southern New Jersey, but one where
the cranberries grow scattered over a soft carpet of moss, inter-
mixed with more or less “cranberry grass” (Carex filiformis and
C. oligosperma), with perhaps a scanty growth of low bushes. In
exploring any bog for surgical sphagnum, always look for the
wet places: the soft, quaky spots around the edges of ponds, the mushy
depressions, and the wet furrows; and steer clear of the bushy places.

COLLECTION AND PREPARATION OF MATERIAL FOR USE.!

The moss is usually collected by hand, but in some cases forks can
be used to advantage. In collecting, emphasis is placed on gathering
clean material, as free as possible from other plants and rubbish,
since sooner or later all extraneous matter must be removed by hand.
After being pulled up, the moss is squeezed to remove excess water
and then packed in, a gunny-sack. On some of the Pacific Coast
“moss drives” as many as 2,000 sacks of moss were gathered in a
single day. If proper precautions are taken against mildewing, the
moss, as it comes from the bog, can be stored without injury for

1 See detailed instructions in papers by Professor Porter (Porter, J. B., Instructions for
the collection and preparation of sphagnum moss for surgical purposes. Circular issued
by Canadian Red Cross Society. pp. 1-7. 1917) and Professor Hotson (1918 and 1919,
op. cit.).

234 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

several months. Before it is ready to be made up into dressings,
however, it must be sorted over (pl. 3) and then dried. In sort-
ing, all foreign material is carefully culled out, and at the same
time the moss may be separated into two or more grades. The
drying is best accomplished by spreading out the sorted moss in
the open air, preferably on drying racks made for the purpose. On
account, however, of the obvious difficulties associated with drying
large quantities of moss in the open, various methods have been
devised for drying it indoors (pl. 4). As soon as it has been
properly dried the sphagnum is ready to be made up into dressings.

SPHAGNUM ABSORBENT DRESSINGS.

The simplest type of sphagnum absorbent dressing consists of a
cloth bag, which is loosely filled with the moss and then sewed up.
The bag is made of light weight muslin of close weave, the usual
gauze covering being impracticable on account of its open texture,
which permits fine particles of moss to work through and cause
irritation. This is the type of dressing authorized by the British
War Office. A modification, developed by the Canadian Red Cross,
embodies the use of an inner envelope of thin Scot paper tissue to
contain the sphagnum, thus permitting the use of gauze for the outer
covering. The type of pad developed and adopted by the American
Red Cross (pl. 4) is essentially similar to the one just mentioned,
except that it has a backing of non-absorbent cotton. In favor of
the American type of pad, it is urged that it has the advantage of
not becoming quickly wet through to the back. In favor of the
simpler types it can be said that, besides being less expensive and
less complicated to make, these afford better ventilation, thus being
cooler and more comfortable. For certain methods of treatment the
American type of pad unquestionably is superior, but “ for ordinary
cases of infected wounds the straight sphagnum pad, made either
with a muslin cover or with gauze and tissue, is in every respect
equal to the cotton backed pad:” in fact, in many respects, it is
better. Full directions for making the different types of sphagnum
absorbent pad are given in the papers by Professors Porter and
Hotson, already referred to.

1This opinion is expressed by Professor Porter in a recent letter to the writer. IIe
further emphasizes ‘‘ the especial suitability of the straight sphagnum pad for tropical
use and for men who have been burned,” as is the case with so many naval casualties.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Nichols. PLATE 4.

FIG. 1.—RACKS FOR DRYING SPHAGNUM INDOORS.
Red Cross workrooms, Seattle, Wash. From Puget Sound Biological Station Bulletin.

ae yeeny \

ii LA 13 x

BACKING or ORDINARY
NT COTTON

4

4 OUTER WRAPPING
of CHEESE-CLOTR

mer Sar murs,

FIG. 2.—A SPHAGNUM ABSORBENT PAD OF THE AMERICAN TYPE,
From House and Garden Magazine.

HISTORY OF MILITARY MEDICINE AND ITS
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCKE.*

By Cot. WESTON P. CHAMBERLAIN, Medical Corps, U. S. Army.

J.

The use of arms, however primitive, for offense or defense, must
be almost coeval with the appearance of man upon this planet. The
carvings of prehistoric races depict the march of organized armies,
and from the deepest shadows of history echoes faintly the clash of
contending nations. In ancient times the art of war, like other
fields of human endeavor, was simple in its practice, victory depend-
ing largely upon numbers and brute strength, though the successes
of the great commanders of the past, such as Alexander, Pyrrhus,
Hannibal, and Caesar, were due in part to superior equipment, and
in part to a better grasp by them of the principles of military tac-
tics and strategy. With the increasing complexity of civilization
the art of war has not been left behind. Its demands along the lines
of equipment, personnel, and brains have steadily increased, and
to-day more than ever before, we find in Europe that the latest dis-
coveries in every branch of science, the coordinated energies of the
entire nation, and the keenest of intellects are requisitioned to add
to the death-dealing powers of the contending races.

While war dissipates treasure, and sacrifices human life by reason
of disease and injury, it is the duty of the medical officer to prevent
needless wastage of life and limb, first in order to promote military
efficiency and secondly in the interest of humanity. And let a be
emphasized at the outset that to-day the first duty of military medi-
cine is not humanitarianism. War in its essence is both cruel and
wasteful, putting the good of the whole above that of the individual,
and the.military medical service aims primarily to prevent wnneces-
sary waste and to remove from the front the inefficient, in order that
the supreme commander may have the largest possible number of
unhampered fighting men on the firing line. If there is a clash be-
tween the welfare of the wounded and the movements necessary for
the most efficient prosecution of the conflict, then humanitarianism

1 Reprinted by permission, from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Apr. 5, 1917.

235

236 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

must give way to military necessity, since victory is the paramount
consideration and ultimate success the only complete justification of
war. Consideration for the wounded must not be allowed to inter-
fere with the interests of the army as a whole, and it has been said
that the commander takes best care of his wounded by annihilating
the enemy as promptly as possible.

Like his combatant comrade the military medical officer must
bring to his aid, both in peace and in war, every resource known to
the healing art. In no other field of professional life is the physician
expected to be thoroughly familiar with so many diverse branches
of knowledge.

The development of military medicine and surgery began at the
same time and kept pace with the slow growth of those arts in civil
life. Egyptians, Babylonians, and Hebrews had physicians with
their armies, and Sanskrit accounts inform us that thosuands of
years ago the wounded were removed from the field of battle, and
taken care of in tents where beds of leaves were prepared for them.
For many ages priests assumed the role of physicians in both military
and civil practice. Homer tells us that several of the great com-
manders were skilled in the treatment of wounds, and that a fleet
of 30 ships was set aside fer the care and transportation of the
wounded—the first record of ships being used for that purpose.
That the work of the surgeon was appreciated in the time of Homer
is shown by the words he put into the mouth of Nestor:

“A surgeon skilled our wounds to heal
Is more than armies to the public weal.”
Homer also Jauded the two sons of Aesculapius, both for their

skill in arms and for their wisdom in surgery, and thus wrote of
them 1,200 years before the birth of Christ:

“Of two great surgeons, Podalirius stands
This hour surrounded by the Trojan bands,
And great Machaon, wounded, in his tent
Now wants the succor which so oft he lent.”
Again he describes an operation performed by one of the surgeons
as follows:

“Patroclus cut the forky steel away ;
While in his hand a bitter root he pressed,
The wound he washed and styptic juice infused;
The closing flesh that instant ceased to glow,
The wound to torture, and the blood to flow.”

As an example of the practice of a later Greek period, it is stated
that Xenophon had eight field surgeons with his 10,000 troops.

During the Roman republic officers of wealth and prominence had
their own private surgeons who accompanied them on the march, but

MILITARY MEDICINE—-CHAMBERLAIN. ZT

there were no special surgeons for the armies. <A regular military
medical service dates from the time of the Emperor Augustus. At
one period we are told that each cohort of 420 men had four sur-
geons, while each legion of 10 cohorts had a legionary physician.
In the navy there was one physician to each trireme. The physicians
were Romans, or naturalized foreigners, and received special instruc-
tion for their vocations. At this date hospitals (valetudinaria) were
established for the severely wounded who were cared for by male
attendants. Physicians to Roman legions were of two grades, but
commanded little respect, and their standing was on a par with
that of the noncommissioned officers. Under the influence of Chris-
tianity it became possible to secure more capable surgeons, and non-
combatant hospital corps men and litter bearers came into use. Their
duty was to remove the seriously wounded to a place of safety, and
to care for them, receiving a reward in silver for each man saved.
They were required to carry a supply of drinking water and to fur-
nish it as long as the wounded suffered from burning thirst. Each
army had a common hospital. The physicians had no executive
power and were subordinate to noncommissioned officers.

Abul Kasem, an Arabian surgeon of note living in the latter
part of the tenth century, in his work on medicine, devoted to the
practice of military surgery a chapter which embodied his own ex-
perience on the battlefield. The Helvetians regarded the treatment
of the wounded as a sacred duty, but limited its application to their
own soldiers, all wounded of the enemy being invariably killed. This
practice was sanctioned by many other nations.

After the decline of Rome, armies seem to have been without or-
ganized surgical assistance for many centuries. Wounded were re-
moved and cared for by their comrades and by female camp fol-
lowers. Up to the thirteenth century the practice of medicine was
largely carried out by monks, and when this was prohibited by Papal
decree, it fell into the hands of the barber-surgeons, who for many
years were the only representatives of a sanitary service with com-
batant units. The names of two military surgeons, Manniot and
Nigellus, are recorded in Doomesday Book, 20 years after the battle
of Hastings. In 1300 it appears that an effort was made to estab-
lish a medical corps in the English Army, but in the muster roll of
1346 no sanitary personnel is mentioned. In 1415, at the battle of
Agincourt, there were with King Henry V a physician, a surgeon,
and 12 assistants. Physicians, however, were for the nobles, not
for the common soldiers. Charles the Bold of Burgundy, in the
fifteenth century, is said to have been the first to attach surgeons
to troops instead of to officers. Gustavus Adolphus did the same
in 1630.

238 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

As the healing art slowly developed, a few better educated men
came to occupy the higher medico-military positions, but in general
there was no organized medical service in armies till about the six-
teenth century, and even then conditions were most primitive. Most
of the common soldiers with serious wounds were left to die where
they fell. If ill or permanently disabled, they were dismissed with
a little money to enable them to reach their home. As illustrative
of the practices of the times, it is related that Ambroise Paré, the
foremost military surgeon of the period about 1550, saw three des-
perately wounded soldiers placed with their backs against a wall.
An old campaigner inquired, “ Can those men get well?” to which
Paré replied “ No.” Thereupon the old soldier went over to them
and cut all their throats, as the chronicle puts it, “sweetly and with-
out malice.” When Paré upbraided him the old campaigner said
he prayed God if he were in sickness and pain that some one would
do the same for him, that he might not linger in his misery.

The ancient treatment of military wounds was most primitive.
For many ages injuries inflicted by swords, lances, arrows, and mace
chiefly claimed attention. Arrow wounds were often regarded as
poisoned, so treatment by boiling 011 was considered by many as most
appropriate, and may have had some favorable influence by combat-
ing infection. Oil and wine were a favorite remedy for wounds.
Arrowheads lodged in the body were drawn out with various crude
instruments. Often they were pushed through and removed by in-
cision from the opposite side. In other instances, where less acces-
sible, they were treated by drawing plasters. Rabbits’ hair, mill
dust, and moss from skulls found in graveyards were used as styp-
tics. Two of the greatest teachers warned surgeons not to under-
take an operation, if the life of the patient was in jeopardy, until
he had received the last sacrament—a very cheering preoperative
procedure. As most of the ancient surgery was practiced by men
without education, the literature on the subject is very scanty and
unreliable. Clumsy instruments for extraction of arrows were used
for centuries without improvement, and ignorance and superstition
clogged the wheels of progress.

The introduction of gunpowder, beginning in the middle of the
thirteenth century, gradually effected a complete revolution in mil-
itary strategy and opened up new fields for the military surgeon.
The replacing of longbows and crossbows by firearms progressed
very slowly, and improvement in the efficiency of these weapons was
equally backward. In the unsatisfactory state of surgery in the
medieval period, the introduction of firearms brought new dangers
and increased the sufferings of the wounded. Fractures of the long
bones, previously rare in warfare, became common, together with
extensive lacerations of the soft parts. Probes and fenestrated

MILITARY MEDICINE—CHAMBERLAIN. 239

bullet forceps were gradually introduced. In the fiftenth, six-
teenth, and seventeenth centuries the writings show that some still
considered such wounds poisoned and treated them by boiling oil,
multiple scarification and venesection; while others, especially
German surgeons, objected to these cruel methods and resorted to
mild measures, such as warm oil of turpentine, hempseed oil, honey
and warm milk, especially goat’s milk. Tents rubbed with pork to
keep the wounds open were advocated. Alum, white hair of the
rabbit, droppings of peacocks, dried blood, burning cotton, and re«l-
hot irons were relied on as hemostatics. Suppuration was con-
sidered a necessary preliminary to healing.

Amid the barbaric methods, the charlatanism and the superstition
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a few brilliant lights flick-
ered, notably Wurz, a famous Swiss barber-surgeon (1518-1575) ;
Mithobius, who wrote a treatise on military surgery in 1553, and
Gelman, who published works on the same subject in 1652. Gelman
described a death from tetanus, following a gunshot wound, which
he blames on the surgeon, saying that the patient could have been
saved if he had been given a draft of Thiriak Andromach in wine
of lily of the valley, and if the neck had been rubbed with a particu-
lar ointment, and the mouth held open with a gag. The greatest
advance in surgery of this period was made by Ambroise Paré (1510-
1590), to whom belongs the credit of having brought about the in-
troduction of the ligature, though he himself was not the first to use
it. Purman, who wrote an excellent book on military surgery in
1738, is the first to describe deformation of bullets.

In the earliest recorded sanitary organization with armies the
barber-surgeons were attached to companies, and a staff physician
was assigned to the headquarters of each large force. Regimental
surgeons were appointed in the English service as early as 1639 and
ranked with chaplains. Sick and wounded were treated in their
company camps by camp followers, and when the army moved were
carried on wagons or left at the nearest town. In some cases the
barber-surgeons provided their own medicines and instruments,
while in other instances deductions were made from the men’s pay
for the purchase of such articles. About the year 1700 medicine
chests were provided as a part of the equipment of regiments. In
the early part of the eighteenth century the training of a better
class of military surgeons was begun and these men were placed in
the position of regimental surgeons, supervising the company bar-
ber-surgeons. England was one of the first countries to recognize
the necessity of a regular medical service in the army and to respect
medical officers. From very remote times the medical department
was an integral part of the English army, and in 1685 mention is
made of a surgeon general, and under William III there was a phy-

240 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

sician general, Sir Patrick Dun. In 1751, for the first time, English
surgeons were permitted to wear the uniform of the troops to which
they were attached, and in 1783 a law was passed prohibiting the
sale of the position of surgeon, but this abuse nevertheless continued
for a long time. A real medical service in France dates from 1708.
In the seventeenth century military hospitals began to be estab-
lished in garrisoned towns and in the rear of armies, and to these as
bases the wounded were removed. Partly mobile hospitals came
into restricted use about 1700, but were not adapted for accompany-
ing marching troops. For many years these hospitals usually carried
no tentage and did not reach the field till a day or two after the
battle. By a treaty between England and France these hospitals
were declared neutral and were treated as such. The Napoleonic
wars brought out the amplification of sanitary resources by the use
of combatant soldiers detailed as litter bearers and surgeons’ helpers.
About this same time the barber-surgeons were being generally re-
placed by trained surgeons, several of whom were attached to a regi-
ment, while medical staff officers were being placed in charge of the
sanitary work with armies to coordinate their sanitary resources.
Only in 1779 had the barber-surgeons in the British army been given
the grade of sergeant, and even then each of them had to expect a
whipping if one of his grenadier patients died under his care. Am-
bulance wagons to transport wounded gradually appeared as a part
of the equipment of regiments. About 1810 so-called flying hospitals,
able to follow troops, began to be roughly organized. A further
great improvement in the type of medical men with the colors
occurred, with corresponding improvement in their status. In 1815
Dr. Jackson, who was appointed by the Duke of York physician
of all the forces, demanded military honors and decorations for his
officers. He said that such titles were irrelevant to scientific men,
but that the common soldier would obey the medical officer better if
he possessed rank in the army. Jackson’s view is as true to-day as
in the past, and forms the basis of the present grading and organiza-
tion of medical departments in all armies. However, in the English
service up to 1871, medical officers absolutely belonged to regiments,
were exclusively under the control] of their commanding officers, and
had no powers of command. As.-a result of our Civil War and the
Franco-German conflict in 1870, the importance of increased mo-
bility for sanitary troops was recognized in the British service, the
regimental system was broken up, and gradually a medical staff
with mixed medico-military titles developed; but its officers were
still denied many of the powers which pertained to similar grades
in the line. Only in 1898, when the designation was changed to
the Royal Army Medical Corps, were British medical officers granted
full military titles and most of the accompanying powers which
correspond with like grades in combatant branches of the service.

MILITARY MEDICINE—-CHAMBERLAIN. 241

Light field hospitals, able to accompany troops with supplies,
surgeons, apothecaries and assistants, came into being about 1850,
but these had no organization of litter bearers to bring wounded to
them and depended on requisitioned country carts for transport of
disabled. The Crimean War demonstrated the inefficiency of the
British medical department and emphasized the necessity for some
mobile transport organization. As a result litter-bearer sections
were organized in several armies. Prior to this the fate of the
wounded had been pitiable, though the short range of weapons and
close order of battle formation had been factors which greatly facili-
tated collection and succor of the injured.

Improvements in firearms and munitions, especially rifling and
the use of fixed ammunition with conoidal bullets and percussion
caps, had caused, at the time of our Civil War, a great increase in
the range and rapidity of fire. Tactics began to adjust themselves
accordingly. Danger zones increased in depth and the rapidity
and precision of the new arms brought about thinning and lengthen-
ing of the lines. Asa result the wounded were scattered over a much
larger area than before. Our sanitary service at that time consisted
of several surgeons and a small hospital for each regiment, a fairly
mobile field hospital under canvas for each division, a division
surgeon to administer the foregoing, and at the bases a great number
of vast fixed hospitals. This system was cumbersome and imprac-
ticable in that it retained with the regiments seriously disabled men
‘and bulky supplies, neither of which had a place there. It was
therefore destructive to tactical efficiency by imterfering with the
mobility of fighting units. It was undesirable from a humanitarian
standpoint because it held sick and wounded at the front where their
care and comfort could not be properly considered. The sanitary
equipment of the regiments was usually far back with the trains and
not available when most needed. The personnel of one regiment
might be overwhelmed with wounded while that of another, not en-
gaged, was entirely unoccupied. There were no reserve sanitary
organizations for bridging the gap, often very great, which inter-
vened between the firing line and the division hospital, and between
the latter and the advance base, or for reinforcing the sanitary
services attached to commands which were overwhelmed by a high
proportion of casualties. As a result great delays in succoring the
wounded and unimaginable suffering occurred in the early part of
the Civil War. That these undesirable conditions were not confined
to our own Army is shown by the words of an experienced French
military surgeon, Le Gouest, who wrote about this time as follows:

Military surgeons who have been present in various engagements all know

that when the wounded fall in ranks there are none to carry them off except
their own comrades * * * the soldier quits the rank often never to return

242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

or only after the fight is over; the number of men carrying off their comrades
is rarely limited to the number really necessary, and one may sonfetimes see
four or five or even six soldiers conducting to the hospital a man slightly
wounded and marching as well as his comrades.

It is easily understod how serious to the plans of the commander
were such depletions of the ranks in the alleged interest of humanity,
but often with the real object of escaping danger. So crippling was
the disability under which the sanitary service labored that on Au-
gust 21, 1862, and again on September 7, 1862, Surg. Gen. Ham-
mond submitted plans for an independent sanitary organization
for use with mobile troops. In both instances these recommenda-
tions were disapproved by the War Department. In the Army of
the Potomac, however, Medical Director Letterman had convinced
Gen. McClellan of the need for special aid for the wounded, and
on August 2, 1862, he issued an order embodying Letterman’s views.
His plan, in brief, called for independent ambulance corps for each
army corps. This corps was equipped with ambulances and litters,
a medicine wagon, and a mounted personnel of officers and sergeants.
The transportation was to be used for the carrying of sick and
wounded and for no other purpose. No persons except those duly
authorized were permitted to accompany sick and wounded to the
rear, either on the march or in battle. Subsequently Letterman
added plans coordinating the work of the ambulance corps and the
field hospital. The advantages of this system promptly became
manifest, and it gave admirable service at the battle of Antietam in ,
the month following its inception. Later Grant adopted the essen-
tials of Letterman’s plan in the Army of Tennessee, and finally,
though very tardily, Congress passed an act, approved by the Presi-
dent on March 11, 1864, establishing a uniform system of ambu-
lance service throughout the military forces. The value of this
mobile independent sanitary organization in saving life and suffer-
ing, and in promoting tactical efficiency can not be overestimated.
The organization and plan worked out by Letterman was so com-
plete and practicable that it remains to-day the foundation upon
which the mobile sanitary service in all armies is largely built,
though experience has taught that its personnel should be composed
exclusively of officers and men belonging to the medical department.
With the development of field hospitals and ambulance companies,
both being large, independent sanitary organizations, the need of
military rank, with authority to command, for medical officers has
become more evident, and the subject of sanitary tactics, as an im-
portant branch of the art of war, has become an established fact
recognized in all armies.

As the organization needful for the handling of the disabled
gradually emerged from the neglect and chaos of the middle ages,

CHAMBERLAIN. 243

MILITARY MEDICINE

so also the practice of military surgery improved coincidently with
the progress of surgery in civil life. Intimately associated with the
earlier achievements are the names of Paré, John Hunter, and Larrey.
The suffering inherent in war was enormously alleviated by the dis-
covery of anesthesia. Still the specter of infection remained, and
hospital gangrene was the scourge of the wounded in the Civil War.
With the development of antisepsis and asepsis a new era dawned
for the military as well as for the civil surgeon. At a somewhat
later date the introduction of small caliber, steel-jacketed bullets,
which usually produced a small, relatively sterile wound, together
with the use of sterile first-aid packets, led to a vast number of heal-
ings by first intention in the case of gunshot injuries which had been
merely dressed aseptically and then left alone. Asepis and conserva-
tism were the watchwords, and the saying passed current that the fate
of “ the wounded man rests with him who applies the first dressing.”
Much of this optimism has disappeared in the last two years, as a re-
sult of the vast European War. The bullet of the latest military rifle
is not as humane as that used a dozen years ago. Shrapnel, high
explosive shells, hand grenades and bayonets, produce a proportion
of wounds far in excess of anything dreamed of in the past. The
conditions of trench warfare favor infection, and the great range
of modern weapons, and the vast numbers of wounded, have rendered
collection of the injured and removal to a place of final treatment
far more slow and difficult than ever before. The character of the
wounds produced by shell, shrapnel, hand grenades, and spitz bul-
lets is such that the first-aid dressing has failed to confer as high a
degree of protection as it afforded in the wars of the previous two
decades. Asepsis is less in vogue, and in England the ery has been
raised, “ Back to Lister ”—in other words, antisepsis with strong dis-
infectants like pure phenol. Extensive opening of wounds with
free drainage has replaced expectant and conservative treatment. No
longer is it said that the fate of the wounded rests with him who ap-
ples the first dressing, but rather that his future depends upon the
rapidity of transportation and the possibility of thoroughly treating
his wounds as soon as possible by elaborate surgical procedures.
Turning from the field of surgery and relief organization in bat-
tle, we find that military medicine, as distinguished from surgery, is
intimately associated with, and a decided contributor to, the subject
of preventive medicine. Since the days when “ The Assyrian came
down like a wolf on the fold ” armies have been peculiarly the victims
of epidemic diseases. Numberless campaigns have failed in whole or
in part, because of dysentery, cholera, plague, scurvy, measles, small-
pox, yellow fever, malaria, typhus, or typhoid. An interesting re-
view might be written dealing with history as influenced by epidemic
disease. Up to the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, disease

244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

had always claimed far more victims in every campaign than had the '
bullets of the enemy. With the growth of the knowledge of infec-
tions during the last half century, the control of diseases due to pre-
ventable causes has become one of the paramount duties of the mili-
tary surgeon, and the success he has attained is shown in the re-
markably great. decrease of sickness in the Russo-Japanese War, and
in the present war in Europe, as compared with campaigns of the
past. In our own service three great triumphs stand forth—the
eradication of yellow fever in Cuba, the prevention of beriberi among
Philippine troops, and the suppression of typhoid fever through our
entire Army by antityphoid inoculation.

Looking back a little more than a century and a half the eye is
caught by the name of Sir John Pringle (1707-1787), who 1s called
the founder of modern military medicine as contrasted with surgical
practice. Pringle, a Scotsman, served on the continent in the mid-
century wars and was surgeon general of the English Army from 1742
to 1758. His work, “ Observations on Diseases of the Army,” 1752,
promulgates the true principles of military sanitation, especially in
regard to the ventilation of hospitals, ships, jails, and barracks. He
gave a good description of typhus fever, showed that jail fever and
hospital fever were the same, correlated the different forms of dysen-
tery, and named influenza. About six years later appeared Van
Swieten’s monograph on camp diseases, and two works on the hy-
giene and diseases of sailors by James Lind and Thomas Trotter.
Both of these physicians published monographs on the subject of
scurvy, which came into great prominence through its ravages among
the sailors of Lord Anson’s expedition in 1740.

No review of the history of military medicine would be complete
without the mention of some of those military medical men whose
names should always be held in memory because of notable services to
the cause of progress and humanity. The civilian is apt to think
that the duties of the medical officer are ight and routine, and that
his professional work consists largely in treating venereal diseases.
Far otherwise. His life is a busy one, entering into practically every
field of medicine, in many of which he delves so deeply that he un-
earths nuggets for the use of future generations. The first name I
will mention is that of Ambroise Paré, born in 1510, the great French
military surgeon whose fame particularly rests on the substitution of
the ligature for the actual cautery and the styptic relied upon before
his time for the control of hemorrhage. He was not the first to use
the ligature, but to him belongs the credit of having led to its general
introduction against great opposition. He combated the prevailing
opinion that gunshot wounds were poisoned. He opposed the use of
boiling oil, popularized the use of the truss, introduced massage, ar-
tificial eyes, and staphyloplasty. He described fracture of the neck

MILITARY MEDICINE—-CHAMBERLAIN. 245

of the femur, and was the first to suggest syphilis as a cause of
aneurysm—a goodly contribution for one who began his career as
an apprentice to a rustic barber. His first military patient was a
eaptain shot in the ankle. Paré says of this case, “ I dressed him and
God healed him.” As he passed through campaign after campaign
his reputation became more firmly established among both soldiers
and physicians. When he entered Metz, which was being besieged
by Charles V in 1552, and was dramatically presented to the officers
by the Duke of Guise, he was received by the soldiers with shouts of
triumph and the exclamation, “ We shall not die even though
wounded, for Paré is among us.”

John Hunter, the erudite scholar and great surgeon, was a staif
surgeon in 1761, when he gained his unique knowledge of gunshot
wounds. His contributions to surgery are too well known to need
mention. He was made deputy surgeon general in the British Army
and introduced a system of promotion in the medical service.

The name of Baron Larrey is ever associated with the campaigns of
Napoleon, and he was one of the great Emperor’s intimate friends
and most trusted advisors. His energy on the battle field and his
genius for organization have never been surpassed. His flying am-
bulance corps and mounted surgeons often passed through showers of
bullets in bringing aid to the wounded. At Aboukit Bay he ampu-
tated General Sully’s leg above the knee under fire, and carried this
officer to safety on his own back just in advance of a charge of British
‘cavalry. He was an able surgeon and the first, in spite of strong op-
position by civil surgeons, to advocate the employment of plaster
splints in the treatment of gunshot fractures. In fractures of the
leg, he used them to allow the patient to leave his bed as soon as
possible. His military service extended over 5Q years, and he par-
ticipated in 26 military expeditions in three continents. Probably
under no circumstances did the ability and courage of this remark-
able man show to better advantage than during Napoleon’s retreat
from Moscow. After the battle of Borodino, Larrey made 200 am-
putations, practically with his own hands, with no bed or shelter,
cold so intense that the instrument often fell from the benumbed
fingers, and with the Cossacks hovering around equally ready to
kill patient and surgeon. At the battle of Waterloo, he was sabred
by Prussians and left for dead. Recovering consciousness and try-
ing to make his way across France he was captured, robbed, and
sentenced to be shot. A Prussian surgeon, who had attended Lar-
rey’s lectures several years before, recognized him, and the order of
execution was stayed by Marshal Bliicher, whose son had been saved
through Larrey’s exertions when wounded by the French in the Aus-
trian campaign.

136650°—20——_17

246 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The greatest of Russian surgeons, and one of the greatest. military
surgeons of all times, was Nikolas Ivanovich Pirogoff, born in 1810,
and who, like Paré and Hunter, had a remarkable career of self-de-
velopment. He served in the Caucasus in 1849, in the Crimea in
1854, and also reported on the Franco-Prussian and Turco-Russian
campaigns. He defined war as a “traumatic epidemic.” He intro-
duced female nursing of the wounded in the Crimea and was a warm
advocate of freedom and higher education for women. In his
treatise on military surgery, published in 1864, he holds large hospi-
tals responsible for the spread of epidemic disease, and recommends
small pavilions and segregation. His method of complete osteo-
plastic amputation of the foot is well known to all surgeons.

Friedrich von Esmarch, the great German military surgeon, intro-
duced the first-aid dressing and standardized surgical hemostasis by
the Esmarch bandage. He did much to improve the status of mili-
tary surgery and the first-aid treatment of wounds. By marrying a
royal princess he became uncle to the present Kaiser. Turning from
the realm of the wounded we find that Emil von Behring, whose
name is ever associated with antitoxin, began his career as a Prussian.
army surgeon. In 1880 the epoch-making discovery of the malarial
plasmodium was made by Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon.
The importance of the discovery of plasmodium was equaled by the
demonstration of mosquito transmission made by Ronald Ross, a
surgeon in the Indian Army Medical Service. After years of patient
work he was able to trace the full development of an avian parasite
in culex and partly that of the human malarial parasite in anopheles.
Zieman, a naval surgeon, was the first to confirm the work of Ross
and the Italian observers. More recently much important and
original work on malaria, as well as on entamoeba, has been done by
Capt. Charles F. Craig, of our own medical corps, who has written
several monographs on these subjects. Capt. Craig, in association
with Maj. Percy M. Ashburn, was the first to establish the truth of
Graham’s theory that dengue fever is transmitted by the bite of mos-
quitoes of the genus culex.

Our knowledge of tropical medicine was enormously advanced by
Col. Sir W. P. Leishman and by Maj. Charles Donovan, both of the
British service, who independently discovered that the so-called dum-
dum fever, or Kala-Azar, was due to an intracellular parasite, which
has been named, in honor of its discoverers, Leishmania donovani.
The name Col. Leishman is also associated with one of our well-
known polychrome stains.

Other names intimately associated with tropical and preventive
medicine are those of the naval surgeons Mormand and Bovay, who
first described the parasite of Cochin-China diarrhea; Maj. Bailey
kK. Ashford, of our Army, whose work on hookworms in Porto Rico

MILITARY MEDICINE—CHAMBERLAIN. ; 247

is too well known to need description; Capt. E. D. Vedder, who in
my laboratory in Manila performed the experiments with emetin and
amoeba, which led Leonard Rogers to undertake the hypodermic treat-
ment of amoebiasis with that drug. Capt. Vedder and myself in
Manila carried out extensive investigations on beriberi, and were the
first to show that the extremely fatal infantile beriberi was promptly
curable by the use of an extract of rice bran or polishings. While
the English and the Germans were the pioneers in developing the
antityphoid inoculation, it was through the enthusiasm and energy
of Maj. F. F. Russell, of our medical corps, that the practice was
introduced and made compulsory in the United States Army. Our
service was the first in which compulsory antityphoid vaccination
was employed, and the demonstration that the scourge of armies
could be eradicated as a result of this measure stands as one of the
greatest triumphs of preventive medicine.

Among others in our own service whose names will be remembered
should be mentioned Gen. George M. Sternberg, formerly Surgeon
General of the Army, and who has but recently died. Sternberg was
a pioneer in bacteriology in this country, and his book on that sub-
ject was for many years a standard work of reference. He was par-
ticularly interested in the subject of yellow fever, and it was due to
this interest that the board of Army medical officers was appointed
which disclosed the method of transmission of that disease.

Among those members of our Army medical service who subse-
quently became prominent because of work outside the practice of
medicine and surgery may be mentioned Maj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth,
who was for many years Adjutant General of the Army, and Maj.
Gen. Leonard Wood, a graduate of Harvard, who for high executive
ability has been promoted to many important posts. Col. John Shaw
Billings has been pronounced by competent authority to be the most
eminent bibliographer in the history of medicine. He served with
great credit as surgeon through the Civil War, and in 1864 was trans-
ferred to Washington for duty, where he remained till his retire-
ment in 1895. His name is indelibly associated with the upbuilding
of the Library of the Surgeon General of the Army, which through
his energy became the largest medical library in the world, and also
with his index catalogue of this hbrary. With Fletcher he edited
the Index Medicus for 20 years. The trustees of the Johns Hopkins
fund in 1876 elected him as their medical advisor after having
accepted his designs for the Johns Hopkins Hospital as the most
satisfactory of any submitted. In 1896, one year after his retirement
from active service, he became superintendent in chief of the New
York Public Library, where he solved the enormous difficulties con-
nected with the consolidation of the New York libraries and the

248 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

construction of the present magnificent building. He remained with
the library until his death in 1913. In 1905 he was selected to lay
out the plans for the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital now facing the
Harvard Medical School.

The name of Jonathan Letterman should always be remembered by
military surgeons as the greatest sanitary organizer of modern times.
I have already referred to his plans for an ambulance corps which
became the basis for such service in all armies. He put an end to
the depleting of the ranks of the Army which had been caused by.
injudicious and careless discharges for disability, and by the license
of sending to distant general hospitals men who should never have:
left the zone of operations. He insisted on having sick and wounded
treated at hospitals nearer the front whenever the condition of the
service and the welfare of the patient permitted, thus doing away
with one of the chief factors in military absenteeism. By well-
thought-out sanitation, strenuously enforced, he kept the Army of
the Potomac in a state of health unparalleled in forces of such
magnitude at that time. For alleviating the sufferings and saving
the lives of thousands of his countrymen, and for adding to the vigor,
discipline, and effective fighting strength of the principal army of
the Republic, he has a just claim to the grateful remembrance of his
professional brethren, of his comrades in arms, and of his country-
men. Gen. McClellan wrote of him in 1863, “I never met with his
superior in power of organization and executive ability.” His name
is now commemorated in-the Letterman General Hospital at the
Presidio of San Francisco.

The most distinguished and important internist of the early French
school was René Laennec (1781-1826). Like Bichat, the creator of de-
scriptive anatomy, he was a regimental surgeon in the French Revo-
lution. Both were early victims of phthisis. If we can trust Kip-
ling’s description, it was while a military prisoner in England that
Laennec carried out the experiments with the stethescope, the instru-
ment with which his name is indissolubly connected.

Intimately associated with the Post of Plattsburg Barracks, from
which I have recently come, is the name of an Army medical officer
at whose door opportunity knocked and was not refused entrance.
Dr. William Beaumont, by his observations and experiments on the
Canadian half-breed, Alexis St. Martin, laid the foundation for our
present knowledge of gastric digestion. Part of this work was car-
ried out at the isolated military post of Mackinaw in the primeval
forests of Michigan about 1825, and the remainder of the investiga-
tions were conducted at Plattsburg Barracks, N. Y. Beaumont was
the true leader and pioneer of experimental physiology in our
country. His work remains a model of patient, persevering investi-
gation, experiment, and research.

MILITARY MEDICINE—CHAMBERLAIN. 249

The conquest of yellow fever is a far-reaching achievement. to
which America can lay entire claim, and which especially reflects
credit upon the Medical Corps of the United States Army. In 1900
the Army board, consisting of Maj. Walter Reed, Maj. James
Carroll, and Contract Surgeons Lazear and Agramonte, proved by a
series of brilliant and conclusive experiments that yellow fever is
transmitted by the bite of a mosquito, the Stegomyia fasciata. Bas-
ing his sanitary work on the discoveries of Reed and his associates,
our present Surgeon General, William C. Gorgas, freed Cuba of
yellow fever and made possible the building of the Panama Canal,
thereby establishing his claim to be called the greatest sanitary expert
the world has known.

The experiments which established the mosquito theory of yellow
fever transmission are so recent and well known that I shall not
enter into them except in one particular. Dr. Lazear died from
yellow fever contracted while at this work. Acting Asst. Surg.
Robert P. Cooke and several volunteers from the Hospital Corps
slept for 30 nights in a small unventilated room, using the bedding
and wearing the garments just taken from fatal cases of yellow fever
and which were soiled with the black vomit and excretions of these
patients. Maj. Carroll first, and subsequently several members of the
Hospital Corps, submitted to the bites of mosquitoes which had pre-
viously fed on yellow fever victims. Several of them contracted the
disease, and Maj. Carroll narrowly escaped death. The world at
large recognizes that it requires high courage for the soldier to
charge the enemy, even in the excitement of battle and surrounded
by his comrades. In the present European war hundreds of medical
men have met wounds and death in serving the cause of fatherland
and of humanity under fire. It called for courage of a different quality,
but of quite as high an order, to enable a man to submit himself, in
cold blood, for experimental infection with a disease which was as
mysterious, as painful, and as fatal as yellow fever. All honor is due
Maj. Carroll, Dr. Cooke, and those Hospital Corps men who stood
this test in the interests of humanity and to the everlasting credit of
military medicine. There is no better example of the sentiment that
“ Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.”

:
3,

nif): ang 11 eye

cis i
suing

gh ies bac =r wows
77 - 2 ye

or.

SOME PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL READ-
JUSTMENT OF MINERAL SUPPLIES AS INDI-
CATED IN RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE.

ELEANORA F. BLIss,

Associate Geologist, U. S. Geological Survey, Washington, D. C.

INTRODUCTORY.

During the four years in which the greatest nations of the world
have been locked in a struggle for military supremacy, there have
been many thinking men both behind the fighting lines and within
the camps of the belligerents who have realized the role played by
economic and commercial activities in the evolution of that inter-
national status that was inevitably bound to result in the most ter-
rific human explosion that has been witnessed in the history of
mankind.

It is a fact that nations, while in truth forming one great world
family, yet are and always will be actuated by the same individual
interests and selfish desires that are bound to be an actuating prin-
ciple in the lives of those who make up any human family. By
realization and appreciation of the fact that as in a family, human
equity demands the recognition and development of the rights of
the individual, so in the world international justice and polity de-
mand the right of individual nations to the means of sustenance
and growth, we shall arrive at a conception of the much longed for
“world democracy.”

In practice this right can not be actually attained. By virtue
of circumstances certain individuals and nations are more highly
endowed than others with nature’s gifts. While the ideal of democ-
racy that all men are and of right should be free and equal, may,
and doubtless will, remain to the end of time unattainable, yet the
principle of democracy as rightly and faithfully applied demands
that those individuals or nations who have attained a certain suprem-
acy in the affairs of mankind shall watch over the welfare and
safety of those who must strugele under the handicap of a lesser
share of nature’s endowments. In the life of a democratic state
there will always be two factors that will combine to keep the

1Reprinted by permission from Economic Geology, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Mareh—April, 1919.
251

252 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

balance true and to prevent the undue ascendancy of one individual
to the exclusion and to the undoing of others. They are: first,
the disinterestedness of human nature which has led many a man
to give up not only his life but also the chances of so-called personal
aggrandizement for the sake of benefiting other individuals and the
race at large; second, the self-interest of human nature which leads
every man to struggle against those interests and ascendancies that
he conceives to be prejudicial to his own personal welfare. It is
only by a true appreciation of these two predominant influences in
the lives of nations and mankind that we shall be able to exercise the
curb in international relations that 1s of paramount importance if
we are to prevent a repetition of the struggle of the past four years.

GERMANY’S METHOD OF COMMERCIAL EXPANSION.

A clear exposition of some of the conditions and policy that led
up to the recent war is shown in a book published during 1918,
“ Germany’s Commercial Grip on the World,” by M. Henri Hauser,
« professor in the University of Dijon. It was written in order to
bring to the French-speaking public the realization of Germany’s
business methods as apphed to her foreign trade, the business methods
by which she had acquired before the war a commercial ascendancy,
little realized by the average business man in countries not appar-
ently within the sphere of German influence, and completely un-
appreciated by the unsuspecting consumer, who regarded the trade
mark “made in Germany” with an amused toleration frequently
bordering on contempt.

Hauser’s book is a distinctly fair and unbiased attempt to set
before the mercantile and also the lay reader the means by which
Germany had made for herself that domination in the commercial
world which is the undoing of all real international democracy.
He gives due credit to German economic virtues, such as her in-
crease in population, her industry, her discipline, and her submis-
sion to authority. In his analysis he emphasizes four fundamental
instruments in the attainment of German commercial power: the
bank system, the cartel, the transport organization, and the role
of the state in encouraging and supporting specialized industries.

The bank system*—By the combination in German banks of
the three functions of deposit, credit, and finance these organiza-
tions have been enabled to play a part in the promotion of industrial
enterprise which in our own country is reserved for the individual
financier, for the banker rather than for the bank. In order to
render their export trade independent of British and French financial
channels, the various large German banks began, as Hatiser aptly

1 Hauser, Ilenri, ‘‘ Germany’s Commercial Grip on the World,” Scribner, 1918. ,-

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 253

phrases it, to “swarm” and in a comparatively short time a network
of German banks was established in South America, Italy, Greece,
Turkey, and Asia Minor. The dangers attendant upon such a
wholesale participation of the banks in industrial promotion resulted
in some heavy losses and caused the banks to adopt a system of
grouping by which each great bank supports several undertakings
and on the other hand each large financial enterprise is backed by
a group of several banks. This grouping of banks is rendered pos-
sible by a mutual interchange of paper, a method which however
advantageous from the point of view of business promotion is never-
theless susceptible of most dangerous collapse in the event of sudden
slump. The relation of the original German bank to the home in-
dustry is reproduced in the relations of the subsidiary foreign banks
to the importer and exporter. They supply the manufacturer with
credit that enables him to furnish his customers with the par-
ticular type of long-term payment best suited to their convenience.
Moreover, the practice of gradually withdrawing German capital
from overseas banks after the institution had been successfully
manipulated into German control has resulted in the financial domina-
tion of foreign countries without the locking up of home capital
to any large extent. The loans made to a foreign state are repaid
in orders, insurance companies instituted abroad replace their re-
serves in German securities; in short, the trend of capital is all to-
wards Germany. Such a condition of affairs leads to what even a
German was forced to characterize as “ an unhealthy rise in industry ”
and furnishes the possibility of a phenomenal and predominating
industrial expansion.

The cartel system.—The celebrated cartel system to which Germany
owes so much of her industrial efficiency is characterized by Hauser
as a combination of producers for the cooperative sale of their out-
put or of certain classes of their output. It differs from our trusts
in that the individual enterprise retains its entity, but shorn of all
independence in the sales transaction which is either carried out by
the sales bureau or else regulated as to price, geographic limitation,
quota of production by individual factories, etc. There are two
factors which check the domination of the cartel. The larger es-
tablishments, such as Krupp, escape its domination because they
are able through their far-reaching interests to supply themselves
with all the essentials of their industry within their own domain.
Moreover, the changeable nature of the cartel which adapts itself
to and changes with the condition of the market renders it not
so much an ironclad yoke as an adjustable harness by which compe-
tition is restrained, overproduction regulated, and lowering of
prices prevented, provided the adherents of the cartel submit to
the rigid discipline of its authority. Hauser explains how the

254 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

cartel came into being as the inevitable outcome of the period of
overproduction, under consumption, and lowering of price that
accompanied and followed the financial depression of 1878. At that
time competition was so intense as to be well nigh the extermination
of many industries and the cartel, which was instituted more or less
as a self-protective measure, has later by its introduction of “ dump-
ing” on foreign markets been enabled to control and correct the
conditions in the home market that have always been both a stimulus
to German industry and a menace to foreign competition, namely,
the ability of the German factory to overproduce. By “dumping,”
the German manufacturer gets rid of his surplus production on
the foreign market at a price that would be disastrous were it not
for his ability to rehabilitate himself by means of the higher do-
mestic price set and maintained by the cartel. Through the cartel
he is also enabled to acquire an export bonus on the price of raw
materials destined for ultimate export in the form of finished product.

Transport—Additional facilities are furnished to the export trade
by the special transport rates on both railway and steamship lines
which not only enable the manufacturer to get his goods to foreign
destinations at sometimes only one-quarter more than he would pay
to ship the same commodity between Breslau and Hamburg, but also
offer an attraction to foreign shippers to consign their merchandise
via German railways or German ships at greatly reduced freight
charges. In other words, by means of the State operation of rail-
ways the Government is enabled to practice a sort of railway dump-
ing by which the transport charges can be reduced for the benefit of
the export trade or of foreign traffic.

Role of State—M. Hauser emphasizes the function of the German
State in economic domination through its ownership of railways,
and its military and naval consumption, together with its hold on
the electrical industry acquired by its monopoly of canal towage.

In regard to the cartel the State finally resolved to make a virtue
of necessity by adopting a policy of toleration and supervision which
wound up in some cases by the State absorbing the cartel as in the
case of the loose jointed union between the government and the coal
syndicate, or by the State organizing the cartel as in the case of the
potash syndicate, which owed its existence in the first place to the de-
sire of the Government to regulate the production of the Prussian
Stassfurt mines and to keep the price sufficiently high to preserve
for the nation the material required for agriculture. The potash
syndicate holds a unique position among German cartels owing to
the fact that German potash production has resulted in the largest
national monopoly known among minerals. The aim of the Kali-
syndikat was not to encourage export by reduction in prices on the
foreign market, but rather to raise the export prices and thus by a
system of reverse dumping to reserve material for home consumption,

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 255

Conquest of foreign markets—In the last section of his book
Hauser deals rather briefly with German methods for conquest of
foreign markets. He emphasizes the systematic study of the indi-
vidual market and clientele by which the German exporter arrives at
a complete understanding of the requirements and possibilities of
their export business. He notes the acumen and_ psychological
shrewdness of the German commercial traveler who is constantly on
the spot, always anxious to satisfy his customer, always ready to do -
business honestly if possible, dishonestly if necessary. He calls at-
tention to the exportation of a business house where it seemed that
foreign trade could be better handled through the direct manage-
ment of an overseas branch of the German industry, and he laments
uncontested intervention of the German middleman in the conduct of
French trade. He acknowledges the cleverness of German propa-
ganda and publicity methods by which they handle an enormous
and skillfully manipulated self-advertising scheme. Most impor-
tant of all, he explains the final step in German exportation, which is
the transplanting of factories themselves into foreign territory. He
disposes of the fallacious argument that such export of industry
enriches the country so penetrated by showing that, as in the case of
the foreign branches of German banks, capital is not actually trans-
ferred from the German source to the foreign country, but on the
contrary the minority of the share of capital is frequently the Ger-
man portion. Nevertheless, the German skillfully manipulates the
distribution of interests so as to retain a controlling hand in the
management, and in addition he obtains a corner on the foreign raw
materials in which he is often deficient at home. A good example of
this was the Thyssen control of Normandy blast furnaces through
his institution of a factory and railway in association with the iron
mines in Normandy. In return for his cession of all except 20 per
cent of his control of the factory to so-called French interests he
acquired the right to purchase the complete supply of the Norman
furnaces. The last step in exportation is taken in order to escape
burdensome taxes on finished products, machinery, dyes, etc., and the
German exports his semifinished materials and assembles and perfects
them in the country of their ultimate destination.

Economic factors in causing war.—tIn conclusion Hauser sums up
the conditions which were potent factors in causing the recent war—
first, the sudden and daring rise in German industry that has
necessitated the organization of a drastic cartel system to combat
the dangers of unlimited competition entailed by overproduction;
second, the further relief of this congestion of overproduction by
means of an overdeveloped system of foreign dumping; and, third,
the temptation to stabilize her somewhat shaky financial foundation

256 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

by the accession of foreign eapital which it. was becoming increas-
ingly difficult to attain by peaceful methods. In short, Germany’s
commercial grip on the world, which had strengthened speedily and
yet to a large extent unobserved, had finally reached a point where
its future strength was becoming imperiled by the growing realiza-
tion of other nations and their consequent restlessness under the
yoke. Such an autocratic and ironclad policy can not continue for-
ever unchallenged, because there exists in the world that inherent
democracy of nations, perchance actuated by fundamental self-
interest, which at all costs insists upon maintaining to individual
nations the right to exist. ‘

The Russian opinion of German methods is briefly set forth in
a small volume by Dr. Paul Gourvitch’ written in English and pub-
lished in New York in 1917. It is also a fair and unbiased descrip-
tion of German commercial power. It gives due credit to the
fact that much of her supremacy was due to her own energy and
foresight in the conduct of her exporting business by which she was
often enabled to supersede the laxer and more “hit-or-miss” methods
of her foreign competitors. Gourvitch describes in detail the im-
porting and exporting of credit. While giving due credit to Ger-
man skill and enterprise in the manipulation of foreign markets
he does not fail to note their dishonest and unscrupulous methods
in the matter of imitation and counterfeiting in order to replace the
commodities of their competitors by their own goods sold at lower
prices.

GERMAN POSTWAR TRADE.

The volume by Herr S. Herzog,? which was published in trans-
lated form about two months ago under the auspices of Herbert
Hoover, Vernon Kellogg, and Frederic C. Walcott, called “The
Future of German Industrial Exports,” represents the ideas of a
well-known German engineeer on the subject of reestablishing after
the war the same methods of commercial supremacy that led to the
recent catastrophe. His avowed aim is to regain by strategic
means the former commercial position of Germany. He definitely
states that since the par value of treaties is nil, any commercial
treaty formulated after the war will be worthless. He contends
that the treaty will be but the preliminary to an economic warfare
having for its object the mastery over German industry. He states
that Germany’s industrial exports must go on. In order to do this
the essential structure of German industry is to be divided into two
classes, the first known as “ protective industries,” representing both
raw and finished products of German origin that are absolutely

1 Gourvitch, Paul, ‘‘How Germany Does Business,’ B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1917.
2 Herzog, S., “The Future of German Industrial Exports,’ Doubleddy Page & Co.,
Garden City, New York, 1918.

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 957

indispensable to some foreign country. These products are to be
placed under a special State control by which they are to be fostered
and supported so that it will be possible without killing the industry
to place an absolute embargo upon its market in any foreign
country that has shown injurious discrimination against Germany.
The second class comprises those auxiliary industries that furnish
to the protective industries the necessary raw materials. These
auxiliary industries are obliged to furnish the necessary raw ma-
terials at such low cost that it is possible for the protective industry
to remain always in control of the market. The secondary industry
will be reimbursed in the course of time by a percentage share in
the earnings of their customers or else through the general guar-
antee fund which it is proposed to institute in order to supply the
necessary reserve capital that will enable the protective industries
to cut their prices below competition and to submit to embargoes on
their market while they produce a stock surplus. It was also pro-
posed to institute a central sales bureau that should have complete
charge of the foreign sale or embargo of the output of the protective
industries.

His scheme as elaborated is chiefly a matter of domestic organiza-
tion which had already reached such an advanced point in German
industry. Its weak point is that Germany is dependent for many
raw materials upon foreign sources. But it must be remembered
that this book was written in the confident expectation of a complete
German victory by which she would be in a position to dictate her
terms to the world. What these terms would have been is stated in
Chapter II with a candor for which we can not help but be grateful
since “forewarned is forearmed.” The terms of their commercial
treaty would have entailed assurance of raw materials at suitable
prices, prevention of specially discriminating or injurious foreign
tariffs, assurance of all concessions and protection to German in-
terests that are conferred upon any other nation, and official recog-
nition of the various federations that were to furnish the modus
operandi of the schemes outlined above (for the protection of German
interests). Herzog then goes on to indicate that it would be well to
demand exclusive favoritism of Germany in certain points, after
carefully eliminating all possibility of any discrimimative favoritism
against Germany. He demands for her unlimited right to secure
raw materials abroad without any export restriction in the country
of origin, he insists upon the right of supervision over German plants
abroad that are furnishing raw materials to the protective industries,
he stipulates for control of foreign freight rates, he eliminates all
foreign concessions that could benefit other countries to the exclu-
sion or disadvantage of Germany, and he demands a special guar-
antee to cover German capital invested in foreign countries. In

258 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

short, he demands not only an open door for German trade but also
all kinds of special provisions operating to the benefit of German
trade in order that she may entrench herself safely behind an in-
vincible bulwark of commercial supremacy.

READJUSTMENT OF MINERAL SUPPLIES.

A commercial domination by any one nation is obviously unjust
and is as we have seen one of the most potent reasons for the recent
war. We can not escape from the fact that in the interrelation of
nations, certain countries are bound to play a*dominant part in the
production or in the manufacture of certain commodities. The Ger-
man control of potash and the Chilean output of nitrates are the
largest examples of so-called world monopolies of minerals. Never-
theless, in the last four years even these two most formidable com-
mercial bogies have been robbed of some of their terrors.

Potash.—We have found to our surprise how possible it is for us
to get along without German potash. The possibility of decreased
consumption, various new sources as well as the increased possibility
of recovery from waste sources in blast furnace and cement plant
gases have shown that for a considerable period, at least, we are not
absolutely helpless without the German supply. But commerce,
which takes the place in the life of a nation that breathing does in
the life of an individual, must, in order to attain eventually the best
results, be like breathing, a natural process.

In the present stage of the world’s development the natural source
of supply for potash hes in the German deposits and from that
supply we have a right to expect our maintenance. It is a debt that
Germany owes to the democracy of nations and which she must pay
with equity and, if not voluntarily, then under protest. In this con-
nection it should be noted that the reserves of Alsace-Lorraine have
been computed as sufficient to furnish the world with potash for 300
years; have been considered to be about equivalent to those of the
Stassfurt deposits, while it appears likely that reserves of consider-
able magnitude may be developed in northeastern Spain. So much for
potash, which, though important by reason of its entire localization
within the confines of what was German territory, is not one of the
most essential of mineral commodities.

The important mineral commodities—The accompanying figures
show in diagrammatic form the relative control by the United States,
Great Britain, France, and Germany of the five most important
mineral commodities. The first column represents the percentage
of the world’s output that is produced by these countries and by
their colonial possessions. The second column represents the pro-
duction control of raw material exercised by these four countries,
as expressed by their domestic production plus their imports. The
third column represents the consumption control of finished products

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 259

as expressed by the amount of raw material retained in the country
after export.

10 TABLE SHOWING RELATIVE CONTROL OF WORLDS OUTPUT OF LEAD
WEB P£0DUCTION PRODUCTION CONTROL
COLONIAL PRODUCTION 55 CONSUMPTION CONTROL
567%

nll TI - 33%

a
UN \TED STAT STATES GREAT REAT BRITAIN FRANCE

Ere

wn

a
GERMANY

100% TABLE SHOWING RELATIVE CONTROL OF WORLDS OUTPUT OF COPPER

e6%
267% 25%
!
% 7 i: "Tl *
pire tere a ou ele Real: a ee
UNITED STATES GREAT BRITAIN FRANCE GERMANY
Nn. Ze
10075 TABLE SHOWING RELATIVE CONTROL OF WORLDS
OUTPUT OF IRON ORE
ao"
x6 %_ 30 37%
pee at
a 20%
of 14% | 14%m 13%
Ns al cen as
fo) 5 |
UNITED STATES GREAT BRITAIN FRANCE GERMAN Y

Fie. 3.

Fics. 1, 2, 3.—Dominant control of the world’s output of lead, copper, iron-ore of mineral products.
Aggregate control shown by vertical line on right.

The United States leads in both production and production con-
trol of all five minerals. Great Britain is equal, or superior, to Ger-
many in production of all except iron ore, in which she has only

260 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

half the output of Germany. France is plainly deficient in all five
essential minerals. Therefore, Germany and Great Britain divide
the control of production among the three European nations.

In the actual industrial control of raw materials, however, the
matter is quite different. The United States still leads, as would be
expected from her large production; Germany has plainly taken
the foremost place in all except the lead industry. She controls by
means of her imports as much fuel as Great Britain and about

1007 TABLE SHOWING RELATIVE CONTROL OF WORLDS
OUTPUT OF ZINC 92

377% 3%

18: ix
"2 10%)
4 8%
eel ——
UNITED ITED STATES GREAT SS SETAIN FRANCE GERMANY

Fic. 4,

100" TABLE SHOWING RELATIVE CONTROL OF WORLDS OUTPUT OF COAL

3 Bas

aot

FF ; 227, 217 i’
il |
Hh 8 |
——S——

~~
UNITED STATES GREAT BRITAIN FRANCE GERMANY

Fie. 5

Fias. 4, 5.—Dominant eontrol of the world’s output of zine and coal. Aggregate control shown by
vertical line on right.

0)

twice as much iron ore, copper, and zine; France is far behind. The
actual amount of fuel consumed for domestic and industrial pur-
poses in Great Britain and Germany is nearly the same, but Ger-
many’s consumption control of crude copper, zinc, and iron is al-
most double that of Great Britain, while the industrial consumption
of France again lags far behind.

An inspection of the scale on the right of the diagrams brings
out the fact that these four countries contro] in their production

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 261

about nine-tenths of the world’s coal and zine; foyr-fifths of the
world’s iron ore; two-thirds of the copper; and ovér half the lead
output of the world. <A glance at the columns showing control of
raw materials indicates that the world’s industrial market of copper
and zine, and nine-tenths of the market of coal, copper, and lead, is
in the hands of these countries. The balance of industrial power
before the war lay between the United States and Germany.

Coal and iron.—tIn the case of France nature has dealt hardly
with her in the matter of mineral resources and as long as she re-
mains deficient in coal she will never become an industrial factor.
Before the war the balance of fuel was too much upon the German
side of the scale. Much of Europe’s chance for a stable and endur-
ing peace lies in an equitable redistribution of her coal and iron
supplies. Various official suggestions from the governments of
France and Great Britain appear to favor the restitution of the Lor-
raine basin to France, thereby transferring almost three-fourths of
Germany’s total of iron ore output. The necessary coke to handle
this amount of ore is to be found partly by annexing the Saare
district and partly by drawing on the high grade coal fields of
Westphalia. In case the Rhenish Westphalian syndicate should re-
fuse to export coal to Lorraine it is proposed that France should
establish a reciprocity treaty with England whereby she can draw
British coal in exchange for French iron ore. It is urged at the
same time that iron ore exports to Germany should be restricted
in order to prevent possibility of future war. These ideas meet with
favor in various British journals.

Some German notions of a post-war distribution of coal and iron
have come to us through French sources. It seemis probable that they
are a fair representation of prevalent opinion in the German com-
mercial world. A memoir addressed to the Imperial Government in
December, 1917, by the Association of German Iron and Steel In-
dustries and by the Association of Metallurgists is in favor of peace
without annexation except for the acquisition of Briey which they
claim would assure to Germany in the next war considerable re-
sources in domestic ore. The Wirtschaftszeitung of the Central-
miichte calls attention to the fact that the annexation of Briey
would cause unfortunate competition with the German blast furnaces
already in operation. It might be better to allow France to retain
possession of Briey and to send her ore to Germany. It appears
that Germany has contemplated the possibility of exceeding the
American iron and steel production by means of the resources of
the Briey basin and by the further development of German interests
in Normandy.

186650°—20-——18 «

262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

A clear exposition of the French attitude towards the coal and iron
problem by L. DeLaunay? has unfortunately never been translated
into English. The second part of the book deals with the treaty of
peace and post-war conditions. He discusses the coal situation of
Europe and calls attention to the fact that the production of Ger-
many had increased nearly 20 per cent in the five pre-war years
while the production of Great Britain had remained nearly station-
ary during the same time. He emphasizes the excellent quality of
the coal of Westphalia, which amounts to two-thirds of the actual
coal production of Germany (lignite excluded). He notes the low
cost of extraction of coal in Germany due to the natural ease in
working their coal deposits and to the installation of machine cut-
ting in German mines. To this natural richness in ceal he ascribes
the longing of the Germans to possess not only the iron ore of Ger-
man Lorraine but even the share that remained to France in the.
field of Briey and Longwy.

He then acknowledges the absolute deficiency of France in coal and
calls attention to the fact that her reserves are far surpassed by those
of England, Belgium, and Holland. He discounts as impractical the
possibility of further important reserves being found beneath the
Paris basin and he disposes of France’s water power as an inade-
quate substitute in addition to the fact that the electrometallurgy of
iron is not yet available for any but special purposes. He, therefore,
states that France is dependent for necessary coal upon the approach-
ing treaty. The production of Belgium is not sufficient to supply the
deficit, and importation from England would not be profitable. He
will not allow that France should be relegated, for lack of sufficient
raw materials, to the position of a manufacturer of only highly re-
fined and specialized finished products, justly contending that she has
shown in the past war that she is far from being in the position of a
dying nation that must be sustained by unnatural and _ selected
industries. He claims on the contrary that she is entitled in return
for her noble efforts to sustain herself against invasion to have a cer-
tain reparation for the injuries that have been dealt to her by nature
in her scant endowment of mineral wealth.

He demands therefore the restitution to France of Alsace-Lor-
raine with her annual output of 21,000,000 metric tons of iron ore, to-
gether with the Saare basin and its annual output of 17,500,000 metric
tons of coal and complete freedom to utilize the ore so acquired.

He then proceeds to examine what would be the situation if France
in order to paralyze the iron and steel industries of Germany should
refuse to export her iron ore to the Germans. The pre-war produc-
tion of iron ore in French Lorraine was 19,500,000 metric tons, and
her exports 8,000,000 tons. By adding to this the 21,000,000 tons of

1DeLaunay, L., ‘‘ France-Allemagne,” Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, LOT.

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 263

German Lorraine France would have at her disposal 40,500,000 tons
of ore, as opposed to 11,500,000 which she smelted in 1913. For the
additional ore almost 31,000,000 tons of coal would be required, if
5,000,000 tons of ore were exported to Belgium and Holland. The
1913 production of France in coal was 41,000,000 metric tons and her
consumption, according to De Launay, was 62,000,000 tons, leaving a
deficit. of 21,000,000 tons. The requirements of the numerous blast
furnaces already in operation in German Lorraine would bring this
deficit up to 52,000,000 or 53,000,000 tons. The annexation of 17,-
500,000 tons of coal in the Saare basin would still leave about 36,-
000,000 to be supplied. Out of 21,000,000 tons imported in 1913,
10,000,000 came from Great Britain and 4,000,000 from Belgium, the
remaining 7,000,000 chiefly from Germany.

De Launay contends that neither Great Britain nor Belgium could
furnish much more than her pre-war quota because of the insufficient
supply of Belgium and the difficulties attendant upon the long haul
from England to the Lorraine furnaces. It would be necessary then
to purchase about 22,000,000 tons of coal from Germany and he in-
sists that the elimination of commercial relations with Germany is
out of the question.

France is face to face with the problem of either exporting ore
from inability to smelt or of buying coal and coke from Germany
and maintaining her furnaces at the risk of overproduction or else of
closing her mines. In other words, France would then be contend-
ing with the problem that beset Germany during the years of her
-phenomenal industrial rise, only with this difference, that whereas
Germany had a great temptation to overproduction with her richness
of combustibles, France has to go abroad to search for the means of
maintaining her furnace output. De Launay does not take kindly
to the idea of restricting mine output, for, although he acknowledges
that there are advantages in holding reserves, he also maintains that
the progress of metallurgy may, in a comparatively short time, dis-
place these phosphorus ores of Lorraine for some other type such
as siliceous or arsenical iron ore. He advocates the exportation of
ore on a reciprocity basis to Great Britain. But he acknowledges
that this would not dispose of the large stocks of iron ore that France
would have to offer.

France must sell iron ore to Germany, provided that she receives
in exchange for it the coal that she requires. This exchange should
be made under favorable conditions such as those assured to Germany
by the treaty of Frankfort in connection with the textile industries
of Alsace. The peaceful interchange of commodities should not
begin until after a period during which Germany should furnish
France with coal without compensation and during which the exports
of French iron ore should be completely closed to Germany in order

264 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

to paralyze certain German factories before they could revert from
a war to a peace basis of production. He would, moreover, reserve
to France the right to place at all times in the future such em-
bargoes on exports to Germany as she might deem necessary in order
to prevent the recurrence of war.

De Launay is not blind to the fact that the ultimate disposition
of Alsace-Lorraine is complicated by the German ‘nationality of
one part of her people. Moreover, he appreciates the domination
of German interests in the iron and salt syndicates, etc., and he
realizes that even if it were possible to rid these institutions of their
German domination they would still be controlled not by French
but by various foreigners, Swiss, Swedes, and the naturalized Ameri-
can Jews of Frankfort. The suggested solution of this problem is
the expropriation of the German inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine.
The industrial syndicates are to be combined into a syndicate of the
Gewerkschaft or localized type, as opposed to the Gesellschaft or
imperial type. That is to say, they are localized under one con-
trolling power only exercised in Alsace-Lorraine. The directors and
stockholders of these new companies are to be entirely French or
members of allied nations. In order to enforce this the stock is to
be all registered. He acknowledges that in spite of these safeguards
it is likely the Germans will obtain a surreptitious hold upon the ad-
ministration through factitious shareholders. It would not be likely,
however, that Germans could continue to exercise such a complicated
and costly method of supervision in Alsatian affairs. It is more
probable that they would retire and construct new factories in the
Ruhr district.

In conclusion De Launay insists that without coal France can not
handle the increased iron and steel industries consequent upon the
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, that the necessary coal can not be
obtained at sufficiently low price from Great Britain on account of
transportation cost, that the factories of France could not work up
the crude products of the Lorraine ores, and that the raw materials
would necessarily continue to be exported to Germany. In case they
are sent to Germany, subject to customs duties, the iron and steel
of Lorraine would not compete with the products of the Luxemburg
furnaces, which pay no duties. He, therefore, stipulates that the
portion of the iron and steel output which was formerly absorbed
by the German market should be admitted to Germany duty free.
He also warns his readers that the German iron and steel industries
will never be extinguished so long as they have access to the foreign
ores of Sweden and so long as they exercise control over the Duchy
of Luxemburg.

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 265

A note of warning is sounded by Dr. C. W. MacFarlane? in “ The
Economic Basis of an Enduring Peace” published in 1918. He goes
further than De Launay and suggests the expropriation of the coal
fields of Westphalia in order to secure to France the necessary fuel
for her industries. He disposes of the problem of the assimilation of
the German people of Westphalia by stating that France is more
successful in dealing with her colonies than Germany and he claims
that the German population would be contented to become citizens
of an industrial republic rather than of an absolute monarchy.
Whether these reasons would be sufficient to insure the suc-
cessful assimilation into France of a population more essentially
German than Alsace-Lorraine is French is a matter of some doubt,
but he realizes that by depriving Germany of 75 per cent of her avail-
able supply of iron ore and by assigning to France 60 per cent of
German coal in the district of Westphalia we would completely wreck
Germany as an industrial power. He therefore proposes to turn over
to Germany the control of Turkey in Asia, in order that she may
rehabilitate her iron and steel industries with the high-grade mag-
netites of Asia Minor. This solution of the difficulty with its neces-
sary concomitant of an all-rail route between Germany and Asia
Minor, with a tunnel under the Bosphorus, and a proposed federated
Balkan State under international guaranty, will not appeal to the
many people who conceive that the increasing participation of Ger-
many in near eastern affairs is already a distinet menace. And if it
has proved impossible to assure the integrity of a nation like
Belgium, which is a well established unity, we may be pardoned for
declining to assume the responsibility of welding the seething Balkan
turmoil into any sort of federated State under an international
guaranty. Nevertheless, MacFarlane’s book serves a needed purpose
by pointing out what we are lable to forget in our natural desire
to see the industries of France placed upon a stable basis—namely,
that by depriving Germany of practically all her iron and by annex-
ing to France so much of German coal that there shall be no commer-
cial interdependence between France and Germany, we are transfer-
ring the predominance of industrial power from Germany to France.
In fact, we would transfer it to such good effect that we would rele-
gate Germany to a position of industrial impotence at the same time
that we placed an undue industrial supremacy in the hands of France,
who would then control by her production two and a half times as
much iron ore as Great Britain, and almost six times as much as
Germany. Such a situation would not be entirely free from danger
to the future peace of Europe.

Tungsten —Through French sources have come various interesting
ideas for the post-war disposition of other minerals less important

1MacFarlane, C. W., ‘The Economic Basis of an Enduring Peace,’ Geo. W. Jacobs &
Co., Philadelphia, 1918.

266 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

than iron and coal. It is unfortunate that we have received so far
no information concerning their ideas on the subject of copper, lead,
and zinc. Great hopes are entertained by the French Government
for a post-war tungsten industry that would le chiefly in the hands
of the Allies. The position of the ferrotungsten industry before the
war was one of the most striking examples of Germany’s industrial
domination of a raw material in which she is herself essentially
lacking. In 1918 Germany produced only about 1 per cent of the
world’s output of tungsten ore reckoned in terms of 60 per cent
tungstic acid. Yet through her imports she controlled over 60 per
cent. of the world’s output. Great Britain, including her possessions,
produced 37 per cent of the world’s output, yet she was dependent
entirely upon Germany not only for ferrotungsten, but also for her
tungsten steel tools, which even though purchased through English
firms were derived from German manufacturers. France’s produc-
tion of 1913 amounted to 2 per cent of the world’s output, and in
addition to this she controlled the production of the French mine of
Borralha in Portugal, and possessed an interest in the Bolivian
enterprises. Owing to her development of water power she had a
pre-war production of ferrotungsten, though it is certain that she
was not at that time in a position to compete with the German
market of ferro alloys, still less with their output of high-speed
tools. Her comparative poverty in this respect is shown by the
statement in La Metallurgia for April 30, 1918, that her consumption
of ferrotungsten had increased from 250 to 1,800 tons as the result
of the war. The suggestion is made that in the future tungsten ore
should only be sold to Germany at very high price in order to main-
tain the high price of tools. On account of the difficulty of success-
fully concentrating the tungsten business on a financially profitable
basis it is suggested that the tin and tungsten industries might be
organized into a combination which would increase the power of the
Allies in the Bolivian field, at the same time frustrating the activities
of Germany in that respect.

The English ferro industry has reached such a point that after
the war it will be able to handle all the British production of
molybdenum, which is nearly one-third of the world’s output. From
French sources comes the suggestion that the four French ferro
producers can, by reason of their cheap water power, handle all the
tungsten or molybdenum which the British might find difficult to
dispose of on account of the high cost of production in times of
peace.

Vanadium and uranium—Owing to the American control of the
vanadium output, the American Metal Company will become the
center for a combination which should dispose of the world’s supply
of vanadium in such a way as to eliminate Germany’s participation in

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 267

the ferro-vanadium business and to relegate her manufactures requir-
ing vanadium steel to an unimportant position. Since the United
States is the principal producer of uranium ores it would seem possi-
ble to combine the management of the vanadium and uranium output
so as to place the uranium business on a self-supporting basis, not
dependent upon state assistance, which is an artificial way of sus-
taining an industry. On account of the possibility that German
reserves of uranium may be increased by further exploitation the
French writers urge upon the Allies the necessity for vigorously
pursuing their efforts to keep the monopoly of these ores in their
own hands.

Antimony—AlI|though it might seem at first sight that the con-
trol of the antimony market would he in the hands of the Allies
on account of the fact that most of China’s production is treated in
the smelters of England, France, and Belgium, yet the fact that
in January, 1917, the Central Powers no longer showed evidences
of the antimony shortage from which they suffered at the beginning
of the war would indicate that they had succeeded in increasing
their resources to a considerable extent, doubtless by exploitation
of the Turkish deposits. It is, therefore, probable that after the
war they would be self-sufficient for the small peace-time require-
ments of antimony.

Tin.—In regard to the tin industry, which has hitherto remained
almost exclusively under the domination of the Metallgesellschaft
and the Dutch market which handles one-sixth of the world’s pro-
duction, French writers indicate the necessity of organizing the
interests of the Allies and of those neutrals who are outside of the
sphere of German interests. The British Empire is the principal
producer of tin and her enterprises are becoming gradually more
coherent while she is ridding herself of the dominant Anglo-Holland
interests. It is easy for her to increase her production, to extend
her smelters in the British East Indies, and also to establish in
Australia a hold which should stamp out growing German influence
in that country. She would in time be able to dominate the mines
of Siam by extension of her interest in the Malay Peninsula.
Bolivian mines should be carefully protected from German influ-
ences. The French industry should be stimulated. Belgium might
readily enter the field of the smelting, and the United States occu-
pies a position of growing importance on account of her de-tinning
industry. The Allies could easily recover from tinplate scrap in
English, French, and Italian works enough to supply all their
needs in tin chloride, and in addition have forty to fifty thousand
tons of steel available for use by re-fusion.

Phosphates.——As far as phosphates are concerned the Allies have
a virtual monopoly of the situation on account of the large produc-

268 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tion of the United States and of the French possessions in northern
Africa. The principal German sources of supply formerly lay in
the Marshall Islands and in the phosphatic slags furnished by the
basic iron industry of Lorraine. The latter source will be transferred
to the French with the accession of Alsace-Lorraine and the output
of the Marshall Islands is now controlled by an English company
which finds its market chiefly in Japan and Australia. Germany
might find a supply in the guanos of South America. The Peruvian
deposits are however controlled by an English company and the
guanos of Oceania are in the French or British islands, so that the
only deposits available for Germany are those of the Patagonian
coast of the Argentine Republic, whose output amounted to only
28,000 tons in 1913. Bone phosphate and phosphate extracted from
animal refuse is a considerable industry in Germany and a prominent
company for the production of chemical fertilizers in Paris was
under German supervision, a fact that is noted by the French as
requiring action on the part of the French Government. In general
the phosphate apportionment is susceptible of easy regulation from
the Allied point of view and it could well be fixed by an interallied
committee for the apportioning of raw materials. Such a committee
would watch not only over the exports from various producing
countries but also over the imports into Germany. The danger of
overproduction in France from her natural phosphates and from her
inereased output of basic slag would be small even if her produc-
tion did not find a market in Germany. The agriculture of France
after a long period of inaction and devastation will require an in-
tensive fertilization similar to that of Belgium, which employs 380
kilograms of superphosphate per hectare of cultivated land, as
against 83 kilograms per hectare employed by France before the war.
The consumption of phosphatic fertilizer in France could readily be
increased by a judicious propaganda launched by the producers. A
reduction in the supply of phosphate to the Central Powers would
greatly decrease the sugar beets in Germany, thereby reducing ap-
preciably her export of sugar.

CONCLUSIONS.

The various suggestions proposed are interesting possibilities for
the post-war regulation of mineral distribution. In the present
emergency while France is exhausted by her long struggle, practi-
cally depleted of man power, devastated in her own industries and
in those that are to be acquired in Alsace-Lorraine, some such ap-
pointment of output as that outlined above is not only advisable
but absolutely essential.

We must now furnish the necessary handicap to German industry
that will allow sufficient time for France to rise to the industrial

MINERAL SUPPLIES—BLISS. 269

prominence made possible by her own acquisitions of iron and coal.
Nevertheless, in dealing with a situation that is obviously abnormal
it is not well to shut our eyes to the fact that a healthy and normal
condition of international industry will always be governed to a
large extent by the natural laws of supply and demand. To be
stable the international balance of power must be in approximate
equilibrium. Forewarned by the past, let us realize that in the
industrial struggle which is a necessary part of the great struggle
for existence no one can reach supremacy except by constant untiring
effort. We must prevent Germany from becoming the dominant
industrial market of the world, but the desired result should be
attained not so much by choking German industry at its sources as by
fostering and sustaining our own neglected industries until they reach
“ point where they can successfully compete with Germany in her
own field. An outlaw nation in our midst will be a poor guarantee
of future harmony. Let us stifle the military despotism of Ger-
many, let us safeguard the revitalized industry of France, and let
us quicken the erstwhile sluggish industries of Great Britain,
then let us hope for a time when the great nations of the earth
may indeed represent a true partnership banded together for common
welfare. Wise men say that out of great wars come, along with de-
struction and devastation, great advantages to the human race.
To-day while we yet stand only in the faint glimmerings of the dawn,
it is hard to believe that out of evil comes good. Yet if the world
shall have been able to realize, not only the cruelty and barbarism
to which she refused to bow, but also the faults and short-sighted-
ness by which many nations are in some sense responsible for allow-
ing such a gigantic catastrophe to come to pass, and if each indi-
vidual nation shall come to realize that she owes both to herself
and to the world to fully develop her resources and her efficiency,
not selfishly in order that she may swell her own power to the
extermination of industrial development in other nations, but gen-
erously so that each nation may fulfil the share of human welfare
imposed upon her by Nature, then and then only will the Great War
bring forth lasting good to humanity.

45 ‘altel

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REPTILE RECONSTRUCTIONS IN THE UNITED
STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.

By CHARLES W. GILMORE,

Associate Curator of Paleontology, United States National Aluseum.

[With 6 plates. ]

A few million years before the Rocky Mountains were born and
when that region was a land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegeta-
tion, it was inhabited by a race of strange reptiles, upon whom
science has bestowed the appropriate name dinosaurs or terrible
lizards.

Some of these dinosaurs were the largest animals that ever walked
the earth and some were very small. They differed greatly in size,
shape, structure, and habits. Some were plant eaters; others fed on
flesh. Some walked on four feet; others with small weak fore limbs
walked upon the strongly developed hind legs. Some had reptile-
like feet; others were bird-footed. Some had: toes provided with
long sharp claws; others had flattened hoof-like nails. There were
dinosaurs with small heads and others with large heads. Some were
large and cumbersome; others were small, hght, and graceful and so
much resembled birds in their structure that only the skilled anato-
mist is able to distinguish their fossil remains. Some of large size
were clad in coats of bony armor, which gave them a most bizarre
appearance.

The fossil remains of many of these various kinds of dinosaurs
are now on public exhibition in the United States National Museum,
and it is the purpose of the present article to describe some of the
more interesting features of a few of these great brutes.

The first skeleton of a dinosaur to be displayed in the United States
National Museum was that of Zrachodon annectens (Marsh), popu-
larly known as the Duck-billed dinosaur because of the general re-
semblance of the widely expanded nose to the bill of that bird. It
was mounted in 1903.

Tt wag one of two nearly complete specimens obtained many years
ago (1891) on Lance Creek, Niobrara County, Wyoming. The com-
pleteness of the specimen is due to the fact that the animal after
death was quickly covered with sand, and before decomposition
had set in. The result being that the bones remained articulated,

271

272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the ribs attached to their respective vertebrae, and the great thigh
bones remaining in their sockets, the legs being retained in a walking
position as shown in the reproduction of the mounted skeleton.

Unfortunately the wearing away of the inclosing sandstone in
which the skeleton was embedded had exposed some of the bones and
portions of them had been damaged prior to its discovery. This
refers especially to the front half of the skull, which had entirely
weathered away. This has been restored from another more perfect
skull, as have other minor parts of the skeleton which were missing.
The skeleton is 26 feet 4 inches long; 11 feet 6 inches high from the
base to the top of the head, and 8 feet 2 inches to the top of the
hips. The skull is 3 feet 5 inches long; the thigh bone 3 feet 4 inches,
while the track of this animal would have been about 21 inches in
length and breadth. This is not the largest individual of its kind,
there being several known skeletons that reach a length of 30 and
more feet.

One of the most remarkable features of this great brute is the set
of teeth with which the jaws were so well provided. In one respect
these reptiles are much better off than the human being, in that as a
tooth is worn out or lost it is replaced at once by another pushing up
from beneath. Each jawbone has from 45 to 60 rows, and from 10
to 14 teeth in each vertical row, one above the other, the entire series
moving slowly upward, and new germ teeth continually forming at
the base to supply those worn away at the top. Thus it will be seen
by a simple computation that there were over 2,000 separate teeth
in the mouth of one individual.

The broad duck-like beak in life was probably covered with a
horny sheath, as in birds and turtles of to-day, and admirably suited
to the pulling up of rushes and other water plants, for this great
creature was a herbivorous or plant-eating animal. That 7racho-
don was water-living is indicated by the webbed fingers of the fore
feet and the long, deep latterly compressed tail, a most efficient
swimming organ and equally useful as a counterbalance to the
weight of the body when striding around on the hind legs on the
land. Specimens have been found showing impressions of the skin
covering, from which it has been learned that the animal was cov-
ered with a thin epidermis made up of tubercles of two sizes, the
larger ones, as has been pointed out by Prof. Henry F. Osborn, pre-
dominating on surfaces exposed to the sun.

In the lower figure of plate 1 is a model restoration by the writer
based so far as the proportions go on the mounted skeleton shown
in the upper figure. The skin pattern is based with modifications
on the published description of the wonderfully preserved mummi-
fied carcass of Trachodon in the American Museum of Natural His-

REPTILE RECONSTRUCTION—GILMORE. 273

tory, New York, which has been so well described by Professor
Osborn, and which has considerable portions of the skin areas pre-
served.

There lived at the same time with the 77rachodon described above
the horned dinosaur (7'riceratops), the largest headed land animal
the world has ever known. In plate 2 is shown a skeleton of one
of these animals in the United States National Museum, mounted in
1904, and to this day the only skeleton of 7riceratops in the world
to be thus exhibited. It is known as a composite skeleton— that is,’
made up of the bones of more than one specimen, though the greater
part of the skeleton pertains to one individual. These specimens
were collected by the late J. B. Hatcher in the northern part of
Niobrara County, Wyoming, a region from which he obtained the
skulls and other skeletal parts of more than 40 individuals.

From the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, the 7riceratops
is 19 feet 8 inches in length, and in front of the hips is 8 feet 2
inches in height. The skull is 6 feet long, or nearly one-third the
total length of the animal, and it is not an exceptionally large one,
for skulls are known that measure 9 feet in length. Although the
largest headed dinosaur, the brain of this creature is relatively
smaller than in any known animal when the great size of the skull
is taken into consideration.

That 7'vriceratops was a fighter and often engaged in combat ap-
pears to be shown by the broken bones that are frequently found
which have healed in life. A pair of horn cores in the National
Museum bear mute witness to such an encounter. That one was
broken off in life is evident from the fact that the stump had
rounded over and healed, while the size of the remaining horn
shows the animal to have reached a ripe old age.

The feeding habits of 7riceratops were manifestly plant eating,
as indicated by the tvoth structure, the food probably being leaves
and branches of low trees and shrubs. Hatcher? has pictured this
country at the time these animals lived as being made up of vast
swamps with wide watercourses that were constantly shifting their
channels, the whole presenting an appearance similar to that which
now exists in the interior of the Everglades of Florida. The entire
region, where the waters were not too deep, was covered by an
abundant vegetation and inhabited by these huge dinosaurs, as well
as by the smaller crocodiles, alligators, turtles, and diminutive
mammals, all of whose fossil remains are now found embedded in
the deposits of that geological period.

The life appearance of 7’riceratops has been depicted by numerous
paintings and several model restorations. In all of these the skin
has been shown as smooth and leathery, but the discovery in recent

1The Ceratopsia, Monog. U, 8. G. S., vol. 49, 1907, p. 194.

274 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

years of specimens having impressions of the skin preserved shows
it to be made up of a series of nonimbricating scales.

The accompanying photographic reproduction (pl. 2, fig. 2) made
of a recently prepared model restoration aims to embody all of the
evidence of recent discoveries. Primarily it is based on the mounted
skeleton shown in the figure above, and was made to a scale of one-
fourteenth the linear dimensions of the original skeleton.

The nonimbricating, scale-like texture of the skin as represented in

the model is based with modifications on skin impressions in the col-
lections of the Geological Survey of Canada, at Ottawa; and al-
though these impressions belong to one of the more primitive Cera-
topsians it does not appear unreasonable to expect that all of the
horned dinosaurs had a scaled integument, though the pattern of the
scales probably varied considerably in the different genera. While
future discovery will undoubtedly show the incorrectness of many
features of this restoration, it at least graphically portrays some of
the discoveries made during the past decade, and which have led to a
much better understanding of the life appearance of these huge-
headed, long extinct reptiles.
- During the same geological period that the Trachodon and Tri-
ceratops lived there were many other and smaller kinds of dino-
saurs. A skeleton of one of these, now in the National Museum, is
shown in plate 8. This was collected in Wyoming in 1891, and it
was In the nature of a surprise upon cleaning the rock from the bones
in 1914 to find that it represented a dinosaur new to science. It was,
therefore, found necessary to give it a name, and the name Zhes-
celosaurus neglectus was coined for that purpose, the last or specific
name being suggested by the seeming neglect on the part of those in
charge of this beautiful specimen which had remained in the original
packing boxes for 23 years after it was first discovered.

The value of a fossil is considerably enhanced when it happens
to be one to which a new name is first given, for it ever after re-
mains the standard for comparison by which others of its kind are
identified. Such a specimen is called a type, and the greater the
number of types in a collection of fossils, usually the greater its
scientific importance. .

The skeleton as here shown in the reproduction occupies relatively
the same position as when found in the rock. The head and neck
are missing, as are some few parts of other bones, as shown by the
light-colored areas in the picture.

The importance of preserving articulated dinosaurian specimens
in their original positions in the matrix can not be too highly
estimated, particularly where they give positive information, as
in the present instance, relating to the proper articulation and angu-
lation of the feet and limbs. Unlike the mammals, the articular

REPTILE RECONSTRUCTION—GILMORE. 275

surfaces in the dinosauts are usually poorly defined, and afford lit-
tle evidence concerning the exact manner of articulation of bones
found detached and misplaced. For this reason any information
conveyed by the finding of an articulated specimen with bones in
sequential position in the rock is more to be relied upon than any
number of expert opinions. <As a rule specimens so exhibited also
hold the attention of the average museum .visitor far longer and
arouse a keener interest in the genuineness of the specimens than does
a skeleton that has been freed from the rock and mounted in an
upright lifelike posture.

To the layman the type of 7hescalosaurus neglectus is'of interest
as showing the skeleton in the same position as when covered up
millions of years ago; and to. the vertebrate paleontologists it will
long remain a standard for interpreting and coordinating the scat-
tered and isolated parts of others of its kind.

In life this animal was about 12 feet in length and evidently strong
and agile in movement. The tail was long, equaling one-half the
entire length of the skeleton, which served as a balancing organ
when the upright bipedal posture was assumed. In rapid locomo-
tion 7’hescelosaurus doubtless progressed entirely upon its hind legs,
as do many of our living lizards, the short fore limbs being used
for sustaining the fore part of the body when feeding from the
ground.

While the head is unknown the resemblance of the skeleton to other
well-known dinosaurs indicates that it was in all probability a plant
eater. The foot structure would imply that it was more of an upland
animal rather than an inhabitant of swampy areas.

In modeling the restoration shown in plate 3, the missing head
and neck were restored from a closely related form in which these
parts are known. In this model an attempt has been made to ex-
press the light, agile nature of 7’hescelosawrus, as is so clearly indi-
cated by the skeleton and especially by the cursorial structure of the
hind limbs.

The animals briefly reviewed in the preceding pages all lived
during the Upper Cretaceous geological period, estimated by the best
authorities as being between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 years ago.
Dinosaurs, however, existed long before that time in what is known
as the Upper Jurassic, and attention is now called to typical repre-
sentatives of the reptilian inhabitants of that period which is esti-
mated to be 10,000,000 or more years old.

One of the most interesting was the Stegosawrus, or plated lizard.
They were by reason of their large size and ornate bony skin struc-
tures the more striking and characteristic of the large reptilia that
inhabited the Northern Hemisphere in those long past ages. It
should be stated, however, that this family is not confined exclusively

276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

to North America, for specimens have been found in England,
France, and German East Africa that are but little unlike the
American representatives.

Quite recently (1917) there has been placed on exhibition in the
musuem at Washington the skeleton of one of these curious beasts,
shown here in plate 4, reproduced from a photograph. The skele-
ton as mounted measures 14 feet 9 inches in length, and stands
about 8 feet high from the ground to the top of the highest plate.
It wag discovered in southeastern Wyoming—a region long famous
for the many and well-preserved fossil specimens found there.
Although collected more than 30 years ago it has only recently been
exhibited to the public.

At present the origin of the family is not known, though it is now
generally believed that they were descended from a bipedal ancestry,
and that increasing bulk and development of the dermal armor
caused them to lose celerity of movement, thus becoming sluggish,
slow-moving creatures of low mentality. By measurement of the
brain cavity in the skull of Stegosaurus it is found that the brain
displaces but 56 cubic centimeters of water, with an estimated weight
of about 24 ounces. This small organ directed the movements of the
creatures, estimated to weigh several tons, whereas the average nor-
mal human brain has a capacity of 900 cubic centimeters in a creature
weighing from 130 to 150 pounds.

The most remarkable feature of the nervous system of this great
brute, however, is the enormous enlargement of the spinal cord in the
sacral region, which has a mass of more than 20 times that of the
puny brain. At best the intelligence of this animal was of the lowest
order, hardly more than sufficient to direct the mere mechanical
functions of life. Whereas the great horned dinosaurs, with skulls
from 3 to 9 feet long, were the largest headed land animals the
world has ever known, the stegosaurs are the smallest headed when
the great bulk of the body is taken into consideration. The jaws are
provided with a dentition made up of teeth so small and weak as to
be always a source of wonder and conjecture as to the real character
of their feeding habits. It would at least appear to indicate that
their food consisted of the most succulent of terrestrial plants.

The structure of the large broad feet suggest they were land
haunting, doubtless of low swampy regions rather than the upland,
and such an environment would be most suitable for furnishing the
soft plant life necessary for their sustenance.

In addition to the small head and the great difference in the propor-
tions of the fore and hind legs, the one most striking external fea-
ture of Stegosaurus is the unusual development of the skin armor,
consisting, as it does, of two parallel rows of erect alternating bony

REPTILE RECONSTRUCTION—GILMORE. Ni

plates extending from back of the skull on either side of the mid-
line of the back to the end of the tail, the tail being armed near the
tip with two pairs of bony spikes or spines. There are also a con-
siderable number of small rounded bony ossicles that in life were
held in the skin and probably formed a mail-like protection to the
head and neck. The primary purpose of this armor must have
been for defense, protective to the extent of giving the animal a
most formidable appearance rather than actually useful as a defen-
sive instrument.

While the fossil remains of these animals are not uncommon in
our museums, they consist for the most part of scattered and dis-
articulated bones. The one here figured is the only mounted skeleton
of this animal in existence at the present time.

In plate 4, is shown a model restoration of Stegosaurus prepared
by the writer and which portrays his conception of the life appear-
ance of this animal. In this restoration is incorporated all of the
latest evidence relating to its external appearance, and is thought
to give a fairly accurate picture of the living animal. The recent
discoveries of skin impressions with the fossil remains of other
dinosaurian specimens makes it not unreasonable to expect that
Stegosaurus had a scale-like integumentary covering, instead of the
smooth elephant-like skin-as here depicted. In the light of recent
discoveries we may yet hope to have still more definite knowledge
as to its true nature.

That the sluggishly moving Stegosaurus had need for his bony
skin protection is indicated by the presence in the same geological
formation of large flesh-eating dinosaurs. One of the most striking
of these, though not the largest, is the Ceratosaurus, a carnivorous
animal with a large head, having jaws filled with rows of strong,
sharp-pointed teeth, that were well adapted to the seizing of its
prey and the subsequent tearing and rending of the flesh. One of
the distinctive features of this animal is the presence on the nose of
a single, well-developed horn, and it was this horn that suggested
to Professor Marsh the name Ceratosaurus nasicornis, meaning nose-
horned saurian or lizard.

The exceedingly small fore limbs armed with sharp claws were
not at all adapted to walking purposes, so that progression must
have been entirely upon the strong hind legs.

This specimen was collected near Canon City, Colorado, during
the years 1883 and 1884. The skeleton was found largely articu-
lated in the rock, but many of the bones, especially the skull, have
been greatly compressed and this flattening largely determined
the selection of the bas-relief method of mounting it for exhibition,
_ see plate 5. The backbone stands out in bold relief from the orig-

136650°—20——19

278 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

inal sandstone matrix, but the greater part of the background was
made of a mixture of sand and cement, that when chiseled gives
so close an imitation of the original sandstone as to make it difficult
to distinguish one from the other.

The pose of the skeleton was determined by the position of
the bones as originally found, and this remark applies especially
to the left thigh bone, which was held by the rock in its proper
position in the hip socket, which was directed backward at such an
angle as to demand a walking stride. An attempt was therefore
made to carry out the idea of a rapid walking motion and to make
the other parts of the skeleton contribute to that effect. The long
tail being raised clear of the ground acts as a counterpoise to balance
the weight and compensate for the swaying of the body and fore-
legs.

The skeleton is 17 feet in length over all and about 5 feet high
at the hips. There have been several life restorations made by vari-
ous authorities; the latest done by the writer in 1915 showing his
conception of the animal in the flesh is shown in plate 5.

In order to graphically present its flesh-eating habits the animal
was modeled completing the killing of a small herbivorous contempo-
rary, Camptosaurus nanus, an animal which could very well have
been the prey of this rapacious brute. On the other hand some
authorities are inclined to consider Ceratosaurus to be a reptilian
hyena that fed upon carrion; but, armed with teeth and claws such
as they have, one can hardly believe they were intended entirely in
the interests of peace.

We will now turn aside from the dinosaurs and in conclusion tell
something about the Dimetrodon, one of the most striking and ex-
traordinary forms of extinct reptilian lfe known from the North
American Continent. In scientific circles this animal goes by the
name of Dimetrodon gigas, but is popularly known as the Giant
Spined Reptile, in reference to the high spines developed along the
median line of the back, as shown in plate 6.

This specimen was found in northern Texas in the spring of 1917
by the veteran collector of fossils, Mr. Charles H. Sternberg, and
acquired from him for the national collections. It is the most per-
fect skeleton of its kind known at this time and is the first one to
be exhibited as a free mount, there being no less than three others
elsewhere mounted in bas-relief. There were many difficult mechani-
cal problems embodied in the mounting of a skeleton of such fragile
proportions, but the success of the undertaking may be best judged
by an examination of the photographic reproduction of the skeleton
here shown. An idea of the painstaking care required in fitting to-
gether the broken pieces of bone, cleaning off the adhering rock, re-
storing missing parts, and articulating and mounting the bones may

REPTILE RECONSTRUCTION—GILMORE. 279

be gleaned from the fact that 18 months of steady labor of one man
was devoted to this specimen from the time it was received at the
museum until ready for exhibition to the public. The pose adopted
is one suggested by a careful study of living lizards, and is an atti-
_ tude often assumed by those land forms of the present day when
slightly irritated—that is, with the front of the body raised from
the ground, the rear portion lowered with hind legs spread out,
head raised, with jaws open, showing the rows of strong, shghtly re-
curved teeth, as if angrily defying some one who had suddenly
blocked his path.

Aside from the large head and strong short limbs, the most
striking feature of Dimetrodon is the high dorsal fin along the back,
formed by the lengthening of the neural spines of the vertebrae.
These range in length from 6 inches on the neck to over 34 feet above
the center of the back, where they reach their maximum develop-
ment, becoming successively shorter as the tail is approached. That
in life these tall spinous processes were united by a thin membrane
of scaled skin there is little doubt. The foreign savants, Professors
Abel and Jaekel, are disposed to think the spines were covered by
skin, but not connected, but this seems highly improbable.

The one living lizard which appears to throw some light on the so-
lution of this problem, and which is very remotely related to Dime-
trodon is Basiliscus plumifrons from tropical America. The crest on
the back shown in the inset in plate 6, though not so high or extensive
as in Dimetrodon, is nevertheless supported by the elongated spinous
processes of the vertebrae and these bear a striking resemblance to the
crest of the extinct form. In general appearance all of the basilisks,
of which there are several species, suggest the idea of lizards upon
whose backs has been grafted a fish’s fin, and it seems that in this
animal we have the best suggestion of the probable appearance in life
of the Dimetrodon fin or crest along the back.

In trying to account for some practical use for this unusual ap-
pendage it has been suggested that it may have resembled some of the
ancient vegetation and thus served to conceal the animal as it lay in
wait for its prey or for better concealment from its enemies. Pro-
fessor Case, the acknowledged authority on the Permian reptiles, says
of these:

The elongate spines were useless, so far as I can imagine, and I have been
puzzling over them for several years. It is impossible to conceive of them as
useful either for defense or concealment, or in any other way than as a great
burden to the creatures that bore them. They must have been a nuisance in
getting through the vegetation and a great drain upon the creature’s vitality,

both to develop them and to keep them in repair. The genus succeeded despite
of them, or perished because of them.

280 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

That Dimetrodon was a carnivorous animal is clearly indicated by
the powerful incisor and maxillary teeth which are admirably
adapted for seizing and holding an active struggling prey. It is not
probable that with his short bowed legs and heavy body he was ever
capable of running fast or for long distances, but was certainly able
to move swiftly for a short space, and thus from where he lay hid-
den in the vegetation made short, scuttling rushes upon his prey, end-
ing possibly with a short pounce which permitted his weight to add
something to the vigor of the attack by tooth and claw.

The edges of pools were probably the regions most densely popu-
lated by the varied amphibian and reptilian forms of the Permian
period, and no doubt such places were favorite haunts of the Dime-
trodon.

The National Museum skeleton has a length of about 7 feet, and
from the base to the top of the highest spine measures 5 feet 6 inches,
and while this is the largest species of its kind single individuals
probably reached greater dimensions,

In plate 6 is shown a photograph of the restoration of )imetrodon
gigas based on the mounted skeleton and which shows the latest con-
ception of the probable life appearance of this creature.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE I.

LEE eee Gil See

FIG. 2.— RESTORATION OF TRACHODON ANNECTENS (MARSH).
Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1915.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE 2.

Fig. |.—MOUNTED SKELETON OF TRICERATOPS ELATUS MARSH.

Fic. 2.—RESTORATION OF TRICERATOPS ELATUS MARSH.
Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1915.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE 3.

Fic. |.—SKELETON OF THESCELOSAURUS NEGLECTUS GILMORE.

FIG. 2.—RESTORATION OF THESCELOSAURUS NEGLECTUS GILMORE.
Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1915,

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE 4.

Fic. |.—MOUNTED SKELETON OF STEGOSAURUS STENOPS MARSH.

FIG. 2.— RESTORATION OF STEGOSAURUS STENOPS MARSH.
Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1915,

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE 5.

Fic. I.—MOUNTED SKELETON OF CERATOSAURUS NASICORNIS MARSH.

Fic. 2.—RESTORATION OF CERATOSAURUS NASICORNIS MARSH.
Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1915,

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gilmore. PLATE 6.

FIG. 2.—RESTORATION OF DIMETRODON GIGAS COPE. INSET: BASILISCUS PLUMI-
FRONS, A LIVING LIZARD.

Modeled by Charles W. Gilmore, 1918.

A PLEISTOCENE CAVE DEPOSIT OF WESTERN
MARYLAND.

By J. W. GIDLEY,

Assistant Curator of Fossil Mammals, United States National Museum.

[With 6 plates. ]

Caves are known in almost all portions of the globe. They usu-
ally occur in the softer rock formations of the nature of gypsum,
sandstone, and particularly limestone. The peculiar nature of lime-
stone, which is usually hard enough to be very resistant, but is slowly
soluble in the presence of certain acids taken from the air by falling
rain, make it especially susceptible to the development of under-
ground caverns. These sometimes attain enormous size and usually
follow the general lines of stratification or some fault or fissure
where surface waters may find more ready access. Thus in limestone
regions caverns, or caves both small and large, are likely to abound,
and in certain localities occur in great numbers. Cave deposits con-
taining bones of extinct animals, however, are comparatively rare in
America, and their discovery, through the very nature of their oc-
currence, is usually purely accidental. It was through one of these
accidents that such a cave deposit was discovered a few years ago in
the vicinity of Cumberland, Maryland.

In the spring of 1912 there was brought to the United States
National Museum, for inspection and determination, a portion of a
lower jaw recognized as belonging to an extinct and hitherto un-
known species of the wolf kind, together with a few other fossil
bones which had been picked up from the bottom of a newly exca-
vated railroad cut about 4 miles northwest of the city of Cumber-
land, Maryland. These specimens had been sent in and were after-
wards presented by Mr. Raymond Armbruster, a local amateur
collector of Cumberland, and his uncle Mr. George Roeder, of Swet-
nan, Virginia. The fossils at once aroused interest, and on invita-
tion of these gentlemen, who reported good prospects of obtaining
more such specimens from this recent excavation, a personal inspec-
tion was made. The cut is situated on the south side of Wills Creek
Valley, where the tracks of the Western Maryland Railway pass
westward through a low limestone ridge, or spur, to enter Cash
Valley. The material from which the fossil bones had been taken

281

282 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

was found to be a true cave deposit, presenting a small exposure, or
outcrop, at the base of the almost perpendicular southern wall of the
cut which at this point is about 100 feet deep.*

This preliminary examination revealed the fact that, while great
quantities of the bone-bearing material had been blasted out and
carried away by the steam shovel, there still remained a considerable
mass which had not been disturbed and which promised to be well
worth a thorough exploration. Following the report of conditions
and prospects to the museum authorities, a systematic excavation
for the careful collecting of the fossil bones was undertaken. The
deposit proved to be of considerable depth and extent, and very
rich both in quantity and quality of fossils, which were exceedingly
varied in kinds of animals represented.

The work, begun in the spring of.1912, proceeded at intervals as
the limited available funds permitted, and was not completed until
the spring of 1915. A preliminary report of the results of the first
two expeditions was published in August, 1913.2, At this time there
had been recognized in the collection, 29 species distributed among
6 orders of mammals. The work of the following two years yielded
many more specimens, and among them were the best obtained at
this locality. Incidentally these also added many new species to the
list reported in 1913, so that the list now includes no less than 45
distinct species or kinds of mammals referable to seven different
orders. To these may be added a few species of reptiles, including
two snakes, and a species of alligator or crocodile. The actual
identity of the latter is not certain, since it is represented by only a
single tooth.

The mammals represented constitute a varied and, in some respects,
strange assemblage. They range in size from a Bat smaller than
a house mouse to a mastodon which attained the size of an elephant.
Probably none of these except the bats could properly be called
‘ave living animals. Most of the species are now extinct, although
many of the extinct forms belong to present day genera,’ and doubt-
less very closely resembled oe living relatives. Among those
animals referable to living genera are bats, shrews, squirrels, porcu-
pines, ground hogs or woodchucks, field or pocket mice, wood rats,
beavers, rabbits and picas, bears, wolves, lynx, wolverines, badgers,

1The accompanying figure, pl. 2, puenente a view of the focation and immediate sur-
roundings of this cave deposit as it appeared after a great part of the subsequent exca-
vating had been completed. It will be noted that here the rock ledges or strata have
been tilted up by mountain folding to a degree at which they are standing almost directly
on edge. <A faint trace of peculiar weathering leading almost directly upward to the
summit of the cliff evidently indicates the original opening of the cavern to the surface of
the ground before the railroad cut was made.

2 Gidley : Proc. U.S.N.M., vol. 46 (1914), No. 2014, 1913, pp. 93-102.

3A genus is a natural group or assemblage of species having certain distinguishing
characters in common. For example the genus Canis includes all the species or kinds of
true wolves and dogs.

CAVE DEPOSIT

GIDLEY. 283

minks, martens, horse, tapir, deer, and possibly a large species of
antelope, big as an ox, which seems to be closely related to the eland
now living in Africa. The exact relations of this antelope, however,
can not at present be stated with certainty, owing to the fact that
two jaws, carrying the cheek-teeth and a few scattered teeth and
foot bones constitute all the remains now known of it. These differ
but shghtly in character from the corresponding parts of the eland,
with which they were compared and this is why it was provisionally
referred to the African genus. A more complete knowledge of the
American animal may show that it belonged to an unknown group
which is now extinct. Other extinct forms belonging to two or pos-
sibly three genera are related but are not ancestral to the living pec-
caries. The peccaries of the present day are considerably smaller in
size and are confined in their habitat to tropical and subtropical
America.

Many of the species in the collection are represented by bones
of numerous individuals. Some of these are recognized by only a
few jaw fragments containing teeth; others by numerous bones,
including more or less complete skulls, jaws and other parts of the
skeleton; while in all the assemblage only a single animal, and that
belonging to one of the extinct species of peccaries, is represented
by a nearly complete skeleton (see pl. 6).

Most of the big bones and skulls of the larger animals were found
broken, and with few exceptions all bones were scattered and in-
discriminately mixed throughout the mass of clay and cave breccia.
This condition of deposition may be readily understood, when the
character of the cavern as it formerly existed is studied. As al-
ready stated the fossil-filled chamber, before the railroad cut ex-
posing it to view was made, reposed at a depth of at least * 100 feet
beneath the surface of the ground, with which it was connected by a
small and more or less irregular opening leading almost directly up-
ward, as indicated in the illustration, plate 2. This opening at
the surface probably broadened out to form one of those depres-
sions, or “sink holes,” so frequently found in limestone regions, and
doubtless acted as a natural trap for animals roaming in its
vicinity, the cavern far below being the receptacle for their bones
when the skeletons had become sufficiently macerated to fall apart
and continue their downward journey through the small, irregular
chimney-like opening. In this descent of a 100 feet or more it 1s
quite evident how these bones became so broken and separated. The
accumulation was probably gradual, extending possibly over hun-
dreds of years, and this time element, in part at least, would account
for the indiscriminate mixing of the bones of so great a variety of

1Brosion has doubtless carried away many feet of material from the summit of the
ridge since these animal remains became thus entombed.

284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

totally unrelated animals, most of which would not be found directly
associated in life.

A critical study of these fossil bones, thus accidentally brought to-
gether and again accidentally discovered by man, unfolds a most
interesting story of the mammalian life as it existed in the environs
of western Maryland during some portion of the so-called “Glacial
Period,” or “Ice Age.” It can not be assumed, however, that these
45 or more species included in the Cumberland Cave collection rep-
resent by any means all the different kinds of animals that lived in
the locality at that particular period; for, it must be remembered,
accident, as just stated, was the chief factor in the accumulation of
this deposit, and doubtless many forms then inhabiting the region
entirely escaped this pitfall and therefore left no record. Never-
theless, could one, looking backward some 50,000 or 100,000 years to
that time, see only those forms represented in this collection as they
appeared in life, a remarkable assemblage of creatures would be
presented ; more remarkable, in fact, than a glance at the list enumer-
ated might at first indicate. One would at once recognize among
these animals of the Pleistocene times, as already intimated, certain
species very like some of those either living in the vicinity to-day or
which have lived there within the history of civilized man. Then
many others would be seen to resemble living forms now only in-
habiting very far-distant localities; while still others would appear
differing from any animal living anywhere in the world to-day.

Among those resembling living or recently extinct species of the
neighborhood would be included two or three forms of bats, a small
shrew, a wood rat, two or three species of pocket mice, a woodchuck,
a “yellow” porcupine, a rabbit, possibly a wolf or two, a black bear,
and probably a deer of the Virginia or white-tail variety. Most
conspicuous and probably the most interesting feature of this
ancient fauna is the large number of species which resembled pres-
ent-day forms that are now known to inhabit only remote and, in
some instances, very far separated localities. Among these may be
especially noted the little coney rabbit, or picas, now confined in
North America to the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains; the
Canadian porcupine, restricted in range to the western United States
and Canada; the wolverine, a strictly boreal or northern animal
abundant in the Arctic regions and not known to range farther south
than northern Massachusetts, New York, and Michigan; a bear of
the grizzly group, not known in recent times to have extended its
range east of the Great Plains States; a tapir, now confined to
tropical zones; a horse, its kind in nature now confined entirely
to the Old World; a certain species of bat now living in northern
Mexico; and two or three species of wolves now living in the west-
ern and northern regions of North America, and in Siberia.

CAVE. DEPOSIT—GIDLEY. 285

In contemplating this list one must bear in mind that the fossil
and living forms compared, with few exceptions at least, are not
identical species, but these fossil forms doubtless in life would have
closely resembled their present-day relatives in general appearance
and probably in habits.

The especially interesting phase of this fauna of the Cumberland
Cave deposit, then, is the association of remains of animals whose
modern relatives are now living under widely varying climatic
conditions, as well as distant geographic ranges. And in referring
to the lists enumerated above one might well ask what sort of
climate prevailed in the western Maryland region during that por-
tion of the Pleistocene in which this deposit of bones was being
formed ?

Crocodiles or alligators are not known to have ever existed outside
of tropical or subtropical climates, and, moreover, cold-blooded
saurians could not have inhabited a locality where the temperature
was accustomed to fall much below the freezing point. The present
day tapirs and peccaries also are confined to tropical and subtropical
localities. The presence of these creatures then, and especially the
crocodile, seem strongly to indicate a warm climate for our-cave-de-
posit fauna. On the other hand, the wolverine is always considered
a boreal animal, normally associated with cold climate conditions
and martens and minks, too, for the most part, now inhabit northern
or at least temperate zones, while the little picas or coney rabbits,
to-day are found living only in the higher altitudes of the Rocky
Mountains or some of the colder regions of Asia and eastern Europe.
The presence, therefore, of these animals-may be taken as almost
equally strong evidence of cold climatic conditions.

How, then, may one account for this intermingling of animals of
such widely varying climatic zones? ‘There are at least three pos-
sible explanations. The first, and most unlikely perhaps, would be
to suppose that the animals of the Pleistocene sufficiently differed
in habits from their living relatives as to render comparisons en-
tirely untrustworthy; or, second, that the accumulated fossil bones
of this deposit represent a lapse of time sufficient for a gradual
local change in climate, from mild subtropic to boreal or arctic, con-
ditions (or vice versa), accompanied by a gradual and appropriate
change of faunas; or third, and to me the most likely supposition is
that the average temperature of the general region, at least of the
lowlands and valleys, was warmer then than now, while the mountain
ranges and peaks in the vicinity, being less worn down by erosion
were probably much higher and therefore colder, possibly even snow
capped.

Such a condition would naturally bring the boreal faunas much
farther south than we now find them, while the valleys and lowlands

286 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

might at the same time be inhabited with a distinctly southern fauna.
A contributory cause for a more southern range of boreal forms may
be found also in the probable fact that the southern extremities of
the great pleistocene ice sheet were at the time not far distant from
this particular region. Under these conditions, had they prevailed,
a mixture of fossil remains of boreal and subtropic animals such as
is indicated in the Cumberland cave deposit is very readily under-
stood and may thus be satisfactorily explained. It might well-be
that animals of widely varied life habits could inhabit contempo-
raneously the same general region—the austral species occupying
normally the lower, warmer levels, the boreal forms the colder re-
gions of the uplands and mountain tops—while certain animals of
each extreme might readily, during the course of seasonal changes,
occupy alternately and temporarily an intermediate locality. More-
over, the very nature and occurrence of the fossil remains found in
the cave mass suggests just such a possibility, while there was no
evidence whatever of a gradual succession or displacement of faunas
affecting the entire region which might have taken place during the
period of the cave-deposit accumulation.

Nearly coincident with the Cumberland cave discovery, and quite
as accidentally, a similar deposit was reported to the National Mu-
seum from a locality in West Virginia. This find did not prove
nearly so rich as the former one, either in numbers of bones or kinds
of animals represented, but is nevertheless of interest since it differs
in some important respects from that of the Cumberland locality,
while the fossils it contained show it to be about equivalent in age.
The deposit was encountered in the course of developing a quarry
in the limestone ledge situated on the west side of the beautiful
valley of the Green Brier, near the little town of Renick.

Here the rock strata are nearly in their original horizontal posi-
tion (see pl. 4) and the small cavern following the general
line of stratification extended backward some distance into the side
of the ledge with its original opening on the same level with the floor
of the cavern instead of directly above, as at the Cumberland locality.
This difference in physical structure is reflected, first, in the character
of the deposit covering the floor of the cavern, it being a soft, loose
cave-clay unmixed with broken stones; and, second, in the much
fewer numbers, and less variety of bones found there. The few bones
recovered for the National Museum, which include only one well-
preserved skull, represent but a single species, and that species,
strangely enough, closely related to or possibly identical with one
of the large extinct peccaries of the Cumberland cave. Unfortu-
nately, as in the case of the Cumberland find, the greater part of the
bone-bearing material had been removed before any steps were taken
to preserve the specimens it contained. It, therefore, is quite prob-

CAVE DEPOSIT—GIDLEY. 287

able that bones of other animals had also found their way into this
deposit, but hardly possible that there was anything lke such a
varied assemblage of animal remains as was formed at the Cumber-
land cave; for here there was no natural trap or pitfall to assist in
their accumulation, and the bones of the Green Brier deposit seem to
have been dragged there by some large carnivorous animal, which in
Pleistocene times may have used the small cavern as a den; or possi-
bly these large peccaries may themselves have occasionally sought its
entrance for protection or shelter.

Among other notable discoveries in the United States of cave
formations containing fossil bones are the Port Kennedy cave de-
posits of eastern Pennsylvania’; the Potter Creek Cave, of Shasta
County, California?; and the “Conrad Fissure” bone deposit of
northern Arkansas.? Descriptions of these may be found by refer-
ring to the publications here cited.

In the Old World, and especially in Europe, discoveries of cave
deposits containing bones of extinct species of animals have been
more frequent than in America. This is probably due, in part at
least, to the fact that much of the Old World is more densely popu-
lated and has been occupied by civilized. man for a much greater
period of time. Boyd Dawkins, a noted English scientist and writer
has given a good account of these caverns in his interesting book on
Cave Hunting, published by MacMillan & Co., London, in 1874.

An especially interesting feature of the European caves is the un-
mistakable evidence that many of them were inhabited for long
periods, especially during the Pleistocene age, by large carnivores,
such as hyenas and bears, and these animals were doubtless re-
sponsible for the accumulation of bone deposits found there repre-
senting many other animals which they had dragged into their dens
for food. Many of the caves also show evidences of having been in-
habited by early man. A good account of these evidences has been
given by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn in his book on Men of the
Old Stone Age.‘

1 Cope and Mercer, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., (2) vol. 11, 1887 to 1891, pp. 193-289.
2 Sinclair, Univ. Calif. Pubs. vol. 2, No. 1, 1904, pp. 1—27.

3 Brown, Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 9, pt. 4, 1908.

4 Osborn: Men of the Old Stone Age, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1915.

cleus t pues . mae da an

bl Pnicgeanernd miues
tery Peake do ;

mck Jali yeh tied

a ;
a AY ta 3 }

‘SLISOddaq SAVO GNVIYSEWND SHL GSYSAOONNM HOIHM LNDO AvOeTIVYe

*Ka|pPlO—'SL6L ‘Wodey ueluosY WS

“| ALV1d

PLATE 2.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gidley.

CAVE FORMATION IN UPTILTED LIMESTONE LEDGE.

“NSXNVL 3YSM SANOG TISSO4 HOIHM WOYS YAEWVYHOD G3SLVAVOXyA

*€ aLV1d “AQIPID—"BILEL ‘Hodey ueluosyWWS

PLATE 4.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gidley.

STONE QUARRY NEAR RENICK, W. VA.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Gidley. PLATE 5.

SMALL CAVE DEPOSIT IN STONE QUARRY NEAR RENICK, W. VA.

“SAV GNVIYSSWND WOYS AZIGI5 SISNSGNV1IYSEWNO SNNODSALV1Id 3JO NOLS1SxS

‘9 AlVid "APIPID—'SL6L ‘HOdey uxjuosyzWS

PALEOBOTANY: A SKETCH OF THE ORIGIN
AND EVOLUTION OF FLORAS.

By Prof. Epwarp W. Berry,
The Johns Hopkins University.

[With 6 plates. |

CONTENTS.
Page
DOiNmROLouDLC LOVE co ee ee Se IE es Eg a a ee ene pe eR eee eae 289
Methods of preservation _______-____- PE ee Pr eee Es Ae 292,
eres joueiove OES. = So ee ee ee eee 294
Rela tionscomOunetas Clon. CGcers masse: mme ane Sauna ae Se ee 291
Types of vegetation:
Te eal po iey str eee eee eee EE et ef eh eh nee) 2 ee 298
IB RYO iniyitel eines eee eee ee sit Be bag bo0ih 2 on: psp d 29 tere hs opdd) D008 BOO
Terie. OP lay te ee a 8 de a eee ee SOL
AT fhnroph tae ae se ee ae ee eee r= anes 2 ts EE ee B11
Tepid ophytaee== = = ee 5 A 5 ee ee Se ee ee See 322
PiCRIGCOSPMeLOO Dp liyikeh ene eee eee Sa fy) Se ee eee ee 334
Cy ca doy liye ee ties aE ee SE ef eh ee ee 2 340
Contienophytamee 2s eee eran, Jae oped freee Hise ayeeter 2 352,
SAN STOSDEEMLO I Inyo ee ee ee ee ee 367
The evolution of floras:
Stacesmotme Olu Ones saree eS ee aS ee 372
Eres) CVO MATER AM is eeeen eee ee ee Se eee B30 [h
IDEVONLANEMLO RAS eee eee we eee bre hs PDS irda kb ee Sih es 378
Carboniferous and Permian Cosmopolitan floras®—~~---------_-_____ 381
Thee lOSSOpLeGIS- Gancamopteris =llota.. =) ess ss ee 383
TAS SiCh ml OTs Spe mwr ee een ees Be SAS ee) tee er ee ee 386
Pl SEE VSN AA OM TST ats ee a ae ee ee ee 392
WOWeLE GRelaceOuUsillO le Sree sees ne ee a eee ee 394
WpperuGnreraiceousmionass ast) a Ushi 18) Vale ed Bi eee eS 3898
TRertieiiys etre Soest eye ree SEE fe hoe is gel he ed ee ee Da 401
TEATS HS OTe av te a Oa LENSE le pe NS See eee Os eee eee eo rs ee ee eee 406
INTRODUCTION.

The study of the former plant life of the globe possesses a many-
sided fascination, not the least of which is the light which it
sheds upon physical history. The term paleobotany, applied to the
science of fossil plants, has come to be widely adopted of late years.
Its story is not merely the history of the endless succession of plants
which have inhabited the earth since life first came into existence,
but it aims to understand and interpret these in terms of the evolu-

289

290 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 1918.

tion of individuals and of floras, their interactions with an ever-
changing environment, and the transmutation of these facts into
terms of ancient geography, topography, rainfall, temperature, and
distribution.

The scientific study of fossil plants is a very modern development,
for, notwithstanding the great abundance of fossil plants in the
countries of the classical world surrounding the Mediterranean, the
limestone quarries of the Greeks, the petrified forests of Nubia, and
the vast public works of Imperial Rome, none of the writers of
antiquity mention fossil plants, although some of them carried on
a lively discussion regarding the nature of animal fossils. Petrified
wood is not recorded until about the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury (Albertus Magnus), and fossil foliage not before the latter
half of the seventeenth century (Major, Lhwyd). The earlier com-
mentators explained fossils as due to the mystical action of the stars
or the mysterious working of spiritual forces like the vis lapidifica
of Avicennia, or the virtus formativa of Albertus Magnus, or the
stone-making spirit of Sperling. Nothing was further from the
accepted thought than that fossils were the remains of real organ-
isms that had once lived; the nearest approach to such a view was
that they were some of the models used by the Creator or that they
had developed from abortive germs of animals and plants that had
become lost in the earth.

After the view that fossils were the remains of organisms had
gained many adherents, they were regarded as evidence of the uni-
versal deluge—an interpretation suggested by Martin Luther in 1539.
This flood theory or diluvial hypothesis found numerous advocates
throughout the seventeenth and even far into the eighteenth century.
For example, in the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1757,
James Parsons figures humerous fossil fruits from the early Eocene
deposit of Sheppey in the Thames estuary. These, he thought,
would furnish evidence of the season of the year in which Noah and
the rest of creation were obliged to take refuge in the ark, and he
concludes from the maturity of these fossil fruits that the deluge
commenced in the fall of the year and not in the spring, as his con-
temporary, Doctor Woodward, hadsupposed. Johann Jacob Scheuch-
zer (1671-1733) was the great exponent of the flood theory, pub-
lishing his Herbarium Diluvianum at Zurich in 1709, and even figur-
ing the bones of one of Noah’s less fortunate brethren which he found
among the fossil leaves at Oeningen on the Swiss border of Baden,
and which subsequently proved to be the bones of a large Miocene
amphibian.

The flood theory passed through various phases of opinion. At
first the fossil plants were regarded as similar to those still growing
in the vicinity—a natural enough belief when the universal accept-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 291

ance of the Mosaic cosmology and a world but 6,000 years old is borne
in mind. Subsequently, when the differences in the fossils became
apparent, they were thought to represent forms still existing in the
Tropics that had been swept to Europe and buried by the waters of
the flood. When with the progress of knowledge of tropical plants
this last view became untenable, it was thought that the fossils rep-
resented plants that had been exterminated by the flood, and from
this it was but a slight step to the opinion advocated by Volkmann,
which appealed to many, that the antediluvian vegetation was of a
far higher order than that of the present with none of the thistles or
other weeds of modern times, and that our modern forest trees are
the degenerate descendants of delightful Adamitic fruit trees—a
phytological fall paralleling and ascribed to the fall of man.

Gradually it came to be recognized that fossil plants were not only
unlike recent ones, but that they were very ancient and not merely
antediluvian but pre-Adamitic—a view first advocated by Blumen-
bach (1790). The first year of the nineteenth century saw the pub-
lication of the Beitraége zur Flora der Vorwelt by Ernst Friedrich
von Schlotheim (1764-1832), in which 14 plates of fossil plants were
published, and these plants were segregated into 5 classes and 12
orders which were based upon the method of preservation. The next
work of importance, with a somewhat different point of view as its
title indicates, was the Versuch einer geognostisch-botanischen Dar-
stellung der Flora der Vorwelt, published in parts from 1820-1838
by Kaspar Maria von Sternberg (1761-1838). The vegetation of the
world was divided into three periods—an older insular period char-
acterized by the coal plants; a period marked by cycadean types,
which corresponds roughly with the modern Mesozoic; and a period
introduced by fucoidal remains and characterized by dicotyledonous
leaves, which corresponds with the modern Cenozoic.

The real Nestor of paleobotany, however, was Adolphe Theodore
Brongniart (1801-1876), the son of Alexandre, who was associated
with Cuvier in his great work on the Paris Basin. Brongniart com-
menced publishing on fossil plants at the early age of 21, and in
1828, in his Prodrome to the Histoire des végétaux fossiles, he drops
the prevailing point of view and treats fossil plants as none the less
plants, endeavoring to fit them into the natural system of classifica-
tion of Jussieu, and recognizing the true position of the gymnosperms
a generation or more before the students of the modern conifers ar-
rived at the same point of view. Brongniart maintained that there
had been a steady progress from lower to higher forms. He believed
in a gradually ameliorating climate, and divided the extinct vegeta-
tion into four periods, the first extending from the beginning to the
end of the Carboniferous, the second corresponding to the early Tri-
assic (grés bigarre), the third including the later Triassic, the Juras-

292 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

sic and Cretaceous, and the fourth making up the Tertiary and
Quaternary or Cenozoic. He'thus laid the foundations of the science
in a broad way and was the inspiration of numerous students who
grew to productivity under his tutelage and example.

During the remainder of the nineteenth century a vast body of
literature was built up by an ever-increasing number of students, of
whom the most illustrious were H. R. Goeppert (1800-1884), of
Silesia; Franz Unger (1800-1870), of Styria; Oswald Heer (1809-
1883), of Switzerland; Gaston de Saporta (1823-1895), of France;
and C. von Ettingshausen (1826-1897), of Austria. In Britain
W. C. Williamson (1816-1895), following the pioneer work of
Witham (1833) and Binney (1868), succeeded in placing the ana-
tomical study of petrified plants of the Carboniferous on a solid
foundation, and this phase of activity is still assiduously cultivated
by a considerable number of contemporary British botanists, among
whom D. H. Scott unquestionably stands at the head. In France
the most active contributors in recent years have been Bernard
Renault (1836-1904) to the anatomical side and C. Rene Zeiller
(1847-1916) to all phases of the subject. Probably the most capable
of contemporary paleobotanists is A. G. Nathorst, of Stockholm.

The pioneer workers in North America were J. W. Dawson
(1820-1899) in Canada and Leo Lesquereux (1806-1889) and J. S.
Newberry (1822-1892) in the United States. Unger, in his Genera
et Species Plantarum Fossilium, had essayed a complete manual of
the subject as early as 1850, but a sufficiently large body of facts
had not yet been accumulated to give his work lasting value, although
it was of immense importance at that time. This task was accom-
plished by W. P. Schimper (1808-1880) in three volumes of text and
one of plates of the Traité de paléontologie végétale (1869-1874).
A less usable work covering the same field in a different way was
the Paléophytologie, contributed by Schimper and Schenk to Zittell’s
Handbuch der Paliiontologie, which was completed in 1890. More
recently, A. C. Seward has essayed to cover the field in a four-
volume work on fossil plants (1898-1918), in which little space is
devoted to other than the morphological aspects of the subject, and
in which the flowering plants are entirely omitted.

METHODS OF PRESERVATION.

Fossil plants have been preserved by two principal methods:
They either became waterlogged and were buried in sediment rang-
ing from mud to sand, or were infiltered by some mineral solution,
or were replaced molecularly by silicic acid, calectum carbonate, or
other mineral substance. The first method is called inclusion, and
the degree with which the details are preserved in the resulting im-
pression depends on the fineness of grain of the sediment. Very

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 293

fine muds preserve every detail with great fidelity. Therefore,
shales, which are simply lithified muds, furnish beautiful fossils, as
in the roofing shales that overlie so many coal seams. The re-
deposition of calcium carbonate in the form of travertine often
entombs well-preserved plant remains as do the alluvial muds of
river flood plains. Volcanic dust falling in water forms an admir-
able matrix, as in the celebrated Miocene lake deposits at Florissant,
Colorado. Impressions of plants constitute the bulk of the objects
with which the paleobotanist has to deal. The substance of the in-
closed plant fragment may remain as a carbonaceous film; it may
be replaced by salts of iron or other mineral; or it may be entirely
dissipated, leaving merely the impression. Occasionally lignified
remains, such as those from certain localities in the Upper Cre-
taceous, may retain their internal structure more or less intact, and
by special methods may be sectioned and studied microscopically.
The fire clays of the Coal Measures often furnish beautiful im-
pressions in dark tints on a light drab background, and some of the
light-colored clays of the Upper Cretaceous of South Carolina,
where the leaf substance has been replaced by iron oxide, yield hand-
some red impressions.

Plant remains are often found in a good state of preservation in
nodules of iron or calcium carbonate. Coal or lignite beds are
simply examples of the inclusion of vegetable débris en masse. In
coarse sediments, or occasionally in finer materials such as tuffs or
travertine, more resistant objects like seeds or stem fragments have
left nothing but the cavity or cast, and such objects often furnish
satisfactory subjects for study. Amber or other fossil resin has
also frequently preserved mummies of plants or other organic re-
mains, especially delicate objects like flowers. The cuticularized
integument of pollen grains or spores is very resistant and is fre-
quently preserved. Similarly the cuticles of leaves retaining the
outlines of the epidermal cells and the stomata are often found to be
intact after the remaining tissues have become completely disorgan-
ized. These can sometimes be peeled from the fossils and mounted
for microscopical examination, or, if this is impossible, collodian
casts of the surface can be made and by the proper handling of the
illumination yield satisfactory microscopic details.

The second and third methods of preservation, or more generally
a combination of infiltration and replacement, are usually termed
petrification. The internal structure of the plant material is con-
served with more or less perfection according to the rapidity of
permeation before the tissues have rotted and the completeness with
which replacement has taken place. If this happened before the
tissues became disorganized thin sections may be ground and the

136650 °—20——20

294 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

histology elucidated. Petrified woods, especially of coniferous trees,
either silicified, caleified, or ferruginized, are common at many
geological horizons. More delicate plant fragments are only rarely
preserved in this way. Such remains where the replacement has
been by calcium carbonate characterize certain horizons of the
English Coal Measures, and similar “coal balls” have been discov-
ered more recently in Moravia, Westphalia, and Russia. Silicified
plant fossils are found at certain horizons in the Permian of St.
Etienne and Autun in France, and often the most delicate thin-
walled tissue, such as cambium and phloem, is well preserved. The
stumps of Cycadeoidea from the American Lower Cretaceous are
silicified, usually denoting a burial in sandy deposits, and range in
perfection from those of the Lower Cretaceous of Maryland, which
are little more than sandstone casts, to some of the wonderfully pre-
served stumps of the Black Hills in Wyoming, in which even the
embryos in the ovules are completely preserved.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

The general principles which paleobotany has elucidated or illus-
trated can be but briefly indicated. First among these is the fact,
roughly traced in the subsequent discussion, that the history of
plants shows them to have had a gradual transformation from early
simplicity to later complexity and progressive differentiation of both
structures and habits in the successively higher groups, thus exempli-
fying the universal principle of evolution. The original scene of
plant activity was in the water. Gradually the main theater of op-
erations was transferred to the land, and the: distinction between
vascular and cellular plants in this respect is analogous to the dis-
tinction between vertebrate and invertebrate animals.

Each successive group of plants that appeared upon the scene illus-
trates a second great principle—that of adaptive radiation; that is,
by progressive modifications (the mutations of Waagen), groups be-
came dominant, such as the Lepidophytes, Arthrophytes, and Pteri-
dosperms of the Carboniferous, the Cycadophytes of the Mesozoic,
or the Angiosperms of the Cenozoic, their members became adapted
for a great variety of environments and tended to occupy all of the
available situations on the land or in cases became secondarily
adapted for an aquatic existence, like the water ferns or the various
aquatic angiosperms. Paleobotany shows one group after another
thus dominating, becoming specialized during the process and then
waning or becoming entirely extinct. The accompanying diagram
illustrates the successive dominance of different plant types and the
increasing complexity of the vegetable kingdom as a whole.

Another principle is illustrated by the progressive loss of plasticity
as organisms or organs became complex and specialized. It was the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 295

simpler organisms that outlasted the complex or gave origin to new
types. The more complex lost their power of adaptability to change
and readily succumbed when such changes in their environment
came. For example, it was not the complex arborescent lepidoden-
droids that gave rise to the modern club mosses, nor were the lofty

PAS USSG PNB U NEED

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Fic. 1.—Diagram showing the relative duration of geologic time, the successive dominance of plant types,
and the progressive increase in complexity of floras.

calamites the progenitors of the modern mares tails, but in each

case simpler forms saved the phylum from becoming extinct. Fern

synangia may have given rise to seeds by modification and peripheral

sterilization, but no seed has or ever will become modified into a

synangium. Thus evolution either of organs or organisms is non-

296 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. .

reversible. The earlier forms of the successive plant groups, in
accordance with the a prior conclusions of evolutionary philosaphy,
are in general synthetic or generalized in structure, 1. e., they com-
bine features of various categories that subsequently became charac-
teristic of diverging lines of evolution. Thus all of the earlier plants
had motile sperms; none had true vessels such as characterize the
wood of angiosperms; cryptogamic, or centripetal wood formation
was an almost universal feature, and many other similar characters
could be mentioned. The Sphenophyllales were synthetic in that
they combined certain characters of their fern ancestry with features
that subsequently became stereotyped in the Lepidophytes and Cala-
mites; they are thus considered as representing an approach to the
common ancestor of the balance of the Lepidophytes and of the
Arthrophytes. The earliest ferns show combinations of features
that subsequently became the property of different fern families;
while the Pteridosperms combined the characters of ferns and
cycadophytes.

Another principle illustrated by paleobotany is that known as
recapitulation, or the fact that, theoretically at least, the ontogeny
or development of the individual is an epitomy or abridgment of the
phylogeny or development of the race. This principle is, however,
difficult of application since its underlying factors are unknown and
the ontogeny may show acceleration, modification, or obsolescence
that renders the application of recapitulation questionable unless
corroborated by other lines of evidence.

A familiar instance of the retention by the seedling of ancestral
adult characters is furnished by the conifers, most of which have
needle leaves on the shoots of the juvenile forms, while with age
these needle leaves of the long shoots are replaced by scales as in
an adult pine, or become reduced to concrescent leaves with a cyclic
instead of a spiral arrangement as in the juniper, or become reduced
to scales while the shoot (phylloclad) functions as a leaf as in Phyl-
locladus. From these changes in foliage in the earlier part of the
life history of the various conifers it is inferred that the scale leaves
of Pinus, the double leaf of Sciadopitys, the phylloclad of Phyl-
locladus, the concrescent cyclic leaves of the Cupressaceae and the
deciduous habit of the larch (Larix) and bald cypress (Taxodium)
are all derived characters.

Another principle is derived from the study of persistence of
organisms or organs. Such conservative organisms as the Bacteria
or the Cyanophyceae have existed unchanged for millions of years.
Conservative organs are those like roots, whose functions and en-
vironment have remained uniform for ages. Thus all roots are
found to be much alike in their organization. Various enthusiasts

PA LEOBOTANY—BERRY. 297

have proclaimed the conservatism of the vascular cylinder, while
others conceive that the parts concerned with spore or seed forma-
tion are more conservative. Foliage in general is apt to be con-
servative in both form and structure, as witness the similarities in
the fronds of the Cycadophytes retained from the Permian to the
present, during which their vascular stem structures and especially
their fructifications varied through wide limits. Ginkgo leaves
have an equally long history, and many angiosperms acquired their
distinguishing leaf form during the Upper Cretaceous.

Another general principle derived from the study of the geological
distribution of plants—a principle for the most part unrealized by
biologists or meteorologists—is that relating to geological climates
of which plants are the most satisfactory known tests. The early
paleobotanists drew extreme pictures of former vapor-laden atmos-
pheres and tepid, torrid climates, but these are found to have no
basis. On the other hand, it has become increasingly clear of late
years that the sort of climate under which the history of man has
been passed is an abnormal climate from the standpoint of geological
history. From the first appearance of terrestrial plants in the
Devonian down to the present there are only two periods at which
it is possible to distinguish anything approaching climatic zoneing
For example, Devonian plants are known from Ellesmere Land on
the north to Australia on the south, and no differences are dis-
cernable in the floras from latitude 85 and those contemporaneous
in central Europe. This uniformity and cosmopolitan distribution
continues throughout the Lower and Upper Carboniferous. In the
Permian, however, there are well-marked floral provinces succeeding
widespread glacial conditions. Again from the late Triassic
throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous there were no polar, temper-
ate, or equatorial zones—the same plants are found within a few de-
grees of the poles as within a few degrees of the equator. Even in
the earlier Tertiary, tropical floras extended halfway across the
temperate zones and temperate forests are known from within five
degrees of the pole. At the close of the Tertiary the successive
glaciations of the Pleistocene changed all this cosmopolitanism,
and to-day man is living in a Pleistocene climate, with well-marked
climatic zones and seasonal variations. The principle may be stated
thus: That for geological time as a whole climates have been more
uniform than at present, and marked variations from this uni-
formity are occasional and are the concomitants of glacial condi-
tions, both apparently the results of a similar but little understood
cause.

RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES.

Paleobotany both contributes to and borrows from the other earth
sciences. Its relation to botany in the accepted sense of that term

298 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

is peculiar, since paleobotany is the botany of all geological time,
while botany is that of but one geological period—namely, the
present. It is now quite impossible to obtain a broad foundation
for phylogenetic, morphological, or distributional studies of existing
plants without a consideration of their extinct ancestors. In the
interpretation of the far distant past paleobotany and its sister
science paleozoology contribute fundamental data to geology, not
only in furnishing the “medals of creation,” which constitute the
best basis for a geological chronology yet discovered; not only as
comprising the subject matter of the biology of the past, which is a
legitimate part of earth history, but in the elucidation of the climate
and other physical conditions of past times, subjects which may be
embraced under the terms of Paleoclimatology and Paleoecology.
Paleogeography, or the Physical Geography of past times, also
derives some of its most important facts from the study of the
character and distribution of fossil organisms.

TYPES OF VEGETATION.

The salient features of the various phyla into which the vegetable
kingdom is now divided will be passed in review, after which the
evolution of floras from the beginning of life on the globe down
through the Pleistocene will be briefly sketched.

PHYLUM THALLOPHYTA.

As a convenience and because of their lack of importance as fossils
the old term Thallophyta will be used for the great mass of thallus
plants, formerly thought to constitute a single subkingdom but now
known to represent several phyla. The thallophytes embrace plants
of the simplest type, but they exhibit nevertheless a very wide range
in the structure and degree of differentiation of the vegetative body
and in their methods of reproduction. The plant body may be a
single minute and often motile cell multiplying by fission, or the
thallus may be an aggregate of cells with a well-marked physiological
division of labor, and differentiated into parts analogous to the
roots, stems, and leaves of the higher plants, and with a correspond-
ing histological complexity. The best known thallus plants [to the
nonbotanist] are bacteria, such fungi as molds and toadstools, and
seaweeds. With but few exceptions, marine plants are thallophytes,
although immense numbers are also found in fresh water and in
various terrestrial habitats. In general, the larger and more complex
are marine and some of these are among the most gigantic of plants.

The thallophytes are primitive types and their existence unques-
tionably antedates the geological record, although they are now
known in considerable variety from pre-Cambrian. They furnish
little that is of paleobotanical interest, since they are either so slightly

BERRY. 999

PALEOBOTANY

resistant that they have left only illy defined impressions in the rocks,
or, 1f they had hard parts as in the so called calcareous algae, these,
while they are often abundant, as in the various limestones of
Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic age, add little to the knowledge
obtained from a study of existing forms. They are, however, of
great philosophic interest, since they point to the steps in the evolu-
tion of the first life forms and since also they are unquestionably
the ancestors of the land plants which appear in the Devonian records
and from which all of our existing terrestrial vegetation has been
evolved. A few of the more important fossil types will be briefly
enumerated.

Proterozoic algae are represented by the large concentrically lami-
nated calcareous deposits known as Cryptozoon, as well as by other
forms referred by Walcott to the genera Weedia, Collenia, New-
landia, Kinneyia, Greysonia, etc. Thousands of obscure tracings in
the Paleozoic and later rocks have been described as fossil seaweeds,
but large numbers of these supposed fucoids have been shown to be
the casts of trails, burrows and similar tracks of worms, trilobites,
and other marine organisms, while others are rill or current markings
of nonorganic origin. Nevertheless, there is no reason for doubting
the presence of algae from the pre-Cambrian onward, particularly
when the supposed fossils show a carbonaceous residue as in the
genus Spirophyton of the middle Devonian. The genus Nemato-
phycus of the Silurian and Devonian includes gigantic forms with
their internal structure preserved, the silicified stems of V. logani
being sometimes several feet in diameter. Nematophycus has been
regarded as belonging to the Siphoneae or possibly the Hog ae aaa
(brown algae).

Another undoubted member of the latter group is the upper De-
vonian genus Thamnocladus. The Diatomaceae (Bacillariaceae),
whose siliceous frustules accumulate as oozes in the present marine
and fresh waters, occur as fossils from the lower Jurassic onward.
They are sometimes present in the Tertiary as relatively pure beds
many feet in thickness and made up of billions of tests of these tiny
forms, as in the Miocene Calvert formation of Maryland and Vir-
ginia, or in the Pliocene of California. The Chlorophyceae or green
algae include many doubtful fossil forms and numerous others that
are well authenticated, particularly in the somewhat unique group
of Siphoneae. Joints of the verticillate or tubular calcareous forms
occur in the older Paleozoic (Cambrian to Silurian), where they are
represented by the genera Ascoma, Primicorallina, Sycidium, Calli-
thamnopsis, ete. This type becomes exceedingly common at certain
Mesozoic and Cenozoic horizons, as in the Mediterranean Triassic
(Diploporella, Halorella, Triploporella) or the middle Eocene of the
Paris basin.

300 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Associated with the foregoing are species of Codiaceae (Girva-
nella, Sphaerocodium, Halimeda, Ovulites), Dasycladaceae (Aci-
cularia, Cymopolia, Vermiporella, Diplorella, Gyroporella). The
Characeae, or Charophyta as they are sometimes called, are a
somewhat isolated group of fresh and brackish water forms, the
stoneworts. They are doubtfully recorded from rocks as old as the
Devonian and their calcareous fruits (oogonia) are present in con-
siderable abundance throughout the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The
Rhodophyceae (Florideae), or red algae, include one family, the
Corallianceae, that is of considerable geological importance, being
represented as early as the Ordovician by Solenopora, and common
throughout the Mesozoic and Cenozoic (Lithothamnium, Lithophy]-
lum). These are the nullipores or reef-forming types and some of
them are remarkable in that they contribute as much as 25 per cent
of magnesium carbonate to the resulting reefs.

Paleozoic bacteria have been known since 1879, and a considerable
number of supposed species have been described by Renault. Pro-
terozoic bacteria have recently been described by Walcott, who
believes that pure limestones without traces of organisms other than
algae clearly indicate the presence of bacteria as the active agents
of precipitation through their denitrifying activities. Traces of
fungi are commonly met with from the Devonian onward. These
are usually in the form of mycelial hyphae, both nonseptate
(Phyconycetes) and septate (Mvcomycetes). They occur in fossil-
ized plant tissues, and occasionally the minute spores or traces of
oogonia or sporangia are present. Berry has recently described
forms in petrified Eocene palm wood in which various stages of
sporangial growth and spore formation are preserved (Peronos-
poroides). Other specimens show zygospores or conidia (Zygospor-
ites, Cladosporites, Haplographites, Oochytrium, etc.)

Foliage preserved as impressions frequently shows traces of leaf
spot or other fungi, and many undoubted remains of this sort have
been described. All of these types of fungal remains are exceedingly
common at all horizons where petrified or other plant tissues occur,
but their nature largely precludes systematic study. It can be safely
asserted that the fungi were of very ancient origin and were already
present in great variety in the older Paleozoic, but that their perish-
able nature and nonaquatic habitat has prevented large numbers
from becoming preserved as fossils. Microscopic forms of both algae
and fungi are present in abundance in oil shales and in some bog
ores of iron from the Silurian down to the present time.

PHYLUM BRYOPHYTA.

The Bryophyta or moss plants, comprising the existing mosses and
liverworts (epaticae), which occupy so prominent a place in some

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 3801

evolutionary schemes, are almost entirely unknown as fossils and
such as are known are either inconclusive in character or confined to
relatively recent periods. These plants were never of large size,
nor have they ever become truly fitted for terrestrial existence.
Their absence in the geological record can not be attributed to
their perishable nature since much more delicate objects have been
abundantly preserved at various geological horizons. While they
have been recorded from the Paleozoic, especially by the early
students, these records usually resolve themselves into fragments
of Lepidophyte, Arthrophyte, or Coniferophyte foliage. None are
conclusively known earlier than the Mesozoic, and the liverworts
antedate the true mosses in the record, fruiting and therefore con-
clusive material of the latter group being unknown in rocks older
than the Tertiary.

PHYLUM PTERIDOPHYTA,

The term Pteridophyta as here understood is restricted to the
fern phylum—the Filicales of the older students—the so-called fern
allies (club mosses and horsetails) being grouped in the phyla Arth-
rophyta and Lepidophyta. The Pteridophyta are a very ancient
stock, always megaphyllous and phyllosiphonic. The fructifications
are borne upon but slightly modified foliage leaves and were never
strobiloid. The known forms are prevailingly homosporous, al-
though heterospory must have been evolved early in their history
since the Pteridosperms are clearly derived from the ancient, at
least pre-Devonian, fern stock. Among existing ferns the Hydrop-
terales or so-called water ferns, of somewhat questionable relation-
ships, are also heterdsporous.

Living ferns are usually segregated into two major groups—the
Eusporangiate and Leptosporangiate, according as the sporangium
develops from a group or from only a single cell. While this dis-
tinction is not without exceptions it is one not observable in fos-
sils, where the mature features must be relied upon. On the whole
the Eusporangiate sporangia are large, attached by a broad base,
with a wall more than one cell thick, and without a definite annulus,
though some of the cells may be thickened; moreover in the Marat-
tiales, one of the important orders from the paleobotanical view-
point, the sporangia are united to form synangia, which by some
students are thought to represent a modification of the sporangio-
phore so prominent in the Arthrophyta, and vestigial in the Lepi-
dophyta. In the present treatment the Pteridophyta are segregated
into the four classes, Coenopteridae, Kusporangiatae, Leptosporan-
giatae, and Hydropteridae, which will be considered separately.

The Coenopteridae or Primofilices comprise a group of Paleozoic
ferns known almost entirely from the anatomy of stems and petioles,

CENOZOIC

PALEOZOIC MESOZOIC

LOWER
CRETACEOUS

DEVONIAN
PRE-
DEVONIAN Coenopteridace

302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 1918.

the features of which are probably overestimated in discussing their
interrelationships. The name, derived from the Greek root for
common or general, is adopted in allusion to their synthetic char-
acters, and the group is considered to have been much wider than
is indicated by our knowledge of the two families Botryopteraceae
and Zygopteraceae, and in the accompanying phylogenetic diagram
is used as the starting point of the fern phylum.

Without attempting to formulate the theoretic characters of the
Kofilices or setting diagnostic bounds to the Coenopteridae as here

NU NAARAREN

RAAAARR

Maw
| Ws o tae —

WRAARRARUS

i

Sy

Hydropteridae

SSS

Ophioglossales

\\\

aceae

a

atoni

ES

XS

TRIASSIC nd

PERMIAN

\
SY

UPPER
CARBONIFEROUS

ae
Be

aOWER
CARBONIFEROUS

Leptosporangiatae, or Eufilices

Fic. 2.—Diagram showing the geologic history and in¢errelationships of the ferns.

used, we may pass to a brief consideration of the two known.
families.

The Botryopteraceae at present embrace three genera: Gram-
matopteris and Tubicaulis based upon Permian stem anatomy, and
Botryopteris based upon stem and sporangial structural remains
ranging in age from the Lower Carboniferous to the Permian.
Little is known of the habits of fronds of these types and they have
not been definitely correlated with material preserved as impres-
sions. They had slender monostelic stems exarch in Grammato-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 303

pteris and Tubicaulis, endarch in Botryopteris, with scalariform or
reticulate tracheids. In B. forensis the sporangia were pedicellate
in groups of from two to six on the ultimate divisions of compound
fronds. They were pyriform with walls of two layers of cells and
on one side had an annulus several cells in width suggesting com-
parison with the Osmundales. The leaf traces vary from rectangu-
lar in Grammatopteris and oval in some species of Botryopteris to
omega shaped in other species of that genus. All known Botryop-
teraceae were small plants thought to have had shghtly fleshy
pinnules, and abundantly clothed with epidermal hairs.

The family Zygopteraceae is based largely on a variety of struc-
tural remains of petioles, although the stem anatomy and sporangial
structure are known in several instances. They range in age from
the Devonian (Clepsydropsis) to the Permian. The leaf traces
show a variety of complexities of form and histology, and in cross
section range from an hourglass or H-shape to the stellate form of
Asterochlaena. It seems probable that the elaborate classification
which Bertrand has based on the variations of these petiolar strands
would not survive a knowledge of the other characteristics of these
ancient types.

The sporangial characters show considerable variation. In Zy-
gopteris the sporangia were grouped and annulate much as in Botry-
opteris. In Diplolabis and Stauropteris an annulus was not de-
veloped; the former had the sporangia grouped in sori or synangia
while in the latter they were borne singly on the ultimate divisions
of the frond. The class as a whole shows relationships with the
Ophioglossales, Osmundales, and Marattiales.

The Eusporangiate class of ferns comprise two known orders—the
Ophioglossales and Marattiales, the former regarded as very primi-
tive by most students and but slightly represented in the fossil state,
although the Paleozoic Rhacopteris and Ophioglossites and the
Mesozoic Chiropteris have often been considered as representing this
order.

The Marattiales, on the other hand, with six existing genera and
about 30 large handsome tropical and subtropical species, have an
extended. geological history. In the present state of our knowledge,
confused as it 1s by the resemblance of Pteridosperm microsporangia
to Maratteaceous synangia, it is diffcult to give a satisfactory esti-
mate of the relative importance of the Marattiales in the Paleozoic,
but they certainly occupied a prominent position in those early floras
and this prominence rests on the evidence of the cosmopolitan frond
genus Pecopteris, the stem anatomy of the forms referred to
Psaronius and its allies, and upon a variety of fructifications.

The Psaroniaceae were tree ferns sometimes 50 feet or more tall,
with fronds, in cases where actual connection has been established,

304 . ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

of the Pecopteris type, arranged in crowded spirals (Psaronius poly-
sticht = Caulopteris impressions), in four vertical rows (Psaronius
tetrastichi) or in two opposite vertical rows (Psaronius distichi=
Megaphyton impressions). Specimens of Psaronius were probably
the earliest known fossil plants with structure preserved since pol-
ished slabs of the trunks were in considerable vogue during the
eighteenth century as decorative objects under the names of “ staar-
steine” or starling stones because of their speckled appearance
(Psaronius has the same meaning), dependent on their anatomical
structure. A very large number of species have been described from
the Upper Carboniferous and Permian. They have been favorite ob-
jects of histological investigation since the days of Corda (1845),
since they are common in a petrified condition in Saxony, France,
and elsewhere. Anatomically, the stems have a complex system of
laterally elongated, concentric curved steles of scalariform tracheids
surrounded by phloem and immersed in a parenchymatous ground
mass with some sclerotic bands below the leaf gaps.

Some of the polyarch roots show secondary wood, but none has
been observed in the stems, the central one cauline and the outer
ones giving off numerous leaf traces and adventitious roots. Outside
the sclernchymatous region which bounds the stem proper is a very
broad zone, formerly thought to be cortical, consisting of closely
packed adventitious roots embedded in a dense felt of hairs which
spring from both the stem and the roots.

The petioles usually show a single horseshoe-shaped trace, al-
though sometimes a second lies within the first. The occasional
presence of lacunae in the root cortex of some of the species suggests
a swampy substratum.

Pecopteris fronds represent the one type among the many familiar
fern-like fronds of the Paleozoic which are so abundant in the roofing
shales of the coal seams that is frequently found in a fruiting con-
dition. Some have been demonstrated to have been borne upon
Psaronius stems and this is probable cf the majority. The fructi-
fications are of a variety of types. Those known as Asterotheca
had large synangia in two rows, one on either side of the median
vein on the under surface of the pinnules, each consisting of five
or six sac-like confluent sporangia forming a close ring. Other
confluent synangia known as Ptychocarpus characterize an Upper
Carboniferous and Permian series of Pecopterids. These synangia
consist of five to eight sporangia united laterally to form a close ring
and adherent to a central receptacle and embedded in continuous
enveloping tissue. They discharge their very numerous small spores
through apical pores, and greatly resemble the arrangement in the
modern genus Kaulfussia. A third Paleozoic type is Danaeites and

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 305

olds El Ll Joa,
ont nteeD

1Z
Fig. 3.—Stem anatomy, foliage, and fructifications of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Marattiales.

1. Psaronius cottai Corda. Cross section of stem from the Permian of Saxony (after Corda).

2. Pecopteris arborescens (Schlotheim). A Carboniferous and Permian frond type (after Schenk).
3. Magnified section of sori of Asterotheca cyathea Brongn.

4. Fertile pinnae of Pecopteris unita Brongn., with Asterotheca fructifications (after Grand’Eury).
T wo pinnules of preceding enlarged.

. Asterotheca hemitelioides Brongn. (after Grand’Eury).

. Asorus of the preceding, enlarged.

8. Underside of pinnule of Scolecopteris elegans Zenker from the Permian of Saxony.

9. Transverse seciion of preceding, enlarged (after Strasburger).

10. Fragment of fertile pinna of Marattia muensteri (F. Braun) from the Rhaetic of Bavaria.

11. Synangium and spores of preceding, enlarged (after Schimper).

12. Nathorstia angustifolia Heer, from the Lower Cretaceous of Greenland, enlarged (after Heer).
13. A synangium of preceding, 8 (after Nathorst).

9

SID oT

306 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Parapecopteris, in which each pinnule bore two continuous rows of
ovoid sporangia more or less united and embedded in the lamina
and opening by apical pores. A fourth type known as Scolecopteris
shows the sori in two rows and consisting of four or five long-pointed
pendant sporangia more or less confluent proximad, united intev-
nally for about one-third their length to a central stalk, suggestive of
the modern genera Marattia, Kaulfussia, and Angiopteris, particu-
larly the first.

Other fructifications (Grand’Eurya, Dactylotheca) have par-
tially or entirely free exannulate sporangia. Many other supposed
Marattiaceous fructifications have been described from the Paleozoic
rocks, as, for example, Hawlea in which there is a rudimentary an-
nulus, Urnatopteris in which the fronds were dimorphic, Renaultia,
Sphyropteris, and Discopteris.

The Marattiales are represented in Triassic floras by numerous
widespread forms variously referred to the genera Marattia, Marat-
tiopsis, Angiopteridium, Angiopteris, Danaea, Danaeopsis, Pseudo-
danaeopsis, Asterotheca, Taeniopteris, and Macrotaeniopteris. They
occur on all the continents and make a particularly large display in
the late Triassic (Keuper and Rhaetic), at which time palustrine,
often coal-forming, conditions with apparently identical species of
plants occur from the Arctic to the Antarctic and from Tonkin and
Australia to Virginia, California, and Chile. The identity of these
Triassic Marattiales with existing forms rests on the form and vena-
tion of the fronds, the arrangement and structure of the sporangia,
and even the spores.

The Marattiales were less dominant in the overlying Jurassic, and
they were still more reduced during the Lower Cretaceous (Angiop-
teridium, Nathorstia, Taeniopteris?). Nathorstia, with several
Greenland and Bohemian species shows pinnate fronds with narrow
entire pinnules bearing two rows of circular synangia of radially ar-
ranged sporangia united to a central receptacle.

Subsequent to Lower Cretaceous times Marattiaceous remains are
infrequent, although occasionally brought to light in the Upper
Cretaceous and Tertiary. A Marattia is described from the English
Eocene and a second from the French Oligocene.

The order Osmundales includes the two recent genera Osmunda
and Todea, together with a dozen or 15 species with large sporangia
arranged in small groups, in linear and often confluent sori, or clus-
tered around the axis of the much reduced fertile pmnae. An annulus
is represented by a group of thick-walled cells below the apex. These
stand somewhat apart from the balance of existing ferns and are
wide-ranging forms, some of which are found on all the continents,
Osmunda being cosmopolitan and Todea antipodean. Aside from

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 307

morphological considerations, the evidence that the Osmundales con-
stitute a relatively primitive line of fern evolution is furnished by
impressions like Z'odea Lippoldi Stur from the Lower Carboniferous
of Silesia, petrified sporangia such as Todeopsis primaeva Renault
from a similar French horizon, or Sturiella from the German Upper
Carboniferous, and finally by the phylogenetic series of petrified
stems described by Kidston and Gwynne Vaughan, among which the
genera Bathypteris, Anomorrhoea, Thamnopteris, and Zalleskya come
from the Upper Permian (Thuringian) of the Ural region. Space
does not permit a description of their histology, but it may be pointed
out that the order appears to have been derived from an ancestor
with a solid stele like the Coenopteralian species Diplolabis Roemeri
and to have undergone an evolution more or less paralleling that of
the Zygopteraceae. This line is continued by Jurassic and Lower
Cretaceous species of Osmundites from South Africa, New Zealand,
and Canada, and by Tertiary species from England, South America,
and Hungary. Impressions of both sterile and fertile fronds allied
to Todea are abundant and cosmopolitan in the late Triassic and
Jurassic and continue into the Cretaceous, while Osmunda-like frond
forms are common throughout the Lower and Upper Cretaceous and
Tertiary in all parts of the world.

A class of ferns, including the existing heterosporous Rhizocarps,
or so-called water ferns, includes the order Hydropterales and pos-
sibly an extinct order, the Sagenopterales. The two existing fam-
ilies, Marsiliaceae and Salviniaceae, are small, more or less wide-
spread aquatic forms with dioecious prothalli, exannulate sporangia
inclosed in “sporocarps,’ which are modified frond segments or
highly developed indusia. Only a single megaspore reaches matur-
ity in each megasporangium. The Salviniaceae contain the genera
Azolla and Salvinia with between 15 and 20 existing species of the
warmer regions and the leaves of the latter genus not appreciably
different from those of the existing species are found throughout
the Tertiary period.

The Marsiliaceae consist of three genera—the monotypic Brazilian
Regnellidium, Pilularia with about six species and Marsilia with over
50 widely distributed existing species. The last has been found fossil
as early as the Upper Cretaceous, but is rare and more or less un-
certain in the fossil state. The extinct genus Sagenopteris is based
for the most part on groups of two to five large asymmetrical reti-
culate veined pinnules borne digitately at the apex of a long and
rather stout stipe and found as impressions in the late Triassic
(KKeuper and Rhaetic) very common in the late Triassic and basal
Jurassic (Liassic) with seven or eight species rather widespread
during the Lower Cretaceous and surviving in one or two Upper

308 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Cretaceous species. Associated with some of the older forms are
oval or spherical bodies thought to represent. sporocarps.

The remainder of the living and fossil ferns, excepting certain
illy understood extinct types, such as the Devonian and Lower Car-
boniferous Archaeopteridae and the Mesozoic Tempskya, may be
grouped together in the Leptosporangiate or Eufilicalean order
Polypodiales, although there is some evidence for recognizing the
Gleicheniales and Matoniales as independent orders,

The Polypodiales embrace the great majority of living ferns and
include the most specialized and abundant families. Without. tak-
ing the space to give their diagnostic characters, which appertain
more especially to the study of recent forms and are admirably dis-
cussed in many texts devoted to that subject, it will be desirable as
well as interesting to glance at the geological record of the various
families.

The family Schizaeaceae with between 75 and 100 existing, mostly
tropical species, segregated into the genera Schizaea, Lygodium,
Mohria, and Anemia, appears to be present as early as the upper
Carboniferous in the genus Senftenbergia of Corda, which had small
linear pinnules bearing two rows of solitary sessile sporangia, with
apical annulae of four or five rows of cells. Triassic forms are not
certainly recognized, but the Jurassic genus Klukia with tripinnate
fronds shows fructifications that render its reference to this family
conclusive. Some of the form-genus Cladophlebis (e. g., C. Browni-
ana from Peru) appear to belong to this family, and during the
Lower Cretaceous the genus Ruffordia of Europe and America ap-
pears to represent the genus Anemia, while Schizaeopsis, found in
a fruiting condition in the Lower Cretaceous of Virginia, repre-
sents Schizaea. The genus Acrostichopteris, based upon sterile
fronds, which range from the bottom to the top of the Lower Cre-
taceous, and found in both Europe and America, also almost cer-
tainly represents an extinct type belonging to this family. In the
Upper Cretaceous petrified sporangia of the Schizaea type have been
found in Japan (Schizaeopteris mesozoica). Undoubted species of
Anemia and Lygodium in Europe and America are common and
widespread during the Tertiary, the latter genus being often found in
fruiting condition. In the poleward spread of subtropical floras
in the Eocene and early Oligocene, Lygodium is found as far north
as the south of England, Wyoming, and Kentucky, associated with
Acrostichum and other tropical forms.

The family Gleicheniaceae embraces about 100 tropical and sub-
tropical gregarious species now segregated to form the genera
Gleichenia, Platyzoma, Dicranopteris, and Stromatopteris—the last
monotypic on New Caledonia and Platyzoma monotypic in north-
ern Australia.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 309

Gleichenias all grow in thickets; the foliage is coriaceous and
perennial and the growth indeterminate. The fronds branch dichot-
omously and resume growth season after season, so that in some
cases the fronds are said to be over 100 feet in length. The pinnae
are pinnatified with small ovate segments or elongate pectinate pin-
nules. Primitive foliar characters are the dichotomous habit and
the frequent development of subsidiary pinnae between the normal
ones. Sorisubglobose, comprising two to six nearly sessile sporangia,
found on the back of a vein. Each sporangium is surrounded by
a broad, transverse equatorial annulus and opens vertically. Spores
are ovoid or tetrahedral, without chlorophyll and with a single dorsal
line.

The existing species range from China and Japan to New Zealand,
Tasmania, and South Africa in the Eastern, and from Louisiana to
the Straits of Magellan and the Falkland Islands in the Western
Hemisphere. While largely tropical, temperature is apparently not
an important factor, since they oceur at high elevations in the Andes
and elsewhere, and range southward to the bleak country of the
Straits of Magellan. Moisture seems to be the most
important factor, for while the foliage is more or
less xerophytic, they do not grow outside regions
of abundant rainfall or great humidity. They are
common throughout Oceania, being especially
abundant in the Hawaiian Islands. Their pres-
ent distribution is clearly indicative of a geological 4 a ee
history, and fortunately considerable of this history — upper Triassic of
is known. The family is evidently an old one and = S778": **
appears to be present as early as the Carboniferous in the genus Oli-
gocarpia, which had sphenopteroid foliage and circular sori consist-
ing of from six to ten pyriform sporangia with a complete transverse
annulus (Zeiller 1888, vide Scott, 1908). The Carboniferous genus
Gleichenites G6ppert and the dichotomius branching genera Mari-
opteris Zeiller and Diplothmema Stur are all now considered as
probable Pteridospermophytes and it is evident that the Gleichenoid
habit of growth was common in both Paleozoic and Mesozoic, and is
without special bearing on botanical relationship.

The family is not known to have been abundant in the Triassic or
Jurassic, the Keuper genus Mertensides of Fontaine being often
referred to the Marattiales. A species of Gleichenia with well-
marked fructications is, however, recorded from the Ketper of
Switzerland and the genus is known from the Rhaetian of Fran-
conia. Jurassic species are recorded from California, India, Italy,
and Poland. Throughout the Cretaceous Gleichenia becomes almost
world-wide in its distribution. While the number of species has

136650°—20——21

310 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 1918.

~

probably been excessively multiplied, the records show 15 Lower
Cretaceous forms. These include Greenland, Spitzbergen, California,
and Virginia, and the great display of that time was in western
Greenland.

No less than 25 different species have been recorded from the
Upper Cretaceous and the localities include Greenland, Atlantic
coast of North America from Marthas Vineyard to Alabama; Kan-
sas, Colorado, Wyoming, and British Columbia in the west; Bo-
hemia, Moravia, Saxony, Rhenish Prussia, and Bulgaria in Europe;
and New Zealand, Sachalin Island on the east coast of Asia. Glei-
chenia becomes much less abundant in the Tertiary and all of the
known ‘Tertiary records are pre-Miocene. Four species are known—
two Oligocene species in Saxony, an Eocene or Oligocene species in
Nevada, and a middle Eocene species in the south of England.

The family Matoniaceae with but two existing species of Borneo
and the Malay Peninsula was prominent in older Mesozoic floras
from the Upper Triassic through the Jurassic, at which time it was
represented by a variety of widespread species referred to the genera
Laccopteris and Matonidium. Still more interesting is the family
Dipteriaceae with the single existing genus, Dipteris, with but four
species confined to the Malayasian region and found growing in
association with Matonia.

The Dipteriaceae became dominant slightly earlier than the Ma-
toniaceae, and the magnificent lyrate fronds of some of the species
are exceedingly common in the Triassic, at which time the genera
Dictyophyllum, Clathropteris, Thaumatopteris, and Camptopteris
are represented. They had lyre-shaped fronds of large size, consist-
ing of many separate or slightly united, serrate margined, and netted
veined pinnules, arranged digitately on a forking stipe; and annulate
sporangia much like the existing Dipteris. The striking appearance
of these forms is better illustrated by the accompanying restorations
than they would be by any amount of descriptive text. Clathropteris
and Dictyophyllum survived into the succeeding Jurassic, where they
were on the wane, becoming replaced in the Cretaceous by forms more
like the modern Dipteris and referred to the genus Protorhipis
(Hausmannia). The sketch map (fig. 5) shows the cosmopolitanism
of the family in the Mesozoic and the restricted distribution of the
few existing species. Restorations are shown in figs. 32-04.

The family Hymenophyllaceae, comprising the existing filmy
ferns, is practically unknown in the fossil record although several
Paleozoic genera (Hymenophyllites, Rhodea, Acrocarpus) have been
referred to it upon insufficient grounds.

Without mentioning the various small modern families unknown
in the fossil state, there remains the two families Cyathaceae and
Polypodiaceae. The former are almost exclusively tree ferns in the

Ws PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. BALD.

modern flora. They are represented in the Mesezoic by Coniopteris,
Dicksonia and Thyrsopteris, to which Dennstaedtia is added in the
Tertiary.

The Polypodiaceae, which comprise the bulk ot existing ferns and
exhibit a very great variety in form and habit, are relatively modern.
Some at least of the older Mesozoic species which are referred to the
form genus Cladophlebis belong to this family. Cladophlebis which
appeared in the Triassic became cosmopolitan in the Jurassic and
Lower Cretaceous where it was associated with species of Onychiopsis,
Asplenium, Dryopterites, etc. Pteris, Onoclea and other genera are
added in the Upper Cretaceous, and a great variety of generic types

Tia. 5.—Sketch map showing the existing range and the geologic occurrences of the Dipteriaceae.

appear in the Tertiary (Adiantum, Polypodium, <Acrostichum,
Oleandra, Woodwardia, etc.)

PHYLUM ARTHROPHYTA,

The Arthrophyta constitute a well-marked phylum and comprise
plants ranging in size from herbaceous forms to large trees and
found from the oldest horizons containing land plants down to the
present. They are characterized by invariably articulated and pre-
vailingly ribbed stems, with the leaves in whorls (verticillate) at the
nodes, free or more or less connate, dichotomously compound in the
earlier groups (Pseudoborniales, Protocalamariaceae), palmately
lacinate in some Sphenophylleae, progressively reduced during the
history of the phylum until in the modern forms the stems and

312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

branches perform most of the photosynthesis. They are all sporan-
giophoric and strobiloid, although there is a considerable range of
variation in morphological! and histological details. Some are homos-
porous and others heterosporous.

The phylum is unique in that it attained its maximum development
in the Paleozoic and has been practically unrepresented since Triassic
times except by the single genus Equisetum, which survives to the
present with less than two score ubiquitous and rather uniform
species. The stock appears to have been of Pteridophytic origin and
to have been primitively megaphyllous. Taxonomically it corre-
sponds rather closely with the Articulatae of Lignier and the Sphenop-
sida of Scott. As known at the present time, it consists of two classes—
the Sphenophyllae and the Calamariae, and the latter includes three
rather well-defined groups or orders, namely, the Pseudoborniales, the
Equisetales, and the Calamariales, the last including two families,
the Protocalamariaceae and the Calamariaceae.

The most primitive of these subordinate groups constitutes the
single order Sphenophyllales of the class Sphenophyllae. This was
a synthetic alliance of mostly smal! forms that combined certain fern
characters with those of the Calamariae on the one hand, and the
Lepidophyta on the other. They are regarded as representing the
specialized descendents of a pro-Sphenophyllum stock, which was
more truly intermediate between the Arthrophyta and Lepidophyta,
and which is supposed to have flourished in pre-Devonian times. The
Sphenophyllums ranged from the Devonian to the Permian and were
practically cosmopelitan except for their partial extinction in Gond-
wana land during and immediately subsequent to the Lower Permian
glaciation. They comprise a considerable number of rather uniform
species, based for the most part upon the impressions of the slender
jointed ribbed stems with nodal whorls of cuneate leaves (hence the
generic name), and long familiar to paleobotanists.

Their habit was much like that of a» modern Galum, although
the genus Cheirostrobus, based upon structural cone material, sug-
gests that they were not invariably small, weak-stemmed, clamber-
ing forms. The ribs did not alternate at the nodes, and conse-
quently the leaves of successive whorls were superposed and not
alternating. The leaves, normally six to a whorl and cuneate, with
entire or toothed apical margins, were frequently dichotomously
laciniate, and in some forms with numerous narrow leaves in each
whorl, these are legitimately regarded as corresponding to the
laciniate segments of the digitately leaved species. The stems
branched frequently at the nodes. The fructifications were fairly
large cones, superficially resembling those of calamites.

The stem anatomy, the elucidation of which we owe in the first
instance to Renault, was characteristic and sufficiently unique. In

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 313

the center there was a triangular strand of primary wood without
any pith or parenchyma and either triarch or hexarch in structure,
with the protoxylem or primitive spiral elements at the angles and
centripedal in its development. The spiral elements sometimes
pass into reticulate tracheids and the later and more central tra-

Fic. 6.—Types of fructifications of the Sphenophyllales.

1. Sphenophyllum trichomatosum (after Stur).

2. Bowmannites roemeri (after Solms).

3. Sphenophyllostachys (after Zeiller).

4a. Sphenophyllum majus from above (after Kidston).

4b. Two nodes of preceding from the side (after Kidston).

5. Sphenophyllum dawsoni showing two whorls in median longitudinal section and external view of a
whorl of bracts (after Scott).

6a. Diagram of transverse section of a complete sporophyll of Cheirostrobus (after Scott).

6b. Diagram of median longitudinal section (after Scott).

7a. Sphenophyllum fertile, median longitudinal section at a node (after Scott): v1, ventral lobe of sporo-
phyll; vsi, vs2, segments into which it splits; d1, dorsal lobe of sporophyll; dsl, ds2, segments into
which it splits.

7b. Diagram of a single sporophyll as it would appear in a transverse section of the cone (after Scott):
vl, vll, ventral lobes; di, d11, dorsal lobes.

cheids are pitted. Secondary wood formation commenced early in
the ontogeny by the activity of a normal cambium. The secondary
wood had its elements very regularly arranged and consisted of
radial series of large tracheids with bordered pits, chiefly on their
radial walls. Interspersed among the tracheids were vertical
strands of parenchyma connected radially by short cells or strands

314 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

that did not form continuous medullary rays. Beyond the normal
cambium was the phloem surrounded by internal periderm formed
by a phellogen, first in the cortex and subsequently passing inward
until it arose in the phloem itself. In Sphenophyllum insigne, a
Lower Carboniferous form of Britain and Silesia, the stem was rather
larger than the average, although still not over a centimeter in
diameter, and differed in having continuous medullary rays, so
that the complicated system of vertical and radial parenchyma
of the later forms may have been a derived rather than a primitive
feature.

The leaf anatomy presents no unusual characters except its strong
mechanical construction, thus precluding the idea advanced by some
botanists that the sphenophyllums were aquatic forms. The root
anatomy shows no features of special interest. i

At least seven types of cone organization are known, indicating
generic differences unsuspected from the external appearance or
vegetative habits of the plants. In fructifications of the S. dawsont
and S. cuneifolium type, the slender cones consisted of a central
axis with whorls of proximally connate bracts, the latter with long
imbricated pointed tips. Each bract bore two slender—one long and
the other short—stalked sporangiophores, so that there were two
concentric series to each whorl of bracts. A single pendulous
sporangium was borne at the tip of each sporangiophore. The
spores were somewhat variable in size, which has been interpreted
as indicating incipient heterospory, and appear to have been all of
one kind. A second type, described from the Polish Carboniferous
as Bowmannites roemeri, had similarly connate whorls of imbricated
bracts each of which inclosed three concentric verticils of short-
stalked bisporangiate sporangiophores. <A third type, S. fertile, had
peltate bisporangiate sporangiophores, but was unique in that both
the dorsal and ventral lobes were fertile; i. e., the sterile bracts or
morphologically dorsal foliar lobes were replaced by sporangia bear-
ing fertile lobes. A fourth type, S. majus, had lax cones made up of
repeatedly forked bracts each with four sessile or very short stalked
sporangia on their upper (morphologically ventral) surface. <A fifth
type, S. trichomatosum, had a single sporangium near the axis on
each bract. In a sixth form, S. marginatum, the sporangiophores
were borne on the axis instead of on the bracts. A seventh and re-
markably complicated type known as Cheirostrobus is often made the
type of a distinct family, the Cheirostrobaceae. It is unfortunately
known only from a few petrified cones from the base of the Lower
Carboniferous of Scotland. These cones were large, 3 to 4 centi-
meters in diameter and about 10 centimeters long, and consisted of
closely packed verticils of compound sporophylls, each -of which
consisted of three upper (ventral) fertile lobes and three lower

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 315

(dorsal) sterile lobes. Each of the fertile lobes or sporangiophores
bore four radially elongated homosporous sporangia.

This brief sketch indicates that the Sphenophyllae as we know
them represent a diversified and ancient stock clearly related to, but
more primitive than the Calamariae. Their relation to the Lepido-
phyta was more remote, the latter showing but slight evidence of a
megaphyllous ancestry or of sporangiophores, the sporangia being
borne directly upon the sporophylls or in their axils. There is con-
siderable homology in the stelar anatomy of the two groups and it
seems probable, especially with the variations of strobilar morphol-
ogy among the Sphenophyllae in mind, that morphologists have
magnified the importance of these features as contrasted with those
in the Lepidophyta. At any rate, the view is advocated here that
both the Arthrophyta and
Lepidophyta go back to a very
ancient common ancestral
stock from which also the
Sphenophyllales as we know
them were descended.

The second class of arthro-
phytes—the Calamariae, in-
clude three orders—namely,
the ancient Pseudoborniales,
the Calamariales, comprising
the large and diversified cala-
mites of the Paleozoic, and the
Equisetales, sparingly repre-
sented in the Paleozoic, some-
what more abundant in the
Mesozoic, and represented in
the existing floras as the sole
survivors of the whole arthro-
phyte phylum. The Pseudoborniales are imperfectly known, being
based upon impression from the Upper Devonian of Bear Island de-
seribed in the first instance by Heer as Calamites radiatus. The
main stems were of considerable size, reaching 10 centimeters in
diameter, with nonalternating ribs. The leaves, of relatively large
size, were in whorls (probably in fours), short-stalked, and palmately
and repeatedly dichotomous. The fructifications were long lax cones
with whorled sporophylls resembling reduced vegetative leaves, and
the sporophylls bore sporangia on their lower surfaces. These im-
portant plants, unfortunately too little known, show decisive evidence
of a megaphyllous ancestry. Scott has suggested a comparison with
Cheirostrobus based upon the complexity of the latter and the com-
pound leaves of Pseudobornia. Irrespective of this somewhat remote

Fic. 7.—Leaf of Pseudobornia ursina Nathorst from
the Devonian of Bear Island.

316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

comparison, the Pseudoborniales in habit and structure, in so far as
these are known, were evidently allied to the Protocalamariaceae
(formerly referred to the genus Bornia) and help to bridge the gap
between the Calamariae and the Sphenophyllae.

The Protocalamariaceae, which are common in the Devonian and
Lower Carboniferous, occurring as late as the Pottsville formation
of the Upper Carboniferous, are generally referred to the genus
Archaeocalamites, although the terms Bornia, Protocalamites, Astero-
calamites, etc., have also been used for them. ‘The stems, most fre-
quently preserved as casts, were often of considerable size; they
show low, flat, nonalternating ribs separated by shallow furrows; the
internodes were of unequal lengths and the lateral branches were
irregularly grouped at some and not at other nodes. The leaves
were free and in whorls; they were narrow and lanceolate or re-
peatedly dichotomous with linear or filiform segments. According
to Renault the pith cavity was large and surrounded by a woody
cylinder of wedge-shaped groups of tracheids with secondary rays.
A carinal canal was located at the apex of each primary group and
the primary rays were shut off by interfascicular wood early in the
course of secondary thickening. In a stem from the basal Carbo-
niferous of Scotland a considerable arc of centripetal wood was
formed inside the carinal canal—a primitive feature, otherwise un-
known in the Calamariales except in the roots.

Such incomplete accounts as are available indicate that the cones
may have exhibited variations comparable with those among the
Sphenophyllae, although much less is known regarding the former.
In the cones described by Renault there were no sterile bracts and each
sporangiophore bore four sporangia, while in other cones (Pothocites)
sterile bracts appear to have been more or less developed. The leaves
suggest the Pseudoborniales and some of the Sphenophyllae; the stele
was like that of a calamite, while the absence of sterile bracts in some
of the cones suggests the Equisetales. There can be no doubt but that
the Protocalamariaceae represent a more synthetic group than the
Calamariaceae, although probably ancestral to them and to the
Equisetales also.

The family Calamariaceae was one of the dominant groups of plants
during the Carboniferous and various of its members often reached
a large size with a corresponding complexity of structure. Pith casts
upward of 30 feet in length and 12 inches in diameter have been
recorded, and Grand ’Eury estimated the height of some of the French
ralamites as about 100 feet and with a trunk diameter of several feet.
Secondary wood was usually formed, although the common mode of
preservation was as casts of the fistular medullary cavity. The
vascular bundles usually alternated at the nodes. The foliage of the
Carboniferous forms comprised two main types—namely, Asterophyl-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 317

lites—in which the leaves were linear acuminate, univeined, and gen-
erally free from the others of the nodal whorl. This type of foliage
is very common and it would seem that the bulk of the calamites had
foliage of this sort. The second type of foliage known as Annularia
was like the former in habit, but the leaves were relatively broader, of
unequal lengths in each whorl, and appear to have been slightly con-
nate proximad. It is impossible to correlate foliar branches with
stem casts, cones, and structural material, so that while all of the parts

Fic. 8.—Views of Calamite foliage and stems.

1. Restoration of Calamites (after Zittel).

la. Medullary cast of a Calamite stem and branch.

2. Annularia longifolia Brongn., from Carboniferous of Bohemia (after Feistmantel).

3. Asterophyllites equisetiformia (Brongn.) from Carboniferous of Bohemia (after Feistmantel).

4. Transverse section of stem, Calamodendron, from the English Carboniferous (after Schenk). .

5. Transverse section ofroot, Astromyelon, from the French Permian (after Renault): p, pith; x1, primary
centripetal xylem; x2, secondary xylem; ph, phloem; en, endodermis; 1, lacunae in cortex; w, walls of
lacunae; c, outer cortex.

of the calamites are well known in different examples, it 1s necessary

to maintain these different categories for the different classes of re-

mains. The foliage varied considerably not only from species to
species, but on the same plant, and while the two foregoing types
constitute useful form genera, it is not always possible to differentiate
sharply between them. The genus Nematophyllum of the West Vir-
ginia Permian shows greatly elongated linear leaves, from 10 to 20 in
a whorl, and suggests a modification in the direction of the Triassic
Schizoneura and Neocalamites,

318 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Schizoneura, a type of the Permian and Triassic, had leaves which
were at first united in a sheath or in several broad sheath segments
that subsequently spht into a varying number of multiple-veined
divisions. Neocalamites of the Triassic had free univeined leaves
greatly resembling those of Annularia in some of the late Triassic
species. Phyllotheca, a Permian and early Mesozoic type, had acic-
ular, shghtly connate, univeined leaves and the sporangia were borne
by peltate sporangiophores alternating with whorls of sterile bracts.
Nematophyllum, Schizoneura, Neocalamites, and Phyllotheca are all
based upon impressions, so that a knowledge of the structure or the
details of organization of their fructifications is unfortunately
wanting. Structurally calamite leaves show a central trace sur-
rounded by a broad zone of mesophyll.

Several generic types of calamites have been based upon stem
anatomy. These include Arthropitys (the Calamites vera of British
botanists) in which the pith was large and hollow except peripher-
ally, with persistent diaphragms at the nodes. Surrounding the
pith was a ring of collateral vascular bundles, the protoxylem in all
but the youngest stems being disorganized to form longitudinal pas-
sages known as carinal canals. The wood was entirely centrifugal
in its development. Secondary wood formation started early and
consisted of scalariform or radially pitted tracheids and variable
rays which continued with undiminished width through the vascular
cylinder or tapered outward or were abruptly shut off by interfas-
cicular wood. The cortex consisted of an inner thin-walled zone of
cells and an outer denser zone in which there was a very great de-
velopment of periderm. The courses of the leaf traces was some-
what varied and more complicated than.in the Equisetales, otherwise
Arthropitys was much like an Equisetum with the addition of sec-
ondary thickening. A second type, known as Arthrodendron and
confined to the British Coal Measures, had a thin zone of wood, in
which the primary bundles were widely separated by the principal
rays which consisted of elongated fibrous elements (prosenchyma),
within which there were secondary rays of parenchyma like those of
the secondary wood. In the latter the tracheids are reticulate, and
the infranodal canals very large. A third type, Calamodendron, of
the European Upper Carboniferous and Permian, had radial bands
of prosenchyma containing secondary rays between the normal rays
and the radial bands of secondary wood. The roots of calamites pre-
served as impressions, which are of widespread occurrence, are
known as Pinnularia. Structural root material, known as Astro-
myelon, shows a usually persistent pith surrounded by a ring of
centripetally developed primary wood alternating with groups of
primary phloem. The zone of secondary wood was wide; the endo-
dermis appears to have been double; and the cortex was very thick
with large lacunar intercellular spaces, denoting a swampy or
aquatic habitat.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 319

Great numbers of a variety of calamite cones are known from im-
pressions, as the large cones of Macrostachya, the more openly con-
structed cones of Huttonia, and the curious cones of Cingularia.
The two types, Calamostachya (Volkmannia) and Palaeostachya, are
also represented by a considerable amount of petrified material with
the structure preserved. In Calamostachya the whorls of peltate
sporangiophores, each bearing four pendent sporangia, alternate
equidistantly with usually twice as numerous sterile bracts, which
are connate or free basally and whose upturned imbricated and
strengthened tips effectually protected the inclosed sporangia. The
latter are elongated sacs with their walls but one cell in thickness,
but stiffened by ridges, and containing numerous tetrads of spores.
In some species the spores appear to be all of one kind (homos-
porous), although they are somewhat unequally developed in C.
Linneyana. Other species (e. g., C. casheana) were heterosporous,
although both microspores and megaspores were borne in the same
region of the cone. Other species (C. grandeuryi) had radial sterile
plates connecting the sporangiophores with the adjacent bracts, thus
inclosing each group of four sporangia in a radial compartment.
Although the sporangiophores were borne on the cone axis midway
between the whorls of sterile bracts, their supply bundles have a com-
mon origin, forking at the nodes, and that of the sporangiophore
passing upward more or less across the interval of the internode and
then bending downward and entering the sporangiophore, thus indi-
cating that, although widely removed from the bracts, the sporangio-
phores were morphologically their ventral appendages as in Spheno-
phyllum. Calamostachya is usually but not invariably associated
with the Asterophyllites type of foliage.

Petrified material of Palaeostachya is less common than that of
Calamostachya. The former cones differ in having the sporangio-
phores inserted in the axils of the bracts and inclined upward—
features usually discernible in impression material. The bracts were
imbricated and more or less connate proximad. The sporangio-
phores, half as numerous as the bracts, bore four pendent sporangia
from their peltate tips. Some cones appear to have been homos-
porous and other heterosporous. It has been commonly assumed
from the axillary position of the sporangiophores that Palaeostachya
was more primitive than Calamostachya, but in one species at least
of the former the supply bundles pursue an at first ascending and
subsequently descending course similar to what obtains in Calamos-
tachya. Some of the Palaeostachya cones are of large size and they
are usually associated with the Annularia type of foliage.

Macrostachya is the name applied to exceedingly large cones of
calamites preserved as impressions. They show considerable varia-
tion and are said to have been heterosporous. Huttonia includes

320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

large cones somewhat resembling those of Macrostachya but more
open and characterized by a disk-like protective flange pendent from
the bract whorls. Cingularia comprises long and lax cones with
widely spaced whorls of coherent bracts at right angles to the axis,
subtended by whorls of nonalternating sporangiophores, equal in
number to the bracts. The sporangiophores were hgulate and divided
distad and each division bore two large pendent sporangia.

Fic. 9.—Types of Calamite fructifications. ;

1. Palaeostachya elongata Pres] (after Schenk).
2. Calamostachya jugleriana Schimper (after Goeppert).
3a. Transverse section of cone of Calamostachya passing through a whorl of sporangiophores.
3b. Median vertical section of Calamostachya.
4, Diagrammatical median section of Huttonia.
5a. Part of cone of Cingularia typica (after Weiss).
5b. Two sporangiophores of preceding seen from below.
6. Palaeostachya vera, Diagrammatical median vertical section (after Hickling):
vascular tissue black.
scleritized parenchyma lined.
soft parenchyma dotted.
On the left the section passes through a bundle and on the right between bundles.

The final order of the Calamariae, the Equisetales, consists of the
single family, Equisetaceae, and comprises at the present time the
single genus, Equisetum, with 25 to 30 rather uniform, widely dis-
tributed, mostly small and chiefly temperate species of scouring
rushes or mare’s tails. The cones are terminal on fertile shoots or
on branches from the vegetative shoots, and entirely lack sterile
bracts. They consist of peltate sporangiophores carrying from 5

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. Cpl

to 10 homosporous sporangia. The rhizomes or underground stems
of the species with annual shoots commonly form tubers, and these
often occur abundantly as fossils, as in the Lower Cretaceous of
Maryland. The Equisetales were represented by a number of small
and imperfectly known Paleozoic species referred to the genus Equi-
setites. During the Triassic they were represented throughout the
world by stem casts, often of large size, with alternating ribbed

RECENT Equisetum

and
TERTIARY

UPPER
CRETACEOUS

LOWER
CRETACEOUS

JURASSIG Z
TRIASSIC

PERMIAN

MESOZOIC CENOZOIC

AN nN

es

UPPER
CARBONIFEROUS

g
Z
AA

ZA\\\\
: in

LOWER
CARBONIFEROUS

\\4
\\

ophyllales
\
\\

WY

orniales
\\
amariaceae
\WY\N

A

N

Calamariales

DEVONIAN

PAs 8002 OL 'C
\ Pseudob

PRE-
DEVONIAN

pro SPHENOPHYLLUM stock

Fic. 10.—Diagram showing the geologic history and phylogeny of the Arthrophyta.

stems and the leaves united into sheaths at the nodes. They con-
tinued as not uncommon types throughout the Jurassic in all parts
of the world, decreasing gradually in size and abundance during
the later Mesozoic until their status and size in the Cenozoic floras
was much as in the existing flora.

The generalized geological ranges of the various arthrophyte
groups as well as their relative importance at different periods and
their filiation are shown in the accompanying diagram,

322 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

PHYLUM LEPIDOPHYTA.
}

The Lepidophyta occupy in some respects an isolated position
umong vascular plants, although there are not wanting students
who connect them with the Hepaticae or the Sphenophyllales on the
one hand, and with the seed-bearing plants on the other. The phy-
lum includes the tiny existing quillworts and herbaceous clubmosses,
as well as the often gigantic Lepidodendrales, which occupied such
prominent position in Paleozoic floras.

Features which serve to unite the somewhat diverse members of
this phylum are the small simple leaves, which are spirally arranged,
and not vertillate, as in the Arthrophyta. All the known Lepido-
phytes are microphyllous, the only suggestion of a departure from
a simple type of leaf being the double leaf trace in the Paleozoic
Sigillariopsis. A second consistent feature is the presence of branch
gaps and the absence of leaf gaps in the vascular cylinder, which is
thus cladosiphonic, with an exarch protostele. A third feature is
the apparently simple relation between the sporangium and the
sporophyll, which can be interpreted as due to progressive sterili-
zation according to Bower’s well-known theory, or may be explained
as a reduction from the same or similar sporangiophoric ancestors
that give rise to the Arthrophyte phylum.

The Lepidophyta are prevailingly strobiloid and are known from
the Devonian to the present. Some are homosporous, other hetero-
sporous, while still other Paleozoic forms had practically crossed
the boundary that separates spore production from seed formation.
Further details are best given in the discussion of the various types
which follow. The geologic history and mutual relationships of
the different members of the phylum are shown in the accompanying
diagram and in the light of present knowledge may be expressed in
tabular form in the following manner:

Order Lypidodendrales: Family Bothrodendraceae, Family Lepi-
dodendraceae, Family Sigillariaceae.

Order Lycopodiales: Family Lycopodiaceae, Family Selaginella-
ceae. ,

Order Isoetales: Family Isoetaceae.

Order Psilotales: Family Psilotaceae.

It will make for clearness to consider the existing forms and their
fossil representatives before describing the wholly extinct Lepido-
dendrales. The Lycopodiales comprise the two families Lycopo-
diaceae and Selaginellaceae. The former includes two genera, Ly-
copodium and Phylloglossum. Lycopodium has about 100 widely
distributed existing species of mostly perennial erect or trailing
herbaceous forms of shaded woods, marshes, ete., some tropical
species epiphytes. But one kind of spores are formed and the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. aoe

sporangia are borne on or in the axils of scarcely modified foliage
leaves more or less distinctly aggregated into strobili.

Fossil species of Lycopodium or Lycopodites, which is often pre-
ferred as a less definite name, are especially liable to be confused
with the foliage of some of the Lepidodendrales or Coniferophytes,
unless represented by fructifications. Among the rather numerous
forms referred to Lycopodites and scarcely different from the exist-

Psilotales _[soetales Lycopodiales

|

|

Tsoetales.
|

CENOZOIC

QARERED UuaEEE

AY

ZA.

4
g
g
g
g
Z
se
g
g
3
g

\\

LOWER

Lepidodendraceae si
LEE
CARBONIFEROUS

| £Z
DEVONIAN
PRE-
DEVONIAN ,
pro LEPIDOPHYTE stock.

Fig. 11.—Diagram showing the geologic history and phylogeny of the Lepidophyta.

PALEOZOTIC

Bothrodendraceae

\

ing forms may be mentioned LZ. Stockii, Kidston from the Lower
Carboniferous, 1. Gutbiert, Gopp., and L. Reidii Penhallow from
the Devonian; L. macrophyllus Goldenberg; and L. Zei/leri, Halle
from the Upper Carboniferous; Z. /anceolatus (Brodie) and ZL.
Scanicus Nath. from the Upper Triassic; Z. falcatus, L. and H.,
L. tenerrimus Heer, L. victoriae Seward from the Jurassic; and
L. cretaceum Berry from the Upper Cretaceous, While Lycopodium-

324 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

hike forms were never apparently very different from what they are
at present, they represent a very ancient line and were represented
as a minor element associated with the diversified arboreal Lepi-
dophyte flora of the Paleozoic.

The genus Phylloglossum consists of a single species of Australia
and New Zealand with a reduced tuberous stem and relatively large
leaves, closely related to Lycopodium, although by some students
considered the most primitive lycopod.

The second family, the Selaginellaceae, consists of the single
genus Selaginella, with about 500 species of mostly mesophytic small
plants not differing greatly from the Lycopodiaceae, except that
after the mother cell stage the spores differentiate into microspores
and megaspores. The foliage is usually dimorphic and both foliage
leaves and sporophylls have a ligule. The cones are not highly
differentiated from the vegetative leaves. Sometimes but one mega-
spore is developed in a sporangium and fertilization may take place
before shedding, thus illustrating steps in the acquisition of the seed
habit. Fossil species of Selaginella, unless they are fruiting, are
not certainly distinguishable from Lycopodites, nevertheless several
undoubted species have been recorded from the Carboniferous (Se-
laginellites Suissei Zeiller, S. primaevus (Goldenberg) S. elongatus
(Gold), S. scilliatus (Kidst). Less authentic species are recorded
from Mesozoic and Cenozoic deposits of widely scattered regions.

The second order, the Isoetales, consists of the single genus Isoetes,
with about 60 existing aquatic or palustrine species, with a reduced
tuberous stem and a crowded rosette of grasshke lgulate leaves
which are relatively larger than in the majority of Lepidophytes.
Microspores and megaspores are produced, both characterized by
their large size and by the formation of trabeculae or strands of
sterile tissue often completely dividing the sporangial cavity. Sec-
ondary thickening occurs and morphological resemblances to the
ancient Sigillarias and modern Monocotyledons have frequently
been insisted.upon, although without logical basis. Fossil forms are
exceedingly rare. Saporta recorded a form from the Lower Cre-
taceous (Barremian) of Portugal (/soetites Choffati). Aside from
untrustworthy records Tsoetes occurs in the Oligocene of France
and the Miocene of Switzerland.

The third order, the Psilotales, is one which has excited a great
deal of discussion. It comprises the two genera Psilotum and
Tmesipteris; the former with two species of both Tropics and the
latter with a single Australasian species, although more are fre-
quently recognized. Both genera are considered to be more or less
saprophytic. ‘Che sporophylls of Psilotum consist of a much
shortened bifurcated axis bearing adaxially a bilocular or trilocular
synangium producing but one kind of spores. In Tmesipteris the -

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 325

sporophylls, alternating with foliage leaves, or more or less zonal in
their development, consist of a short axis terminating in a pair
of lanceolate lobes and bearing adaxially an elongated bilocular
slightly stalked synangium, and producing but one kind of spores.
Both genera show a decided tendency toward repeated branching of
the sporophylls, a feature much emphasized by Thomas, Scott, and
Bower, but believed by the writer to be without significance.
Whether the sporophyll be regarded as morphologically a branch or
a leaf is disputed.

Those who accept the latter view regard the Psilotales as sporan-
giophoric and closely related to the Sphenophyllales. Others consider
that the necessities of nutrition of large sporangia with many spores
resulted in the formation of sterile plates, such as occur in Isoetes
and in the sporangia of some of the Lepidodendrales, and regard the
bi- or trilocular sporangia of the Psilotales as septate unilocular spo-
rangia. The view that these masses of sterile tissue may represent
vestiges derived from sporangiophoric ancestry has not been sufli-
ciently emphasized and will be referred to in a subsequent para-
graph. Meanwhile, it may be said that the action of Scott and
others jn separating the Psilotales from the Lepidophytes and group-
ing them with the Arihrophytes is greatly to be deprecated. The
fossil history of the Psilotales is unknown. Various fragmentary
specimens described as Psilotites are without value. Among the
doubtful forms that have been related to the Psilotales are the
Devonian genera Psilophyton, Dimeripteris and Pseudosporochus,
and the Permian genus Gomphostrobus.

The order Lepidodendrales aierits a more extended considera-
tion than has been accorded the preceding three orders. It consists
of three well-marked families very prominent in Paleozoic. floras,
the Bothrodendraceae, Lepidodendraceae, and Sigillariaceae, to
which should possibly be added the Pleuromoiaceae for the recep-
tion of Triassic Sigillaria-like plants. Although herbaceous re-
mains are known, the vast majority of the Lepidodendrales were
arborescent and some of them reached a height of 100 feet or more.
The most ancient of these families, the Bothrodendraceae, unites in
many respects the features that later characterized the Sigillaraceae
on the one hand and the Lepidodendraceae on the other. The
Bothrodendraceae are especially characteristic of the Devonian and
Lower Carboniferous. They were cosmopolitan and their abundance
may be indicated by the fact that the so-called paper coal of Russia
consists almost entirely of their flattened cuticles. A number of
generic types have been recognized, although our information re-
garding them is vague in a good many particulars.

136650°—20——22

326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Bothrodendron, or Cyclostigma as it has frequently been called,
is not very different in the appearance of impressions of the stem
The stems were dichotomously

from some species of Sigillaria.

0
>)

FG. 12.—Fructifications, leaves and bolsters of various fossil Lepidophytes.
(Explanation for figure on next page.)

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. a pa

branched. Bolsters are usually wanting and the leaf scars are re-
mote, small and circular or rhomboidal, they show a central leaf
trace scar and two lateral parichnos scars; immediately above and
close to the leaf scar is a small hgular pit. The leaves were small,
linear lanceolate, univeined, and more or less persistent. In one species
(B. punctatum) the self-pruning of branches resulted in the large
scarred impressions known as Ulodendron. The term Rhytidoden-
dron has been used for some species and recently the genus Poroden-
dron has been proposed for certain forms from the Lower Carbonif-
erous of Russia and Spitzbergen that were formerly referred to
Bothrodendron. Anatomically, the stems show either a small pith
cr a solid core of wood with external protoxylem. The secondary
zone of wood was thin and the cortex was less differentiated than in
the Lepidodendrales.

A cone, Lepidostrobus Olryi Zeiller, which is considered to have
belonged to Bothrodendron minutifolium is of the usual Lepidostro-
bus type with elongated sporangia. A small cone with a histology
that suggests its having been borne by Bothrodendron mundum lacks
the radially elongated sporangia and instead has them extended
upward inside the sharply flexed bracts and is conspicuously lgu-
late. It bore microsporangia in the distal and megasporangia in the
proximal region. Another type of cone, Lepidostrobus Zeilleri,

EXPLANATION FOR FIa. 12.
A. Lepidocarpon lomaxi Scott:
1. tangential section (after Scott).
2. diagram of sporophyll; m, micropyle, St. stele (after Seward).
3. tangential section near distal end of immature sporophyll; 1, ligule (after Scott).
B. Miadesmia membranacea (modified from Scott):
1. tangential section 1a and b, larnina of bract forming wings; v, velum or integument with its processes;
e, sporangium.
2. radial median section m, micropyle, 1, ligule.
C. Pinakodendron ohmann, megasporangiate sporophyll (after Kidston).
D. Spencerites insignis (after Williamson):
1. spore showing wing in surface view, sp. cavity, w, wings.
2. tetrad in section showing 3 spores.
FE. Mazocarpon. Diagrammatical transverse section of megasporophy 11 (after Benson).
F. Lepidostrobus veltheimianus, median vertical section.
G. Same showing megaspore, M, and microspore, m, in section (after Kidston):
2. single megaspore in surface view.
. Cantheliophorus, 1, radial and 2, transverse section (after Bassler):
a, axis; b, blade; c, pedicle; d, sporangium; e, brace; f, crest; g, keel; h, guard.
. Bothrostrobus, median vertical section (after Watson).
. Sigillaria spinulosa (after Renault):
1. leaf from below showing furrows and scar.
2. tangential section of outer cortex showing leaf trace and parachnoi:
pa, parachnoi; x, xylem, primary above, secondary below; tr, phloem; s, sheath of bundie.
M. Sigillaria latifolia, transverse section of leaf (after Renault):
x,xylem; s, schlerenchyma; tr, transfusion tissue; g, stomatiferous furrows.
N. Lepidodendron bolster. 1, surface view; and 2, in median radial section:
a, ligule; b, leafand leaf scar; ¢, leaf trace; e, parachnoi.
O. Sigillaria bolster in surface view:
a, ligule; b, leaf scar; c, leaf trace; e, parachnoi.
P. Spencerites insignis, Diagrammatical radial section showing two sporophylls with megasporangia
(after Berridge).

PA

328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

which may belong to Bothrodendron tenerrimum, appears to lack
sterile bracts.

Another genus, distinguished from Bothrodendron by the surface
ornamentation of fine raised lines between the remote leaf scars, is
Pinakodendron. Several species have been described, and in one,
P. Ohmanni, the megasporangia were attached to the basal adaxial
faces of the sporophylls of the same size and form as the foliage
leaves, and borne on certain parts of the branches, but not terminal
as were most Lepidophyte cones.

Other genera of somewhat doubtful affinity are Leptophloeum
in which the leaf scars are more crowded, and Omphalophloios in
which rhomboidal bolsters were developed. Leptophloeum occurs in
the Devonian or Lower Carboniferous of North America, Europe,
Asia, and Spitzbergen, while Omphalophloios is found in both
America and Europe.

Other related forms are referred to the genus Archaeosigillarea or
Protolepidodendron. The most remarkable of these is a large trunk
from the Middle Devonian of New York shown in figure 28. The
actual specimen, preserved in a fine-grained blue shale, was 5
meters in length and 38.5 centimeters in diameter at the swollen butt,
and 12 centimeters in diameter at the distal end. In appearance the
slender arching bifurcating branches with the subulate falcate per-
sistent leaves gave it a weird aspect. The swollen base and tapering
stem indicate some secondary thickening. At the base, rootlets simi-
lar to those of Stigmaria are preserved. The leaf cushions at the
base are distant and irregular. Higher up they are in vertical rows
on ribs separated by angular furrows as in Sigillaria, while still
higher up they pass gradually into typical rhomboidal spirally ar-
ranged Lepidodendron bolsters. The leaf scars are in the upper part
of the bolsters, obovate in form or slightly cordate above, and show
a subcentral leaf trace scar flanked by crescentic parachnoi, with a
well-marked ligular pit immediately above the margin. Protolepido-
dendron thus unites the features of Lepidodendron and Sigillaria
in one synthetic type and it seems probable that the majority of
Devonian forms that have been referred to those two genera really
represent Protolepidodendron. Other species have been recorded
from various European Devonian localities.

In the family Lepidodendraceae, the majority of the species
were tall trees reaching in some cases a height of 40 meters, with a
straight shaft unbranched for a long distance above the ground,
with a dense crown of dichotomously forked branches covered with
crowded masses of long narrow simple leaves spirally arranged, and
with large terminal cones. The leaves were ultimately shed from the
older portions of the trunk and the geometrically sculptured stems
are among the commonest of Carboniferous fossils affording the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 329

characters by which several hundred species have been distinguished
and utilized for stratigraphic purposes. The perfection of preserva-
tion of these trunks surfaces indicates an absence from the Car-
boniferous forests of the numerous parasitic and epiphytic forms
which crowd tree trunks in the present ¢xy tropical forest.

The essential features of the surface markings are of considerable
importance. The leaf cushions or bolsters were crowded in spiral
arrangement with angles above and below, and rounded sides (rhom-
bic), always longer than broad and truncated above the middle,
where the abcission of the leaf occurred. The leaf scar is subcircular
and shows three scars—a central one representing the leaf trace and
laterals on each side known as parachnoi. Just above the leaf scar
is a small triangular print left by the ligule, while below the leaf
scar there are frequently two rounded prints or depressions on
either side of the keel which, like the parachnoi, are tracts of thin-
walled tissue which functioned as aerating tissue. Other markings
of an ornamental character are frequently present on the bolsters.
With the decay of the cortex the characteristic Lepidodendron fea-
tures gradually become obliterated. If merely the epidermis is gone
the resulting features are those of Bergeria, once thought to repre-
sent an independent genus. If decay has removed part of the cortex
the forms are known as Aspidaria, and if all of the outer cortex is
gone showing the imbricated leaf traces it is known as Knorria.

Anatomically the stem is monostelic with centripetal primary
wood, which may extend to the center or inclose a pith. There
is usually a considerable development of centrifugal secondary
wood consisting of scaliform tracheids and medullary rays. Pri-
mary phloem has been recognized but there is some doubt regarding
the presence of secondary phloem or of any persistent cambium. In
forms that have not been demonstrated to have formed secondary
wood, secondary thickening takes place in the outer cortex through
the development of a periderm.

Leaf traces, collateral in structure, pass off from the stele without
leaving any gaps and pass obliquely through the cortex to the leaves,
each leaf receiving a single bundle. The cortex is of great thick-
ness and variable according to age and species. Usually there is
an inner parenchymatous zone poorly preserved. The outer cortex
consists of thicker walled elements, usually with an enormous de-
velopment of phelloderm, which served for the lack of mechanical
tissue in the vascular cylinder.

The leaves had a single central vascular bundle surrounded by a
sheath of transfusion tissue and the stomata are commonly restricted
to two deep grooves on the lower surface. What corresponds to the
roots in higher plants are peculiar organs known as Stigmaria,
which as casts or impressions are among the commonest coal measure

330 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

fossils, particularly in the underclays beneath the coal seams. In
complete specimens the main axis is seen to divide into four main
forks which run horizontally and branch dichotomously. The sur-
face is smooth or irregular, wrinkled, and covered with well-spaced
umbilicate scars from which, in well-preserved material, cylindrical
radiating rootlets are seen to diverge. These are slightly constricted
at the base and lack root hairs. These are so common that the under-
clays are often called Stigmaria clays, and they are the pest of stu-
‘dents of petrified material, since they are found penetrating the
tissue of other plants that formed the substratum in the Carbonifer-
ous swamps. The main axis consists of a central pith, a ring of
centrifugal wood accompanied by phloem and surrounded by a cortex
with abundant periderm. Sometimes no distinction between pri-
mary and secondary wood is observable, while in other specimens
centripetal primary wood is present. The rootlets show a different
anatomical arrangement, each containing a monarch stele, with radial
vascular strands connecting the protoxylem with groups of cortical
tracheids. They arise from the inner margin of the primary wood,
although the outer cortex is continuous with that of the main axis.

Stigmaria have frequently been found attached to both Lepidoden-
dron and Sigillaria trunks. There has been much discussion regard-
ing the morphological nature of Stigmaria, since they do not conform
to the usual morphology of true roots, but whatever their morphologi-
cal homologies, physiologically they are roots.

The fructifications of the Lepidodendraceae have been described
under a variety of generic names, the most common being Lepido-
strobus. Lepidostrobus had an axis similar anatomically to a vege-
tative twig and bore numerous spirally arranged sporophylls, each
bearing a single very largé radially elongated sporangium on its
adaxial surface. The sporophyll had an upturned blade and these
formed an imbricated protective surface for the cone. Between the
sporangium and the blade a hgule was present. It seems probable
that the Lepidodendrons were always heterosporous, the two kinds
of spores being produced on different parts of the same cone or upon
different cones. The microspores were small, tetrahedral in form, and
very plentiful. The megaspores were relatively very large, few in
number, tetrahedral in form, with a hairy, surface and commonly
opening by apical flaps. The prothallus within the megaspore is oc-
casionally preserved and even archegonia have been recognized. In
another cone genus, Spencerites, the sporangia were united to the
sporophyll by a distal neck and the spores were winged. In some
Lepidodendron cones large masses of sterile tissue are developed
within the sporangia suggesting a vestigial sporangiophore, and in
Mazocarpon the large sausage-shaped megaspores are imbedded in a
solid parenchymatous tissue.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BEBRRY. aout

Still another type of Lepidodendron fructification was Cantheli-
ophorus in which the sporophylls were commonly deciduous. Each
sporophyll bore two large sporangia separated by a median sterile
plate interpreted as representing the sporangiophore of the ancestral
pro-Sphenophyllum stock.

Ulodendron branches have also been formed on certain species of
Lepidodendron, and other Lepidodendron shoots, known as Halonia,
are characterized by spirally disposed scars or tubercles thought to
indicate the points of attachment of cone peduncles.

The vast majority of stem impressions represent minor variations
of the common Lepidodendron type. In the genus Lepidophloios
the bolsters were very prominent and became recumbent in old age,
so that the normal leaf scar appears to be at the base. The Halonia
branches with their spirally stalked deciduous cones appertains par-
ticularly to Lepidophloios, which, anatomically, was exactly lke
Lepidodendron.

The Sigillariaceae are much like the Lepidodendrons in essential
features, but differed considerably in habit. They attained their
maximum development in the Upper Carboniferous and gradually
waned during the Permian, although they appear to have survived
into the Lower Triassic. The trunks were generally massive and for
the most part unbranched, giving them a peculiar appearance and at
one time suggesting a relationship with the cycadophytes, since dis-
credited.

Some specimens 6 feet in diameter at the base had tapered to 1 foot
in diameter 18 feet above the base, while a French specimen was found
preserved for a length of 71 feet, which was 2 feet in diameter at one
end and 1 foot 8 inches at the other. The leaves were persistent
toward the top of the stem and in some cases were very long and grass-
like. Stem impressions, which, like those of Lepidodendron, are
exceedingly common throughout the coal measures, can readily be dis-
tinguished by their vertically arranged scars often on prominent ribs,
by the slight development of bolsters, and by the scars being wider
than high, with the angles at the sides and rounded above and below.
Very many species have been described and the variations observed
are very useful for stratigraphic purposes, and have resulted in an
elaborate analysis of the types of surface ornamentation. These fall
naturally into two main groups: The EuSigillariae with ribbed stems,
and the SubSigillariae with smooth stems.

The Eusigillariae show broad longitudinal ribs separated by fur-
rows and are segregated into two subordinate groups: 1. e., Favu-
laria, in which the ribs are separated by zigzag furrows and the scars
by transverse furrows; and Rhytidolepsis, in which the ribs are sepa-
rated by straight furrows and are often much broader than the close
set or spaced scars. Where the furrows are broad and intercalated,

332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

narrow ribs without leaf scars are developed. The forms are some-
times set apart under the name Polleriana, and when transverse fur-
rows appear, the forms are grouped under the name Tasselata.

The various stages of preservation yield characteristic surface
features thought to indicate distinct genera by the older students
but useful now as descriptive terms. 'Thus when partially decorti-
cated, the inwardly enlarging strands of aerochyma result in vertical
rows of pairs of large mammilae, and such stems have been called
Syringodendron. Petrified material of Sigillaria is rarely found. The

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levereveterens Ss)

Fia. 13,—Types of Sigillaria stem ornamentation (diagrammatic).

A. Leiodermaria\ , psigillari C. Tasselata

B. Clathraria 9 JP UPS iariae. D. Rhytidolepis|_. ... .
i. Polleriana Eusigillariae.
F. Favularia

pith was very large and the vascular cylinder thin and sometimes
Lroken up into separate bundles. Tracheids were reticulate or
scalariform, increasing in size centripetally. Secondary wood con-
sists of radically arranged scalariform and pitted tracheids, cen-
trifugal in development with narrow medullary rays. Cortex was
thick with an inner soft zone and an outer mechanical zone as in
Lepidodendraceae. The leaf traces had an inner centripetal pri-
mary strand surrounded by a centrifugal secondary zone. The
leaves are much like those of Lepidodendron with a central con-
centric vascular strand surrounded by a considerable development
of transfusion tissue. In some instances the strand is double. The

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. Sao

cuticle was dense and the stomata were confined to the two furrows
on the lower side which were clothed with multicellular hairs.

The cones of Sigillaria, usually going by the name of Sigilarios-
trobus, are common as impressions, but are practically unknown
in a petrified condition. They were often very large, being as
much as five or six em. in diameter in S. nobilis. They agree in
having long peduncles covered with needle-like bracts. The fertile
part bears crowded sporophylls of somewhat variable shape with
flexed and imbricated distal blades. The sporangia were some-
times attached for nearly their whole length to the adaxial face of
the sporophyll, while in other cases they are thought to have been
attached distally. Some cones are known to have been heterospo-
rous and this was probably the rule throughout the family. It was
formerly thought that both the Lepidodendraceae and Sigillaria-
ceae became extinct with the Paleozoic, but cones considered to be
related to the Lepidodendraceae and named Lycostrobus are re-
corded from the Upper Triassic (Rhaetic) of Sweden and certain
remains from the Lower Triassic (Bunter) of Europe, known as
Pleuromeia and sometimes made the type of a separate family, are
now believed to represent the Sigillariaceae. Pleuromeia, which is
imperfectly known, is represented by stem casts of simple stems
nine to ten cm. in diameter, the surface covered with remote rhom-
boidal, Clathraria-lke, leaf scars.

Basally the stem separates into four lobes suggestive of Stigmaria
or Isoetes and covered with rootlet scars like those of Stigmaria.
Poorly preserved terminal cones of crowded imbricated sporophyls
are also known. The form of the stem and the growth separation of
the leaf scars indicate secondary thickening; decorticated specimens
resemble Knorria, and the thin central cylinder all point to a close
affinity with the true Sigillarias. The cone genus Poecilitostachys,
described by Fliche from the Tyiassic of France, also indicates a third
type of the Lepidodendrales which survived the Paleozoic.

There remain for consideration two examples which indicate that
some of the Lepidophytes had definitely progressed beyond hetros-
pory to what amounts to the acquisition of the seed habit. The first
of these, unfortunately designated by the preoccupied name of Lepi-
docarpon, comes from the lower Coal Measure of England. In
Lepidocarpon the cone was of the Lepidostrobus type in all its imma-
ture details. Only a single megaspore reached maturity in each
sporangium, practically filling the whole cavity, and as it matured it
was inclosed with a complete investment (integument or velum) which
grew up from the adaxial surface of the sporophyll and opened only
by a narrow apical micropylar slit. At maturity the whole sporophyll
with its integumented megasporangium was shed as a closed seed-like
reproductive body. |

334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The second spermophytic Lepidophyte type, known as Miadesmia
and coming from the Lower Coal Measure of England, was borne on
a slender herbaceous form. Each sporophyll bore a ligule like those
of the vegetative leaves and had a fringed lamina. The megaspor-
angium was attached to the proximal adaxial face of the sporophyll
and developed a single megaspore, which filled its cavity, and was
inclosed in an integument arising from the proximal region of the
sporophyll, which completely invested the megasporangium, except
for a circular micropylar opening at the beak-like distal apex of the
sporangium. The micropyle was surrounded by numerous integumen-
tal hairs or tentacles, which probably facilitated fertilization. Some
megaspores are filled with prothallus. The whole sporophyll was
shed at maturity. In some respects Miadesmia was more advanced
than Lepidocarpon, and while neither are morphologically homolo-
gous with the seeds of the other spermophytes, they are physiologic-
ally true seeds, which apparently did not evolve further along lines
leading to higher plants, as did the seeds of the Pteridospermophytes.

It can not be said that there is any unanimity of opinion regard-
ing the phylogenetic position of the Lepidophyta. Some students
regard their origin as entirely independent of the Arthrophyta,
while others regard them as probably distantly related_to the pro-
Sphenophyllum stock that represented the Arthrophyte ancestral
line. At the other end of the phylum there are students (Seward,
Potonié) who consider that the Araucariales and perhaps the bal-
ance of the Coniferophytes diverged from the Lepidophyte stock,
while others justly doubt that the phylum had any higher issue.

The view advocated here, an opinion frequently advanced, is that
the Lepidophyta represent a group of forms derived by reduction
from more megaphyllous ancestors, and that the prevailingly simple
relationship between the sporangia and the sporophylls is due to
simplification or reduction from sporangiophoric ancestors closely
related to the theoretical pro-Sphenoph}llum type. This view is based
in part on a consideration of the paired sporangia of Canthelio-
phorus with their central sporangiaphoric plate, on the ventral pad
of Spencerites, the core of sterile tissue in Mazocarpon, the sterile
plates in various Lepidostrobus sporangia, and the staiked sporangia
of the modern Psilotales. A consideration of the details of mor-
phology and the fossil record, too extensive a subject for presenta-
tion in the present brief review, leads to the conclusion that the
Lepidophytes are not related to any of the higher seed plants and
never gave rise to more highly organized types.

PHYLUM PTERIDOSPERMOPHYTA.

The recognition and partial elucidation of the seed ferns of the
Paleozoic is one of the outstanding paleobotanical achievements of the

PEATE I:

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry.

Fic. 14.—RESTORATION OF LYGINOPTERIS, THE BEST KNOWN PALEOZOIC SEED FERN.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 335

last decade. It is needless to dwell on the immense advantages which
seed bearing confers on the plants which have acquired this habit.
The mere fact that seed plants are the dominant existing plants is
. sufficient proof of this.

Over a generation ago Stur suggested that the fronds of Neurop-
teris, Alethopteris, and other form genera of fern-like fronds exceed-
ingly common in the Paleozoic were probably related to the cycads
since they were never found in a fruiting condition like normal
ferns. Subsequently the anatomy of certain petrified stems showing
a combination of fern and cycad characters led to the proposal of a
group, the Cycadofilicales, for these intermediate types. Meanwhile,
the structure of a considerable number of Paleozoic seeds suggestive
of cyeads, ginkgos, and gnetales had been described, but beyond corre-
lating some of them with Cordaites little was known of the plants
which bore the majority. In 1903 Oliver and Scott succeeded in
proving that certain seeds (Lagenostoma) were borne on fronds of
the Sphenopteris type and these in turn were attached to stems known
as Lyginodendron. This discovery stimulated an interest in the sub-
ject and a succession of discoveries followed, so that enough is now
known to warrant considering a large number of the supposed Paleo-
zoic ferns as Pteridosperms or seed ferns. The manifestly primitive
characters show in one feature or another, such as the more or less
free nucellus, the complex vascular supply of the seeds, their total
lack of an embryo, the fact that both megasporangia and microspo-
rangia were borne upon but slightly modified foliage leaves of de-
compound fernlike fronds, and various recondite histological charac-
teix, justify regarding the seed ferns as representing a distinct phy-
lum—the Pteridospermophyta. They were gymnospermous in habit
and some students regard them as a subordinate class of gymno-
sperms—a taxonomic term that has outlived its usefulness for other
than descriptive purposes.

‘tha Pteridospermophyta may be tentatively characterized as plants
wit. the habit and, to a large extent, with the anatomical features of
ferns, but differing in producing integumented megasporangia or
seeds borne on the usually but shghtly modified fernlike foliage and
never aggregated into true strobili; having secondary thickening in
both stems and roots.

From the rapidly increasing contributions to the knowledge of the
Pteridosperms it will suffice to describe a few of the better known
forms. Among these the best known is Lyginodendron, or Lyginop-
teris as it is more properly called. Lyginopteris represents a group
of species with slender, scrambling, mostly unbranched stems of con-
siderable length bearing large forked decompound fronds upward of
a meter in length and long known under the name of Sphenopteris
Hoeninghausi, whose persistent petioles (Rachiopteris) were almost

336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

“as large as the main stem on which they were arranged in a two-fifth
spiral. The roots (Kaloxylon) were partly adventitious, the stem
cortex was fibrous and reticulate and was clothed with spines and
capitate glandular hairs. The seeds (Lagenostoma) were borne in
lobate cupules while the pollen was on the other and more reduced
fronds in rosettes of six or seven fusiform bilocular sporangia (Cros-
sotheca). The accompanying restoration gives an idea of* the habit
of Lyginopteris, but fails to show the forking of the frond stipes.

The absence of an embryo has led to questioning the use of the term
seed for Lagenostoma and other Paleozoic forms. ‘They are indubi-
table seeds, however, and the absence of an embryo may be explained
by the resting period having occurred after pollination, while embryo
formation was postponed until after the seeds had been shed, and
immediately preceded germination.

Lyginopteris was monostelic with a large pith containing sclerotic
tissue. Primary wood consisted of from five to nine collateral
strands. In all but the most immature stems there is a broad zone of
secondary wood of pitted tracheids and medullary rays. The cam-
bium was persistent and is sometimes petrified, as is the phloem. The
cortex comprises a thin periderm and an inner, poorly preserved soft
cortex and an outer cortex characterized by radial bands of fibrous
tissue. Leaf traces are mesarch and double. Anomalous features
are the occasional formation of inverted secondary wood by the in-
trusion of the cambium through a foliar gap.

The seeds, 5 or 6 minims in length, were borne in a lobed cupule
and were orthotropous and radially symmetrical, with a single in-
tegument confluent with the nucellus except distad. The free part
forms a plug and the pollen chamber was hence reduced to a conical
slit. The integument was supplied by nine vascular strands which
ran to the apex, which formed a fluted dome or radially septate canopy
at the apex of the barrel-shaped seed.

The microsporangia were found in connection with vegetative
fronds by Kidston. They are of a type known as Crossotheca and
consisted of a rosette of six or eight bilocular fusiform sporangia.
Other types of microsporangia may well have been present in dif-
ferent species of Lyginopteris, as, for example, those called Telan-
gium, in which the sporangia are concrescent proximad. <A second
genus of seed ferns which is fairly well known is Heterangium,
which had long angular slender stems with large and graceful forked
(Sphenopteris elegans Brongn.) fronds arranged in a three-eighths
spiral. While the evidence is less conclusive than in Lyginopteris
there are good reasons for considering the seeds known as Sphaeros-
toma as those of Heterangium. Heterangium had a monostelic stem
like Lyginopteris, but the pith was replaced by mesarch primary
wood, as in some recent ferns. The secondary zone was thin. The

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. Bey

seeds (Sphaerostoma) are small with an inner integument and an
outer integument or cupule, both with an elaborate vascular supply.
The free apical part of the nucellus is a relatively fiat plinth sur-
mounted by a central dome or lagenostome, which is surrounded by an
annular pollen chamber. The free apical part of the integument
formed a frill or canopy with eight radial crests around the micro-
pyle. Heterangium has a greater range than Lyginopteris, being
found from the Lower Carboniferous to the Permian. Seeds of Lygin-
opteris or Heterangium are found in the French Coal Measures asso-
ciated with the frond genera Sphenopteris elegans, S. dissecta, and
S. obtusiloba.

A second family type to which at least four genera are referable is
the Medullosaceae. These are characterized by the enormous devel-
opment of the fronds of the Neuropteris and Alethopteris type with
petioles several centimeters in diameter. This enormous display of
foliage is doubtless to be correlated with the peculiarities in the
anatomy of the stems. The most primitive known genus, one indi-
cating the point of departure of the other and more specialized mem-
bers of the family is Sutcliffia of the English Lower Coal Measures.

Sutcliffia had a large pithless central stele of centripetally formed
wood from which meristeles branch and divide and fuse irregularly
and eventually give rise to leaf traces, a large number of which enter
each petiole, where their structure is concentric. Secondary wood is
but feebly developed. The next stage in the evolution of these forms
away from the Heterangium type is furnished by J/edullosa anglica,
which is polystelic with normally three steles each developing second-
ary wood. ‘The stems were as much as 7 or 8 centimeters in diameter
and bore spirally arranged decompound fronds with decurrent
petioles. Many adventitious roots were formed.

Without stopping to dwell on the histological details we pass to the
exceedingly complex Medullosas of the Permian, in which the steles
become very numerous and are differentiated into inner “ star rings”
and outer “ plate rings” systems, the latter forming a peripheral zone
which is an almost closed woody cylinder. Successive extrafascicu-
lar zones of wood and bast were developed in several species. The
leaf traces which are at first concentric break up into strands with
external protoxylem, several from different levels of origin entering
each petiole. The peculiar arrangement in these later Medullosas is
a necessary outcome of large polystelic stems with secondary thick-
ening and appears to have constituted a rather impractical experi-
ment in attempting to develop secondary thickening around numerous
steles ina single stem. If the theory advocated by Worsdell, Chodat,
and others is substantiated, it would appear that certain of the Per-
mian Medullosas solved this problem in the mechanics of stem struc-
ture by suppressing the centripetal portions of the steles, while the

338 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

centrifugal and continuous portions characterized forms which passed
by gradations into the Cycadophytes. Scott and Solms Laubach, on
the other hand, regard the Medullosaceae as a highly differentiated
derivative of a Heterangiumlike ancestor which became so specialized
that it became extinct during the Permian. Other genera that
appear to belong to this family are Colpoxylon, Rhexoxylon, and pos-
sibly Steloxylon, all based upon fragments of petrified stems from the
Paleozoic of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Medullosa petioles are referred to the genus Myeloxylon and
structural material has been described from both Europe and Amer-
ica. The foliage of Medullosa was of the frond types known as
Neuropteris, Alethopteris, and Linopteris; all of which were exceed-
ingly abundant and cosmopolitan in the later Paleozoic floras. Jm-
pressions from the Scotch Carboniferous show large Rhabdocarpus
seeds attached to the fronds of Neuropteris heterophylla and similar
but still larger seeds attached to Belgian specimens of Vewropteris
obliqua. N. Schlehani and NV, auriculata have also been shown to have
been seed-bearing.

The microsporangia appear to have been four valved and termi-
nal on naked pedicels in V. heterophylla or marginal on orbicular
or cuneate pinnules as in Potoniea, V. gigantea and NV. Carpentieri.
Although no seeds have been found in actual connection with Alethop-
teris there are good reasons for believing that some species at least
(e. g., A. lonchitica, A. Serlii) bore seeds of the Trigonocarpus type.
The latter, which are often exceedingly common as impressions and
casts, as described from petrified material are elongate-oval radially
symmetrical. The testa is thick and consists of an outer flesh (sar-
cotesta) a shell (sclerotesta) and an inner flesh. The shell has
three longitudinal ribs which characterize the seeds when preserved
as casts after the decay of the outer flesh. Less prominent lines are
intercalated between the main ribs. There was a long triangular
micropylar canal leading to a small pollen chamber in the apex of
the nucellus and the latter is free to the base.

Other genera that may represent sporangia of different types of
Medullosaceae are Codonotheca, Schiitzia, Whittleseya, Dolerophyl-
lum, and Ottokaria (7%).

The bulk of the remaining types referred to the Pteridospermo-
phyta are based upon anatomical studies of stem or petiole frag-
ments ranging in age from the Devonian (Kalymma) to the Permian
and will not be described in the present connection. In addition to
these, several types of fronds formerly referred to the ferns have
been proved to be seed-bearing, as, for instance, fronds referred to
Pecopteris Pluckencti but probably representing P. Sterzeli, in which
the slightly reduced pinnules bore terminal oval seeds with a thick

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry. PLATE 2.

Fic. 15.—_DETAILS OF ORGANIZATION OF SOME OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SEED
FERNS.

1. Calymmotheca stangeri Stur. Involucres of megasporangia or seeds (after Stur).
2. Restoration of Lagenostoma lomaxi (after Oliver).
3. Microspores of Lagenostoma ovoides (after Benson).
4, Lagenostoma lomaxiin median longitudinal section (after Oliver).
c, micropyle; d, space between nucellus and integument; e, cupule; f, integument; ch, chalaza.
5. Sphenopteris hoeninghausi (after Schimper).
6. Lagenospermum sinclairi (after Arber)
7. Neuropterocarpus kidstoni (after Kidston).
8. Sphaerostoma ovale (after Benson):
c, cupule; e, f, integument; v, vascular bundle in integument; n, upper part ofnucellus; m, megaspore;
a, archegonia.
9. Sterile pinnae of Aneimites fertilis from the Pottsville of West Virginia (after White).
10. Seed bearing pinnae of the preceding.
11. Median longitudinal section of Trigonocarpus parkinsoni (after Scott).
12. Transverse section of preceding:
Sa, sarcotesta; Se, sclerotesta; if, inner flesh; mi, micropyle; m, megaspore and prothallus; Pe. pollen
chamber; v, vascular bundles; t, tracheal disk; nt, tracheids of nucellus.
13. Seed bearing pinnules of Pecopteris (after Grand’Eury).
14. Pterispermostrobus bifurcatus from the Carboniferous of New Brunswick (after Stopes).

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 339

sarcotesta giving the impression the appearance of having narrow
wings. This discovery is of special interest since typical Pecopteris
fronds have been shown to have constituted the foliage of Psaronius
(an undoubted fern) and they frequently show fern fructification of
the Asterotheca or Scolecopteris type. A second fern, Aneimites fer-
tilis, from the Appalachian Pottsville had small bilaterally symmet-
rical seeds on the somewhat reduced pinnules, the fleshy sarco-
testa giving the impressions the appearance of having narrow wings.
Other associations of seeds and fronds not found in prganic union
are the frond species Lremopteris artemisaefolia and the seeds Sam-
aropis acuta, the frond species Aneimites bellidulus, and the seeds
Lagenospermum Arberi.

It has been suggested that the Gondwana genera Glossopteris and
Gangamopteris were Pteriosperms, but there is as yet no basis for
this view. The peculiar Permian frond genus of Asia and North
America known as Gigantopteris is found in constant association in
the latter country with flat cordiform alate seeds borne in the con-
cavity of an obovate reduced pinnule with the Gigantopteris vena-
tion, and associated with these are detached two ranked strobiloid
organs consisting of similar bract-like pinnules bearing small oval
pendent microsporangia—not true cones, but definitely more stro-
biloid than any demonstrated Pteridospermophyta.

It is evident that the Pteridospermophyta constituted a large
and varied plexus of synthetic seed plants, our knowledge of which
is too imperfect to warrant an extended discussion of their phylo-
genetic relations. ‘That they were descended from the ferns is
obvious, but whether from the more complex Ccenopteridae (e. g.,
Asterochlaena), through the polystelic Medullosaceae or from a
simple protostelic form of Botryopteraceae through Lyginopteris
is debatable. They seem to show an as yet undemonstrated re-
lationship with the Paleozoic Marattiaceae. Within the phylum,
Scott regards them as showing two lines of descent: One through
the evolution of a single stele and leading in the direction of the
Cycadophytes, and the other toward polystely which eventually
became extinct. Chodat, on the other hand, regards Lyginopteris
as a true fern with specialized megasporangia without higher issue,
while he considers the Medullosaceae as the ancestors of the Cyca-
dophyta.

Whatever the details of descent turn out to be the Pteridosperm-
ophyta in some of their forms undoubtedly stand in an ancestral rela-
tionship to the Cycadophytes, and they may well have merged in
their earlier manifestations with the same stock that gave rise to
the Cordaitales and Ginkgoales,

340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Following is a summary of the types which are probably referable
to the Pteridosperm phylum:
Lyginopteraceae—Lyginopteris (Telangium Lagenostoma Lagenospermum,
Pterispermostrobus ) Sphenopteris, Calymmotheca, etc.,
Heterangium (Sphenopteris Sphaerostoma, ete.).
Medullosaceae—Medullosa (Myeloxylon, Neuropteris, Alethopteris, Linopteris,
Trigonoearpus, Codonotheca, Schtitzia, Whittlesaya, Dolerophyl-
lum, ete.).
Colpoxylon.
Rhexoxylon.
Sutcliffia.
Steloxyleae (?)—Steloxylon.
Megaloxyleae—Megaloxylon.
Rhetinangieae—Rhetinangium.
Stenomyeleae—Stenomyelon.
Cycadoxyleae—Cycadoxylon.
Ptychoxy lon.
Calamopityeae—Calamopitys (Kalymma).
Eristophyton.
Cladoxyleae—Cladoxylon.
Volkelia.
Protopityeae—Protopitys.
Incertae sedis—Pecopteris pluckeneti, Eremopteris artemisaefolia, Wardia,
Adiantites bellidulus, Ottokaria, Strobilites, Gigantopteris,
Glossopteris (?), ete.

PHYLUM CYCADOPHYTA.

No existing group of plants has excited more interest in recent
years than the existing cyeads (order Cycadales). Before the pecu-
liarly organized Mesozoic forms were understood, the wealth of
foliar impressions of cycad-like fronds in the Mesozoic rocks
throughout the world and similar less abundant remains in the later
Paleozoic, led to the conclusion that the cycad line was simply an-
other example of an ancient, persistent, rather uniform stock derived
from the ferns, whose existing representatives were the straggling
survivors of a type which attained its maximum development in the
older Mesozoic. The researches of Carruthers, Solms Laubach, Na-
thorst, Lignier, and Wieland have shown that the group was large
and diversified, and includes at least two extinct orders very differ-
ent from the existing cycads; that its origin is to be looked for
among the seed ferns rather than the true ferns; and that existing
cycads represent relatively modern and never very abundant deriva-
tives of this ancient stock.

In sketching the morphology of the Cycadophytes the reader has
to bear in mind that we are dealing with an extensive group that ap-
peared in the record as early as the Carboniferous (Westphalan)
and continued to the present, and that aside from the recent forms and
a few exceptional fossil forms like the Rhaetic Wielandiella and the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 341

Lower Cretaceous Cycadeoids and Williamsonias, we have only the
remains of foliage as a clue to relationships, and practically no in-
formation regarding anatomy or fructifications; the latter we infer
from the analogy of known forms were highly variable.

Various attempts at a natural, or at least a logical, classification
of the Cycadophytes have been attempted. These range from re-
garding the phylum as consisting of two subordinate groups: the
Cycadales, and the Mesozoic Cycadeoideas and Williamsonias as a
second order—the Bennettitales, to those recognizing such illy
founded groups as the Nilssoniales, based upon cuticular characters.
Without wishing to depreciate the importance of any available fea-
tures in the study of fossil forms, all of which are valuable, or of
failing in recognition of the praiseworthy work of Nathorst, Thomas,
Bancroft, and others upon cuticles, it may be suggested that cuticles
can scarcely be regarded as affording ordinal criteria. In the case
of the proposal of such a group as the Nilssoniales, the variation in
detail of these features and their similarity to what obtains rather
uniformly in other groups of xerophytic gymnosperms, shows con-
clusively that they represent convergence due to habitat. A tendency,
especially among botanists, to regard the cycadeoids as the dominant
and progressive fossil type and to overestimate the degree of rela-
tionship between them and their contemporaries, the Williamson-
iales, is also to be deprecated.

Tt must be recognized, entirely aside from the degree of converg-
ence or divergence of fructification morphology, that the cycado-
phyte stock as it was derived from the pteridosperms was a relatively
slender stemmed branching type, corresponding to the more primi-
tive Williamsonia type as exemplified by the Triassic Wielandiella.
Nothing is known of the anatomy or fructifications of many of the
so-called Williamsonia genera such as Pterophyllum, Plagiozamites,
Anomozamites, ete. Analogy would lead to the view that the floral
and stem morphology had not become stereotyped in this order and ex-
hibited considerable diversity, sufficient to include Podozamites on
ihe one hand, and Williamsonia on the other. It would seem that
the most natural arrangement of the phylum is one that regards the
main line of descent from which the more specialized or reduced
branches were given off at different times as a separate order, the
Williamsoniales, which was the long existent and cycadophyte
plexus, from which two other orders, the Cycadales and the Cyca-
deoidales, were derived.

Quite naturally the Williamsoniales that are nearest the points of
origin of the Cycadeoidales, or Cyecadales, will show great similari-
ties in their fructifications, but any arrangement that throws these
points of contact into one order and recognizes such quasi groups as

136650°—20

99
23,

342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

Nilssoniales or Diodniales, effectually obscures the fundamental plan
of evolution of the phylum, if its history has been at all like that just
outlined. The name Williamsoniales is unfortunate, and probably it
would be better to use Hemicycadales (Wieland).

As sketched in the following paragraphs the Cycadophyta are
somewhat arbitrarily segregated into three subordinate groups: The
aberrant Cycadeoidales, which are not as far removed from the second
group, the Mesozoic and existing Cycadales, as formerly was thought
to be the case. The third group, for which the inappropriate name
Williamsoniales is retained, includes the balance of the Cycadophytes.
It is not a compact group, and the progress of discovery will doubt-
less show it to be unnatural. In its beginnings it approximates the
Pteridospermophyta and also shows points of possible contact with
the Gnetales and Ginkgoales. In its more evolved members (e. g:,
Williamsonia) it approximates the Cycadeoids to such an extent that
Wieland and other authorities group the former and the latter to-
gether. The two points of view are entirely in agreement regarding
the facts and differ merely in the placing of the boundary between
the two groups, a not very serious difference in an evolving series of
forms.

Although in Cycadeoidea Gibsoniana, the species in which the floral
organization was first made known, only ovulate organs were dis-
covered, the much fuller American material leads to the inference
that the flowers were normally bisporangiate.

The Cycadeoidales appear to represent an evolution from the older
Williamsoniales stock, and according to our present knowledge, they
are confined to the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous. Their prevail-
ingly tuberous trunks are individually abundant in a silicified condi-
tion in certain sandy strata of those ages, particularly in the Portland
Dirt Bed of the Isle of Wight, in the Patuxent formation of Mary-
land, and the Morrison beds of the Freezeout Hills in Wyoming. By
far the largest number have been found in the similar strata of the
Lakota formation, which outcrops in the Black Hills rim. Similar
remains in less abundance have been found in France, Italy, Galicia,
and elsewhere. Their wonderful preservation and exceptional mor-
phological features have resulted in unusually painstaking researches
which have shown that the group as a whole was one of rather limited
variation and stereotyped organization, relatively no more abundant
in Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous times than are the Cycads in exist-
ing floras.

The salient features, briefly enumerated, are a tuberous or short
columnar stem, sometimes an aggregate of tuberous stems, as in some
species of Encephalartos. The stem was encased in a heavy armor
of persistent leaf bases, which largely obviated the necessity for the
development of a thick zone of mechanical woody tissue in the stem.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry. PLATE 3.

Fic. I7.-THE HISTORIC JOHNS HOPKINS CYCAD, CYCADEOIDEA MARYLANDICA
(FONTAINE), THE FIRST PETRIFIED TRUNK DISCOVERED IN AMERICA, X}s.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 343

The interstices of leaf bases were filled with multicellular scales
(unicellular hairs in the Liassic C. Micromyela Moriére) correspond-
ing to the ramentum of ferns, in some cases (as in the genus Cyea-
della) very long and enclosing the whole trunk in a felt-like mass.
This ramental covering appears to have facilitated their subsequent
silicification, so that normally the fossil trunks show the ramental
areas as prominent partitions, separating the subrhombic angular
cavities left by the leaf stalks which decayed or were shed before
fossilization. Among the leaf bases occur numerous short axillary
branches each terminated by a solitary fructification or flower, as
Wieland terms the latter. The anatomy of the stem is much like
that of the cycads. There is a thick cortex, a comparatively thin
vascular cylinder and a very large pith containing secretory sacs
rather than gum canals. The vascular bundles are collateral, the
protoxylem is next the pith (endarch), and the few spiral marked
tracheids are soon replaced by scalariform tracheids which appear
to characterize the phylum, although pitted tracheids are recorded
in Cycadeoidea micromyela. In the leaves, however, the structure is
mesarch, suggesting their pteridophytic ancestry. The leaf traces
care single and direct and thus more simple in their arrangement than
in existing cycads.

The axillary branches bear reduced leaves or bracts spirally ar-
ranged, and are of a length to bring the terminal flower at about
the general level formed by the persistent leaf bases. The branch
axis expands into a subhemispherical or conical receptacle. At its
base and immediately beyond the enclosing bracts was inserted a
whorl of compound microsporophylls, united into a continuous
sheath proximad, expanding distad into a bipinnate frond with
alternate pinnae, all of which, except the apical and basal pairs,
bearing two rows of synangia, suggesting those of a marattiaceous
fern, the whole greatly resembling a fertile fern frond rather than
a verticil of stamens, and lke the former circinate in vernation.
The surface of the receptacle above the staminate collar is beset with
slender pedicels, each bearing at its extremity a single orthotropous
seed, the interspaces packed with sterile appendages known as inter-
seminal scales, which expand apically so that only the micropylar
part of the seed reaches the surface, and the whole is compact and
simulates a closed pericarp. Before proceeding with the descrip-
tion of the seeds, it may be well to state that of the various morpho-
logical homologies that have been advanced, that which regards the
interseminal scales as greatly reduced foliar appendages and the
seed-bearing pedicels as reduced megasporophylls seems the most
probable.

The whole fruit-like body is ovoid or turbinate in shape, several
centimeters in length, the surface a mosaic of the expanded tips of

344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the interseminal scales, between which the micropylar tubes of the
seeds protrude. The microsporophylls are only preserved in im-
mature strobili. They have disappeared at a later period, but their
former presence can usually be inferred from the basal shoulder
that marks their insertion on the receptacle. The probabilities are
that all the cyeadeoids were bisporangiate, although this is disputed
in the case of some species. The seeds are very small as compared
with those of living cyeads and have a two or three layered testa,
prolonged upward into a micropylar tube, the outer palisade layer
of which at the shoulder where it joins the seed being expanded by
radial extensions, forming five or six radial wings. The cavity of
the seed is completely filled by a large dicotyledonous embryo which
in its development, unlike any living gymnosperms, destroys all of
the endosperm.

A variety of eyead fronds are found in the deposits which have
yielded the petrified trunks, but our information regarding their
actual foliage is furnished by small unexpanded petrified material
which shows pinnate fronds of the Zamia type, circinate in verna-
tion, with erect pinnules. The number was small in Cycadella. In
Cycadeoidea ingens there were 60 to 100 pairs of linear or slightly
spatulate pinnules, and the truncate pinnate fronds are estimated as
having been several feet in length at maturity. It seems probable
from the large number of cones in the same stage of development in
some trunks and their complete absence in other large trunks that
seed formation was the culminating event of many seasons of vege-
tational activity, possibly occurring but once at the maturity of the
plant, but more probably repeated at increasing intervals through-
out life. In the historic Johns Hopkins Cycad shown in the accom-
panying figure 17 there are 58 strobili on the face figured.

Fronds indistinguishable from those of cycadeoids are cosmopoli-
tan from the Triassic to the Upper Cretaceous, but there is no means of
determining to what an extent they belong to the cycadeoids, and the
probabilities are strongly in favor of considering most of them as the
fronds of the order that I have termed the Williamsoniales.

The Williamsoniales comprise a much more protean and long-lived
group of forms, unfortunately known almost entirely from impres-
sions. They appear in the later Paleozoic in the genera Plagiozamites,
Pterophyllum, and Sphenozamites; are very prominent in the Tri-
assic, Jurassic, and Lower Cretaceous; and are still present but in
reduced numbers in the Upper Cretaceous after the cycadeoids had
become extinct. The nature of their remains precludes a concise sum-
mary of their features. Both the very abundant foliar remains as
well as such fructifications as have been preserved indicate a much
wider variability than among the other two orders of cycadophytes.
The sole feature that at present can be considered as probably char-

PALEOBOTAN Y— BERRY. 345

mee

Ze

SIH
ee Ges

Wey

SHEet

Fic. 16.—Fructifications of the Cycadeoidales.:
1. Restoration of an vnexpanded fructification of Cycadeoidea (after Wieland).
2. Embryo of Cycadeoidea showing vascular bundles (afier Wieland).
3. Median longitudinal section of ovulate strobilus of Cycadeoidea (after Wieland):

m, pith; x, xylem; p, phloem; c, cortex; a, insertion of leaf; b, bracts; s, seeds; 1, leaves; d, collar for in-
sertion of microsporangiate disk.

4. Restoration of complete and partially expanded fructification of Cycadeoidea (after Wieland).
5. Section of seed and adjacent interseminal scales of Cycadeoidea turrita (after Wieland):
is, interseminal scales; s, pedicle of seed; e, embryo; r, megaspore membrane; n, nucellar sac; t, inner
layer of testa; p, exterior layer of testa “blow off’’; m, micropylar opening and canal; b, chalaza.
6. Section of seed and adjacent interseminal scales of Cycadeoidea morierei (after Lignier):
a, archegonia ?; ¢, pollen chamber; t and tl, inner and outer testa; 0, peduncle.
7a, b, ¢, d. Diagrammatical restoration of fructification of Cycadeoidea colossalis (after Wieland):

A, transverse section above the receptacle showing the bracts (black), a petiole with vascular bundles
ramenta, and (1—10) the wings of the microsporophylls. B, C, longitudinal section of flower showing
the receptacle with the small megasporophylls, the staminate disc with winged microsporophylls
and synangia, and the terminal brush of interseminal scales (indicated by the arrow in B). The
megasporophylls and synangia are represen‘ed larger than the actual size. D, this shows on one
side the dome-like arrangement cf the microsporophylls and, on the right, a microsporophyll in side-
view. IE, longitudinal section as far as the plane 7 surmounted by the apex of the collection of
microsporophylls, c; s, microsporophyll with synangia; A, recurved apex of microsporophyll; B,
bracts; D, insertion of disc; Z, outer bracts next the petiole bases.

8. Longitudinal section of synangium of Cycadeoidea dacotensis (after Wieland).
9. Transverse section of a partially emergent but still folded frond of Cycadeoidea ingens deeply imbedded
in ramentum (after Wieland).

346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

acteristic of the order is the relative slenderness and elongation of the
stem and the frequency with which it branched, often dichotomously.

It is not possible to consider the various foliar types in the limits of
the present paper, a subject requiring much study and never ade-
quately discussed, and only a few of the more representative types will
be mentioned. Among these one of the most remarkable is the genius
Wielandiella from the Rhaetic of Sweden. Wielandiella had an elon-
gated slender stem not over 2 centimeters in diameter, with repeated
dichotomies, prevailingly naked except in the region of the forks,
where it bore spirally arranged, rather reduced fronds of the Nilssonia
or Anomozamites types. In each fork was a subsessile fructification
surrounded by bracts. These fructifications are met with in two
forms, probably representing different ages and states of preservation.
In the one it consists of a small pyriform axis separated from the
peduncle by a swollen striated collar bearing oval microspores on the
surface of greatly reduced scalelike sporophylls. Ovulate structures
on the pyriform axis appear to have been vestigial. In the second
type the axis is hidden by the linear bracts but its surface reveals a
regular pattern of interseminal scales between which the micropylar
tubes project, indicating an ovulate organization like that of the
eyeadeoids and Williamsonia.

Another old genus is the Rhaetic genus Cycadocephalus, also from
Sweden, and based on impressions of a large fructification 10 centi-
meters long and 7 centimeters in diameter. The peduncle is slender
and shows no leaf or bract scars. No trace of a central ovulate re-
ceptacle is discernible, the head consisting of a cluster of linear
microsporophylls with a keellike midrib on their inner faces, and
bearing on either side of this midrib linear pointed synangia.

A third Rhaetic genus is Weltrichia from Franconia, based upon
a funicular fructification, the cup of which was formed by the con-
crescent bases of about a score of broadly linear microsporophylls,
the whole 10 centimeters in length and 9 centimeters in diameter.
The free lanceolate apical portions of these bear linear appendages
5 to 8 millimeters long attached to their inner faces, comparable
with the synangia of Cycadocephalus. No traces of ovulate struc-
tures are known, so it can not be determined whether either Cyca-
docephalus or Weltrichia were unisexual or bisexual. An elaborate
account of Weltrichia by Schuster, largely imaginative, supplies a
remarkable assemblage of features that are best ignored until cor-
roborated by some reliable student.

As previously mentioned, a variety of frond genera of late Tri-
assic, Jurassic, and Lower Cretaceous ages are found from Japan
and New Zealand on the east to California and Alaska. on the west,
and from Franz Joseph Land, Spitzbergen, and Greenland on the
north to Graham Land on the south. No continent is without an

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 8347

abundant representation. In the present abridged account a mere
mention of the more important genera that have been recognized
must suffice. Associated with these frond genera at many localities,
particularly in India, England, and southern Mexico, are the objects
commonly referred to the genus Williamsonia.

hi Uy
WN AY
i My

(

LEZ

. A i MM
cl he

_
NN

LS

i

\\

\
nat

Fic. 18.—Types of Williamsoniales.

la, b. Williamsonia virginiensis Fontaine from the lower Cretaceous of Virginia (after Fontaine).
2. Williamsonia spectabilis. Restoration after Thomas, Jurassic of England.

3. Restoration of Williamsonia mexicana from the Liassic of Mexico (after Wieland).

4. Frond of Zamites gigas from the Jurassic of England (after Seward).

5a. Williamsonia whitbiensis microsporangiate disk from Jurassic of England (after Nathorst).
5b. Sporophyll of same showing insertion of synangia.

6a. Bucklandia milleriana from the Jurassic of Scotland (after Carruthers).

6b. Bucklandia (Yatesia) joassiana from the Jurassic of Scotland (after Carruthers).

6c. Williamsonia sp. from the Liassic of Mexico (after Wieland).

The most celebrated of these is perhaps Wdlliamsonia gigas, dis-
covered early in the last century in the Jurassic outcrops along the
Yorkshire coast, and the basis for Williamson’s historic restoration.
These have been found in organic union with foliage and stems.
The stems (Bucklandia) were slender, 5 centimeters in diameter,
covered with rhomboidal leaf scars, with a crown of Zamia-like fronds

348 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

about 2 feet long, and bearing at the summit slender peduncles
20-80 centimeters long, covered with spirally-arranged scale leaves,
and terminated with an ovulate receptacle bearing pedicillate seeds
similar to those of Cycadeoidea surrounded by bracts or sterile
sporophylls united proximad to form a disk or cup. No trace of
microsporophylls are certainly known in this species, although the
probabilities are that it was bisporangiate, in fact, certain staminate
disks have been referred to this species by various students.

Naturally, a very large number of different species of William-
sonia have been described from a variety of Mesozoic horizons and
localities, but few of these show essential features or have been
exhaustively investigated. A very characteristic form (W. virgin-
zensis) occurs in the Lower Cretaceous of Virginia and another in
the Upper Cretaceous of Delaware.

Among the better-known forms are W. spectabilis from the York-
shire Jurassic, which shows a funicular disk prolonged into linear
lanceolate microsporophylls bearing on their inner faces fertile
pinnae carrying reniform synangia. <A central ovulate receptacle
is wanting. W.whitbiensis,also from the Yorkshire coast, is similar
to the preceding, but the fertile pinnae are reduced and the reniform
synangia are borne on either side of the midrib along the inner
face of the free part of the microsporophylls. Still another type
is W. mexicana from the Lias of Southern Mexico in which the cup
is deeply campanulate with 10 short narrow free lobes bearing two
rows of lateral synangia.

The only petrified Williamsonia known is the imperfectly pre-
served W. scotica from the Jurassic of Scotland, which shows hairy
bracts, no traces of microsporophylls, and a central receptacle con-
sisting of interseminal scales and pedicellate seeds exactly similar
to Cycadeoidea

An interesting and more reduced type, whose affinities indicate the
survival to the middle Jurassic of the Wielandiella type, is one
made the basis of the genus Williamsoniella. If the various parts
are correctly correlated they show slender, frequently dichotomous
stems bearing scattered leaf scars and believed to have borne the
associated type of foliage known as 7aeniopteris vittata. In the
stem forks are pedunculate bracteate fructifications consisting of a
whorl of cuneate microsporophylls bearing five to six sessile reniform
synangia on either side of the inner keel. Within the whorl of
microsporophylls a pyriform receptacle with a sterile crown is coy-
ered with small interseminal scales and short-stalked seeds like those
of Williamsonia and Cycadeoidea.

Remarkably well-preserved fronds from Greenland and elsewhere
described as Cycadites have recently been shown to possess a double
midrib separated by a stomatal groove, and these forms have con-

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 849

sequently been made the basis for a new genus, Pseudocycas,
although nothing is known of the plants which bore these anomalous
fronds.

A frond genus that deserves mention is Podozamites, to which a
very large number of often detached pinnules have been referred,
some of which are with difficulty distinguished from the conifero-
phyte genera Nageiopsis, Araucaria, etc. These are widespread and
more or less abundant from the Triassic to the Upper Cretaceous.
In the more perfect specimens Podozamites shows a slender rachis,
with somewhat irregularly spaced parallel veined lanceolate pin-
nules, often deciduous. Podozamites may jwell be composite. In

eH
ea
at MASE

Fic. 19.—Restoration of the Jurassic Williamsoniella (after Thomas).

a, vertical section of flower, X 3: b, microsporophyll from side, X 1: c, same in transverse section.

certain species the pinnules appear to be borne on definite short
shoots, and the associated fructifications (Cycadocarpidium) con-
sist of loose cones of sporophylls, much like the vegetative leaves,
and bearing proximad, two ovules with pointed wing-like appendages.
Podozamites in some of its forms may thus constitute a point of con-
tact between the cycadophytes and coniferophytes, or it may really
belong with the latter phylam and have no cycadean relationship.

The Cycadales have tuberous or columnar, sometimes subterranean,
sparingly or not at all branched stems, covered with persistent leaf
bases, bearing a crown of large compound leaves and apparently ter-
minal (truly lateral), dioecious strobilae. The cortex is thick, the

350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

vascular cylinder thin, and the pith large. Bundles are collateral
and endarch in the stem, but often mesarch and even concentric in
the leaf traces and strobilar axes. The leaf traces girdle the stem,
entering leaves on the opposite side from which they separate from
the vascular cylinder. Wieland has unquestionably shown that the re-
lationships between the existing and the two extinct orders are closer
than was formerly supposed.

The existing cycads constitute a rather compact group of nine
genera and about 110 species indigenous in the warmer regions of
both hemispheres—Cycas with some 16 oriental species and Zamia
with about 380 occidental species being the dominant genera. Be-
sides Zamia the genera Microcycas, Dion, and Ceratozamia are
American; Encephalartos and Stangeria are African, while Cycas,
Macrozamia, and Bowenia are Asiatic or Australian. In individual
abundance they do not play a leading role in any forest assemblage,
although the small Stangeria paradowa forms thickets in southeastern
Africa and Macrozamia spiralis forms a scrub over considerable
areas in eastern Australia. For trunk-forming plants they are in-
conspicuous and vary from the dwarf Zamias with underground
stems or epiphytic forms to some of the species of Cycas, which
reach a height of 20 meters and live to a great age.

The stem consists of pith, wood, cambium, and phloem, enveloped
in a thick cortex ending in periderm and giving rise to a thin bark,
but supporting an investure or armor of old leaf bases, persistent
or not, according as the growth of periderm affects its excision,
The pith occupies one-third the diameter of the stem. It is ex-
tremely parenchymatous and frequently affords commercial starch.
Mucilage canals traverse the pith, cortex, and rays. The pith is
traversed by gum canals and by anomalous cauline vascular bundles
in Encephalartos and Macrozamia and by peduncular bundles in
Dion, Stangeria, Ceratozamia, Zamia, etc. The wood falls into two
types. In Zamia, Dion, Stangeria, Ceratozamia, and Microcycas ( ?)
it is what is known as monoxylic, 1. e., there is a thin and more or
less open system of collateral bundles and no persistent cambium or
marked secondary thickening. Contrasted with this, Cycas, Macro-
zamia, Encephalartos, and Bowenia are polyxylic and develop a
succession of imperfect cortical cambiums which form xylem zones
that are often more or less inverted, as in Macrozamia and Bowenia,
thus suggesting comparisons with such Pteridosperm genera as
Medullosa.

The Cyeadales and presumably the majority of the fossil cycado-
phytes send down a primary root, which continues as a taproot, often
approaching the trunk in size. AI] the forms have compound leaves.
In most genera they are simply pinnate, but in Bowenia and cer-
tain species of Macrozamia and Cycas the pinnules are further sub-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. ob

divided, giving them a graceful fernlike appearance. This is ex-
hibited in Stangeria in another way. Each pinnule has a thick
midrib with several vascular bundles, and the broad lamina with
prominently toothed margins is traversed by dichotomously branch-
ing lateral veins running to the margins, which give it such a fern-
like appearance that the first specimens of the foliage to fall in the
hands of botanists were described as a new species of fern of the
genus Lomaria. In Cyeas the narrow pinnules have a midrib with
a single large vascular bundle. All the other genera lack a midrib
and have the pinnules traversed by subequal longitudinal bundles.
The order of development and the venation of the fronds vary from
genus to genus. .

The leaves are in whorls crowning the stem or the branches in
branched forms, giving a strikingly handsome appearance. Each
whorl alternates with a whorl of scale leaves. The whorl may con-
sist of but a few to over 100 fronds, varying in size from a length of
10 centimeters to more than 3 meters and the fronds may have but
a few to as many as 250 pinnules. The structure is xerophytic and
the pinnules generally have entire margins. They vary from lance-
olate to linear and acicular. In some Zamias and Stangeria the
margins are serrate. In Dion they are thorny, and in Encephalartos
they are inequilaterally lacerate.

A feature reminiscent of ancient habits and shared only by Ginkgo
among existing seed plants is the fertilization of the egg cells by
multicihated swimming sperm cells.

The histological and morphological details of the Cycadales be-
long to modern rather than paleobotany and need not be dwelt upon
in the present discussion.

Both the staminate and ovulate sporophylls are always aggregated
in strobili, which are compact and rather uniform throughout the
order, except that m Cyeas the ovulate strobilus instead of being
compacted in a cone consists of rosettés of sporophylls resembling
reduced foliage leaves, in which ovules replace the lower pinnae or
teeth.

The fossil record of the Cycadales is extremely meager. It includes
certain not conclusively determined ovulate cones from the Keuper
of Switzerland, resembling those of Zamia, and more convincing car-
pellary leaves, like those of the modern Cycas, from the top of the
French Triassic (Cycadospadix hennocquet), from the Kimeridgian
of Italy and Scotland (Cycadospadix pasianianus), and from the
Rhaetic of Sweden (Cycadospadix integer), which demonstrate the
presence of true Cycadales in the late Triassic and Jurassic. The
Cretaceous records are few and not especially trustworthy. During
the Tertiary a few undoubted remains of cycads occur at scattered
localities, demonstrating a more extended geographical range than

302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

obtains at present. Thus there are two species of Zamia in the
lower Eocene along the shores of the Mississippi embayment. A
third species occurs in the basal Eocene of Belgium, and a fourth in
the late Oligocene or early Miocene of Chile. Oligocene species include
a Zamia from France, an Encephalartos from Greece, and a not cer-
tainly identified Ceratozamia from northern Italy. The Miocene rec-
ords include a Zamites and a Cyeadites from Switzerland.

PHYLUM CONIFEROPHYTA.

The Coniferophyta correspond almost exactly to the Gymno-
spermae of the older students. Their outstanding characteristic is
the exposed ovules discovered by Robert Brown in 1827. This fea-
ture has ceased to be diagnostic, since it is common to the Pteri-
dospermophyta and Cycadophyta, and is evidently of ancient line-
age. Although probably more continuously and abundantly repre-
sented in the geological record than any other group of plants, it
can not be said that our knowledge of either the comparative mor-
phology or the geological history of the phylum warrants.a dog-
matic view of their phylogeny.

All the known coniferophytes are woody plants with pronounced
secondary growth; nearly all are trees, end it is extremely doubtful
if the group ever contained herbaceous forms. They show rather
uniform xerophytic structure, due possibly to the character of the
water-conducting tissues, or to the evergreen foliage, since of the
existing species, only the bald cypress, ginkgo, the larch, and
Glyptostrous, are deciduous. They usually can not compete suc-
cessfully with angiosperms under genial conditions. Structurally
the bundles are collateral and a primary persistent cambium de-
velops all of the secondary tissues. The water-conducting tissues
are tracheids: with bordered pits and true vessels are found only in
the Gnetales. Both mega and microspores are normally formed in
cones (strobili), which are never bisporangiate.

The Araucariales and Taxales are dioecious, while the Coniferales,
Cordaitales, and Ginkgoales are monoecious. ‘The sporophylls follow
the leaf arrangement and hence are spiral or cyclic. The stami-
nate cones have two or more sporangia to the sporophyll, hence
these are less numerous than in the Cycadophytes. They are exceed-
ingly variable and very characteristic for genera. The ovulate
cones are varied and their morphological interpretation has been
warmly debated for a century. <A digest of the various opinions
advanced is given by Worsdell. (Annals of Botany, vol. 18, p. 57,
1904.)

Pollination is effected through the agency of the wind (ane-
mophily). The stock is of great antiquity and contemporaneous

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. a08

groups are to be regarded as divergent or convergent and not directly
filiated. :

Although very probable, the view that the Coniferophyta is a
monophyletic group can not be said to be established. It has been
demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the Cordaitales, Gink-
goales, and Cycadophytes are alike related to the Pteridosperms and
Ferns. In the case of the Coniferales and Araucariales this is not
so certain, and some students (Renault, Campbell, Potonié, Seward)
consider the latter groups as of Lepidophytic origin. There is a
plausible amount of evidence for such an origin for the Araucariales,
although such a derivation is not generally accepted. There are,
however, insuperable difficulties in the way of including the Conifer-
ales in such a stock, even if this theory be accepted for the Araucariales.
The most interesting order from an evolutionary standpoint, the
Gnetales, since they seem to form a connecting link with the Amentif-
erous Dicotyledonae, have an ancestry completely unknown, although
they show certain structural and developmental points of contact
with the Cordaitales, Ginkgoales, and Cycadophytes.

In the present treatment the coniferophytes are grouped in six
orders: Cordaitales, Ginkgoales, Taxales, Araucariales, Coniferales
(Pinales), and Gnetales, which are best discussed separately. The
oldest of these orders, long since extinct, is the Cordaitales—a knowl-
edge of which is due primarily to the work of Grand ’Eury. The
Cordaitales were exceedingly abundant and presumably varied at
several horizons in the Paleozoic and the synthesis of a study of im-
pressions of their foliage and fructification, pith casts, and petrifac-
tions enables us to draw a satisfactory picture of their general ap-
pearance and habit, although as yet it is usually impossible to corre-
late specific foliar impressions with petrified stems and seeds.

They were tall and relatively ‘slender trees with trunks that were
frequently over 100° feet in height and unbranched except at the
crown, where their spirally arranged foliage of simple and often
large parallel veined leaves was displayed. Leaf form has been
used as a basis for the three forms genera: Eucordaites, with spatu-
late blunt tipped leaves often several inches in width and 2 or 3
feet in length; Dorycordaites, with pointed leaves approaching those
of Eucordaites in size; and Poacordaites, with narrow linear leaves.
The parallel venation, unbranched in Poacordaites but repeatedly
forked in Dory- and Eucordaites, suggest monocotyledon foliage
and the early writers consequently considered Cordaites as a mono-
cotyledon. Both the wood structure, the floral organs, and the seeds
were known long before their true nature was appreciated.

The stem has the general features of a modern conifer, except for
the much larger pith, sometimes as much as 10 cm: in diameter,

354 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

which was often discoidal as a consequence of the rapid elongation
of the stem, so that casts yield characteristic forms described by
the early writers as Artisia or Sternbergia. Structurally the wood,
commonly known as Araucarioxylon
or Dadoxylon, is centrifugal, with the
narrow spiral protoxylem lying at the
periphery of the pith, succeeded radi-
ally by spiral tracheids, soon passing
into scalariform elements, which after
an interval pass into pitted tracheids
greatly resembling those of the modern
Araucariales. The bordered pits,
which were limited to the radial walls
of the tracheids, are usually in two or
more rows and so densely crowded in
alternating series that they tend to be
hexagonal in outline. The rays are
narrow; originally they may be three
cells wide, but those of the secondary
wood are usually one or two cells wide
at the most. The phloem, of sieve
tubes, parenchyma, and some bast
fibers, is like that of modern conifers.
The leaf traces were often double, as
in some Pteridosperms and Ginkgo.
The bark was thick, but is usually not
well preserved. The root system was
feebly developed for such large trees,
diarch in structure, with a broad zone
of secondary wood, conforming in its
histology with that of the stem. The
leaf structure is comparable to that of
aw cyead pinnule, with collateral bun-
dles, and the stomata are confined to
the lower surface.

The fructifications show consider-
able variation. The catkins, com-
monly preserved as impressions under
the name of Cordaianthus,. show an
elongated axis with bracteate pedicels
Fic. 20.—Cordaianthus from thelowerAlle- Jjagrino the alate bilaterally symmetri-

gheny formation of Maryland. = sya et, .
cal cordate seeds. Petrified material
shows the staminate catkins to consist of a thick axis bearing spirally
arranged bracts, between which the microsporophylls are inserted,
either singly or massed near the apex. Each microsporophyll consists

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 855

of a pedicel surmounted by three or four or more vertically elongated
pollen sacs which split longitudinally, and contain large pollen grains,
which often show a group of prothallial cells. In appearance the ovu-
late cones are much like the staminate. The axis is thick and clothed
with spirally arranged bracts, many of which are sterile. Intheaxis of
others are found short-stalked ovules with bracteoles. The ovules had
two integuments—an oufer fleshy one, and an innner one which be-
came crustaceous. The ovule shows a nucellus with a large pollen
chamber and a beak-like micropylar canal. The pollen grains found
in the canal and pollen chamber are larger than those in the pollen
sacs, with their mass of prothallial or antheridial cells more exten-
sively developed, and it is hence inferred that the habit of forming
pollen. tubes had not yet been developed and motile sperms were
formed directly. The seeds of numerous species are common as im-
pressions and have frequently been found in a petrified condition.
They exhibit considerable variation in size and form and commonly
go under the name of Cordaicarpus.

Several additional types of Cordaitean wood anatomy are known.
These include Mesoxylon, of which several species have been de-
scribed from the English Carboniferous, and which help bridge the
gap between Cordaites and the family Poroxylaceae of the Carbonif-
erous and Permian. Both Mesoxylon and Poroxylon develop cen-
tripetal xylem in the primary wood. A third family, the Pityeae,
based on large trunks from the Lower Carboniferous of Scotland, is
chiefly distinguished by the wide rays. Other anatomical genera in
the Cordaitean plexus include Callixylon of the Upper Devonian of
Europe and America, Caenoxylon of the Russian Permian, Mesopitys
of the Permian, Parapitys of the middle Carboniferous and Archal-
aceopitys of the Lower Carboniferous of Kentucky. Evidently much
remains to be learned before these and other as yet unknown Cor-
daitean forms can be properly allocated. The Cordaitales show
clearly their origin from the same ancient plexus that gave rise to the
Pteridosperms. They likewise show points of contact with the later
coniferophyte orders, especially with the Ginkgoales, Taxales and
Araucariales.

The Ginkgoales as a group can be characterized only by the fea-
tures of the single existing species, and these may be misleading when
applied to remote ancestral forms. This obvious conclusion must be
borne in mind in the attempts to relate these forms to the ancient
Cordaitales on the one hand and the modern Abietineae on the other.
Thus the formation of pits on the tangential walls of the tracheids
at the end of the annual ring is a purely physiological response to
an alternation of growth periods and resting periods and is due to
climatic changes, as is the deciduous habit, and it is very probable
that neither of these characters was present in early Mesozoic forms

356 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

or has any phylogenetic significance. Similarly the paired sporangia
appear to represent a reduction from the more numerous sporangia
in the Mesozoic species.

The modern Ginkgo has a persistent primary cambium, collateral
bundles, double-leaf trace, no wood parenchyma, resin ducts in both

Fic. 21.—Views illustrating the variation in leaf form of the fossilspecies of Ginkgo.
i. Ginkgo digitata (Brongn.) Heer. Jurassic of Oregon.
2. Ginkgo laramiensis Ward from the Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming.
3. Ginkgo obtrutschewi Seward. Middle Jurassic of Chinese Dzungaria.
. Ginkgo sibirica Heer. Jurassic of Oregon.
. Ginkgo huttoni magnifolia Fontaine. Jurrassic of Oregon.
. Ginkgo adiantoides (Unger) Heer. Tertiary of Isle of Mull.
. Ginkgo adiantoides from the Fort Union of Montana.

10 oe

pith and cortex, tracheids with radial opposite pits separated by so-
called bars of Sanio. The leaves are comparable anatomically with
those of cycads but are simple and deciduous. They are borne on
either long terminal shoots or in tufts at the apex of short axillary
shoots, the latter habit shared by some fossil species of Baiera. The

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. S57

pollen is shightly winged and is formed in microsporangia, which are
normally in pairs, pendent from the expanded tips of sporophylls
arranged in loose catkins in the axils of scale leaves at the end of
short shoots. The megasporangia are also normally in pairs, although
but one ovule matures, and are at the end of a long stallk which is
morphologically a shoot and in some Mesozoic species bore more than
two ovules. The sperms are ciliated and free-swimming as in the
Cyecadophytes and Pteridophytes. Ginkgo was formerly considered
a member of the family Taxaceae, although its resemblance to
cycads has long been known. It appears to have been derived from
the Paleozoic plexus of Pteridospermophyta and shows points of con-
tact with both the Paleozoic Cordaitales and the Mesozoic William-
soniales. All three groups probably had similar ancestors, but there
is no evidence that the Ginkgoales have been ancestral to any existing
group of Coniferales.

The modern Ginkgo is the most isolated as well as the oldest exist-
ing arborescent form, its stock being represented in the fossil record
continuously from the Permian to the present. The leaves are so
characteristic that there is little uncertainty regarding their deter-
mination, although in some of the older associates referred to the
Ginkgoales the foliage simulates such digitate fern fronds as Schi-
zaea, and some of these are of questionable identity. The limited
space forbids more than a mention of the extinct genera that have
been referred to this order and which in some cases do and in other
cases do not belong to this stock. Some of these genera are Ginkgo-
phyllum, Saportaea, Trichopitys, Dicranophyllum, Rhipidopsis,
Whittleseya, Psygmophyllum, Gomphostrobus, Trichophyllum, Feil-
denia, Phoenicopsis, and Czekanowskia.

Some of these, such as Saportaea and Rhipidopsis, seem clearly
to represent early variants of the Ginkgo type, but the two fossil
genera that stand out beyond all question are Ginkgo itself and the
allied genus Baiera, the latter segregated on account of the short
petiole and the repeated dichotomy of the leaf blades to form narrow
elongate ultimate segments in which the veins no longer fork and
because of the more numerous micro- and megasporangia. The mod-
ern Ginkgo sometimes furnishes instances of more than the usual
number of pollen sacs and ovules, and its leaves also frequently
become divided to simulate those of Baiera.

Both Baiera and Ginkgo appear as far back as the Permian and
become abundant and varied throughout the Triassic, Jurassic, and
Lower Cretaceous, where frequently the seeds, immature fruits, and
the pollen-bearing catkins, as well'as the leaves, are found fossil.

Baiera attains its maximum range somewhat earlier than Ginkgo,
and, as the accompanying map shows, its distribution appears to

136650°—20 24

358 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

have extended beyond the known range of Ginkgo in South America,
South Africa, and New Zealand. It is evidently a waning type
during the Upper Cretaceous and becomes entirely extinct before
the close of that period. Ginkgo, on the other hand, has been found

l'1G. 22.—Views of different species of Baiera.

1. Gaiera muensteriana Heer. Rhaetic of Baireuth (after Schenk):
1. leaf.
la. unripe microsporophylls.
1b. ripe microsporophylls. -
2. Baieraraymondi Renault. Permian of France (after Zeiller).
3. Baieraangustiloba Heer. Jurrassic of Siberia (after Heer).
4, Baiera pulchella Heer. Jurassic of Amur Land (after Heer).
5. Baiera microsporophylls. Upper Triassic of Switzerland (after Leuthardt).
6. Baierafurcata Heer. Upper Triassic of Switzerland (after Leuthardt).
7. Baiera foliosa Fontaine, x 5. Lower Cretaceous of Virginia (after Berry).
8. Same, showing short shoot (after Berry).

in the Tertiary of Greenland, North America, Europe, and Asia, the _
characteristic Ginkgo adiantioides being abundant and scarcely dis-
tinguishable from the still existing species. The latter, long thought
to be extinct except as preserved by cultivation in the temple gardens
of China and Japan, has recently been reported in a wild state in

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 359

western China. The accompanying map (fig. 23) shows the area
within which fossil Ginkgos have been found as well as the more
restricted areas in Greenland, North America, Siberia, and Europe,
where Tertiary representatives are known. The area in eastern
Asia, included in a broken line, indicates the restricted natural
habitat of the existing species, although it has been widely planted
and thrives throughout the temperate zones, there being large num-
bers of magnificent trees in the Washington parks. Some representa-
tive fossils of both Ginkgo and Baiera are shown in the accom-
panying figures.

The order Gnetales includes but three existing genera, which differ

widely in habit, habitat, anatomy, gametophytic structures, and in

ah ‘
a ere z 2 ——— zZ Ds a DG | 5 — | sp a |

Fig. 23.—Sketch map illustrating the geologic history of Ginkgo and Baiera.

endosperm and embryo formation, and yet have a thread of common
characters denoting their community of origin. Ephedra, with about
30 species of low, straggling shrubs with jointed ribbed stems and
reduced leaves, inhabits the more arid parts of both the Eastern and
Western Hemispheres. It is the least specialized of the three genera
and more like the Coniferales. Gnetum, with about 26 species of both
the eastern and western Tropics, comprises small trees or woody lianas
with opposite, netted-veined, dicotyledonous-like leaves, and is most
advanced in the direction of the angiosperms. The third genus,
Tumboa (Welwitschia), is a remarkable monotypic form of western
South Africa with a shortened, swollen axis and but two excessively
long parallel veined leaves, and is obviously most specialized (aber-
rant). All of these modern forms are evidently the end products of

360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

an ancient and diversified group which unfortunately has not been
certainly recognized in the older fossil floras—Gnetopsis of the Car-
boniferous (Stephanian) of Europe and North America being, ac-
cording to Oliver and Salisbury, a pteridosperm related to Conostoma.
Gnetum has been definitely recognized in the Pliocene of Holland,
while several species of Ephedrites have been recorded from the
Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary. The relationship of these latter
can not, however, be regarded as established beyond suspicion.
Leaves suggestive of Gnetum are also present in the Lower Cre-
taceous of Virginia.

The chief point of interest in the Gnetales is their angiospermous
characters shown in their possession of true vessels (absent in all
other gymnosperms) in their broad rays, the presence of companion
cells in the bast, the incipient perianth of the inflorescence, the floral
morphology, the details of sporogenesis, fertilization, and embry-
ogeny with the elimination of archegonia, the organization of eggs,
and the dicotyledonous embryos. Such of these features as were
known to the older morphologists suggested that the Gnetales were
to be looked upon as representing the progenitors of the flowering
plants and this view, which has long been in disrepute, has recently
come into prominence again and is supported by a considerable body
of evidence. Lang and Thompson have shown that the Gnetales are
undoubtedly related to the rest of the gymnosperms and are not to
be considered true angiosperms, as Lignier advocated. On the other
hand, the attempt to consider them as a reduction series from the
Mesozoic Cycadeoidales must be considered an abortive speculation.
Some light on their geological history is greatly to be desired, since
the most recent work with the existing forms indicates an ancient
and collateral relationship with the balance of the Coniferophyta,
going back possibly to the same pteridosperm plexus from which the
Cordaitales took their origin. Hence, comparisons of the gnetalean
flower with the fructifications of existing conifers is obviously futile.
In the other direction, the least aberrant genus, Gnetum, while in no
sense a “ missing link,” furnishes good grounds for considering an as
yet unknown group of gnetalean forms as the ancestors of the angio-
sperms through the primitive amentiferous families.

The members of the order Taxales are dioecious and they differ
from all other Coniferophytes except the Ginkgoales and Gnetales,
in that true cones are not organized, the ovules developing into
seeds with a partially fleshy testa (aril) or cupule. Normally only
a single ovule of the sporophyll reaches maturity in the modern
forms, although more seem to have been developed in extinct genera
like Palissya.

The Taxales contain but 8 of the 86 existing genera of the
Coniferophytes and only about 75 of the 325 existing species. At

BERRY. SO

PALEOBOTANY

least two, and probably three lines of descent are obvious. The first
of these is the stock of the family Taxaceae, which is regarded as
primitive and a probable offshoot of the Cordaitales by some
students, and is considered a modern reduction series by others.
Whatever the intricacies of morphological legerdemain, it can be
positively affirmed that the Taxaceae go back at least as far as the
late Triassic and are hence more ancient than the ancestors assigned
for them by nonpaleobotanical students. Moreover, the disconnected
geographical distribution of the 17 existing species is a conclusive
indication of an extended geological history, as is the greater geo-
graphical range of all of the genera in the past than they attain
at the present time. The fossil record, in addition to occasional

Fic. 24.—Foiiage and fructification of Palissya.

1, 2. Twig and cone of Palissya Braunii Endl, from Rhaetic of Veitlahm near Culmbach, Bavaria.
3, 4. Cone scales of P. sphenolepsis Fr Braun in ventral (upper) and side view, showing seed cupules
(after Nathorst).

species of Taxus (Taxites) and Tumion (Torreya) from the Cre-
taceous to the present, includes the Triassic genus Palaeotaxus, the
Lower Cretaceous genus Cephalotaxites, the Upper Cretaceous genus
Cephalotaxites, Cephalotaxospermum, Vesquia, Taxo-torreya, ete.
Cephalotaxus fruits have been found in the Phocene of Europe and
all of the other existing genera appear to have been well represented
during Cenozoic times.

That the resemblance of Cephalotaxus to Ginkgo and of Taxus to
Cordaianthus, the complex vascular anatomy of the seeds, the ab-
sence of resin canals, are not illusory features of the existing species
is indicated by the foregoing brief survey of the fossil forms. The
second line of descent in the Taxales is represented by the family

362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Podocarpaceae, often made to include two subfamilies, the Podocar-
peae and the Phyllocladoideae, while some students consider the lat-
ter to represent a third evolutionary line.

The Podocarpaceae are to-day as distinctively characteristic o7
the Southern Hemisphere as the Taxaceae are of the Northern.
They comprise over 50 of the 72 existing species of the order.
Podocarpus is easily the dominant genus with over two score exist-
ing species, and is found on all the southern continents, where it
forms extensive stands com-
parable to those of Pinus in
the North Temperate Zone.

The Phyllocladoideae are
today confined to the Austra-
lian-New Zealand region but
both subfamilies have an ex-
tended geological _ history.
Probably their oldest authen-
tic representative is Palissya
(Elatocladus) of the Triassic
and Jurassic, which had di-
morphic foliage and remark-
able lax cones made up of flat
lanceolate foliar-like sporo-
phylls, with two rows of small
seeds in cupules on their up-
per (ventral) surface. Palis-
sya, to which 10 or a dozen
species have been referred, is
abundantly represented by
sterile twigs in the older
Mesozoic of Europe, Asia, and
America, as well as in both
the Arctic and Antarctic re-
gions.

Another equally old genus,
of great interest but not com-
pletely known, is Stachy-
taxus, which has two or three species in the Rhaetic of Sweden
and Greenland. It had yew-like leaves and loose cones, each sporo-
phyll of which bore a pair of large seeds on their upper (ventral)
face, which are compared by their discoverer (Nathorst) with
the modern Dacrydium. Podocarpus itself contains about a score
of fossil species which appear to have been abundant and rather
widespread during the Tertiary, and are doubtfully recognized in
the Upper Cretaceous. The allied genus Nageiopsis, represented in
the modern flora by the Nageia section of Podocarpus with about a

Fic. 25.—View of the fructifications of Stachytaxus
(after Nathorst).

BERRY. 368

PALEOBOTANY

dozen broad-leafed species ranging from Japan to the East Indies
and New Caledonia, is exceedingly abundant in the Lower Cretaceous
of North America, and is represented in the English Wealden and the
Asiatic Neocomian. It has also been recorded from the English
Jurassic and the Mesozoic of New Zealand.

Phyllocladus occurs throughout the Tertiary of Australia, and
various supposedly related genera such as Phyllocladites of Spitz-
bergen and Protophyllocladus of North America and Asia are pres-
ent in the Upper Cretaceous. Wood known as Phyllocladoxylon
has been described from strata as old as the Jurassic.

The difficulty of correctly determining foliar specimens and the
lack of structural fossil material of this order leave much to be de-
sired in the knowledge of the geological history of the order, but
such information as is available can not safely be ignored by weavers
of phylogenetic hypotheses.

The ordinal rank of the Araucariales, first clearly emphasized by
Seward and Ford, receives abundant confirmation from a considera-
tion of their organization and geological history. The difficulties of
homologizing their morphology with that of the Coniferales or Tax-
ales has led to endless discussion and to the hypothesis, previously
mentioned, of regarding them as independently derived from Lepido-
phytic ancestors. The existing forms, about fifteen in number, are
segregated into the large-leafed genus Dammara (Agathis) with
four or five species of the East Indian-New Zealand region, and
Araucaria with ten or twelve species of South America and the
Oriental region. They are dioecious and form large and complex
cones in which the morphological distinction of leaf and bract is
eliminated. The ovules are solitary and the pollen sacs are free
and pendulous. Features of the vascular anatomy made much of
by morphological speculators are the persistent leaf traces, the ab-
sence of resin canals, bars of Sanio, and wood parenchyma. The
tracheids are characterized by crowded alternating and often flat-
tened bordered pits, indistiguishable from those of the Cordaitales.
Foliage leaves only are present, there being no traces of the scale
leaves so characteristic of the Coniferales.

The existence of a variety of Mesozoic genera which combine some
of the features of Araucarian vascular anatomy with Abietinaceous
characters and the cone and foliar habitsof a variety of genera (Wid-
dringtonites, Brachyphyllum, Raritania, Thuites, Androvettia, Arau-
cariopitys, Woodworthia, etc.) has led some students to regard the
Araucariales as derived by reduction from the Abietiniaceae, which
are usually considered the most modern and specialized conifero-
phytes. This ingenious hypothesis entirely ignores the geological
record, and the cone and foliar habits of the forms, here regarded as
the more significant.

364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Only a summary of the geological history of the order can be given
in the following paragraphs. Petrified wood from the Paleozoic
can not be accepted as an indication of the presence of this order,
since the wood anatomy is practically indistinguishable from that
of the Cordaitales, hence the term Araucarioxylon may be of a dual
significance. The Upper Carboniferous and Permian genus Walchia
had foliage like that of the modern acicular-leafed Araucaria, bossed
pith casts caused by the interlaced sclerenchyma fibers at the periph-
ery of the pith, spirally-arranged leaf cushions, araucarian wood
anatomy and single-seeded cone scales, and is commonly regarded as
an early member of this order, as is also the Carboniferous genus
Schizodendron (Tylodendron), and the Permian genera Gomphos-
trobus and Ulmannia. Permian leafy twigs have been referred to the
genus Araucarites and various older Mesozoic genera, such as Al-
bertia and Pagiophyllum probably belong in this alliance. Un-
doubted Araucarian wood and single-seeded cone scales are cosmo-
politan during the Jurassic, and continue unabated throughout the
Lower and Upper Cretaceous. Dammara foliage and cone scales like-
wise become cosmopolitan during the Upper Cretaceous, and extinct
genera such as Pseudoaraucaria, with two seeded sporophylls, and
Protodammara, with three seeded sporophylls, have also been de-
scribed. The order appears to have continued its world-wide range
well into the Tertiary for unquestionable araucarian remains of this
age have been recorded from the New Siberian Islands north of Asia,
North and South America, Europe, East India, on the border of
the Antarctic. Africa, then as now, is without records. That the
Araucariales began to dwindle in the late Tertiary and during the
Pleistocene is shown by their absence at those times throughout the
Northern Hemisphere, their presence on Kerguelen Island and in
the Pleistocene of the Falkland Islands, and their subfossil occur-
rence beyond the present range of the existing species.

The Coniferales as here understood is an order coterminous with
the family Pinaceae of the older botanists, and would possibly be
more appropriately termed the Pinales. The details of structure
and distribution belong more properly to recent botany, and such
as are mentioned in the present connection will be introduced in the
brief sketch of the three families into which the order is segregated.
These are the Taxodiaceae, Cupressaceae, and Abietineaceae.

The family Taxodiaceae comprises 8 existing genera and about 13
existing species characterized by a nearly complete coalescence of
bract and scale, wingless pollen, and spiral phyllotaxy. The extinct
species greatly outnumber the existing, and the family has evidently
passed its climacteric stage and seems destined to extinction. More-
over, none of the genera has more than three existing species (Ath-
rotaxis), three have but two (Sequoia, Taxodium, Glyptostrobus),

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 365

and four have but one (Sciadopitys, Cunninghamia, Taiwania, Cryp-
{omeria). Their restricted range is also an indication of former
greatness. Thus Glyptostrobus is Chinese, Sciadopitys is Japanese,
Taiwania is confined to Formosa, Cunninghamia and Cryptomeria
are Chino-Japanese, Athrotaxis is Australian, Sequoia is confined
to the Pacific and Taxodium to the Atlantic border of North Amer-
ica. The family is unrepresented in Europe, South America or
Africa at the present time. Its fossil history constitutes one of the
romances of paleobotany, illustrating the antiquity, growth to cos-
mopolitanism, and subsequent wane of the various types. The oldest
known genus that appears to represent this family is the Permian
and Triassic Voltzia with dimorphic distichous foliage, long, slender
cylindrical cones of imbricated three to five-lobed sporophylls, and
two or three-winged seeds. There are at least half a dozen species
known and they are recorded from Europe, Asia, and South Amer-
ica, but not certainly from North America.

Another ancient and truly cosmopolitan genus was Cheirolepis,
with distichous twigs, short pointed leaves and five-lobed two-seeded
sporophylls. A genus of doubtful affinities is Leptostrobus of the
Jurassic of Asia and North America, although Sequoia appears to-
ward the end of that period (Portlandian). In the Lower Cretace-
ous the more noteworthy genera are Sphenolepis and Athrotaxopsis,
although Sequoia is undoubtedly represented by foliage, cones and
structure material at widely separated localities.

The Upper Cretaceous genera are Geinitzia, which may belong to
the Araucariales; Ceratostrobus and Microlepidium, both European
genera; Cunninghamiostrobus, a Japanese genus based upon struc-
tural cone material; Cunninghamites, which had numerous species in
Greenland, Europe, and North America; and Sequoia which is
abundant and recorded from all the continents except Africa and
Australia, and from Spitzbergen on the north to Graham Land on
the South. During the Cenozoic, especially during the older Ter-
tiary, Sequoia continued unabated and is recorded from all the con-
cinents except Africa. Athrotaxis is recorded from Europe, Cryp-
tomeria is found in Europe and the Arctic, while Taxodium and
Glyptostrobus are found everywhere throughout the Northern Hem-
isphere in the greatest abundance, and both genera are still present
in Europe as late as the early Pleistocene.

The most obvious characteristic of the family Cupressaceae is the
cyclic arrangement of the reduced leaves, a feature which, acquired
early in their history, has continued unchanged from the Cretaceous
to the present. The cones are small and are hard or fleshy at ma-
turity. The existing genera are nine in number and contain about
80 species, of which 40 per cent belong to the genus Juniperus. The

366 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

smaller genera show apparent anomalies of distribution coupled
with an extended history.

There are a number of Mesozoic genera, of which Brachyphyllum
(Echinostrobus) is the most prominent and including Raritania,
Thuites, Androvettia, and presumably Moriconia and Inolepis,
which have been investigated anatomically and which show various
combinations of the following features: Sclerotic pith, lateral pits
of ray cells, branched leaf traces, mucilaginous resin canals, uni-
serial spaced bordered pits of the tracheids passing into alternating
and sometimes mutually flattened series, transfusion tissue not lat-
eral to the foliage strands, but showing a tendency to surround the
phloem. These and other features are regarded in some quarters as
indicating that these genera are descended from the Abietineaceae
and should be included in the order Araucariales—a view that has
received but slight acceptance and one that is dissented from in the
present article,

The family history goes back to Widdringtonites of the Triassic,
and to Palaeocyparis and Brachyphyllum of the Jurassic. These
are not altogether conclusive in their testimony, but the family
springs into unquestionable prominence during the Upper Cretace-
ous at- which time in addition to Brachyphyllum, Thuja, Thuites,
Juniperus, and disputed genera like Androvettia, Moriconia, and
Tnolepis, there were well marked species of Widdringtonites and
Frenelopsis in which the foliar features are substantiated ‘by fructi-
fication characters, which in the case of the valvular cones of the
Actinostrobinae are unmistakable. The genera Callitris, Cupressus,
Chamaecyparis, and Libocedrus appeared in the Eocene, while many
of the Cretaceous genera survived into that time and attained an
extended range.

The family Abietineaceae is characterized by almost completely
distinct bract and scale, by winged pollen, short shoots, needle leaves,
and various recondite anatomical features of unproved phylogenetic
import. They are admittedly the most complex morphologically, and
are usually regarded as the most modern family of Coniferophytes,
although some students consider them to represent the ancestral stock
from which the Araucarialea, Taxales, and the Taxodiaceae and Cu-
pressaceae have been derived by reduction. Whichever view finally
prevails, there can be no question but that in the light of present
knowledge they have much the shortest geological history. There
are 9 genera and about 125 existing species, of which more than half
belong to the genus Pinus, and they form extensive forested areas in
the North Temperate Zone, to which they are practically confined.
Extinct genera are rare and include the Upper Cretaceous Prepinus,
Entomolepis, and Plutonia. Among the still existing genera, Pinus

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 3867

has numerous extinct species and goes back to the Lower Cretaceous
(Pinites or Abietites), Cedrus goes back to the Lower Cretaceous,
Picea and Abies to the dawn of the Upper Cretaceous, while Tsuga,
Pseudotsuga, and Larix are exclusively Tertiary and Recent. The
family is especially varied and widespread in the relatively short
period from the Oligocene to the Recent.

PHYLUM ANGIOSPERMOPHYTA.

The taxonomy of the angiosperms is still in a most unsatisfactory
state. The chief steps in their classification have been taken by
Ray (1703), Jussieu (1789), De Candolle (1819), Endlicher (1836—
1840), Brongniart (1843), Braun (1864), Bentham and Hooker (1862-
1883), Eichler (1883), and Engler (1892). While very imperfect and
founded to a too great degree upon floral morphology the classifica-
tion proposed by Engler and derived largely from Eichler’s work is
the most satisfactory, and it has the additional advantage of having
been elaborated in a general systematic treatise.

In contrasting the angiosperms with the coniferophytes or with any
of the other great groups of seed plants, one is impressed with the lack
of knowledge of both recent and fossil forms. Making their appear-
ance in the geological record during the Lower Cretaceous, they soon
outdistanced all competitors and from the Eocene to the present they
have been the dominant plant group. Over 100,000 existing species
are known, and the fossil forms, even in the relatively short period of
their dominance, probably outnumber the recent, so that vast numbers
of species and very imperfect knowledge render a gener alized presen-
tation well nigh impossible.

The angiosperms undoubtedly show the most perfect adjustment
of the plant organism to a strictly terrestrial existence. Adaptable
to a degree unequaled in other phyla they inhabit the most diversified
environments, and some have secondarily invaded the sea margins as
well as the lakes and streams, while others have become parasites,
saprophytes, or epiphytes. The modification of their flowers for se-
curing cross-pollination through the agencies of insects or birds is well
known, as are the various modifications of fruits and seeds for dis-
persal by wind, mechanical ejection, floating, passing unharmed
through the alimentary tract of birds or mammals, sticking or cling-
ing to fur or feathers, etc. Ranging in size from tiny aquatics to
giant trees several hundred feet tall, and ranging in their life span
from that of a single season to several thousand years, they are the
most impressive members of the vegetable kingdom. Fruits are con-
fined almost exclusively to angiosperms and are apparently one of
the effects of fertilization, as specializations for protection and dis-
persal of the seeds.

368 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The variety of fruits is almost as great as that of flowers, and must
be considered an important factor in the success of the angiosperms,
as well as one of their prime benefits to humanity. It seems more
than a coincidence that the evolution of a group of plants of the ca-
pacity of the angiosperms, in which, as in some of the cereals, 30 per
cent of the total weight of the plant is stored as elaborated food in the
seeds, should have been contemporaneous with the evolution of the
warm-blooded animals. At any rate, it seems certain that human
civilization could not have evolved but for the evolution of this plant
phylum.

The angiosperms are so numerous and present so many morpho-
logical diversities that it is impossible to give a succinct characteriza-
tion. Their outstanding feature is angiospermy itself, 1. e., pollina-
tion results in bringing the pollen spores in contact with a receptive
surface of the carpel (stigma), and not with the ovule, as in all
other known seed plants. All known angiosperms have closed
ovaries, and no other phyla have. At the same time it should be
recalled that angiospermy was itself a product of evolution and that
some time a series of fossil forms may be discovered showing this
character in the formative stage.

Anatomically angiosperms are characterized, the dicotyledons nor-
mally and the monocotyledons primitively, by the vascular system
of the stem constituting a tubular cylinder (siphonostele) of col-
lateral bundles and having leaf gaps. The wood is marked by the
presence of vessels arising through cell fusion—a feature common to
the gnetalean coniferophytes and one absent in certain specialized
families of angiosperms such as the Cactaceae and Crassulaceae, and
in other possibly primitive families such as the Trochodendraceae.
The improved conductive and supporting tissues of the angiosperms
result in a general improvement in storage tissues and in a great
expanse of foliage, and consequently a greatly increased production
of nutritive materials. These histological features as well as the
floral morphology, to be alluded to presently, are features of the
sporophyte generation. The history of the male gametophyte does
not differ materially from that which obtains in the various gymno-
sperm phyla; but the female gametophyte is not only more reduced,
but its development is associated with new and peculiar features.
Free nuclear division in the egg is wanting (a feature common to
Gnetum and Tumboa among the Gnetales). The process of what is
commonly called double fertilization is a strictly angiospermous
characteristic. Among the units organized in the embryo sac is
what is known as an endosperm nucletis. One sperm unites with
the egg nucleus, and the result of this union is the embryo. The
second sperm nucleus unites with the endosperm nucleus, and the
result of this union is the trophophyte or endosperm which furnishes

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 369

the nutriment for the developing embryo ‘and the subsequent
germinating plantlet. This course of events is strikingly uniform
throughout the phylum and is unknown in other plants.

Those who consider the formation of seeds as the most important
characteristic of a definite group of vascular plants (Spermophyta)
ignore the history of the origin of the seed habit, and the result is
no more natural than the old Exogenous and Endogenous classes,
or than one which attempted to use homospory and heterospory to
define natural groups of the remaining vascular plants. Moreover,
such a treatment is confronted with the necessity of defining a
flower. If a flower is considered as a group of sporophylls in order
to include the gymnosperms, it then includes many of the so-called
flowerless plants. If, on the other hand, the gymnosperms are
placed in their correct perspective and a flower is defined as a group
of sporophylls associated with a perianth, the limit of the flower
corresponds almost exactly with the limits of the phylum (except
Gnetales) and the necessity, if such exists, for abandoning the con-
venient term flowering plants, as some students have advocated, is
obviated. The popular concept of a flower is too firmly intrenched
to warrant any attempt to arrive at a more philosophical morphol-
ogy, and the fact that floral envelopes are lacking, either primitively
or by reduction in some groups, is no more pertinent than the fact
that some flowers consist entirely of floral envelopes and lack sporo-
phyls.

The presence of floral leaves (calyx and corolla) surrounding the
sporophylls and derived both from sterilized sporophylls above and
bracts below, appears to have been conditioned largely by the habit
of entomophily. Although the primitive floral envelopes were
probably protective in their function, certainly their subsequent
history and great diversity of detail are the result of entomophily.
In the more primitive flowers the sporophylls tend to be free and
the axis tends to be elongated with the members in a spiral arrange-
ment. Evolution of the flower proceeded along the lines of reduc-
tion in axial length until the members passed to a cyclic arrange-
ment when they tended to become definite and fewer in number and
at length became confluent to a greater or less degree. The three
marked stages are termed hypogynous, perigynous and epigynous,
and all grades of intermediate stages are present. Inequalities of
growth result in other diversities. The members tend to evolve
from a radial symmetry (actinomorphic) to a bilateral symmetry
(zygomorphic) or to an isobilateral symmetry with two planes of
symmetry and with the halves unlike.

Systematists segregate angiosperms into two series—monocotyle-
dons and dicotyledons—and there has been almost endless discussion
as to which line was the more primitive. Both were present in the

370 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

Cretaceous, so that history fails to shed any light on the problem.
Formerly, gymnospermous and other remains from the older rocks
were thought to represent monocotyledons, but none such are now
recognized. Modern opinion tends in the direction of regarding the
distinctions between these two groups as largely cumulative, and that
the number of the cotyledons and the correlative characters are of
less phylogenetic importance than was formerly believed. The view
is here advocated that the angiosperms are strictly monophyletic
that the monocotyledons are not primitive, nor did the primitive an-
giosperms exhibit combined monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous
characters, but that the dicotyledonous type is the more primitive,
and that it has given rise to the monocotyledonous stock, not, how-
ever, as a single or monophyletic line of evolution, but by one such
line combined with several reduction series derived from different
regions in the dicotyledonous plexus. Systematists have long rec-
ognized the similarities between the monocotyledonous arums, pond
weeds, and screw pines on the one hand, and the dicotyledonous pep-
pers and willows on the other, as well as the convergence of certain
Ranalian groups and the water plantains. The case of the water-lily
family is a classic instance of a group of dicotyledonous origin which
has essentially reached the monocotyledonous category.

Analogies between the amphisporangiate “ flowers” of the aber-
rant Cycadeoideas of the Mesozoic and such dicotyledonous flowers
as those of the Magnolia have furnished a basis for a theory of angio-
sperm descent which, while fascinating, is believed to be illusory.
More definite evidence for a revival of the old view that the angio-
sperms are related to the gymnosperms through the amentiferous
dicotyledons and some ancient gnetalean type similar to Gnetum has
recently been accumulated. This evidence comprises the character
of the inflorescence, the floral morphology, the details of sporogene-
sis, fertilization and embryogeny, the organization of vessels in the
wood, the broad rays, companion cells in the bast, the habit and foli-
age, the dicotyledonous embryo, the elimination of archegonia and
the organization of eggs. The foregoing considerations are derived
entirely from a study of recent forms, since no certainly determined
fossil forms of Gnetales are known, and no known fossil angidsperms
throw any light upon these features.

The monocotyledons and dicotyledons may now be briefly charac-
terized. In the former many of the forms are herbaceous, which
argues for modernity. Anatomically the bundles are closed (am-
phivasal), are without cambium, and are scattered through the paren-
chymatous ground mass of the central cylinder. Sometimes the
bundles indicate a primitively circular arrangement such as obtains
in the dicotyledons, and the theory that a tubular central cylinder
with foliar gaps was an ancestral condition accords with the view of

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. ore

phylogeny here advocated. This does not mean, however, that the
monocotyledons are strictly modern and monophyletic. The flowers
tend to be trimerous and chalazogamy has not been observed. There
is a greater reduction of sporogenous tissue in the megasporangium
than in the dicotyledons. There is one seed leaf or cotyledon which
is terminal in position, while the stem tip is lateral. The leaves are
poorly differentiated into blade and stall and tend to be entire, sheath-
ing, and lack stipules. The venation is closed and the primary and
lesser systems are so sharply contrasted that the leaves are commonly
considered parallel veined, and even when the latter feature is less
obvious as in the arums and many tropical forms, the contrast in
caliber just mentioned remains obvious.

In the dicotyledons the stem shows a tubular cylinder (siphonos-
tle) of collateral bundles, a persistent cambium forms secondary
phloem and xylem, both of which elements arise through cell fusion.
Secondary thickening results in a relatively larger display of assimi-
lative tissue (foliage) and a branching habit. The cotyledons are two
in number and lateral in position, and during germination the grow-
ing points and cotyledons are liberated by the elongation of the hypo-
cotyl as contrasted with the monocotyledonous tendency to free the
root and stem tip by the elongation of the cotyledon which functions
as an abserbing organ suggestive of the “ foot ” of pteridophytes. The
dicotyledonous flowers tend to be four or five merous. The leaves are
well differentiated into petiole, blade, and frequently stipules are
present. The venation is graduated and open and hence prevailingly
netted-veined, and this results in all degrees of lobation and division
of the laminae.

Historically the oldest known angiosperms are found in the Lower
Cretaceous of Greenland, North America, Europe, Australia, and
New Zealand. These earliest known types do not appear to be
primitive (only the foliage and secondary wood structures are
known), and an extended earlier but unknown period of evolution
seems to be demanded. By the close of the Upper Cretaceous, both
monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous angiosperms are not uncom-
mon, and these include palms and most of the principal families ex-
cept the most specialized, such as the orchids among the former and
the composites among the latter. A second modernization of the
flowering plants took place at the dawn of the Tertiary and a third
modernization in the Miocene. The Miocene floras were much lke
those of the present, but were richer in arborescent types and the
forms were more widely distributed than they are at the present
time. The bulk of the herbaceous vegetation appears to have been
relatively modern in its evolution and those large groups or parts
of groups that are especially characteristic of existing temperate
floras, such as the Cruciferae, Borraginaceae, Labiatae, Compositae,

PRAVC VE OeZnOnwC

312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Umbelliferae, Krameriaceae, Papilionaceae, etc., were relatively very
modern and their main evolutionary deployment seems to have been
largely Pleistocene and postglacial. The subject is much too large
for treatment in the present article, but a somewhat full discussion of
the geological history of the angiosperms will be found in the Pro-
ceedings of the American Philosophical Society, volume 53, pages
129-250, 1914.

RECENT

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DEVONIAN
PRE
DEVONIAN

The mutual relationships of the various groups of vascular plants
that have been briefly discussed in the preceding paragraphs are
shown in figure 26, which aims to represent graphically their
phylogeny as understood by the writer and their relative importance
throughout geologic times.

Fig. 26.—Diagram showing the geologic history and phylogeny of vascular plants.

CONCLUSION.

THE EVOLUTION OF FLORAS.
‘STAGES OF PLANT EVOLUTION.

Somewhat as in human history a long period of mythology pre-
ceded written history, so in a consideration of the history of the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 3.733

plant life on the earth the period of preserved records may be ap-
proached through a long antecedent vista of theoretic and more or
less speculative conclusions, which, since plant life seems to have
preceded the first distinctive animal life, reach back to the hypotheti-
cal origin of life itself. These stages may be somewhat arbitrarily
considered as embracing first an Eophytic stage, followed by a
Chlorophyllic stage, and the latter may be divided into an Algal
substage, and a second or Pteridophytic substage comprising the
origin and subsequent evolution of land plants,

The more important advances during the evolution of land plants
have been the acquisition of secondary wood formation and the
development of heterospory and the seed habit.

The marvelous recent discoveries in bacteriology have shown by
what means the first life forms derived their nourishment through
the utilization of inorganic materials. Bacteria are the simplest as
well as the smallest of known organisms, and because of their minute
size and similarities in form they are classified largely by the pro-
found chemical reactions which they inaugurate. It is quite possible
that they represent the first stage in the evolution of life upon the
globe. At any rate they illustrate for us the manner in which, in a
prechlorophyllic stage of plant history, simple organisms like bacteria
derive their nitrogen from ammonia compounds and their energy by
means of oxidizing catalyzers. All organisms which do not utilize
organic carbon must have some source of energy that will enable
them to take up carbon dioxide and partially replace the oxygen
with hydrogen and thus build up complex organic compounds. The
energy for this transformation is obtained by the oxidation of carbon,
nitrogen, sulphur, or iron derived frem hydrogen sulphide, ammonia,
etc. These forms constitute the four primitive types of oxidizing
bacteria that are known at the present time, and such forms which re-
quire no organic food materials are termed Prototrophic bacteria
(nitrifying, nitrogen fixing, sulphur and iron oxidizing). Thus his-
torically chemosynthesis must have preceded photosynthesis. Recent
studies show that some form of photosynthesis by means of which cer-
tain bacteria utilize purple and other pigments in employing the
infra-red rays of light probably preceded and may have been a step
toward chlorophyll activities. The primitive bacteria have a proteid
cell wall which is a modification of the general protoplasm, and not
one of cellulose ; they contain chromatin but do not organize a definite
nucleus, and they multiply largely by vegetative fission. Systematists
erect a phylum, the Schizophyta, to which they refer the Schizomy-
cetes or bacteria, and the Cyanophyceae or the so-called blue-green
algae. The latter are microscopic forms with a related organization,
formerly considered as the ancestors of the bacteria, which were thus

136650°—20——25

374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

regarded as simplified or degenerate types—a reversal of their true
relationship.

The largely speculative conclusion sketched above derives a con-
siderable measure of probability from the recent discovery of fossil
bacteria, as well as evidences of their activities in some of the oldest
sedimentary rocks, and it is legitimate to consider that the denudation
of the most ancient rock surfaces was accelerated by the action of
bacteria in facilitating rock weathering exactly as they have been
shown to do at the present time. The next stage in bacterial history,
represented at the present time by the Metatrophic forms, was that
in which the necessary carbon for their activities was derived from
the complex nitrogenous compounds of other bacteria, or of algae as
the latter came into existence instead of from inorganic sources. The
third stage was one in which the habit of true parasitism became
developed, represented at the present time by the Paratrophic bac-
teria. The evolution of Metatrophic bacteria appears to have brought
to a close that period of earth history during which the process of
organizing complex organic molecules from inorganic materials was
possible, since bacterial activity would inhibit such processes, and
this explains in a measure why the origin of life was an evolution
that could not take place in later geologic times.

Pre-Cambrian limestones, as well as those of later ages, which are
without traces of discrete organisms, are now considered by geologists
as indicating the presence of bacteria as the active agents of deposi-
tion, in the same manner as Drew and others have shown the recent
calcareous oozes to have been precipitated. This also furnishes stu-
dents with some measure of the probable temperatures of the waters.
Similarly iron bacteria are probably responsible for the bedded iron
ores of the primitive rocks.

The presence of Proterozoic bacteria has been demonstrated
recently by Walcott. Paleozoic bacteria were first discovered by Van
Tiegham in 1879, indicated by the evidences of butyric fermentation
in the cellulose membranes of silicified plants from Saint Etienne.
Subsequently a considerable number of Paleozoic bacteria were de-
seribed by Renault and others by a microscopic study of sections of
petrified plants and coprolites. Evidences of bacterial activity are
obvious in petrified-plant material of all geological ages, but this
field of study is not an especially fruitful one, since these organisms
are so small, so ancient, and unchanging, and hence offer but few
reliable characters of systematic value.

It might perhaps be legitimate to divide plant evolution into two
major stages—the prechlorophyllic and the chlorophyllic—and to
consider that the eophytic stage leading to the formation of the
simpler algae required as long a time as all the subsequent evolution
of the vegetable kingdom. When, however, it is recalled that the

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 375

whole protoplasm of these unicellular forms was virtually in con-
tact with the environment the degree of potency of modifying forces
must have been enormously greater than it was after the protoplasm
was inclosed in a barrier of cellulose, or was rendered relatively inert
by the formation of specialized systems of tissues. Thus these first
stages of plant evolution may not have required the eons of time
that at first thought seemed probable. During the Eophytic stage
of evolution the hypothetical prechlorophyllic phase passed grad-
ually into a second or chlorophyilic phase which may appropriately
be termed the Algal phase of evolution. The original bacteria-lke
life forms obtained their energy from the geosphere and the hydro-
sphere. The formation of chlorophyll enabled them to make in-
creasing use of the atmosphere as a source of energy. This develop-
ment of chlorophyll, first as scattered granules and subsequently as
definite plastids, so that the sun’s rays were utilized for photosyn-
thesis and the abstraction of carbon from the carbon dioxide of the
atmosphere, was perhaps the greatest forward step in the evolution
of life, second only in its importance to the origin of life itself.
That this second phase of plant evolution was very ancient 1s shown
by the traces of algae in the Pre-Cambrian rocks and by various
collateral lines of evidence of plant activity, such as the vast amount
of carbon (graphite) in the Proterozoic schists, the presence of opal
silica due to algal activity, and the large amounts of bedded iron ore.

Nearest to the bacteria are the Cyanophyceae or blue-green algae.
They are all tiny forms world-wide in their distribution, found in
the intercellular spaces of higher plants, on bark, leaves, and roots,
and forming, as the so-called gonidia, one of the two components of
the lichen thallus. Their cell nucleus appears to lack a limiting
membrane, their chlorophyll is not definitely organized into chloro-
plasts and they multiply entirely in a nonsexual way by fission. The
primitive epicontinental seas probably swarmed with Cyanophyceae
where the waters contained sufficient terrigenous sediments in sus-
pension to furnish the needed nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. Where
denitrifying bacteria rob the sea water of its nitrogen and precipitate
calcareous ooze, algae are not common. The alga stock subsequently
became diversified both in their vegetative and reproductive structures
and processes for the various marine habitats, and have changed but
little during the ages. Itisamong the more primitive of the Chloro-
phyceae or green algae, particularly the fresh-water forms that an-
alogies point to the next great step in plant evolution, which was the
invasion of the land. This finally resulted in the diversified vegeta-
tion of trees, fruits, and flowers as they exist at present. This third
stage of plant history, which had its inception in pre-Devonian and
probably in pre-Cambrian time, may appropriately be termed the
Pteridophytic stage, and from these early pteridophytic stocks have

376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

come not only the megaphyllous ferns, seed ferns, cycads, conifers,
and flowering plants, but also the microphyllous lepidophytes and
arthrophytes, while the Bryophyta represent an independent and
never thoroughly terrestrial line of evolution from other algal types,
and are otherwise unrelated to the higher plants.

Summarizing the foregoing largely speculative evolutionary sketch,
the history of the vegetable kingdom may be divided into a pre-
chlorophyllic stage, the first chlorophyllic or algal stage and a second
chlorophyllic or pteridophytic stage inaugurated by the beginnings
of a land flora. The subsequent evolution of the various types of land
plants from fern-like ancestors comprises stages of lesser magnitude
and come more completely within the range of observation.

The most momentous event in the later history of the vegetable
kingdom was the first occupation of the land. That we must look to
the algae for the origin of land plants is clearly shown by the am-
phibious method of fertilization of all the so-called archegoniates.
It was probably some of the simpler green algae (Chlorophyceae)
that first left the water, somewhat as does the modern Botrydium.
The necessity of a water supply resulted in water-absorbing organs
(roots), and epidermal] cuticularization to limit evaporation, and sub-
sequently, to the evolution of mechanical tissue and conduction tissue
to enable them to lift their assimilating organs above the surface. At
first these primitive land plants were limited to moist environments
and have been compared by Campbell with certain liverworts, as
those of the class Anthocerotes, which he considers may represent in
a general way the stock from which the mosses diverged in one direc-
tion and the ferns in another. Paleobotany furnishes no support for
this specific view.

Formation of secondary wood by the various stocks of early land
plants was a great advantage and far reaching in its results. Increase
in diameter meant ability to reach a greater height and carry more
branches, and thus display more foliage, and this meant many changes
in habit and greatly increased working power. This may be summed
up in greater mechanical strength, more assimilating tissue, and better
conducting tissue.

Some lines, like the Cordaitean, evolved a regular arrangement with
centrifugal additions like that perfected in modern trees. Other lines
experimented with the old cryptogamic centripetal secondary wood.
Others succeeded for a time in reaching a lofty stature with only a
thin zone of secondary wood, relying mainly on the thick cortex for
mechanical support. Such were the Lepidodendrons, but that their
solution of the problem was incapable of survival by modification into
something more efficient is proved by their failure to appreciably
survive the Paleozoic.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. OTT

Another early evolutionary advance was the origin of heterospory
in the originally homosporous lines of descent. Reproduction by
spores was, and still is, essentially an aquatic process, and hence de-
pendent almost entirely upon external and uncontrollable conditions.
By developing two kinds of spores the megaspores could be provided
with a better chance of survival, while the microspores could be effi-
ciently produced in much greater numbers, and thus render the chances
of fertilization more favorable. The next step, approached through
a series of forms that retained the megaspore for a gradually length-
ening period, during which the parent plant furnished the needed
nutriment and water and evolved an apparatus for facilitating the
access of the sperm to the egg cell, leads naturally to the organization
of true seeds, which was early approximated in such diverse stocks as
the Lepidophytes and Pteridophytes, and perfected in the Pterido-
spermophytes. It is perhaps unnecessary to dwell on the advantages
of the seed habit, the supremacy of its possessors in the later period of
geological history, and at the present time, is conclusive evidence of
the advantage it gives in the struggle for existence. It may be com-
pared to the lengthening of the period of infancy, which is a factor of
such importance in the most advanced human races, and seed and
spore methods of reproduction may be compared with the viviparity
of the higher mammals as contrasted with the oviparity of such ani-
mals as most of the fishes or the pelecypod mollusca.

The question of the origin of the characteristic alternation of
generations is not directly a paleobotanical question. The absence
of Bryophytes from the early floras and the general character of the
oldest known land floras are entirely opposed to the derivation of the
sporophyte from a sporogonium. The view that it was derived from
a branched thallus has several supporters (Tansley, Lang). On the
other hand, as Coulter forcibly puts it, there is no reason why an
erect leafy axis bearing neither spores nor gametes is not quite as
supposable as the appearance of a sporophore with neither gametes
nor leaves, or a gametophore with neither spores nor leaves. On
such a view, leaves would be primary structures—a view with much
historical probability. Consequently the evolution of cones was se-
quential—a view in accordance with the older morphology.

PRE-DEVONIAN FLORAS.

Except. for some very inconclusive objects, many doubtful, and a
considerable number of well-authenticated algae (such as Core-
matocladus, Chaetocladus, Callithamnopsis, Primicorallina from the
Trenton limestone of New York and Wisconsin; Nematophycus and
Pachytheca from America and Europe), no fossil plants are known
from the pre-Devonian. The supposed Silurian flora described by
Dawson and Matthew from New Brunswick, and that described by

378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Potonié from the Harz are now known to be Upper Carboniferous
and Devonian, respectively. Nevertheless, the advanced character
of the Devonian floras makes it a certain assumption that a some-
what similar flora existed during Silurian times. Floras are most
fully preserved in continental deposits and these are the first to be
destroyed during subsequent cycles of erosion, unless they happen
to be deeply buried, and then they may never come to light in sub-
sequent times. It is only from Devonian and later times that any
considerable number of continental deposits have escaped this fate
and are available for our enlightenment. Consequently, terrestrial
floras appear upon the scene with apparent suddenness during the |
Devonian. ;
DEVONIAN FLORAS.

Such Devonian floras as are known—and their distribution in-
cludes Spitzbergen; Bear Island; the maritime Provinces of Can-
ada; Maine, New York, Kentucky, and elsewhere in the United
States; Russia, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Bohemia, and Germany
in Europe; and Australia in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as
scattered localities of minor importance elsewhere—apparently indi-
cate a cosmopolitan flora that was very lke that of the succeeding
Lower Carboniferous times. Many supposed fucoids have been de-
scribed from Devonian rocks, but these are for the most part of
a very indefinite nature. The gigantic stems of Nematophycus
found in both the Silurian and Devonian are recorded from Canada,
New York, Ohio, England, Wales, and Germany. Their structure is
often preserved and they are indubitable algae, probably representing
ancient and giant relatives of the modern Laminarians, which often
grow to great size. A type exceedingly abundant and characteristic
of the Middle Devonian of the Appalachian region was Spirophyton,
which has often been considered as of mechanical origin, but which
shows a carbonaceous spirally ascending thallus that passes through
the bedding planes of the rock and probably represents an ancient
seaweed comparable to a modern Thalassophyllum. Objects ap-
parently representing the oogonia of Devonian charaphytes have been
recorded from Ohio and elsewhere.

The ferns are represented in the Devonian by Asterochlaena, a
genus of the family Zygopteridae, which ranged from the Devonian
to the Permian; and by a considerable number of rather widespread
genera of not very certain botanical position, such as Sphenopteris,
Sphenopteridium, Rhizomopteris, Otidophyton, Dimeripteris, Spi-
ropteris, Rhodea, Hostimella, Aneimites, Rhachiopteris, ete. Cer-
tain similar but later forms have been shown to be pteridosperms, so
that the status of many of these Devonian forms is rendered un-
certain. A striking fern-like plant, conspicuous in the Devonian of

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry.

Fic. 27.—-DEVONIAN FORMS OF ARCHAEOPTERIS.

. Archaeopteris fimbriata Nathorst. Ulpper Devonian of Bear Island (after Nathorst).

. Archaeopteris jacksoni Dawson. Devonian of Maine (after White).

. Archaeopteris fissils Nathorst. Devonian of Russia (after Nathorst).

. Archaeopteris hibernica (Forbes). Devonian of Ireland (after Schimper).

4a. Pinnule of same (after Schimper).

4b. Fertile pinnae of same (after Schimper).

4c. Group of sporangia of same (after Schimper).

4d. Stipules of same (after Kidston).

5. Archaeopteris hitchcocki (Dawson). Devonian of Maine, fertile pinnae of type (after White).
5a. Group of sporangia of same (after White).

m wh

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 879

North America, Europe, the Arctic, and possibly present in China,
is Archaeopteris. It includes a considerable number of species and
appears to have survived into the Lower Carboniferous of Spain
and elsewhere.

Archaeopteris shows considerable variation in the details.of its
organization. Its fronds were large, occasionally a meter in length,
bipinnate with stipules at the base of the stipe. Sterile pinnules
cuneate or obovate with entire or variously toothed or laciniate mar-
gins and dichotomously flabellate veins. The fertile pinnules borne
on the same fronds with the sterile pinnules had their laminae
greatly reduced and carried sessile or short-stalked large oval
sporangia in groups of twos or threes. The latter are usuadly re-
garded as exannulate, and consequently Archaeopteris was formerly
considered to have been a marattiaceous fern, although latterly,
many students regard it as probably a pteridosperm. (PI. 4.)°

The Pteridosperms were also probably represented in the Devo-
nian by the structural materials known as Kalymma petioles, and
by the genera Cladoxylon and Calamopitys representing two dif-
ferent family types. The Lepidophyte phylum included Devonian
species of Lepidodendron, Leptophloeum and Lepidostrobus and an
abundance and variety of Bothrodendraceae referred to the genera
Porodendron and the cosmopolitan Bothrodendron. An idea of their
abundance may be surmised from the fact that the so-called paper
coal of central Russia is made up largely of their stem cuticles.
One of the most exceptional Devonian plants and the largest known
pre-Carboniferous tree is Protolepidodendron primaevum, which
was found in the Portage beds near Naples, New York (fig. 28).
The expanded butt shows that some secondary wood was probably
formed. The roots are gone but Stigmaria-like rootlets, were pre-
served. At the base of the trunk the leaf scars are irregular. Above
the base they are closely spaced on pronounced vertical ribs as in
the Favularia type of Sigillarias. Higher up the ribs die out, the
scars become rhomboidal, and bolsters appear until typically spirally
arranged lepidodendron scars have replaced the Sigillaria type.

The leaves were persistent, about 3 cm. long, dilated at the base
as in Bothrodendron, and Jax or recurved. The leaf scars are on the
most prominent part of the bolsters, oval in form, and show an upper
or ligular scar, a central leaf trace scar, and on either side of the
latter large lunate parachnoi. This remarkable type belongs to the
group that includes similar forms often referred to the genus
Archaeosigillaria, and represented in the Devonian of New York,
Pennsylvania, Norway, England, Bohemia, and Germany. Phylo-
genetically they appear to lie halfway between Bothrodendron and the
Rhytidolepis Sigillarias. The genus Psilophyton which characterizes
the Devonian of North America and Europe is very imperfectly known

380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

and opinions differ regarding its affinities, some students considering
that it represents a peculiar early Lepidophyte. Unquestionably a

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Fia. 28.—Protolepidodendron primaevum (Rogers) of the Portage beds of New York.

good many unrecognizable fragments have been erroneously called

Psilophyton.

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 3881

The Devonian Arthrophytes included numerous primitive forms
of Calamites known as Archaeocalamites. These are distinguished
from the later Calamites by their unequal internodes, nonalternating
ribs, and their dichotomously divided leaves. The imperfectly known
order Pseudoborniales, with their lax cones and similarly compound
leaves, belong here. Foliage indistinguishable from that of the later
Asterophyllites and Annularia was present in the Devonian. Spheno-
phyllum—theoretically the most ancient Arthrophyte—was present
in North America, Europe, and Bear Island, and the genus Hyenia
from the Devonian of Norway is also supposed to have represented
the Sphenophyllales.

The higher vascular plants of the phylum Coniferophyta were un-
doubtedly present during the Devonian, but so much of the material
is made up of fragmentary impressions that great confusion prevails.
Forms called Psygmophyllum may represent either the Ginkgoales,
Cordaitales, or be simply fern foliage. A Ginkgophyllum described
from the Devonian of Ireland appears to be an early member of the
Ginkgo stock. The Cordaitales, which were so prominent in the later
Paleozoic, are represented in the Devonian by pith casts resembling
Artisia and Sternbergia. This is not certain proof of the presence of
true Cordaites nor are the fragments from Devonian rocks referred to
Cordaites conclusive. The decisive evidence of the presence of Cor-
daites or of closely allied forms belonging to this order, is furnished
by the petrified woods from widely scattered Devonian localities re-
ferred to Dadoxylon or Araucarioxylon. A recently proposed genus,
Callixylon, is based upon beautifully petrified wood of several species
from the Middle and Upper Devonian of Ohio and Russia.

CARBONIFEROUS AND PERMIAN COSMOPOLITAN FLORAS.

The Carboniferous rocks contain very many seams of coal, and in
the Northern Hemisphere, at least, the Carboniferous is thought of
as preeminently the period of coal formation. The enormous quan-
tity of vegetable débris necessary for the formation of even a single
coal bed has led to the belief that the vegetation of Carboniferous
times was ranker and more luxuriant than at any other time in the
earth’s history, and that it grew in enormous swamps under torrid
cloudy climatic conditions. Nothing is farther from the truth.

The vegetation of the Carboniferous was probably not more varied
or luxuriant than at many other times in geological history, and it
is doubtful if the palustrine forests of Carboniferous or Permian
times were as dense, and they certainly contained much less of a
variety than the existing tropical rain-forests or jungles, such as,
for example, that of the Amazon basin. What makes the Car-
boniferous forests so interesting to the geologist quite aside from

3882 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the productive coal measures that resulted from their activities, is
the widespread uniformity of physical conditions prevailing at that
time, which facilitated the formation of coal.

Coal is found somewhere in the world in all geological periods
subsequent to the Devonian, but scarcely anywhere or at any time
was nature’s balance so delicately adjusted that such a percentage
of the contemporaneous vegetation escaped oxidation, accumulated
over long periods, and was preserved. The impression that these
coal swamps were like modern peat bogs, er that they covered thou-
sands of square miles along the coasts of Appalachia is not borne
out by the extent and Jateral variation of the coal seams and asso-
ciated sandstones and shales, and it is becoming increasingly clear
that while favorable conditions prevailed over wide areas, individual
seams are usually restricted in extent; some representing low coastal
swamps, others valley swamps, and others lagoonal and lake deposits
of drifted materials and a rain of spores and forest litter.

That the humidity was high and the sky cloudy is reasonable, but
the evidence does not support the various theories that the sun was
normally hidden or that the atmosphere was dense with carbonic
acid gas. Nor was the heat torrid. That there was not the latitudi-
nal or seasonal variation that exists to-day is shown by the cosmo-
politanism of the floras and the normal absence of growth rings in
the coniferous woods. It has been suggested that our knowledge of
Carboniferous floras is confined to those which grew on lowlands
adjacent to the regions of coal accumulation, and while this is true,
it should be borne in mind that lowland and upland floras of any
period differ merely in generic and specific types, and there is no
reason to suppose that unknown orders or nascent phyla inhabited
the Carboniferous uplands.

We may draw a generalized picture of a Carboniferous or Per-
mian swamp as densely forested with clumps of slender, graceful
Calamites—scouring rushes enlarged to fifty times the size of the
modern ones—growing in and about the margins of the water; mas-
sive columnar Sigillarias with their persistent crown of needle-
like leaves and their shallow, spreading roots; tall Lepidodendrons
with their branched and evergreen crowns; lofty cordaites with their
large pendent, evergreen leaves; large clumps of Marattiaceous and
other ferns, slender-stemmed Sphenophyllums clambering over and
among the other vegetation, and a variety of seed ferns everywhere—
some with long, slender stems like Lyginoptems dependent on the
jungle for support, while others with massive stems like Medullosa
quite capable of taking care of themselves in the universal upward,
light-seeking growth. (See fig. 14.)

Chronologically, many of the Devonian types lingered into the
Lower Carboniferous, during which time Archaeopteris and Psilo-

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry. PLATE 5.

——

Pat

SSS

~S
SSS

SS

SA

SS

Ss

EE EIST oe

=
CLE:

SS

eS

SSS

WS
AS

SS

WEE
Lip
iA

TSS

a2

S

Vey
Yj

heey
LE

SS

= Ye

FIG. 29.—VIEWS OF TYPICAL MEMBERS OF THE GLOSSOPTERIS FLORA.

a. Gangamopteris cyclopteroides Feistmantel.
b. Neuropteridium validum Feistmantel, <%¢.
ce. Glossopteris indica Schimper, X's.

d. Glossopteris angustifolia Brongi—art.

ee
“ a
A

i.
oN aay

J .. i - r H La

Te ei <7
van) or

nines

iy rn
eee r ey ee hua ee ae
a hay ea treet, Be stax canta MAE a eB
oe 9 he hs : '

i

os

Is

riya }

fi

PALEOBOTAN Y—BEBRRY. 383

phyton became extinct. The primitive Archaeocalamites were grad-
ually replaced by the true Calamites. Protolepidodendron and other
Bothrodendraceae originated the distinct families of Sigillariaceae
-and Lepidodendraceae, and the seed ferns and true ferns showed a
succession of forms that enables the paleobotanist to determine in just
what part of the coal measures a particular florule belongs.

Throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and particularly in the
Appalachian province as compared with Europe, relative uniformity
of conditions lasted throughout the whole Carboniferous and into
the Permian, and while there was a steady march of vegetation and
a succession of varying forms, the general facies changed but little
as compared with the contemporaneous history of the Southern
Hemisphere (see Glossopteris flora). Already in the Carboniferous
of both Europe and America, Cycadophyte fronds appear in the
record, foreshadowing the great Mesozoic display of these plants.
A few Ginkgo-like types were present and Walchia and Voltzia
among the Coniferophytes give promise of the impending change
from a sporophytic to a spermophytic vegetational régime.

THE GLOSSOPTERIS-GANGAMOPTERIS FLORA,

At a horizon believed to be Lower Permian in age and associated
with well-marked glacial deposits in Australia, Tasmania, India,
South Africa, and South America, and with less definitive evidence
of glaciation in several other areas, are found traces of a peculiar
and regional flora in which the cosmopolitan types of the late Car-
boniferous and Permian, such as characterize the floras of these
times in the Northern Hemisphere, are largely absent. This southern
flora is termed the Glossopteris or the Gangamopteris flora from its
two most characteristic elements. These were simple fern-like
fronds, shaped like those of the common hart’s-tongue (Scolopen-
drium), and were borne on creeping stems or rhizomes, long known
by the name of Vertebraria. The fronds of both genera are much
alike, of a similar lanceolate to obovate form and with an anastomos-
ing venation. They are distinguished from one another by the pres-
ence of a thick midrib in Glossopteris, and by the practical absence
of a midrib in Gangamopteris. In the former genus the sporangia
are known and were borne upon very much reduced oval fronds. It
is not certain whether they were true ferns or represent the seed ferns
so common in the Paleozoic. Fronds of these two genera are shown,
much reduced, in the accompanying figures (fig. 29).

Associated with these Glossopteris and Gangamopteris fronds
were the remains of Phyllotheca and Schizoneura, relatives of the
northern Calamites, fronds of Cycadophytes (Pterophyllum, Glosso-
zamites) and Neurophteridium, various fragments of ferns (Clado-
phlebis, Pecopteris, Sphenopteris, Taeniopteris), conifers (Voltzia),

384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

and the leaves of Noeggerathiopsis and Euryphyllum, probably rela-
tives of the northern Cordaites. From the combined evidence of the
organisms, their distribution, and the continental character of the de-
posits, geologists have restored from the depths of the present seas a
yast southern continent extending from Australia to India and thence.
to Africa and South America, which is called Gondwana Land and
which existed throughout the Permian and the first half of the Meso-
zoic. It was very probably connected southward from both Australia
and South America with the land mass in the south polar region
known as Antarctica, and a restricted land bridge connected it across
northwestern Africa with southwestern Europe. Elsewhere along its
northern borders a Mediterranean sea encircled the globe, separating
Gondwana Land from Angara Land (the ancient continental mass of

LOWER PERMIAN

OBOGRAPHY

ty ,
af

|e
ne

and
GLACTATIORN

Fic. 30.—Sketch map showing the geography and glaciation of the Permian.

Asia) and from Eria (North America). It was upon this Gondwana
continent or on the Antarctic continent to the southward that the
Glossopteris flora had its inception.

It was the climatic changes resulting from this widespread emer-
gence and elevation of the land and the consequent alteration of the
oceanic and atmospheric circulation that furnished the stimulus for
its evolution, and these climatic changes culminated in a glaciation
that probably exceeded in its magnitude that of the more familiar
and relatively recent Pleistocene Ice Age. These changes gradually
banished the more characteristic elements of the cosmopolitan flora
from this region, although it is known to have constituted the origi-
nal vegetation of the country, having been discovered in Lower Car-
boniferous or in Devonian rocks in South America and Australia and

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 3885

in the Tete basin in southeast Africa in rocks as young as the Upper
Carboniferous (Stephanian).

The earlier Glossopteris floras immediately overlying the Glacial
boulder beds, or in some cases, as in the Greta series of New South
Wales, intercalated between glacial deposits, are everywhere rela-
tively simple and unmixed and characterized by the plant types men-
tioned above. ‘With changing conditions that can only be inter-
preted as an amelioration of the climate, various members of the
northern cosmopolitan flora, especially the Lepidophytes, succeeded
in reestablishing themselves. It is probable that they were never
entirely extinct in the whole of Gondwana Land, but that they had
been present throughout the Glacial period in northern Africa and
northern South America.

This recolonization of the South by the cosmopolitan types is
especially well illustrated in Brazil, where the farther the plant bed
is above the basal boulder bed, the more cosmopolitan is the facies
of the contained flora, which in the upper beds shows petrified
gymnospermous wood lacking annual rings such as were typically
developed in similar woods in beds immediately overlying the boulder
beds in Australia. In India, which at that time was geographically
difficult of access to returning northern types, no Lepidodendrons,
Sigillarias, or true Calamites have been recognized, although a species
of Sphenophyllum is recorded, and the genus Noeggerathiopsis may
really represent the true Cordaites. In South Africa the immigrants
from the North included Lepidodendron, Sigillaria, Bothrodendron,
and a doubtful Sphenophyllum. In South America they include
Lepidodendron, Lepidophlois, Sigillaria, Bothrodendron, and the
Paleozoic tree fern Psaronius.

Indicative of the Lower Permian age of the Glossopteris flora,
as well as of a land connection to the northward, is the presence of
Glossopteris and Noeggerathiopsis in the Upper Permian (Zech-
stein) of the Vologda and Petschora districts of northern Russia and
in the Altai Mountains and elsewhere in Siberia, showing that these
types spread northward from Gondwana Land into the region still
occupied by the cosmopolitan flora before the close of the Paleozoic.
The genus Glossopteris itself, as well as some of its associates, not
including Gangamopteris, are known to have survived the Permian
and were present as dwindling relics as late as the Upper Triassic
(Rhaetian), or even in the Lower Jurassic, Glossopteris having been
recorded from beds of Jurassic age (Liassic) in southern Mexico.
Glossopteris has also been discovered in south latitude 85° in the
Beacon sandstone series, which has been traced for over 700 miles
across Antarctica, where it is coalbearing and probably of Permian
age, although part of it may be younger. Other genera of the
Glossopteris flora such as Schizoneura and Neuropteridium occur

386 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

in the Northern Triassic, and Phyllotheca, which is not a typical
member of the true Glossopteris flora, since it is found in the Car-
boniferous of Europe and Asia Minor (Heraclea), persisted into the
Jurassic of Italy.

Some students interpret these facts of distribution as indicating
that the Paleozoic cosmopolitan floras became extinct at or shortly
after the close of that age and that Gondwana Land was the place of
origin and the center of radiation of the Mesozoic floras, which, as
regards those of the Northern Hemisphere, were hence of southern
origin. There is but slight ground for this opinion, which will be
referred to subsequently in the account of the Triassic flora. The
only additional statement necessary in concluding this brief sketch
of the Glossopteris flora is that during the Upper Triassic (Rhaetian)
and the Jurassic, at which times the paleobotanical record again
becomes reasonably complete, there is not the slightest trace of a
northern and a southern floral province such as characterized the
Permian, but from Greenland and Spitzbergen on the north to Graham
Land on the south, and including Australia, India, Africa, and South
America, the whole earth is once again clothed with a cosmopolitan
flora as it had been in the Carboniferous, but one which, on the whole,
was very different from the latter.

THE TRIASSIC FLORA,

The change in the terrestrial floras in passing from the Paleozoic
to the Mesozoic is not as great as tradition holds; nevertheless, it
is sufficiently marked. Older paleobotanists thought that the Lepi-
dodendrons, Sigillarias, Cordaites, Calamites, and the characteristic
ferns and seed ferns of the coal measures all became extinct by the
end of Permian time. However, few if any of these types that
gave the facies to the late Paleozoic floras, did not have some sur-
viving relatives in the Triassic, and, moreover, many of the Paleo-
zole types were obviously on the wane during the Upper Permian,
while new types, such as Baiera, Ginkgo, and some of the Cyca-
dophytes (Plagiozamites, Pterophyllum, Sphenozamites), praenun-
cial of the Mesozoic, had already made their appearance.

One reason for the sharp contrast between the known Triassic
floras and those of the later Paleozoic was the long interval, corre-
sponding to the Bunter and Muschelkalk of European Triassic
chronology, during which the character of the deposits was pre-
vailingly inimical for the preservation of vegetation (coarse aeolian
or current bedded sands and saliferous salt pan sediments). It
was not until the Upper Triassic (Newark formation of eastern
North America, Lettenkohle and Rhaetian of Europe and the other
continents) that fossil plants became abundant, and by that time

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 387

evolution had accomplished much. Moreover, there were special
stimuli to change in the wide extent of continental areas, the forma-
tion of mountain ranges, the diversification of climates, and the
competition of new plant associations that had resulted from the
Permian glaciation. Furthermore, many geologists consider the
prevailingly red deposits of the Triassic indicative of extremely
arid if not real desert conditions. Without subscribing to this ex-
treme view, it is probable from the geography of that time alone
that the climates were less humid or uniform than they had been
previous to the Permian glacia-
tion; at least such was the case
during the earlier Triassic.
Marine Triassic deposits of
the Mediterranean regions at-
test to the abundance of cal-
careous algae (Diplopora, Gy-
roporella) at that time. On
the land, mosses and hepatics
were unknown and the floras
consist overwhelming|ly of ferns,
Cycadophtes and Conifers,
Among the ferns most of the
Paleozoic types are missing or
much reduced. The whole class
Coenopteridae or Primofilices
was absent. The class Hydrop-
teridae, never abundant in the
geological record, was sparingly
represented in the late Triassic
by Sagenopteris. The Euspo-
rangiate ferns, so common in
the Carboniferous and Permian, Se
where they were represented by Fia. SES of Macrotaeniopteris (after
: 3 Russell), & 1/10.
Psaronius, Pecopteris, etc., were
the most prominent fern element during the Triassic, with seven or
eight genera and a large number of species, especially in the Keuper
and Rhaetian (Danaeopsis, Taeniopteris, Macrotaeniopteris, Maratti-
opsis, Angiopteridium, Pseudodanaeopsis, Asterotheca, Oligocarpia).
Macrotaeniopteris with its large strict simple fronds was especially
common in the rocks of the Newark formation in the eastern United
States. The Leptosporangiate ferns, which comprise the bulk of the
living ferns, were represented in the Triassic by the more ancient
families, Gleicheniaceae, Osmundaceae, Dipteriaceae, and Matonia-
ceae, while Cheiropteris of the late Triassic is thought to represent
the Ophioglossales.

388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Perhaps the most interesting Triassic fern family, and next to the
Marattiaceae in importance at that time, was the Dipteriaceae.
Surviving in only four species with a limited range from India to
New Caledonia, they were represented during Triassic times by the
genera Protorhipis, Clathropteris, Dictyophyllum, Thaumatopteris,
Camptopteris (fig. 32), characterized by their dichotomous fronds,

Tig. 32.—Restoration of Camptopteris (after Nathorst), x 1/4.

indeterminate growth, and netted-veined pinnae suggestive of a leaf
of a chestnut oak. These ferns were practically cosmopolitan dur-
ing the late Triassic, especially in the two closely allied genera
Clathropteris (fig. 34) and Dictyophyllum (fig. 33). Protorhipis
did not attain its maximum range until later in the Mesozoic, while
Thaumatopteris and Camptopteris were always more restricted in
their range,

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 389

A fern-like genus, Thinnfeldia, of undetermined botanical affinity
that appeared in the Rhaetian or uppermost Triassic in Australia,
South Africa, South America, and Europe, is more especially char-
acteristic of the cosmopolitan Jurassic floras.

The Arthrophyta of the Triassic were less varied than earlier.
The order Sphenophyllales as well as the majority of the calamites
had become extinct, but representatives of the latter continued to
exist throughout the Triassic, where they were represented by Schi-
zoneura and Phyllotheca which survived from the Permian and by
Neocalamites (fig. 35) which occurs in the Upper Triassic of
Virginia, Mexico, Europe, Asia, South Africa, and Australia, In

Eh if
Bet oa Seley es fa
vr oS

Fia. 33.—Restoration of Dictyophyllum (after Nathorst), x 1/2.

addition to these, the remains of large species of Equisetum are com-
mon as stem casts in the continental deposits of the Triassic.

The Lepidophytes were represented during the Triassic by oc-
casional fragments of Lycopodites (Naiadita) like foliage, and in
the Lower Triassic by a few specimens of Sigillaria and a related
genus known as Pleuromeia, which testify that this characteristic
Permian type still lingered, although much reduced in importance.
No lepidodendrons are known from the Triassic unless represented by
the cone genus Lycostrobus from the Upper Triassic of Sweden.
The Pteridosperms or seed ferns, so important and characteristic
an element in Paleozoic floras had largely vanished. Triassic sur-
vivals probably existed although none are certainly known. Glos- -
sopteris, which gives its name to the Permian flora of Gondwana

136650°—20-——26

390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Land, is found in the Triassic at a number of scattered localities
and is thought to have been a pteridosperm.

The Cycadophytes, first recognizable in the Carboniferous, fur-
nished one of the most prominent Triassic types of vegetation, rep-
resented chiefly by a great variety of frond impressions. Some of

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Fic. 34.—Restoration of Clathopteris (after Berry), x 1/2.

the genera present at that time were Pterophyllum, Ctenis, Ano-
mozamites, Ptilozamites, Otozamites, Sphenozamites, and Nilssonia.
The majority belonged to the slender branching-stemmed William-
sonia order, rather than to the squat forms like those of the Creta-
ceous Cycadeoideas, or the modern cycads.

ALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 391

The Triassic Coniferophytes represented all of the orders. The
primitive Cordaitales of the Paleozoic were represented in the genus
Yuccites, and by the surviving Gondwana Land genus Noeggerathiop-
sis. The Ginkgoales had two cosmopolitan types in the Triassic-Baiera
and Ginkgo, both of which first appeared in the Permian or earlier,
and both continued in abundance throughout the major portion of
the Mesozoic. The Arau-
carian line was not as abun- 3
dant as it became in the
later Mesozoic, but appears
to have been represented by
Albertia of the European
Lower Triassic, by Pagio-
phylum which was com-
mon in North America and
Europe;and by Araucarites
and various petrified woods
referred to the genus Arau-
carioxylon.

The Coniferalian group,
often represented by am-
biguous foliar shoots, com-
prises four families: Abi-
etineaceae, Taxaceae, Taxo-
diaceae and Cupressaceae.
The first appears to be of
Post-Triassic origin; the
second was represented in
the Triassic by the charac-
teristic genus Palissya with
dimorphic foliage and Jax
cones, and by the Upper

Triassic genera, Stachy- i

taxus and Dyes eee the VA
Taxodiaceae were repre- ‘>
sented by the genus Voltzia,

a survivor from the Per-
mian, and probably by the
genera Cheirolepis and Sphenolepis. Widdringtonites appear to
have represented the Cupressaceae during the Triassic.

There are no known traces of Triassic flowering plants, despite the
misleading names of some of the plants of that time, or the mistaken
notions of the older paleobotanists that forms named Yuccites, Con-
vallarites, etc., were monocotyledons. All of these supposed mono-
cotyledons have been shown to-be Cordaitean, as in the case of Yuc-

Fia. 35.—Restoration of Neocalamites (after Berry), x 1/18.

392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

cites, or Lepidophytic as in Naiadita, or Arthrophytic as in_Con-
vallarites.

Considering the march of vegetation during the Triassic as a
whole it may be noted that succeeding the sparsely represented floras
of the earlier Triassic, there appeared throughout the world during
the Upper Triassic extensive floras which, while containing surviving
stragglers from the Paleozoic, decidedly foreshadowed the cosmo-
politan floras of the succeeding Jurassic time. Regarding the place
of origin of these Triassic floras, it may be said that they contain a
mixture of survivors from the northern cosmopolitan and the Gond-
wana Land Permian floras. The undue emphasis that has often
been placed upon Glossopteris and the habit of speaking of Schi-
zoneura and Phyllotheca as members of the Glossopteris flora has
led some students to consider that the Triassic flora was evolved in
Gondwana Land. <A careful analysis of the Triassic floras, how-
ever, for which space is lacking in the present article, clearly shows
that this was not the case, but that the more prominent elements in
the Triassic floras had northern ancestors, as, for example, Voltzia,
Pterophyllum, Baiera, Ginkgo, Sphenozamites, Phyllotheca, Neoca-
lamites, ete., and originated in the northern land masses.

THE JURASSIC FLORAS.

The Jurassic was a time of warm climates, shallow seas on the
margin of the continents, and low-lying lands. Its deposits are not
sharply separated from the underlying Triassic or the overlying
Lower Cretaceous, consequently, the contrast in the succession of
floras are, in the main, the evolution of new specific types rather than
of greater groups. Paleontologically the Jurassic is characterized
primarily by the swarming marine faunas of its “shallow seas. Fol-
lowing the almost world-wide occurrence of the rich palustrine Rha-
etic floras of late Triassic age, the record consists of a succession of
sandy, clayey, and calcareous rocks of marine origin, relatively poor
in their representation of the contemporaneous terrestrial vegetation,
although most of the Jurassic stages are fairly well represented by
fossil plants in some part of the world.

Caleareous algae of both marine and fresh waters (charophytes)
are not uncommon, but not especially noteworthy. Several modern
appearing Hepatics have been recorded. Ferns, Cycadophytes and
Conifera comprise the bulk of the vegetation. Many of these are
generic types which ranged from the Triassic to the Lower Creta-
ceous. The magnificent lyre ferns (Dipteriaceae) of the Triassic sur-
vived in some of their manifestations in Jurassic times, as did some
of the Triassic Marattiacene. The former were not, however, so
characteristic of Jurassic times as were the representatives (Laccop-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 393

teris, Matonidum) of the family Matoniaceae, a family with but two
existing Malayan species of Matonia.

There were several wide-ranging Jurassic species of Laccopteris
and Matonidium, characterized by pedate fronds somewhat similar
to those of the Dipteriaceae, but less variable or striking. The
Gleicheniaceae were sparingly represented by species of Gleichenia:
the Osmundaceae by Osmundites; the Schizaeaceae by Klukia; the
Cyatheaceae by Dicksonites and Coniopteris; the Polypodiaceae by
Cladophlebis, Onychiopsis, and Dryopterites; and the Hydropterales
by various species of Sagenopteris. Probably the most characteristic
Jurassic fern genera were Coniopteris, Laccopteris, and Thinnfeldia.

No Pteridospermophytes are known as late as the Jurassic, and it
seems a reasonable assumption that this phylum had become extinct,
although Glossopteris, a possible seed fern, is recorded from the Lias
or basal Jurassic of southern Mexico. The Arthrophyte and Lepido-
phyte phyla, so prominent in the Paleozoic, had, by Jurassic times,
come to be represented mainly by modern-looking species of Equise-
tum (Equisetites), Lycopodites, and Selaginellites.

Perhaps the most prominent element in Jurassic floras was the
variety of ubiquitous genera of cycad-like fronds and fructifications.
These are found from the Arctic to the Antarctic and on all of the
continents at that time, and embrace a large number of form genera.
The bulk of these belong to the order Williamsoniales, although
Cycas-like fructifications are known (Cycadospadix). There is little
evidence of the presence of the Cycadeoidales during the Jurassic,
although their widespread occurrence in Lower Cretaceous times
indicates that they were already in existence, as does the close ap-
proximation to their fructifications of those of Williamsonia. These
have already been described in the paragraphs devoted to the Cyca-
dophyta. Frond genera characteristic of Jurassic rocks, and often
beautifully preserved as impressions, are Podozamites, Ptilozamites,
Pseudoctenis, Ctenophyllum, Ctenis, Taeniopteris, Nilssonia, Anomo-
zamites, Dictyozamites, Glossozamites, Otozamites, Pterophyllum,
Ptilophyllum, and Zamites.

The remainder of the known Jurassic flora consisted of representa-
tives of the Coniferophytes—the most advanced phylum, the Angio-
spermophyta, not being certainly known earlier than the Lower
Cretaceous. Among the Coniferophytes, species of Ginkgo and of
the allied genus Baiera were perhaps the most abundant and wide-
spread. Jurassic Gnetales are not certainly known and the mainly
Paleozoic Cordaitalean order appears to have already become extinct.
The Araucariales were prominent throughout the Jurassic, in the
deposits of which age, petrified wood, twigs, and single-seeded cone
scales, essentially like those of the existing genus Araucaria, are
found in abundance at widely scattered localities.

394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The Taxales are less clearly recognizable in collections of Jurassic
plants, although their variety and abundance in the preceding late
Triassic and in the succeeding Lower Cretaceous, gives certainty to
the assumption of their presence through the intervening Jurassic.
The order Coniferales, which includes the majority of the existing
Coniferophytes, is well represented during the Jurassic, especially
by members of the family Cupressaceae, to which Brachyphyllum
(Echinostrobus), Widdringtonites, Palaeocyparis, Cyparisidium,
and other genera, are referred.

The family Taxodiaceae is doubtfully represented by Leptostrobus,
and Sequoia appears in the. record before the close of the Jurassic.
The relatively modern family Abietinaceae is of little importance
until later times, and its presence during the Jurassic rests upon
somewhat inconclusive remains of Abietites (Pinites), Holochloris,
etc. Rather common Jurassic Coniferophytes of unknown botanical
affinities are Fieldenia and Phoenocopsis, thought to be related to the
Ginkoales.

A picture of the flora at any time during the Jurassic would show —
nothing like the lofty forests of the Paleozoic or of Tertiary and
modern times. The Jurassic floras, whether of swamp or upland,
as known, consisted primarily of ferns, cycads, and conifers. The
ferns were all forms of moderate size. None of the cycad-like forms,
so characteristic of this age of earth history, were lofty; probably
none were as tall as an old existing individual of Cycas, and the
Jurassic cycads are more comparable in appearance to what is com-
monly denoted by the term “scrub.” Rising above the general low
level of this scrub were the various Coniferophytes, which may have
predominated in more or less pure stands at certain localities, and
among which the Jurassic representatives of the maidenhair tree
(Ginkgo) stand out prominently.

THE LOWER CRETACEOUS FLORAS.

Lower Cretaceous plants are known from all of the continents
except Antarctica, and they are particularly abundant in North
America and Europe. The two most extensive floras are those
of the Potomac group of Maryland and Virginia, and those of
similar age from the opposite side of the Atlantic in southern Portu-
gal. These afford valuable comparisons for shedding light on the
place of origin and the migrations of the various types. A third
large Lower Cretaceous flora is that of the so-called Wealden of
England, Belgium and Germany. Other floras of this age are
found in South Africa and eastern Asia, as well as in Spitzbergen,
Australia, New Zealand, and Greenland.

While the known Lower Cretaceous floras necessarily represent
but a small percentage of the species which clothed the earth dur-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 395

ing that time, they furnish some data bearing on the march of
vegetation during which flowering plants first appeared in the
record and during which the transformation from a Jurassic to an
Upper Cretaceous and essentially Cenozoic type occurred. This
flora shows evidence in the varying proportions which the main
types such as the ferns, Cycadophytes, and Conifers bear to one
another, that there are represented plants that grew under local
differences of soil, altitude, humidity, and precipitation conditions.
It is apparent that the dominant types of the late Jurassic con-
tinued without marked change throughout the earlier Cretaceous.
These were the ferns, Cycadophytes, and Conifers. Little is known
of the Thallophyta, Bryophyta, Arthrophyta, or Lepidophyta.

The Arthrophyta, represented in the Lower Cretaceous by species
of Equisetum had evidently dwindled to proportions strictly com-
parable to their present-day deployment. One or two Selaginellites
represent the Lepidophytes and several Marchantites represent the
Bryophyta. The more characteristic fern families of the older
Mesozoic, such as the Marattiaceae, were greatly reduced in im-
portance, and the families Schizaeaceae, Gleicheniaceae, Matoniaceae
Osmundaceae and Dipteriaceae, which were prominent early in the
Lower Cretaceous, were overshadowed by the Polypodiaceae before
the close of the Cretaceous, the latter represented by various species
of Cladophlebis? and Onychiopsis.° Pteridosperms were unknown
and it is reasonable to suppose that this phylum was no longer repre-
sented in the flora of the world.

Several interesting petrified Osmundaceae are known at this time,
and the Gleicheniaceae were especially abundant in the far North
along with other ferns indicative of great humidity. A peculiar
tree fern represented by petrified fragments of large trunks and
referred to the genus Tempskya was very widely distributed in
North America and Europe at this time. A typical member of the
Schizaeaceae was the genus Schizaeopsis found in the Potomac de-
posits of Virginia, with fertile fronds very similar to some of the
modern tropical species of Schizaea (fig. 36). A survivor from the
older Mesozoic was the Hydropteralean genus Sagenopteris, a hand-
some American species of which is shown in figure 37.

The Cycadophytes of the early Cretaceous were essentially the fa-
miliar, even if too little known types of the later Jurassic. They
were abundant in genera species and individuals, and were quite as
dominant an element of the Lower Cretaceous floras as they had been
in the late Triassic and throughout the Jurassic. Before the close
of the Lower Cretaceous, however, they became largely extinct.
Some of the genera represented in the Lower Cretaceous were Dio-

1Some species of Cladophlebis appear to belong to the Osmundaceae. Those from the
Potomac appear to represent the Polypodiaceae,

396 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

nites, Stenopteris, Ctenopsis, Zamiopsis, Nilssonia, Dichotozamites,
Podozamites, Glossozamites, Anomozamites, Cycadites, Otozamites,
Zamites, and Pterophyllum.

In addition the squat forms so common in a petrified condition at
this time and represented by the genera Cycadeoidea and Cyeadella,
(the former of which has furnished so much information regarding the
structure and morphology of the fructifications) are to be mentioned
as important elements in the flora as well as the detached bract-en-
circled fructifications of the slender stemmed or Williamsonia forms.
The Ginkgoales were represented by several species of Ginkgo and by
numerous occurrences of Baiera, although neither genus is as common
as it was earlier. The Taxaceae seems to have been more prominent
than later, with species of
Nageiopsis and Cephalo-
taxopsis, both of which
were individually abun-
dant. The Araucarian
conifers are well repre-
sented, but in no great va-
riety. The Abietinaceae
showed numerous forms of
Abietites and before the end
of the Lower Cretaceous,
undoubted species of Pinus
are known, and Cedrus has
also been recorded.

Sequoia, Sphenolepis, and
Arthrotaxopsis represented
the Taxodiaceae, while Fre-
nelopsis and Widdrington-
ites, which were widespread,
represented the Cupres-
saceae. Brachyphyllum and
Czekanowskia continued to survive. Little can be said about the
Lower Cretaceous flowering plants. Certain genera from the oldest
Potomac (Rogersia, Ficophyllum, Proteaephyllum) have been de-
scribed as angiosperms, but they more likely represent Gnetalian forms
comparable with the modern Gnetum. The are poorly preserved im-
pressions and might even represent fragments of the fronds of Dip-
teriaceous ferns—a conclusion amply proved for one of Saporta’s
proangiosperms (Protorhipis). This author has described a num-
ber of indefinite plant fragments from Portugal as Poacites, Rhizo-
caulon, etc., some of which he calls proangiosperms, while similar
fragments are called monocotyledons. They are all entirely incon-
clusive. Nothing remotely suggestive of flowering plants is known

Fic. 36.—Restoration of a fertile frond of Schizaeopsis from
the Lower Cretaceous (after Berry), \ 4/5.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 897

from the Wealden floras of England, Belgium or Germany; the
similar floras from Japan, the Kootenai flora of Montana and Brit-
ish Columbia, or even from the Barremian flora of Russia, France,
and England. The so-called Urgonian flora of Greenland contains
two or three dicotyledonous leaves, but there is some uncertainty re-
garding their exact age and they may be somewhat younger. Sim-

——
Ss

We

Fia.37.—Restoration of Sagenopteris elliptica Fontaine, from the Lower Cretaceous of Virginia (after Berry).

ilar indefinite dicotyledonous remains have recently been recorded
from Australia and New Zealand.

There is, however, satisfactory evidence of flowering plants in
strata referred to the Aptian stage, based not only upon foliage but
upon petrified wood, with structure preserved. Toward the close of
the Lower Cretaceous in its uppermost stage (Albian), angiosperms
become a considerable element in the flora, constituting 380 per
cent of the uppermost Potomac (Patapsco) flora, 17 per cent of

398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the Fuson flora of the Black Hills, and over 35 per cent of the
Albian flora of Portugal. It would be interesting to pursue the
subject in more detail, to discuss the place and manner of origin
of this latest and most highly organized plant phylum, as well as
its early paths of migration, but the subject is highly speculative
and may well await an increase of knowledge.

The same statement is in a measure true of attempts to describe
Lower Cretaceous climatic conditions. The floras are so different
from those of the present that any quantitative estimates are out
of the question. These floras do, however, show such slight changes,
which may be legitimately related to temperature conditions as they
are traced from place to place, that a marked uniformity of temper-
ature over many degrees of latitude must be admitted. From Peru,
within 15° of the Equator to western Greenland in latitude -70°,
or Spitzbergen in latitude 78 °, the fossil plants indicate uniformity
of temperature. It seems obvious from a consideration of the large
fronded ferns and Cycadophytes that they could not have with-
stood a winter such as characterizes the cooler parts of the Temper-
ate Zone at present, nor are deciduous forms known except Laricop-
sis and possibly Zamites.

THE UPPER CRETACEOUS FLORAS.

The Upper Cretaceous was a time of surpassing interest for
students of floral history. Most of the survivors from the older
Mesozoic that characterized even the later Lower Cretaceous were
entirely absent or very much reduced in relative importance, while
dicotyledonous leaves and palms appeared at that time in large
numbers and great variety. The ancestry of a majority of our
present forest trees can be traced back to the Upper Cretaceous,
at which time their distribution and associates were very different.
Upper Cretaceous plants are much alike wherever found and they
are known from all of the continental land masses. Very many dif-
ferent species have been described, especially from North America,
where they have been studied much more thoroughly than else-
where.

Some of the largest and most interesting of the Upper Cretaceous
floras are those of the Dakota sandstone—a littoral sand recording
the transgression of a Cretaceous sea northward across the western
interior of North America from Texas to the Arctic Ocean. The
Dakota flora, described chiefly from Kansas and Nebraska, com-
prised several hundred species. It includes but a few Conifers—
mainly forms of Sequoia; large numbers of ancestral hardwoods
such as the earliest known birches (Betulites), many persimmons
(Diospyros), beeches (Fagus), numerous figs (Ficus), Magnolias,
Holly (Ilex), walnut (Juglans), tulip tree (Liriodendron), sassa-

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 399

fras, bayberry (Myrica), sycamore (Platanus), cottonwood (Popu-
lus), oak (Quercus), buckthorn (Rhamnus), willow (Salix), soap-
berry (Sapindus), sheepberry (Viburnum), etc. Associated with
these familiar modern types were exotic elements, such as Aralia,
camphor trees (Cinnamomum), Cissites, Paliurus; ancestral mem-
bers of the orange family (Citrophyllum) ; extinct genera, such as
Dewalquea, Aspidiophyllum, and Protophyllum; tropical forms,
such as Oreodaphne, Zizyphus, Pterospermites, Sapotacites, and
Sterculia. A few doubtful leaflets represented the erstwhile abun-
dant Cycadophytes of the older Mesozoic.

Another exceptionally interesting flora of about the same age as
that of the Dakota sandstone is that found in western Greenland.
Overlying the Lower Cretaceous Kome beds of Disko Island and the
Nugsuak Peninsula in latitude 69° to 72° north are several thousand
feet of Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits carrying fossil
plants. Few regions within the Arctic Circle have been studied as
thoroughly as this one. The fossil plants were first discovered about
100 years ago and excited the liveliest interest in European scien-
tific circles, since the geologists of that time could not realize how
different the climate is at the present time from what it was in
Cretaceous and Tertiary times. The Upper Cretaceous plants of
Greenland occur in an older (Atane) and a younger (Patoot) series.
The former contains over 175 different plants, of which many are
identical with forms found in central Europe (Bohemia, Moravia,
Saxony) and in North America and -Asia (Sachalin). Ferns were
numerous, including many fine species of the genus Gleichenia.
Associated with poplars, walnuts, magnolias, pines, oaks, ginkgos,
and similar temperate types were bread fruit (Artocarpus), figs,’
cinnamons, and other tropical types. Many of these ranged south-
ward along the Atlantic coast to Alabama and Texas, showing how
uniform was the Upper Cretaceous climate. Very many plants of
this age have been described from New Jersey, Maryland, the Caro-
linas, Alabama, and Texas. Araucarias and Dammaras, both con-
fined to the Southern Hemisphere in existing floras, are common.
The last Baieras, Brachyphyllums, Williamsonias, Geinitzias,
Frenelopsis, and Czekanowskia occur at this time. Palms were
abundant as far north as northern New Jersey, and there were many
tropical, mixed with temperate, types.

There is not space to describe these ancient floras in detail nor to
discuss the many interesting problems of distribution that they help
to explain. Paleobotanists are agreed that the flowering plants
(Angiospermophyta) must ‘thave had a long ancestry previous to
their first-known occurrence in the rocks, because of the apparent
suddenness of their appearance in great variety and with compara-
tively modern characters. There were many large land surfaces in

400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the earlier Mesozoic, about whose floras nothing is known, and these
may have witnessed the evolution of the angiosperms. They cer-
tainly originated in one of the land masses of the Northern Hemis-
phere, and the evidence points to the vast expanse of Asia or the
Arctic region as the theater of their earlier evolution. Certainly
during the Upper Cretaceous there was a continuous spreading
southward in Europe, North America, and Asia along land routes
that are known from independent lines of evidence to have been in
existence at that time, and almost everywhere the same forms occur,
alike in Bohemia, Alabama, or Sachalin Island. They penetrated
far into South America during the Upper Cretaceous (Argentina),

Fig. 38.—Gleichenia pulchella Knowlton, from the Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming (after Knowlton).

and even reached Antarctica (Graham Land). These Upper Cre-
taceous floras invariably show a mingling of temperate and tropical
types indicative of a humid warm temperate climate, and they always
contain forms like Dammara, Araucaria, Widdringtonites, Pro-
teaceae, Myrtaceae, etc., that are to-day largely confined to anti-
podean regions. Throughout the Upper Cretaceous, new types con-
tinued to appear, while the stragglers from older floras gradually
were dying out, so that by the dawn of the Tertiary most of the
archaic forms had become extinct.*

1A full account of the Upper Cretaceous floras of the world with lists of species and a
complete bibliography is given by Berry in the volumes on the Upper Cretaceous pub-
lished in 1916 by the Maryland Geological Survey.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 401

THE TERTIARY FLORAS.

The classic chronologic subdivisions of the Tertiary are, from oldest
to youngest: Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. These were
based in the first instance largely on the percentage of living species
of Mollusca in the rocks of the Paris basin, but subsequently received
a lithologic and diastrophic basis. In some respects the Tertiary
floras are more interesting than those that preceded them, since clim-
ates were genial, land surfaces ample, and the vegetation was exceed-
ingly luxuriant and varied, Moreover, the key to the understanding
of present-day geographical distribution is largely dependent on an
understanding of these Tertiary floras.

Tertiary plant remains are exceedingly abundant and include those
found in travertine, such as the rich Paleocene floras of Sézanne in
France, those entombed in amber, especially the wonderfully pre-
served flowers in the lower Oligocene Baltic Amber. Buried swamp
deposits preserved as lignite coals and the associated clays and shales
are rich in plants, and such deposits are common throughout the
world and have been particularly exploited in Europe and the west-
ern United States. Flood plain deposits with riverside plant types
abound at certain horizons, and old lake beds yield a plentiful harvest.
Two of the most celebrated lake deposits are those of the Miocene Lake
of Oeningen on the Swiss border of Baden, made classic by Heer’s
researches, and the small Miocene lake of Florissant in the heart of
the Colorado Rockies, where successive showers of volcanic ash en-
tombed an extensive flora in the resulting fine-grained shales. Ter-
tiary plants are also abundant in the far north in Alaska, Ellesmere
Land, Greenland, Spitzbergen, and elsewhere, and they have also been
found on Seymour Island on the margin of the Antarctic continent.
Materials for the complete elucidation of Tertiary floral history are
being rapidly accumulated, but only a few of the more striking inci-
dents in this history can be mentioned in the compass of the present
brief review.

An interval of emergence and land extension nearly everywhere
intervened between the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentation,
in consequence of which and the time interval represented we find
that the earliest Tertiary floras show marked contrast to the Cre-
taceous floras that had preceded them. In middle latitudes like
that of the United States we find an extensive forest of hardwood
trees, covering not only the east, but also the great prairie region of the
West, since at that time there were no mountain ranges to shut off
the moisture-laden winds from the Pacific. Abundance of moisture
and luxuriance of vegetation are indicated by the abundant and ex-
tensive coal beds of early Tertiary age found in so many of the trans-

402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Mississippi States, as well as in the Southern States bordering the
Gulf of Mexico.

This early Tertiary flora consisted of familiar hardwoods, such as
willow, gum, cottonwood, sycamore, oak, walnut, hickory, etc., asso-
ciated with figs and palms, and numerous exotic types, such as cam-
phor, breadfruit, sterculia, bauhinia, etc., that have since become
extinct on this continent but still survive in other regions. Sequoia
still flourished as far east as Dakota and along the Mississippi Gulf,
and its ferruginized cones are abundant at some Eocene horizons, while
the clays contain profuse impressions of its foliage. At this time
(Eocene) the Gulf of Mexico extended northward beyond the mouth
of the Ohio and its shores were clothed with a wonderfully varied
flora containing numerous migrants from the Tropics, such as bread-
fruit, custard apple, soapberry, rain tree, alligator pear, mangrove,
fiddlewood, devilwood, persimmon, dilly, iron wood, mastic, button-
wood, stopper, buckthorn, wild lime, redbud, cocoa plum, sea grape,
and many acacias and mimosas. Among these were forms like the
Nipa Palm, distributed by ocean currents, and now confined to the
littoral of southeastern Asia.

Engelhardtia is a tropical genus of trees belonging to the walnut
family, but, unlike the walnuts and hickories, the seed part of the
fruit has remained small, thus facilitating the production of a large
number of seeds. The bracts, which are inconspicuous in the walnut,
have become enormously enlarged in the Engelhardtias, so that each
seed has three large wings to aid its dispersal. In our lower Eocene
the oldest known representative of these trees shows the initial type
of the winged fruits, so much more primitive than Engelhardtia that
it is referred to a new genus named Paraengelhardtia. Associated
with Paraengelhardtia are true Engelhardtias, also the oldest
known, and both new to the Western Hemisphere. The modern forms
number about a dozen, and all but one of these are confined to the
Orient, where they range from the northwestern Himalayas through
farther India and Burma to Java and the Philippines. One form,
probably a descendant and relic of this abundant Eocene display
in the Mississippi embayment region, is still found in the mountains
of Costa Rica, and a considerable number are found in the upper
Kocene and later Tertiary of central and southern Europe.

The winged fruits of Engelhardtia and its ancestor, Paraengel-
hardtia are shown in figure 39 (plate 6).

Among the leguminous trees, already mentioned as being very
abundant, are numerous species of the coral bean, Sophora, evidently
strand types, and one of these, which was exceedingly abundant in
west Tennessee, is scarcely to be distinguished from the existing cos-
mopolitan strand plant of the Tropics, Sophora tomentosa.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Berry. PLATE 6.

Vasrd
eS

“s-.
Se ee oer

= Sse be BY
Se eee Bi NaN a7 pri lek
A EEE We ZA S
Lah eae i] =

Fic. 39.—WINGED FRUITS OF PARAENGELHARDTIA AND ENGELHARDTIA FROM
THE EOCENE OF THE MississipP! EMBAYMENT (AFTER BERRY), SLIGHTLY
REDUCED.

|
iil
YA

Chai tea
;

PALEOBOTANY—BERRY. 403

Another genus belonging to this alliance, Dalbergia, to which the
rosewood of commerce belongs, is represented by four species. The
jeaves of two of these combined with the characteristic one-seeded
pods as they occur in the clays of western Tennessee are shown
in the restoration,
figure 40.

One other genus
of legume deserves
special mention,
since it has an
abundance of fossil

leaves and_ pods.

This is the genus Fia. 40.—Restoration of lower Eocene Dalbergias from Tennessee (after
Berry) much reduced.

Cassia, to which the
senna, as well as our common herbaceous sensitive plants belong.
The modern cassias range from herbs to trees and are very abundant
and varied, between three and four hundred species having been
described from the warmer temperate and tropical climes of all the
continents. It is especially eommon in tropical America and had a

long geological

ae LD , history extending

aN <0 = back to the Upper

( a y eh: 2. Cretaceous. Over
4 Sp Gm, & a dozen species

have been brought
to light in the Ter-
tiary bordering the
Gulf of Mexico,
and a restoration
of one of these
from the lower
Eocene, in which
both the pods and
leaflets were pre-
served, is shown in
figure 41.

The genus Pali-

urus of the family
Fic. 41.—Restoration of a Cassia abundant in the lower Eocene of Missis- R h amnaceae

sippi and Tennessee (after Berry), x 1/2. é
(Buckthorn) is of

especial interest, not only because it is represented by the very char-
acteristic fruits as well as by the leaves, but because it has such an
extended geologic history and was formerly cosmopolitan. In the
later Tertiary it dwindled, and in the existing flora it has only two
species which are found from southern Europe through southern

404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Asia to China and Japan. Fossil forms are found as early as the
Upper Cretaceous, at which time at least a dozen species, all North
American, have been described, seemingly indicating an American
origin for the genus. The leaves are not common in the lower Eocene
but the characteristic peltate fruits are not rare, and the two com-
bined have furnished the data for the restoration shown in figure 42.

Comparable floras are found in Europe in the Paris basin, along
the south coast of England, and elsewhere.

With the passing of events the climate gradually became warmer,
as attested not only by the terrestrial floras on both sides of the At-
lantic, but by the
contemporaneous ma-
rine faunas, until,
during the upper
Eocene and _ lower
Oligocene, the cli-
mate of our Gulf
tier of States and
southern Europe be-
came strictly tropical
and was overrun by
an appropriate
tropical vegetation,
while the temperate
forest pushed into
the polar regions un-
til most, if not all of
the lands within the
Arctic Circle and
part at least of the
Antarctic continent,
: were forested by cool
temperate types.

The most extensive
of these polar floras
is that recorded from western Greenland (latitude 73°), which in-
cluded nearly 300 different species. Eighteen of these are ferns; 28
are conifers, including the Ginkgo, incense cedar, cypress, and nu-
merous sequoias and pines; 21 are monocotys, including two palms;
and a vast abundance of diocotyledonous leaves of willow, poplar,
alder, hazel, beech, oak, elm, sycamore, walnut, ash, service berry,
sumach, dogwood, gum, grape, magnolia, maple, holly, buckthorn,
hawthorn, etc.

Traces of this flora are found in Grinnell Land, Spitzbergen, Ice-
land, Siberia, and elsewhere to within 8 or 10° of the North Pole, in
a region that has since become a desert of snow and ice. In the

Fig. 42.—Restoration of Paliurus based upon fruits and leaves from
the lower Eocene of Mississippi and Tennessee (after Berry), X 1/2.

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 405

Southern United States at that time, one of the prominent features
of the vegetation was the abundance of palms, represented by the im-
pressions of leaves and much petrified wood. Among the palms are
Thrinax, Bactrites, Palmetto; and a well-marked date palm is rep-
resented by characteristic seeds. Nutmegs are also represented by
fruits, as are the Copaiba gum, the Sapodilla, and the Carapa. The
leaves preserved include mangroves, satin wood, citrus, stopper, but-
tonwood, canna, sea grape, climbing ferns (Lygodium), and the
tropical marsh fern ( Memaechen), cinnamon, ree ‘many other
tropical types.

During the Oligocene the climate became cooler and drier. Many
modern African and Australian types occur in Europe. In America
the plains type of country became prominent in the west as a result
of the rising mountain systems. The polar floras retreated to lower
latitudes. Along the Gulf of Mexico many tropical types, such as
the breadfruit and camphor survived, but were gradually replaced
by temperate trees like the elm and hickory, until toward the close
of the Miocene the flora became very similar to that of to-day, al-
though the species were extinct forms of our familiar genera of
mixed hardwoods which ranged farther west in the prairie States
than they do at present, and exotic types like the Ailanthus at Floris-
sant give testimony to the subsequent lapse of time.

The Miocene forests of Europe were extensive and contained a
greater variety than do those of modern Europe. The floras of the
Northern Hemisphere were still largely cosmopolitan, or at least
Holarctic, and the Miocene and Pliocene deposits of Europe contain
many American or Oriental types, such as walnuts, hickories, bald
cypress, magnolia, tulip tree, sassafras, and sweet gum, which sub-
sequently became extinct on that continent.

The Pliocene florally is simply a somewhat modernized Miocene.
American Pliocene floras are little known, but include forms like the
water chestnut (Trapa), now extinct in the Occident. In Europe the
Pliocene was a time marked by the completion of the Alps and great
geographical changes in.the Mediterranean region, where the sea
margins were densely forested with a great variety of mixed hard-
woods, among which many American and Asiatic types were promi-
nent. Numerous still existing species, such as the bald cypress, box,
maple, yew, etc., appear during the Pliocene, plant bearing deposits
of this age being especially common throughout Europe. In South
America the tropical rain forests of the Amazon basin still covered
the present desert region along the Pacific Coast, and the Andes were
at least 14,000 feet lower than they are at the present time.

136650°—20——_27

406 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

THE PLEISTOCENE FLORAS.

The Pleistocene, because of the widespread glaciation which gives
it a distinctive place in geological chronology, is, for humanity, the
Tce age or Glacial period, although a similar period of climatic rigor
has already been described in connection with the Permian Glos-
sopteris flora, and evidence of similar glaciations in the early
Paleozoic and pre-Paleozoic times has been discovered in recent
years. That. the Pleistocene glaciation was contemporaneous with
the evolution of the human stock and exercised a profoundly modify-
ing influence on the noble races of mammals and forest trees of
the Northern Hemisphere enhances its interest, as does the obvious-
ness of its modification of the topography, resulting in numerous
lakes, ponds, and bogs. The freshness of its moraines, bowlder till,
and sand plains—all scarcely modified in the few thousands of
years that have elapsed since the last ice sheets disappeared—also
emphasized its nearness to human history.

The inauguration of glacial conditions found an essentially similar
flora in all three of the continents of the Northern Hemisphere. The
retreat of the last ice sheet left an impoverished flora in Europe and
two great asylums of survivors in eastern North America and east-
ern Asia. The explanation, broadly speaking, is most simple.
Neither America nor Asia with their extensive coastal plains and
north and south mountain chains offered insuperable barriers to
migration southward and back, while in Europe the mountain
ranges (Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, Balkans, Caucasus) all trend
east and west, many were lofty enough to be local centers of glacia-
tion, while the sea effectually stopped the gaps between the various
mountain systems. Hence many of the plants of the Pliocene forests
of Europe were unable to escape extinction and so perished.

There were at least four separate times when ice sheets accu-
mulated over the land. Each of these lasted for from 10,000 to
20,000 years, and they were separated by long intervals of genial
climate known as Interglacial periods, of thousands of years’ dura-
tion, during which the floras spread northward to even beyond
their present range. Many such Interglacial floras have been de-
scribed from Europe, where the subject has been diligently investi-
gated in connection with the economic study of peat bogs. The
best known Interglacial flora of North America, where the extensive
peat resources have been largely neglected, is that found in the
Don Valley near Toronto. Here are found the plane tree, maple,
osage orange, and other types that do not quite reach that latitude
at present. Other traces of the Pleistocene floras are found in cave
deposits associated with a partially extinct fauna, and buried swamp
deposits overwhelmed by a mantle of sand during changes along the

PALEOBOTAN Y—BERRY. 407

coasts yield their quota of forms, most of which are still existing
species, such as the bald cypress, loblolly pine, sycamore, Carolina
poplar, hickory, river birch, and various species of oaks. All of
these show that the Interglacial floras scarcely differed from those
of to-day except in the details of distribution of the various species.

During the epochs of glaciation these temperate forests retired
southward and gave way along the ice front to arctic willows and
dwarf birches, which penetrated southward to about latitude 40°.

The post-glacial amelioration of the climate, the opening of areas
that had been covered with glaciers to occupation, the mixing of
soils through ice action, all combined to stimulate evolutionary ac-
tivity in the plant kingdom, particularly among herbaceous forms,
many of which date from this time. It seems probable that the char-
acteristic Temperate Zone herbaceous families, already mentioned in
the description of the angiosperms (ante) date from about this
period. :

Possibly more potent than natural causes in modifying the existing
vegetation has been the action of humanity, with fire, ax, and do-
mesticated grazing animals. Forests are now waning. Human in-
tercourse results in untold feats of distribution, emphasized by the
familiar cosmopolitan weeds of these modern days. Insect and
fungal pests are similarly spread both rapidly and widely, and all
of these factors tend to increasingly restrict or even exterminate
the native vegetation.

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THE DIRECT ACTION OF ENVIRONMENT AND
EVOLUTION.’

PRINCE KROPOTKIN.

There can be no doubt that species may become greatly modified through the
direct action of environment. I have some excuse for not having formerly
insisted more strongly on this head in my Origin of Species, as most of the best
facts have been observed since its publication.—Darwin, Life and Letters, iii. 232.

When we cast a general glance upon the work accomplished during
the last half century in connection with the theory of evolution, we see
that the question which underlay most of the theoretical discussions
and inspired most of the study of nature and experimental research
was the great fundamental question as to the part played by the direct
action of environment in the evolution of new species. This question
was one of the absorbing thoughts of Darwin in the later years of
his life, and it was one of the chief preoccupations amongst his
followers. f

A mass of researches having been made in this direction, I analyzed
them in a series of articles published in this Review during the last
seven years. Beginning with the evolution of the conceptions of
Darwin himself and most evolutionists about natural selection,” I next
gave an idea of the observations and experiments by which the modi-
fying powers of a changing physical environment were established
beyond doubt.* Then I discussed the attempt made by Weismann to
prove that these changes could not be inherited, and the failure of this
attempt.* And finally I examined the experiments that had been made
to ascertain how far the changes produced by a modified environ-
ment are inherited.’ What we have to do now is to consider the con-
clusions which may be drawn from all these researches and discus-
sions.

Alp

When Darwin was leaving England for a cruise in the Beagle he
was warned by one of his friends that he must not let himself be

1 Reprinted by permission from The Nineteenth Century and After, January, 1919.

2 Nineteenth Century and After, January, 1910.

°“The Direct Action of Environment in Plants,” July, 1910; and ‘‘ The Response of
Animals to their Environment,’ November and December, 1910.

4“ Tnheritance of Acquired Characters: Theoretical Difficulties,’ March, 1912.

5“ Inherited Variations in Plants,’ October, 1914; and “Inherited Variations in
Animals,’’ November, 1915.

409

410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

influenced by what he might see in nature in favor of the variability
of the species. ‘ None of these French theories,” he was told (1
quote from memory), which meant: “ Nothing of the ideas of Buffon,
Lamarck, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, according to whom the direct
action of the ever-changing conditions of life originated the infinite
variety of vegetable and animal forms peopling the globe.”

Darwin carefully observed nature and studied its life, and he felt
the spell of “the French ideas.” And both in 1842, when he wrote
a first sketch of his conceptions about evolution, and in 1859, when
he published his Origin of Species, where he insisted upon the domi-
nating part played in the evolution of new forms by natural selec-
tion, he indicated at the same time the part that is played by the
Buffon-Lamarckian factor—the direct action of environment. Lyell
even reproached him with the “ Lamarckism” of the Origin of Spe-
cies. However, at that time Darwin postponed a thorough discus-
sion of the subject to a work on variation, for which he was collect-
ing materials. Only nine years later he published the first part of
this work; but in the meantime, already in the third edition of the
Origin of Species, he felt pean to introduce important matter deal-
ing with the direct action of environment. His great work on Vari-
ation, as well as the sixth edition of Origin of Species, contained, in
fact, a straightforward recognition of the importance of the environ-
ment factor in the evolution of new species. He did not hesitate to
admit that in certain cases “ definite” and “ cumulative” variation
under the influence of environment could be so effective for origi-
nating new varieties and species adapted to the new environment,
that the réle of natural selection would be quite secondary in these
cases.

The reasons for such a modification of opinion were acknowledged
by Darwin himself. In the fifties there were no works dealing on a
scientific basis with variation in nature; while experimental mor-
phology, although it had been recommended already by Bacon,’ was
called into existence after the appearance of Darwin’s work. Still,
the new data, rapidly accumulated in these two branches of research
after 1859, were such as to convince Darwin of the importance of the
direct action of environment, and he frankly acknowledged it.

Of course he did not abandon the fundamental conception of his
Origin of Species. He continued to maintain that a purely indi-
vidual, accidental variation could supply natural selection with the

1The Foundations of the Origin of Species, a sketch written in 1842. Edited by his
son Francis Darwin. Cambridge, 1909.

2In Sylva Sylvarum (Works, London, 1824, sec. 526) the great founder of inductive
science wrote: “ First, therefore, you must make account, that if you will have one plant
change into another, you must have the nourishment overrule [the inherited dispositions].
* * * You shall do well, therefore, to take marsh herbs and plant them upon tops of
hills and champaigns; and such plants as require much moisture, upon sandy and very
dry grounds. * * * This is the first rule for transmutation of plants.”

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 411

necessary materials for the evolution of new species. But he also
had seriously pondered upon the following question that was raised
by his first great work. Granting all that has been said about the
importance of the struggle for existence—would natural selection be
capable of increasing, or merely accentuating, from generation to
generation a new useful feature, if this feature appeared accident-
ally, in a few individuals only, and was therefore submitted to the
law of all accidental changes? Is it not necessary, for obtaining
a gradual increase of the new character, that some external cause
should be acting in a definite direction for a number of generations
upon the majority of the individuals of a given group and its effects
be transmitted more or less from one generation to the next?

The reply that Darwin gave to this question in 1868 in the revised
(sixth) edition of his Origin of Species was pretty definitely in the
affirmative. He wrote:

It should not, however, be overlooked that certain rather strongly marked
variations, which no one would rank as mere individual variations, frequently
recur, owing to a similar organization being similarly acted on—of which fact
numerous instances could be given with our domestic productions. * * *
There can also be no doubt that the tendency to vary in the same manner has
often been so strong that all individuals of the same species have been similarly
modified without the aid of any form of selection.*

Besides, everyone who will take the trouble (or rather, give him-
self the pleasure) of rereading Variation will see that such a thing
as an indefinite, haphazard variation, even with the aid of natural
selection, hardly had any importance for the great founder of the
theory of evolution at the time when he wrote this last work.2 Over
and over again he repeated in it that variability depended entirely
upon the conditions of life; so that if the latter remained unaltered
for several generations, “there would be no variability, and conse-
quently no scope for the work of natural selection.” And, on the
other hand, where the same variation continually recurs, owing to
“the action of some strongly predisposing cause,” the appearance of
new varieties is rendered possible, independently of natural selec-
tion. In chapter xxiii he gave the facts he was able to collect before
1868, “rendering it probable that climate, food, etc., have acted so
definitely and powerfully on the organization of our domestic pro-
ductions that new subvarieties or races have been thus formed with-
out the selection by man or nature.” Tt is also evident that if Darwin
had had at his disposal the data we have now he would not have
limited his conclusions to domesticated plants and animals. He
would have been able to extend them to variation in free nature.

1 Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 72; the italics are mine.

2 See Variation in Domesticated Animals and Plants, vol. ii, pp. 289, 291, 300, 321, 322,
347, and so on, of the 1905 popular edition of Mr. Murray.

412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.
NUE

For the first 20 or 30 years after the appearance of the Origin
of Species research was chiefly directed to the study of the direct
action of environment as it works in free nature and is made to
work in our experiments. The chief result of these researches was
to prove, first, that there are no such specific characters, either in
plants or in animals, as could not be altered by modifying their
physical conditions of life; and, second, that the variations obtained
experimentally under certain conditions of heat or cold, dryness or
moisture, rich or poor nutrition, and so on, were exactly those which
are characteristic for animals and plants living in the Arctic and
the Torrid Zone, in a dry and in a wet climate, in fertile prairies
and in deserts. It was thus proved that if a species of plants or
animals migrated from a warmer into a cooler region, or from the
seacoast inland, or from a prairie land into a desert, variation itself
amongst the new immigrants, apart from natural selection, would
tend to create a variety representing an adaptation to the new con-
ditions. The same would happen if the climate of a given locality
underwent a change for some physiographical reason. In both cases
natural selection would thus play a quite subordinate part—that of
a “handmaid to variation,” as Hooker wrote in one of his letters
to Darwin. It would have only to weed out the weaklings—those
who would not possess the necessary plasticity for undergoing the
necessary changes in their tissues, their organs, and (with animals)
in their habits.

The researches of those years having shown how the floras and
the faunas of the Arctic barren lands, the Alpine summits, the Afri-
can swamps, the seacoasts, the deserts, and the steppes were adapted
to withstand the climate and the general conditions of life in each
of these surroundings, the first steps were also made, especially by
botanists, to prove that most of these wonderful adaptations could
be reproduced in a short time in our experiments. It was sufficient
for that to rear the plants or the animals in those conditions of
temperature, moisture, light, nourishment, and so on, which prevail
in the different regions of the earth. Hence, already then, especially
for those who were acquainted with nature itself, it appeared most
improbable that the adaptations of plants and animals which we
see in nature should be the results of merely accidental, fortuitous
variations. .

To take one of the simplest instances—we had learned from ex-
periments that when a plant was grown under a glass bell in a very
dry air its leaves soon ceased to develop succulent lobes, and the
ribs of the leaves were turned into spines or prickles. And when
we saw that spiny plants were characteristic of the vegetation of

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 413

dry regions, we could not be persuaded that the unavoidable trans-
formation of leaves into prickles and spines in all plants immigrat-
ing into a desert, or growing in a gradually desiccating region,
should count for nothing in the evolution of spiny species. We
could not believe that all the evolution of the so-called “ adaptive”
structures in deserts, sea borders, Alpine regions, and so on, which
is going on in nature on an immense scale as a physiological result
of the conditions themselves, should leave no trace in the evolution
of the desert, sea-border, and Alpine species; that the adjustments
which are in the individual a direct consequence of the physico-
chemical action of the environment upon its living matter, should
have in the evolution of a species a merely accidental origin.

Already then many biologists took the Lamarckian point of view;
and very soon Darwin himself, after having gained what he con-
sidered to be the main point of his teaching—the variability of
species,! made the next step. He recognized the powers of the direct
action of environment in the evolution of new varieties, and even-
tually new species. The part of natural selection in this case was
to eliminate those individuals which were slow in acquiring the new
adaptive features, and to keep a certain balance in the evolution of
new characters. Its function was thus to give a certain stability
to the new variety. Of course this stability did not mean immuta-
bility. There being no immutable species, it meant only that the
new features would be retained for a certain number of generations,
even if the new variety was placed once more in new surroundings,
or was returned to the old ones.

00k

That changes produced in plants and animals by the direct action
of a changing environment are inherited was not a matter of doubt
for Darwin. He had carefully studied and sifted the experience of
breeders and cultivators, and he found in it ample proofs of such
an inheritance. He was aware, of course, that mutilations are not,
and can not be, inherited as such (this had been known, in fact,
since the eighteenth century) ; but he also knew that characters de-
veloped in a new environment were transmitted to the offspring—if
the modifying cause had acted upon a certain number of generations.
This last limitation was well known to both Lamarck and Darwin
and repeatedly mentioned by them.

Having already discussed in a previous article the teachings of
Weismann, who opposed this view, I shall refer the reader to that
article? and only mention here and further develop one or two of
its points.

1See his Letters. 2 Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1912.

414 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Going back to an early and not generally known work of Weis-
mann, Upon the Final Causes of Transmutations,t I found that the
origin of his teachings was not experimental; it was theological.
In 1876 Weismann was still a Darwinist. His own experiments on
seasonal dimorphism had confirmed the facts discovered by Dorf-
meister concerning the effects of temperature in producing two dif-
ferent races of butterflies, while the experiments that Weismann made
subsequently on mice to prove the nontransmission of a mutilation—
the clipped tail—added absolutely nothing to our previous knowl-
edge. If Weismann had taken the trouble of consulting Darwin’s
Variation before he had written his eighth essay he would have seen
that clipped tails are not inherited, and he would have learned why
such mutilations have little chance of being inherited—embryonal
regeneration—and why their nontransmission did not affect Darwin’s
views upon the inheritance of variations.

It was under the influence of Schopenhauer’s, Hartmenn’s, and °
Karl Baer’s criticisms of the philosophical substance of Darwinism
that Weismann accepted the idea of Baer that evolution without a
teleological guidance from above was an unscientific conception. He
thus came to the conclusion that, although evolution is a mechanical
process, it must have been predetermined by a supreme power in
accordance with a certain plan. And, in order “ to reconcile teleology
with mechanism,” he borrowed from Nigeli and partly from Nuss-
baum the idea of “ continuity ” of the germ plasm; and thus he came
to a Hegelian conception of an “immortal germ plasm ”—‘“ a matter
endowed with an immortal soul.” His hypothesis was thus suggested
by those same considerations, lying outside the domain of science,
that Darwin had had to combat.

In his Essays upon Heredity, written in 1881-1887, Weismann
represented his germ-plasm hypothesis as an outcome of the remark-
able microscopical discoveries made in those years by a number of
well-known anatomists concerning the processes taking place during
and immediately after the fertilization of the egg. But as early as
1897 Prof. Hartog made the quite correct remark that the cardinal
defect of the theory of Weismann was its “ objective baselessness.”

It professes [he wrote] to be founded on the microscopic study of the changes
in the nucleus in ecell division, but there we find nothing to justify the assump-
tion of two modes of nuclear division in the embryo—the one dividing the deter-
minants and the other only distributing them between the daughter cells.”

Later on two of the leading microscopists who took part in the
just-mentioned discoveries, far from giving support to Weismann’s

1“ Teber die letzten Ursachen der Transmutationen,” in Studien zur Descendenztheorie,
Leipzig, 1876, chapter ‘‘ Mechanismus und Teleologie.”’ I don’t know whether there
exists an English translation of this chapter.

2“The Fundamental Principles of Heredity,’ in Natural Science, xi, October and No-
vember, 1897. Reproduced in Professor Marcus Hartog’s Problems of Life and Reproduc-
tion, London, 1918.

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. Ald

contention that no material influences can be transmitted from the
protoplasm of a cell to the germ plasm of its nucleus, distinctly con-
tradicted it.

More than that. The fundamental point of all the hypotheses
brought forward by Weismann was the isolation of the germ plasm
and the impossibility of its being influenced by the changes going on
in the body under the influence of the outer agencies. But the more
we advanced in the study of heredity the more we were brought to
realize the close interdependence of all the organs and tissues of the
living beings—plants and animals alike—and the impossibility of
one of their organs being affected without a disturbance being pro-
duced in all parts of the organism.? We learned from the best
embryologists that the living substance which is the bearer of in-
heritance is not localized in the nucleus of the germ cells, and that
an intercourse of substances between the nucleus and the cell plasm
must be taken as proved.*? Finally, we have now experiments tend-
ing to prove that even unimportant lesions of the body may be fol-
lowed by important modifications in the reproductive cells.*

The difficulties which the hypothesis too hastily framed by Weis-
mann had to contend with when it was confronted with the scientific
observation of nature, and the new hypotheses he brought forward
to meet the rapidly accumulated contradictory facts, were discussed
in my above-mentioned article. Sufficient to say here that, after
having emphatically denied at the outset that his “immortal” germ
plasm could be influenced by external agencies “in the same direction
as that taken by the somatogenic changes (in the body) which fol-
low the same causes”;° and after having maintained that the mix-
ture of two germ plasms in sexual reproduction (that is, amphi-
mixis) was “the only way” that hereditary influences “ could arise

1Oscar Hertwig, Der Kampf um Kernfragen der Entwickelungs- and Vererbungslehre,
Jena, 1909, pp. 44-45 and 107-108. See also Nineteenth Century, March, 1912, p. 520.

*To a review of this question in his capital work, Heredity (London, 1908, p. 64),
Prof. J. Arthur Thomson added the following words: ‘‘ Holding firmly to the view which
we have elsewhere expressed, that life is a function of interrelations, we confess to hesita-
tion in accepting without saving clauses any attempt to call this or that part of the
germinal matter the exclusive vehicle of the hereditary qualities.”

3 Rabl, Ueber Organ-bildende Substanzen und ihre Bedeutung ftir die Vererbung: E.
Godlewski jun., in Roux’s Archiv, vol. xxviii, 1908, pp. 278-378. The connection between
all the cells in plants has been proved by observation, and now it begins to be proved for
animals. The lively intercourse between the cells of the animal’s body by means of the
wandering cells, which was observed during regeneration processes, seems not to be
limited to these processes. The researches of His, Kupffer, Loeb, Roux, and Herbst are
tending to prove that the same cells also take part in the ontogenetic processes. (See
the articles of Herbst in Biologisches Centralblatt, vols. xiv and xv.) As to Nussbaum,
whose work suggested to Weismann the ‘ continuity ’’ of the germ-plasm, his idea is that
the germ cells are exposed to the same modifying agencies as the body cells (Archiv fiir
mikroscopische Anatomie, xviii, 1908, quoted by Prof. Rignano in La transmissibilité des
caractéres acquis, p. 169.) Many other biologists come to the same conclusion.

4 Experiments of Ignaz Schiller on Cyclops and tadpoles; preliminary report in Roux’s
Archiv, xxxiv, pt. 3, pp. 469-470.

5 Essays, ii, 190.

416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

and persist,’? Weismann soon had to abandon his amphimixis
hypothesis (already repudiated long since by Darwin). Gradually
he came to the hypotheses of “ germinal selection,” or struggle for
food between the determinants of the germ plasm, as a probable
cause of inherited modifications, and “ parallel induction.” In these
two hypotheses he thus acknowledged that the germ cells are modi-
fied by external causes, so as to reproduce in the offspring the somatic,
or body changes produced in the parent by the environment. Only
in his second hypothesis he suggested that the germ cells are influ-
enced directly by the external agencies—not through the modifica-
tions produced by the environment in the organs and tissues of
the body. It hardly need be said that most biologists received this
last suggestion not as a new workifg hypothesis but as a veiled con-
cession of Weismann to his opponents. In fact, the hypothesis was
not a generalization born from the study of changes going on in
germ cells under the action of external agencies; it was advocated
only as an hypothetical explanation for the facts that contradicted
the previous hypotheses of Weismann. But till now, “we are told
by the specialists who have studied the subject,” it is impossible to
ascertain in one single concrete case of inheritance how the modifica-
tion was produced in the germ cells—through the body cells or
independently of them.?

Some biologists saw in “parallel induction” an interesting new
line of research, and they followed it. But Darwin, who already
knew this hypothesis long before Weismann resorted to it, pointed
out with full right, in Variation, that although a simultaneous modi-
fication in some definite direction of the body cells and the germ
cells takes place in certain special cases, this can not be a general
cause of the hereditary transmission of variations. Like Amphi-
mixis, this hypothesis does not account for the inherited adaptive
variations, the necessity of which for the evolution of new species
Darwin already saw in 1868, and we still better see now.

In short, Weismann’s attempt to combine the pre-Darwinian con-
ception of innate predetermined variations with the Darwinian
principle of natural selection has failed; and an attentive reader
of his last work, Vortriige zur Descendenztheorie, especially the
pages 258-315 of the second volume, will himself see how little there
remained from that attempt. By his criticisms of some facts, which

1Bssays, i, 196. :

2Cf. L. Plate, Selektionsprinzip, 4th edition, 1913, pp. 441-442. The same view, as it
was pointed out by Prof. Hartog, is held by E. B. Wilson, the author of a standard work
on the cell: ‘‘ Whether the variations [he writes] first arise in the idioplasm [the germ
plasm] of the germ cells, or whether they may arise in the body cells, and then be
reflected back upon the idioplasm, is a question to which the study of the cell has thus
far given no certain answer” (The Cell in Development and Inheritance, 2d edition, 1900,
p. 483, quoted by Marcus Iartog in his work, Problems of Life and Reproduction, London,
Murray, 19138, p. 198, chapter on the inheritance of acquired characters).

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 417

formerly used to be quoted as proots of the inheritance of acquired
characters, he certainly induced biologists to go deeper into the
subject of heredity. But that was all. In his attempts at construc-
tive work he failed. He had not that power of inductive generaliza-
tion which leads modern science to its great discoveries. His
hypotheses were brilliantly and imaginatively developed suggestions,
but they were not brilliant inductive generalizations. They even
lacked originality.
Ei.

However, it may be asked: Why do we not know more cases where
the hereditary transmission of acquired characters has been proved
by experiment? Why have we not yet proofs of acquired characters
being retained for a number of generations, even though the offspring
was taken back to its old environment? These two questions cer-
tainly deserve a careful examination.

The reasons are many. To begin with, it is extremely difficult to
breed plants, and still more so higher animals, in surroundings suf-
ficiently different from the normal ones for altering the distinctive
characters of a species. Especially is it difficult to make animals
reproduce themselves in such conditions. In the best conducted
experiments it happened over and over again that the second genera-
tion, when it was bred in an unusual environment, perished entirely ;
in the best cases only one or two individuals survived.

Besides, it was only gradually learned by the experimenters
that, in order to obtain an inheritable variation, the modifying
cause must act at a certain period of.the individual’s life, when
its reproductive cells are specially sensitive to new impressions.?
And then the experiments require time. While it is very difficult
to breed several generations in succession in unusual conditions,
it is precisely several, or even many generations which must
be under the influence of a modifying cause in order to produce
amore or less stable variation. Lamarck, in stating his two
laws of variation, was careful to indicate that the changes must be
slow, and that they must take place for a succession of generations, 1n
order to be inherited and maintained later on for some time. Darwin
repeatedly insisted upon this. But only now the conditions under
which such experiments must be conducted are beginning to be
realized in special climatic stations and laboratories. Up till quite
lately such experiments were not in favor in most of the west
European universities.

Finally, during the first decades after the appearance of the
Origin of Species, research was chiefly directed, as we have seen,

1 Darwin knew it and mentioned it in several places in Variation; but when the fact
was established by the experiments of Merrifield, Standfuss, and so on, it was received
as a new discovery.

418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

to prove the very fact of a great variability of the species, even
in their typical specific characters—this being denied then by a great
number of zoologists and botanists. And later on a mass of experi-
ments had to be made in order to prove that if plants and animals be
placed in such conditions of temperature, moisture, light, and so on,
as are offered in different regions of the earth, they will display ex-
actly those variations which are characteristic of the floras and faunas
of these regions, without any interference of natural or artificial selec-
tion. Besides, it was important to prove, and it was proved, that
these variations, representing in most cases adaptations to the new
conditions of life, could be produced by the new conditions them-
selves, which stimulate certain physiological functions (nutrition,
evaporation, the elaboration of fats, and so on), and through them
modify different organs."

Only after this immense work had been done—and it took more
than 40 years—did biologists begin to investigate how far such varia-
tion is capable of giving origin to new races, and how many genera-
tions must be submitted to the modifying influences in order to pro-
duce a more or less stable variety.”

It must also be noted that at the outset inheritance experiments
were chiefly made with variations in the colors and the markings of
insects, and only now are they beginning to be directed toward the
far more important study of variations in physiological functions,
which are (as was indicated long since by G. Lewes and Dohrn, and
lately by Plate) the chief agencies in the evolution of new races.

These are the causes which explain why the inheritance of en-
vironment-variations has not yet been proved by more experiments.
However, it must not be forgotten that we know already two im-
portant groups of variations, both due to environment, which are
inherited, and the inheritance of which is not contested. One of them
is the inheritance of variations by means of bud-reproduction, and
the other includes the so-called “sports,” described by de Vries as
“ mutations.”

1 All this has been proved by experiment, and this is why a good-sized book would be
required to record the results obtained lately by Experimental Morphology. Cf. T. H.
Morgan’s Experimental Morphology, New York, 1907; Przibram’s Experimental-Zoologie,
Vienna, 1910; Yves Delage and M. Goldsmith, Les théories de l’évolution, Paris, 1909;
and so on.

“That time was an important element in the problem was emphatically asserted by
both Lamarck and Darwin, and even by Bacon. But there are Weismannians who over-
look it. Thus Lamarck was reproached with having enunciated two contradictory state-
ments in his first and second law. But such a reproach could only be made by overlook-
ing the time that is required to produce the changes. To use Lamarck’s own words, time
is needed ‘ both in gradually fortifying, developing, and increasing an organ which is
active, and in undoing that effect by imperceptibly weakening and deteriorating it, and
diminishing its faculties, if the organ performs no work’”’ (first law). All that the
second law says is, that what has been acquired or lost in this way is transmitted to the
new individuals born from the former; but it says not a word about the length of time
that the new character is going to be maintained, if the new-born individuals are placed
again in new conditions or returned to the old ones. These individuals evidently fall in ,
such case under the action of the slow changes mentioned in the first law.

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 419

With regard to the former I have already mentioned in a previous
article! that Darwin, who had studied the subject, had shown that
there is no means of finding any substantial distinction between re-
production by buds, cuttings, rootstocks, and the like, and reproduc-
tion by seed. The laws of both are the same, and in both cases the
reproduction takes place by means of germ cells, capable of reproduc-
ing the whole plant with its sexual organs and with sexual reproduc-
tion, whether the germ plasm be contained in a seed or a bud, in the
leaf of a begonia, or in the cambial tissue of a willow. And I have
also shown that if Weismann, writing in 1888 under the fascination
of his amphimixis hypothesis, made the grave mistake of thinking
that there is no transmission of germ plasm in vegetative reproduc-
tion, and therefore described “bud-variation” as an “ individual
variation,” he at least saw his error later on. He recognized in
1904.2 using almost the same words as Darwin used in Variation,
that a plant obtained through budding is as much a new individual as
if it had been reproduced by seed.*

But it must be remembered that in the vegetable world reproduc-
tion by buds (rootstocks, runners, and the like) is far more impor-
tant than reproduction by seed. In fact, it seems most probable
that the immense majority of the plants which cover the northern
part of the northern hemisphere have reproduced themselves since
the glacial period chiefly by buds, runners, rootstocks and the like,
as the Arctic and many Alpine plants still reproduce themselves.
And as they transmitted to their offspring, during this long period
of a chiefly vegetative reproduction, the characters they acquired in
new surroundings, as they followed the retreat of the ice sheet, we
can already say that an enormous number of sub-Arctic and Tem-
perate Zone varieties and species owe their origin to the inherited
effect of the direct action of changing surroundings.

It is very nice to say in poetical language that the steppes of south
Russia are covered now with the same individuals of grasses that
were withering under the hoofs of the horses during the migration
of the Ugrians from the southern Urals to Hungary; but a botanist
who knows that a bud on the rootstock of a grass contains the very
same germplasm as the seed in its ear does not take these pretty
images for a scientific induction.

1 Nineteenth Century and After, October, 1914; pp. 821-825.

2 Vortriige, 2d edition, vol. ii, pp. 1 and 29.

8 Weismann is thus no longer responsible fer those who go on repeating his opinions of
1888, when he believed that in vegetative reproduction we have only a subdivision of the
same individual, and added ‘‘ But no one will doubt that one and the same individual can
be gradually changed during the course of its life by the direct action of external influ-
ences.” (Essays, i, 420.)

420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

V.

Much the same must be said about the so-called “ sports,” or inher-
ited variations which seem to appear all of a sudden and have often
given to breeders and growers the possibility of raising new varieties,
or subspecies. Darwin paid them a good deal of attention; and in
1900, when the well-known Dutch botanist de Vries described the
“ sports” under the name of “ mutations,” and saw in them the real
cue to the origin of species, interest in these “ sudden” or “ discon-
tinuous” variations was renewed.

Already in Darwin’s times it had been suggested that the “ sports ”
may represent an important factor in the evolution of new species,
and Darwin had shown the reason why this could not be the case
(it will be mentioned further on). However, developed as it was
by de Vries in a well-written work, rich in original observations,
“the mutations theory ” obtained for some time some success. The
main objection against considering natural selection as nature’s
means of evolving new species being the insignificance of the first
incipient changes in “ continuous” variation, and their little value
in the struggle for life, some biologists saw in the sudden variations,
or “mutations,” the means of getting rid of this objection, without
resorting to the hateful direct action of environment.

De Vries based his theory chiefly on the sports of a well-known
decorative plant, the evening primrose, or Oenothera lamarckiana,
which he found growing wild in a field at Hilversum, near Amster-
dam. It displayed there a number of “sports,” and by cultivating
these sports de Vries obtained a number of new “species.” These
observations led him to build up a new theory of descent. Accord-
ing to it, the variations which Darwin described as “ continuous,” or
“ fluctuating,” have no value for the appearance of a new species—
not only because they are too small for. having a life value in the
struggle for existence, but also because they are not inherited, and
consequently can not be “cumulative.” The sudden “sdiscon-
tinuous” variations (Darwin’s “sports”) are known, on the con-
trary, to be inherited, and they often offer sufficient differences from
the normal type to be of value for natural selection. In artificial
selection they have been the means of obtaining new steady varieties.

In his earlier researches de Vries, who had studied for 15 years
such inherited “monstrosities” as the five-leaved clover, and the
many-headed poppy, had come, in accordance with Prof. J. MacLeod,
to the conclusion that rich nutrition in the wide sense of the word

1 Darwin probably would have described them only as ‘‘ incipient species.’’? Prof. Plate
considers them as habitus modifications. They differ, he says, from the mother plant in
many organs, but in each of them in an insignificant degree.

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 421

(heavy manuring, keeping the seedlings wide apart, and so on) was
the first condition for obtaining such inheritable variations.t But
later on, accepting the teachings of Weismann, he separated the
“nutrition variations,” which, he maintained, were not inheritable,
from the “mutations.” The latter were inherited, because they were
originated by “ congenital” variations, suddenly appearing for some
causes unknown in the germ plasm, at certain periods of the life of
the species. Each species, he said, has such a period, during which
it can give origin to new species.

However, it was soon recognized by most botanists that the value
of the Oenothera sports for a theory of descent had been overesti-
mated. rom accurate researches made in the United States, at
Harlem, and in the environs of Liverpool, it appeared that the
species described as Ocnothera lamarckiana had a long history: it
was cultivated in Europe as early as the middle of the eighteenth
century, and it easily could be a crossing of two other species of the
evening primrose. Hence its great variability.2 Moreover—and
this is an essential point, already noticed by Darwin—a variation is
often described as a “sudden” one simply because the minute
changes which were leading to its appearance were not taken notice
of. In reality, leaving aside those unimportant individual differ-
ences which but feebly affect some organs, Darwin found no sub-
stantial difference between the sports and the inheritable fluctuating
variations due to environment.’ As to the idea that sports might
explain the appearance of new species, Darwin very wisely pointed
out that purely accidental sports could not have played such a part
in the evolution of new species, because they would not offer that
accommodation to environment which can only be supplied by a
definite and cumulative variation under the influence of a new envi-
ronment—this variation being aided by natural selection.

At any rate, those who have seriously studied the whole subject
of evolution and heredity, like Yves Delage, Johannsen, Plate,
and many others, do not now attribute to “mutations” the
importance that was going to be attributed to them a few years

1Cf. Die Mutationstheorie, vol. i, Leipzig, 1901, pp. 93, 97-100, and in fact all the
fourth chapter. Also his earlier articles, L’unité dans la variation and Alimentation et
sélection, summed up in Mutationstheorie.

“Many important data concerning variation in Oenotheras will be found in the mono-
graph of Messrs. D. T. MacDougal, A. M. Vail, and G. H. Shull, Mutation, Variation and
Relationships of Oenotheras, Washington (Carnegie publications), 1907.

8“ Monstrosities graduate so insensibly into mere variations that it is impossible to
separate them” (Variation, ii, 297-298). He considered that “ variability of every kind
is directly or indirectly caused by changed conditions of life” (p. 300); and “of all
causes which induce variability, excess of food, whether or not changed in nature, is
probably the most powerful”’ (p. 302).

136650°—20——28

429 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

ago.t Prof. Ed. Bordage, who has published lately a special study
of the whole question of mutations, also came to a similar con-
clusion.?

Lo begin with, Bordage points out that the Oenothera lamarckiana
is, according to different botanical authorities, a hybrid, either be-
tween Oc. grandiflora and Oe. biennis, both imported to Europe
in the eighteenth century (the former was known at Harlem since
1756), or between different varieties of Oe. biennis, which is a very
variable species.* But even if it was not a hybrid, the evening
primrose has undergone so many changes in the conditions of its
culture during the last 150 years that its present considerable vari-
ability may be a consequence of these changes.

All taken, Prof. Bordage comes to the opinion that a mutation
is not something substantially different from an ordinary variation.
It is only “a sudden external expression of internal processes, accom-
plished gradually and without interruption. * * * Between the
sudden and the slow variation there is no absolute difference. Both
can be considered as the effects of the same law, manifesting them-

selves more or less rapidly.”
fy vel

“ Mutations,” we have just seen, were described as “ congenital vari-
ations.” But every variation of form and structure, once it is in-
herited, implies a “congenital variation.” Some change must have
taken place in the germ cells whatsoever the origin of the variation
or the position of the germ cells in the organism may be. We learn,
it is true, from the experiments of MacDougal and Tower that cer-
tain inheritable changes may be obtained by a direct action of ex-
ternal agencies (temperature and so on) upon the germ cells. Of
course, they may. But nobody has yet proved that changes produced
in the body cells can not affect the germ cells, while modern research
tends to prove quite the contrary.

Consequently, we are not astonished to learn that de Vries, having
recognized in his last work, Gruppenweise Artbildung, that every

1Thus, fully recognizing that ‘‘de Vries has established in the domain of heredity a
mass of facts, the theoretical value of which still remains in some respects to be estab-
lished by further research,’ Prof. Plate, in analyzing the mutation theory in his monu-
mental critical work (Selektionsprinzip, pp. 384-485), wrote: ‘‘ The mutation theory
obtained an apparent temporary success because it introduced new words for well-known
facts and conceptions, and thus awakened the idea that a new knowledge had been won.
It is evident that for the theory of descent no real progress in advance of Darwin had
been won in that direction.’’ In another very elaborate work, Vererbungslehre (vol. ii, of
his Handbiicher der Abstammungslehre, Leipzig, 19138, pp. 480-475), Plate returned once
more to this subject, and after a careful examination of the whole question (including
Mendelism) he worded his final conclusion as follows: ‘‘ Those thoughts in it [the
mutations theory] which are correct are not new, and its new components can not be
accepted” (p. 473).

2 Tes nouveaux probléms de l’hérédité: la théorie de la mutation,” in Biologica, ii,
1912.

2The latter is the opinion of Mr. Boulenger, an authority on the subject; and the
former is the view taken by Davy and several other botanists,

°

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 4238

mutation must have “not only an inner cause, but also an exterior
cause,” and that the high variability of the Oenotheras must be “ to
some extent a consequence of the special conditions of the soil,” !
has thus given a hard blow to the idea of a fundamental distinction
between “mutations” and ordinary variation. Both are inherited,
the difference being only one of degree in the modifying cause.

It may be added that Erwin Baur, who also has carefully studied
the subject, comes to a similar conclusion in his Introduction to the
Experimental Theory of Heredity. As a rule (he writes) muta-
tions are rare (one in a thousand individuals, or less) ; and “ what
are their causes in most cases we don’t know.” Only lately experi-
ments were made showing that mutations (i. e., inheritable variations)
can be provoked by exterior influences, depending on our will, Such
are the experiments on the Colorado beetle made by Tower, who
used high temperatures, dryness of the air, and low atmospheric
pressure, those of Blaringhem, who provoked inherited variations
by mutilations of plants, and MacDougal, who acted directly on
the reproductive cells.?

Finally we learn from another most careful and gifted experi-
menter, Professor Klebs, that those characters of a plant which
belong to the most constant ones under the ordinary conditions of
culture can become most variable under properly chosen conditions;
and that both the so-called continuous and the discontinuous varia-
tions (the mutations) can be obtained in the same individual, accord-
ing to the external conditions into which it is placed.*

The consensus of opinion is thus against attributing to mutations
an origin quite different from the origin of habitus variations. But
once it is so, we have in the so-called “ mutations” another vast cate-
gory of characters “acquired” under the influence of a changed nutri-
tion in a new environment, and inherited.* And these two vast cate-

1De Vries, Gruppenweise Artbildung, pp. 342-343; also Species and Varieties: their
Origin by Mutations, Lectures before the University of California, edited by D. T.
MacDougal, Chicago, 1906, p. 451.

2Erwin Baur, Einfiihrung in die experimentelle Vererbungslehre, Berlin, 1911, pp.
202-204. In a recently published work by R. Ruggles Gates, The Mutation Factor in
Evolution, with particular reference to Oenothera (London, 1915), we have an important
contribution to this subject. Its chief interest is in the researches made by the author
to discover the changes which take place in the germ cells when an inherited variation
takes place in the extremely variable complexus of species and varieties represented by
the Oenothera. These researches have not yet brought the author to a definite conclu-
sion as to the causes of mutations (p. 321); but they open an interesting branch of
investigations in the great question of heredity.

3“Studien tiber Variation,’ in Roux’s Archiv, vol. xxiv, pp. 29-113; review in Année
biologique, xiv, p. 357.

4 With all the respect I have for the always most accurate work of Prof. J. Arthur
Thomson, I confess that, whatever his other reasons in favor of discontinuous variation
may be, the facts he mentions in Heredity (London, 1908, pp. 86-89) hardly prove that
“variation leads by leaps and bounds.’’ The very words with which Prof. Thomson
accompanies, with his habitual fairness, each of the examples he mentions; suggest that
there is no reason to affirm and some reason to doubt that the new characters appeared
suddenly. About the wonder horse with an extremely long mane we are told that ‘“ the
parents and grandparents had unusually long hair’’; about the Shirley poppy, that the
“single discontinuous variation ”’ from which it was obtained ‘‘may have occurred often
before Mr. Wilks saved it from elimination ’’; but no reason is given to suggest that it
was a “sudden ”’ variation; the same applies to the star primrose, the moth Amphidasys,
and the medusoid Pseudoclitia pentata, which is said to be ‘‘ remarkably yariable.”

424 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

gories immensely reduce the part that natural selection may have to
play in the evolution of new species. With this reduced function it
becomes quite comprehensible. F

Vids

The dominating tendency of modern research is thus to come to a
synthesis of the two chief factors of evolution—the Buffon-Lamare-
kian factor, including the variations called forth by a changing env1-
ronment, and the Darwin-Wallacian factor of natural selection. Dar-
win, as we saw, frankly acknowledged it.

Herbert Spencer had already come to this conclusion, only giving
even more importance to the first factor:

The foregoing chapters, he wrote, in the second enlarged edition of his
principles of Biology, imply that neither extreme (i. e., natural selection alone,
or the direct action of environment without the aid of natural selection) is here
adopted. Agreeing with Mr. Darwin that both factors have been operative, I
hold that the inheritance of functionally caused alterations has played a larger
part than he admitted even at the close of his life; and that, coming more to the
front as evolution has advanced, it has played the chief part in producing the
highest types.

Tt is most interesting to note that Weismann, although his starting
point was quite different from that of Darwin and Spencer, also came,
after all, to the same views. He began by proclaiming the “ all-
sufficiency of natural selection” for giving origin to new species, and
rejected the necessity of inheritable adaptive changes being produced
by the environment. But we saw how he gradually came to new
hypotheses, which actually recognized the part played in the evolu-
tion of new species by inherited variation.

Pages could be covered to show how biologists engaged in experi-
mental work came, after some hesitation, to recognize the modifying
influence of environment. But a few quotations will do to show the
general tendency of modern research.

Standfuss has summed up the results of his 24 years’ experiments
in a carefully worded lecture. He sees in the predominance of an
older type upon a newly appearing variation the key to the difficulty
of a transmission of acquired characters to the offspring. The grip
of the old stirp—of what has become strongly established during a
succession of generations—can not, Standfuss says, be easily over-
powered by the new (a view, by the way, expressed already by Bacon).
And after having proved by his experiments that sometimes the new
is inherited, Standfuss concludes his lecture with these words:

The mutual interaction between the agencies of the outer world and the
organisms gives origin to fluctuating (schwankenden) new forms; they are

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 495

inherited more or less, then they are sifted by selection, and kept by it within
definite lines of development.*

Wettstein, who has been experimenting for years upon the modifi-
cation of plants by exterior agencies, openly accepts the hereditary
transmission of acquired characters in his Handbook of Systematical
Botany. He writes:

In the immense majority of cases adaptive characters are originated by the
so-called “ direct adaptation ”; in other words, we must recognize in the plant
the faculty of adapting itself directly to the prevailing conditions of life and
inheriting these acquired adaptation characters.’

J. P. Lotsy, the author of a well-known elaborate work on the
theories of descent, comes to the conclusion that—
unless we accept a vis vitalis (a life force) which, after all, would explain
nothing, it is impossible to find another reason for the origin of variations but
the influence of the external conditions on the substance of the protoplasm, and
without an inheritance of the acquired variation, or character, there is no
reason for its being fixed. If one absolutely denies the possibility of biometa-
morphoses (variations due to environment) being inherited, this means to
deny evolution itself.*

D. T. MacDougal, after having analyzed the work of Buchanan,
Gages, Klebs, Zederbaum, and de Vries, finds that their discoveries,
coupled with his own and other botanists’ work at the Desert Bo-
tanical Laboratory in the United States and elsewhere, enforce upon
us the conclusion that structural changes and implied functional
accommodations are without doubt direct somatic responses, which
became fixed and permanent in consequence of their annual repeti-
tion through the centuries. W. Johannsen, whose main work, Ele-
ments of the Exact Science of Heredity,’ is held in high esteem by
biologists of all schools, comes, in one of his latest writings, to the
conclusion that without inherited variations “selection: would have
no hereditary influence.”® And so on.

Weer

The idea of natural selection apparently did not occur to Lamarck,
although several passages in his works suggest that he had noticed
the struggle for existence. As to the modern Lamarckians, while
nearly all of them indicate the limitations of natural selection, they

1M. Standfuss, “ Zur Frage der Gestaltung und Vererbung,”’ lecture before the Zurich
Naturalists’ Society, in January, 1902. Zurich, 1905 (separate reprint).

2Handbuch der systematischen Botanik, Vienna, 1901 seq. I quote from Adolph
Wagner’s Geschichte des Lamarckismus, Stuttgart, 1909, p. 215.

3 Vorlesungen tiber Descendenztheorien, vol. ii, Jena, 1908.

4“ The Inheritance of Habitat Effects in Plants,” in Plant World, xiv, 1911; analyzed
in Botanisches Centralblatt, Bd. cxxii, 19138, p. 134.

5 Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre, Jena, 1909, pp. 308, 449, ete.

6“ The Genotype Conception of Heredity”? in American Naturalist, xlvy, 1911, quoted
by Semon in Verhandlungen des Naturforschers-Verein in Briinn, vol. Ixix.

426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

do not exclude its action from their schemes of evolution. They only
object to the exaggerated part attributed to it by those whose concep-
tions of descent are influenced by their sociological or supernatural
consideration, and they understand that natural selection surely gives
stability to the effects of the direct action of environment. Most of
them also recognize that by the side of these two main factors of
evolution one must take into consideration the two aspects—indi-
vidual and social—of the struggle for life, the development of pro-
tective instincts in the higher animals, and the effects of use and dis-
use of organs, crossing, and the occasional appearance of more or less
sudden variations—all these having their part in the evolution of the
unfathomable variety of organic forms.

Among the modern biologists, Prof. Plate has perhaps best un-
derstood the necessity of a synthetic view of the factors of evolution,
which he has developed in his elaborate work, now known under
the title of “Selektionsprinzip.” He examined first in detail the
scope and the possibilities of natural selection under the different
forms of the struggle for life, and after having shown that natural
selection steps in where the Lamarckian direct adaptation fails, and
that single-handed it would not be sufficient to solve the problem of
the origin of species, Prof. Plate sums up his opinions in the fol-
lowing lines which, in the present writer’s opinion, are a fair state-
ment of the case:

The only real difficulty for Darwinism is [he writes] that the variations must
attain a certain amplitude before they are “ selection-worth”; that is, before
they give to selection the opportunity to step in. Minimal individual differ-
ences can call forth no selection. However, I have shown already at some
length (pp. 109-179) that after a careful study of the problem this difficulty
proves to be illusory, because, on the one hand, it is impossible to deny that
there are variations worthy of being selected,* and, on the other hand, there are
in nature different ways for increasing the minimal differences, so that they
do become worthy of selection. Of these different ways, the modification of
functions, the changes in the conditions of life, use and disuse, and orthogenesis
enter into the category of the factors indicated by Lamarck, and therefore the
selection theory can not refuse the collaboration of the Lamarckian factors.
Darwinism and Lamarckism,” taken together, give a satisfactory explanation of
the growing up of species, including the origin of adaptations, while neither of
these two theories, taken separately, gives it. (Selektionsprinzip, pp. 602-603.)

Let me only add, to avoid misunderstandings, that the Lamarckism
of which I have spoken in these pages and which Plate has in view in
the just given quotation means the teachings of Lamarck as they
appeared in his Philosophie zoologique, his remarkable Discours
d’ouverture de l’an X et de l’an XI, delivered at the Academy of

1QOne must, however, ask whether such sudden variations appear in sufficient num-
bers.—P. K.

2“T mean, of course [he added in a footnote], only the causal-mechanical part of
Lamarckism, not its autogenetical and psychical ideas.’’ See pp. 501, 504.

ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION—KROPOTKIN. 427

Sciences at Paris, and his Systeme analytique des connaissances posi-
tives de Vhomme, of which the last two are entirely ignored in this
country and the first is frequently misquoted. These teachings show
that Lamarck had not the least leaning towards a metaphysical
Natur Philosophie and they have nothing to do with the vitalist and
other theories of the German Neo-Lamarckians, of whom Francé (a
distinguished botanist) and Dr. Adolph Wagner are prominent
representatives.”

A synthesis of the views of Darwin and Lamarck, or rather of
natural selection and the direct action of environment, described
by Spencer as direct and indirect adaptation, was thus the necessary
outcome of the researches in biology which have been carried
on for the last 30 or 40 years. If considerations lying outside the
true domain of biology, such as those which inspire the neo-Lemarck-
ians and inspired Weismann, cease to interfere, a synthetic view of
evolution (in which natural selection will be understood as a struggle
for life carried on under both its individual and its still more im-
portant social aspect) will probably rally most biologists. And if
this really takes place, then it will be easy to free ourselves from the
reproach which has been addressed to nineteenth-century science—
the reproach that while it has aided men to liberate themselves from
superstitions, it has ignored those aspects of nature which ought to
have been, in a naturalistic conception of the universe, the very
foundations of human ethics, and of which Bacon and Darwin
have already had a glimpse.?

Unfortunately the vulgarisers of the teachings of Darwin, speak-
ing in the name of science, have succeeded in eliminating this deeply
philosophical idea from the naturalistic conception of the universe
worked out in the nineteenth century. They have succeeded in
persuading men that the last word of science was a pitiless individ-
ual struggle for life. But the prominence which is now beginning
to be given to the direct action of environment in the evolution of
species, by eliminating the Malthusian idea about the necessity of
a competition to the knife between all the individuals of a species
for evolving new species, opens the way for a quite different com-
prehension of the struggle for life, and of nature altogether.

1See R. H. Francé, Der heutige Stand der Darwin’schen Fragen, Leipzig, 1907; and
Dr. Adolf Wagner, Geschichte des Lamarckismus, Stuttgart, 1909.
2 Cf. ‘‘The Morality of Nature,’ in Nineteenth Century, March, 1905.

ON THE LAW OF IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION.’

By BRANISLAV PETRONIEVICS, PH. D.
’

Louis Dollo, the great Belgian paleontologist, first publicly for-
mulated in 1893 (Dollo, 4) his famous law of irreversible evolution,
one of the most important laws of the evolution of organized beings.’
This law has often been debated and applied, but I do not know
that anyone has attempted to set it forth, basing his exposition on
Dollo’s own works. This is what I propose to do here, adding to
my account some critical remarks on the value of the law in ques-
tion.

The law of irreversible evolution was stated by Dollo as follows:

An organism can not return even in part to a previous condition already
passed through [déja réalizé] in the series of its ancestors. (Dollo, 4 p. 165.)°

It is usually supposed that the law thus expressed applies only
to parts and organs which are reduced or eliminated; but this is
not correct. The law is much wider in its application, covering
functional organs as well. In order to understand more clearly the
far-reaching nature of Dollo’s law we must make certain distinc-
tions in the concept of organic evolution and give some definitions
of them.

Organic evolution may be, as we know, progressive, regressive,
and mixed.* If, during mixed evolution (which is the most wide-

1 Translated, with permission, by Gerrit S. Miller, jr., from Science Progress, January,
1919.

* He previously stated this law in 1892, in his Cours autographié, etc. (Dollo, 1), the
same year in a note which appeared in the Bulletin de la soe. belge de Géol., ete. (Dollo,
2) and in an article which appeared in A. Giard’s Bulletin scientifique de la France et
de la Belgique (Dollo, 3).

’ Later, Dollo expressed his law with greater exactitude:

“An organism never exactly renews a previous condition, even if it finds itself placed
in an environment identical with one through which it has passed. But, by virtue of the
indestructibility of the past, it always retains some trace of the intermediate stages which
it has traversed.” Dollo 17, p. 107, and 10, p. 443.) Let us note that Dollo definitely
admits the reversibility of conditions of existence: ‘‘ Evolution is irreversible as regards
the structure of organisms * * *, but reversible as regards environment (Ethology).”
(Dollo, 7, p. 15.)

*In my course of independent lectures (on universal evolution) given at the Sorbonne
this year, which will later be published, I have defined evolution in general as follows:
“ Evolution is a thing’s coming into being by successive stages of change.’ When each
successive stage of the evolutionary process contains something more than the preceding
Stage, evolution is progressive ; it is regressive when each successive stage contains some-
thing less than the preceding. Evolution is mixed when in an evolving whole one part
evolves progressively and the other regressively.

429

430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

spread type in the domain of organic evolution) progression pre-
dominates, or, to put it in another way, if the final condition reached
represents progress in comparison with the initial condition, we then
shall call such a mixed evolution “ascending evolution,” and of
this process the extreme type is represented by pure progressive
evolution with or without the addition of new parts. But if, in
mixed evolution, regression predominates, or, in other words, if the
final condition reached is a regress in comparison with the initial
condition, we shall call mixed evolution of this kind “ descending
evolution,” pure regressive evolution evidently representing the ex-
treme type of such a process. The foot of the horse, made of a
single digit, which has come from a pentadactyle foot by the
atrophy of the lateral digits and the great increase of the median
digit, is the best-known example of ascending mixed evolution, while
the skull of the living Ceratodus, in comparison with that of Dip-
terus, its probable Devonian ancestor, presents an example of de-
scending mixed evolution.

Taking into consideration on the one hand, the definitions which
we have just made, and, on the other, the examples cited beyond,
which Dollo brought forward in favor of his law, we ought to sep-
arate the cases of ascending evolution from those of descending
evolution, something which Dollo himself did not do. Clearly,
if the structure of an organ or if the parts of an organ are lost
through descending evolution, and if it is not possible, as is almost
unanimously agreed, to replace the lost structure or parts, 1t does not
at all follow—at least 4 priori—that a reversal of evolution would
not be possible in the contrary case; that is, when the structure of
an organ has been lost by the ascending evolution of this organ.

We should therefore replace Dollo’s single law by three different
laws, one of which, the first and most fundamental, will express the
impossibility of a reacquisition of lost parts, the second of which
will apply to the cases in which the original structure of an organ
has been lost by ascending evolution, and the third to the cases in
which the structure has been lost by descending evolution.

These three laws are as follows:

1. Organs and parts of organs reduced or lost through regressive
evolution can not be regained by a new progressive evolution.’

2. If the original structure of an organ has been lost through
ascending evolution (with or without the addition of new parts)
the original structure can not be regained:

(a) By the reacquisition of the lost parts, this reacquisition being
impossible according to the first law.

1Tor the first law, see Dollo, 7, p. 5 (the lost interclavicle of Dermochelys), Dollo, 9,
p. 130 (the atrophied pineal eye of Plioplatecarpus), and Dollo, 16, remark 2, p. 400.

IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 431

(6) By the regressive evolution of the new parts, the total disap-
pearance of these parts being impossible.

(c) By the ascending evolution of these new parts in a new direc-
tion.

3. If the original structure of an organ has been lost through de-
scending evolution (with or without the loss of parts), this original
structure can not be regained:

(i) By the reacquisition and progressive evolution of the lost
parts, this reacquisition being impossible according to the first law.

(11) By the ascending evolution of the nonreduced parts in a new
direction.

(ii) By the ascending evolution of altogether new parts.

ji oS

The various cases falling under these three laws we wish now to
explain by examples found in the writings of Dollo.

Tor the first law examples are very numerous. The birds lost their
teeth during the Cretaceous period; no subsequent bird has been
able to regain these lost parts. The mandible of mammals consists
of a single piece homologous with the dentary part of its reptilian
ancestors; no mammal has been able to regain the lost other parts
of the reptilian jaw, etc.

But the examples that especially demonstrate the validity of the
first law are those in which the return to ancestral conditions would
necessitate the reappearance of parts which an organism has lost.
As these examples are at the same time illustrations of the two
other laws we shall deal with them in connection with these laws.

The best-known example of the first alternative under the second
law is the pseudo dentition of Odontopteryx, an Eocene fossil bird.
Instead of the true teeth that have been lost, Odontopteryx has the
margin of the beak and of the lower mandible dentate like a saw.

The most striking example of the second alternative under the
second law is the pelvis of Triceratops. The dinosaurian ancestors
of Triceratops had become adapted to bipedal life, and therefore
were possessed of a very long and very narrow ischium and of a
pubis provided with a postpubis which was similarly very long and
very narrow (Dollo, 10, p. 444). In its secondary adaptation to
quadrupedal life Triceratops was not able morphologically to regain
the triardiate pelvis of its far-distant quadrupedal ancestors, for it
has retained traces of the bipedal phase in the rudimentary post-
pubis and in the narrow, recurved ischium. That is to say, the post-
pubis, the new structure acquired during bipedal life, could not
totally disappear, and the new form of the ischium could not dis-
appear either (Dollo, 10, p. 446).

The most important and most obvious example of the third alterna-
tive under the second law is also found in a dinosaur, nearly related

432 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

to the preceding, Stegosaurus. This animal had for its immediate
ancestors bipeds like the ancestors of Triceratops, and, like Tricera-
tops, it became readapted to quadrupedal life. But while the tri-
radiate pelvis of its far-away quadrupedal ancestors has been physio-
logically reestablished through regressive evolution (atrophy) of
the postpubis and ischium in Triceratops (Dello, 1. c. p. 446) these
parts have evolved in a new direction in Stegosaurus. Here the
ischium becomes shortened and flattened ; the postpubis does the same
and moreover applies itself closely along the ventral margin of the
ischium. But morphologically there is here no return to the former
triradiate condition of the pelvis, since the ischium has kept some
trace of the form which it acquired in the biped phase, and the pos-
terior branch of the pelvis is no longer formed by the ischium alone
but by the ischio-postpubie complex. While evolving in the new
direction the postpubis has thus changed in function (Dollo, 1. ¢. p.
447).

We find an illustration of the first alternative of the third law in
the evolution of the arms in the Octopods. These animals in adapt-
ing themselves to bottom sea life have lost a pair of arms (the tentac-
ular arms) possessed by their immediate ancestors the heteropod de-
-capods. They have thus become isopods again (excepting the pecu-
liar case of the Argonaute, and the hectocotylisation of one of its
arms) like their distant ancestors the Belemnoteuthids (isopod de-
capods) without having been able to regain the same number of arms
(see Dollo, 17, pp. 115-116) .*

The best illustration for the second alternative of the third law is
the foot of Dendrolagus, an arboreal Kangaroo. The structure of
the foot in the saltatorial Macropodidae—the predominance of the
fourth toe, the syndactylism of the second and third, the reduction of
the fifth and the complete disappearance of the great toe—shows us
that their immediate ancestors were arboreal. In Dendrolagus, a
Macropodid which has again become arboreal, the opposable great
toe, completely atrophied in its immediate ancestors the terrestrial
kangaroos, was not able to reappear. But the unreduced parts of
the foot have undergone an ascending evolution in a new direction.
While the metatarsals and the phalanges have diminished in length,
the phalanges and claws have become lengthened and the claws have
at the same time become curved. Thus the foot of Dendrolagus has
not been able to return to the structure of the foot of its distant

1A still more convincing instance would be the secondary steganocephaly of the che-
lonians. This steganocephaly differs from the primary steganocephaly of the ancestral
steganocephalous amphibians in that the postorbital, the supratemporal, and the epiotic
do not reappear in the cranial vault when once lost (see Dollo, 19, p. 59). But the
secondary steganocephaly of the chelonians, although very probable (see especially the
recent note by G. A. Boulenger, “ Sur la place des Chéloniens dans la classification” in
Comptes rendus, vol. 167, 1918, p. 514), is not yet beyond doubt. See D. M. 8S. Watsen,
Eunotosaurus africanus, in Proce. Zool. Soc., London, 1917, p. 1011.

IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 433

ancestors, which possessed an opposable great toe, syndactyly of the
second and third toes, dominant fourth toe, and reduced claws. (See
Dollo, 6, pp. 194 and 199.)

Finally, for the third alternative of the third law we have an
illustration in the secondary carapace and plastron of the turtle
Dermochelys. The distant ancestors of this turtle were, like it, sea-
turtles; its reduced primary plastron (a ring formed of four pieces)
and its still more reduced primary carapace (represented by the
nuchal plate alone) bear witness to the fact. When adapting them-
selves to littoral life the imimediate ancestors of Dermochelys reac-
quired a carapace and a plastron, but this carapace and plastron are
entirely new structures of superficial dermal origin. Readapting
itself to marine life Dermochelys has preserved: this carapace and
plastron of its immediate ancestors, although both are already much
reduced. (See Dollo, 7, pp. 9-14.)

ETE,

The importance of the law of irreversible evolution is multiple.
In-the first place, this law has a phylogenetic application, that is, it
places us in position to reconstruct, with the often insufficient
paleontological material which we possess, phylogenetic series which,
if they are not true series are at least series which represent indubi-
table evolutionary stages. Its ethological application is yet more
considerable. It is often the only means of determining the con-
ditions of existence and the method of adaptation to life of fossil
organisms. But sometimes this law has a morphological importance
also, because by using it we can distinguish homologies from mere
analogies. Finally Dollo has shown that it can act also as a guide
in classification, that it therefore has a systematic application.

The most important phylogenetic application of the law was made
by Dollo in the difficult question of the phylogeny of the Dipnoi.
Dollo’s very ingenious paper on this subject (Dollo, 5) should be
considered a model presentation of the philosophic point of view
in the new paleontology. Before Dollo this subject was in a truly
chaotic state, one of the most eminent paleontologists having de-
clared Dipterus, the oldest and most primitive type, to be the most
specialized.t_ Nowhere else has the conception of the irreversibility
of evolution given such brilliant results. Since this conception ex-
presses the idea that we never fully return to an ancestral structure
it can be used to determine whether a particular condition is primary
or secondary. Consequently it can be used to decide upon the direc-
tion of evolution when we have a series containing a suflicient num-

1See A. S. Woodward, Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum, pt. 2,
1891, p. XX. But aiter Dollo published his important memoir Woodward accepted his
conclusions. See his presidential address to the Section of Geology, in Nature, yol, 81,
1909, p. 292 (and Dollo, 16, rem. 2, p. 387).

434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ber of terms intermediate between the extremes (Dollo, 5, p. 977).
Just such a series we possess in the paleontological series of the
Dipnoi: Dipterus valenciennesi, Dipterus macropterus, Scaumen-
acia, Phaneropleuron, Uronemus, Ctenodus, Ceratodus, Protopterus,
Lepidosiren (l. ¢., p. 88). Dollo shows that the structure of the
tail as well as that of the top of the head, the squamation, the pugu-
lar plates, the opercular apparatus, the ganoin, and the ossification
of the mandible, the suborbital band—all this proves that the course
of evolution has been in the direction from Dipterus to Ceratodus.
and not the opposite (1. c., p. 89-97). Itis especially by the struc-
ture of the tail that the concept of irreversibility is illustrated. In
a long and thorough treatment of the subject Dollo shows (1. ¢.,
pp. 89-97) that the diphycercal tail of the Dipnoi (and of the other
known ancient and modern fishes) is a secondary diphycercal tail
whose morphological value in the Dipnoi (the second dorsal fin, the
second anal fin) is not equivalent to the morphological value of the
primitive diphycercal tail (caudal fin). In this secondary diphy-
cercal condition there is therefore no return to the primitive
structure.

The most important other cases of phylogeny which Dollo has
considered are the phylogeny of the sirenians (Dollo 3, p. 119), the
phylogeny of the Leather-backed turtle (Dollo, 7, p. 9), and the
phylogeny of the Holocephah (Dollo, 13, p. 107).

One of the most important cases with regard to the ethological
application of the law of irreversibility is found in the memoir on
the Dipnoi. If it be assumed that Dipterus comes from Ceratodus,
as the latter is an adaptation to life in turbid water, it would be
necessary to suppose either that Dipterus represents an adaptation
to life in mud (excessively turbid water), or else that it represents
a return to life in clear water. The first alternative being that of
Lepidosiren, the second is the only one which remains open for dis-
cussion (Dollo, 5, p. 99). But, putting aside paleontological and
purely ethological reasons, the law of irreversibility is sharply op-
posed to such a view.

“Would the lost ganoin return? Would the cephalic shield resolve itself
into its ancestral elements? Would the suborbital band with its ossicles in
varying number become once more a solid arch? Would the opercular appa-
ratus resume its original dimensions? Would the vanished jugular plates re-
appear?” As all of these structures are reduced in Ceratodus (1. ¢., p. 100),
Dipterus can only represent a primary adaptation to life in clear water, that
is to say it is purely a fish (‘the most pisciform of Dipnoi,” 1. ¢., p. 101).

1 Discussing the subject of the phylogeny of the Holocephali (Dollo, 13, pp. 107-108),
Dollo says: ‘‘ The idea of the irreversibility of evolution, which has led me to the results
that I have just demonstrated, has once more shown its usefulness. Without it one would
be led to assert that specialized organisms could become primitive again and then once
more specialize themselves in the same or another direction. Such an assumption, unless
supported by absolutely complete paleontological series—which we are far from possess-
ing—would destroy all possibility of discovering phylogeny, the main object of mor-
phology.”

IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 435

Another important instance of the ethological application is fur-
nished by the bipedal habits of the immediate ancestors of Stego-
saurus and Triceratops.

If evolution were reversible these two dinosaurs would have exactly regained
their former quadrupedal structure, and there would have been no way to dis-
tinguish their secondary quadrupedal existence from the first (Dollo, 10, p. 448).

The other most important cases of ethological application are: The
secondary adaptation to the swimming sea life of the Pycnodonts
(Dollo, 17, pp. 108-9), the secondary adaptation to the swimming sea
life of the Trilobites Dephon and Aeglina (Dollo 16, pp. 410 and
412), ete.

Among the instances of the morphological application of the law,
that of the secondary abdominal ventral fins in the teleosts has a spe-
cial importance. As is known, the ventrals of teleosts may be either
abdominal or thoracic or jugular. But among the abdominal ventrals
we have two types—those which have no connection whatever with
the pectoral girdle, and those joined to the clavicular symphysis by
a ligament. As there is no reason for the presence of this ligament
in situ we have to conclude that it is the degenerate remnant of a
former direct connection with the pectoral girdle. In conformity
with the irreversibility of evolution the ventrals in again becoming
abdominal have kept the connection with the clavicular symphysis
which they acquired when occupying a thoracic or jugular position
(Dollo, 14, p. 139).

The other important instances of the morphological application
of the law are: (1) The very anteriorly placed choanae of the sea
turtles (Dollo, 8, pp. 817-820), (2) the longirostral and brevirostral
condition in Crocodilians (Dollo, 12, p. 85), ete.

Finally, we must mention the one instance in which Dollo has
used his law in systematic work—the Ptyctodonts. Before Dollo
these fossil fishes, then known from their dental plates only, had been
placed among the Holocephali. In his important memoir on this
subject (Dollo, 13) Dollo showed that, by virtue of the law of ir-
reversible evolution, the Ptyctodonts can not be regarded as Holo-
cephali and that they ought to be treated as Arthroderes. Since
then Dollo’s conclusion has been wholly confirmed.

Although the empiric evidence for the validity of his law has been
abundant and varied, Dollo was not satisfied with such a wholly
empiric demonstration. He has attempted to give a deductive dem-
onstration as well. He says:

The Irreversibility of Evolution is not, as many have believed it to be,
merely an empiric law based purely on facts of observation. But it has deep-
seated causes which carry it in final analysis to a question of probabilities,
as in the case of the other laws of nature. Evolution being a summation of
exactly determined individual variations in an exactly determined order, to
have it reversible would be to admit the possibilty of the intervention of
causes exactly the inverse of those which produced and fixed the individual
yariations from which the first transformation arose, and in an exactly inverse

436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

order—circumstances too complex for it to be imagined that they are ever
realized. (Dollo, 19, p. 59, rem.; see also Dollo, 3, p. 127.)

And, when speaking of the impossibility of the descent of Dip-
terus from Ceratodus (Dollo, 5, p. 100, the passage referred to
above) he says:

And let it be noted that it is here a question not of one isolated character,
but of a whole group of characters, something that is much more serious so
far as irreversibility is concerned * * * But it is particularly in its
action on elements as multiple as these that we can affirm with certainty that
evolution is not reversible (1. ¢. rem. 72, p. 122).

The irreversibility of evolution becomes, therefore, according to
Dollo, the more probable as the number of elements increases, and
it is practically a necessity when the number of elements is con-
siderable.

AV.

Having explained the law of irreversible evolution, the various
cases which it makes clear, also its applications, and its logical
basis, we now wish to make some critical remarks on the various
aspects of the law.

In the first place, its logical basis. The deductive demonstration
of his law, attempted by Dollo, is very doubtful. As to the number
of elements on which evolution acts, it is not a question of cells,
but of organs and parts of organs (because it is only these last
which have their peculiarities determined in the germ), and the
number of these organs and parts is not relatively great even in the
most complex organism. But, if we consider the much greater
number of individuals in which the organs and parts of organs show
individual variations, the chance that they will vary in different
directions and consequently also in inverse directions becomes pos-
sible. It is only if we assert that individual variations are rela-
tively not very numerous—predetermined—that this course of rea-
soning founded on pure probability becomes weak. In that case,
however, the law of irreversible evolution is not the result of nu-
merical probability, but the result of unknown internal causes of
organic evolution.

There is, therefore, no logical necessity in the law of irreversible
evolution, and this law remains a purely empirical rule. Let us
now see how much the three laws of this evolution are confirmed by
experience, and to what extent we should expect possible exceptions.

As to the first law,! this law appears to be without exceptions so
far as it applies to lost organs and parts. For the loss of an organ
or of a part having become final by the loss of the corresponding
tendency in the germ, it is almost impossible to imagine the reap-
pearance of this tendency, bearing in mind, on the one hand, the

1Compare the similar observations of A. Handlirsch, 24, p. 1328 (cited by Dollo, 15
rem. (2), p. 429).

IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 437

difficulty of producing new tendencies in the germ by the influence
of external causes, and on the other the degree of correlation that
would be needed among these tendencies. When it is a question of
the reduction of an organ or part, two alternatives must be distin-
guished. If the reduction has gone so far that the corresponding
tendency in the germ is verging on complete disappearance, the re-
duced organ or part will find itself practically in the same condition
as if it were already lost. But if their reduction has not reached
to such an extreme their evolution in an inverse direction will not
be impossible.

For the second law we must distinguish between the case of a single
part and that of a complex organ. The regressive evolution of a sin-
gle part, if during this evolution and the preceding progressive evo-
lution no change of form has taken place, could clearly lead back to
the point where the progressive evolution started. And the regres-
sive evolution of a single part, if the corresponding arrangement in
the germ is not too much enfeebled, could evidently also be followed
by a new progressive evolution. But if a change of form has taken
place during the first progressive evolution, and if this change of
form has been so great that a change in the corresponding arrange-
ment of the germ has been necessary, then neither the regressive evo-
lution following the original progressive evolution will be able to
lead back to the point of departure of the latter, nor will a new pro-
gressive evolution have the power to accomplish it, because to do so
would necessitate the return to a disappeared condition. If, for
instance, a tooth has first increased in size and afterwards dimin-
ished without change of form this tooth will be able by diminution
to assume the dimensions which it had at the beginning of its in-
crease, and a new increase of the same kind will not be impossible
(if the reduction has not gone too far). But if the increase in size .
has been accompanied by a radical change of form, if, for instance,
a conical tooth has become laterally compressed, then a return to the
conical form will not be possible either during its diminution? or
during a new increase in size.

In the case of a complex organ Dollo asserts that its return to the
previous condition through the action of regressive evolution is im-
possible on account of the “ indestructibility of the past.” But if
a single reduced part of an organ is regarded as the supposed reason
why reversibility is impossible, we are able to affirm almost with cer-
tainty that in such a case the indestructibility of the past does not
exist, because it would find itself in contradiction with the well es-

1 This impossibility is exactly what W. D. Matthew supposes to have happened during
the evolution of the Felidae when he supposes that the felines come from Dinictis, a
primitive saber-toothed cat (see W. D. Matthew, ‘‘ The Phylogeny of the Felidae,’ Bull.
Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 28, 1910, p. 290 s). Scott has clearly had a glimpse of the
fact that this phylogeny contradicts the law of irreversible evolution (see W. B. Scott,
28, p. 540 s).

136650°—20——29

438 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tablished law of the necessary regressive evolution of nonfunctional
parts and organs. The reversibility of the ascending evolution of a
complex organ, when it depends on a reduced part, is therefore not
impossible (we can suppose, for instance, that the secondary ventrals
of teleosts will return in the future to their original condition
through the complete disappearance of the clavicular ligaments).

In the case of a nonreduced part, whose form has, however,
changed during ascending evolution, the indestructibility of the past
again does not exist in the strict sense, the nonreduced part
being able to change its form again by a new progressive evolution,
although the original condition of this part, and consequently the
original condition of the organ in question can not be reestab-
lished. The pelvis of Triceratops may be taken as an example. The
postpubis of this pelvis exists in a very rudimentary condition, and
as rudimentary parts tend to disappear, the postpubis certainly
would have disappeared if Triceratops had lived long enough. It
is therefore only its recurved ischium, very different in form from
the ischium of its distant tetrapod ancestors, which was able to pre-
vent Triceratops from recovering its original pelvis.

Finally, if there is an ascending evolution of nonreduced parts
(pelvis of Stegosaurus) it is the change of function which saves these
parts from a regressive evolution; the indestructibility of the past
does not exist here either. And it is clear that the same reasoning is
also applicable under the third law to the evolution of a complex
organ. |

To sum up: The irreversibility of the evolution of a complex or-
gan depends entirely on the irreversibility of the evolution of the
reduced or nonreduced individual parts which enter into its com-

‘position, and the second and third laws are not without exceptions
in this respect any more than the first; as we have seen, it is the
germinal base of the first law which underlies the entire subject.

As I said at the beginning, most naturalists know Dollo’s first law
only. This is only a part of his general law, although the most im-
portant and most certain part. This general law, in spite of the pos-
sible exceptions, has an extraordinary importance for biological
philosophy and evolutionary philosophy in general. Dollo will al-

1 Besides the law of irreversible evolution Dollo has formulated (see Dollo, 4, p. 165)
two other laws—that of discontinuous evolution (before H. de Vries) and that of limited
eyolution. In his subsequent writings Dollo hag only rarely touched on these two other
laws (on the law of limited evolution see Dollo, 7, p. 9, Dollo, 8, p. 813 and p. 820,
Dollo, 9, p. 1381; on the law of discontinuous evolution see Dollo, 5, rem. (66), p. 120;
Dollo, 7, rem. (11), p. 9; and Dollo, 17, pp. 189-140).

IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION——PETRONIEVICS. 439

ways be regarded, like Cuvier before him, as the founder of a great
law of the organic world.
LITERATURE,

1. L. Dollo, Cours autographié sur l’évolution du Squelette des Vertébrés.
Lecons faites 4 l'Institut Solvay (Université de Bruxelles) en 1891-2.

Pe Sur Vorigine de la nageoire caudale des Ichthyosaures. Bulletin
de la société belge de Géologie, de Paléontologie et de Hydrologie, vol. 6,
1892, Procés-verbaux, pp. 167-74.

3. Sur la morphologie des cotes. Bulletin scientifique de la France et
de la Belgique, publié par A. Giard, Paris, vol. 24, 1892, pp. 113-29.

4. Les lois de l’évolution. Bulletin de la soc. belge de Géol., etc., vol. 7,
1893, Procés-verbaux, pp. 164-6.

5. Sur la phylogénie des Dipneustes. Bulletin de la soc. belge de Géol.,
etc., vol. 9, 1895, Mémoires, pp. 79-128.

6. Les ancétres des Marsupiaux, étaient-ils arboricoles? J/liscellanées
biologiques dédiées au Prof. A. Giard, Paris, 1899, pp. 188-203.

(G Sur Vorigine de la Tortue Luth (Dermochelys coriacea). Bulletin
de la société royale des sciences médicales et naturelles de Bruxelles,
1901, separate, pp. 1-26.

8. Sur levolution des Chéloniens marins (Considérations bionomiques
et phylogéniques). Bulletin de lV Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des
Sciences, 1903, pp. 801-50.

9. Un nouvel opercule tympanique de Plioplatecarpus (Mosasaurien
plongeur). Bulletin de la soc. belge de Géol., etc., vol. 19, 1905, Mémoires,
pp. 125-81.

10. Les Dinosauriens adaptés a la vie quadrupéde secondaire. Bulletin
de la soc. belge de Géol., etc., vol. 19, 1905, Mémoires, pp. 441-8.

fale Le pied de l’Amphiproviverra. Bulletin de la soc. belge de Géol.,
etc., vol. 20, 1906, Procés-verbaux, pp. 166-9.

2: Nouvelle note sur les reptiles de ’EHocéne inférieur de la Belgique et
des régions voisines (Eosuchus Lerichei et Eosphargis gigas). Bulletin
de la soc. belge de Géol., etc., vol. 21, 1907, Procés-verbaux, pp. 81-5.

ile} Les Ptyctodontes sont des Arthodéres. Bulletin de la soc. belge de
Géol., etc., vol. 21, 1907, Mémoires, pp. 97-108.

14. Les Téléostéens 4 ventrales abdominales secondaires. Verhand-
lungen der k. k. zool.-botan. Gesellschaft in Wien, vol. 59, 1909, pp. 185-40.

alisy Les poissons Voiliers. Zoologische Jahrbiicher, Abtheilung fiir Sys-
tematik, vol. 27, 1909, pp. 419-88.

16. La Paléontologie éthologique. Bulletin de la soc. belge de Géol., etc.,
vol, 23, 1909, Mémoires, pp. 377-421.

ale Les Céphalopodes adaptés 4 la vie nectique secondaire et 4 la vie
benthique tertiaire. Zoologische Jahrbiicher, Supplement vol. 15 (Fest-
schrift, J. W. Spengel, vol. 1), 1912, pp. 105-40.

18. Globidens Fraasi. Archives de Biologie, vol. 28, 1913, pp. 609-26.

19. ———— Podocnemis congolensis et l’évolution des Chéloniens fluviatiles.
Annales du Musée du Congo Belge, Bruxelles, 1918, pp. 49-65.

20. A. Giard, Les tendances actuelles de la morphologie. Revue scientifique,
1905, pp. 171-2.

1To the list of Dollo’s writings on the law of irreversible evolution I am adding the
titles of some other papers (most of them already cited by Dollo) whose authors have dis-
cussed or applied this law. Among these treatises the important book by O. Abel,
Grundziige der Paleobiologie der Wirbeltiere, 1912, deserves special mention because it
contains nearly all the examples cited by Dollo and many others besides. Dollo’s law is
discussed, pp. 616-618.

440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

21. G. v. Arthaber, Beitrige zur Kenntniss der Organisation und der Anpas-
sungserscheinungen des Genus Metriorhynchus. Beitrdge zur Paleon-
tologie und Geologie Oesterreich-Ungarns und des Orients, 1906, p. 301.

22. CH. Dépéret, Les transformations du monde animal, 1907, pp. 243-4.

23. F. v. Huene, Die Dinosaurier der europidischen Triasformation, 1908.

24, A. Handlirsch, Die fossilen Insekten und die Phylogenie der rezenten
Formen, 1906-8, vol. 2, p. 1328,

25. H. F. Osborn, The Age of Mammals, 1910, p. 34.

26. K. Diener, Palzontologie und Abstammungslehre, Sammlung Géschen,
pp. 98, 110-14.

27. O. Abel, Grundziige der Palezobiologie der Wirbeltiere, 1912.

28. W. B. Scott, A History of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere, 1913.

29. R. 8, Lull, Organic Evolution, A Textbook, 1917, p. 280 and p. 572.

THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR OF INSECT
EVOLUTION.’

By S. S. CHETVERIKOV.

[With 1 plate. ]

The question of how this evolution traveled, which factors directed
it along the course that led insects to their present height of organiza-
tion, is of deep interest to every entomologist.

Insects appeared on the earth very long ago. Beginning with the
middle of the Paleozoic era—namely, the Carboniferous period—the
earth’s crust contains undoubted traces of insects, principally impres-
sions of wings, and indications of insects exist even in the earlier
epochs. And thus, in course of this colossal interval of time, an
interval the greatness of which is beyond the limit of human under-
standing (be this interval 30,000,000 or 60,000,000 years, the impres-
sion on the mind will not be different), the process of evolution of
the insect forms continued unabated—a process which brought them
to the present stage. The tremendous development attained by insect
life on earth is best shown by the following few figures. By 1907,
384,000 species of insects were described and named. An annual
average of about 6,000 species is being described since then, a num-
ber which shows no tendency to diminish; on the contrary, as
Europeans penetrate into tropical countries, this number is showing
decided increase. Thus, all agree that the number of species of
insects on the earth must be expressed by a number of at least seven
figures. But, whichever the number we finally agree upon, whether
that of 10,000,000 species by Riley, or the more modest figure of
2,000,000 by Sharp, one fact remains certain—namely, that the num-
ber of species of insects is at least six times that of species of all the
other animals put together. And, if we recall that the number of
individuals of each species of insects is on the average many times
greater than that of other species of animals (excepting Protozoa),
the colossal development of animal life in the form of entomons will
become fully evident.

What is the cause of this? What is there in the insect that gave it
the capability of occupying this exclusive position in the animal

1Translated from the Russian by Jacob Kotinsky, Branch of Forest Insects, Bureau of
Entomology, U. 8. Dept. of Agriculture, from Bull. Soc. Ent. Moscow, Vol. I, p. 14, Nov.
(15) 28, 1915.
441

442 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

world? To answer this question, let us look a little into the past of
our planet and raise, as much as nature will permit us, the curtain
that shrouds its past history.

In looking into the past and present of the animal world of the
terra firma we perceive one fact—two types of animals are striving
for dominance. These two types are the vertebrates and the arthro-
pods. True, parts of both types (fishes and crustaceans) remained in
the water, in their native medium, but in the present case they will not
interest us. But in the evolution of insects (as well as the other
classes of terrestrial arthropods) on the one hand and terrestrial ver- _
tebrates on the other we see a striking contrast; we have before us
one of those characteristic instances full of deep significance, where
nature, in aiming for the same goal, proceeds and attains it by means
of two opposite routes.

If this goal is assumed to be the protection of the species in the
struggle for existence, what are the paths along which the vertebrates
and the insects traveled? These roads are hidden from us in the deep
mystery of the past ages, and only scant, fragmentary, and scattered
data for study are given us by the paleontological discoveries.

The first impression we get from these data is that in early geo-
logical epochs the vertebrate world was incomparably larger, more
massive than in the contemporary; that the type of vertebrates ap-
pears to be degenerating, growing smaller.

Indeed, a whole series of gigantic forms which previously popu-
lated the earth has completely disappeared from its face: all the 50-
feet long Brontosauri, J/astodonsauri, elephant-like Dinothers, Mas-
todons, and many, many others died out, and the vast majority of con-
temporary vertebrates can not compare with them in size of body.
However, on closer study we will note a different aspect. We will see
that none of these vertebrate giants are the ancestors of the present
forms. On the contrary, these are all forms which are always ex-
tremely and one sidedly specialized, adapted to definite and, doubtless,
limited conditions of existence. And what is no less important, to
which I wish to call special attention, is the fact that these gigantic
forms appear as if they always conclude a series of links of a chain of
successive forms, at which it suddenly breaks. These chains usually
begin with small forms, with primitive peculiarities of structure and
only as specialized characters accumulate does the size of the animals
grow until it attains gigantic proportions and extreme specialization,
and then the power of adaptation to changed conditions of existence
seems to disappear and the entire chain of forms closes its earthly
existence. For illustration I will present a few examples.

The class Amphibia at first appears in the lower carboniferous de-
posits as small salamander-like forms, Branchiosaurus, which belong
to the subclass Stegocephali. But in the triassic we come across such

INSECT EVOLUTION—CHETVERIKOV. 443

gigantic forms as I/astodonsaurus, of which the skull alone was about
5 feet long. But with these gigantic forms the entire subclass of
Stegocephali dies out.

The class of reptiles appears in the Permian period, and is here at
first represented by small primitive forms, which rarely exceed a half
meter in length (Palaeohatteria of Rynchocephalia, 50 cm. long;
Seymuria of Anomodontia, length of skull 10 cm.). Only in the
mesozoic, as the specialization of the first primitive characters de-
velops, do larger and larger and finally gigantic forms occur.

Even in orders this relation may be followed out. Thus, in the
order Sauropterygia the most primitive is the small Lariosaurus
(25-100 em. long) and its highest specialization the order attained in
the huge Plesiosaurt and Pliosauri, the skull of which is almost 1.3 m.
long. The order Dinosaurus, which always astounded human imagi-
nation by the abundance of gigantic, colossal, and most curious forms,
appears at first in the Triassic in the form of comparatively small and
primitive forms. Only later, in the upper Jurassic and in the chalk,
do the Dinosauri attain their greatest specialization and dimension
(Brontosaurus 17 m. long, upper Jura.; Stegosaurus, 9 m. long, upper
Jura.; Zguanodon, almost 10 m. high, upper Jura. chalk; finally,
Triceratops, from the upper chalks with the largest skuli that ever
existed on dry land, a length exceeding 2 m.). But after that all of
these curious creatures rapidly die out.

The mammaha also began their existence with insignificant sizes
(Amphilestes, Triconodon, and others), the length of which scarcely
exceeded that of a rat. But specialization proceeded gradually and
parallel with it also increase of size until there appeared such colossal]
and in some respects highly specialized forms as Dinotherium, Masto-
don, mammoths, elephants, whales, ete.

But enough of examples. It seems to me enough of these are
given to have the assertion I made above cease to appear as strange
as it might have seemed at first. The first impression, that the
evolution of the vertebrates proceeded from primitive large forms
to small ones, is false. On the contrary, we see the exact opposite:
Primitive forms are small and the massiveness of the animal body
grows only in course of evolution and specialization. If we should
now wish to answer the question made above—i. e., by what path did
the vertebrates travel toward self-preservation in the struggle for
existence ?—the answer will now be clear. It is the path of gradual
perfection, parallel with the accumulation of strength. This is the
path of open, direct force, but at the same time of honorable
struggle. The vertebrate faced danger; it did not run from it,
did not hide, and only developed its strength and power in the
process of perfection for the purpose of meeting the enemy. The
herbivor increased its body in order to place its mass in opposition to

444 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the smaller carnivor; the carnivor increased its strength in order to
be in condition to overpower the larger prey which was slipping
away from it. And thus continued step by step the struggle, a con-
tinuous open struggle, which resulted in the gigantic and highly
specialized forms. But conditions of existence changed and the mas-
sive specialized animals were not able to obtain the necessary plastic-
ity and adaptability, and died out, completing in themselves the
chain of development of separate groups. Such is in general the
process of evolution of the external appearance of the type of verte-
brates.?

We will now pass to the insects. To keep abreast of the verte-
brates, by developing the massiveness of form, they were evidently
unable to do. The very brevity of their life cycle with the usually
rapid cessation of growth gave them no hope of conquering even a
amodest position for themselves among the increasingly developing
vertebrate classes. It would seem their fate was doomed beyond
hope. But in the struggle for existence nature recognizes no honor-
able or dishonorable means; all of them are good if they lead to the
purpose, and where nothing can be taken by force she takes things
by the aid of trifles, converting these trifles into a mighty power.
If the struggle can not be direct it becomes necessary to dodge it.
And thus, with this method, diametrically opposed to the preceding,
the evolution of insects proceeded.

The world is occupied by large, ponderous vertebrates, engaged in
a keen struggle with one another, and to keep up with them there is
absolutely no possibility; but everywhere among them there re-
main small free nooks, whither it is useless for the heavy ponder-
cus vertebrates even to think of penetrating. It is thither that the
insects turned. Just as gravel, then sand and dust, more and more
firmly fill the free spaces between piles of coarse stone, so the hordes
of insects, innumerable as sand, small as dust, more and more com-
pletely fill the crevices left by the vertebrates. And there are many
of these nooks, and the smaller the form the more room there is for it.

But if what was just said is true, paleontology should confirm it.
However delicate, however small the body of the insect, yet under
favorable conditions it still left its impression in the thin ooze of
the filled basins, and the more than 7,600 species of excavated insects
(Handlirsch, 1907) tell us that among them we can seek and should
find a confirmation of our thought if it agrees with the truth.

Insects (evidently) started existence in the lower stratum of the
Upper Carboniferous era—i. e., in the middle of the Paleozoic—and
already toward the end of that era they have attained considerable
development, as shown by the 884 species of insects found there.

1Of course, we can not consider the above outlined process of evolution as inevitable for
all terrestrial vertebrates. Many departures from it could be found. I aimed to give only
the general scheme of the process which seemed to me typical for the group of animals
under consideration.

INSECT FVOLUTION—CHETVERIKOV. 445

If we look at any table (as in Handlirsch) showing the inter-
relation and evolution of contemporary and fossil insects we will
see that almost all Paleozoic orders are extinct. We will also see that
the majority of them barely pass out of the Paleozoic period. But,
from the evolutionary point of view, the extinct orders are a direct
contrast to the majority of extinct orders of vertebrates. These latter
became extinct because in their specialization they had come to such
a pass from which there was no outlet. The Paleozoic orders of in-
sects, however, are all Proto orders (Protorthoptera, Protodonata,
Protohemiptera, etc.), and the most ancient order of this period is
Palaeodictyoptera, an order which embodies in itself all the imagin-
able most primitive characters of a winged insect.

These orders became extinct not because they were extremely
specialized, but because they evolved in the Mesozoic and gave rise to
more perfect, better adapted forms which replaced them. And thus
if we could get a glimpse into that world to see how these primitive
insects lived and how they looked it would help greatly to solve our
problem.

If we were to turn to the authority on this subject, to the above-
mentioned Vienna savant, Anton Handlirsch, with the request to
picture to us the world of Paleozoic insects he could have hardly
answered us better than we find it stated in his comparatively recently
issued book on fossil insects.t This statement is so interesting that I
permit myself to quote it in translation:

To our eye, which is accustomed to see usually delicate and extremely
variable forms of insects around us, the character of the Paleozoic form of
insect fauna should appear very unusual. The vast majority of species of those
days exceeded by many times the dimensions of their contemporary progeny,
while small forms are entirely absent in the ancient formations, although, as
is evident from the Mesozoic deposits, they are capable of preservation not
worse than the large ones * * *, Inthe middle of the Upper Carboniferous
period the forest swamps of our areas were populated with cockroaches about
as long as a finger, dragon-fly-like creatures with a wing spread of about 23
feet, while insects that resemble our mayflies were as big aS a hand. Heavy,
clumsy forms, adapted more for short flits rather than true flight, inhabited
the shores of streams and the forest clearings; the ancestors of our grasshop-
pers, crickets, and cicadas, our flies, ants,and bees passed their monotonous,
cheerless life in deep silence, wholly. devoted merely to the coarse question of
nourishment and the elementary functions of reproduction * * *, Only to-
ward the end of the Carboniferous period and tater in course of the Permian
period, simultaneously with the dying out of the disappearing, primitive group
(Palaeodictyoptera), do somewhat more highly organized forms appear and we
notice at the same time a diminution in their average dimension.

A. truly characteristic picture, not without some mystic gr eatness.
In the accompanying illustration (pl. 1) we see a greatly (4/7)
diminished restoration of one of the insect representatives of that
1 Anton Handlirsch.—Die fossilen Insekten und die Phylogenie der recenten Formen.

Leipzig, 1906-1908.
2L. ¢., p. 1150; the italics are mine.

446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

age: Meganeura monyi Brongn., order Protodonata. Alongside of
it (lower right), reduced to the same scale, is its contemporary
progeny, Aeschna grandis L. What a pitiful pigmy it is and its
specific name (grandis) sounds like such a mockery.

Such are the giant Paleozoic insects.

Handlirsch’s conclusion that the existence of gigantic forms is
explainable by the fact that they lived in a tropical climate is, in my
opinion, entirely wrong. I cheerfully admit that in those remote
times the climate of the center of contemporary France, where most
of the excavated insects lived, might have been tropical, but we have
absolutely no proof that this has any causative relation to the large
size of the Paleozoic insects.

Handlirsch himself admits that myriads of extremely small forms,
the like of which did not exist in the Carboniferous epoch, exist in
the present tropics alongside of the larger ones (though still not as
large as the Paleozoic). Iam firmly convinced that the question here
is not of climate, but of the fact that here we have only the begin-
ning, the dawn of insect evolution.

And now we pass over to the Mesozoic. Here the general appear-
ance of the insects changes very abruptly. All contemporary orders
and even many of the contemporary families have their represen-
tatives there. I will not stop to enumerate; I will merely indicate
that insects with complete metamorphosis appear for the first time
in the Mesozoic. If we compare the Mesozoic fauna with that of
the Paleozoic just described, and then with the contemporary, the
first will be found to contain probably more in common with the
latter than with the extinct giants that inhabited the Carboniferous
landscape. And alongside of the already quite definite specializa-
tion in the Mesozoic forms there appear also small, inconspicuous
species which attain sometimes barely 3 millimeters in size, but their
impressions are still preserved quite clearly.

I call attention to another fact which is associated with the same
evolutionary tendency of insects: Four of the contemporary orders
(Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and Diptera) have de-
veloped particularly rapidly in the geological epoch nearest to us.
It also appears that just these four orders are particularly rich in
small forms. This fact tells us clearly that the evolution of forms,
directed towards a diminution in size of body, leads in insects to a
rapid development of the orders mentioned. The new forms do not
crowd the old ones out; they merely take that which the old ones for
some reason were incapable of utilizing. On the other hand, in
those orders like the dragon flies and Orthoptera, for instance, in
which, by virtue of some inherent causes, the process of diminution
developed slowly, the entire evolution also proceeds in a slow tempo,

WlICLVOLIN’VUV.

171.

MCpUrt,

VDiliuitouliianr

MEGANEURA MONYI (BRONGN).

AESCHNA GRANDIS L.

A.

B.

natural size.

4
a

Both

INSECT EVOLUTION—CHETVERIKOV. 447

and some of them are already approaching the end of their earthly
existence.

What cause, then, what factor, started the vertebrates and insects
on these two diametrically opposite roads of evolution? What pecu-
liarity of structure of their organism in one case (in the vertebrates)
hinders their excessive diminution, admitting at the same time almost
unlimited external increase, while in the other case (in insects)
diminution is almost unlimited ?

However great the difference and variation in the body structure
between vertebrates and insects, still the majority of their organs
give us no clue to the solution of the problem we proposed. Neither
the differences in structure of the alimentary canal, nor of the mus-
culature, the heart, the nervous system, nor any of the other soft
internal organs, can explain to us why evolution in the direction of
such external diminution was possible in insects and entirely inac-
cessible to the vertebrates. Only on passing over to a study of the
skeleton do we find in the two groups such sharp, characteristic, and
common differences which give a key to the understanding of the dia-
metrically opposite paths of their evolution. Saying nothing about
the chitin of insects which, owing to its simultaneous hardness and
elasticity, represents an ideal skeletal material, the very fact of the
transfer of the skeleton of insects to the surface, the perifera of their
bodies, appears, in my opinion, to be the most essential moment which
determined their evolution.

I will not dwell on the fact that a continuous external skeleton is
the best means of protection against the influence of the external
medium, which is especially important for small forms, since the rela-
tion of the circumference of their body to its surface is in them par-
ticularly unfavorable. The purely mechanical peculiarities of the
internal as well as the external skeleton are of great importance to us.

In order to explain this question more precisely we will turn to
the accompanying illustration (fig. 1). Above is represented a
graph of the exoskeleton of, let us say, some extremity, when the
diameter of the inner area is 4/5 of the outer diameter. Below we
have two graphs with an internal skeleton arranged along the axis
of the extremities. If we now turn to the theory of resistance of mate-
rials, we will find there the following data: The modulus (i. e., the
power) of resistance to bending (and in the given instance it is just
this form of resistance that interests us) in a solid cylinder, and in
a hollow one is expressed by the following two formulae:

aD? a(D,‘—d*)
Maras: and W.=—39p, :

W and W, are the respective moduli;
D is the diameter of the cross section of the cylinder;

448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

D, is the outer diameter of the cross section of the hollow cylinder;
and

d is the diameter of the cross section of the inner area of the hollow
cylinder.

Utilizing these two formulae we may get, by aid of the most ele-
mentary algebraic calculations, which need not be made here, the
following two interesting conclusions:

1. If we assume that an extremity with the central skeleton (lower
left figure) has the same cross section as an extremity with an outer

Fic. 1.—Graphs of ezoss sections of skeletons, of limbs for instance. <A, exoskeleton with diameter of
inte=nal area (d)=4/5 of the external diameter (D). B and C, endoskeletons.

skeleton (upper figure), the areas of the cross section of the skeleton
and muscles being equal in both figures, then the extremity with the
central skeletcn will appear to be almost three times (2 and 11/15)
weaker than the one having a peripheral skeleton.

2. If we calculate the diameter that the cross section of the central
skeleton should be in order that, with the same outer diameter of the
extremity, it should be equally strong in both cases, we will get the
third figure (lower right figure). It turns out that the skeleton has
to be colossal: Its diameter must be 84 per cent of the diameter of
the whole cross section, so that only an insignificant peripheral layer

INSECT EVOLUTION—-CHETVERIKOV. 449

is left for the musculature, which is, of course, especially unsuited
for a massive, bony skeleton.

We thus see that in both instances there is a decided and tremen-
dous advantage in the insect skeleton. It is only, thanks to these ad-
vantages of their external skeleton, that insects were able to develop
those small, slender, harmonious, and exquisite forms, the perfection
of which we so often admire and whither the vertebrates with their
heavy, clumsy endoskeleton were, of course, unable to follow them.
And if we add the fact that the exoskeleton represents besides an end-
less field for the development of purely external characters, then the
great variation of contemporary insects should no longer surprise us.
But, of course, these forms could develop only gradually, by means
of a long and slow evolution, and this is why we do not meet them
among the early primitive, cumbersome, and clumsy Carboniferous
forms.

We have reached the end of our thesis. If we now return to the
question with which we began as to the fundamental cause of the
opposite direction of the paths of evolution of vertebrates and in-
sects we will find, it seems to me, but one answer: The cause is, the
presence in insects of an outer chitinous skeleton, owing to which they
were in a position, by continuously diminishing the dimension of their
body, to conquer for themselves an entirely independent place among
the other terrestrial animals, and not only to conquer it but to in-
crease in an endless variation of forms and thereby acquire a tremen-
dous importance in the general economy of nature. Thus their in-
significance became their power.

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THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS?
By EH. L. Bouvier.

INTRODUCTION.

The insects are animals which seem to defy our imagination by
the strangeness of their forms and the surprising character of their
habits. In his “ War of the Worlds,” Wells, the fiction writer, sur-
prises us with his belligerent Tripods who sweep down as con-
querers on our planet, where they exterminate and terrify unhappy
humanity. This flight of the imagination appears to exceed all
reason, but how far does it not fall short of that which Nature
herself provides for our astonishment in the realm of the Articu-
lates! Here, it is true, we do not meet with Tripods, but the Hexa-
pods or Insects have invaded the entire terrestrial domain, where
they make their power terribly felt; the Octopods or Arachnids
share this domain both with the Insects and with the Myriapods,
these latter often possessing more than a hundred pairs of legs;
while in the water swarm the Crustaceans which rival the Myriapods
in the number of their appendages. And what do the organs with
which Wells endows his Tripods amount to when compared with
those which serve as arms or ornaments to a host of Articulates;
when compared with the enormous pincers of crabs and lobsters,
with the serrated sword-like beak which projects from the forehead
of shrimps, with the wonderful trocar at the end of the abdomen in
female Hymenoptera, with the overgrown horns which rise from the
head and thorax of not a few Scarabaeids, with the many spines brist-
ling on the body of the thorny spiders, or with the exceedingly
elongated legs which give to the Myriapods of the genus Scutigera
their swift gait and terrifying aspect?

The habits of these animals are just as puzzling as their shapes.
What is the meaning of the horrible courtship of spiders and man-
tids, where the female’s response to the embrace of her mate is canni-
balism? What must we think of the predatory wasps which paralyze
with dagger thrusts the victims intended for their larvae? What of
the Brachonids and Ichneumons, which deposit their eggs either on
or in the body of other insects? What, above all, must we think of

1A translation by permission of the Introduction and Conclusion of “‘ La vie psychique
des Insectes,’’ by E. L, Bouvier; published by E. Flammarion, Paris,
451

452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

the larvae issuing from these eggs and scientifically devouring their
host, taking pains to leave intact until the very last his most vital
organs? The orb-weaving spiders have no peers in the art of weav-
ing. They know how to fasten marvelously regular webs between
the branches of trees, how to pass over rivers on bridges of floating
threads, and, when still young, how to use similar threads to take
flight through the air as real aeronauts. The sacred Scarab fashions
into a pear-shaped ball the oily dung of sheep and into a perfect
sphere of foodstuff the coarse excrement of horses; and certain wasps
of the genus Eumenes mold tempered earth into pottery of the
most charming design. Face to face with these phenomena which
surprise him, man wonders and tries to understand, but especially
does he endeavor to protect himself against these strange creatures
among which he finds more enemies than aids; prolific and multi-
form the minute Phylloxera has succeeded in destroying his vine-
yards; voracious and migratory the bulky locusts advance in num-
berless legions to lay waste his crops; various flies and gnats sting
and infect his cattle. And he himself does not escape the virus
secreted by these terrible pests; mosquitoes threaten him with ma-
laria in the vicinity of marshes and the Glossinas with sleeping sick-
ness in the damp and shady jungles of the African tropics; fleas
bring him the germs of plague, and filthy lice that of the typhus
fever which claimed so many victims in the East at the beginning
of the present war.

What a contrast with the vertebrates, which form the other high-
est point of the animal kingdom! No doubt among the latter there
exist cruel and voracious species; some of them are openly hostile
to us, and many are remarkable for their instincts and their skill.
But where do we find'the excessive variety of forms and the oddity
of habits which are the heritage of the Articulates? Georges Maeter-
linck gives us a poetic version of this striking contrast: “ The insect,”
he says, “ does net belong to our world. The other animals, evén the
plants, notwithstanding their mute existence and the great secrets
which they jealously guard, do not seem wholly strangers to us. In
spite of everything we have a certain feeling of terrestrial kinship
with them. They may surprise, nay, astonish us, but they fail to
upset the very foundations of our concepts. The insect, on the other
hand, displays something that seems incongruous with the habits,
the morals, the psychology of our globe. Apparently it comes from
another planet, more monstrous, more vigorous, more demented, more
atrocious, more infernal than ours. Vainly does it seize upon life
with an authority and a fecundity unequaled here below; we can not
accustom ourselves to the idea that it is part of the scheme of that
nature of which we fondly believe ourselves to be the favorite chil-
dren. With this amazement and this failure to understand is mingled,

PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS—BOUVIER. 453

no doubt, a certain instinctive and profound feeling of dread im-
parted by these beings so incomparably better armed and equipped
than ourselves, these containers as it were of compressed energy and
activity which we vaguely feel to be our most mysterious enemies, our
final competitors,and perhaps our survivors.”

Everything concerning these animals is surprising, even when, in
the present stage of their mental evolution, they seem to come near
us and to engage in activities, such as we frequently observe among
the social species, which might well be considered as human. We are
perplexed at the foresight of harvesting ants, at the care other ants
take of their herds of ‘plant lice, at the horticultural skill of the
fungus-growing species and at the specialization of labor which
reduces certain workers among the Myrmecocysts to the condition of
honey-pots. We prize so highly all our own aptitudes as to believe
that they are unequaled, even when inspired by the least commend-
able motives. Though bellicose ourselves, we think it strange that
beehives or ants-nests should engage in warfare. At times we re-
vert to barbarism by reducing our enemies to slavery, yet we exclaim
with surprise at the habits of slave-making ants.

It is the fact that these wonderful analogies are well calculated to
emphasize the contrast between the world of the Articulates and our
own. We feel that the psychic evolution of these animals is no less
peculiar than their structure, and that they are never so widely
separated from us as when they appear to resemble us most closely.
The old anthropocentric school has passed away; we no longer at-
tempt to understand insects by comparing them to man, we rather
try to grasp the mechanism that allows these animals to evolve men-
tally and to develop modes of action which appear human.

Such was our object in writing this book. The sources from which
we could draw in compiling this work were numerous, but we have
not made use of them all, because many are lacking in the required
scientific accuracy. Moreover, ever since the work of Loeb and Jen-
nings research in animal psychology has been directed along a
fruitful path, where we ourselves were happy to follow the foot-
steps of these biologists and their many disciples, such as Bohn,
Pieron, Rouband, Turner, etc. Much attention has been paid also
to the work of biological observers from Réaumur (Mémoires pour
servir a Vhistoire des Insectes) to Fabre (Souvenirs Entomologiques) ,
where abundant information may be gleaned on every page. In
this company, where France occupies such an honorable place, we
wish to call especial attention to Commander Ferton, whose work is
remarkably rich and exact. To my dear pupil, George Bohn, special
acknowledgement is due for the value of his numerous papers and
for the originality of his two books, “ Naissance de 1’Intelligence,”

136650°—20 30 “

454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

and “ Nouvelle Psychologie Animale,” as well as for the material
contributed by him toward the preparation of the present study.

CONCLUSION,

In ordinary speech, the word “instinct” stands for all the hered-
itary and automatic revelations of activity, from simple tropisms
to the most complicated outward manifestations of individual mem-
ory. Instinctive acts are stereotyped, being ever the same when re-
sponding to stimuli of the same nature, and almost always adapted
to their object, although not resulting from previous experience on
the part of the individual. To define them* more precisely is im-
possible, for they are varied and complex, overlapping one another
and often becoming so confused as to render difficult the tracing of
their limits. Nevertheless, we should not place them all on the same
level and attribute to them all a common origin. Tropic reactions
are due to the properties of living matter, rhythms presuppose an
organic memory, and hence a period of education, ancient or recent;
Lut this apprenticeship is purely mechanical and dependent upon
the stimuli that produce it.

Apprenticeship has its part also in those manifestations of mem-
ory belonging to the species which play such an important part in
the behavior of articulates. This kind of memory presents a char-
acter of distinct superiority, inasmuch as it was made effective for
the race by the distant ancestors of the individual in the guise of a
choice between the various possible responses of differential sus-
ceptibility. Choice, of a remarkably intellectual nature, is even more
noticeable in the instinctive manifestations of individual memory.
The animal, endowed with well-developed senses and nervous sys-
tem, not only reacts to new necessities by new acts, but associates
ihe stored impressions of new sensations and thereby appropriately
directs its further activities. Thus, by an intelligent process, new
habits are established, which by heredity become part of the patri-
mony of instinct, modifying the latter and constituting elements es-
sential to its evolution. Of these instincts acquired through an in-
telligent apprenticeship Forel was led to say that they are reasoning
made automatic, and it is to them particularly that we may apply
the idea of certain biologists that instincts are habits which have
become hereditary and automatic. Probably all superior instincts
at first had this intellectual quality. This certainly is true of all
such as originated from more or less slowly acquired habits; it seems
to be the rule as well with instincts due to mutations. It stands to
reason that, whether they result from a sudden psychic change or
from a sudden organic modification, these instincts must always be
preceded by some intelligent period of education, during which they

PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS—BOUVIER. 455

become perfected, in order to be handed on to posterity and to assume
the character of true instincts.

Here, then, we are confronted with several classes of instinctive
acts, which differ not only in origin but also in intellectual char-
acteristics. No doubt they are linked together by many intermediate
manifestations, and in the animals with which we are now concerned
they often blend the one with the other or even with the reflexes, on
account of the profound differentiation of nervous and sensorial cen-
ters. It is, nevertheless, very difficult to consider them as manifesta-
tions of a special faculty saiich we would fain place on the level of
intelligence by calling it instinct. The name instinct justly applies
to certain forms of activity which are innate and automatic, but these
forms proceeded in diverse ways from the vital energy which is the
source of all organic activity, and the highest of them, which are at
the same time the most striking ones in the animals here studied, were
originally acts more or less requiring the exercise of true intelligence
on the part of species and individuals. Intelligence has no part in
the development of the instinct that draws nocturnal Lepidopter:
toward the light, nor has it doubtless anything to do with the rhythms
through Se organic memory manifests itself. But intelligence it
is that regulates by appropriate selection all manifestations race
memory ; intelligence again, in the sundry forms of association and
individual memory, that puts together the most complicated mech-
anisms of instinct.

Instincts are of various kinds. If, by the word instinct we under-
stand not any one special faculty, but the complex of all the in-
stincts, namely, the innate automatism regardless of its origin, we
can say with Bergson that instinct and intelligence “are not things
belonging to one and the same order,” that they “ diverge in direct
ratio of their development,” but that “they never become completely
separate.” They are both “opposites and complements” and they
assist one another. “On the one hand, indeed, the most perfect in-
stincts of the insects are accompanied by certain gleams of intelli-
gence, be it only in the choice of place, time, or material of construc-
tion. When, by exception, bees build their nest in the open, they in-
vent arrangements which are new and in the true sense intelligent
to meet the new conditions. On the other hand, intelligence has still
more use for instinct than instinct has for intelligence, since the
ability to work up raw material presupposes in the animal a supe-
rior grade of organization, to which it could have arisen on the wings
of instinct only.” Before such evidence as this Fabre was forced
to modify his theory of immutable instinct. “By itself, mere in-
stinct,” says he, “ would leave the insect disarmed in the perpetual
conflict of circumstances. A guide is needed in the midst of this
bewildering mélée. That the insect has ench o side 1S evident to

456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

a high degree. This is the second domain of its psychic powers.
Here it is conscious and susceptible of perfecting by experience. As
I dare not designate this rudimentary aptitude by the name of intel-
ligence, a title too noble for it, I shall call it discernment.” But is
discernment in this sense not really a form of intelligence?

Such is the measure in which instinct and intelligence are combined
in animals. If, following Bergson, we admit that consciousness “ is
proportional to the power of selection at the animal’s disposal,” it
will be quite evident that consciousness must be particularly ob-
scured in all purely instinctive acts, but that on the contrary it must
accompany all intelligent acts. Bergson, however, regards conscious-
ness in a peculiar light, since he considers it as “ life projected through
matter,” as the common source from which sprang in different direc-
tions both instinct and intelligence. This view leads us away from
the commonly accepted theory that consciousness must be considered
as that inmost luminary which enlightens our actions. It is possible,
even probable, that this kind of consciousness exists to a greater or
lesser extent in the animals. However, we can not know anything
about it, and we believe with Ed. Claparéde that “the science of
animal psychology may and must scrutinize the problem of the
greater or less intelligence of animals without being concerned about
their consciousness.”

We discern intelligence in its simplest expression wherever we
notice a choice between the various alternatives offered by circum-
stances, and in one of its highest forms wherever we observe that
power of invention which, according to Bergson, enables the human
race to “manufacture artificial objects, more particularly to make
tools with which to make other tools and to vary their fabrication
indefinitely.” These two extreme forms are naturally connected by a
series of links, and we know that the one as well as the other plays a
part in the behavior of Articulates. The latter of the two seems,
however, to be rather exceptional in our group, showing itself only
in the primitive state consisting of the use of foreign bodies as im-
plements. The tool used by Ammophila urnaria is a small stone with
which the female rams and packs the dirt that closes her burrow.
With certain ants of India (Oecophylla smaragdina) and of Brazil
(Camponotus texter) the instrument consists of the larva of the
species itself. Held between the mandibles of the workers, these
larvee by means of their thread glue and fasten edge to edge the
leaves of which the nest is constructed.. The implement of the crabs
of the genus Aelia, in the Indo-Pacific seas, is supplied by a delicate
sea-anemene. This is held between the pincers of the animal, which
probably uses the nettling exudations to paralyze its prey.

Facts of this nature are rare in the world of Articulates, but they
have an important sigmifvance. Tha non of the little stone is not yet

PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS—-BOUVIER. 457

a fixed habit with Ammophila urnaria, it belongs only to certain in-
dividuals more highly endowed than others and is perhaps only
accidental even with them. Maybe it will finally pass into the in-
stinctive habits of the species; for the present it belongs to the
domain of individual intelligent acts. The crabs of the genus Melia
are already farther advanced, all the species carry anemones and all
exhibit a curious modification of the pincers, the fine teeth having
become elongated and needlelike so as to give them a better hold
on their guest and tool. That they are adapted to the latter is evi-
dent, yet this adaptation is not such that the crab is likely to be in
serious danger when it has not its Actinia. Many of the Melias
brought back by explorers are not provided with anemones, and we
may believe that the presence of this implement guest is not yet of
vital importance to the species of this peculiar genus. The case of
the ants which use their larvee as needles is quite different. With
them this singular habit is innate and specific. Though probably
acquired through intelligent acts, it now belongs entirely to the
domain of instinct in the species among which it prevails. And thus
we always come back to that predominating fact of the psychologi-
cal history of Articulates, namely, the transformation of intelligent
acts into instinctive acts. The following considerations formulated
by Bergson eminently apply to this group:

Among animals, invention is never more than a variation on the theme of rou-
tine. Locked up as it is within the habits of its species, the animal succeeds
no doubt in broadening these by individual initiative ; but its escape from autom-
atism is momentary only, just long enough to create a new automatism; the
gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened; dragging the chain merely
lengthens it. Only with man does consciousness break the chain.

Man occupies the topmost place in the scale of vertebrates, for,
breaking the bonds of instinct, he insures thereby the complete ex-
pansion of his intellect. Insects, especially Hymenoptera, hold the
same dominating position in the scale of Articulates, where they are
the highest achievement of instinctive hfe. These two groups repre-
sent the actual extremes of the two paths followed by psychic evolu-
tion in the Animal Kingdom; the articulates are going toward in-
stinct, the vertebrates toward intelligence. These two courses are
quite opposite, but why have they diverged? At the beginning of
their evolution, during that far distant epoch when they were dif-
ferentiating along four main lines (Echinoderms, Molluscs, Articu-
lates, and Vertebrates), animals were threatened by a great danger—
“an obstacle,” says Bergson,.“that doubtless almost checked the
progress of animal life. There is a peculiarity which we can not help
being struck by when we glance at the Paleozoic fauna. The mollusks
at that time were more universally provided with shells than those
of to-day. The arthropods in general were provided with a carapace.

458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The oldest fishes had a bony covering of extreme hardness.” But
“the animal which is shut in a fortress or in a coat of mail is con-
demned to an existence of half-sleep. It is in this torpor that the
Echinoderms and even the mollusks are living to-day. The Arthro-
pods and Vertebrates escaped from it, and on this happy circum-
stance depends the present development of the highest forms of life.

“In two directions, indeed, do we see the impulse of active life
regaining the upper hand. The fishes exchange their ganoid armor
for scales. Long before them the insects had made their appearance,
having also rid themselves of the armor that once protected their
ancestors. In both groups the inefficiency of the protective envelop
was compensated for by a nimbleness that enabled them to escape
their enemies and also to take the offensive and to select the place
and time of the encounter.”

These remarks rest on a solid foundation, but they should be
modified in one particular which is of paramount importance in the
explanation of the structure and the special psychology of the Ar-
ticulates. ‘These animals have never lost the chitinous armor that
protected their primitive ancestors. They have preserved it in its
entirety and with greater or less thickness. Coleoptera, crabs, scor-
pions, and thousand-legs of our times are by no means inferior in
this regard to the ancient forms from which they are descended.

As a matter of fact they are covered to-day as in times of yore,
with an external skeleton of chitin. That is why Edmund Perrier,
in his desire to emphasize their dominant character, has called them
Chitinophores. To escape imprisonment within their protective en-
velope, to acquire the flexibility and mobility necessary to their evo-
lution, they underwent certain superficial modifications. These con-
sisted in the division of the armor into several pieces by means of
articular lines, along which the chitin is less thick than elsewhere,
thus allowing the pieces to move one upon the other. This is the
very way in which they became Articuwlates, at once acquiring agility
without losing their protective cover. Naturally such joints were
formed wherever the several segments, arranged in a row and con-
stituting the body of the animal, came together. As a result, these
segments acquire a certain independence and their uniformity is to
a certain extent preserved. Indeed, we see that many Articulates
possess a pair of appendages on each segment (Myriapods and the
majority of Crustaceans) and that the insects most remote in this
regard from the primitive types are still provided with seven pairs
of appendages (one pair of antennae, three pairs of buccal append-
ages and three pairs of legs) not to speak of the modified or rudi-
mentary organs to be seen on the different parts of the abdomen.
And the chitinous envelope of these appendages has broken into

PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS—BOUVIER. 459

joints in the same manner in which the body itself became annulated.
Hence the name of Arthropods often given to articulate animals.

What a difference from the vertebrates. Their skeleton becomes an
internal framework. The organism is thus allowed to attain greater
dimensions; the segments are able to fuse to a greater degree and to
lose more or less their independence; all of which results in the re-
duction of the number of limbs to only two pairs.

Now, the relative independence of the segments and the multi-
plicity of the appendages have as a corollary the differentiation of
these structures, each of which plays a special part in the organism.
As Bergson remarks, the various appendages of Articulates are as it
were natural implements, which differ from each other in structure
as well as in function. Their specialization may be carried so far
as to have each part of a single organ perform a separate function.
This is clearly seen in the bee, in which the first tarsal joint of the
hind legs is transformed into a brush, the tibia into a pollen basket,
while the two joints, by the contact of their edges, act as pincers
which take up the flakes of wax secreted under the abdomen. It is
an admirable instrument wonderfully adapted to the performance
of its particular tasks. As a general rule, apart from the changes
which they may undergo in the course of specific evolution, the ap-
pendages of arthropods are unchangeable in the individual and are
narrowly adapted to certain purposes; they are the tools for instinc-
tive work, and in this they differ from the less specialized but more
generally useful limbs which serve as implements to the vertebrates,
at least to the higher vertebrates. With these latter, as Bergson
expresses it, the two pairs of limbs “ perform functions much less
strictly dependent upon their form,” acquiring complete independ-
ence in man, “ whose hand can do any kind of work.”

Tt seems, then, that the extraordinary preponderance of instinctive
activity among the Articulates has as its essential reason the differen-
tiation and the multiplicity of the appendages, in other words, the
chitinization of the integument and the formation of joint lines which
results from it. From the beginning these animals were doomed
to use organic instruments, and they made the best use possible of
these. Their main psychical task consisted in engraving upon their
memory and in instinctively repeating the acts to which these organs
were adaptable.

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SEXUAL SELECTION AND BIRD SONG:

By CHAUNCEY J. HAWKINS.

The place of song in the life of the bird has since the days of Darwin
been a question of dispute between the scientists. Darwin was the
first to deal with bird song in a satisfactory, philosophical manner.
He formulated the theory of sexual selection, which down to the pres-
ent day is still held by many ornithologists to be the most satis-
factory explanation of the use of song as well as the best explana-
tion of its evolution. He maintained that the males _possess-
ing the best song would naturally be the choice of the females, and
that the song characteristics which had made a male the choice of his
mate would naturally be handed on to his offspring—in other words,
would become secondary sexual characters. This Darwin called sex-
ual selection in distinction to natural selection, whose operation had
a wider scope.

To do Darwin justice, we should state the theory in his own lan-
guage. Sexual selection “depends on the advantage which certain
individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in
respect of reproduction.” * * * In cases where “the males have
acquired their present structure, not from having transmitted this
advantage to their male offspring alone, sexual selection must have
come into action.” * * * “A slight degree of variability, lead-
ing to some advantage, however slight, in reiterated deadly contests,
would suffice for the work of sexual selection.” * * * So too, on
the other hand, the females “have, by a long selection of the more
attractive males, added to their beauty or other attractive quali-
ties.” * * * “Tf any man can in a short time give elegant
carriage and beauty to his bantams, according to his standard of
beauty, I can see no reason to doubt that female birds, by selecting
during thousands of generations the most melodious or beautiful
males, according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked
effect.” “It has been shown that the largest number of vigorous
offspring will be reared from the pairing of the strongest and best
armed males, victorious in contests over other males, with the most
vigorous and best nourished females, which are the first to breed in
the spring. If such females select the more attractive, and at the

1 Reprinted by permission from the Auk, vol, xxxv, No. 4, October, 1918.
46]

462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

same time vigorous males, they will rear a larger number of offspring
than the retarded females which must pair with the less vigorous and
less attractive males. So it will be if the more vigorous males select
the more attractive, and at the same time healthy and vigorous
females; and this will especially hold good if the male defends the
female and aids in providing food for the young. The advantage
thus gained by the more vigorous pair in rearing a larger number of
offspring, has apparently sufficed to render sexual selection efficient.”
Wallace was the first critic of the sexual selection theory. He
admits the display of gorgeous colors, the antics and songs of
the male bird before the female, as fully demonstrated by Darwin,
but he says, “it by no means follows that slight difference in the
shape, pattern, or colors of the ornamental plumes are what lead a
female to give the preference to one male over another; still less that
all the females of a species, or the great majority of them, over a
wide area of country or for many successive generations prefer
exactly the same modifications of colors or ornament.” Thus he
rules out the idea that the female makes a conscious choice of the
male most highly colored or who is the best smger. But this does
not destroy the idea that there may be an unconscious choice. Indeed,
Wallace seems to admit this possibility when he says, “ As all the
evidence goes to show that, so far as female birds exercise any choice,
it is of the most ‘ vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome’ males, this form
of sexual selection will act in the same direction (as natural selec-
tion), and help to carry on the process of plume development to its
culmination.” Tf this choice exercised by the female is unconscious
rather than conscious, Darwin’s theory is not vitally affected. All he
is anxious to demonstrate is that the most vigorous bird succeeds in
winning the most desirable mate, however the choice may be made,
and if he succeeds in this the bird may pass to his offspring his own
characters which in succeeding generations will become permanent.
But Wallace goes deeper in his criticism than the mere matter of
choice. He attributes the origin of song to natural selection rather
than to sexual selection. Darwin begins with sober colors and
attributes the gay colors of the males to selection on the part of the
female. Wallace starts with the gorgeous colors and declares that
the gray colors of the females are due to natural selection. Bright
plumage would render the mother bird sitting on her nest con-
spicuous and make her the easy prey to hawks and other natural
enemies. Hence all the highly colored females, through generations,
have been destroyed, only the more sober colored birds remaining.
The original brightness has been forfeited by the sex as a ransom for life.
Female birds in open nests are similarly colored like their surroundings; while

in those birds where the nests are domed or covered, the plumage is gay in both
sexes.

BIRD SONG—HAWKINS. 463

The same principle of natural selection may be attributed to the
call of birds. “These are evidently a valuable addition to the
means of recognition of the two sexes, and are a further indication
that the pairing season has arrived; and the production, intensifica-
tion, and differentiation of these sounds and odors are clearly
within the power of natural selection. The same remark will apply
to the peculiar calls of birds, and even to the singing of the males.
These may well have originated merely as a means of recognition
between the two sexes of a species and as an invitation from the
male to the female bird. When the individuals of a species are
widely scattered, such a call must be of great importance in enabling
pairing to take place as easily as possible and thus the clearness,
loudness, and individuality of the song becomes a useful character,
and therefore the subject of natural selection.”

The increase and development. of beautiful plumage is caused by
the superabundant energy of the male bird.

During excitement and when the organism develops superabundant energy,
many animals find it pleasurable to exercise their various muscles, often in
fantastic ways, as seen in the gambols of kittens, lambs, and other young ani-
mals. But at the time of pairing male birds are in a state of the most perfect
development, and possess an enormous store of vitality, and under the excite-
ment of the sexual passion they perform strange antics or rapid flights, as much
probably from the internal impulse to motion and exertion as with any desire to
please their mates.

So, also, “the act of singing is evidently a pleasurable one, and it
probably serves as an outlet for superabundant nervous energy and
excitement, Just as dancing, singing, and field sports do with us.”
If superabundant vigor can account, for the songs and ornaments of
birds “then no other mode of selection is needed to account for the
presence of such ornament.”

Brooks attacks the theory of Wallace that the duller colors of
the female are acquired by natural selection. Thus there is found
a difference in the colors of lizards where the female does not
incubate and does not require the duller colors for the purpose of
protection. In domestic fowl where danger from natural enemies
is almost nothing the same difference in the color between the male
and female continues. Thus the explanation is more fundamental
than the one proposed by either Darwin or Wallace. Brooks bases
his explanation upon a theory of heredity which supposes that the
body gives off gemmules and that “the male reproductive cell has
gradually acquired, as its special and distinctive function, a peculiar
power to gather and store up these gemmules.” The male cell,
therefore, has acquired the power to transmit variation while the
female cell keeps up the constancy of the species, “We thus look
to the cells of the male body for the origin of most of the variations

464 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

through which the species has attained its present organization.”
Darwin said that the plumage and song of the male bird were trans-
mitted by the selection on the part of the female of the gayest bird
and the best singer. Brooks goes deeper and finds the cause for
these secondary sexual characteristics in the power of the male cell
to transmit the variations. He does not deny that the female may
choose the best singer but affirms that the male must lead in varia-
tions from his very nature.

Geddes and Thompson carry forward still further the criticism
of Wallace and Brooks. Wallace accounts, on the theory of
natural selection, for the dull colors of the female and for the more
brilliant colors and song of the male. Darwin on the other hand
rivets his attention upon the gorgeous colors, the plumes, combs
and wattles of the male, accounting for them by the theory of
sexual selection but fails to tell us why the same process does not
brighten up the coat of the female. The mere statement of the
position must make it clear that there is some deeper cause than
that discovered by either Darwin or Wallace, some internal factor
much more powerful in its operation than any external cause.
Geddes and Thompson finds this in the essential difference be-
tween the sexes. “The females incline to passivity, the male to ac-
tivity.” The female cochineal insect “spends much of its life like a
mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant. The male, on the other hand,
in his adult stage is agile, restless, and short lived.” So with the
other insects and other animals. The male is more active, while the
female is passive.

For completeness of argument, two other facts may here be simply men-
tioned: (a@) At the very threshold of sex difference we find that a little active
cell or spore, unable to develop itself, unites in fatigue with a larger more qui-
escent individual. Here at the very first is the contrast between male and
female. (0b) The same antithesis is seen when we contrast the actively motile,
minute, male element of most animals and many plants with the larger pas-
Sively quiescent female cell or ovum.

To the above contrast of general habits two other items may be added on
which accurate observation is still unfortunately very restricted. In some
cases the body temperature, which is an index to the pitch of life, is distinctly
lower in the females, and has been noted in cases so widely separate as the hu-
man species, insects, and plants. In many cases, furthermore, the longevity of
the female is much greater. Such a fact as that women pay lower insurance
premiums than do men, is often popularly accounted for by their greater im-
munity from accident, but the greater normal longevity on which the actuary
calculates, has, as we begin to see, a far deeper and constitutional explanation.

The agility of males is not merely an adaptation to enable that sex to exercise
its functions with relation to the other, but is a natural characteristic of the
constitutional activity of maleness; and the small size of many male fishes is
not an advantage at all, but simply again the result of the contrast between the
more vegetative growth of the female and the costly activity of the male. So,
brilliancy of color, exuberance of hair and feathers, activity of scent glands,

BIRD SONG—HAWKINS. 465

and even the development of weapons can not be satisfactorily explained by
sexual selection alone, for this is merely a secondary factor. In origin and
continued development they are outcrops of a male as opposed to a female con-
stitution. To sum up the position in a paradox, all secondary sexual charac-
ters are at bottom primary and are expressions of the same general habit of
body (or to use the medical term, diathesis), as that which results in the pro-
duction of male elements in the one case, or female elements in the other.

This essential difference between the two sexes which expresses
itself in differences of plumage and song is further emphasized by
the facts, first, that many of the secondary sexual characters ap-
pear only at sexual maturity. Thus some of the male birds are dull
colored when young like the female and acquire the brighter colors
only on full development. Again, when the sex organs are removed
by castration, the male ornaments or weapons of battle disappear.
In cattle castration reduces the size of the horns, and after castra-
tion of the stag he never renews his antlers.

In the case of young cocks the effects of castration are very vari-
able, sometimes increasing, sometimes decreasing the secondary sex
characters. One result is clear, however, that the whole body is
affected; the larynx is intermediate in size between that of cock and
hen, the syrinx is weakly developed and the capons seldom crow or
do so abnormally, the brain and heart are lighter in weight, fat ac-
cumulates in the subcutaneous and subserous connective tissues, and
the skeleton shows many abnormalities.

The conclusion seems inevitable that neither Darwin nor Wallace
reached the root of this matter. “The males are stronger, hand-
somer, or more emotional, simply because they are males; i. e., of
more active physiological habit than their mates.” This view does
not wholly eliminate either natural or sexual selection. These may
be limiting, and, in a sense, directive factors, but it is fundamentally
the nature of sex which determines the gay color or the vigorous song.

To complete our review of this controversy which has been waged
between ornithologists, we must record some of the more recent dis-
cussions of the Darwinian theory of sexual selection. Hudson says:

The result of such independent investigation will be a conviction that con-
scious sexual selection on the part of the female is not the cause of music and
dancing performances in birds, nor of the brighter colors and ornaments that
distinguish the male. It is true that the female of some species, both in the
vertebrate and insect kingdoms, do exercise a preference; but in a vast majority
of species the male takes the female he finds, or that he is able to win from
other competitors; and if we go to the reptile class we find that in the ophidian
order, which excels in variety and richness of color, there is no such thing as
preferential mating; and if we go to the insect class, we find that in butterflies,
which surpass all other creatures in their glorious beauty, the female gives her-

self up to the embrace of the first male that appears, or else is captured by the
strongest male, just as she might be by a mantis or some other rapacious insect.

466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

He accounts for the singing of birds by the abounding energy of
birds.

We see that the inferior animals, when the conditions of life are favorable,
are subject to periodical fits of gladness, affecting them powerfully and stand-
ing out in vivid contrast to their ordinary temper. And we know what this feel-
ing is—this periodic intense elation which even civilized man occasionally ex-
periences when in perfect health, more especially when young. There are mo-
ments when he is mad with joy, when he can not keep still, when his impulse is
to sing and shout aloud and laugh at nothing, to run and leap and exert himself
in some extravagant way. Among the heavier mammalians the feeling is mani-
fested in loud noises, bellowings and screamings, and in lumbering, uncouth
motions—throwing up heels, pretended panics, and ponderous mock battles.

This is simply a repetition of Herbert Spencer’s surplus-energy
theory, which was based on the earlier theory of Schiller, who in his
letters ‘On the sthetic Education of Mankind” wrote:

Nature has indeed granted, even to the creature devoid of reason more than
the mere necessities of existence, and into the darkness of animal life has
allowed a gleam of freedom to penetrate here and there. When hunger no
longer torments the lion, and no beast of prey appears for him to fight, then
his unemployed power finds another outlet. He fills the wilderness with his
wild roars and his exuberant strength spends itself in aimless activity. In the
mere joy of existence, insects swarm in the sunshine, and it is certainly not
always the cry of want that we hear in the melodious rhythm of bird songs.
There is evidently freedom in these manifestations, but not freedom from all
necessity. The animal works when some want is the motive of his activity,
and plays when a superabundance of energy forms his motive when overflowing
life itself urges him to action.

It is too superficial a theory to satisfy the modern mind. We are
compelled to ask the question, why does the male bird have more
surplus energy than the female? This question throws us back to a
consideration of the fundamental difference between the male and
the female. There is only one answer to that question. The male
sings more vigorously because he is a male, in other words because
there is some fundamental difference between the sexes. ;

Karl Groos has contributed one very serious modification of the
Darwinian theory which has not been given sufficient consideration
by ornithologists, namely, that the song and antics of the male bird
are not for the purpose of compelling her choice by the female but
to overcome and break down her instinctive coyness. Nature has
given the female coyness as a dam to nature’s impulses to prevent
the “ too early and too frequent yielding of the sexual impulse.” A
high degree of excitement is necessary to break this down and hence
the necessity for all the vigorous songs and antics of the male.

I am confident that this theory is destined to find wider accept-
ance in the future than it has in the past, indeed, that a large part
of the song of birds before the nesting season is for the purpose of
breaking down the reluctance of the female rather than compelling

BIRD SONG—HAWKINS. 467

her choice of a particular male. At Bakersfield, California, I spent
an hour watching a male flicker sitting on a small limb a foot or
more above his mate, while both birds went through motions that
were interesting and at times almost ludicrous. The proud male
would extend his head in a line with his body, then turn both body
and neck first to one side and then the other, like a weather vane
hung on a central shaft, at the same time jerking his head back and
forth in a sort of kick-up motion, and pouring out all the time a
quick succession of notes which might be represented by the words
“pick-up, pick-up, pick-up,” closing the whole performance by a
right about face, when he would rest a minute and repeat the
process. His less gaily colored mate was not so vigorous in her
antics as her proud lord nor did she indulge in them so frequently
but it was evident that he was making his impression and she could
not refrain from expressing her feelings. I was certain that these
birds had mated their lives “for better, for worse.” Hence the
love song could not have been for the purpose of mating, but to
furnish the necessary excitation to make productive the season that
was at hand for the reproduction of their race. There is no other
explanation that can be given for birds already mated, unless it be
that of the overflow of superabundant energy and this is too super-
ficial an explanation for the deep laid plans of mother nature. Were
this the only cause for the songs and antics of birds the mere overflow
of nature might never terminate in anything or it might lead to un-
regulated abuse. But nature protects and regulates her ways by
safety valves, of which the reluctance of the female is one, and this
must be overcome before the reproductive process can become
effective.

This view seems to be strengthened by the fact that the display
of song and antics is used by polygamous birds and animals as well
as by those which mate for the season or for life. The rooster with
his harem about the barnyard is just as vigorous in his performances
as the bird which is devoted to his single mate. The doe in her
breeding time calls to the buck, who rushes to her side, then she,
“half in coyness, half in mischief, takes to flight at his eager ap-
proach, makes toward an open space, and runs in a circle. The buck
naturally follows, and the chase grows hot and exciting as a race
of horses on a track. To the frequent high calls of the fleeing doe
are added the deep, short cries of the panting buck; but suddenly
the roguish doe disappears like a nymph into the thicket near at
hand, and the baffled buck stands with head erect and ears thrown
forward; then we see his head lowered as he catches the scent, and
he, too, vanishes in the wood.” But this deer is a polygamist and
his antics can not be for the purpose of mating.

468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Watch the finch as he dances about his mate, fairly losing himself
in a frenzy of ecstasy, flashing his wings in a wild delight and
prancing about and chattering; the antics of the noisy street spar-
row, the prancing and cooing of the pigeons, and there is only one
evident conclusion. It is not for the purpose of mating but the
more immediate purpose of hastening the female to fulfill her nat-
ural function. There are times when two or more males are involved
in these antics, in which case there must be at least an unconscious
choice on the part of the female, or a battle royal which will drive
the competing males away, but in the vast majority of cases there
is only one ardent male bird in the presence of the female, and he
is often the bird with which she has already mated.

A weakness of the sexual selection theory that has not been
given sufficient consideration is that the song of birds has been
treated too exclusively in connection with the mating season. Men
have riveted their attention on those rapturous bursts of song which
precede and continue through the mating time, and have given too
little attention to the fact that few birds are ever wholly voiceless,
that most birds speak the sign or voice language, at least to some
extent, all through the year.

Most of our best singers have two distinct song periods. One
begins with the arrival of the advance guards of the migrating hosts
and continues until the broods of young birds are hatched. When
the young birds have left the nest and are able to care for themselves
there is a cessation of the full, joyous songs, September being gener-
ally the silent month. Then many of the birds begin to sing the
last of September or the first of October and continue until Novem-
ber. Bicknell has determined definitely the limits of these song
periods for many of our birds. The house wren begins to sing its
love song in April and continues to the last of July or the first of
August. After a period of comparative silence it begins its autumn
song which has none of the spontaneity of the spring song, but con-
sists of a “low rambling warble,” which continues to the middle of
October. The black and white creeping warbler sings from April
to the late June. Its second period begins from the ninth to the
twenty-second of August and lasts only a few days. The first period
of the oven bird stops by the end of June. The second period be-
gins in August, at first haltingly, as though it had forgotten how
to sing, but finally bursts into full song by October. The wood
thrush sings from its arrival in late April or early May until the
middle of August. It is not heard again until October and then
only the call notes, never the full song.

Bicknell attributes this period of silence to the moult of the bird.
In many cases the moulting periods of our song birds correspond
more or less closely with periods of silence, voice being renewed

_ BIRD SONG—HAWKINS, 469

with the renewal of plumage. The general statement may therefore
be made that birds are predisposed toward silence during the height
of the moult. Though this fact may by many be regarded as one
not requiring demonstration, it is by no meats without exceptions.
In the earlier and later stages of the moult the vigor of the birds in
general seems little impaired. Not only do many species enter on
their migrations while yet the moult is in progress or before the
complete maturity of their renewal plumage, but birds may be found
sitting upon their eggs with evident indications of activity in the
growth of feathers. Still we must regard it as a general fact that
singing and moulting are in some degree complementary.

Some birds have no second song period. The catbird sings from
April through July, but is not heard in the autumn. The brown
thrasher sings from April to the first week in July, but is silent in
October. After August the scarlet tanager is not heard again in
full song. Where this second period is lacking it is probably due
to the excessive fatness of the bird. Thus the scarlet tanager un-
dergoes its moult in August. The growth of the new feathers con-
tinues until October, when the bird becomes very fat. The wood
thrush moults in August, but is not fat. By the last of September
its plumage is nearly perfect and the bird is fat. Hence the song
seems to be interrupted first by the moult and then by the adipose
condition.

There are some cases where the birds’ best song is outside of the
mating season. It is a significant fact that the male birds arrive
first in the migration and soon after their arrival begin their full
song, though there are no females to hear. It may be said this is
for the purpose of attracting the females on their arrival or that
the male is practising his art, but this seems too superficial an ex-
planation. There must be something within the bird himself which
causes him to sing, though there is no ear to listen. Hudson calls
attention to a small yellow field finch of La Plata which does it best
singing in August. There birds gather in great flocks in the tops
of trees and sing in concert, producing a “great volume of sound,
as of a high wind when heard at a distance.” Later this choir
breaks up, love infects the individuals, and they scatter over fields
and pasture lands. But during courtship the male has only a feeble,
sketchy song.

There are birds which sing more or less the entire year. Hudson
found several birds in Patagonia with good voices, one a mocking-
bird, which were autumn and winter songsters. Olive Thorne
Miller tell of a gray-checked thrush in captivity which sang all
winter.

136650° —20——31

470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

All through the long winter this charming thrush, with his two neighbors,
delighted the house with his peculiar and matchless music, and endeared him-
self by his gentle and lovely disposition. No harsh sound was ever heard from
him; there was no intrusion upon the rights of others, and no vulgar quar-
rels disturbed his serene soul. (In Nesting Time, pp. 168-169.)

The voice of the crow is as vigorous in January as in June, and
while I write these lines, in February, a blue jay is screaming from
a tree in a neighbor’s yard as though April had come. The chicadee
sends out his cheery song the coldest day in winter with almost as
much vim as he does in the nesting time. The metallic notes of the
flicker ring over the hillside through the coldest months with a vigor
becoming the hardy bird. Indeed, the man who goes forth into the
New England hills in winter, especially if the sun happens to be
shining brightly, must be impressed by the number of bird notes he
will hear during the day. I went forth one day in January when
the earth was encased in ice, over which was a thin layer of fluffy
snow. A strong wind was blowing, whipping the bare branches of
the trees. The thermometer was low and the air stinging, surely as
unfavorable a day as one could find for birds. What was my de-
light to find a large flock of robins and another of goldfinches.
The latter were as active and cheerful as though it had been a day
in May. Defying the wind, they were in the tree tops,.swinging on
the tips of branches, sometimes hanging upside down, hunting
eagerly for food. And from the tops of the trees their sweet, unob-
trusive notes dropped down like bubbles of melody floating leisurely
through the air. They were such a friendly company, no one show-
ing jealousy because another had been more fortunate in finding
food. Their concert of song was a free expression of their genial
disposition, some birds uttering only single notes while others rolled
out three or four syllables. I never heard a more hearty goldfinch
chorus in the spring than they uttered on this cold January day, ex-
cept it was not quite so loud as in April. The robins showed more
effect of the cold weather sitting on a branch with their feathers
fluffed out, as though to increase the size of their feather coat, but
with all their discomfort they too indulged in song. Most of them
gave the single robin note, but occasionally a more ambitious bird
would rol] out a longer phrase, one bird answering another that
called from a distant tree. Then the entire flock would rise on
wing, chirping as they flew, as though glad they were living and
could not withhold an expression of their joy. From the top of the
pines the crows cawed at each other, tipping their bodies as they
called in a tilting motion, and protruding their necks and heads
with each note.

The fact that is too seldom taken into consideration is that while
the bird usually sings his most vigorous song and indulges in his
most frantic efforts around the nesting season, he does use his

BIRD SONG—HAWKINS. 471

voice at other times during the year; that there are few birds that
are entirely voiceless at any time. Sometimes he utters only a
call note, again the note of alarm, caused by sudden fright, while
again he sings apparently only for the pure joy of living. But
throughout each month of the year either a sign or spoken language
plays a part in the ceremony of his existence. His song is not
merely a thing related to his sexual life. It has a relationship to
his total existence. It is no more to be explained by the principle
of sexual selection than is the existence of the human voice, even
in its higher and finer modulation, by the same law. It is the
means by which the bird expresses himself to the outer world. It
is used according to the need of the hour or the season—the instru-
ment by which the bird communicates his needs or feelings.

It is significant in this connection that so little has been said
concerning the voice of the female. The question may reasonably
be raised whether her voice is not much more important in nature’s
scheme than that of the male. He is a much more ardent, vigorous
and accomplished singer. But after all that can be said about his
song the fact remains that it is not so very important. It is a sort
of grandstand performance. He is a sort of troubadour who comes
forth to please those who hear, but it contributes nothing we can see
toward the protection or rearing of the young. But who that has
listened to the sweet, low notes of the mother to her young or the
alarm notes or clucks which cause her helpless brood to run to hiding,
can doubt that the voice of this female is very important in the
struggle for existence. If the purpose of selection is the improve-
ment of the race why might not some genius show that males select
the mate with the best cluck or call for the protection of her brood 4
It would certainly be a theory far more in harmony with nature’s
plans. But, while no person would probably have the courage to
prove such a theory, it can not be doubted that the female has a
language and that it is far more important in the preservation of the
race than the more modulated language of the male.

All of these facts must be taken into consideration before we can
adequately account for the song of birds. The sexual selection
theory is based too exclusively upon one period in the bird’s life.
The bird has more than one season of song and there is no month
of the year when his voice does not play some part in his life. The
female has a language as well as the male. It must be evident that
any explanation which will be adequate to account for bird language
must cover every season and must be found in the inner life of the
bird rather than in outward circumstances or choices.

Again there are certain types of sign language which are much
more universal among birds than has generally been assumed. Much
emphasis has been placed upon the displays and love dances of

472 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

pheasants and birds of paradise which, it has been assumed, was
the cause of the beautiful plumage of these birds. The female
choosing the best performer or the most highly colored male has
resulted through slight modification, generation after generation,
in these elaborate decorations. But we have, since Darwin, dis-
covered that the love dance or display is in some measure used
by many birds, often birds of dull color, like the English sparrow,
and they are still, in spite of the love dance, dressed in gray or
sober plumage. Howard, in his remarkable History of the British
Warblers, has shown “that these birds of sober hues perform dur-
ing moments of sexual exaltation, antics which in every way reflect
the display supposed to be peculiar to birds of brillant plumage.”
Savi’s warbler also indulges in these antics even when feeding his
young. Furthermore, these dances are not confined to the period of
courtship. i

From whatever point of view we approach this subject the evidence
is so strong that we are compelled to look for our explanation in the
internal life of the bird rather than in any external, exciting cause.
Most of the theories thus far set forth have in them an element of
truth. If the purpose of song is excitation of the female to break
down her coyness, this very act may compel her to exercise an un-
conscious choice and thus sexual selection may exert a limiting and
directive force in the life of the bird. Even Hudson’s theory that
the bird sings out of the abundance of its very being, joy and life, is
not to be ignored. But the question forces itself upon us, why does
the bird sing and dance to overcome the female coyness and what
gives the male more vitality than the female? The answers to these
questions force us back into the inner life of the bird to seek our
answer in the essential difference between the sexes.

So far as song, as well as other displays, in the mating season are concerned
they are due to the ripening of the sexual glands, from which, as Pycraft has
shown, hormones are set free, and, pervading the body, stimulate the nervous
system, and at the same time the secondary sexual characters—the antlers of
the stag, the mammary glands of the female, the “breeding plumage” of the
bird. When they arc obviously secondary sexual characters, as in the case of
dull-colored birds, the result is the same, a state of physical exaltation ex-
pressed in ‘‘ display.” Males or females wherein these ‘‘ hormones” are but
feebly developed, display and respond indifferently, and so cease to please the
opposite sex. As Mr. Howard has pointed out, in the case of the warblers, no
amount of display on the part of the male will avail until the female has at-
tained a like pitch of preparedness for the work of procreation. The courtship
of the ruffs and reeves, already referred to, affords another illustration. Here
it will be remembered the males for weeks spend laborious days in endeavor-
ing to gain some responsive sign from their prospective but phlegmatic mates,
yet without receiving the slightest sign of encouragement or recognition. As
soon, however, as the female has become ‘ sexually ripe,’ as soon as the hor-
mones secreted by her generative glands have done their work, she herself in-
dulges in a species of nuptial dance, waltzing round her lord, and setting down

BIRD SONG—HAWKINS. 473

before him with her tail directed toward his head. Thus the sexual activity
displayed by the male comes to mean simply that he is more ardent at this
time than his mate. The advantage of this is obvious for thereby the more
vigorous males, by proclaiming their desire to pair, defeat their less vigorous
rivals, who might otherwise be chosen. The earlier they can take the field,
the more persistent their advances, the greater their chance of ultimate suc-
cess, and this because they slowly instill a preference which can not be over-
come by later and less virile comers.

This fact makes it clear why many of the sober-tinted birds are as
ardent in their love dances and displays as some of the more bril-
liantly colored birds like the peacock and the pheasant. It may also
explain why some of the more brilliantly colored birds sing as vig-
orously as the duller-tinted species. Their nervous system is in a
condition of intense stimulation through the action of secretions
thrown off by the sex glands. But the important fact is that it com-
pletely modifies the theory of sexual selection, so modifying it that
there is little of the significance attributed to it by Darwin and his
followers remaining. The antics, display, and songs of birds are
germinal variations which have survived and are not the result of
conscious or unconscious choice on the part of the female. This is
“borne out by the fact that birds of the most sober hues affect dis-
plays of a character precisely similar in kind to those of birds in
which this display appears to be made for the sole purpose of exhib-
iting to the best advantage some specially modified or beautiful col-
ored feathers.”

This view which seeks the cause of song in the internal life of the
bird rather than in external causes also gives a more satisfactory
view of the total language of the bird, the call and alarm notes, the
gentle notes of the mother bird over her young, and the songs that
are uttered outside of the mating season. The sexual selection theory
has fallen down, in my judgment, from the fact that it has confined
itself too exclusively with one short period in the language of the
bird. It has failed almost exclusively to recognize that birds have a
language which extends throughout the entire year, either sign or
tone language,-and that there must be something in the feathered
creature which will account for this less vigorous expression of life
and needs which occurs outside of the mating season. It is here that
the theory of germinal variations comes to our assistance. Voice
having originated in the hisses and groans of the reptile, it was in-
evitable that there should be a difference both of tone and vigor be-
tween the male and female birds, due to the essential difference of
sex and any variations in voice which might arise would be pre-
served in the male germ which assures the variation in the species
while the germ of the female guarantees the constancy of the species.

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MARINE CAMOUFLEURS AND THEIR CAMOU-
FLAGE: THE PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE
SIGNIFICANCE OF FACTS REGARDING THE
COLORATION OF TROPICAL FISHES.

By W. H. LONGLEY.

[With five plates. ]

Shortly before his death the late Col. Roosevelt wrote: +-“ In its
groundwork essentials the matter of animal coloration is one of
kindergarten simplicity.” But, as a minor result of the World War,
knowledge is widely disseminated which shakes confidence in the
finality of this conclusion.

For years our harbors have been choked with ships in bizarre
war paint, designed to deceive the enemy regarding their apparent
size, speed, and direction of motion. During the same period, tanks,
ereat guns, and other implements of war upon the battlefields of
the world have been painted on much the same system, with the
general result, paradoxical as it seems, that their visibility has been
diminished. But if daubing a gun with irregular patches of vivid
and contrastive color increases the difficulty with which it is dis-
covered by aerial observers, this fact, wholly opposed as it is to pre-
conceived opinion, may lead one to suspect, with regard to animal
coloration, that underlying principles may not always be obvious;
and to infer too, that Col. Roosevelt’s plummet may not have reached
bottom in depths he believed he had sounded.

The differences in color between closely related species of animals
are often more striking than any other marks which serve to dis-
tinguish them one from another. But, upon the basis of the Dar-
winian hypothesis, the more noteworthy the difference between two
forms, the more important, upon the average, should have been the
role of natural selection in bringing it into being. The greater
the difference, the greater too should be the ease with which the
service rendered by divergent characters of related species should be
demonstrated. These facts sufliciently explain the “sustained in-
terest of Darwinians in animal coloration; here, in a sense, they have
elected to stand and to demonstrate the existence of that general fit-

1 American Museum Journal, vol. XVIII, 1918,
475

476 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ness for survival, that adaptation to environment, which should char-
acterize animals, if their evolution has proceeded as they suppose.

Almost by common consent such animals as the hare, woodcock,
tree frog, flounder, and a host of others, both terrestrial and marine,
are considered obliteratively colored. Indeed, the extent to which
the colors, and even the patterns of some of these animals, repeat
those of their surroundings, and the difficulty with which they are
discovered when at rest, leave little room for dispute regarding the
significance of their coloration. But it is otherwise with animals
which display patterns of massed colors in sharp contrast with one
another and with no obvious tendency to repeat those of the environ-
ment in which their possessor may be observed, at least at times.

Even the general reader who only occasionally seeks diversion in
biological literature will recognize in these patterns a familiar bone
of contention. To some persons they have seemed to owe their
brilliance and conspicuousness to sexual selection. In the opinion of
others they warn potential enemies of unpalatability upon the part
of their prospective prey, and so preserve the latter from unwelcome
and dangerous attack. Still others see in such patterns marks devel-
oped through ministering to recognition at a distance between mem-
bers of the same species. It has also been held that such types of
coloration contribute nothing to their possessors’ welfare and are to be
regarded merely as an indication of their immunity from attack on
account of their agility or other advantage they enjoy. Finally,
and, as it seemed, most preposterously, until recent events placed the
matter in a new light, it has been suggested that they are as truly
obliterative in function as others. These patterns of the second sort
differ, however, from those of the first in having to discharge their
function under different conditions, to which fact they owe their
peculiarities.

For the last suggestion zoology is indebted to Mr. Abbott H.
Thayer,’ whose contribution to an understanding of animal colora-
tion has been most substantial. America, however, has been rather
backward in expressing appreciation of Mr. Thayer’s discoveries.
It may therefore be of interest to present in brief certain findings of
an entirely independent order which consistently support the general
principles he enunciates, whose truth and significance are not yet
thoroughly comprehended.

The findings in question? are almost exclusively derived from
field studies of fishes and crustacea, which involved the use of equip-
ment not commonly employed in such work. The whole may be seen
in action in plate 1, figure 1, which shows the launch Darwin, of the

1See Abbott H. Thayer, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. Macmillan,’
New York, 1909.

2 Tor a detailed statement, see the Journal:of Experimental Zoology, vol. 23, 1917, and
recent issues of the Year Book of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

COLORATION OF FISHES—LONGLEY. A477

department of marine biology of the Carnegie Institution of Wash-
ington, her complement of men, and the diving hood and camer:
which made the chief investigation possible and permitted a pictorial
record of some of the observed facts to be secured.

As will appear from the picture, the hood affords one no protec-
tion from the water. It is simply an inverted, weighted, metal cylin-
der, cut to fit the shoulders, and connected with a compression pump
by a hose through which its contained air may be renewed. In prac-
tice its weight is shghtly more than sufficient to overcome the natural
buoyancy of the operator. It is simple, safe, and convenient to
handle; yet it permits one to work upon the bottom in warm tropical
water for hours at a depth of 10 to 15 feet, with only one’s head in
the bubble of air it holds.

Provided with such a hood, and enjoying the comparative free-
dom of movement assured by the use of 100 feet of hose, one has
an unusual opportunity to observe the behavior of representative
marine animals under natural conditions. Most of the creatures
show little fear of the strange thing they see, until it is fairly upon
them. Schooling nocturnal fishes continue to rest idly about their
gathering places. Diurnal species, upon the other hand, come and
go, intent upon important business. Carnivorous forms, indeed, far
from taking flight, may even gather around one to search for pos-
sible food to be discovered about overturned stones, while herbivor-
ous types pass and repass, it may be in droves, cropping the more
or less dense turf of algae which covers the reefs.

It is a strange world in which the diver finds himself; it is so
small and still; so surrounded by mystery; so surprisingly unlike
that which one imagines it to be, observing it from the surface.
Even when the light is brightest and the water most free from sedi-
ment, one never sees objects at a greater distance than a few yards; ?
and if a heavy surf is pounding a short distance seaward, so much
débris may be borne inshore on the rising tide that one may be shut
in almost as completely as in a blinding snowstorm, and have no means
of finding one’s way back to the boat other than following the hose.
No sound reaches one save that of the air rushing into the hood
at each stroke of the pump above. Graceful gorgonians, purple,
brown, yellow, or olive, may sway gently as the lazy swell rolls
overhead; or as one clambers about the face of some submerged
escarpment, one may see, from below, sheets of foam spreading where
trampling rollers raised by an incessant trade wind have broken.
Yet all transpires in perfect silence.

A feature which contributes in high degree to the strangeness and
unreality of one’s surroundings is the fact that while in the hori-

1JIn one instance under very favorable conditions the visibility was found to be 15
paces

478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

zontal plane one’s world suffers diminution, all vertical distances
prove to be much greater than they appear from the surface of the
water. Apparent smooth bottoms are rough; rough ones are seamed
by crevasses ragged with overhanging ledges, or are pitted with holes
scoured by the waves and communicating with cne another at times
beneath natural bridges. Yet, however rough the bottom, one carries
one’s load of metal with ease, since its effective weight is so greatly
reduced in water. One even scales near-vertical precipices without
difficulty, for the same reason. But, light as one feels, real speed is
out of the question, and the horizon is very near. It is therefore
well, perhaps, that upon every hand interesting things claim one’s
attention, or active imagination might dwell too much for comfort
upon terra incognita rch the hood’s one narrow window permits
even to touch one from the rear.

The animal life on a rich tropical reef will engross the powers of
observation of a naturalist for an indefinite period, even if he is
able to study it only from a boat through a water glass; but its appeal
to his interest is intensified when he is able actually to stand upon
bottom, beneath water, in the very midst of the creatures observed.
This is due to several factors. Limited as one’s range of vision 1s
by the opacity of the water and its suspended sediment, one still
sees more and more clearly upon the whole, when submerged than
under any other condition. No reflection from the water’s surface,
and no inability to manipulate one’s water glass satisfactorily, robs one
of the last act of innumerable dramas staged by the reef population.
Again, many of the most interesting creatures to be seen, or features
in their behavior, can not be made out clearly at distances which must
intervene between them and an observer at the surface. Finally,
fishes in particular, among marine animals, are not adjusted alone
to a world beneath them. One needs, therefore, in many instances
to see them from below, against what les above, in order to grasp
the full meaning of their coloration.

Some of the glimpses a diver catches of the normal lives of the
animals by which he is surrounded are highly instructive. He may
find, for example, even on what seems the loose and shifting sand
of a submarine Sahara representative species whose habits and
structure accord with their surroundings. There are flounders there
marked with the color and pattern of the bottom beneath them, which
while he watches will bed themselves and be lost from sight in an
instant, except as their prominent eyes rise beyond the general surface
of the body, and above the drifting sand, keep watchful outlook upon
local happenings. Pale, hatchet-faced razor fishes of one genus or
another may also be in evidence, sidling away leisurely as he advances,
and ready ever to demonstrate the ease with which their peculiar form
enables them to cleave the sand, dart from sight, and lose them-

COLORATION OF FISHES—LONGLEY. 479

selves in the barren waste. A bit of food will often bring crabs
out of hiding, too, to scuttle over the bottom, whose characteristic
features are faithfully repeated in their own markings. But if one
may judge from their behavior in tanks, the day is not their pre-
ferred time for roving, and after a little they almost invariably
give what in any animal not covered by a firm exoskeleton would
be a shrug or two, and scraping and scratching with their hind
legs go down backwards out of sight.

Thus one finds peculiar structures discharging odd functions, and
so interpreting themselves. Proof is obtained, too, that reactions
are normal which one sees from time to time among one’s captive
animals. But often one observes incidents which remain incompre-
hensible, as when two yellow grunts ({Zacmulon sciurus) approach
one another slowly, snout to snout, open their mouths to the limit of
their gape, and gaze, as it seems, for several seconds, as if in rapt
attention, each at the patch of bright red in the buccal cavity of the
other. Nor is it clearer why from tiny holes in dead pieces of coral
a small unidentified species of fish with an enormous dorsal fin
should protrude half its body and rapidly and repeatedly elevate and
depress its great banner, while another seems to respond in kind to
the signal.

One of the most striking things to be observed at favorable places
is the abundance of fishes. Not only are hundreds of individuals to
be seen without changing one’s station, but as many as 50 species
have been noted at one spot within an hour. Since all are so near
that almost without exception detailed comparison of appearance
and behavior is possible even to the unaided eye, it is obvious that
comparable advantages may be enjoyed rarely, if ever, in respect to
other groups of animals.

The places at which species so abound are ideal points at which
to learn to distinguish the different forms, and to become familiar
with their appearance in life, which is commonly very different
from that of dead specimens, even when freshly taken. For ad-
vanced students of the behavior of the species concerned such places
possess additional advantages, for it is sometimes possible to see
there side by side types not occuring elsewhere together, and to
verify tentative conclusions regarding their specific difference in
habits which may rest upon observations made upon them sepa-
rately. As points, however, at which study of behavior should be
begun, and particularly as stations at which by study one might
hope to determine the significance of the animals’ colors and pat-
terns, few places could be less propitious. They are average, or
typical, environments for a comparatively small number of the
species present; and it is in its typical environment that one of
these creatures should be seen in order that the significance of its

480 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

coloration may be apprehended; for it is to that environment that
it is adapted.

It is a simple proposition, and should be self-evident, that, al-
though two species may often be seen doing the same things to-
gether, neither their distribution nor the range of their activities
is therefore of necessity identical. Nevertheless, writers overlook
this fact, and reason unsoundly that because two or more species
occur together, pursuing their occupations “cheek by jowl,” and
yet differ in pigmentation, both can not be obliteratively colored.

Painters and plumbers, capitalists and coal heavers, may at times
be seen together similarly engaged, yet their differences in dress and
demeanor are not without practical relation to their respective
callings. No one forgets that they aré not always rubbing shoulders
reading the same newspaper bulletins, or paying the same income
taxes. Similarly, although the colors displayed by mixed swarms of
fishes upon the reef are varied, although some are matched by noth-
ing one sees in their vicinity and the patterns in which they appear
may be highly contrastive, each particular combination may serve,
and serve in essentially the same way, under the conditions in which
it is most commonly to be seen. The truth will appear, however, only
when the different species have been observed under many conditions,
and the range and activities of each have been defined; until which
time no one’s suggestion of the revealing or concealing effect of their
colors and patterns may claim to rank higher than an interesting
working hypothesis.

In determining when and where a given species is to be found,
and how it spends its time, which are the fundamental facts con-
cerning it in the present connection, no single method is more valu-
able than the analysis of stomach contents of individuals taken from
as many and varied localities as possible, and at all times of day
and night when they may be secured.

Application of this principle shows that there is, on the whole, a
sharp distinction between diurnal and nocturnal species, since com-
paratively few seek and capture food indifferently at all hours. To
which group a form belongs is usually clearly indicated by the
amount and the stage in digestion attained by the food in the fishes’
alimentary tract morning and evening. In some species every indi-
vidual of hundreds examined will be full at daylight and fasting at
sunset. Species of which this is true commonly school at definite
points during the day.

The fishes in figure 2, plate 1, are in characteristic grouping in
typical surroundings. Such small knots, and larger aggregations of
nocturnal feeders, are semipermanent in composition; for individuals
which may be distinguished by some peculiarity, such as size, wounds,
scars, or malformations, may be seen day after day at the same place.

COLORATION OF FISHES—LONGLEY. 481

Knowledge of this fact, and of the fact that at night these species
feed upon food of definite sort, whose range is known, permits one at
last to speak with some confidence regarding their distribution at
different hours.

Important, however, as is the information gained through deter-
mination of the feeding habits of fishes, or of other animals, through
analysis of their stomach contents, the vividness of one’s mental
picture of their daily round of activity is increased immeasurably
by direct observation of their behavior. Nothing could be clearer
than the import of masses of statistics showing that some fishes feed
by night and others by day. Yet his conception of the fact is pale
and colorless who has not seen the nocturnal species coming in at
daylight singly, or in twos or threes, until, their accustomed school-
ing places swarm with them; or who has not noted, at dusk, forms
which have been active all day disappearing, in what way it is
almost impossible to discover, while others from the inner, dimly
lighted, secluded fastnesses of the reef, come out of obscurity some-
what before, but with as little confusion, and with almost as definite
an order of appearance, as the stars in the twilight.

At many points the method of direct observation yields results,
however, which could never be inferred, even from complete know]l-
edge of the food of fishes and the conditions under which it is taken.
This is the case with all the minor diurnal activities of nocturnal
species; and is quite as true of the common changes of color,
shade, and pattern, which species of the most diverse sort effect
under a great variety of conditions. With respect to all such matters
it is indispensable, and the results to be obtained by pursuing it are
crucial in determining the significance of the coloration of fishes.

To secure a comprehensive pictorial record of specific differences
in behavior it is practically necessary to use a camera inclosed in a
water-tight container more or less after the model of that shown in
figure 1, plate 2. The submarine photographs illustrating this article
were obtained with a 4 by 5 autograflex camera, protected as appears in
the picture. The camera “looks” through a circular window in the
left end of the box. What is in focus in the field of the lens appears
upside down in the mirror mounted in the upper end of the focussing
hood. The act of focussing, the tripping of the shutter, and other
operations necessary in making either instantaneous or time exposures
are made by various screws and plungers, some of which are not visi-
ble in the figure. It is necessary to send the box to the surface for the
purpose of changing the plate after each exposure.

The difficulty with which pictures may be secured varies with cir-
cumstances. When the light is good an exposure of a tenth of a second
is sufficient; that is, a snapshot may be taken; and if the subject
is reasonably quiet and the water calm, it is not particularly

482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

difficult to secure the result desired. But one’s trials mount very
rapidly with failing illumination, shyness of the subjects, their
activity, and, above all, with the roughness of the water. The camera
box is large and somewhat awkward to handle. It requires both hands
and knees to steady and manipulate it. In the meantime while one is
using it the heavy hood, left to its own devices, except insofar as it
may be steadied against the camera by pressure of the forehead, rides
upright or otherwise according to conditions. The long rolling swell
pushes one now a step or two forward, now back too far to accomplish
anything, and meanwhile the image in the mirror, never overbright,
goes into complete eclipse, as one’s breath condenses upon the window
of the hood. Then whatever advantage of position may have been
gained for the moment has to be abandoned; the glass must be flooded
with water and the attempt renewed from the beginning.

The camera readily records such differences in regard to their
habits, as appear in the case of the fishes shown in plates 1 and 2.
The former, as has been said, are nocturnal; the latter, diurnal reef
rangers. The one class, as one might infer from the picture, is
marked in general by its comparative inertia when undisturbed; the
other is equally characterized by its restless activity.

Each of these primary groups includes a great variety of species,
and is capable of subdivision upon the basis of differences in distri-
bution and behavior. , Some fishes sedulously avoid the hight, and in
proportion to their numbers are rarely seen. Others swarm about
the coral beds or stacks, and are not found at all upon the open reef.
Some are found chiefly, or solely, on sandy bottoms; others among
particular sorts of marine vegetation. Some haunt the bottom;
some, the surface; some, again, the intermediate depths; while others
may swim at any level. Now follows a fact of great significance:
When the fishes are grouped naturally upon the basis of their micro-
geographical distribution, so to speak, it appears that the range of
variation in color is much less upon the average within each of the
subordinate groups than it would be in a group of the same size
selected at random from the local fish fauna as a whole. In addition
the colors dominant in the different groups are correlated in general
in a definite way with those of the preferred haunts of the group,
and tend to repeat them. This seems to indicate almost as clearly as
anything can that the colors of the fishes in question are upon the
whole what they should be in order to make them inconspicuous in
their normal surroundings.

This is quite at variance with the conclusion naturally drawn from
the appearance together of many species of different colors in one
circumscribed region. But, with few exceptions, readily recognized
as such, the places where species congregate most freely are foci
where many simpler environments meet, or even overlie one another.

COLORATION OF FISHES—LONGLEY. 483

Each individual which one sees commonly at such a place, if it is
not frankly a stray specimen, is adjusted to some one or more of the
various factors which make up its complex environment of the mo-
ment. To others it is more or less unadapted, and its lack of adapta-
tion in so far as color is concerned may make it appear conspicuous.
It is impossible to consider its conspicuousness functional, however,
something which nature has elaborated through selection on account
of its revealing quality. It is not even possible to look upon it as
something of no significance, upon which nature has placed no
check. Such as it is, it is a sort of residual, and possibly irreducible,
conspicuousness; for species, as gaudy as any, possess marked power
of adaptive color change.

That many fishes, those from tropical waters in pe eae may
vary greatly in color from moment to moment, has long been known.
A few moments’ observation of the fishes in the tanks of the New
York aquarium, for example, even when the observer sees the crea-
tures for the first time and lacks more than the average intelligent
person’s interest in them, will make clear their power of color change.
Under what conditions this power is exercised in nature, and whether
the color changes of unconfined fishes in their native surroundings
conform to law, has, however, until recently never been determined
on any compr ae scale.

This deficiency in biological knowledge is probably due to the fact
that for the most part the visits of biologists to tropical reefs, where
the changeable species are best to be observed, have chiefly been of
short duration, and, in so far as they have been concerned at all with
fishes, have been devoted to collection, rather than to the study in
life of local species. Under such circumstances the students, or col-
lectors, as the case may be, have gone chiefly to those places where
fishes most abound, to places, in other words, where the underlying
system their color changes follow is to be perceived with greatest dif-
ficulty.

What it is that determines that color shall change in changeable
species, and how strictly utilitarian the changes are in their general
effect, appears most clearly when the creatures are observed at some
point where large areas of rather uniform character meet others from
which they differ sharply in color. Such, for example, are the
boundary lines between bare bottoms covered with clean white sand
and those covered by a dense mat of brown seaweeds or green marine
plants of one sort or another. If at such critical points one watches
passing fishes that are equally at home on either side of the line they
may be seen making appropriate changes as they pass from one to the
other. One has to wait largely upon the haphazard movements of
herbivorous species in order to secure demonstration of the law in
accordance with which their color changes occur; but with a broken

484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

sea urchin, or any other such titbit, carnivorous fishes of small or
medium size may be drawn from point to point, and their color changes
evoked at will. In the face of these and other facts even the most
skeptical must accept the complex mechanism of color change in
fishes, as a device whose chief function is to enable the species that
possess it to display obliterative hues in typical surroundings within
their specific ranges, in which they are and have been through ages
accustomed to move in the course of their normal activities.

It is difficult and perhaps impossible to translate the details of a
fish’s coloration into terms of service rendered. It is conceivable
and highly probable that many of its lesser peculiarities are without
biological significance. It is clear, however, that in the gross it serves
to blend its possessor with its environment and tends to obliterate it,
one should suppose, in the eyes of potential enemies or prospective
prey. In view of the incidence of the power of color change within
the group, and of the correlation of the color of fishes with their habits
and distribution, there is no reason to suppose that revealing and
concealing types of coloration may be distinguished among them.
Broadly conceived, all their coloration, so far as the evidence goes,
is obliterative in effect.

This fact is‘rich in suggestion. Al] the Darwinian hypotheses of
animal coloration have really grown out of effort to explain how
animals’ colors and patterns serve them in the struggle for existence.
For if such characteristic features as the markings of animals are
without utility, the hypothesis of organic evolution by natural
selection possesses at best no general application. This is indeed
an opinion held by many biologists. But let Darwinians, in a
day when the lives of men by thousands have been staked upon
the truth of a contrary conception, forswear allegiance to the
fetish of warning coloration. Let them spend in the field what-
ever time is necessary in order to determine in what relation
the colors of birds and insects stand to those of their surroundings,
and whether they are correlated with their significant habits and dis-
tribution. Then we may gain at last a comprehensive view of animal
coloration consistent with fact. In that case, if we may hazard a
prophecy, the hypothesis of natural selection should regain in time
much of its departed glory; for there is reason to believe that the
doctrine of utility will be generally sustained in regard to the colora-
tion of the higher animals.

The prospective significance of known facts regarding the colora-
tion of reef fishes is not readily to be stated. It is largely bound
up with the subject of changeable patterns; for not only do fishes
change their color and shade, but some have two or more alternative
systems of markings in which their colors may appear.

COLORATION OF FISHES—LONGLEY. 485

Some patterns which are not changeable seem to be correlated
with definite habits. In the case of others which are changeable there
is conclusive evidence that they are displayed under specific condi-
tions. One may almost dare state it as a law, that when any species
has alternative patterns of longitudinal stripes (or self-color) and
transverse bands, the former is shown when the fish that displays
it is in motion, while the latter tends strongly to appear whenever
it comes to rest.

To be able to say so much is decidedly encouraging. The color
patterns of fishes are more than variegated pigment patches com-
pounded at random; they possess biological significance. Whoever
reads the riddle of their organization, and comprehends the order
of their changes, will discover the essential principles of a natural
system of camouflage. In the changeable colors, and even more in
the changeable patterns of fishes, he should find, too, a delicate physi-
ological indicator, through changes in which variation in psychic
states should be observed to advantage.

1Since this was written it has been observed that like many fishes the squid (Sepia
sp.) when at rest in the water is transversely banded, but replaces these bands by
longitudinal stripes when it begins to move.

136650°—20——382

wre
3 Pt2 we

‘

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Longley. PLATE I.

Fig. I.—LAUNCH DARWIN. DIVER ABOUT TO DESCEND WITH CAMERA.

Fic. 2.—YELLOW GRUNTS (HAEMULON SCIURUS) AND A COMMON GRUNT (H.
PLUMIER!) IDLING THE DAY AWAY AMONG GORGONIANS.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Longley. PLATE 2.

Fic. |.—WATER-TIGHT CAMERA HOLDER USED IN SUBMARINE PHOTOGRAPHY.

Fic. 2.—-RED GOATFISH (UPENEUS MACULATUS), YELLOWTAIL (OCYURUS CHRYS=
URUS), AND IRIDIO BIVITTATUS, DIURNAL FISHES, SEARCHING FOR FOOD
TOGETHER.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Longley. PLATE 3.

scluRUS ABOUT MASSIVE CORALS.

Fic. 2—RED PARROTFISH (SPARISOMA ABILDGAARDI) IN ONE OF ITS VARIED
COLOR PHASES AMID GORGONIANS.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Longley. PLATE 4.

Fic. |1.—BUTTERFLY FISH (CHAETODON OCELLATUS).

These dainty little fishes are commonly seen in pairs as shown.

FIG. 2.—FIGHTING GRUNTS (HAEMULON PLUMIER!).

The one at the left has taken its station over the Gorgonian tuft and resents intrusion.

Smithsonian Report, 1918:—Longley. PLATE 5.

SCHOOLING PORKFISHES (ANISOTREMUS VIRGINICUS), MASSIVE CORAL, AND LONG-
SPINED, NEEDLE-POINTED SEA URCHINS.

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i

FOOT-PLOW AGRICULTURE IN PERU.

By O. F. Cook.

[With four plates. ]

Three principal types or systems are to be recognized in the study
of the highly specialized agriculture of the ancient Peruvians. In
the lower valleys, at altitudes less than 5,000 feet, farming probably
was limited to the more primitive milpa system, the same that is
still followed generally in tropical America in regions of low ele-
vation. Under the milpa system a new “farm” is made each year
by cutting and burning the trees or bushes, which clears the land
for planting and renders cultivation unnecessary. In some countries
it is customary to raise a second crop, which may receive a little
weeding or hoeing, but the land is not kept in cultivation continu-
ously. There must be a new growth of trees or bushes before the
same place can be cleared again by burning.

Above the milpa belt, in the intermediate or temperate valleys
of the eastern Andes, at altitudes between 5,000 and 11,000 feet,
agriculture was of the terrace system, which the ancient Peruvians
carried to a higher development than any other people. The mega-
lithic retaining walls, built of huge rocks, unsquared, but fitted to-
gether with precision, testify to a high degree of industry, organi-
zation, and skill, and must be reckoned among the chief wonders of
the ancient world. Hundreds of square miles of land were reclaimed
by straightening rivers, walling, filling, leveling, and covering with
a deep layer of fine soil. AI] of these artificial lands had also to be
irrigated, often by carrying the water channels for many miles
through craggy mountains or along precipitous slopes. After being
cropped with maize continuously for centuries the terrace farms are
still fertile, and have enabled millions of people to live in a region
that in its natural condition could have been of no use for agriculture
purposes.*

In still higher valleys, at altitudes of from 11,000 to 14,000 feet,
the climate is colder, moisture is more abundant, and the slopes are
more gentle. There is less need of terracing or of irrigation, but the
alpine grasses and other small plants form a dense, fibrous turf, a
condition like that of northern countries where the plow is the basic

1See Staircase Farms of the Ancients, National Geographic Magazine for May, 1916.
487

488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

implement of agriculture. Though the early accounts show that
llamas were employed extensively, as beasts of burden the ancient
Peruvians appear to have devised no means of using these animais
for draft purposes or to assist in the cultivation of the soil. The
farming of the mountain grasslands was done by human labor,
facilitated by a peculiar implement for breaking the sod.

The Peruvian foot plow, in the Quichua language called taclla
or chaquitacila, consists of a rather stout wooden handle, between
5 and 6 feet long, shod in modern times with an iron point about 3
inches wide and two or three times as long. On the left side just
above the iron point, is a foot rest, bound to the handle by leathern
thongs. A few inches farther up is another rest attached in the
same way, projecting forward. The second rest is for the left
hand, which thus assists the foot in applying the weight of the
body to the pushing of the implement into the soil. Middendorft’s
idea of the tacl/la being worked with both feet may have been sug-
gested by the presence of the two projecting pieces, but one foot
would be needed on the ground.

Other names for native Peruvian plows are arma and yapuna,
recorded by Holguin and Middendorff, respectively. The verb to
plow is yapuy or yapuni, and yapuk is a plowman. In the Aymara
language, spoken in the high tablelands around Lake Titicaca, yapa
is a field or farm, corresponding to chacra in Quichua. Among the
Quichua words that may be related to taclla are tacllamaqui, the
palm of the hand, and tacllani, meaning to slap or to knead, which
might refer to plowing. Another verb, takyani, meaning to fix or
make firm, might allude to the lashing on of the rests for the foot
and the hand. Holguin gives suvuna as the name of the foot rest
of the taclla. The word chaquilpa is defined as a part of a chaqui-
taclla, and huisu as a stick that is lashed to a plow.

The plowmen do net work alone, but two together, so that their
tacllas enter the soil only a few inches apart, under the same piece
of sod, which is then pried up. A boy or woman kneels in front of
each team of plowmen to turn the sods as fast as they are loosened.
There is also a special word, racra, defined by Holguin as the boy
who turns the sod in plowing. Effort is required in driving the
taclla into the ground, as well as in prying up the sod. In the
rarified atmosphere of the high altitudes plowing with the taclla
is very strenuous exercise. ‘The men are soon out of breath, and the
work has to be done in short “heats.” While the operation might
be compared to spading, there are three notable differences—the way
of handling the tool, the tearing of the sod, instead of cutting it,
and the turning of the sod by hand instead of lifting and reversing
it with the spade. The taclla is like a narrow spade, or spud, but

FOOT-PLOW AGRICULTURE—COOK. 489

this tool has a sharp cutting edge, and is used to extirpate thistles
or other deep-rooted weeds, not for breaking the sod.

The work that was being done on the slopes along the pass of La
Raya in the middle of April, 1915, corresponds to fall plowing in
northern latitudes. Only narrow strips of sod were being turned at
this time, marking the rows where the potatoes were to be planted,
but all of the ground is broken later and the tough sod disintegrates
during the long growing season into a loose black soil. The cultiva-
tion of potatoes is carried to an altitude of more than 14,000 feet on
the southern slopes of the valley in the district between Santa ee
and Araranca.

Agriculture in the high altitudes becomes strictly subordinate to
pastoral activities, the feeding of flocks of llamas, alpacas, and sheep
on the grassy lands above the range of cultivation. The hardiest
varieties of potatoes are too bitter to be eaten in the fresh state, but
are dried as a reserve stock of food, after freezing, thawing, and
treading out the juice. The natives are familiar with the names,
habits, and distinctive qualities of many varieties of potatoes, in-
cluding several types that are very different from any known in the
United States. The flavors, colors, and textures of the different
kinds of potatoes are as ecnly appreciated among the high-altitude
people as the varieties of apples or peaches are with us. In the pass
of Panticalla a hospitable Indian farmer favored us with boiled
potatoes to eat out of hand, and insisted that we put the remainder
of our “treat” in our pockets. The firm textures and distinct
flavors of the Peruvian varieties may be due in part to their being
less affected by cooking, since water boils at lower temperatures in
the high altitudes. Potatoes are not baked or roasted, fuel being too
scarce,

At the upper limit of agriculture in the pass of La Raya the only
crop associated with the potato is a small species of chenopodium,
called canihua (canyéwa). In the year after potatoes a crop of
canihua is grown on the same Jand, with no additional preparation.
The canihua is not the same as the better known quinoa, which is
grown at somewhat lower elevations, but is a smaller plant with
smaller seeds, not bitter like most varieties of quinoa. The canihua
is sown broadcast, requires no cultivation, and is gathered by pulling
up the plants and piling them on blankets, where the seeds are
rubbed out by hand as soon as the plants are gathered. And after
being dried and winnowed the seeds are parched and ground into a
meal that is similar to the gofio of the Canary Islanders, and is used
for food, in the same way, by shepherds in the mountains or travelers
on the road.

Weeds and grasses resume possession of the soil while the cafaihua
is growing, and the land is left as pasture for several years before

490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

another “ plowing ” is attempted. The periods of cultivation are too
short to break down the fibrous roots of grasses and other plants in
the soil, so that very little erosion can take place. In favorable
locations the system is permanent, and there is nothing to show how
long it has been in operation or how many times the sod has been
turned. Uncounted generations have lived in the highlands, and as
much labor may have been applied to plowing with the taclla as in
building the walls, terraces. artificial lands, and aqueducts for the
more striking system
of agriculture that
was developed in the
intermediate valleys.

That northern
Europe may have
passed through a
stage corresponding
to the foot-plow ag-
riculture of Peru is
suggested by the sur-
vival of asimilarim-
plement in the He-
brides and along the
west coast of the
Scotch Highlands.
The Gaelic name,
caschrom, is ex-
plained as a com-
pound of cas, foot,
and chrom, crooked,
and is defined in the

Fic. 1.—The caschrom or foot-plow of the Hebrides, from Mitchell’s 4 eo
“The Past in the Present,” page 113. Standard Dictionary

as “a highland pick

or bog-hoe for stony ground. Called also foot-plow and crook-spade.”
As described and figured by Mitchell ' the caschrom is essentially sim1-
lar to the ¢aclla, in spite of several differences in detail, such as a
longer point, a more distinct curve near the base of the handle, and
the lack of a separate hand rest, in addition to the foot rest. The
mechanical principle is the same, the use of the weight of the body in
breaking the soil. It might be said of the taclla, as of the primitive
European implement, “the work which the caschrom does is neither
contemptible in quantity nor quality, and there has gone brain to its
contrivance.”

The Peruvian foot-plow agriculture may be said to have had a
very important relation to the present agriculture of northern Europe,

1The Past in the Present, p. 113.

FOOT-PLOW AGRICULTURE

COOK. 491

seeing that the northern nations have become so largely dependent
upon a Peruvian plant (the potato), the same crop that was the
chief basis of foot-plow agriculture in Peru. That the laborious
native system of plowing the potato lands has survived the Spanish
conquest is easy to understand, since the Spanish colonists had noth-
ing better to take its place. Spanish methods of plowing with oxen
are now in general use in the dry intermediate valleys of Peru, where
maize and wheat are the principal crops; but these methods are
poorly adapted to the sod-lands of the potato belt in the higher alti-
tudes. The primitive plows of dry Mediterranean countries serve
merely for breaking and stirring the surface soil, not for cutting and
turning a tough sod. Even a name for sod seems to be lacking in
Spanish. The Quichua word is champa, but in Quichua-Spanish
dictionaries champa has to be explained as “ turf of earth with roots ”
(cesped de tierra con raices), or “clod of turf” (terron de cesped).

Although the potatoes and the other Andine crops are not con-
fined to the soils that have to be broken by the foot plow, this im-
plement may well symbolize the agriculture of the highlands. A
special problem was presented by the mountain grasslands, and was
solved by means of the taclla. The native hoe, or Jampa, sufficed for
the agriculture of the intermediate belt, and the axe or the cutlass
for the milpa system of the more tropical valleys where new clear-
ings are cut and burned each year. The foot-plew system is like
milpa agriculture in that the land is planted only at intervals, but
in other aspects—climate, soils, crops, implements, and methods of
farming—it is widely different.

= a
=i i
[ tT
ul : Lt

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Cook. PLATE I.

Fic. 1—THE TACLLA OR PERUVIAN FOOT PLOW AND THE METHOD OF HOLD-
ING AND USING IT.

From the National Geographic Magazine.

-

Fig. 2.—FALL-PLOWED FIELD AT THE UPPER LIMIT OF CULTIVATION, ABOUT
14,000 FEET. PASS OF LA RAYA, SOUTHERN PERU.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Cook., PLATE 2.

A GRouP OF NATIVE HOUSES AT THE UPPER LIMIT OF CULTIVATION, PASS OF
LA RAYA, SOUTHERN PERU.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Cook. PLATE 3.

A BITTER VARIETY OF POTATOES CALLED TUTU, GROWN AT THE HIGHEST ALTI-
TUDE, NoT EATEN IN THE NATURAL STATE, BUT DRIED INTO CHUNOS. NATURAL

SIZE.
From the National Geographic Magazine

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Cook. PLATE 4.

A RATHER LARGE PLANT OF CANIHUA, A SPECIES OF CHENOPODIUM, PLANTED AFTER
POTATOES, AT THE UPPER LIMIT OF AGRICULTURE. NATURAL SIZE.

SUN WORSHIP OF THE HOPI INDIANS.

By J. WALTER FEWKES,

Chief, Bureau of American Ethnology.

[With 11 plates. ]

So far as can be judged from ceremonies, the Hopi religion, so
called, is materialistic, and the object of the rites is to secure food
and material blessings. There may be another and deeper meaning,
but this is of no concern at this time; the object of this article is to
discuss their sun worship from an exoteric point of view.

The Hopi are an agricultural people, their main food supply being
maize, or Indian corn. The rain, snow, and hail which water the earth
fall from the sky; without moisture the corn withers and yields no
harvest. The power that causes rain to fall is elemental and re-
garded as supernatural.

The seed corn must be planted, for it does not grow save in the earth.
There is a power in the earth that makes corn sprout, but this power
is connected with that of the sky. In other words, there are two
cosmic agencies that appeal to the farmers—the sky and the earth.
These are magic powers to which are assigned sex, male and female,
and the Indian, knowing that to a union of sexes he owes the birth
of his own life, ascribes the origin of all life to the same powers.

The essential necessities in the life of an agricultural people are
that the sun may warm their farms and the rain may adequately
moisten them; that seeds committed to the earth may sprout and
grow until the harvest. Maize being the national food of the aborigi-
nal inhabitants of Hopiland, their life depending on the success of
their crop of corn, it was early recognized by these people that the
force which fertilized and watered the growing corn was the sky.
These powers were not understood; each was a mystery; imagina-
tion conventionalized them and made them supernatural. It would
certainly be logical to ascribe growth and fructification of crops to
rain, since when water failed the growing plants withered and yielded
no harvest. The heat of the sun was naturally associated with fructi-
fication, for the seed buried in the earth would not grow without a
warm earth, and the sun warmed the earth. What more natural
than to suppose that the analogy of the birth of life from male and
female elements existed in all nature. and to associate sex with these

493

494 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

two great magic powers of nature—the sun with the male and the earth
with the female element. With this fundamental idea firmly fixed in
the human mind, in time myths would cluster about these conceptions ;
the imagination through poetry would define them objectively until
science should lead to rational explanations. When once symbolized
or conventionalized they became more and more complicated and took
a strong hold on the primitive mind. In the absence of realism a
knowledge of causation due to direct observation was of slow growth.
The magic powers of earth and sky were personated, and when once
personated the possibility of man influencing these personations arose
in the human mind, and with it the belief that man could control them
by a more powerful magic. Influenced by this belief, he invented
many ceremonies, which as time went on also became more and more
complicated. These ceremonies not only increased in complication
but also derived much from myth, surviving in modified form. even
into an epoch when changed culture has rendered them little else than
folklore. Stripped of the incrustations of time and modifications due
to locality, two great objects stand out prominently in the Hopi re-
ligion, viz, growth of crops, by which is understood the fertilization
of the seed, and abundant water and warmth to make the plants grow
to maturity.

Climate is then the all-important factor in religious beliefs and
practices of the Hopi. They recognized its connection with the sun’s
motions and devised a method of determining accurately by observa-
tions of the position of the sun on the horizon, the time for planting
and the pericd of the rainy season. This constant observation of the
sun naturally led them to what is ordinarily called sun worship. The
sun itself is not worshiped, but in their minds became a symbol, a
representative of powers back of the sun controlling meteorological
phenomena. This power when personated by an anthropomorphic
symbolism is called by various names as the “ Heart of the sky,” or
the magic power of the sky. ‘There clusters about this conception
of primitive man many other secondary ideas, some of which are
incomprehensible to the civilized mind with a more exact knowledge
of cause and effect.

We know that rain in clouds is water evaporated from the earth,
falling on account of changes of temperature in the air. The primi-
tive man did not know this. Our scientific explanation of lightning
is that it is the result of electrical difference in tension. The mind
of primitive man had no such idea. The primitive agriculturist
ascribed forces of sky and earth to supernatural magic powers, and
from their influence upon the life of the agriculturist these powers
are regarded as above all others; sky and earth are considered par-
ents of all life. It is not possible for scientific men of our century to
analyze all the conceptions of the Sky god in the Hopi mind, but by

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 495

presenting instances of symbolic personations I shall endeavor to
throw some light on the nature of sun worship as it now exists among
the Hopi.

There are at least several kinds of data from which we can inter-
pret primitive conceptions of worship, among which are current
mythology, symbolism, and descriptive legends. For instance, when
the Sky god is personated, he wears prescribed paraphernalia, as a
mask painted with certain symbolic designs, and carries certain
badges or other regalia. We can interpret his supposed character
by his dramatic acts and relations to other supernatural beings when
personated in ceremonials. In myths of the Sun god there have been
passed down explanations of their rites by earlier devotees, which
are crystallized by sacerdotal additions or philosophical definitions
modified by the mentality of more modern thinkers.

It is evident that these mythological stories and ceremonial sur-
vivals among primitive people are based on symbolic and analogical
rather than scientific conceptions, for in the growth of exact knowl-
edge each generation somewhat modifies the myths of its prede-
cessors, immediate or remote, to suit new conditions of life, evolved
in the evolution of religious thought; consequently mythology, so
called, is in a state of continual flux so far as explanation of cere-
monies is concerned, and its present form may be unreliable as a
means from which to determine the earliest or the characteristic
ideas of antecedent primitive people.

One means of arriving at a knowledge of past beliefs is the sur-
vival of prehistoric ceremonies and cult objects handed down from
the past. The rites of the people are subject to slow changes, and
these modifications are not as rapid as the myths, mainly because of
the secrecy surrounding them, augmented by the conservatism of
an original priesthood which tends to preserve them in their purity.
But myth and rite form the woof and the warp of religious develop-
ment, and it is advantageous, on the very threshold of the study of
sky worship among the Hopi, to measure the relative importance
of mythological evidence and that of surviving rites. In the present
article I have discussed the latter data.

The existing ritual of the Hopi Indians is a complex, composed
of several units, possibly borrowed, but distinct from each other.
The rites of different units are unlike in details, but have forms of
nature worship and certain other cults in common. Sun worship is
a common element in this mosaic ritual, but its character varies in
complexity as well as in distinctive features in the component units.
To comprehend the character of sun worship it may be well to refer
to certain modifications in each component group.

Both myth and rite furnish evidences that the highest form of sun
worship among the original Hopi was introduced by groups of peo-

496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ples from the South—virtually from southern Arizona. Legends
say that these southern people, called the Patki, introduced into
Hopiland the serpent sun cult, a higher form of religious symbolism
than that previously existing.

The cult of the Snake people and other northern clans which set-
tled the Hopi towns before the Patki came emphasizes ancestor wor-
ship, sky and earth playing a subordinate role in its ceremony.
Their appeal to nature powers is through ancestral beings, repre-
sented by reptilian descendants of a culture-hero or heroine, brought
into the town for that purpose in their great annual festival. Sky
worship with them was secondary, or at least they have no symbolic
personation of the Sky god. Among the southern clans agriculture
had become the main occupation in the food quest long before they
came to Hopiland, and with them prayers were made directly to
the sky and earth as powers that cause the crops to grow. Both their
myths and ritual deal more with cosmic powers, showing a high
development of aboriginal worship.

Two positions of the sun on the horizon, at his solstitial rising
and setting, the former at the end of June and the latter at the
close of December, mark occasions of elaborate solar ceremonies.
The time is determined by the Sun priests of the Patki people. It
has been found that the former event is directly connected with the
advent of the rainy season, and the latter marks when the sun
reaches his most distant point to the south, at a time when the great
cold intensifies the growing fear of the people that he is about to
depart from the earth never to return. The departure of the being
to whom the farmer owes his crops must be prevented, he must be
compelled to turn back, or, as poetically expressed, the malign in-
fluences of the winter—personated by a hostile being—must be offset
that the Sky god may return. In midsummer all known magic
must be exerted to compel the Sky god to water the fields that the
corn may grow and ripen. In both cases the sky power must be
compelled? to aid the farmer. For want of a better term we call
this process prayer, but it is more than a verbal entreaty, it is com-
pulsion by sympathetic magic, and may be expressed in several
ways, one of which is by mimetic representation called dramatiza-
tion.

Tn rites performed at the two periods above mentioned a partici-
pant personates the sun, and others represent supernatural beings
to whom the needs of the worshipers are addressed. The per-
sonators are clothed in the dress and carry the paraphernalia that
in Hopi legends are associated with these supernaturals. They

1The word is used advisedly. A priest by magic may compel a supernatural to do -
what he wishes.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 497

perform dramatic rites, which indicate what the priests want, and
the accompanying songs or verbal prayers are those which are con-
sidered efficacious, having been passed down from a remote past
for that end.

Let us take for illustration the elaborate sun rite that occurs at
the winter solstice, near the end of December. The date of this
celebration is determined by the Sun priests, who watch the course
of the sun as it daily sets on the western horizon, retreating farther
and farther south, as if to withdraw altogether. Each day its alti-
tude at noon is less as its setting is more and more to the south; the
sun is evidently slowly departing from the earth. When it reaches
its most distant southern point and sets behind the San Francisco
mountains in the notch at Eldon Mesa, an official announcement is
made through the town crier that the sun has descended into his
house in the west. This from experience they know is the time
when a supreme effort must be made to offset the power which is
driving him away from his children and then the priests must use
all their magic medicine to cause the sun to return to his people.
The sun’s efforts to return are then most feeble, and must be aug-
mented by all the supernal powers of which man is capable.

The most important rites connected with “ calling back the sun ” are
held in.seeret, on which account they occur in a ceremonial chamber
called a kiva, to which only the initiated have entrance. This room
is occupied by men belonging to the Sun clans, and by others, mainly
old men, called Sun priests. A detailed description of the altar
(pl. 1) and other paraphernalia in the kiva at this dramatization
need not be made, but a few general features may be mentioned.
At one end of the room, near the ceremonial opening in the floor
called the sipapu, there is erected an assemblage of objects which
may be called an altar, composed of an elaborate framework, to
which are attached painted circular disks made of gourds, repre-
senting flowers. These symbols form a screen,! behind which some
of the actors conceal themselves.

In the middle of this screen there is left an opening through which
protrudes a head of a serpent effigy. On the floor in front of
it are arranged various objects, the most conspicuous of which is
a stack of corn ears, future seed, neatly arranged in a pile. Here
are also certain emblems and paraphernalia belonging to the priests,
among which may be mentioned a badge or palladium of the Patki
priesthoods, their medicine bowl, a prayer meal basket or tray, and
various fetishes. Before the screen stand masked men representing
certain supernaturals, and along the sides of the room sits the chorus

1 The Winter Solstice Ceremony at Walpi. Amer. Anthropologist, n. s., Vol. XI, pl. 1,
1898.

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

498

On

ch

O

xX

ws,

OLA = Bel ya
im anytclen as

Ns KE S
G
CY) i DRS we
c) CY VO) ;
VIS RoRIcO ee
Ge OD ED Cd! Nex OS
pa

3s

MOT)

ALTAR OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE CEREMONY AT WALPI.

PLATE 1.

zy protrudes.

5

a, Disk through which great serpent effi

b, Bird fetish.

c, Bank of seed corn later distributed to clans.

cf, Flowers of vegetation, corn, melons, and squashes.

One, at left, has holes for corn flower symbols.

cm, Corn mounds or germ fetishes.
hs, Head of Torned Serpent.

k, Mask of Sun god or Sun katcina.

kb, Kiva roof beams.

km, Masquettes of Corn maids.

mb, Medicine bowl.

p, Line of meal along which blessings pass to village.

7, Rain cloud symbols.

sp, Man blowing trumpet, imitating roar of Horned Serpent.

t, Tiponis or badges of chiefs of the ceremony.

s, Lateral framework supporting the altar screen.
us, Upright beam supporting the altar screen.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes. PLATE I.

ALTAR OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE CEREMONY AT WALPI.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 499

who sing songs to the accompaniment of rattles and say the appro-
priate prayers as the occasion requires.

The ceremony or drama before this altar opens with a formal
smoke by the chiefs, in which, with due reverence, a lighted tobacco
pipe is passed with great solemnity from one priest to another, seated
about the fireplace, after which steps are heard on the roof of the
room, indicating an important arrival. Soon a small ball of sacred
meal thrown through the hatchway of the roof lands on the floor
by the side of the fireplace, by which the arrival of the god is
formally announced. The visitor is invited to enter. Cries of the
eagle have been imitated for a long time by a man seated in one
corner of the room blowing through a bone whistle into a bowl of
medicine. These cries or calls to the Sky god now become louder
than ever, and soon the visitor appears in the hatchway and de-
scends the ladder through the roof. He is welcomed into the room
and is seen to represent a large bird, wearing on his head a bunch
of feathers attached to a leather helmet made in imitation of a
bird’s head. The disguise is not limited to the head, for his body is
daubed in spots with pinon pitch, to which are attached feathers,
while across his shoulders is stretched a string to which are tied rows
of feathers in imitation of wings which he flaps up and down,
mimicking the motions of a bird. Thus appareled he struts around
the room, imitating a bird in gait and in the movements of his
wings, at times emitting calls like those of a hawk or eagle. This
personation represents the Sky god, whose advent is the return of
that supernatural.

In one corner of the room, at the right of the altar, sits a maiden
apart from all others, who represents the Earth maid. On the floor
in front of her there is a pile of sand a few inches high, in which are
stuck a few short sticks like arrows. After the Sky god has made
several circuits about the room, during which he is the recipient of
many prayers from the assembled priests, he halts and squats
directly in front of the girl. Bending down his body almost to
the mound, he takes from it in each hand an arrow, and then
raising his body with a cry, throws them back into the pile of
sand. Having made another circuit of the room, always sinistral
in direction, he returns to the girl, repeating the act several times.
The meaning of this performance is not hard to discern; it repre-
sents the fertilization of the earth, as symbolized by the girl, by the
lightning as symbolized by the arrows. The act is a declaration
that man desires the god to fructify the earth and thus to bless them
with abundant harvest.

The object of this winter solstice ceremony is not only to draw
back the sun, the arrival of whom, as we have seen, is dramatized
in the rite just described, but likewise to impart new life to all

500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

nature, to fertilize the earth, that the Germ god may vitalize not
only the crops, the seeds of which are piled below the altar, but also
all game, domestic animals, and human beings—material resources —
of all kinds. The winter solstice rite is a complex prayer to the Sky
god to return and renew life.

The horned or plumed serpent is a symbol of the Sky god and
this being brought to Hopi by southern colonists is consequently
symbolized in the winter solstice ceremony introduced by them.
It occupies a prominent place in the rite in which the return of
the Sun god is dramatized, and its idol or effigy is the most con-
spicuous feature on the above mentioned altar. Directly after the
celebration of the arrival of the Bird god each worshiper says his
prayer to the serpent idol, the head of which occupies the opening
in the screen of flowers, and sprinkles it with sacred meal, as is
customary in prayers. They regard this serpent effigy as a per-
sonation of the Sky god, or as the renewer of life, as the bird man
whose actions have already been described represents the sun.

But to study this element of sky worship in its more elaborate
drama we should visit the kivas at the vernal equinox, near the plant-
ing time, when there takes place perhaps the most remarkable cere-
mony yet described among the Hopi or any aboriginal tribe of North
America.

The description given above indicates the character of the Sky
cult by one component of the Hopi in the winter solstice ceremony at
Walpi, but the fertilization ceremony with very significant varia-
tions occurs at other Hopi pueblos. We have observations of this rite
at Oraibi, where the intention is identical with that at Walpi, although
the horned serpent efligy is not introduced. Here elaborate sun cere-
monials, in which the Bird man plays a prominent part, are dupli-
cated, although modified in details. In addition, there are certain
rites performed at this time at Oraibi which appear in a modified
form at Walpi. The most significant of these is the introduction
of a portable screen, on which is painted the counterpart of the sun,
the Germ god, before which are performed ceremonies for the fer-
tilization of corn. The screen used at this time is a rectangular
frame, over which is stretched a cotton cloth bearing other designs
in addition to the figure representing the Germ god (Alosaka).
The lower part of this screen under the figure is covered with corn
seeds. On one side of the central figure is a design representing the
sun; on the other a picture of the moon, above which is a well-
painted corn plant. To the top of the screen are attached semi-
circular hoops covered with cotton wool, symbolic of the clouds.

The ceremonies about this screen are too elaborate to be described
in detail, but their main object is the fertilization of corn, represented
by the kernels attached to its lower part. In the progress of the rite

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 501

these seeds are scraped from their attachment to be used in future
planting. During the songs an invocation is sung to the Great Snake,
although no efligy or other representation of him is used at that time.
Shortly after this rite, absent at Walpi, there appears in the kiva a
personation of the Sky god wearing on his head a star with four
points, the “heart ” of the sky. He carries in his hand a disk upon
which is painted the sun emblem, to the back of which is tied a plant-
ing stick. At the most solemn time in the rite this personator twirls
the sun emblem in his hand, pointing it in succession toward the
cardinal points.

In reviewing these rites with a view to interpretation and compari-
son with the Walpi variant, it appears that the main object is the
same as the rites in which the effigy of the snake is used, or fertiliza-
tion of the seed. The Sky god, symbolized by both sun and horned
serpent, is the beneficent Sky god who fertilizes the seed, brings the
rain, and causes the crops to grow. It thus appears that the functions
of the Great Serpent and the Sky god are intimately connected in
Hopi philosophy, the difference of personation in dramatization be-
ing largely due to modification in the different pueblos, possibly from
the predominance of different clans.

It is evident that there are two essential features or two elements
involved; first, the fertilization of the earth and, second, the renewal
of life, especially of the food plant, corn. The production of rain
is not the striking motive in this complex ritual, but rather the pro-
curing of the needed warmth and moisture upon the seeds to cause
growth and furnish a food supply. From one point of view the fall-
ing rain fertilizes the earth and makes the crops grow, so that we
may say there is only one object in these rites, namely, that of fertili-
zation.t The Sun and Great Serpent, symbolic forms of the Sky god,
impart the principle of life, as in many other ceremonies among the
Hopi.

The Zufi have an equivalent of the Hopi horned serpent, whose
effigy, mechanically attached to tablets on which rain clouds are de-
picted, is brought into the town and carried to the entrance of each
kiva. The head of this effigy is held over the kiva hatchway, while
water with seeds are poured through the body, emerging from the
mouth into receptacles held up to receive them—an act symbolic of
water and seeds for the coming planting time, the gifts which the
Great Serpent brings to the Zuni. To still further show that the Hopi
serpent effigy is a god of fertilization it may be mentioned that at-
tached to the backbone of its body there is a quartz crystal, symbol of
the sun, and specimens of all the different kinds of seeds known to the
Hopi. The intention of the Great Serpent worship in both pueblos

tef. H. K. Haberlein, The idea of fertilization in the culture of the Pueblo Indians.
Mem, Anthrop. Assoc., Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 1-55.

136650°—20——_33

502 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

is practically the same; it refers to the Sky god symbolized with
minor differences in paraphernalia but introduced for an identical
purpose. The Hopi, like the aborigines of Mexico, Central America,
and the West Indies, reverenced the Great Serpent and worshiped
the supernatural he represents as a beneficent being, who brings life,
much needed rain, and other blessings. The serpent with them was
not a devil or a personation of moral evil.

Shortly after the close of the act that celebrates the arrival of the
Sky god there occurs at Walpi a dramatic representation of a con-
flict of supernatural beings, supposed to be hostile. This takes the
form of a realistic fight between men appropriately clothed to per-
sonate these beings, lined up on each side of the room, while a man
representing a supernatural being stands in the middle of the kiva
before the altar. As his opponents, ranged in two rows, one on each
side, surge up against him, a spirited song is sung by a chorus, begin-
ning with a low-intoned chant, that gradually rises in intensity until
it becomes a war cry. Each participant has depicted on the shield he
carries a figure of the being he represents. The man before the altar
carries a shield with a picture of the Germ god (pl. 2); his op-
ponents, various other designs. The contest begins by one of the
attacking party pressing forward against him, as if endeavoring
to overeome him. Back and forth for a considerable time the com-
batants surge, each endeavoring to overthrow his opponent. Finally
the attacking man falls to the floor overcome by sheer exhaustion,
and in that condition is carried out of the room. A second opponent
then advances and he, too, is overcome. This is repeated until all the
opponents have been overthrown, some being removed from the room
in an exhausted condition. The man bearing the shield is vic-
torious over his enemies. During this combat there is much shouting
and what appears to be great excitement prevails, much of which is,
of course, feigned. At the close, the triumphant man, holding his
shield high above his head, says a prayer, the purport of which is
a declaration of victory over all comers, or a taunt to any others who
question that claim. As the excitement subsides, he leaves the room.

The explanation of this event is not wholly obvious, but the com-
bat suggests the conflict of hostile nature powers, and recalls certain
rites among the ancient Aztec people.

It should be borne in mind that these events take place at night
in a closed room, from which the people are debarred. There re-
mains to be considered an event that occurs at dawn the next day,
when the arrival of the Sun is dramatically represented in the pres-
ence of the people. At sunrise there enters the pueblo a masked
person bearing symbolic paraphernalia ascribed to the sun, accom-
panied by two men dressed as women, each bringing a flat basket
tray in which ears of corn set on end are arranged in a circle in-

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes. PLATE 2.

ALOSAKA (GERM GOD) ON SUN SHIELD IN WINTER SOLSTICE CEREMONY.

Horsehair stained red generally found on the periphery of sun shields is here omitted.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 503

closing symbols of sprouting vegetation. As this trio passes through
the village these symbols are distributed to the head of each clan.
Many rites in addition to those above mentioned are performed, but
those described illustrate the more important phase of the drama
the combined efforts of the Sun worshipers to overcome hostile
powers, to halt his departure, and to renew life, thereby insuring the
growth of the corn.

The role that sun serpent worship plays among the Hopi may be
more clearly understood by an examination of another celebration of
the Patki clans occurring at the end of March, near the vernal equi-
nox. So close is this to a theatrical exhibition that it is difficult to
determine whether it is a religious or a secular observance. Origi-
nally, probably, it was the former, but the personations in it are so
striking that it has been modified into a secular performance. A
special article+ has already been devoted to the different acts, six in
number, which last from sunset to sunrise the next day.

The setting of the horned serpent scenario at the vernal equinox
at Walpi is quite different from that at the winter solstice, although
the effigies of this monster are identical in both ceremonies. During
this celebration we have a succession of drainatic performances, each
of which crudely represents some cultural episode in the history of
the tribe.

The events about to be described occurred consecutively in sacred
rooms or kivas which at the time were occupied by spectators, the
performers passing from one room to another performing simul-
taneously different acts in the rooms. Each room at that time had a
different audience, determined by clan affiliations, crowded in the
spectators’ section or the raised part of the floor at one end of the
chamber. The ceremonial region of the room was unoccupied save
by the performers, who came and left before and after each act.
During the performance the kiva chief, who controls the rites, sits
near the fireplace at the base of the ladder, and feeds the fire with
greasewood, the flames of which furnish the only light to illuminate
the chamber. ‘The performers bring their own paraphernalia, which
they set up in the dark, the fire tender allowing the flame to go down
meanwhile or covering it with a blanket that the preparations for
the successive acts may not be witnessed by spectators. In the sev-
eral acts that form this primitive drama many episodes in the cul-
ture history of the tribe were dramatized, but I shall consider only
those in which the horned snake cult was introduced.

The first act, in some respects, is similar to the so-called screen
drama of the winter solstice and is one of the most instructive. The
spectators having assembled, the kiva chief takes his seat on the floor

1A theatrical performance at Walpi. Proc. Wash. Academy of Science, Vol. II,
pp. 605-629, 1900.

504 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

by the fireplace and soon a ball of meal thrown into the room from
above lands on the floor, tramping of human feet being heard on the
kiva roof. The chief calls out to those on the roof to enter, at the
same time covering the smoldering fire with an old blanket to shut out
the light, after which the forms of men are seen descending the ladder.
As they enter the room with the customary salutation they make their
way to its unoccupied part and in the dim hght put their screen
in place and arrange their paraphernalia on the floor. At a signal
from them that they are ready to begin, the chief removes the cover-
ing from the fireplace and before the astonished gaze of the audience
there appears stretched across the rear of the room a cloth screen
(pl. 3) upon which are painted various symbolic devices with figures
representing Corn maids, Germ god, and symbolic rain clouds, light-
ning, and other designs. The most prominent of these are six cir-
cular disks arranged in line across the middle of the screen to which
each is attached. On each of these disks is painted a symbolic pic-
ture of the sun. The screen is held upright by poles, each supported
by a man, whose naked body is daubed with clay and who wears on
his head a helmet covered with projections like wens. These men are
the so-called Mudheads, Delight Makers, or the clowns. On the
floor before the screen is arranged a miniature field of corn, each
hill a clay cone, supporting a corn plant that has been grown in the
kiva. Prominent among the actors before the screen is a man dressed
as a woman who represents the Earth woman; there are several men
with masks on which are wens or knobs representing eyes, mouth,
and ears. Others similarly appareled are squatted by this screen
along the sides of the room. Behind it are men who manipulate the
serpent effigies soon to be described.

The effigies of the horned serpent used in this rite are like that of
the winter solstice ceremony; a few words regarding their construc-
tion may be instructive. Each serpent has a head and body; the
former a gourd, the latter made of cloth appropriately painted and
stretched over rings, the size of which increases from the head back-
ward. The so-called backbone to which the head is attached is a
stick by which the idol is manipulated. It has a ferrule just back
of the neck, to which are attached a bag with seeds of various kinds,
a quartz crystal, and other objects. The head is made of a gourd
painted black, in which the mouth and teeth are cut, the lips being
painted red; from the mouth there protrudes a strip of red painted
leather representing a tongue. The eyes are bundles of seeds done
up in buckskin protruding like goggles from the top of the head, to
which is also tied a bundle of feathers and a short curved horn.
As the rite begins, this effigy is manipulated by a man stationed
behind the screen, and is slowly protruded through the opening

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 505

covered by the sun disk, until it projects 3 or 4 feet in front of
the screen.

The act opens with a song by the chorus, and as it progresses
the six disks bearing the sun emblems, which are seen to be hung
by a hinge on one side, swing open from below. As they do this
there protrudes through the openings the blackened heads of six
effigies of the great serpent, one of which, larger than the others, has
udders and is called the “mother serpent.” As the songs begin,
these effigies move their heads back and forth, darting at each other
as if attempting to bite their neighbors, while from the rear of the
screen issue sounds made by concealed actors imitating the fancied
roar of the horned serpent. As this continues, the song rises higher
and higher, and the attacks of the serpent effigies on their fellows
become more and more vicious. Suddenly the head of the mother
serpent sweeps down to the floor of the room over the imitation
field of corn, overthrowing the hills and scattering them right and
left. These realistic movements of the snake effigies are caused by
men concealed behind the screen, who handle their charges by
means of a stick called the “backbone.” After the field of corn
has been overturned and the serpent effigies raise their heads, there
passes before them the man dressed as the Earth woman, who offers
prayer meal as food to the enraged serpent, after which the effigies
are withdrawn, the disks fall back in place, and the chief gathers
up the scattered clay cones with the sprouting corn plants and dis-
tributes them among the audience.+

The kiva chief stirs the greasewood fagots in the fire until the
flame again lights up the kiva, and all is ready for the advent of
another group of actors fresh from a performance in another kiva.

After a long wait another act is performed, the arrival of the
actors being announced in the same manner as before described.
In this act a masked man, representing the Sky god, stands in the
middle of the kiva, holding in his hands the efligy of a serpent
about 5 feet long. When the song that accompanies the rite begins,
the snake efligy appears to crawl around the man’s neck, twisting its
body or darting out its head in a most realistic manner. In this
proceeding the serpent is the servant of the man; it is evident that
the effigy is controlled by the manipulator. Near the close of the
act, when there is great excitement among the spectators and many
loud cries, the efligy is made to sweep down on the floor over a
miniature field of corn, skillfully arranged on the floor in the same
manner as in the preceding act.

An examination of the mechanism by which these movements of
the effigy are produced reveals the fact that what appears to be

1The Horned Serpent is here the agent of the Sky god. The act may dramatically
represent the fertilization of the corn by the Sky god.

506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Ze
Sv

S
Ls
“R004
SF

aX ay Ve Ze Ye Ma,
SS analy hae

SX cf

PLATE 3. SERPENT SCREEN AT WALPI.

a, Alosaka, or God of Germs.

b, Corn maids.

cf, Miniature cornfield, made of sprouted corn sect in clay pedestals.
es, Embroidered katcina sash.

jf, Hawk feathers.

fb, Unidentified bird.

jr, Rain symbol.

h, Habaiwuqti, mother of living beings; Earth goddess.

hs, Horned Serpent effigies.

k, Mud heads, personations of ancients.

kb, Beam of kiva roof.

kk, Man blowing trumpet to imitate roar of Horned Serpent.
ks, Extended serpent effigy being fed by mother of gods.

1, Lightning symbols.

m, White ceremonial blanket.

mt, Tray of prayer meal.

po, Prayer offerings.

rb, Rainbow symbols.

rc, Rain cloud symbols.

s, Frame supporting screen of the serpents.

sd, Symbol of Sun.

sh, Shell or gourd trumpet used to imitate roar of the Horned Serpent.
u, Udders of the mother Horned Serpent.

wb, Ceremonial blanket

“IGIVAA LY NS3SYOS LNAdYaS

a Ob. TD STAN W

"€ ALVId *sayMe4j—'SIL6L ‘HOdey UBIUOSYU}IWS

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 507

the left arm of the man apparently hanging naturally at his side
is a false one, the man’s real arm being extended into the body of
the serpent through a slit in its back; his hand grasps a stick which
forms the backbone of the reptile. The signification of the proceed-
ing is evident. The personator is the Sky god with his servant the
hghtning. .

In another act in the series performed at the vernal equinox in
Walpi we have the episode of the “ Mudheads” struggling with a
serpent effigy protruded through an opening closed by a disk on
which is depicted the sun symbol. The performance is shown in
plate 4.

If not too tiresome we may consider another act in this series of
weird dramatizations. It is recorded in legends that at one time the
Great Serpent rose in the middle of the court of an ancient village
until his head projected to the clouds. As this monster emerged
from the earth he drew after him an overflow of water that covered
the whole land, and drove the inhabitants to the mountains. When
a flood covered the earth, the chief of the village, speaking to the
serpent, whose head was in the zenith, said “ Why do you thus de-
stroy my people?” The snake replied, “ You have a bad man, or
wizard, in your number who bewitches you. I will not. return to
earth until you sacrifice to me your son.” Sorrowfully the chief fol-
lowed this demand for the relief of his people and threw his son into
the water, and the serpent sank into the earth, dragging after him
the flood that he had brought. Upon this legend is based the act of
the Hopi drama at the spring equinox, which is dramatized as fol-
lows:

After the same preliminaries that precede other acts, while the
room is dark, a new set of actors descend the Jadder and place on the
floor near the ceremonial opening two pottery vessels (pl. 5), on the
sides of which are painted pointed star emblems, symbolizing the
sky god. The openings of these jars are closed with semicircular flaps,
four in number, attached to the rims of the vessels. The chorus,
seated around these vessels, are the clowns who wear hideous masks
covered with clay balls; they are supposed to represent archaic men
who peopled the earth before the advent of the present race. This
act, like the others, is accompanied throughout with song; and as
the singing rises in volume there emerges from each jar the head of
a serpent efligy, which mounts to the roof of the kiva, dragging its
body behind it until its whole length is visible.

They do not leave the bowls, being attached to the rims. They be-
gin to twist their bodies together and appear to bite at each other
as if angry. They even bend down and sweep over a miniature field
of corn arranged on the floor, after which they slowly sink back into

508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,

LTT ATV LTT]

(a ne Fell Vere IN

feo Mey ¥ 4 nice ad ss

a“ Vinee ca_* a ea
Bo! aS AE Ww : ian
. Te, ic peers “Sat :
“wd Iwi, BS fe
TW | Vani fear |

SS

SS

NS ED Fas G
Wa FY, Sh & G

aa ie

yy
Wy)

PLATE 4, STRUGGLE OF SERPENTS AND MUDHEADS,

cd, Cedar boughs concealing the man who manipulates the serpent effigies.
Jp, Flame from fireplace.

hs, Horned Serpent effigies.

k, Mudheads; ancients (man and boy).

kb, Banquette of the kiva.

1, Symbol of lightning.

rc, Symbols of rain clouds.

sd, Sun symbol raised to horizontal position.

sr, Ridge of sand for supporting the screen.

if, Turkey feathers.

1918.

Smithsonian Report, t918.—Fewkes. : PLATE 4.

M Weight dau 199:

STRUGGLE OF SERPENTS AND MUDHEADS.

y=
ora

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 509

the vases from which they have emerged. The means by which this
is done cannot be discovered in the darkened room, but invisible
horsehair or other strings attached to the heads and bodies of the
effigies pass over the beams of the kiva roof, and down to the hand
of the singers. While with one hand these men shake their rattles in
accompaniment to their songs, with the other they manipulate the
serpent in realistic movements, It is apparent that this act repre-
sents the serpent destroying the planted field, possibly by a great
flood, as recounted in the legend given above.

The episode represents in a more or less complete form a myth
which is said to have originated in the far south, and which is
still current in modified form among the Pima and Papago, supposed
to be descendants of the ancients who once peopled the massive walled
ruins, of which Casa Grande is the recognized type. The horned
snake represents among the Pima as among the Hopi, the Sun god,
called Teuhu (“Montezuma”), who taught mankind how to irrigate
fields for cultivation and to build ditches to distribute the water of
the Gila over their thirsty farms. It is said that this being controlled
the waters of the Gila, and that he was worshiped. A story re-
counts how he took a hair from his head and drawing it through his
mouth laid it on the ground so that one end touched the channel
through which the river now flows. He took another hair or feather
and drew it through his mouth and laid it parallel to the first, and
so on until he had marked out the land in sections. When that had
been accomplished he spoke a word and each of these hairs or
feathers became a serpent, and later an irrigating ditch. The
channel of the river itself became the great serpent, “and that is
why,” added the narrator, “ we worship the river in the form of a
serpent, and on this account we make frequent sacrifices on the banks
of irrigating ditches.” When this cult was transported into the arid
mountains of Hopi, where rivers are unknown, except in the rainy
season, 1t still persisted, but, like many survivals, the environment
and object of the worship was changed; the serpent became the rain
god, or the agent of the sky, in causing rain to fall on the crops.
This myth is perpetuated in the dramatic festival at the vernal
equinox.

The cult of the Zuni horned serpent, Kolowissi, has a close
resemblance to that of the Hopi, suggesting that it was probably
derived from the same source, or the former inhabitants of villages
now in ruins along the Little Colorado. We owe to Mrs. Stevenson a
description of the rites observed when the effigy of this being is car-
ried to the Zuni kivas, from which it looks as if the Zuni horned
serpent, like the Hopi, is an incarnation of the Sky god and has the
same function. At certain times in these rites the Zuni effigy is made
to vomit water and all kinds of seed at the command of the Sky god.
The Zuni drama of the advent of the horned serpent occurs at the

510 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

A

on ame

3

a\

PLATE 5.—SERPENT EFFIGIES RISING FROM JARS.

a, Head of effigy of Horned Serpent.

b, Vases, receptacles for effigies.

cd, Cedar boughs.

cf, Miniature field of corn made of sprouted corn plants in clay pedestals.
é, Eyes.

J, Feathers of hawk.

fr, Falling rain painted on jars.

h, Horn of Horned Serpent.

rc, Symbols of rain clouds.

s, Strings used in manipulating snake effigies.
st, Star symbol.

t, Tongue of Horned Serpent.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes. PLATE 5.

SERPENT EFFIGIES RISING FROM JARS.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. Fyn!

same time the sun ceremonies are celebrated among the Hopi, and
sun symbolism is prominent on the paraphernalia used at that time.

The horned serpent called Avanyu is the main idol in the winter
solstice altars? of the Tewa pueblo, Hano, two of which are manu-
factured each year of clay and laid on the floor back of the sand
paintings (pl. 6). Dramatic rites are performed before this altar
and the sun is suggested by the stick called sun ladder (pi. 11) in the
rear of the altar.

The Tewa Avanyu, like the Hopi horned serpent, represents the
great power of the Sky, the male fructifying element, father of all
life, personated by a clay image. The six horned serpents of the
Tewa, ascribed by some authors to the different cardinal points,
is a parallel conception with the six horned serpents of the Hopi.
They are not different beings, but the same Sky god localized.

The worship of the power of the sky as symbolized among the
Pueblos by a great plumed or horned serpent sheds a light on the
reverence Which the Mayas and other Central American cultures of
prehistoric times paid the power they personated as the plumed ser-
pent (Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl) whose many representations occur
on prehistoric buildings devoted to worship in Mexico and Central
America. There figures of the great serpent symbolize the same
great male power of nature as the rude figurines of the Hopi. Prof.
E. B. Tylor has shown that Quetzalcoatl represents the sun, but the
meaning of his cultus is much deeper. Quetzalcoatl symbolizes the
same conception as the plumed serpent of the Hopi, not the sun
alone but the great father of all life, the male fructifying power of
nature of which the sun is a visible representative of an attribute.

In some of the Hopi festivals the worship of the horned serpent
seems to be hopelessly entangied with another characteristic of a
less highly developed culture. I refer, of course, to the flute festival
and its relation to the well-known snake dance of the Hopi. This en-
tanglement is due to mutual acculturation of the Horn, Snake, and
Flute peoples, the latter of which came from the same region as
the Patki people who introduced into Hopiland the plumed serpent
worship. The confusion is increased by the introduction of living
reptile worship in the snake dance. It is well, therefore, to consider
this relationship.

There are at Walpi two great midsummer ceremonials unconnected
with the great serpent cult which alternate in August each year—
one, the snake dance, occurring in odd years; the other the flute
dance, that is performed in even years. The former shows few ob-
jective evidences of Sky serpent worship; the latter contains many
personations and symbols of that cult, due to an ancient association
of the Horn and Snake clans; the union of the former with the flute
clans antedating the separation of Snake and Horn people.

1 Winter solstice altars at Hano. Amer. Anthrop., n. s., Vol. I, 1899.

r

512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

<<

PLATE 6. WINTER SOLSTICE ALTAR OF HANO.

a, Clay image of the Tewa Horned Serpent.

b, Medicine vase.

c, Necklace and teeth made of corn kernels.

e, Symbolic cornstalks.

f, Turkey feathers.

gs, Gaming reeds.

h, Horn of Horned Serpent.

1, Lightning symbol made of sand on floor.

Uf, Lightning framework made of wooden slats.
n, Eagle feathers placed at entrance to the kiva to warn away the uninitiated.
nb, Clay ball to support eagle feathers.

s, Waterworn stones used as fetishes.

sl, Symbol made of wood of sun ladder.

sm, Dry painting made of sand on the kiva floor.
sp, Spear or arrownead of stone.

“ONVH SO YVLIVW S0ILSTOS YSLNIM

"9 ALV1d "SeyME4A—'BI6L ‘odey uBluOsYyyWS

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. Wee

In the preceding pages the essential elements of sun worship in
the Hopi ceremonies ascribed to southern ‘colonists and those of
Hano and eastern extraction have been considered, and these may be
said to represent forms of solar rites among these people; but
there are still other forms of sun worship that are said to have
been introduced by other people that make up the heterogeneous
population. Among many others may be mentioned the so-called
Katcinas, where we have a set of rites not as complex, but perhaps
more primitive. These beings among the Hopi represent ancestral
personages, or clan ancients. The sun is regarded as the father of
both Katcinas, or those who have passed on, and men and women
still hving. As it is supposed that human beings that have died and
now live in ghostly communities have greater powers to aid the
living, they are appealed to and influenced by magical processes and
they are conjured from time to time to return to the village and
aid their descendants or living survivors. The occasion of their ar-
rival is a great festival, at which, after having been prayed to, they
depart for their home in the underworld, where the spirits of the
dead are supposed to dwell. The dramatic representation of their
advent and departure is celebrated by an elaborate Cramatization,
commonly called a dance, in which masked personations of these
beings appear. At this time appears also a representation of the
Sky god, who leads the Katcinas into the pueblo. As the dead are
supposed to follow the setting sun to his home in the west, the
entrance to the underworld, the Katcina departure is also dramat-
ically represented when they leave the pueblo. The advent of the
Katcinas is accompanied by a personation of the sun, their leader,
just as on the departure of the personated dead from the village the
sun accompanies them to his western home. |

The representation of the arrival and departure of the sun and
his followers occurs annually in February and July, the former
naturally beginning before sunrise, the latter at sunset. In the
celebration of the arrival of the Sun god? leading the clan ancients,
or Katcinas, two men retire, early in the morning before sunrise,
to a shrine situated east of the town at the head of the trail, to
dress in an appropriate manner. One of these (pl. 7) arrays him-
self to represent the sun (the horned serpent symbolism is absent),
while the other serves as his guide, which is practically necessary
on account of the size of the mask which his companion wears. These
two men time their entrance into the pueblo in such a way as to enter
it when the sun rises. They proceed in turn to all kivas or sacred
rooms and the houses of the foremost clans. The man personating
the sun (pl. 7) carries in one hand a bundle of sprouting beans and

1Sky-God personations in Hopi Worship, Journ. Amer. Folk Lore, vol.°15, 1902. This

article is limited to personations by men, whereas the present supplements it with
representations by serpent effigies.

514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

PLATE 7. THE SUN GOD OF THE KATCINAS.

a@, Personation of the returning Sun god of the Katcinas.

b, Woman standing in doorway of home blessed by departing Sun.
c, Shell tinklers on leggings of Sun god.

ch, Ceremonial blanket.

ck, Crook, symbol of the offering to the Sun god.

e, Sprouting beans and vines, symbols of fructification.

jf, Feather.

fs, Fox skin.

g, Ceremonial kilt.

hs, Stained red horsehair, symbol of sun’s rays.

k, Embroidered edge of ceremonial kilt showing rain cloud and. falling rain symbols,
1, Ladder.

m, Wallof house.

m, Stone stairs to upper rooms.

o, Star symbol.

p, Symbol characteristic of Sun’s disk.

s, Eagle beak characteristic of Sun’s disk.

sf, Staff with symbols of old man, Sun.

tf, Eagle feathers.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes. PLATE 7.

THE SUN GOD OF THE KATCINAS.

SUN .WORSHIP—FEWKES. 515

corn, and in the other a badge of his office. He performs the follow-
ing rites at each house: Approaching the doorway, he is met by the
oldest woman in the house, who throws a pinch of sacred meal on
him, uttering a prayer for desired benefits. The personator in re-
sponse makes six silent bows, turning first to the rising sun and then
to the woman, to whom he repeats the same, after which he hands
to her several kernels of sprouting beans as a symbolic promise in
answer to her prayer. He then makes with sacred meal four up-
right bands on the side of the doorway, after which he departs to
repeat the same proceeding at the next house. This occurs at the
door of every ancestral room throughout the pueblo and at all the
kiva hatchways. Having done this he departs, and in time
there enters the pueblo from the east a line of masked men repre-
senting the masked clan ancients or Katcinas, who perform an
elaborate rhythmic dance. These clan ancients, led by the Sun
god, are supposed to have now returned and remain in the neighbor-
hood until July, when they depart, at which time an event called
the farewell dance? is celebrated.

The celebration of the advent of the Sky god followed by Kat-
cinas at the pueblo Sichomovi differs somewhat from that at Walpi
above described, mainly because this pueblo is of Zufi derivation,
being modified by personators of bird gods from the neighboring
pueblo, Walpi. The leader is here called Pauatiwa (Zuni name)
and represents the Sky god; the Katcinas that follow are known by
Zufi names and wear masks decorated with Zuni symbols.

The well-known Snake dance of the Hopi, in which rattlesnakes,
called the elder brothers of the Snake fraternity, are introduced, is
quite different from the horned serpent and Katcina worship de-
scribed in the preceding paragraphs. Its present survival in the
Hopi region and its known existence at Keresan pueblos, Sia? and
Acoma, in historic times, we may ascribe to colonists whose ancestors
came from the same area. It is preeminently the cult of a moun-
tainous region, or a northern canyon culture, which spread to the
south where it survived into the historic epoch.

The two cults—that of the horned serpent and that of the Snake
dance—are regarded as radically different. In the latter the incar-
nation of the Sky god in various forms, as birds or horned ser-
pents, plays no important role, while in the former there is abun-
dant symbolism indicating sun worship, so called. The Snake dance
of the Hopi is not primarily a Sky god cult, but rather a form of
ancestor worship, in which the mythic Snake maid and the Snake
youth figure prominently. These have been identified as representa-

1A Few Summer Ceremonies at the Tusayan Pueblos. Journ. Amer. Eth. and Arch.,

Vol. II, pp. 69-108, 1892,
*Tusayan Snake Ceremonies. 16th Rept. Bur, Amer, Eth., p. 809, 1897.

516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tives of the Earth being, or Corn maid, and the Sky god, but the
conception they express is radically different from what we find
in the horned serpent cultus. In the Snake dance of the Hopi we
have a family ceremony in which the reptiles as elder brothers are
gathered from the fields to receive the prayers of their living de-
scendants. They are prayed to as the offspring of ancestral beings,
and are supposed to have more power, in influencing the gods who
cause the crops to germinate and mature, than the living or human
descendants of the same parents. Throughout the legend that ex-
plains the Snake dance both sky (sun) and earth play their parts;
the former guides the Snake youth through the underworld, and
over the sky; the latter is his mentor, the Spider woman.

The prayers at the time of the Snake dance always present the de-
sire of the Hopis for rain to water their farms that corn may grow
and yield abundant harvests. Nowhere throughout the rite do we
find any idols of these two culture ancestors, but they are repre-
sented by a boy and girl in the dramatization of the Snake myth,
as recorded in my account of the Snake ceremonies at Walpi.' Un-
like the Katcinas, the participants do not wear masks and no repre-
sentative of the Sky god leads them into the village.

Nowhere in the Hopi ritual do we find more instructive examples
of solar and sky worship than in the so-called Flute dance,’ which has
been modified by elements of the Snake dance. It would be germane
to this discussion to indicate the points of relation between the myths
and rites of the Flute and Snake priests, but it would take one too
far from the immediate subject in hand. The objective symbolism
dealing with sky worship found on one of the altars of the Oraibi
Flute festival is worthy of analysis.

The most important idol of one of the Oraibi Flute altars (pl. 8)
is identified as the “ Heart of the Sky,” another name for the sky
power. This idol bears a horn on the head resembling that ap-
pendage of the horned serpent effigies. Its lower limbs are deco-
rated with zigzag figures that symbolize the lightning, and there
are other symbols on this idol that suggest the Sky god. On the
sides of this image are idols of the Flute youth and the Flute maid,
to which the prayers of the Flute priests for rain and the fertiliza-
tion of the farms for good harvest are especially directed. The sym-
bol of the sun is worn on the back of a priest in their march (pl. 9)
from the Sun spring to the pueblos on the last day * of the Flute fes-
tival. In the myth of the Flute fraternity there are constant ref-
erences to Sky and Earth god worship in the underworld, which are

1 Snake Ceremonials at Walpi. Journ. Amer. Ethnol, and Archaeol., Col. IV, 1894.
2The Walpi Flute Observance. A Study of Primitive Dramatization. Journ. Amer.
Folk Lore, Vol. VII, No. 21, 1894. The Oraibi Flute Altar. Journ. Amer. Folk Lore, Vol.
VIII, No. 31. The Miconinovi Flute Altar, Journ, Amer. Folk Lore Vol. IX, No. 55, 1896.
?Tusayan Snake and Flute Ceremonies. 19th Rept. Bur. Amer. Eth. 1901.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. e7

rudely dramatized in the ceremonies, showing how important these
nature powers are regarded. Although sky worship related to that
of the horned serpent of the Patki clans appears in the Flute rite,
mythologically and ceremonially, the Flute legend and rite resemble
those of the Snake dance. These likenesses can be explained by
legends that the Flute clans formerly lived with the Patki people
and have mutually modified each other. It is instructive to note also
that the Flute, like the Snake rite and that of the horned serpent,
occurs in midsummer or near the summer solstice, which is a critical
epoch in the calendar of all agricultural people.

There occur among the Hopi a few rites about sand pictures of
the Sun made on the floors of the kivas. One of the most typical
examples of these minor rites occurs in the pueblo Oraibi preceding
the return of the Katcinas, or a few days before the advent of the
personation of the Sky god which has been described above. The
sand painting, a foot and a half in diameter, bounded by four
concentric circles of different colored sand, incloses a central area
in which is represented the prescribed symbol of the sun. On quad-
rants of this circular figure there are representations in sand of four
arrowheads, each of the color corresponding to the direction of its
quadrant, and also four parallel lines, symbols of feathers. After
certain preliminary rites, as exchange of terms of relationship, cere-
monial smoking and prayers, songs are sung during which the chief
takes a flat bowl, perforated with small holes, and sprinkles the sand
picture several times with “ medicine,” at the same time invoking the
gols of the four cardinal points.

In the course of this rite a quartz crystal is deposited on the
face of the sun represented in the sand picture, but before it is
placed there one of the priests, mounting the ladder and standing
at the entrance to the kiva, reflects a ray of sunlight upon the picture.

The object of the rite is to convey their desires to the Sky god by
sympathetic magic. Instead of asking the Sun god to send the
rain, the priests show by action and gestures what is desired, the
reflected ray of light from the sun being the induction of the power
of the Sky god into his image.

This throwing of the sun’s ray into a medicine bowl by reflection
from a rock crystal is repeated in other rites in the same way as
mentioned above, even when there is no sand picture of the sun. For
instance, it occurs in the rite around what is called the six-directions
altar, constructed in the following way: After having spread out
on the floor a layer of valley sand, the priest makes six converging
lines of sacred meal, one of which represents the north, another the
west, another the south, another the east, and two others the above
and below. At the point of convergence of these lines is placed

136650°—20: ot

518 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

PLATE 8,. ALTAR OF THE FLUTE (DRAB) AT ORAIBI.

a, Heart of the Sky; anthropomorphic form of Horned Serpent; the zigzag symbols represent lightning;
cephalic horn; wings, rc; prayer emblem, po, breath feathers carried in left or ceremonialhand.

c, Corn slabs of wood.

cf, Corn flowers.

cm, Corn mosaic, made of kernels of corn.

f, Hleads of grass seeds.

fh, Idol of Flute hero, offerings in left or ceremonialhand,

g, Unknown objects.

1, Lightning symbol.

m, Symbolic corn plant.

p, Wooden base of symbolic corn plant.

po, Prayer feathers.

7, Falling rain.

s, Wooden rod supporting altar framework.

sm, Sand mogaic.

tb, Bird.

ts, Mound of sand to support badge of flute chief, temporarily removed.

w, Medicine vase.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes. PLATE 8.

ALTAR OF THE FLUTE (DRAB) AT ORAIBI.

Piatt i A

ca met .

; Ay ae
et ips he We

"SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 519

an earthenware bowl containing the “ medicine.” At the extremity
of each line is an ear of corn of the color corresponding to
the direction indicated by these lines; yellow corn for the north,
blue or green corn for the west, red corn for the south, white corn
for the east, speckled corn for the above,.and black corn for the
below. On each one of these ears of corn is laid a stone and a drop
of honey. The object of the stone is to indicate that the worshipers
wish the corn to be hard; that of the honey is to ask for sweet corn
of the different colors.

In the course of the songs and prayers about the six-directions
altar, petitions are made for abundance of maize, during which, in
sequence, each ear is solemnly raised by the priest, dipped in the
medicine, and the adhering drops shaken off in the direction in-
dicated by the color of the corn, the stones being left in the medi-
cine. At the conclusion of this rite the priest takes a quartz crystal,
mounts to the entrance of the kiva in the roof, and reflects a ray
of sunlight into the liquid contained in the medicine bowl.

There are here three different kinds of sun worship due to the
northern, eastern, and southern components of the Hopi ritual, but
what is said here must be very general in nature. The northern com-
ponent is, of course, the cult with the living snakes or the famous
Snake dance. There are no masked dancers in the Snake dance, no
uprights to the altars unless the painted slat called the “ butterfly
tablet ” be so regarded; no anthropomorphic idols except the two on
the Snake altar at Oraibi; no prominent plumed serpent or Sky god
worship. The cultus hero and heroine are personated by a boy and
a girl. This cult is simple as compared with those from East and
South.

The cults of eastern and southern provenance have more in com-
mon; the Katcinas, derived from the East and South, personify clan
ancients led by the Sky god, both personated by masked men. The
Katcinas have elaborate altars with idols, as in their equinoxial and
solstitial worship the Patski people have elaborate effigies of the
horned serpent, corn maids, germ gods, and the like. There are
many minor differences, as presence of clowns, multitude of prayer
sticks and the like, but cults of eastern and southern derivation are
evidently higher in development, more varied or more differentiated,
showing that the Snake dance bears every evidence of being not only
a simpler form of worship, but also distinct in its geographical origin
from the others, as the Hopi claim. We may call it the cult of the
Tcamahias or ancient people of the San Juan ruins, strongly repre-
sented in pueblos of ancient and surviving in pueblos of modern
Keresan_ stock.

In many of the public sacred dances in Hopiland there appears
among the participants a personage who bears on his back a shield

ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

520

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SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 521

on which is depicted the sun emblem (fig. 1 and pl. 9). This appears
in certain dances that are worn down to their essential features, hav-
ing lost in the course of time subsidiary rites which legends declare
formerly accompanied them. Take, for instance, the Buffalo dance.
Buffalo hunting was common among some of the ancestors of clans
that now live with the Hopi, but in the course of time these clans
migrated into a region where the buffalo no longer ranged. Natu-
rally, the buffalo cult declined and their great ceremony assumed a
contracted form as compared with the original. It has, in fact, be-

y7

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ha

Fic. 1.—SuN EMBLEM (horsehair stained red omitted).

come a spectacular dance of one day’s duration, in which appear a
girl called the Buffalo Maid and a boy called the Buffalo Youth
(pl. 10), the cultus heroine and hero of the Buffalo cult. On the
back of the Buffalo Maid is an elaborately made symbol of the sun,
while the youth carries a zigzag stick representing the lightning.
The signification of these two symbols is apparent; the Buffalo Maid
is the daughter of the Sun or the Sky god, and the Buffalo Youth
the agent who wields the lightning that fertilizes the earth to produce
buffaloes, a modified form of the elaborate drama already described.

522 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

PLATE 10. BUFFALO YOUTH AND MAID.

bh, Cap made of buffalo skin.

bs, Skin, symbol of buffalo disguise, formerly a buffalo skin.
cb, Ceremonial blanket, embroidered.

dk, Ceremonial dance kilt with embroidered rain clouds and falling rain.
h, Horns of buffalo.

k, Ceremonial kilt.

1, Stick symbolically representing lizhtning.

m, Moccasins with fringe.

po, Prayer feathers.

rt, Rattle.

s, Symbol of the sun.

sl, Sun ladder, prayer stick.

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sqaiye.
ate

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 523

One more fact might be mentioned in regard to this abbreviated
Buffalo dance, namely, that the prayer offering (pl. 11) made after
the« ‘eat the Sun shrine has a very unusual form. It is, in fact,

a mi re notched ladder about 6 inches long, adorned with feath-
“=S, i tation of the prayer stick which is placed in the Sun shrine
. 2% t. The recognized object of this strange offering is to aid,
by othetic magic, the Sky god in rising, as recounted in an

elabora.: legend to which the legendists of certain clans refer when
asked to account for this form of sun worship among the Hopi.

Studies of the idols of the great serpent, taken in connection with
Hopi myths and modern ceremonial! survivals and symbolism, lead
to the conclusion that the great serpent effigy or idol on Hopi altars
is the personation of the power we commonly call the Sky god. This
power, or the fructifying principle of nature, becomes manifest to
man as the lightning, but is visible also as the sun, which has its
appropriate symbol and personation. Hence, Sun worship and great
serpent worship are indissolubly connected and by some are thought
to be identical. They are not the same, but regarded as different,
being directed to attributes of the same supernatural being and
therefore aspects of the same worship. This power is called by as
many names as the personators assume.

When we analyze the meaning of the great serpent represented by
God B of the Maya codices or horned serpent figures on shell and
other objects from the Mound Builders indicating a similar sym-
bolism, we find evidences of the same conception of a great power
sometimes called the Sky god, the great male power that creates,
among other things, life and light.

The worship of sun or sky is pronounced in certain individual
and secular customs of these people. If he visits any of the dwell-
ings where there is a newly born baby a few days old, the observer
will, notice on the wall of the room near the fireplace a number of
parallel scratches a few inches long made by the thumb-nail. Every
day after birth the mother of the baby makes an additional scratch,
until they are 20 in number. On the evening of this day begins
the rite of consecrating the baby to the sun and giving him a name.
In order to see this rite one should spend the night in the room,
where he is always welcome, as many of the preliminary events
occur before sunrise. About 4 o’clock in the morning the grand-
mother, or the oldest woman member of the family, prepares for the
event. The room is carefully swept, the baby washed, its face cov-
ered with sacred meal, an ear of corn tied to its breast. This ear of
corn is the symbolic mother of the child, and is carefully preserved
through its life. Shortly before sunrise the father seats himself on
the east side of the roof, completely muftled up in a blanket with only

1 Also the great serpent mound of Ohio,

524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

his face showing. He carefully watches the point of sunrise, and
as soon as he sees the light of the rising sun he gives the signal that
the time has come for the dedication of the child. There then
emerges from the room a procession, led by the mother of the child,
and followed by the grandmother, or oldest woman of the clan, who
carries the baby strapped to one of the primitive cradles charac-
teristic of these people. The mother traces along the roof a line of
sacred meal extending from the entrance of the room to the place
where the father is seated. The grandmother follows her daugh-
ter holding the cradle in such a way that the head of the child will
not diverge on one side or the other from this line, the purpose
being that the life of the child may not be crooked, but morally
follow the symbolic straight line drawn by the mother. The two
women are attended by the other relatives of the family, mostly girls
and women. As the head of the procession approaches the father,
which is so timed that the sun has just appeared above the horizon,
the grandmother holds the baby up to the sun, and the mother says
a short prayer, dedicating her child to the being she regards, as do
all pious Hopi, the father of all life, at the same time adding the
name which she desires her child should bear. At the conclusion
of this simple ceremony all return to the household, where a feast
has been provided. The baby being the honored person, is placed
at the head of the two lines around the bowls of food, but before
anyone begins to eat. the mother takes in her hand a pinch of every
kind of food and throws it in the fire, with a prayer to the gods of
the hearth. She then returns to the food bowls, takes a second
pinch of all the different kinds of food provided in the feast, and
carries it to the baby, placing it in its mouth. The signal is then
given and all those present, augmented by many others who perhaps
were led to the household for that purpose, begin the feast.

This dedication of the baby to the sun is the first of several rites
which occur in the individual life of every Hopi. When the child
arrives at years of discretion it is customary to impart to him the
knowledge of his relationship to supernatural beings. In other
words, up to that time children have been taught to believe that the
personations of Katcinas are gods that from time to time perform
their elaborate dramatization in ceremonial dances. It is deemed
necessary to impart to youths the fact that the priests who personate
these beings are their own relatives, but this knowledge must be ob-
tained by a flogging, or by personal suffering. The rite of flogging
the children is complicated, and has been elsewhere described, but it
suffices our purpose here to mention the fact that the person who
flogs the children represents the Sun god. The whole ceremony is
explained by an ancient legend which is somewhat as follows, omit-
ting details not germane to our subject.

PLATE II.

Smithsonian Report, 1918.—Fewkes.

SUN LADDER PRAYER STICK CARRIED BY THE BUFFALO MAID AT HANO.

SUN WORSHIP—FEWKES. 525

In very old times, the legend states, before the seeds of corn and
other food which form the diet of the Hopi were brought to man-
kind, thereby changing their cultural condition, the announcement
of this gift was made to a gathering of people who sat around a
large sacred stone bemoaning their lot. A voice issuing from be-
neath the stone, called to the bravest of them to go down into the
bowels of the earth to meet the God of Germs. No one of their
number dared to accept this invitation save a young man not yet of
high standing in the priesthood. He replied to the voice, “ What
shall I do to enter the underworld?” and the voice repled, “ Put
your hand on the rock before you.” The boy immediately did this
and a cleft appeared, widening into a passageway through which he
descended.

He passed into the underworld and there entered a beautiful room
adorned with sea shells, turquoises, and other objects dear to the
Hopi heart. In the middle of the room was the god resplendent in
his costuming, wearing about his loins a girdle made of red horse-
hair, holding in one hand the shield of the sun and in the other
a whip made of the yucea. As the boy approached this being he
was greeted with the words “ You are welcome here, but you must
endure much suffering before you depart. If you are brave of
heart vou will carry back to your people gifts of great value.”
Without hesitation the boy advanced and said, “I am ready for any
ordeal.” Immediately after, the god raised his whip, which, like
a stroke of lightning, descended on the bare back of the youth.
For some time this went on until the boy was almost exhausted
with loss of blood, but he still kept his brave heart, and até the
close the gods presented him with a prayer plume with the words
“Annually you must plant this stick in my shrine in the upper
world and I will bring you all the gifts of nature as a reward. You
must perform this initiation ceremony with the youths of age in the
village, dressed in the same way as the sun, and singing the same
songs which you have here heard. Asa proof that I will aid you, I
give you here a bundle of seeds which you shall plant yearly. Put
your hand upon the rock above you.” As he obeyed this command,
the rock opened a passageway and the boy passed out to his sorrow-
ing friends. The passageway then closed, and the boy put his hand
again on the rock, but it did not open, although the impression of
that hand is still pointed out on a rock in the valley below. When he
emerged from the underworld, he told the assembled men nothing of
his adventure other than that every year the boys and girls of a cer-
tain age should gather together in the kivas and he would perform
the mysteries of the initiation through which he had already passed
in the underworld. “And that is why,” added the narrator, “every
year in February the personators of the Sun god flog our children

526 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

that they may be brave of heart, and that the Sun god in turn may
bring his blessings of abundant crops and fertilizing rains.”

The last ceremony in the individual] life of a Hopi is also con-
nected with the worship of the sky power, or his personation, the sun
god. After death the deceased is mourned for a limited time by the
relatives, during which there is placed over his face a wad of cotton
batting called a mask, in which are pierced two openings for his eyes,
and he is addressed as follows: “ You have become a Katcina. Aid
us in bringing the rain, and intercede with the gods to fertilize our
farms.” It will be noted that the dead is addressed by the same
name as that given to the ancestral personations, which play such a
prominent réle in the worship and ceremonial dances of the Hopi.
After other rites, which need not be mentioned at this time, the
corpse is wrapped in blankets, in a contracted position, the knees
brought to the chin; carried down the mesa by the oldest man of his
clan, accompanied only by one or two male relatives, and deposited
in a sitting posture in a rudely made grave among the rocks of the
foothills. The corpse is placed looking toward the east, and for
four days bowls of food and prayer offerings are placed over the
grave, but the place of burial is known only to the intimate rela-
tions. It is the belief of the Hopi that the spirit of the dead
remains in the grave four days, and that the “breath body ” of the
food placed there is for the consumption of the spirit, or “breath
body ” of the dead; but at sunrise on the fourth day it is thought to
emerge from the grave, and is supposed to follow the sun in its course
to his house in the west, which is situated beyond the horizon, indi-
cated by a notch near the San Francisco Mountains, and on to the
abode of the dead. The object of placing the dead facing the east
is that he may see the sun when it rises and be able to emerge from
the grave in time for the journey. Under guidance of the sun, the
“breath body ” enters the underworld, and is received by the ghostly
inhabitants which people it, for this is the abode of the dead, and the
Sky god is a ruler of that world, in the Hopi conception. It may be
said incidentally that the occupations which the apotheosized pur-
sue are practically identical, in their conception, with those of the
quick in the upper world. They not only perform the same secular
work as on earth, but also engage simultaneously in similar cere-
monies, and at times communicate with them through a hole (sipa-
pu) in the floor of the kiva, returning from time to time as already
described in those dramatic dances known as the Katcinas. It will
thus be seen that in individual rites from birth to death the worship
of the Sky god, in the form of the Sun god, is always present in the
Hopi mind, as well as in their great dramatic cerémonies.

A CONSTITUTIONAL LEAGUE OF PEACE IN THE
STONE AGE OF AMERICA.

THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS AND ITS CONSTITUTION.

By. J. N. B. Hewirr.

Bureau of American Ethnology.

In the Stone Age of America the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the
Oneida, the Cayuga, and the Seneca, five Iroquoian tribes dwelling
in the central and the eastern regions of what is to-day the State
of New York, established a tribal federation or league, with a care-
fully prepared constitution, based on peace, righteousness, justice,
and power. These five Iroquois tribes spoke dialects of the Lroquo-
ian stock of languages, which is one of about 50 spoken north of
Mexico.

After more than four years of a world war, characterized by
such merciless slaughter of men, women, and children, by such
‘titanic mobilization of men and weapons of destruction, and by such
hideous brutality, that no past age of savagery has equaled them,
the peoples of the earth are now striving to form a league of nations
for the expressed purpose of abolishing the causes of war and to
establish a lasting peace among all men.

So, of more than passing interest is the fact that in the sixteenth
century, on the North American Continent, there was formed a per-
manent league of five tribes of Indians for the purpose of stopping
for all time the shedding of human blood by violence and of estab-
lishing lasting peace among all known men by means of a consti-
tutional form of government based on peace, justice, righteousness,
and power, or authority.

Its founders did not limit the scope of this confederation to the
five Iroquoian tribes mentioned above, but they proposed for them-
selves and their posterity the greater task of gradually bringing
under this form of government all the known tribes of men, not
as subject peoples but as confederates.

The proposal to include all the tribes of men in such a league of
comity and peace is the more remarkable in view of the fact that
that was an age of fierce tribalism, whose creed was that no person
had any rights of life or property outside of the tribe to whose

r

527

528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

jurisdiction he or she belonged, and that every person when beyond
the limits of his or her tribe’s protection was an outlaw, and com-
mon game for the few who still indulged in the horrid appetite of
cannibalism. So that the doctrine of the founders of the league that
all persons by adopting their formulae could forego the shedding
of human blood and become related as “ fathers” and “ mothers ”
and “sons” and “ daughters,” in the terms of Troquoian kinship and
affinity, was revolutionary and most disturbing from the viewpoint
of this intense tribalism. It was the central teaching of Deganawida,
the great statesman and lawgiver of the Iroquois people in the six-
teenth century, that out of the union of a common motherhood and
a common fatherhood arise the daughtership of all women and
the sonship of all men, and the rich fellowship of all mankind.

The establishment of the league of the five Iroquois tribes in the
closing decades of the sixteenth century was -in large measure not
only a drastic reformation but also an experiment. Avowedly it
was designed as an institution for the extension and preservation
of peace and equity and righteousness among all men; and it made
a fundamental departure from the practice of the past in completely
excluding in so far as terms go the military power from participa-
tion in the conduct of purely civil affairs.

When using the terms war and warfare, it must be remembered
that while they denoted defensive, apprehensive, and offensive strife,
and the mood and the means (the weapons belonging thereto),
they did not imply the war and warfare waged by a military State,
a body of soldiers, drilled and regimented and organized independ-
ently of the civil body. There were, strictly speaking, no armies
among tribal men; only the beginnings, the more or less developed
germs of these things. There were, indeed, groups of fighters who
were regimented and organized, not in a practical or rational
manner and mood, but in accordance with mythical and sociological
conceptions and predispositions, and strictly with relation to their
kinship status, individually and severally, in the tribal organization
to which they belonged. For every tribe, great or small, or group
of tribes, was, exclusive of the women and the children, an inchoate,
undifferentiate army, a group of instant or else actual fighters.

For like reasons there was no State religion, where all forms and
moods of it were tolerated and practised.

At the period of the formation of the league and for at least 75
years afterwards these five tribes, thus united, were surrounded by
a number of powerful and hostile tribes, nearly all of which were
cognate with them in speech. On the St. Lawrence River, ap-
proximately on the present sites of the cities, Montreal and Quebec,
dwelt two strong Huron tribes. On the upper Ottawa River were
the Algonquin and their congeners. Around Lake Simcoe were two

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 529

more powerful Huron tribes, to which the two mentioned above as
living on the St. Lawrence River migrated about the beginning of
the seventeenth century, and formed an alliance with them. These
are the four Huron tribes mentioned in the Jesuit Relations. South-
ward from the Huron tribes, and in the peninsula lying westward
from Niagara River and northward from Lake Erie and extending
eastward over Niagara River to the watershed of the Genesee River
in New York State, were situated the numerous towns of the powerful
“neuter nation.” also of cognate speech. South and southeastward
of Lake Erie dwelt the warlike Erie, who also were of cognate
speech with the Iroquois tribes; and still farther eastward were the
little known Black Minqua also of cognate language. In the upper
Susquehanna river valley, especially in the Wyoming valley, lived
the noted Massawomeke also of cognate speech. On the lower
Susquehanna dwelt the fiercely warlike Conestoga. On the Dela-
ware river and its affluents dwelt the Lanape or Delaware tribes
who spoke Algonquian dialects. Eastward, along and beyond the
Hudson River dwelt the Mohegan and their cognates who also
spoke Algonquian dialects. Such summarily was the tribal environ-
ment of the five Iroquois tribes at the era of the institution of their
league or confederation. Tradition is silent as to any extensive
warfare with these surrounding tribes anterior to the founding of
the league.

History records the use of two fundamentally distinct methods of
grouping peoples by means of institutional bonds. The grouping of
men in this manner has been aptly termed regimentation. The two
systems mentioned are the tribal system of regimentation and the
national system of regimentation. In the first, men are regimented
or organized on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as a legal
fiction, and in the second, men are regimented or organized in insti-
tutional units on the basis of territory. But history records transi-
tional forms of organization, and the most important-of these is the
feudal, for both methods mentioned above are found in feudal so-
ciety, showing transition from tribal to national society and govern-
ment.

Now, the tribes of the Iroquoian stock of languages are regi-
mented or organized on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as
a legal fiction, and they trace descent or lineage of blood only
through the mother.

To grasp fully and to comprehend clearly the structure and the
workings of the great institution which is called the league or eon-
federation of the Five Nations, one must have a summary but clear
knowledge of the several constituent units which in the last analysis
have voice and place in its structure and workings.

530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

In brief, these are the ohwachira (=the uterine family), of which
cne or more constitutes a clan; the clan, of which one or more may
constitute a sisterhood, or, as it is usually called, a phratry of clans;
the sisterhood or phratry of clans, of which only two constitute a
tribe in Iroquois social organization ; the tribe, of which two or three
constitute a sisterhood or phratry of tribes; and finally the league
or confederation which is composed of just two sisterhoods or
phratries of tribes.

The common noun ohwachira (as pronounced by the Mohawk and
other 7-sounding dialects) or ohwachia (as uttered by the Onondaga
and other 7-less dialects) signifies a group of male and female uterine
kin, real, or such by legal fiction. It includes all the male and the
female progeny of a woman, and also the progeny of a woman and of
all her female descendants, tracing descent of blood in the female line
and of such other persons as may have been adopted into it. In so
far as known the ohwachira, unlike the clan, does not bear the desig-
native name of a tutelary or other protecting genius, or “totem” as
it is commonly but loosely called when applied to a clan; and yet it is
commonly known that the influential matron of an ohwachira usually
bears the reputation of being deft in the peculiar arts of the sorceress,
each of which being the potence or orenda of some tutelary.

The matron of an ohwachira is usually, not always, the oldest
woman in it. But, by becoming incapacitated by age or other infirm-
ity to manage the affairs of an ohwachira as its moderator, she may
ask permission to resign so that a much younger woman of recognized
ability and industry and integrity of character may be nominated
and installed to preside over the ohwachira in her stead.

Naturally, the ohwachira had as many firesides as it had women
who were married. Each married woman of an ohwachira used one
side of one of the fires at the center of the lodge. The Iroquoian
lodge was extended lengthwise to accommodate those who dwelt in it,
and the fires were kindled along the center from place to place.

The members of an ohwachira have (1) the right to the name of
the clan of which that ohwachira is a constituent unit; (2) the
right of inheriting property from deceased members of it; (8) the
right to take a part in the councils of the ohwachira; (4) the right
to adopt an alien through the advice of the presiding matron of it.

In the present organization of the league, only certain ohwachira
have inherited chiefship titles, the principal and the vice-chief, and,
consequently, the right to name any of its members to fill these
offices; after the formation of the league these nominees had to be
installed by federal officers, but previously by tribal officers. Strictly
speaking, these titles of chiefship belong to the mothers in the
ohwachira, over which the presiding matron held a trusteeship.

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 531

Rarely, the offspring of an adopted alien came to constitute an
ohwachira having chiefship titles; but this was first only a trustee-
ship of the titles, which belonged to an extinct, moribund, or out-
lawed, ohwachira. A basic rule of the constitution of the league
of the Iroquois provides in the case of the extinction of an ohwachira
owning chiefship titles, that for the preservation of this title,
it shall be placed in trust with a sister ohwachira of the same
clan, if such there be, during the pleasure of the council of the
league. This was a most important law in view of the fact that no
new federal titles were instituted after the death of Deganawida,
the prophet statesman of the [roquois.

The women of marriageable age and the mothers in the ohwachira
had the right to hold councils; especially, such as those at which
candidates for chief and vice-chief might be nominated by the
mothers alone. At such councils these women had the right to
formulate some proposition for discussion by the tribal council; it
might be done in conjunction with other ohwachira. (This is, in
embryo at least, the modern so-called right of initiative.) In like
manner, a proposition might be made to the tribal council to submit
to the suffrages of all the people, including infants (the mothers
casting their votes), any question which might be occupying the
attention of the council or the people. (This is, in embryo at least,
the modern so-called right of referendum.)

It is the right of the matron of the ohwachira whose chief wanders
away from the path of rectitude to take the initial step in his depo-
sition for cause—first, by going in person to him and warning him
to reform and to return to the path of right and duty; if he fails
to heed this warning she seeks out her brother or eldest son, as a
representative of the men of her ohwachira, and together they go to
give the erring chief the second warning. [If still he persists in the
neglect of duty and in doing wrong, the matron then goes to the
chief warrior of the ohwachira, and then these three together go to
him and merely inform him that he must appear on a given day at
the tribal council. There the chief warrior asks him categorically
whether he will or will not conform to the expressed wish of his
ohwachira. If he refuse to reform he is at once deposed, the chief
warrior figuratively removing from his head the “symbolic horns ”
(i. e., receiving back the wampum strings which are the certificate
of his official title) of his title and handing them to the matron.
(This is, in brief, the recall of modern times.)

In the structure of the league several ohwachira, some having a
chiefship title, are incorporated to form one clan, so that this clan
is represented in the tribal or the federal council by two or more
chieftains. It so happens that the Mohawk and the Oneida tribes
have only three clans each; but each of these clans has three oh-

532 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

wachira which have a principal chief and a vice-chief, respectively ;
and so these two tribes are represented in council, when all are pres-
ent, by nine chiefs and nine vice-chiefs or messengers, the latter
of course have no voice in the deliberations except in case the chief
be, for some reason, unable to attend a council when he may deputize
for such council his messenger to act for him. In the nature of
things, every ohwachira of the Iroquoian tribes formerly possessed
and worshiped, in addition to those owned by individuals, one or
more tutelary deities or genii called ochinagenda, in modern usage,
but formerly named oiaron (or oyaron) with a larger meaning,
which customarily were in the secret custodianship or trusteeship of
certain wise women who were usually named physicians, but who
were in fact also so-called witches.

The ohwachira or uterine family was the primary unit of the social!
organization of all Iroquoian tribes. It must not be overlooked that
the members of an ohwachira could not marry one another, nor could
the members of a clan, composed of one, two, or more, such ohwa-
chira, which by thus uniting to form a single organic unit become
sisters, or sister ohwachira, and the members of the unit so formed
become exogamous with relation to one another. The union of two
or more organic units naturally produced an organization of a higher
order and an enlargement and a multiplication of rights, obligations
and privileges.

It will be needful to keep in mind the fact that the women of an
ohwachira who elected to marry had to do so only with men from
ohwachira which had a cousin relationship to their own, for they
must not commit incest by marrying men from their own ohwachira
or men from a sister ohwachira. Thus, every ohwachira which had
women who were married was interrelated with many cousin streams
of blood, and it is these outside ties which bound together the various
blood streams. Troquoian society is then held together by the bonds of
affinity, while the tracing of the descent of blood through the women
preserved its purity and insured its continuity.

When an ohwachira became an integral part of a clan—a higher
unit—it necessarily delegated some of its self-government to this
higher unit in such wise as to make this union of coordinate units
more cohesive and interdependent. Thus the institution of every
higher organic unit produced new privileges, duties, and rights, and
the individual came under a more complex control and his welfare
become more secure through tribunals exercising a greater number
of delegated powers in wider jurisdiction.

Status in an Troquoian tribe was secured only by being born into
it, by virtue of birth in one of its uterine families or by adoption
into it. But an alien could be and was adopted into citizenship in
the clan and tribe only by being adopted into an ohwachira (uterine

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 533

family) of some clan. The ceremony of adoption was so potent that
where two alien sisters were adopted, each into a clan which inter-
married with the other, their children intermarried as coming from
exogamous groups.

Whatever land was held by the ohwachira for cultivation and on
which fuel and berries and nuts and roots and bark and medicines
and poisons were procured, belonged exclusively to the women of the
ohwachira.

Ordinarily, the members of an ohwachira were obligated to pur-
chase the life of one of its members who had forfeited it by a
homicide and to pay for the life of the victim as well.

It was seen that the earth produced things which were fixed in her
breast; all the things that grow whether corn, beans, squashes, berries,
or nuts, are nourished directly by the earth. In like manner it ap-
peared that woman, the mother, was a producer, and nourished what
she produced on her breast; hence, the woman and the earth are
sisters. So the cultivation of the things that grow out of the earth
is especially the duty and pleasure of woman. While the pursuit of
game, and fish, and birds, and men who are not fixed in the earth
was strictly within the prerogative of the men.

The ohwachira through its matron exercised the right to spare, or
to take, if needs be, the life of prisoners of war in its behalf and
offered to it for adoption. Such briefly is the ohwachira of Iro-
quoian. social organization.

The Troquoian clan is an intratribal exogamic body of uterine kin,
real, or such by legal fiction, regimented for the purpose of securing
and promoting their social and political welfare. The clan has a
name, which serves as a class or preferably unit name for its mem-
bers, and which is derived usually from some animal or bird or
reptile belonging to the habitat of the ancestors of this body of
kin, or to its customary tutelary genius. The lineal descent of blood,
the inheritance of property, both personal and common, and the
hereditary right of eligibility to public office and trust are traced in
the clan through the female line attained through the action and
interaction of its constitutive units—the ohwachira (the uterine
families).

The Iroquoian clan is constituted organically of one or more
ohwachira; its chief or chieftains came to it through its constituent
ohwachira which may have possessed such officers. A large number
of the characteristics of the ohwachira may be predicated of the clan,
for the reason that the ohwachira gave up for administration to this
larger grouping a number of their functions. So that a clear knowl-
edge of the ohwachira is first needed to understand what a clan is.

136650° —20-——35

534 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The following summary of the characteristic rights and privileges
of an Iroquoian clan may be enlightening: (1) The right to a dis-
tinctive name, which an invariable custom derives from some animal,
bird, or reptile, characteristic of the habitat, which may have been
regarded as a guardian genius or protecting deity. (2) Representa-
tion by one or more chiefs in the tribal council. (8) An equitable
share in the communal property of the tribe. (4) The right and
cbligation to have its nominations for chief and subchief of the clan
confirmed and installed by officers of the tribal council in earlier
times, but since the institution of the league, by officers of the federal
council. (5) The right to the protection of the tribe of which it is
a constituent member. (6) The right of the titles of the chief-
ships and subchiefships hereditary in its ohwachira(s). (7) The
right to certain songs, chants, dances, and religious observances.
(8) The right of its men or women, or both together, to meet in
council. (9) The right to the use of certain names of persons, which
are given to its members. (10) The right to adopt aliens through
the action of a constituent ohwachira. (11) The right of its members
to a common burial ground. (12) The right of the mothers of con-
stituent ohwachira(s), in which such official titles are inherent, to
nominate candidates for chief and subchief; some clans have more
than one of each class of chiefs. (13) The right of these same
mothers to take the prescribed steps for impeaching and deposing
their chiefs and subchiefs. (14)The right to share in the religious
rites, ceremonies, and public festivals of the tribe.

The duties incidental to clan membership are the following: The
obligation not to marry within the clan, formerly not even within the
sisterhood or phratry of clans, to which the one in question belonged ;
the effect of membership in the sisterhood of clans was to make all
men either mother’s brothers or brothers, and all women mothers or
sisters. (2) The joint obligation to purchase the life of a member
of the clan which has been forfeited by homicide or the murder of a
member of the tribe or of an allied tribe. (3) The duty and obliga-
tion to aid and to defend its members in supplying their wants,
redressing their wrongs and injuries through diplomacy or by force
of arms, and in avenging their death. (4) The joint obligation to
replace with prisoners or other persons other members who have been
lost or killed, belonging to any ohwachira of a clan to which they may
be related as father’s brothers or father’s clansmen, the matron of
such ohwachira having the right to ask that this obligation be fulfilled.

The clan name is not usually among the Iroquois the common
designation of the animal or bird or reptile after which the clan may
be called, but very commonly denotes some marked feature or charac-
teristic or the favorite haunt of it, or it may be just a survival of an
archaic name of it.

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 535

The number of clans in the different Iroquois tribes varies; the
smallest number is three representative clans, found in the Mohawk
and the Oneida, while the Seneca have nine and the Onondaga eight.
There are also some clans which, having no chief titles, are seldom
named in public.

In historical times, and in the past as far as tradition Meri us,
every clan belonged to a sisterhood or phratry of clans, and so was
not directly a member of a tribe. In all Iroquois tribes two sister-
hoods or phratries of clans are found, each forming one side of the
dual tribal organization. One of the tribal sides represents the
fatherhood or male principle and the other the motherhood or female
principle among living things.

There are three native terms in the speech of the Iroquois which
may be translated into English by the word chief or chieftain.
These are in the third person and in the Mohawk dialect, as follows:
rakowa’ne™, ra‘séhnowa’ne™, and roya’ne‘r, each signifying “he (is)
a chief.” The first two are generic and so may be applied to civil
or military chiefs, while the last is at present restricted to chieftains
of the League, who represent their tribal constituencies both in the
tribal council and in the federal council of the League, and also is
applied to the women chieftainesses. The chief bearing the last
name has a subchief or messenger, who is usually mentioned by the
agnomen, “The Cane” or “The Ear,” and who is symbolically
represented as sitting on the roots of the Tree (the Chieftain) whose
subchief he is. It is the duty of this subchief to see personally that
the chief’s orders in his official capacity are carried out—either in
person or by the aid of the warriors or other members of the clan.

The first of these official names signifies “he great, noble, (is),”
being derived from the stem meaning, “ great, large, or noble.”
The second, meaning “ his name great, noble, (is),” is derived from
a compound stem composed of the noun “name” and the attributive
qualifying stem just mentioned. The third term is notionally not
connected with the two terms just mentioned. Its stem, -ya’ne‘r,
means “ beneficent, bountiful, good, promotive of good or of welfare,
(to be).” This stem is also the basis of the words for Law, the
Commonwealth or the Institution of the League. Thus, in Iroquo-
ian thinking a law, or the body of laws, is what brings to pass what
is highestly or greatestly good. And so a federal chief could not
engage in warfare while holding such a title.

Some biographic notice of at least four of the chief actors in the
events leading up to the institution of the league may be of interest
and be instructive. These four are Deganawida, Hiawatha, Djigon-
sasen, and Atotarho (Wathatotarho).

To begin with the first named. Deganawida was one .of the
world’s wonder children. His conception, birth, and career are

536 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

largely idealized by tradition. Prophetic dreams and visions an-
nounced to his doubting grandniother his alleged divine origin and
heavenly mission among men; prodigies attended his birth and
childhood; he had power on earth and in heaven—that is to
say, he knew and sought to do the will of the Master of Life,
Teharo™hywa’k’ho”. His mother and grandmother were poor
and despised and lived alone in a small lodge by themselves on
the outskirts of the village to which they belonged, and so they
had few, if any, visitors who might seek the daughter for a wife.
But there came a day when the watchful mother became aware that
her daughter would herself in due time give birth to a child, and
bitterly did she reprove her for not marrying a man in the
customary way, for now she was bringing scandal upon her mother
and herself. The daughter, however, steadfastly denied that
she had had commerce with any man at any time, but her mother
doubted her and carried her reproof so far as to cause the daughter
much bitterness of spirit, and she, therefore, spent much time in
silently weeping, for she loved her mother and claimed that she did
not know the cause of her pregnancy, and she was deeply grieved
by her mother’s chiding. It was then that the mother had a dream
in which she was told by a divine messenger that she was doing her
daughter great wrong in not believing her statement that she did
not know the source of her condition; and she was further told that
her daughter would bear a male child, whom they must call
Deganawida, and that he would be indirectly the cause of ruin to
their people.

The repentant mother upon awaking asked her daughter’s forgive-
ness for the wrong she had done her in not believing her denials.
They, however, decided to destroy the life of the child when it should
be born because of the dream’s declaration that he would grow up
and be the source of evil to their people. So when the child was born
they carried it to a neighboring stream of water, which was frozen
over, and cutting a hole in the ice thrust the child into it to drown,
and they returned to their lodge. But when they awoke in the
morning they found the child unharmed and lying asleep between
them. This attempt to rid themselves of this child was repeated
twice more, but each time no harm came to the child, and then after
consultation the two women decided that it was the will of the Mas-
ter of Life that they should raise the child. They were most kind
to him thereafter, and they gave him the name Deganawida, as the
dream had directed the grandmother to do. He was reputed to have
been one of seven brothers, but in regard to the father or fathers
of the six younger brothers tradition is silent.

When he grew to man’s estate he informed his mother and grand-
mother that he must leave them to perform a’ great work in lands

f

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 5B

lying south of the great lake. He left them in a “ white canoe,”
which perhaps was a canoe of white birch, which later tradition has
carelessly confounded with the ice canoe(=1ce block) in which the
Troquoian myth of the Beginnings says the Winter God goes from
place to place and which by further corruption of the misconception
in modern literature has become a “ flint” or “stone ” canoe.

Tradition ranks Deganawida with the demigods, because of the
masterful ovenda or magic power with which, it was alleged, he
tirelessly overcame the obstacles and difficulties of his great task;
because of the astuteness and the statesmanship he displayed in nego-
tiation; and lastly, because of the courage and wisdom he showed in
patiently directing the work of framing the laws and elucidating the
fundamental principles on which they and the entire structure of the
Iroquois league or confederation must rest, if these were to endure to
secure the future welfare of their posterity. He was a prophet and
statesman and lawmaker of the Stone Age of North America. Tradi-
tion ascribes his lineage to no tribe, lest his personality be limited
thereby.

The traditions concerning the person who has become known as
Hiawatha on close examination are found to describe two very dif-
ferent personages.

In one tradition Hiawatha when first seen by Deganawida was a
cannibal’ and was actually engaged in bringing the carcass of a
human being into his lodge, which he quickly proceeded to quarter
and cook in a pot of water. He had been out hunting for human
beings, and meeting this one had killed him for his larder.

Deganawida had previously heard of his cannibalistic habits
from Djigonsasen, the chieftainess of the Neutral nation (or tribe),
who was the first person to understand and to accept the radical pro-
gram of Deganawida for stopping the shedding of human blood by
violence and for the establishment of peace and equity and righteous-
ness and power.

Unseen by Hiawatha, Deganawida, the tradition says, mounting to
the top of the lodge watched Hiawatha at work; peering through the
smoke hole from a point just over him, Deganawida saw what was
being done by Hiawatha and, tradition says, caused him by mental
suggestion to realize the horrible enormity of what he was then
doing; so he mistook the face of Deganawida, reflected in the pot, for
his own, and being struck with the great beauty of that face he con-
trasted it with the character of the work in which he was then
engaged and exclaimed, tradition says: “That face and this kind of
business do not agree”; and he then and there resolved to give up
cannibalism for all time. He quickly arose and carried the pot out
of the lodge and cast its contents away at some distance from the
lodge.

5388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Deganawida having descended from the top of the lodge went
forward to meet his host. Because of his recent experience Hia-
watha was very much pleased to have a guest who brought him the
wonderful message of peace and righteousness and power. The
result of this conference was the conversion of Hiawatha to the
reform program of Deganawida and his agreement to aid in the
work of bringing about the change in the attitude and relation of
men one to another.

According to tradition, Deganawida gave him his name after his
conversion, and Hiawatha became a loyal and enthusiastic disciple
of Deganawida and gave up everything in order to devote all his
energies and time to the work of establishing the projected league
or confederation of peoples in accordance with the principles ex-
pounded by Deganawida. He indeed undertook several very impor-
tant missions for his great teacher and acquited himself with great
credit.

The most effective and unscrupulous opposition the two reformers
encountered in their work came from the noted Onondaga chief,
Atotarho (Watatotarho), a wizard and sorcerer who was feared
far and near, who, during the years in which the league was being
brought into being, removed by secret means, it is said, the seven
daughters (some versions say three) and then the wife of Hiawatha,
his opponent.

No place is given by tradition as Hiawatha’s birthplace, although
some analysts declare that he was a half-brother of the fierce chief-
tain Atotarho (Watatotarho), of the Onondaga, his pitiless antag-
onist.

This tradition asserts that he lived among the Mohawk and mar-
ried the daughter of a chief there and that he himself became a chief
among these people. His name is still on the list of titles of federal
Mohawk chiefs.

In the other version of the tradition of the founding of the league
of the Iroquois Hiawatha is treated as the chief actor in the con-
ception and establishment of this confederacy instead of the real
founder, Deganawida. But from a careful survey of the narrative
of events herein this version is found to be much less faithful to facts
than the one first mentioned.

It appears that in this tradition the several missions upon which
his mentor, Deganawida, sent him, were fused together in such wise
as to make them merely a series of events or episodes in a single
journey of Hiawatha, which he was alleged to have made in despair,
going directly southward from the Onondaga council lodge; on this
journey he was said to “have split the sky,” meaning merely that he
took a course directly south. Herein, too, he fled from Onondaga

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 539

because of vexation of spirit for the loss of his children by the will
of the great sorcerer, Atotarho (Watatotarho).

The descriptive details are highly interesting to the antiquarian
because they shed some faint light on the kind of pledge or vouch
which was in use before wampum and wampum strings came into
vogue for that purpose. On this journey some of the persons dele-
gated to communicate with Hiawatha used for a pledge small shoots
of the elderberry bush which were cut into short pieces, and from
which the pith was removed, and these little cylinders strung on
small cords of sinew; likewise, the tradition continues, the quills of
large feathers, cut off and strung on cords, were also used as tokens,
pledges, or vouches for the good faith of the messenger or speaker.

Fresh-water shells were substituted by Hiawatha for these things.
Coming to a small body of water, he saw its surface literally covered
by ducks swimming about. He went near and exclaimed, “Do you
not attach any importance to my mission?” At once the ducks flew
up into the air, bearing up with them the water of the lake. Hia-
watha at once went down into the bottom of the lake, thus made
dry, and there he saw many shells of various colors. These he gath-
ered and placed in a skin bag which he carried. When the bag had
been filled he returned to the shore of the lake, and selecting a suit-
able place sat down there and, tradition says, strung the 28 strings
with their messages, which are employed in the ritual of the con-
doling and installation ceremony of the league to this day, although
these fresh-water shells have long been replaced by wampum beads.

It is thus seen that this tradition makes Hiawatha the designer of
the pledges for this rite, although the matter of the tradition shows
that this cannot be true, because the use of a set number of topics of
the “comfort,” or rather “requickening address,’ was in vogue
among other tribes of the Iroquoian linguistic stock—the Huron,
for example.

The name Hiawatha was immortalized by Longfellow in the
beautiful poem bearing this name, although there is nothing in the
poem that can be predicated of the historical person bearing that
name. This was due to the mistake of confusing two names—that of
Hiawatha with that of the Iroquoian god, the Master of Life, the
one who gives or creates all life, both faunal and floral, on the earth.

Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his “ Onondaga, etc.,” is directly responsible
for this confusion, for, although Schoolcraft added to it, Mr. Clark
brought it to pass in the first instance. In the hands of careless
hearers and recorders native Indian names which in fact have no re-
lationship whatsoever are readily confounded. In the Mohawk dia-
lect of the Iroquoian stock of languages (and in all others of this
stock using the r-sound in their phonetics) Teharonhiawagon ap-
proximately records the sounds in the name of the Life God or the

540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Master of Life; but this name in Onondaga (and in all other dia-
lects of this stock, which do not use the r-sound), becomes Dehaen-
hiawagi. This name, misspelled, appears in print as Ta-oun-ya-
wat-ha, Thannawege, Taonhiawagi, and Tahiawagi, etc.; but be-
tween these and the dubious attempts to record the native original
for the Anglicised Hiawatha—namely, Tahionwatha, Taoungwatha,
Ayonhwatha, Hayenwatha, Hayonwentha, etc.—there is no relation-
ship whatever. But Clark, misled, perhaps, by otosis and miscon-
ception and by a confused tradition, identifies in direct statement the
two names and the two persons.

Schoolcraft, when gathering material for his Notes on the Iro-
quois, received a number of fragmentary mythic tales about the Iro-
quoian god, the Master of Life and also traditional stories about one
of the chief founders of the league. But as these had been con-
founded by Clark and made to relate to a single individual School-
craft undiscriminatingly adopted this intermixture, and added to the
mischief by transferring Hiawatha to the region of the Great Lakes,
and there identified him with Nanabozho, the Master of Life, or
God of Life, of the Chippewa and other Algonquian cognates.

Now, the Mohawk Troquoian Teharonhiawagon and the Chippewa
Algonquian Nanabozho are approximately identical mythic concep-
tions, but neither has in fact or fiction any feature predicable of
Hiawatha. Schooleraft’s The Hiawatha Legends, to which we owe
the charming poem of that name by Longfellow, were chiefly mythic
tales and fiction about Nanabozho, the Chippewa Master of Life, but
which contain nothing about Hiawatha, an Iroquoian chieftain of
the sixteenth century.

Were Europeans of some day in the future shown a great narra-
tive of French epic adventure in which Prince Bismarck, the de-
spoiler of France, should appear as the central and leading Gallic
hero in the glory and triumph of France, the absurdity and error
would not be greater or more towering than in these blunders of
Clark and Schoolcraft concerning Hiawatha and the Master of Life
of Iroquoian and Algonquian mythic thought.

In the establishment of this highly organized institution the
swart statesmen, Deganawida, Hiawatha, and their able colleagues,
and the equally astute stateswoman, Djigonsasen, a chieftainess of
the Neutral nation (or tribe), then very powerful and warlike, united
their efforts in bringing to a successful issue, notwithstanding bitter
intratribal opposition, a peaceful revolution in the methods, in the
scope, in the forms, and in the purposes of government extant among
their respective peoples—a much needed reform which was at once
fundamental and far-reaching in its immediate effects and future
possibilities. j

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 541

The dominant motive for the establishment of the League of
the Five Iroquois Tribes was the impelling necessity to stop the
shedding of human blood by violence through the making and rati-
fying of a universal peace by all the known tribes of men, to safe-
guard human life and health and welfare. Moreover, it was intended
to be a type or model of government for all tribes alien to the
Iroquois. To meet this pressing need for a durable universal peace
these reformers proposed and advocated a constitutional form of gov-
ernment as the most effective in the attainment of so desirable an end.

The founders of the league, therefore, proposed and expounded
as the requisite basis of all good government three broad “ double”
doctrines or principles. The names of these principles in the native
tongues vary dialectically, but these three notable terms are expressed
in Onondaga as follows: (1) We’’ Skénh’no”’, meaning, first, sanity
of mind and the health of the body; and, second, peace between in-
dividuals and between organized bodies or groups of persons. (2)
Ne” Gaii‘hwiyo‘, meaning, first, righteousness in conduct and its
advocacy in thought and in speech; and, second, equity or justice,
the adjustment of rights and oblig&tions. (3) Ve” Ga’s‘hasdé™’ sa’,
meaning, first, physical strength or power, as military force or civil
authority; and, second, the orenda or magic power of the people or
of their institutions and rituals, having mythic and religious impli-
cations. Six principles in all. The constructive results of the con-
trol and guidance of human thinking and conduct in the private, the
public, and the foreign relations of the peoples so leagued by these
six principles, the reformers maintained, are the establishment and
the conservation of what is reverently called Ve’’ Gayanén'sa’g6’na—
1. e., the Great Commonwealth, the great Law of Equity and Right-
eousness and Well-being, of all known men. It is thus seen that the
mental grasp and outlook of these prophet-statesmen and _ states-
women of the Iroquois looked out beyond the limits of tribal bound-
aries to a vast sisterhood and brotherhood of all the tribes of men,
dwelling in harmony and happiness. This indeed was a notable
vision for the Stone Age of America.

Some of the practical measures that were put in force were the
checking of murder and bloodshed in. the ferocious blood-feud by
the legal tender of the prescribed price of the life of a man or a
woman—the tender by the homicide and his clan for accidentally
killing such a person was 20 strings of wampum, 10 for the dead
man and 10 for the forfeited life of the homicide; but if the dead
person were a woman, the legal tender was 30 strings of wampum,
because the value of a woman’s life to the community was regarded
as double that of a man. And cannibalism,-or the eating of human
flesh, was legally prohibited. Even Hiawatha forswore this abom-
inable practice before taking up the work of forming the league.

542 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The institution of the condoling and installation council was im-
portant and most essential to the maintenance of the integrity of
their state, for the ordinances of the league constitution required
that the number of the chiefs in the federal council should be kept
intact. So to the orenda, or magic power, believed to emanate and
flow from the words, the chants and songs, and the acts of this coun-
cil, did the statesmen and the ancients of the Iroquois peoples look
for the conservation of their political integrity and for the promo-
tion of their welfare.

So potent and terrible was the orenda of the ritual of the mourn-
ing installation council regarded, that it was thought imperative to
hold this council only during the autumn or winter months. Since
its orenda dealt solely with the effects of death and with the restora-
tion and preservation of the living from death, it was believed that
it would be ruinous and destructive to the growing seeds, plants,
and fruits, were this council held during the days of birth and
growth in spring and in summer. To overcome the power of death,
to repair his destructive work, and to restore to its normal potency
the orenda or magic power of the stricken father side or mother
side of the league, and so making the entire league whole, were some
of its motives.?

In eulogizing their completed labors the founders of the league
represented and described it as a great human tree of flesh and blood,
noted for size and length of leaf, which was also represented as being
set up on a great white mat—that is to say, on a broad foundation
of peace, and whose top pierced the visible sky. It was conceived
as having four great white roots composed of living men and women,
extending respectively eastward, southward, westward, and north-
ward, among the tribes of men who were urgently invited to unite
with the league by laying their heads on the great white root nearest
to them. It was further declared that should some enemy of this
great tree of flesh and blood approach it and should drive his hatchet
into one of its roots, blood indeed would flow from the wound, but
it was said further that this strange tree through its orenda would
cause that assailant to vomit blood before he could escape very far.
In certain laws the federal chiefs are denominated standing trees,
who as essential components of the great tree of the league are ab-
sorbed in it, symbolically, and who are thus said to have one head,
one heart, one mind, one blood, and one dish of food.

The ties which unite a tribe with its gods—ties of faith and the
bonds of duty and obligation of service which bind the persons of
the tribe unitedly together, ties of blood and aflinity—are the
strongest operative among tribal men and women. Every unde-

1 See the writer’s article on this subject in Holmes Anniversary Volume, Washington,
1916.

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—HEWITT. 543

veloped people or human brood of one blood and origin live under
the direct care and special providence of its gods and so seeks to
maintain, by suitable rite and ceremony, unbroken and intact relation
and converse with them. From the legends and traditions of such
a people it is learned that all that they have, all that they do ritually,
and all that they know, they have received freely by the grace of
their gods. The tribes of the Iroquois people were no exception to
this rule.

In Iroquois polity there was a definite separation of purely civil
from strictly religious affairs. So the office of civil chief was clearly
marked off from that of prophet or priest, and in so far as an
incumbent was concerned it was the gift of the suffrages of a definite
group of his clanswomen, and so in no sense was it hereditary. The
office was hereditary in the clan, and strictly speaking in some
family line of the clan. The civil assembly, or the council of chiefs
and elders or senators, was in no sense a religious gathering, not-
withstanding the custom of opening it with a thanksgiving prayer
in recognition of the Master of Life—a strictly religious act. The
officers of the religious societies and assemblies were not the same
as those who presided over the councils of chiefs. And it is note-
worthy that a federal chief must not engage in warfare while clothed
with the title and insignia of office; to do so he was required to
resign his office of federal chief during his absence on the warpath.

* *k 8 * *% *% %

There is a dualism in organization running through all public
assemblies of the Iroquois peoples living under the earlier culture.
It must be noted that this dual character of the tribal and league
organization does not rest on blood ties or affinity, or on common
religious rites, but rather on the motive to dramatize two dominant
principles which appear to pervade and energize all observed sentient .
life. In short, this dualism is based primarily on certain mythic
concepts regarding the source of life and the most effective means
of conserving it on earth among men. Among the Iroquois people
of to-day the knowledge of the reason for the persistent dual organi-
zation of tribe and league has been lost completely. But a pains-
taking analysis of rituals and of certain terms appearing in them
gives us a trustworthy clue to the reason for a dualism in organi-
zation. The reason thus deduced is the need for embodying in the
tribal organic unity the principles of the complementary sexes as
organic factors in order to secure fertility and abundant progeny.
In short, it was deemed imperative to recognize the male and female
principles of the biotic world and all that such recognition implies—
fatherhood and motherhood and the duties and obligations arising
from these states, as defined in Troquois thinking. This dualism
makes the life of the father and the mother endure with that of the

544 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

clan of which either is a member. The same is true of sonship and
daughtership. :

This ascription of sex to groups—organic groups—of persons
measurably explains the potent motive which underlies the ap-
parently artificial rule of exogamy that controls certain groups of
persons as against other like groups of persons.

By the prophet-statesmen of the early Iroquois and their cotribes-
men the League of the Five Tribes as an institution—as an organic
unity—was conceived at times as a bisexed being or person; 1. e., as
an organic unity formed by the union of two persons of opposite
sexes. To those early prophet-statesmen life was omnipresent—
obtrusively so, for, unconsciously, their ancestors had imputed it to
all bodies and objects and processes of the complex world of human
experience. But it must be noted that the life so imputed was
human life, no other. And so as an institution the league was con-
ceived as an animate being, endowed with definite biotic properties
and functions, as the male and female sexes, fatherhood and mother-
hood, mind, eyesight, dream power, human blood, and the possession
of guardian spirits for its two highest organic members.

In the ritual of the installation of chiefs in all the many addresses
and chants and songs, each of the two constituent organic members,
the father and the mother sides, is addressed as a single individual.
In the famous so-called six songs of the mourning and installation
council, which are so dramatically sung by a chief who represents
the dead chief or chiefs to be resurrected, each of the two constituent
persons is addressed, but in the fifth song, the totality, the league
as a unity is addressed as a person, to whom is sung this farewell
song of the departing chief. This is done evidently to secure the
departure of the ghost in peace.

Again, the lamenting cry of “hai’i,” hai’i,” which is so tediously
recurrent in all the chants and songs, but one, of the mourning and
installation council, is employed, it is said, in order to console the
spirits or spirit of the dead. The reason for using this particular
ery is that it is reputed to be that made by spirits when moving from
place to place. But it was believed that should this cry be omitted
in the rituals the displeasure of the departed spirits would be mani-
fested in an epidemic of diseases affecting the spine and the head.

The duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a
father to the clan of his children were by the founders of the league
made a part of the functions of the male member, or sisterhood of
tribes, in the organic structure of the league. In lke manner the
duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a mother
to the clan or sisterhood of clans of the father of the children were
made a part of the functions of the female member, or sisterhood
of tribes, in the organic structure of the league. Thus the two con-

LEAGUE OF IROQUOIS—-HEWITT. 545

stituent members of the highest order in the structure of the league
were the female group of two tribes and the male group of three
tribes, respectively representing the mother and the father sides,
the female and male principles, the whole representing the union of
fatherhood and motherhood for the promotion of the life force and
welfare of the community.

The term agadon’ni, meaning “my father’s clansmen,” has two
very distinct applications—first, to the clan of one’s father, and,
second, to the male or father side of the league. And the term
kheywda’ we", meaning “my offspring,” also has two very different
applications—first, to the clan of the children’s mother, and, second,
_ to the female or mother side of the league. There were three tribes
which constituted the male or father side of the league structure—
namely, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, and the Sereca; and two tribes,
the Oneida and the Cayuga, originally constituted the female or
mother side of the league. To the Onondaga, however, was given
the noteworthy distinction of presiding over the deliberations of the
federal council. This they did of course through their chiefs; but
these chiefs did not have the right to discuss the question at issue.
This apparent primacy of the Onondaga carried with it the office of
fire keeper and the presiding officer of the federal council.

It must be noted that the mother or female complex of tribes and
the father or male complex of tribes were held together by the exer-
cise of certain rights and the performance of certain duties and obli-
gations of the one to the other side.

The federal council, sitting as a court without a jury, heard and
determined causes in accordance with established rules and principles
of procedure, and with precedent.

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THE PROBLEM OF DEGENERACY.’

By A. F. TREDGOLD.

By the term “ degeneracy ” is usually understood any marked fall-
ing away, either morally, mentally, or physically, from the average
condition of the nation or race. Thus, among civilized peoples, the
habitual criminal and the morally perverse, the mentally unstable
and insane, the physically weak and iil-developed, are often spoken
of as “ degenerates.” But these various conditions may be dependent
upon widely different causes, and in the endeavor to make this clear,
and to attach, 1f possible, a more precise meaning to the word, it
will be well to refer to some points regarding individual develop-
ment.

In a previous article in this Review (October, 1913) it was stated
that the development of the individual is dependent upon two fac-
tors—namely, the seed from which he is derived and the soz/ in
which that seed is grown. These are commonly spoken of as heredity
and environment, or nature and nurture; perhaps they are more
accurately defined as intrinsic potentiality and extrinsic stimulation,
It was shown that the highest degree of development necessitates the
presence of a maximum developmental potentiality plus an optimum
environment. It follows that defective development, of sufficient
severity to come within the usual meaning of the word degeneracy,
may be caused by a defect in either or both of these contributory
factors. As examples of such inferiority due to defects in the
environment, I may refer to the intellectual poverty and the immo-
rality or moral obliquity which result from inadequate or improper
training and instruction during youth and adolescence; also to the
stunted growth and poor physique, often the actual disease and
deformity, which follow insanitary surroundings, deprivation of
suitable food and exercise, and general neglect or mismanagement,
during the early months and years of development. These are con-
ditions with which most of us are only too familiar; and probably no
one would deny that under such adverse surroundings the individual
must fail to attain that degree of development of which he is innately
capable.

On the other hand, we are equally familiar with instances in which,
in spite of the most hygienic surroundings, the best education and

1 Reprinted by permission from the Quarterly Review, July, 1917.

547

548 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

,

the most careful upbringing, the individual never reaches the aver-
age developmental plane. Many children of this type die within a
few months of birth, not so much from actual disease as simply be-
cause they have not strength to live. Others survive, but are
physically, mentally, or morally deficient. Doubtless in some cases
there may be obscure faults in the environment, but there are very
many in which this is not so, and in which there are clear indications
of an innate defect of potentiality; in other words, of the fault being
in the seed and not in the soil. The great bulk of the mentally defi-
cient belongs to this group.

The difference between these two types of so-called degeneracy,
however, lies not only in their mode of causation, but in their ulti-
mate results. That which is due to an inadequate or adverse environ-
ment acting upon the embryo—that is, after fertilization of the germ
cell has taken place—is, in most instances, an affection of the cells of
the body only. These are incapable of attaining their full develop-
ment, because some of the necessary external stimuli to that develop-
ment are lacking. If the want is supplied before the period of
growth is past, the arrears may be made up; if not, some degree of
permanent defect results. In some cases it is probable that the germ
plasm which is stored within the individual, to give rise, in due time,
to another generation, may also be affected; but in most instances
this is not so. What is produced is a somatic modification only, the
germinal potentiality of the seed being unimpaired. The case is
entirely different with regard to that type of degeneracy which
appears in spite of a satisfactory environment. The defect here is
clearly germinal; it is, in fact, a germ variation, and as such is trans-
missible to subsequent generations in accordance with the laws of
heredity.

In view of this important and far-reaching difference between
these two types, usually comprehended by the word “ degeneracy,”
some verbal distinction is clearly necessary. In my opinion that term
should be restricted to the latter group, accordingly I venture to
define degeneracy as “a retrograde condition of the individual re-
sulting from a pathological variation of the germ cell”; and it is
in this sense that it will here be used. Perhaps the most convenient
word to denote the somatic modification arising from a defective
environment would be “ decadency.”

Degeneracy, then, is the expression of a germ variation. It is
generally accepted by biologists that variations of the germ cell
tend to be transmitted to subsequent generations. It is doubtful
whether this transmission is invariable, and the laws governing it
are still very imperfectly known, but, as a broad fact, it is cer-
tainly true. It follows that the occurrence of variations is a phe-
nomenon of the utmost importance to the future of the race. Such

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 549

variations may be divided into two main groups: Firstly, those
which connote an increased potentiality for development in some
particular direction, thereby placing the individual at a greater
advantage in the struggle for existence. These may be termed
“progressive” variations, and they obviously lie at the root of
progressive racial evolution. Secondly, those which connote a dimin-
ished potentiality for development of such a, nature as to impair the
survival value. These may be termed “ retrogressive ” variations and
he at the root of social degeneracy. It is with this latter class only
that we are now concerned.

The prevention of the perpetuation of these retrogressive varia-
tions is clearly a social problem of great moment, and comprises
what is known as restrictive or negative eugenics. But the prob-
lem of their causation is even more important; for restrictive
eugenics, however complete, can never prove entirely satisfactory
so long as degenerates are still being produced de novo. Accord-
ingly it is chiefly with the question of causation that it is proposed
to deal.

There are three chief views as to this causation, which may be dis-
cussed seriatim. The first is, that degeneracy is not the expression
of any new germinal change, but the perpetuation of a defect which
has existed in certain strains or stocks of the human race from the
very beginning or from a Simian ancestry. This idea has probably
occurred to most thinkers on the subject, but it has recently again
been advanced by Dr. C. B. Davenport, of America. Doctor Daven-
port,! speaking of the origin of mental defect, says:

The conclusion is forced upon us that the defects of this germ plasm have
surely come all the way down from man’s apelike ancestors, through 200
generations or more. The germ plasm that we are tracing remains rela-
tively simple; it has never gained, or only temporarily at most, the one or
the many characteristics whose absence we call (quite inadequately) ‘“ de-
fects.”’ Feeble-mindedness is thus an uninterrupted transmission frony our ani-
mal ancestry. It is not reversion; it is direct inheritance.

Now, with regard to this theory, we must either assume that the
defect has been present since the very origin of life, or that it has
appeared at some subsequent period. On the former view it is
presumed that the innate potentiality only sufficed for the attain-
ment of a certain low stage of mental development; degeneracy,
however, is no mere evolutionary arrest at some particular phase;
it is usually seen as, if I may venture to use such a term, a pro-
eressive retrogression of certain stocks. If, however, we admit
that the variation has made its appearance at some later stage of
evolution, then this theory affords no explanation as to its causation ;

1*The origin and control of mental defectiveness,”’ 1912.

136650°—20: 36

550 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

it simply pushes the inquiry back to that period, “200 generations
or more.”

In this connection it may be remarked that atavism is not un-
commonly invoked as the explanation of feeble-mindedness, which
is one of the most prevalent forms of degeneracy. It is contended
that, for some reason or other, these persons reproduce, or hark
back to, a stage of mental development which was typical of savage
or prehistoric man, but from which normal mankind have evolved.
It is inferentially suggested that, although mental defectives are
incapable of holding their own in a civilized community, they would
not be incapable of so doing among these more primitive types.
I can not accept this view. I find it exceedingly difficult to believe
that the feeble-minded members of a civilized community would be
any better able to hold their own among a community of savages
than they are in their present environment; and J find it still more
difficult to imagine that such persons represent a normal develop-
mental phase in the mental evolution of the human race.

In this place also reference may be made to a recent work by V. A.
Moschkoff (Neue Theorie von der Abstammung des Menschen und
seiner Degeneration). This author looks upon the whole of man-
kind as being blended in various degrees from two types—white
diluvial man and Pithecanthropus. He describes the physical, men-
tal, and moral characteristics of these types with a minuteness which
puts the deductive ability of Owen completely in the shade, and
which might, indeed, almost be the outcome of a personal acquaint-
ance with these primeval beings in the flesh. White diluvial man
would appear to have been a sort of Apollo, the possessor of many
beauties and virtues, and of a body which was in every way more
perfect than any now existing. Pithecanthropus, on the other hand,
was a speechless, repulsive being, apparently somewhat midway
between an African pygmy and a modern gorilla. According to
Moschkoff, not only is degeneracy, as seen in idiots, cretins, and cer-
tain ethnic groups, due to a reversion to the pithecanthropic element,
but the alternate expression of the characters of these two stocks
takes place at different ages in the same individual and at different
cycles in the life of the nation, and so leads to successive alterations
of individual character, and even to progressive and retrogressive
changes involving the whole community. Even civil wars and
internal dissensions, which the sociologist usually attributes to eco-
nomic causes, are claimed by the author as being due to the swing
of the pendulum bringing into play a preponderating pithecanthropic
element. And the pendulum would appear to swing so regularly
that, given the requisite biological data, he would even be able to
forecast which would be the fat and which the lean years of a nation’s
future. Can anything more be expected of science than this?

TREDGOLD. 551

DEGENERACY

The second theory of causation is that these retrogressive varia-
tions are not caused, but arise of themselves; in other words, that
they are “spontaneous” in origin. Thus, in the Report of the Royal
Commission on the Feeble-minded the following statement occurs:

Both on the ground of fact and of theory there is the highest degree of prob-
ability that feeble-mindedness is usually spontaneous in origin; that is, not due
to influences acting on the parent.

Now, as Huxley remarked many years ago, to say that a variation
is spontaneous is simply to express our ignorance of its causation;
and it is obvious that this theory of “spontaneous variation” is
extremely unsatisfactory. The more we learn of the phenomena of
nature, the more do we find evidence of law and order; and it would
be strange, to say the least, if chance and not law should control
what is probably the most important happening in the whole of
nature.

The third view is that retrogressive germ variations have neither
existed ab initio nor are spontaneous in origin, but are produced by
the operation of natural processes and in obedience to natural Jaws.
In my opinion this is not only the most reasonable view in itself,
but the only one which is supported by definite evidence; and,
although it is not yet possible fully to explain the manner of pro-
duction of these germ variations, it 1s possible to advance certain
considerations which at least possess the merit of carrying us a step
further toward the elucidation of this problem.

If we pass for a moment from the germ cells to consider the cells
of the body, we find that retrogressive changes occur under two con-
ditions: Firstly, in consequence of an endogenous decline of their
vitality; secondly, through the action of external agencies. The
former of these changes occurs in old age. By this is not meant old
age as expressed by years; some persons are old at 40, others still
young at 80. What is meant is that condition of senescence which
results from the exhaustion of the inherent vitality of the cells.
They are unable to function because they have come to the end of
their physiological banking account. Decay arising from without
is best exemplified by the action of such inorganic and organic
poisons as alcohol, lead, and phosphorus, or by toxic bodies produced
by certain microorganisms. These agents may bring about such a
deterioration of important cells and tissues that the death of the
individual results. The problem we have to consider is whether the
germ-cells may be affected by similar agencies. May they undergo
pathological variation in consequence of senescence? May the same
result be caused by adverse factors of the environment ?

To begin with the first of these questions—since the modern con-
ception of the continuity of the germ plasm has become popular, it is
not infrequently said that this plasm is “immortal.” But even if

‘

552 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

it be granted that germ plasm existing to-day is the lineal descendant
of plasm which has existed since the origin of life, this statement re-
quires some qualification. The unexpended germ cells not only die,
of course, at the death of the individual, like any other piece of pro-
toplasm, but they may die, or at all events lose their capacity for
reproduction (which comes to the same thing), while the ordinary
somatic cells are still alive. This commonly takes place in women
between the fortieth and fiftieth year. Now, it has been noticed by
several observers that children born toward the end of the female
reproductive period tend to be feebler than those born while the
generative organs are in full vigor. Possibly this, in part, may be
due to a senility of the maternal tissues which nourish the seed, but
it is equally likely to be due to a senility of the seed itself, so that
there is some ground for thinking that senescence may be a possible
cause of pathological germ variations.

Again, there are certain infusoria, which, while ordinarily multi-
plying by fission, from time to time undergo a form of conjugation
not unlike that which occurs between the sperm and germ cells in
human beings. It was shown by Maupas that, if this periodical con-
jugation is prevented, the offspring resulting from subsequent fissions
gradually undergoes a form of degradation until the whole group
eventually becomes extinct. Prof. Marcus Hartog argues from this
and similar researches made by other inquirers that conjugation or
fertilization plays an important part in warding off senescence. Is
such introduction of fresh blood necessary to ward off senescence
and prevent germinal impairment in the case of higher animals,
human beings in particular? With regard to certain domestic ant-
mals, there is reason to think that close in-breeding is followed by
a gradual deterioration of offspring; and experienced breeders are
practically unanimous that the effect of this is to produce debility,
abnormalities, and eventually sterility. As Sir Francis Darwin
says, “it is generally admitted that degeneration either in constitu-
tion or in other ways does ultimately ensue; so that at any cost the
breeder is absolutely compelled to admit blood from another family
or strain of the same race.” In the case of human beings, however,
in-and-in breeding to this extent is practically unknown; and it is
therefore unlikely that senescence of the germ plasm from such a
cause plays any practical part in the production of degeneracy. At
the same time it is to be remarked that the effect of consanguineous
marriages is to intensify any existing defect; and the same is true
where mating is rigidly restricted to the members of any one small
section of society. We are apt nowadays to bewail the not infrequent
union of members of our old and formerly exclusive aristocracy with
chorus girls and the like. The process may be attended with a serious
decline in “ form” and manners; but it is possible that 1t may possess

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 5538

physiological compensations which are beneficial to the race as a
whole.

We have now to consider the question of the modification of the
germ plasm by the environment. Fifty years ago few scientific per-
sons would have doubted this; and even to-day it is probable that
most medical men would say that their clinical experience supported
such a view. But in those days it was supposed that the germ cells
arose, by some means or other, from the body cells; it followed that
their condition was dependent upon the condition of the body cells,
and the production of germ variations through the environment was
a necessary and logical sequence. But recent writers, particularly
Professor Weismann, have proclaimed the “ continuity ” of the germ
plasm; they have contended, in other words, that it is not produced
anew in each individual, but is an independent plasm, which is
handed on from generation to generation as a separate entity; and it
is consequently argued that the germ plasm is immune to its sur-
roundings. Some writers have even gone so far as to say not only
that the environment has, in fact, no influence in the production of
germ variations, but that it can not have any such influence, because,
if it had, it would be subversive of the whole doctrine of evolution.
Since this argument strikes at the very root of what I conceive to be
the origin of degeneracy, it will be well to consider the basis upon
which the assertion is made. And in this connection I can not do
better than quote the words of Dr. Archdall Reid, who is perhaps
the most strenuous advocate of this view. Dr. Reid says:

If this theory that germinal changes may be caused by waste products, cir-
culating toxins, and the like, is correct, all races affected by any sort of disease
should drift steadily toward extinction. Again: If disease produces any
germinal change, then, no matter how small and imperceptible the differences
between one generation and the next, * * * the constant accentuation of
the alteration during hundreds, perhaps thousands, of generations must make
it at last manifest and unmistakable. * * * The facts are decisive; nearly
all human races have been exposed to disease for thousands of years, and in no
instance is there to be found an iota of evidence that any race has, as a con-
sequence, become degenerate. (‘The Laws of Heredity, pp. 260-262.)

Now, at first sight these statements may appear very plausible;
but a little reflection will show them to be really fallacious in that
they entirely disregard one important consideration—namely, the
possibility that the vulnerability of the germ plasm may vary greatly
in different individuals. In the case of the ordinary tissues and or-
gans of the body—the somatoplasm—there is no doubt whatever on
this point; and one of the best-established facts in medicine is that
of the varying resistance to disease presented by different individuals.
Thus, one person will rapidly succumb to tuberculosis, influenza,
pneumonia, or other toxic process; another will escape death but
evince considerable subsequent deterioration; while a third will re-

554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

cover without any permanent ill effects. It is surely not unjusti-
fiable to consider that similar differences of vulnerability may exist
in the case of the germ plasm. Adverse factors of the environment
will then not. be operative upon the germ plasm of the whole com-
munity, but only upon that of the susceptible portion; and it will no
more follow that “all races affected by any sort of disease should
drift steadily toward extinction” than it follows that all persons af-
fected with tuberculosis, influenza, or other disease will necessarily
lie of those complaints. Further, not only may some germ plasm be
practically immune, but plasm which is susceptible may be influenced
to varying extent, both quantitatively and qualitatively, thereby giv-
ing rise to many different forms of variation and degrees of de-
generacy.

As a matter of fact this is precisely what happens; and the mani-
festations of degeneracy as seen in daily life vary within very wide
limits. In some instances the variation is so pronounced as to inter-
fere seriously with the survival value of the resulting offspring.
Such individuals will then be eliminated by natural selection, pro-
vided this is sufficiently rigorous, so that, far from being subversive
of the doctrine of evolution, the process is one which actually con-
duces to racial evolution. It may happen, however, that the varia-
tion is much less pronounced and the social environment not sufli-
ciently rigorous to bring about elimination. Such individuals will
then not only be enabled to survive, but will intermarry with those
whose germ plasm is unimpaired, with the result that a dilution of
the morbid process may take place so far as individual members are
concerned, but there will be a more widespread dissemination
throughout the community.

As will presently be shown, these milder manifestations of degen-
eracy occur more particularly in the central nervous system. They
involve those parts of the nervous system concerned with the higher
processes of mind, and they take the form of a diminished mental
potentiality, a lessened vigor and initiative, a want of balance, and
a loss of control. The social expression of these changes is seen in an
incapacity of the community for sound government and legislation,
for organization and for social progress, and an inability to compete
with more vigorous neighbors, both in the arts of peace and in those
of war, the natural termination of which is social decline or even dis-
ruption. It is exceedingly questionable if any student of history will
be found to maintain that there is not “an iota of evidence” of the
past existence of such degeneracy.

As to why the germ plasm of different individuals should vary
in susceptibility to the action of adverse factors in the environment,
we know very little. It is not inconceivable, indeed it is a reason-
able assumption, that its state of nutrition may be subject to change,

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 555

and that this may determine its immunity or vulnerability; or the
same result may be brought about by the absence or deficiency of
some internal secretion. This question is one of great moment, but
it is too intricate to enter upon in this place.

The fact is, then, that not only are there no a priori reasons
against the modification of the germ plasm by the environment, in
spite of much reiteration to the contrary, but there are many such
reasons in favor of this modification taking place. Doubtless the
germ material possesses a considerable degree of resistance to the
action of the environment; for, were it otherwise, and did it reflect
every transient change, racial stability could hardly exist. But
there is a great difference between some degree of resistance and
absolute immunity; and when we remember that after all the germ
plasm is still living protoplasm and consequently dependent for its
sustenance upon the quantity and quality of the fluids supplied to
it, the view that it can lead a charmed life, utterly uninfluenced by .
any condition of its host, is untenable. As Beard says, “the germ
cell must react. to and be influenced by its environment”—a con-
clusion not only accepted by most competent biologists of the present
day, but acquiesced in by Weismann himself.

However, the question is no longer one of speculation and a priori
“reasoning. Whatever may be asserted of the theoretical impossi-
bility that the germ cell should be adversely affected by its environ-
ment, there is now very clear evidence that it 1s so affected; and to
some of this evidence we may briefly refer. One of the earliest
observations (1861) was that of Dr. Constantin Paul regarding the
effect of lead. This observer found that out of 32 pregnancies, in
which the father alone suffered from lead poisoning, the mother
being free from that condition, 12 of the children were stillborn,
8 died during the first, 4 during the second, and 5 during the third
year of life, while another died later in childhood. Similar
data were published by Lizé (1862) regarding workers exposed to
the fumes of nitrate of mercury. Out of 12 pregnancies in which
the father alone was exposed, there were 4 stillbirths; of the remain-
ing 8 children, 3 died before the fourth year, and only one of those
who survived could be described as vigorous. The toxic effects of
alcohol upon growing protoplasm are well known; and, since exper-
imentation with this is comparatively easy, it has naturally formed
the subject of many investigations. One of the most recent is that
by Stockard upon guinea pigs, by which it was shown that the net
result of 24 matings of alcoholized fathers with normal mothers
was only 5 surviving offspring, or no more than might have been
expected from a single pairing of two healthy animals; and, further,
that at the age of two months these 5 survivors were only half the
usual size. Dr. EK. Bertholet, after a series of microscopical exami-

556 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

nations in 120 alcoholic and nonalcoholic human beings, was able to
demonstrate very clear differences, and to assert that “the hurtful
influence of chronic alcoholism upon sexual glands is not to be
denied.” Similar results have been obtained with other poisons;
and during recent years it has also been shown that germ variations
may be induced by temperature (Sumner, Bordage, Tower) and by
the injection of chemicals into the immature ovary (Macdougal).
Finally, from inquiries which I have lately made into the effect of
X rays, there seems to be no doubt that males working with unpro-
tected tubes are rendered temporarily sterile owing to the action of
the rays upon the sperm cells. If this and other agencies can thus
bring about the death of the germ cell, it is a justifiable inference
that smaller doses can so injure it as to produce a living but impaired
offspring; and the earlier observations above quoted show that this
is actually the case.

In view of the evidence which is now available and is daily
increasing, it is impossible to deny that the germ cells may be
adversely affected by the environment. As to the actual causal
agents of this change in human beings our knowledge is still in-
complete. My own observations lead me to think that alcoholism,
tuberculosis, and venereal diseases play an important part. But
there may be many others with which we are as yet unacquainted,
and which will certainly be brought to light when once we discard
the bogey of “spontaneous variation,” and seek them in a true scien-
tific spirit, devoid of preconceived nctions as to what may be possible
and what impossible.

The important question now arises as to the nature of the germinal
change which is thus induced. In spite of the many researches of
recent years, we still know very little about the physical basis of
inheritance; but this much is certain, that, in some at present
mysterious way, the germ cell contains “representatives” or “ de-
terminants” of all the variable parts of the body of the offspring to
which it subsequently gives rise. Perhaps the best way of regard-
ing these is that of a series of directive forces or specific energies,
each of which is concerned with directing the growth of a particular
tissue. On this hypothesis we may assume that the effect of toxic
agents is to reduce this innate potentiality, and to bring about what
may be termed a devitalization, or an impairment of the whole, or
of certain specific, energies of the germ cell. This will not only be
operative in the case of the immediately resulting offspring, but.
since it is fundamental, may involve subsequent generations. This
is in nowise antagonistic to the view of germ continuity.

But the different organs of the human body, as they exist to-day,
vary greatly in what may be called their antiquity. There are
some—for instance, the circulatory system—which have undergone

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 557

comparatively little change with the evolution of the human race
through many lower species. There are others, such as the nervous
system, which have undergone a very great elaboration, probably
even in man himself. It is legitimate to conclude that the innate
germinal potentiality of the systems of less antiquity, which have
undergone more recent evolutionary change, will be more lable to
alteration under adverse or abnormal conditions of the environment
than will the potentiality of those which are more organically fixed
and have, in fact, a longer heritage; and hence it will come about
that these adverse factors exert a selective influence upon the con-
stituents of the germ cell, being chiefly operative upon the higher
parts of the nervous system. At the same time our conception of
development can hardly be that of a series of organs each pursuing
its own growth independently. It seems likely that a certain
mutual interrestraint exists, and that, where the potentiality for
growth of one organ or tissue is rendered defective, the lessening of
restraint may result in irregularity and overgrowth of contiguous
tissues, with the production of gross anatomical anomalies and de-
velopmental errors.

When we turn to the manifestations of degeneracy—that is, to
the manner in which these pathological variations of the germ cell
are revealed in the offspring—we find strong corroboration of these
views. Retrogressive variations, manifested generation after gener-
ation, are to be found, it is true, in many organs, such as the skin,
the eyes, the skeleton, etc.; but the commonest expression of all and
by far the most frequent form of degeneracy is seen in a defective
and abnormal constitution of the higher parts of the nervous sys-
tem; that is, in the parts concerned with the functions of mind.
The usual medical term for this manifestation of degeneracy is
“neuropathic diathesis”; and its physical basis is undoubtedly, as
has now been shown by many exhaustive inquiries, an impairment of
neuronic potentiality which is germinal in origin and may be trans-
mitted generation after generation.

The manifestations of this neuropathic diathesis vary greatly in
their degree and nature. In the slighter forms of impairment, as
already remarked, there is simply a lessened durability and dimin-
ished power of resisting the stresses and strains of life; a weakening
of nerve vigor, a proneness to psychasthenia, and a consequent
inability for sustained competition. If more pronounced, there is
a tendency to early mental dissolution or dementia, to hysteria,
epilepsy, insanity, and other marked psychopathic disorders; while,
if still more marked, there are grave defects of anatomical develop-
ment, resulting in feeble-mindedness, imbecility, or idiocy. It has
now been conclusively shown that, while some stocks evince no
tendency to any of these abnormal mental states, there are others

558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

in which such conditions occur with great frequency for many
generations. Some members of such a stock may be epileptic, others
suffer from insanity or marked moral failing, while others may be
feeble-minded or even idiots. Since the environment of such per-
sons differs in no material particular from that of the mentally
healthy section of the community among whom they live, it is clear
that the failing is of the germ cell and is inherited. In many
family histories it is possible to trace a definite progressive accentu-
ation of the impairment, and in some even to trace it to its origin.
Thus, in persons suffering from the mildest manifestations, neuro-
pathic antecedents are relatively uncommon; but a history of an-
cestral alcoholism or tuberculosis is frequently found. Among
epileptics, evidence of the neuropathic diathesis occurs in about 39
per cent of cases; in the insane this proportion reaches from 50 to
60 per cent; while in the mentally defective it occurs in from 80
to 90 per cent. There is thus an increasing degeneracy, which
reaches its culminating point in that condition in which mind has
become so reduced as hardly to have an existence, namely, profound
or absolute idiocy.

It has sometimes been objected that, since the particular defect of
the individual is not identical with that which has existed in his
ancestors, it can not be regarded as “hereditary.” This, however,
is either mere hair splitting or betokens a complete ignorance of the
nature of the inheritance underlying these morbid conditions. Of
course idiocy, insanity, epilepsy, etc., are no more inherited, as such,
than any other human quality or defect. Inheritance consists, not in
the transmission of actual qualities as we see them, but in the poten-
tiality to develop those qualities under an appropriate stimulus.
Similarly in degeneracy, what is transmitted is not epilepsy, in-
sanity, or mental defect, but a diminished developmental potentiality
of the nervous system; in other words, the neuropathic diathesis;
and I am of opinion that here also the particular manifestations are
in many cases determined by particular environmental factors oper-
ating during the period of growth.

It has been stated that the gross forms of mental defect represent
the culmination of degeneracy ; and hence it follows that individuals
so suffering are usually characterized by serious abnormalities of
anatomical growth and of physiological function in many parts of
the body. These are known as “stigmata of degeneracy.” ‘The list
of these “stigmata” is a long one, comprising among others, de-
formities of the brain, eyes, external ears, nose, palate, hands, feet,
and many other structures. I must confess that the inclusion of
some of the snomalies which have been described amongst the signs
of “degeneracy” (as I have defined it) seems hardly warranted.

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 559

Apart from the fact that there are so many anatomical variations
within the normal range that the abnormal becomes exceedingly dif-
ficult to define, many of those which are undoubtedly errors of de-
velopment appear to me to be more a result of adverse conditions af-
fecting the growth of the embryo than of a real germ variation; and
a single so-called stigma of degeneracy is not infrequently found in
persons who present no other physiological or psychological ab-
normality. This is particularly the case with the external ear, also
with the deformities known as harelip and cleft palate. At the
same time there is no doubt that developmental errors are far com-
moner in victims of the neuropathic diathesis than in the healthy
members of the community; and the presence of numerous “ stig-
mata” is so commonly associated with other signs of germinal im-
pairment which is transmissible—of true degeneracy, in fact—as to
be extremely suggestive of that condition.

We see, then, that the chief expression of degeneracy occurs in that
part of the organism which is at once the most elaborate, the most
recent in phylogenetic development, and the most important—
namely, the higher portions of the brain. But it is not usual to find
such a person possessed of full or even average bodily vigor; and the
majority of degenerates evince in addition a lessened power of re-
sistance to disease and a proneness to early death. Whilst a few
persons suffering from the milder degrees may do good work, some
even taking rank with genius, there can be no question that the great
majority are distinctly inferior, in moral, mental, and physical fiber,
to the untainted members of the community. It follows that the
presence of any considerable number of such persons in the State
must entail a serious diminution in the aggregate of vigor and great
economic disadvantages.

What effect have these degenerates upon posterity? Individuals
suffering from the more pronounced degrees of degeneracy—idiots
and low-grade imbeciles—are usually sterile. Further, there is
every probability that, if even the milder grades mated solely among
themselves, there would gradually be produced such an accentuation
of the morbid process that the disease would work out its own salva-
tion by causing the extinction of the stock. But, as has already been
pointed out, the initial impairment does not involve the whole com-
munity, and the mating is not thus restricted. Persons suffering
from the initial and milder forms of degeneracy mate with the unim-
paired, so that the question of the laws governing the transmission
of the defect becomes one of great practical social importance.

Our knowledge regarding these laws is still very inadequate, but
it may be said that, in the main, most, if not all, modes of inheritance
may be referred to one of two groups. In the one the inheritance

560 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

is “ blended”; in other words, the individual may be looked upon as
the result of a mechanical mixture of the germinal material of his
two parents. This is, perhaps, best seen in the various shades of
skin color (mulatto, quadroon, octoroon) which result from the mat-
ing of a white with a negro. In the second group certain qualities
or peculiarities of one germ cell seem to dominate over antagonistic
qualities of the germ cell of the other sex, so that the individual
“takes after” his father in regard to some details, but after his
mother in regard to others. As Goethe says:

Vom Vater hab’ ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Fitihren ;
Vom Miitterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabuliren.

At the same time an individual who himself shows no indication
of any parental peculiarity may yet pass it on to his offspring, con-
stituting what is described as patency and latency, as is seen in
hoemophilia and certain other diseases. It seems hkely that what
is commonly known as prepotency, dominance, and patency and
latency, may be embraced within the laws which were first discovered
by Gregor Mendel, Abbot of Briinn, 50 years ago, and which are
now known as Mendel’s Laws. Mendel’s conclusions, drawn from
experiments on peas, were long unknown to the world; but their re-
discovery has given an enormous impetus to similar inquiries, and
during the last few years numerous investigations have been made
with the object of ascertaining whether his results are applicable to
man. With regard to some qualities this has been shown to be the
case; and it now seems to be established that such abnormalities as
brachydactyly, color blindness, night blindness, and congenital cata-
ract are transmitted in accordance with Mendelian laws. Is this so
with the neuropathic diathesis, which we may certainly consider the
most important form of degeneracy from the socialogical aspect ?

Researches which have been made under the auspices of the Eu-
genics Record Office of America proclaim that this is the case, and
that “ the fact of the hereditary transmission of the neuropathic con-
stitution as a recessive trait, in accordance with the Mendelian theory,
may be regarded as definitely established.” But the difficulties and
sources of possible fallacy attendant upon such inquiries are so great
that one must accept these conclusions with considerable reserve. It
is impossible to deal adequately with the question in this place, but
it may be remarked that a person may be of neuropathic constitution
and yet pass through life apparently normal, owing to the absence of
any direct excitant to a mental breakdown; in other words, he may
inherit a predisposition to insanity and yet, in consequence of his
life being cast amid healthy surroundings devoid of strain, never

DEGENERACY—TREDGOLD. 561

become insane. The ascertainment of the number of offspring who
are hereditarily affected thus becomes a matter of the greatest diffi-
culty, and yet this is essential in order to prove that the transmission
is in accordance with Mendelism. My own experience is that, while
all the offspring of two markedly degenerate persons are always
defective, the children resulting from the union of a pronounced
degenerate with a healthy individual tend to be, not some normal
and some abnormal, but all of them of abnormal constitution. If
one parent only bears the taint in slight degree, it is not uncommon
to find some children affected while others entirely escape; but even
here it is by no means rare for all the children to evince a distinct
psychopathic failing. Whilst, therefore, it is hazardous to dogmatize
on the subject—for the facts are by no means conclusive—the avail-
able evidence seems to suggest that the inheritance is more often of
the blended than of the Mendelian type.

I have spoken of the pronounced grades of mental defect as being |
the culmination of degeneracy; but it is not always thus cumulative,
and it is possible that the mating of a person suffering from a milder
degree of germinal impairment with healthy stock might, after a
few generations, lead to the eradication of the impairment and so to
regeneracy. But the experiment would be somewhat hazardous for
the individual offspring. Severe exciting factors might readily fan
the slumbering spark into a violent flame; and this is probably the
explanation of many so-called sporadic cases of insanity and even of
mental deficiency. Such exciting factors may be supplied by injury
during birth, infectious disease during childhood, excess or strain
during adolescence or maturity, or indeed any untoward condition
of the environment, whether of intra- or extra-uterine life. And,
should the germinal impairment be still more pronounced, it seems
highly probable not only that mating with healthy stock is power-
less to neutralise the defect, but that there is the greatest danger of
a considerable reduction of the mental vigor and durability of
all the offspring and consequently of a marked decline in the net
capacity of the community. It is by such means that I conceive
that a nation, while still surviving, may not only lose its power to
advance, but may be rendered incapable of successful competition
against its more vigorous neighbors and so sink to a lower plane.
And when we take into account the neutralization of the force of
natural selection which occurs in a civilized as opposed to a more
barbarous community, and which prevents the elimination of these
unsound members, it is not difficult to understand how it has come
about that nations which have reached a high degree of civilization
should in course of time have been overrun by a horde of barbarians.
For with nations, as with individuals, it is the “ fit”? who survive.

562 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

It may safely be said that the problem of degeneracy has now
passed beyond the academic stage, and that its practical importance
is recognised by most thoughtful persons. But its pressing nature
is still unrealised; and it is, perhaps, not unnatural that, in the
midst of the greatest war the world has ever known, it should be
regarded as a question which can well await the return of peace.
There could be no greater mistake. The military necessities of the
country and the large number of casualties have already emphasized
the importance of “man power” and directed attention toward the
declining birth rate and the conservation of child life. All this is
quite right and proper; but it is an incontrovertible fact that the
many medical rejections and the system of voluntary service have
both led to these casualties being disproportionately incident upon
the most fit, and that the general effect of the war has been to aug-
ment still further the previously existing tendency toward the sur-
vival of the least fit. And there is great danger that an indiscrimi-
nate increase in the birth rate, a demand for quantity irrespective
of quality, may still further contribute toward this result. Let us
make no mistake. The ending of the war will not end international
competition; and, if we are to maintain our national or economic
supremacy we shall need, not merely men and women, but the best
men and women we can produce. If we are to do this, the problem
of degeneracy must have a place in any scheme for increasing the
birth rate and building up the future manpower of the nation.

HISTORY IN TOOLS.’

By We Moco ENDERS RETR, HewRa Ss He aAc ID: Glib ub. D., suirr: a:
Professor of Egyptology, London University.

In modern teaching political history has overshadowed all other
aspects of man, and the general history of civilization has not yet
received recognition. It matters nothing whether Aristotle, Euclid,
Newton, or Pasteur lived under a republic or a despotism; but it is
of the first importance in history to know the influence of such
thinkers and discoverers. The movement of man’s mind in ideas,
knowledge, and abilities should be one of the principal and most
stimulating subjects in education. This would not be a materialistic
limitation, and one side of it has been admirably written already in
Lecky’s History of Morals.

Among the activities of man the development of his means of
work must certainly be considered. But while there are many books
on offense and defense, arms and armor, there is none that traces
the history of the mechanical aids. Thousands of writers have
described the sculptures of the Parthenon; not one has described the
means used in performing that work. It is a mystery to us how
fluted columns with an entasis could be produced, true to a hun-
dredth of an inch in the diameters between the deep groovings.

In taking up the neglected history of tools,’ the nature of the mate-
rials used is the first view to consider. After the stone ages, the
order of metals—bronze and then iron—is tolerably well known. Of
late years an earlier age of copper has been noticed in several
countries, and this again may be divided into an age of native copper
and an age of smelted copper. The use of copper in the American
hemisphere was entirely limited to native copper, never smelted;
in fact, it was the stone age, including a malleable stone. Native
copper is also found in various places in Europe and Asia, and it
seems only reasonable to suppose that it would be worked before
smelting was discovered. What points to this is the pillowy form
of tools in the earliest metal age of most countries. This form could
not be cast except in closed molds, but it would be the most natural
for hammered native metal. The earliest stage of casting was the

1Reprinted by permission from Science Progress, July, 1917.
2A first step in historical treatment I have attempted, in a catalogue comparing the
tools of Egypt with those of other lands, ‘‘ Tools and Weapons,” with 3,000 figures.

563

564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. -

mere limiting of outpoured metal in an open mold, and hence flat
castings, such as are found in Egypt, and such as appear in other
countries after the hammered forms. The order of use of metallic
materials, then, seems to be native copper, smelted copper, bronze,
iron, steel, and brass. Copper may. be hardened by small impurities
and much hammering until it is equal to any bronze; the main pur-
pose in using bronze was probably to facilitate casting, especially
for closed molds. The czre perdue process also needed bronze, and
that was a favorite mode of work from early Egypt to early Britain.

S.W.CASPIAN

Ce
Cas)

CAUCASUS RHINE

SWEDEN

CARNIOLA

—_—_—>
SLIDING MOTION

MOTIOn, >
en em
e

%

AY

Forms of socket: 1, 2, small for hardwood; 3, 4, lengthened for softer wood; 5, 6, forlifting.
Forms of reaper: 7, sliding cut, Swiss; 8, rotated round wrist, Egypt.

In both those lands the metal was run to an astonishing thinness,
often only a fiftieth of an inch, a mere film over the sand core.

When the variations of the forms of tools in different countries
are compared, much is seen to depend upon climate. In the north
(figs. 3, 4), sockets are much larger and deeper than in the south
(figs. 1,2). This is due to the softer and more stringy nature of
northern woods, which would be bruised and crushed in the leverage
of a small socket. Neither oak nor ash nor beech could compare with
the Syrian shwm for resisting a wrench. The varying purposes also
led to very different forms; the slight socket and large blade for a
fighting ax, when the blade was not gripped in the cleavage; the
splitting ax with a long socket to enable a side wrench to be given;

HISTORY IN TOOLS—PETRIE. 565

the cleaving ax with a long back to the socket (figs. 5,6) to aid in a
lifting pull to get it out of the wood. In the agricultural tools there
are clear distinctions between the scythe or sickle worked with a saw-
ing motion from the hand at the end of the blade (fig. 7), or the

reaping sickle with a circular are around the wrist which rotates it
- (fig. 8), or the pruning hook to top off high vine-sprays in the south
(figs. 4, 6), or the bill hook to cut copse wood in the north. The
different kinds of motion must be considered before we can under-
stand the varying use of each tool. In weapons, similarly, the width
of spear or arrowhead is conditioned by the defense. On bare bodies
wide cutting blades are the most effective, to attack clothed bodies a
narrower blade is needed, and for piercing armor of leather or metal
a mere spike is required.

These forms which result from the necessities of use and the guid-
ance of utility may very probably be evolved in many different
centers quite independently. We know, in modern times, the Patent
Office shows how often a simple thing may be reinvented. The
case is different, however, when we look at artistic style; in that,
each race or country has its own characteristics which cling to it for
ages, and are seldom adopted by others. When a design recurs we
can generally trace its descent, sometimes through thousands of
years. Sometimes principles of form also have an astonishing per-
sistence. The northern and Syrian peoples used flanged edges to
stiffen tools, the Egyptian and most Mediterranean peoples would
have none of them. The European and Asiatic used socket holes,
the .Egyptian always rejected them. The European cast in flat
molds, and used punched ornaments; the Asiatic cast in closed molds,
and used cast relief ornament. The Asiatic and east European
used recurved outlines; the European and Egyptian used straight
or simply curved outlines. In all these respects we see a funda-
mental artistic difference between races.

Another curious aspect of the subject is the worship or reverence
given to weapons. Spears were kept in the temples of Italy as
means of divination, and immense ceremonial spear-heads are known
from early Mesopotamia, Italy, Sweden, Britain, and China. The
scimitar was adored in Scythia, and the Quadi adored their swords
as deities. ‘The driving of a nail into the temple of Jupiter in Rome
was the means of averting pestilence. The double ax was a usual
tool, and also a sacred form; ceremonial copies, which could not be
hafted, were made in various northern centers, apparently as stand-
ard weights.

Several stages of inventive activity may be discovered, when a
great outburst of new types appears. The most prolific period seems
to have been in the later bronze ages, about 900 B. C. The most per-
fect forms of bronze chisels were then devised (figs. 9 to 13), both

136650°—20——37

566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

tang and socket chisels, wide chisels, deep mortise chisels, saws with a
uniform rake to the teeth to cut in one direction, great knives of a
flamboyant form (fig. 14) with double curves—all due to north
Italian genius. About the same time, or a little later, the Chalybes
on the Assyrian side were developing iron and steel tools on modern
lines, socket and tang chisels, saws, rasps, and the early stages of files
and centerbits. These were in use about 700 B. C. It is also notice-
able how a great wave of ethical ideas appears in that age in Judaea,
Greece, and Egypt; it seems to have been a potent stage of thought
in many branches.

Some tools which have been, and still are, very usual if other
lands, are little known in the West. The adze had a very long career,
from the early prehistoric age of Egypt, and is still the common tool
of the East. It is often now confused with the axe, under the gen-
eral name of celt; but it is essentially different, being unsymmetrical
in side view, and used across the plane of motion. One common
form of it, from about 1500 to 400 B. C., has scarcely been noticed
hitherto; it has two projections on the side edge to hold up the lash-
ing which attached it to the handle. It is strange to see how a tool
which was commonly used in many countries for a thousand years,
has now disappeared from life as totally as the mammoth.

It is too often supposed that because some thousands of years have
passed in the history of a tool, therefore we must now be in posses-
sion of far better forms than those of past ages. This is true in
many cases, but by no means always. The forms of the chisel were
perfected 2,500 years ago; and the beauty of work in the bronze age
chisels (fig. 10) with perfectly even blades, dished octagonal flanges _
to the tang, or square sockets ribbed on the outside for strength
(fig. 18), has never been exceeded. In other tools there has been an
actual loss of good design. The Egyptian form of the Roman shears
has one leg detachable for sharpening (fig. 36); it was held in place
by two slots engaging T-shaped pins, it could be detached in a second,
and yet was quite firm. Such a facility for sharpening is a great
advantage, but the form has entirely disappeared. Another Egyptian
form was the iron sickle (fig. 8) with a trough groove to hold a strip
of steel teeth; this was adapted from the old Egyptian wooden sickle
with flint saws inserted, and when steel was valuable it. was a great
advantage, yet it entirely died out from use. The use of saws and
crown drills with fixed teeth of corundum or gem stones, for cutting
quartz rocks, was the regular system of work in Egypt 6,000 years
ago, and in Greece 4,000 years ago. The cores produced were so
perfect and clean-cut that, as Sir Benjamin Baker said, any engineer
would be proud to turn out such good work with the best diamond
drills. The saws were over eight feet long, sawing blocks of granite
1% feet long. This splendid work was quite forgotten, the Roman
had no such grand tools, and some thousands of years passed before
such means were reinvented 50 years ago.

HISTORY IN TOOLS—PETRIE. 567

In other cases we can trace the gradual evolution of a tool down
to the present day. The carpenter’s saw was at first merely a blade
roughly hacked on the edge; by 4,500 B. C. it had regular teeth,
sloping equally both ways; by 900 B. C. the Italian gave a rake to
the teeth to make them really cut in one direction, instead of merely
scraping as before. No ancient saw, however, had a kerf, cutting
a wider slit than the thickness of the blade; we do not know when
that was invented in the Middle Ages. The Egyptian used a push

9 10 a 12

)

ITALIAN BR OUN Ze AIGTE:
6

OO ee Me

SAXONY MESOPOTAMIA

ITALY SIBERIA

9 to 14.—Bronze Ageinventions of Italy; not used by Egyptians.
15 to 19.—Forms not used by Egyptians.

saw as the earliest form; the pull saw was the only one in the West
and the Roman world; the push saw came back into use in the last
few centuries, though the pull saw in a frame is still universal in
the East. The world did without shears for many ages, cloth being
cut with a rounded-blade knife (fig. 34). About 400 B. C. the
mechanical genius of Italy invented the shears, which in two or three
centuries more were fitted to the fingers, and thus started the scissors.
The snuffers in Exodus is a mistranslation; the early tools for trim-

568 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ming a lamp were a small knife with pair of tweezers to trim the
wick, and a point to part the strands.

In some cases it is curious to see how long men remained on the
brink of an invention. Copper wire was made by cutting and ham-
mering from 5,500 B. C., yet the drawing of wire remained unknown
for 6,000 years or more. When the first drawn wire was made is
not yet fixed, but it seems to have been unknown to the Romans.
Thick beaten wire was made into chain with round links as far back
as the second dynasty, 5,200 B. C.; and links doubled up, and looped
through each other, appear in the sixth dynasty, 4,200 B. C. Yet
chains were not commonly used till much later. The Gauls excelled
in such work, as they used chain cables and rigging in place of rope,
to resist the Atlantic gales. The screw was a Greek invention, and
greatly used by the Romans as a means of motion. Then centuries
passed before the nut and screw for fastening was invented; and
again centuries before the screw used to fasten wood, which first
appears less than 200 years ago.

The light that the distribution of tools throws on the status of
ancient civilization is most valuable historically. Not only does
the using of certain tools show a level of work and ability, but the
resistance to the adoption of forms known elsewhere shows that
there was a sufficient ability already in a country. In the present
day the forms of common tools differ in various parts of Europe,
because each country has a civilization strong enough to carry on
without copying another country. A large improvement in one
country is the only condition on which other countries will borrow
from it, and only then if the changes will suit other conditions.
When we find that countries, known to have been anciently in con-
nection, each steadily resisted various forms of tools used by the
other, we have good evidence that each civilization was on such a
level that it could supply all its wants without great benefit by
imitating another. This form of evidence gives some insight into
dark ages, of which but little detailed knowledge is preserved; it
suffices to show whether countries were far below one another, or
on such an equality of work that each was independent.

In Egypt there were many forms of tools and weapons, which
were then the standard types, and yet these are never found in other
lands. The earliest ax (fig. 20) is a plain square form, from about
6,000-5,000 B. C. Then a round ax (fig. 21) was adopted till nearly
3,000 B. C. After that wider lugs were developed to enable it to be
firmly bound on to a handle (fig. 22); and this was made in a
lighter and longer form as a battle-ax (fig. 23) used mainly about
1,500 B. C. None of these forms are found in other countries, yet had
the lands around Egypt been much behind in their ax forms, they
would naturally have been influenced by Egyptian types. as there was

HISTORY IN TOOLS—PETRIE. 569

trade intercourse during all these periods. The only adoption
of such forms was due to entirely independent reinvention of
the ax with lugs in South America, without any intermediate
example. The form is a natural one to adopt in hammered copper,
for getting a firm attachment to the handle.

JOU
gern

30

C.
20 to 36 —Forms of tools peculiar to Egypt.

Other adaptations of the ax were the large blade of curved outline
on the end of a pole (fig. 24), the half-round halberd (fig. 25) and the
long edge set in a stout baton (fig. 26) for a cutting blow. All of
these were common in Egypt, but never spread elsewhere.

570 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The adz in Egypt was at first a straight long blade of copper
with parallel sides (fig. 27). Later it developed a rounded head-end
(fig. 28), with contracted neck (fig. 29) to aid in binding it on a
handle. Neither of these was copied in any other country.

The chisel was at first sharp at both ends, and held by the middle

‘ (fig. 30). Later there is a deep mortising chisel with an equal curve
of each face (fig. 31). Neither of these Egyptian forms appears
anywhere else.

The dagger, from prehistoric times onward in Egypt, had a
crescent handle held in the palm of the hand (fig. 32), so as to use the
weight of the arm end-on for a thrust; whereas the European dagger
was always held as a knife, across the hand. The Egyptian ornament
was by parallel ribs along the axis (fig. 33) ; in all other countries the
ornament is by lines parallel to sloping edges. Some forms are
entirely restricted to Egypt, as the cutting-out knife (fig. 84) with
a curved blade for cutting linen, the forked spear butt (fig. 35), and,
in Roman times, the shears with detachable leg (fig. 36) and the
sickle with replaceable teeth (fig. 8).

Here, then, are 17 tools and weapons, mostly of general impor-
tance and use in Egypt, which were none of them required by the
neighboring lands, where there must have been some useful equiva-
lents. .

The converse is equally true; many forms were used around Egypt

- which never were adopted there. In Cyprus and other lands the
earliest axes are of a pillowy form (fig. 15), with bulging faces. In
Europe the double ax (fig. 16) was not only a tool and a weapon, but
also a sacred symbol and a standard weight. In Mesopotamia the
sloping socketed ax was usual (fig. 17), in Assyria the pickax (fig.
18). Not one of these was made by any Egyptian, and only two
such were rarely brought in by Greeks in late times.

The principle of sockets for handles was well developed in Italy
and spread elsewhere, for axes, hammers, and chisels, yet no Egyp-
tian would make a socketed tool, and the only ones in Egypt were
brought in by Greeks. The use of hammered sides to a blade, to
form a flange for stiffening it, was of early date in Syria, and general
in the north. Yet it is rare, and probably foreign, in Egypt, and
unknown in the Mediterranean. The girdle knife (fig. 19) is common
in the West and in Asia; the flamboyant-blade hunting knife (fig. 14)
was usual in Italy, and spread into the North; the sword was the
staple weapon in the North. Yet none of these were adopted by
Egypt, and very few swords have been found there, nearly all for-
eign. In all these cases Egypt did not require a loan from the
other lands.

This sharp separation between countries endured for thousands of
years, while they were trading in food, materials, and manufacture
continually. We can only conclude that each country already had,
in these respects, what best suited it.

HISTORY IN TOOLS—PETRIE. 571

We now turn to the other historical point of view, the forms which
are widely spread, because they were required. In Egypt at about

37
AB
CYPRUS
‘a SWISS NORICAN
E.G Yorn CYPRUS EGYPT
48 50 62 54 56 59
Sen c (de Sees“
57 2
EGYPT
61
EGYPT r SaC tay
49 YORKSHIRE
58
Tar AENY,
. RHINE
Swiss
CYPRUS SICILY @) D. BRABANT

37 to 51.—Forms of tools alikein East or West.
52 to 60.—Four variants of Sicilian razor, separately adopted in the North.

5,500 B. C. there suddenly appeared a very large wide-splayed adz
(fig. 38), different from all that came before or developed later. The

572 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

same large splayed adz (fig. 37) appears in Cyprus; it evidently came
from there to Egypt, or both lands drew on a common source else-
where. About 4,200 B. C. the ax with two large scallops in the back
edge (fig. 40), leaving three points of attachment, suddenly appears
in Egypt; a thousand years later it is far more advanced in Syria
(fig. 39) than in Egypt, and it probably originated there, and spread
also to Greece. About 3,000 B. C. a very strange drawing of a sickle
appears in Egypt (fig. 42) unlike any other there; this is closely likea
Swiss form (fig. 41). At the same time small daggers with notched
tangs appear both in Switzerland (fig. 43) and in Cyprus (fig. 44).
Here are links from the European copper age to the East. The same
line of connection appears later, about 1,200 B. C., when the pruning
hook (figs. 45, 46) from Noricum (the modern mines of Styria)
appears In Egypt (fig. 47); the rhombic arrowhead of Greece and
Italy is found also in Egypt, the bronze hoe of Cyprus (fig. 49) and
Egypt (fig. 48) spread northward in the Iron Age, and the European
sword was rarely brought into Egypt.

An interesting confirmation of history is seen in the knives with
straight parallel blades and turned-over ends. These are char-
acteristic of the Siculi in Sicily (fig. 51), and just at the time when
the Shakal people were attacking Egypt the same knife (fig. 50) is
figured in an Egyptian tomb, and a specimen also has been found.
This proves the connection between the Siculi and Egypt at the time.

A curious evidence of different trade routes is given by the razor.
An unusual form in Sicily has a concave hollow or notch in the end
(figs. 52, 54), which was reduced to a mere split (fig. 56) or a shght
hollow (fig. 59). The notch form traveled into Italy (fig. 55) by the
simple way across the strait. The concave hollow, widened as a cres-
cent, traveled up to Switzerland (fig. 53) and Germany (fig. 60),
probably by the Adriatic. The split form (fig. 56) traveled to
Flanders (fig. 58) and England (fig. 57), probably by the Rhone.
Here four different modifications branch from a type and are carried
by different routes to distant lands.

The triangular arrowhead is believed to have been started in south
Russia. Thence it spread over central Europe and central Asia, and
was taken by the Scythian migration into Syria about 600 B. C.,,
and hence into Egypt.

Thus the spread of forms throughout the ancient world illustrates
the movements of trade and of warfare, while the isolation of various
types at the same time shows how efficient and self-supporting the
ancient civilizations were in most requirements. The history of
tools has yet to be studied by a far more complete collection of ma-
terial, above all of specimens exactly dated from scientific excava-
tions. It will certainly be, in the future, an important aid in tracing
the growth and decay of civilizations, the natural history of man.

THE BACKGROUND OF TOTEMISM.’

By E. WASHBURN HOPKINS,
Yale University.

The secret of the totem has been successfully veiled for many years
through the ingenious efforts of would-be interpreters, some of whom
have even ventured to explain all religion as an outgrowth of totem-
ism. Others, less rash, have been content to find totemism where it
never existed. A typical case of invented totemism may be seen in
the Hindu deluge story, where Manu is rescued by a fish and the fish
is interpreted as “probably a totem.” This tale really illustrates the
“orateful animal” category of folklore. A fish, saved by Manu, in
turn saves him. It isa fish that grows too rapidly to be a normal fish,
yet it is identified with the jhasha, of which genus the makara is the
best species. Manu does not revere it; it is at first no divinity. Only
long afterwards, when the chief god becomes Brahman, and again
when Vishnu is exalted, does the fish become a divine form and
Avatar.

The people of the Vedic age knew the boar, the wolf, the monkey,
the swan or goose, the eagle, the crocodile, the serpent, and before its
close the elephant, and the tiger, yet they worshiped none of them,
nor showed any sign that they felt themselves akin to any one of
these animals. It is true that sometimes a Vedic god is said to.
“rage like a terrible beast,” but only a perverted intelligence could
find in this statement evidence that the god had previously been the
animal.? Divinity of real animals is borrowed afterwards from the
wild tribes (who have totems) or is a later growth which recognizes
divinity as in a cow because the cow gives food. The (cloud) cows
of the air like the (lightning) snake of the sky may be ignored as due
to poetic diction. So the fact that the sun is a bull, an eagle, a horse,
is no indication that any one of the three was regarded qué animal
as a totem or even as divine.

Most attempts to find totemism where it is not remind one of the
clever old Brahman who instructed Madam Blavatsky that all things
were known to the seers of the Rig Veda. “Even the steam engine?”

1 Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 38,
pages 145-159.

2This is the absurdity to which Wundt is led, who says that because Homer’s heroes
are like lions therefore they are totemistic survivals (Mythus und Religion, 2, 285).

573

574 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

he was asked. “Certainly,” he replied, “for, look you, in this place
is mentioned smoke, here they speak of fire, and here again they sing
of a car, and what is a locomotive save a car with fire and smoke?”
So, to prove the existence of totemism, it is not enough to point to
descent from a lion or to an individual name. In Africa clan-totem-
ism often reverts to animal names given to one chief in flattery, “O
thou elephant,” “O thou lion among men.”

Totem is said to mean “token,” implying group relationship; but
not blood relationship, since this would exclude plant totems, unless
these are all secondary. But at present there is a tendency to deprive
the word totem of every meaning it ever had. The totem of British
Columbia is a protective spirit (often not animal) seen in a vision
and has no relation to relationship; it is individual, not clannish.
An African chief, on dying, said that he would become a butterfly.
Straightway the butterfly became the “totem” of his clan (1. e., they
would not kill it). And what shall we say of totems defined as “odds
and ends” and “knots” (in Samoa), or the “heart of all animals” and
“intestines” (African Kiziba “totems”) ? What is the use of calling
these totemic phenomena? Each is simply a case of taboo; to one
clan “intestines,” gud taboo, became sacred; but that is not a totem.
So sex totems, honorific totems, color totems, cloud totems (Austra-
lian), twins as totems (Bantu Bahima)—are these totems at all? Or
shall we say with Doctor Goldenweiser that, since every characteris-
tic of totemism is negligible,’ there remains as totemism nothing save
a vague tendency for social groups to become associated “with objects
and symbols of emotional value,” and that totemism is merely a
“specific socialization of emotional values”? Would not this tenuous
definition apply to a Baptist church as well as to a totemic clan?

It may not be superfluous to remind the general student that totem-
ism as the foundation of religion is only one of many suggested
foundations, not one of which by itself will uphold the burden
placed upon it. It was thought to be fundamental because it was
said to be universal. But despite Robertson Smith’s great work it has
not been proved to be Semitic.2 Nor has it been found among the
Aryans, where even in the Lupercalia it cannot be discovered.* In
Africa what is called totemism is not religious and is usually derived

1The “invariable characteristics’ of totemism are supposed to be exogamy, taboo, re-
ligious veneration (totem worship), name, and descent. But none of these is a necessary
factor in totemism. Dr. River’s “ three essentials ’’ are in typical form exogamy, descent,
and taboo (of totem flesh), whereas totemism may exist without any of these character-
istics and essentials. See “ Totemism, an Analytical Study,’ by A. A. Goldenweiser,
Journal of American Folklore, 23 (1910), p. 182, 266, 275.

2 What Dr. Robertson Smith showed to exist among the Semites were elements of a pos-
sible totemism ; but he could not show their combination. See his Religion of the Semites,
p. 42 f. and 287; and (opposed) Lyall, in JRAS, 1904, p. 589.

3 See L. Deubner in the Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft, 1910, p. 481 f. For other
Aryan fields, see Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons, p. 74, 98; and A. B. Keith, JRAS,
1907, p. 939.

TOTEMISM—HOPKINS. 575

from the personal totem.1 In South America even Dr. Frazer ad-
mits that totemism and exogamy exist in only two tribes (the Goa-
jiros and Arawaks, withal “almost surely,’ not quite), and the
“mother sea” and “mother maize” of Peru were only ancestral
food-givers (not totems). Moreover the admitted fact that the skin
of the “lion ancestor” worn at festivals by the Chanchas is no evi-
dence of totemism reacts on the explanation of such skin-clad revelers
elsewhere, as in Greece and Rome.’

But by dint of calling almost anything totemism, totemism has
been found almost everywhere. It really does exist in many different
parts of the world, North America, Africa, Polynesia, Australia, ete.
We will take it as we find it in some of its most primitive forms,
where it has nothing to do necessarily with religion or with marriage.

In Australia, where we have been assured that there is no religion,
only magic (but this is a fallacy), and where at any rate we find
totemism without religious implication, there are two things to be
considered. First, is this Australian culture unique or is it only part
of a greater complex, taking in the Melanesians? Indications point
to a common substratum rather than to isolation. How the connec-
tion arose is not difficult to imagine; why it stopped is harder
to guess. At any rate there is the possibility that Australian
savages represent not the most primitive stage but a decadent form
of an earlier stage of culture, when, for example, these savages could
sail the sea. Then, secondly, there is to be considered the complex
of totemic groups. For the purpose of this paper I have stressed
the kind of totemism in which the totem is eaten and exogamy is
not considered. But no one kind of totemism can be posited for
Australia. If totemism imply a relation (magical or religious) be-
tween a clan and a class of animals or plants, Australian totemism
may be either in the female line (the child then belongs to the class
of the mother), or in the male line (the child then belongs to the
father’s class of animals), the former sort being found more in the
eastern part of the country, the latter in other parts. But the
Australian group may be merely a fortuitous class of collective own-
ers of a certain territory, and in this case the child belongs to its
father’s totemic class, but the group is not exogamous (a western
sort of totemism). Besides these sorts there is the totemism of the
cult society, in which all are totem members; the divided society, in
which each half of the tribe has a different totem; and that of the
four or eight divisions of relationship; while, in addition, sex-totem-
ism again divides the tribe into two totemic parts. Moreover, per-

1See, for example, Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples, etc., p. 205 f.; Nassau, Fetichism
in West Africa, p. 210. Bantu totemism is usually of this sort. There is here no venera-
tion for the totem.

2See Frazer, Totemism, p. 95; The Golden Bough, 2. 298; Totemism and Exogamy, 2.
230; 3. 571, 579.

576 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

sonal totemism (New South Wales) gives every individual a separate
totem. In some of these there is a definite ritual; in some, no ritual
at all or a negative ritual.?

Australian custom has thus cast fresh light on totemism. But
whereas in Australia reincarnation is associated with totemism and
the guardian spirit is not associated with it, in British Columbia
the guardian spirit is intimately associated with totemism and rein-
carnation is not associated with it. Moreover, descent from the
totem is assumed in Australia and may be absent in British Columbia
(it appears only in some tribes and then not clearly).

A very peculiar form of totemism has recently been found in the
matrilinear society of the Fiji (a race probably connected with the
Australians). There a man may eat his own clan totem, but may
not eat his father’s.2, His own totem is derived from his mother. He
may eat it, but his son may not. All the food growing on his father’s
tribal area (a sacred place) is taboo to the son, whether it be a
banana or an eel, or both; to the son it is all “ spirit food,” taboo (but
called “totemic”). As a converted Fiji Christian. explained the
matter :

Bananas and eels were forbidden to me by religious scruples because they
belonged to my father. Formerly, if I ate them, they would make my mouth

sore, but now that I have become a Methodist without any religious scruples,
they do not hurt me.

This is “totemism” in terms of legal right to property. Any-
thing growing or living on the paternal land is “ totem ;” i. e., taboo.

In northern Australia the majority of the tribes do not eat, or
eat only sparingly, of the totem; but in some the mother’s totem, if
given by a member of the group, may be eaten. Here, too, it is a
question of legal rights rather than a religious matter. In the
Kakadu (northern Australian) form of totemism, the totem is de-
termined by the spirit of a deceased person thought to be reincarnated
in the totemist, and in this case there is no food restriction at all,
simply because it is not a case of real totemism, since the spirit
may come from any ancestor.*

Tt is evident that totemism raises the whole question of the funda-.
mental relation between things secular and things religious in
primitive mentality. Are they radically divided, is there a distinct

1 Compare the paper of Mr. A. R. Brown at the Meeting of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, August, 1914, in which the different forms of Australian
totemism are classified.

2 Compare A. M. Hocrat, “ The Dual Organization in Fiji,’ Man, 1915, no. 3. A man
may eat his own clan animal (“ dispose of his own’’), ‘‘ but he may not eat his father”’
(sic), because his father’s is not his to dispose of.

* Spirit children swarm about and enter women, as in the Central Australian Arunta
belief. See Baldwin Spencer, Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914). On
the connection between Australia and Melanesia, see Rivers, History of Melanesian Society.

Apropos of possible ancestors in the New Hebrides a tribe traces its descent to a
boomerang which became a woman ancestress of the clan.

TOTEMISM—HOPKINS. 577

cleavage between them, as is assumed in Durkheim’s system, or shall
we say that, as among the primitive Veddas, no such cleavage exists
originally, but it develops gradually in accordance with the part
played by religion in the social life? Conduct seems to have an
accidental connection with religious life; not an intrinsic connection
sufficient to produce a system of religious ethics. Even in the same
race and clan totemic systems differ in regard to their social bear-
ings."

Once it was supposed that totemism conditioned the bed and board
of the totemist; he must marry out of his totem group (his kin) and
he must not eat his totem except as a religious sacrament. On this
assumption all the old theories of totemism were based. Exogamy,
it was thought, arose from totemism.?

But as exogamy exists without totemism (e. g., in Assam and
Polynesia), so totemism has nothing to do fundamentally with
exogamy. “The Australian totemic clan is not as such exogamous.”*
Again, the totemist may or may not eat his totem. The totem also as
a “ receptacle of life” of the totemist has been imagined to be exercis-
ing its primitive function; but this theory (of the origin of totemism)
has also been seen to be faulty. The personal totem has influenced
the aspect of totemism in America. Much of what is called totemism
in Africa originates in personal, not tribal totems, though it may
become tribal. In Coomassie, for example, vultures are sacred to
the royal family either through the caprice of a ruler or because
they are useful as scavengers.t| This is the kind of “totem” one
finds as the totem of the royal house of Oudh in India, a fish that is
really the symbol of a water god who was once a Mohammedan
saint.

The totemism of the name is the prevailing Polynesian and
Micronesian type and apparently it is there the earliest. Among
the most primitive Micronesians there is nothing religious in the
use of totem names or the plants and animals regarded as totems.
It is to be observed also that here plants are as natural as animals
in a totemic capacity. Since this is true also of primitive Australian
totemism, it is evidently a false assumption that blood kinship
underlies totemism, especially when the totem may be, e. g., light-
ning, as in Australia. In the Efatese (Micronesian) group, which
is regarded as extremely primitive, women names are usually those
of vegetables, and as the clan name is given by the ancestress there
is really more vegetal than animal totemism.’ Both kinds are found,

1 Compare B. Malinowski in Man, 1914, no. 89. .

2J. F. McLennan, Primitive Marriage. A number of other works embody the sam
theory.

* Goldenweiser, op. cit., p. 241.

4Bllis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 213.

®Compare D. MacDonald, The Oceanic Languages, p. xii.

578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

however, and the point is chiefly that in the Efatese custom we have
evidence of primitive totemism absolutely without reference to re-
ligion. The Efatese came perhaps from Arabia and may represent
a primitive Semitic condition, where a purely economic and social
matter became gradually overlaid with a religious coloring. So our
troquois did not worship their totems, nor descend from their
totems. Nor did the taboos of the Omahas have anything to do
with their totems, and they also may descend from guardians. Even
the name of the Omaha group is not that of the totem. Thus totem-
ism is not a homogeneous institution. Under the appearance of
uniformity it conceals a heterogeneous collection of social and reli-
gious conditions as vague and unsystematic as are those of taboo and
fetishism. It consists, if it means anything specific, in clan respect
for a class of plants or animals and usually in a regard for ancestors;
but there is no proof that the most primitive totemism represents a
condition in which these elements were already fused and confused,
so that the plant or animal was the clan ancestor, whose descendants
have human brothers who will not slay them. The clan worship of
an inviolate totem is a late, not a primitive form. Originally, real
totemism may or may not be religious; it starts with a certain
relation to the source of food and is apt to end with food, but
on its course it is obnoxious to all the ills of a diseased religious con-
sciousness. ‘The taboo of eating totem flesh is general in North
America (though not universal), but such a taboo is not necessarily
coterminous with the class; it may include a larger group, hence it
may not be totemic in origin.

Certain aspects of totemism, such as ; tattooing and the use of
totempoles and the “ medicine” carried by totemists, may be omitted
from the discussion of primitive totemism. So the various taboos
incidental to totemism are results which in themselves do not explain
totemism. A vital error is that the sacrifice of the totem is funda
mental; this leads to the idea that all sacrifice is based on totemism.
Lastly, there is a bookful of errors based on false notions of “ original
totemism”’ and to be avoided as idle speculations. One well-known
writer has declared that all domestication of animals reverts to
totemism; wild animals, finding that as totems they were not mo-
lested, came to man and became household pets; wolves became dogs,
tigers became cats. So plants were cultivated first as totems until
man discovered that maize was good to eat and tobacco to smoke!
Wundt explains man’s present dislike to a diet of vermin on the
assumption that we have inherited the feeling that vermin are sacred
ancestral totems. This incredible suggestion is made in all serious-

TOTEMISM—HOPKINS. 579

ness and is merely an instance of what imagination can suggest
under the guise of science.?

The name theory of totemism is an old error. Herbert Spencer
derived totemism from names; Jevons derives names from totemism.
Andrew Lang attempted to explain the totem as a name and part of
a system of naming.» Something similar has also been tried by
Pikler and Somld, who hold that the totem is a kind of writing—
that is,-that the totem animal, painted, served originally as a mark
to distinguish one clan from another.’

Other theories refer totemism to a belief in metempsychosis or
to a belief in a personal guardian spirit. The first was favored by
E. B. Tylor; but as metempsychosis is held by non-totemic people
and totemists do not all believe in metempsychosis, this theory does
not suffice, though it applies to certain selected examples; like the
Bantus. The guardian-spirit theory has been dubbed the American
theory, because it was invented here* and is illustrated by American
tribes. Yet the fact that this type of totemism is lacking in many
places; for example, among the wild tribes of India, where totemism
is common, does not make for its acceptance as a general explanation
of the phenomena. The phase is, in fact, not tribal but individual,
and against the theory stands the circumstance that it excludes
women, who have no personal totem. The guardian spirit (which
may or may not be an animal-spirit) is in truth not a totem but
rather resembles the bush soul. In higher form it becomes the genius
and guardian angel.

‘Sir J. G. Frazer has advanced several theories in regard to the
origin of totemism. He used to hold that the totem was the soul-
keeper; but he then abandoned this view in favor of the theory that
totemism was a system of magic intended to provide a supply of
food for somebody else. This altruistic theory he explained as
follows: In a group of clans every clan killed its own totem for some
other clan and subsisted itself on the kill of a third clan. Clan A

1In his Mythus und Religion, 2, 298, Wundt thus explains by inherited “ Gefiihlston ”
man’s otherwise inexplicable aversion to a diet of worms, mice, snakes, etc. What is true
is that there is a common superstition to the effect that vermin represent the souls of
demons or of evil persons (in India due to Karma; hence holy water keeps off noxious
insects). Wundt of course derives all nature gods from animal gods. He ignores com-
pletely the cogent evidence to the contrary. In Churchill’s Weatherwords of Polynesia
(1907), men are derived direct from divine weather aspects, rain, clouds, etc., which, as
gods, generate all the races of earth. The savages who thus invent gods of phenomena
as ancestors can not be ignored ; they represent a religious phase as primitive as totemism.

2The Secret of the Totem (1905).

3“ Der Ursprung des Totemismus,” in the Jahrbuch fiir Vergleichende Rechtswissen-
schaft, 1902. On the deficiencies as well as advantage of the name theories, Wundt has
some sound remarks, op. cit. 2, 265.

4Miss Fletcher, The Import of the Totem (1895); Boas, in U. S. National Museum
(1897). The personal guardian (seen in a dream) taken from the animal world is
found also among the Iban of Borneo (originally from Sumatra). See The Pagan Tribes
of Borneo, by Charles Hose and William McDougall (1912).

580 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

killed for Clan B, Clan B for Clan C, ete.t It is difficult to believe
that savages, whose main business in life is to look out for number
one, ever arranged their hope of a dinner on the precarious promise
of some other clan to supply them with food; and in fact Dr. Frazer
himself abandoned this sie vos non vobis theory in-favor of still a
third explanation, which he now thinks will be his last theory. At
any rate, it is his latest, though we may venture to hope it will not
be his last. It is based on the fact that some savages believe that
their offspring comes not from intercourse between men and women,
but from the spirits of animals or quasi-animals seen by a woman,
or from the food she eats. They think that the spirits which thus
become their children are really the animals they have seen or whose
flesh they have eaten before conceiving. Hence Dr. Frazer calls this
the conceptional theory.”

Curiously enough, almost all these theories absolutely ignore
the usual foundation of totemism. The works of Spencer and
Gillen on the tribes of central Australia have shown that here totem-
ism generally reverts to the principle of food-utility. The so-called
Opossums in central Australia received their totemic name because
they “subsisted principally on this little animal.”* Is not this the
most natural reason in the world? They that eat possum are called
possums. They that eat meat in India are called Meaters. Do not
we also have frog eaters, beef eaters, etc.? It is much to be regretted
that Dr. Frazer in his latest theory has flung away completely
all connection between food and totem, or admits it only as an acci-
dental element in the conceptional theory. In fact, most totemism
rests on food supply. The ancients tell us that the totemic troglo-
dytes at the time of Agatharcides regarded their cattle as parents.
Why? Because (they said) their cattle supphed them with food.*
In the Harivansha, which reflects Hindu belief of cirea 400 A. D.,
the cowboys say:

The hills where we live and the cows whereby we live are our divinities;

let the gods, if they will, make a feast to Indra; as for us, we hold the hills
and cows to be the objects worthy of our worship and reverence. For in that

1The food theory of Dr. A. S. Haddon is that each clan subsisted on one animal and
gave to its neighbors its superfluous supply ; if crabs, then they would be called the Crab
Clan.

2Compare The Golden Bough (1900), 8, 417 f.; Totemism and Exogamy, 4, 41 f.
Dr. Frazer’s latest theory is based on the investigations of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, Totemism
in Polynesia and Melanesia, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1909, p. 172 f.,
in regard to the belief of the savages of Banks’ Islands in the northern New Hebrides,
especially the natives of Mota and Motlav. The conceptional idea itself is found, too, not
only in Australia but in Germany, where also women were supposed to conceive on sight.
On P. W. Schmidt’s ‘‘ trade totemism,”’ Z. f. E., 12 (1909), which follows the lines of
Frazer’s theory of food exchange, see Goldenweiser, p. 277.

8 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 209.

4Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, p. 296.

TOTEMISM—HOPKINS. 581

they serve us they should be requited. That whereby one is supported should
be his divinity ; hence we will make a festival in honor of our cows.’

This is exactly the Toda point of view, though not the Toda rite

The totemless Hindu here recognizes that the provider is the god
to him provided for. This is the general background of “real
totemism.” It is found all over the earth and at times comes to the
point of gliding into true totemism.

Thus, in Peru fish are deified on the seacoast and maize is not; but
maize is deified inland, simply because it is the staple diet. This is
the first step in totemization. The giver of food is the giver of life;
ihe giver of life is conceived either as father and as mother or as both
parents and god. Hence the maize is called not only divine but
mother.

In the Boston statehouse there hangs to this day the effigy of a
huge codfish, an object of almost devout reverence. -Why? Because
our Yankee ancestors got their. food supply to a very great extent
from this kind of fish. For that reason only was the cod elevated
to a position of such dignity. They did not worship it, but they
made it their “token.” Their thought was “in Cod we trust,” and
they expressed this thought openly in the idol of that fish.

In Yezo a bear is sacrificed annually as a half-divine animal. It
is fed and nourished by the women and then “sent to its parents ”
with every mark of sorrow and respect. Now this Yezo bear is not
a totem. The Ainu claim no clan blood-brotherhood with it. Yet
in this sacrifice we are at the very edge of true totemism; for the
bear is the food supply, hence divine, hence too, sacrificed, that it
may take a message to the bear clan, tell how well it has been treated,
and return next year. Compare with this the spring sacrifice made
by the Mayas of one animal of each species for the sake of getting
increase. Are not these (which are not examples of totemism) al-
most totemistic? The Yezo ceremony is like that of the British
Columbian Lillooet, who also sing a song of mourning to the bear
they kill and invoke it te send game of its own kind. Even the rais-
ing of the head on a pole is found here.? Yet this is not a “ totemic”
clan. °

But, it will be urged, why then the prohibition against eating the
totem? In Australia the prohibition against eating is, as I have
shown, a secondary stage, while in some cases there is merely a hy-
gienic restriction. In America many tribes eat their totem, while

1Gaivo hi pijyah * * * goyajnam karayisyami, Hariv., 2, 16, 1 f. (3807-3851).
The cows are garlanded and sacrifice of meat and milk is made to the hills. It is grossly
explained in the sequel that god Krishna ‘‘ became the hill’’ (transubstantiation) ; but
this is merely an orthodox trick to convert the rustic rite into one in honor of the
recognized divinity.

2Teit, Jesup Expedition, apud Goldenweiser, op. cit., p. 204.

136650°—20——38

582 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

vegetable totems (maize, for example) are clearly sacred because
they are a food supply. Sun supply and food supply in Australia
brought forth the same rites. In other words, both rituals were for
the same purpose, to increase the power of food giver and light
giver as food giver. Nor can it be objected that “things not
fit to eat” are made totems. Different times, different stomachs.
Even our immediate forefathers ate things that we would
rather revere than eat, and savages eat anything edible. Again,
inedible things, such as poisonous objects, become holy by way
of being hygienically taboo, and such a taboo plant, as holy,
tends to confuse totem holiness with taboo holiness. In India
there are many taboo trees and taboo plants, though none is a
totem to the Aryan. They are taboo either because they are sacred
to a god or because they are poisonous. So we have poisonous
totems. The Begandas of Africa say that their whole totem sys-
tem (it is not really totemism, but resembles it) is based on purely
hygienic principles. Their “totem” is injurious; it made their an-
cestors ill; hence it is “holy”; hence not eaten. But others may eat
it. Many other peoples permit their neighbors to kill the totem they
themselves would like to kill and eat did they dare. The Australian
Blackfellow now kills rarely what he used to kill and eat freely.
Alabama and Georgia Indians always used to eat their totems. Is
it not an assumption to say that these edible totems represent a later
stage? Australian custom suggests that the non-edible totem is the
later totem, the more edible the earlier. Moreover, worship is a
secondary stage. The Omaha Indians never worshiped their totems.
The Californians show a middle stage, that of the Egyptians and
Todas, who kill but rarely and eat the totem as a sacrament. Then
behind that lies the stage in’which the totem is killed freely all the
year round, but once a year is killed as a sacrament. Such is said to
be the totemism found among some tribes of the Caucasus, and it is
the usage, but without totemic kinship, of the Ainus already de-
scribed. The animal killed is offered apologies lest its spirit retali-
ate; but this apologetic attitude is found with savages even when
they kill an ordinary animal or cut down a tree. It is assumed
merely to safeguard the slayer from its victim’s angry spirit.*

One plant and one animal in India have been divine for millen-
niums—the moon plant and the cow. Their deification as drink and
food was gradual. At first anyone might drink the moon-plant beer
and any guest had a cow killed for his food. The Soma then became
reserved for the priest, the cow became reserved as milk giver. Both

1The apology to any animal slain is made in America; to the tree, for example, in
Africa. It does not imply constant worship, but only a passing respectful solicitude, lest
the animal or tree, being vexed, retaliate, This attitude results in a sort of momentary
“worship” (placation).

TOTEMISM—HOPKINS. 583

became as food and drink divine; Soma as intoxicant became a
magical thing, taboo to the vulgar. Yet neither Soma nor cow ever
became a totem. Their divinity lay in their use not in their an-
cestorhood.?

Wundt thinks he has added something to the history of totemism
by saying that in establishing the totem on a cultural basis the cult
itself was made permanent; in other words, periodic religious cere-
monies leading up to an observance of days in general were intro-
duced by totemism, which (in Wundt’s own words) was “the great-
est and most important step taken in the development of cult” (that
is, of cult in general).2- Yet this discovery of Wundt is not so sig-
nificant as it appears to be. For it rests on the conviction that
totemism is the base of all other cults. As a matter of fact, savages
base their cult much more generally on seasonal changes than on
totemic observances; in fact, the latter are often no more than the
reflection of the former. Wundt with his overdriven theory of the
Fanany-cult fails to recognize the equally old and far more common
fear of animals not as totems but as spirit forms of reincarnated
human beings. This popular belief is more important than that of
the “worm spirit.” On the whole, Wundt’s theory that totemism
underlies all religion and that, underlying totemism, is the belief that
the worms crawling out of a dead man’s body are his souls is as little
likely to satisfy serious investigators as any of the one-sided theories
of the origin of religion which preceded it. Not only is totemism
not the basis of religion, it represents no religious stage or stratum
whatever.?

If, then, we have regard to the fact that with all its divergencies
in detail totemism in its original habitat (1. e., where the name arose)
is in the main a recognition of a peculiar bond subsisting between a
group of human and a group of animal or vegetable beings, that this
bond is not an individual or sex matter, but that in the great ma-
jority of cases it is connected with dietary restrictions, we have the
basis of what may reasonably be called totemism. To dub every cult
of an animal totemic is like calling any object of religious regard a
fetish; it tends to meaninglessness. -From this point of view we
may then reasonably admit as totemic what appears to be the earlier
stage in this human bond, as illustrated by the cases forming what I
have ventured to call the background of totemism, Australian,
Peruvian, etc., in which the reason for the bond is palpably because
the totem: (though not yet a real totem) is regarded as the provider
of sustenance, primarily because it is the totemist’s food, Mother

1The divine myrobolan called ‘“‘ chebulic’’ as an efficacious drug arose from a drop of
ambrosia; garlic sprang from drops shed by Rahu and has a demoniac power, etc. The
Varuna tree is named for the god. Other plants and trees receive a similar sanctity.

2 Wundt, op. cit. 2, 258.

® See on this point the very sensible observations of Dr. Goldenweiser, op, cit., p. 264,

584 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

Maize, Grandfather Fish, etc. Even where there is no tribal bond
in the individual-guardian this motive shows itself in another form,
for the guardian is a spirit whose guardianship is especially exer-
cised in leading the ward to his food, directing him on the hunt, just
as the father ghost of the Vedda is invoked mainly to guide the sup-
plant son on the track of his prey.

If we abandon this guiding thread we are lost in the labyrinth:
There remains no more than a vague notion that totemism indicates
a social apprehension of some spiritual power, or, as a recent sci-
entist has expressed it, “ What is totemism anyway except consecra-
tion to spirits?” Nothing is gained by such a definition. On the
other hand, it is a great gain to recognize that the old limitations
imposed upon totemism are not essential; it does not necessarily
imply worship, exogamy, descent, or name. All these things are
special social variations springing out of totemism according to
circumstances.?

Thus, finally, the matter becomes a question of definition. Is it
well to make totemism synonymous with any trait found in it?
After all, the word totemism is American, and in America, until the
sociologists began to play with it, it had a pretty definite meaning
not necessarily involving name, descent, exogamy, worship, or taboo
but always implying a clan connection with a class of animals or
plants, and this connection ought to be maintained in our use of the
word. That this connection was originally based on economic
grounds (as I think) is a secondary matter. But we should not call
lightning or intestines “totems.” In an already established totemic
environment such wierd “ totems ” may be adopted, as the social need
of a totem may be satisfied by calling any object of taboo a totem,
but secondary phenomena should not lead us to ignore what totem-
ism really represents.

1Among the Gilyaks a drowned clansman becomes a beast called Master (spirit), who is
revered as a guardian. But this spirit lacks the fundamental essence of totemism in
that it is (or was) human and individual. A half-human totem is a common Australian
phenomenon, but always this monster is invented as an explanation of a bifurcated de-
scent into animal and human categories; either the animal nature is always present, or
the human ancestor has a very intimate connection with the totem animal. Association
serves ag well as descent in America to give the totem, but it is association with a non-
human creature. In British Columbia, as in some of our tribes, the totem animal is a
regular source of food supply and is freely hunted, killed, and eaten.

A GREAT NATURALIST—SIR JOSEPH
HOOKER.’

By Sir BE. Ray Lanxkester, K. C. B., F. R. S.

It often happens in the progress of human thought that periods
of special importance are marked, not, as rarely occurs, by the
emergence of a solitary genius, but by the appearance of a group of
gifted men of like habit of mind and enthusiasm for a given branch
of study. Their coincidence in mental activity has been due some-
times to family connection and local association, sometimes to the
system of universities in which a professor of genius is succeeded
by his pupil and he again by his, so that a “school” originates
which may spread its members and its teaching far and wide.

In the middle of the nineteenth century a group of naturalists
appeared in this country who were destined to bring about a momen-
tous change in human thought, by placing on a firm basis the doctrine
of “organic evolution ”—a doctrine which includes the gradual and
“natural” development of living things from nonliving matter,
and further the gradual and “natural” development of man from
an animal ancestry. The group we have in view has Charles Lyell
(born in 1797) as its starting poimt. Devoted from his earliest
years to the study of natural history (his father being an accom-
plished botanist), Charles Lyell, when an undergraduate at Exeter
College, Oxford, was attracted to geological study by the lectures
of Canon Buckland. He was called to the bar, but fortunately his
inherited property enabled him to abandon that profession when he
was 30 years old, and to give all his energy to his favorite science.

In 1830-1832 Lyell published his memorable work entitled “The
Principles of Geology: An Attempt to Explain the Former Changes
of the Earth’s Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation.”
That book and personal friendship with its author had a command-
ing influence upon two younger men, Charles Robert Darwin and
Joseph Dalton Hooker, the former 12 years and the latter 20 years
Lyell’s junior. Darwin, who had studied geology with Sedgwick
of Cambridge, was away on the voyage of the Beagle from 1831 to
1836, when Lyell’s great book was published, but came immediately
Ta ee its influence on his ae and in Loy was closely associated,

“Reprinted ie permission from the Guaeieniy Review, October, 1918.

585

586 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

as secretary of the Geological Society, with Lyell, for whom he
conceived a profound admiration and lifelong regard.

Hooker left England in 1839, being then 22 years old, to accom-
pany Captain (afterwards Sir) James Clark Ross, the experienced
Arctic navigator, on the expedition of the Hrvebus and Terror to
the Southern Hemisphere and Antarctic polar regions. The main
purpose of this expedition was to make observations on terrestrial
magnetism and to determine the position of the southern magnetic
pole. But Ross was an ardent naturalist and anxious to observe
and collect both plants and marine animals, and accordingly man-
aged to take young Hooker as surgeon (he was M.D. of Glasgow)
to the H'rebus and botanist to the expedition. Ross not only gave
his young surgeon every facility to collect plants in the various
lands visited, but also employed him to work the towing net and
make drawings of marine invertebrates when at sea. Some 60 years
later a large portfolio of these beautiful and interesting drawings,
which had never been published, were placed in the hands of the
present writer by their venerable author, to ascertain whether,
after so long an interval, they might have scientific value.

Young Hooker had Charles Darwin’s example before him, and
the recently published “ Journal of a Naturalist on H. M.S. Beagle”
in his cabin, when he sailed on the Hrebus, but did not make Dar-
win’s acquaintance until 1847, four years after his return from the
Antarctic. Hooker’s association with Lyell was earlier, for the
Lyells of Kinnordy were intimate friends of his father; and it was
from Sir Charles Lyell’s father that he received the newly issued
copy of Darwin’s “ Journal,” just in time to take it with him to the
Antarctic. With Charles.Lyell’s great book he had early famil-
iarity, and he had also read Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation, which appeared in 1832. Though not
a very convincing work, it turned his thoughts, with very definite
results, to the question of the mutability of species—already raised
by the essential nature of Lyell’s geological doctrine and widely
discussed at that time in consequence of the writings of Lamarck
and St. Hilaire.

To this group of three (Lyell, Darwin, and Hooker), who were
richly stored with knowledge of living things by their explorations
in many parts of the globe, there was now added a fourth, T. H.
Huxley. He made Hooker’s acquaintance first at the British asso-
ciation meeting at Ipswich in 1851, having recently returned from
the voyage of the surveying ship Rattlesnake, to which he had been
appointed surgeon with a view to the opportunities thus provided of
making studies in marine zoology. Old Sir John Richardson, the
Arctic explorer, a first-rate naturalist and head of Haslar Hospital,
whither in those days young naval surgeons were sent on probation,

LANKESTER. 587

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER

had detected Huxleys abilities and secured for him the post on the
Rattlesnake in 1847, just as eight years earlier he had used his in-
fluence to secure for Hooker a similar position on the /’rebus.

These four men, Lyell, Darwin, Hooker, and Huxley, were the
actual “ begetters” and the chief propagators, both in the more
restricted world of science and among the larger public, of the vivi-
fying doctrine of organic evolution. The close personal ties which
linked the first three were strengthened by the marriage of Joseph
Hooker in August, 1851, to Frances Henslow, eldest daughter of the
Cambridge professor of botany, the man who turned Charles Darwin
to a scientific career. Huxley came to them, to use Hooker’s own
simile, “as steel to a magnet,” and was soon admitted to the closest
intimacy, giving them and receiving from them the warmest affection.
A tie of fellowship between Hooker, Darwin, and Huxley was that
they were all three “old salts” and had the training and “ the knowl-
edge of men” given by service in the royal navy. Huxley also met
and sealed a close alliance with John Tyndall at the Ipswich gather-
ing of the British association in 1851, and so brought that physical
philosopher into close and permanent relationship with the Dar-
winian “nucleus.” He, too, brought Herbert Spencer into constant
relation with the group; whilst young John Lubbock (afterwards
Lord Avebury), who was a neighbor of Darwin’s, now settled at
Down, in Kent, became, both by his scientific work in zoology, botany,
and geology and by his personal charm, a welcome associate.

In 1864 Huxley, Hooker, George Busk (surgeon and naturalist),
Spencer, and Tyndall, who had been close friends of Huxley’s ever
since his return from the voyage of the Rattlesnake, together with
Frankland, the chemist, Hirst, the mathematician, old colleagues and
allies of Tyndall, and Sir John Lubbock and Spottiswoode, friends
of them all, founded the “ X Club,” which met once a month for
dinner, its purpose being, as Mr. Leonard Huxley tells us—
to afford a definite meeting point for a few friends who were in danger of drift-
ing apart in the flood of busy lives. But it was in itself a representative group
of scientific men destined to play a large part in the history of science. Five
of them (there were nine in all) received the Royal medal of the Royal Society ;
three the Copley medal, the highest scientific award; one, the Rumford; six
were presidents of the British Association, three were Associates of the Insti-
tute of France; and from amongst them the Royal Society chose a secretary, a
foreign secretary, a treasurer, and three successive presidents. * * * They
included representatives of half a dozen branches of science—mathematies,
physics, philosophy, chemistry, botany, and biology; and all were animated by
similar ideas of the high function of science and of the great Society which
should be the chief representative of science in this country.

Not unnaturally the club exercised, during its 28 years of existence
(it expired in 1892, owing to the dispersal of its original members
and the decision not to elect new ones), a great influence on the prog-

588 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ress of scientific organization, an influence which assuredly was not
sectarian nor exercised for party purposes. While the club, though
bound up with the Darwinian movement, did not comprise the origi-
nators of that new doctrine, Lyell and Darwin himself—on account
of their health and absorption in special pursuits at a distance from
the town—it also, for a similar reason, did not include Alfred Russel
Wallace, who had lately returned to England from his long sojourn
in the tropics. His name can never be forgotten as that of one who,
independently of Darwin and while exploring in the tropics, con-
ceived and stated the identical theory of the origin of species by the
natural selection of favored varieties in “ the struggle for existence,”
which had been more fully worked out, though held back from
publication, by the elder naturalist. Wallace, as all the world knows,
gladly gave all credit in the matter to Darwin, and contributed by
his original observations and arguments, and by the lucid exposition
given in a series of invaluable books for a period of more than forty
years, to the establishment of Darwin’s doctrine of organic evolution.
Wallace held himself very much aloof from the London whirlpool,
finding happiness and full occupation for his long life in scientific
work,

It is perhaps a mere coincidence, but in any case a very important
fact, that we have a series of remarkable volumes giving in an un-
usually complete form the Life and Letters of Lyell, of Darwin, and
of Huxley. Happily they wrote many letters, fortunately preserved
for publication, in which their scientific work and the development
of their views, as well as delightful revelations of character, of
their tastes, their likes and dislikes, and of their heroic struggles
and daily occupations, are recorded. These volumes can perhaps
hardly be called “ biographies”; they are the materials for consid-
ered well-balanced biography. They have been gathered by loving
hands and connected by a thread of narrative and explanatory notes.
Now we have a similar Life and Letters of Hooker, the material*for
which has been arranged by his widow, and presented in due order
by Mr. Leonard Huxley, who had already done for his father’s
memory what he has here, with skill and experience, done for that
of his father’s closest friend. The letters here given, taken with
those of Darwin and Huxley and Lyell, interweave with and com-
plete one another, giving a remarkably close picture of the growth
of a great scientific theory.

We have indicated in bald outline the place which Hooker occupied
in the little group of naturalists who established, in the later half
of the nineteenth century, the doctrine ot organic evolution. Since
we are here concerned with the story of his te and work, it is now
time to state more specifically what was hig actual contribution to
the science of his time, and then to point out, as these volumes of

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 589

his “ Life and Letters” enable us to do, to what native gifts of mind
and character, on the one hand, and to what fortunate circumstances
of training and association on the other, this contribution was due.
Those are the inquiries which must always be of foremost interest
when we are in possession of the detailed story of a great man’s life.

Hooker was before and beyond everything else, a great botanist,
the greatest “ knower” of plants of his day, whether we estimate the
immense number and variety of plants which he knew, or the thor-
oughness of that knowledge, or the vast area—that of the whole
earth’s surface—the vegetable population of which became familiar
to him, either in the dried collections of travelers or (to an extent
never achieved by any earlier or contemporary botanist) in their
living condition. The latter result was attained in two distinct
ways: Firstly, by his prolonged and often perilous journeys to the
Southern Hemisphere, to India and the Himalayan region, to Pal-
estine and the Lebanon, to the Atlas Mountains and to North Amer-
ica; and secondly, by his control of the most extensive and admirably
organized botanic garden in the world, where living plants were
almost daily received or were raised from seed sent from every part
of the earth’s surface.

Probably the greatest permanent benefit conferred on mankind
by Hooker—his greatest contribution to science—was his organiza-
tion, as a great and permanent state institution, of the gardens, plan-
tations, glass houses, museums, laboratories, and the incomparable
herbarium, at Kew, together with its highly trained staff of all
grades, its splendid and continuous series of publications, its world-
wide correspondence and close relations with botanical institutions in
the colonies and India, so as to form a vast living mechanism, work-
ing under his incessant care for the increase of botanical science.
The indifference, the opposition, the sheer brutality, by which his
efforts were too frequently opposed, and the ultimate triumph by
which his tenacity of purpose, his honesty and unworldliness of
character, were rewarded, can be realized and appreciated by the
reader of this book. So also can one learn with pleasure of the fine
men, both among his scientific colleagues and the few intelligent
officials with whom he had to deal, who sympathized with and helped
him.

Here we may read the full story of the ignorant insolence of one
Ayrton—an obscure politician who became a minister of the Crown,
und proposed to make Kew into a mere pleasure garden and to
give his orders to Hooker as to a head-gardener, but was, by a
timely rally of wiser statesmen and lovers of science, brought
to heel like a whipped dog. Here, too, we read of the mean financial
tricks of the East India Co.; the delays of the Admiralty; the stupid
parsimony of the Treasury relieved by the generosity and friend-

590 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

ship of Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-general of India; the good-
will of fine old Admirals; and the enthusiasm of many high-placed
officials (such as Bertram Mitford, Lord Redesdale), and well-
tried friends who valued pure science and were spell-bound by
Hooker’s abilities, persistence, freedom from all desire for per-
sonal profit, and simple-minded devotion to one noble end—the
building up of what were for him two inseparables, Kew and Botani-
cal Science.

Hooker’s more direct contributions to scientific botany are parallel
in importance to the creation of the great institution (founded by
his father and completed by the loyal help of his son-in-law and
successor, Sir William Thiselton Dyer), wherein he worked out
during many years the enormous collections of plants brought thither
by himself and amplified by official and private collections. His
first scientific paper, on some new mosses, was written and published
in 1837, when he was only 20 years of age; his last in 1911, on
some Indian species of the balsams (genus: Impatiens)—a large and
difficult group to which he gave minute study, dissecting them under
the microscope and drawing them with all the skill and_assiduity of
his youth, until within a few days of his death in his ninety-fifth
year. The mere titles of the papers and volumes which Hooker
produced in those 74 years of work occupy 20 pages in the “ Life.”
No.mere enumeration of their number can give an idea of their
bulk, of the number of drawings and often colored pictures which
illustrate them, of the tireless industry which produced them, or of
their scientific weight and purpose.

For the convenience of ready publication he carried on fhnpaeihe
out his life (with the assistance in later years of other botanists,
his chosen colleagues) Hooker’s Icones Plantarum, founded by his
father in 1837, and the Botanical Magazine, founded by William
Curtis in 1787, which has appeared regularly every month during
130 years. It was edited for 40 years by Sir William Hooker, on
whose death in 1865 Sir Joseph became editor and chief contribu-
tor, handing it over in 1904 to his successor as director of Kew,
Sir William Thiselton Dyer. For 78 years the two Fitches, uncle
and nephew, were the only artists (without rivals for the perfec-
tion of their work) employed on the production of the hundreds
of plates picturing new or rare plants published in the Botanical
Magazine. But Hooker’s greatest works were published as separate
volumes, usually by the aid of grants from government departments.
Such were the Flora Antarctica (1844-1847), 2 volumes, with 198
plates; the Flora Nove Zelandiw (1853-1855), with 130 plates;
the Flora Tasmaniz, with 200 plates; and the Flora of British
India (by J. D. H. assisted by various botanists), 1872-1897, 7
volumes. A great number of important papers of smaller bulk,

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 591

but always of special significance, were published by him in the
Transactions of the Linnean Society, in the journal of the Geo-
graphical Society and other journals, and as contributions to the
works of other authorities, British and foreign.

Hooker did a vast amount of work with his own hands, his own
pencil and pen. The mechanical work of sorting the “ hay-stacks,”
as collections of dried plants are irreverently called, the selection of
specimens for description and incorporation in the herbarium and
of duplicates for distribution to other botanical institutions and
individuals (a proceeding by which exchanges were obtained and
the completeness of the Kew herbarium assured), was always a
delight to him; the mechanical labor and the mere “handling” of
plants being, as he tells us, a relief from closer work and yet con-
ducive to thought and reflection bearing on his one great purpose.
Of course, he had an efficient staff and distinguished botanists as
volunteer assistants, attracted by the unique conveniences for study
afforded by the great herbarium, the library and the working-
rooms, for which by degrees, following out and developing the cher-
ished scheme of his father, he succeeded in getting the reluctant
officials of the Treasury and the Board of Works to disburse the nec-
essary funds.

The great interest for Hooker in all this accumulation of know-
ledge touching the flora of every part of the world, over and above
the mere record of new plants and their habitat, was the discovery
of the causes which have led to the present geographical distribution
of plants. The problem continually presented itself to him in his
travels. Take, for instance, the following passage in a letter writ-
ten to his father from the Thibet frontier in 1848:

To-day I went up the flanks of Donkiah to 19,300 feet * * * The
mountains, especially Kinchin-jhow, are beyond all description beautiful ;
from whichever side you view this latter mountain, it is a castle of pure blue
glacier ice, 4,000 feet high and 6 or 8 miles long. I do wish I were not the only
person who has’ ever seen it or dwelt among its wonders * * * J was
greatly pleased with finding my most Antarctic plant, Lecanora miniata, at the
top of the pass; and to-day I saw stony hills at 19,000 feet stained wholly
orange-red with it, exactly as the rocks of Cockburn Island were in 64° south.
Is not this most curious and interesting? To find the identical plant forming
the only vegetation at the two extreme limits of vegetable fife is always inter-
esting; but to find it absolutely in both instances painting a landscape so as to
render its color conspicuous in each case 5 nfiles off, is wonderful.

How does it come about that this plant flourishes in two such
widely remote regions? How can we account for hundreds of other
instances of the presence of identical plants in isolated localities
thousands of miles apart, and for the absence of others in regions
contiguous with one in which they abound ?

592 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

The great botanists preceding Hooker had believed in the “ special
creation” of this endless variety of species and widely differing
grades and elaboration of vegetable life, as an ultimate fact. Buffon,
at the end of the eighteenth century, had pointed out the connection
of climate with the distribution of plants, and argued that vegetation
must have commenced where the cooling globe was first cold enough
to support it—i. e., at a pole. He remarks that “the same tempera-
ture might have been expected, all other circumstances being equal,
to produce the same beings in different parts of the globe both in the
animal and vegetable kingdoms.” To him also we owe the recogni-
tion of the limitation of groups of species to regions separated from
one another by “natural barriers.” Tournefort had, still earlier,
pointed out the likeness between the vegetation of successive eleva-
tions, implying successive reduction of temperature, and that of suc-
cessive degrees of latitude carrying the same successive change of
climatic condition. Humboldt (whom Hooker met in Paris in 1845)
showed that many great natural orders of plants (Gramineae, Le-
guminosae, Compositae, etc.) are subject to certain laws of increase
or decrease relatively to other plants in going polewards (in both
hemispheres) and skywards. The construction of the “isothermals”
of the globe, which we owe to Humboldt, was a great instrument
toward the advancement of geographical botany. Hooker regarded
him (as he says in a letter to Darwin in 1881) as the greatest of
scientific travelers; and in 1845 he writes of him (vol. 1, p. 185):

He was never tired of coming to ask mie questions about my voyages [the
Antarctic expedition with Ross]; he certainly is still a most wonderful man,
with a sagacity and memory and capability for generalizing that are quite
marvelous.

Lyell had shown that distribution is not a thing of the present
only or of the present condition of climates and present outline and
contours of lands. He also showed that our continents and oceans
had experienced great changes of surface and climate since the in-
troduction of the existing assemblages of plants and animals; that
there had been a glacial period, and long before that a warm Arctic
period, as proved by the abundant fossils (brought back by Arctic
travelers) of plants belonging to a warm temperate zone. But these
relations of flora and climate were looked upon as the outcome of
direct adaptation by sudden and inexplicable acts of creation. It was
Hooker’s special merit and privilege to be the first to introduce into
the attempt to explain the facts of the geographical distribution of
plants, the conceptions already current in the scientific world of (@)
the mutability and derivative origin of species; and (6) the migra-
tion of floras. This he did independently, by his own “self-
thought,” as Darwin termed it. His views are apparent in his earlier

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 593

publications, but are most fully set forth in his Introductory Essay
to the Flora Tasmaniae, dealing with the Antarctic flora as a whole.

His study of Darwin’s plants from the Galapagos Islands and
their relation to those of other tropical islands and of the South
American Continent brought him into close relation with Darwin,
whom he visited in 1847. This was the beginning of their memor-
able intimacy and continuous exchange of letters (contained in these
volumes and the similar Life and Letters of Darwin). These letters
were really conversations as to endless botanical details—inquiries
made and answered, criticisms and arguments submitted by one to
the other. They form a record of surpassing interest to all future
generations of biologists. Hooker’s stores of knowledge of fact in
every department of botanical science were of essential service to
Darwin, while Darwin’s marvelous fecundity in original suggestions
as to the explanation and the significance of facts and his remorse-
less criticism of those suggestions by appeal to other facts and to
experiment, were a perennial stimulus to Hooker, who was himself
a theorist, a generalizer—what is sometimes called “a philosopher ”
—of large outlook. Lyell wrote in 1859 to Hooker of the Introduc-
tory Essay to the Flora Tasmaniae:

I have just finished the reading of your splendid Essay on the Origin of
Species, as illustrated by your wide botanical experience, and think it goes far
to raise the variety making hypothesis to the rank of a theory, as accounting
for the manner in which new species enter the world.

And Darwin wrote:

I have finished your essay. To my judgment it is by far the grandest and
most interesting essay on subjects of the nature discussed I have ever read.

Hooker was the earliest prominent naturalist to declare his ad-
hesion to the theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection
set forth by Darwin in his historic volume of 1859, but his complete
adhesion to it was only arrived at by long and minute discussion
with Darwin of his data, his arguments, and inferences, extending
over some years both before and after 1859, in which the two
naturalists were in constant communication. It must be borne in
mind that Darwin’s theory of the survival of favored varieties by
natural selection was something additional to the hypothesis of the
derivative origin of species which Hooker had supported. Dar-
win’s theory gave an explanation of that derivation, and showed it
to be the necessary result of existing natural causes.

Hooker continued during the next 22 years to take a leading part
in the development of an understanding of the geographical distri-
bution of organisms on the earth’s surface in the light of Darwin’s
great doctrine of natural selection. He was at times much per-
plexed by the attempt to demarcate natural phyto-geographical
provinces and subprovinces, as distinct from merely topographical

094 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

areas; and, finally, he seems to have come to the same conclusion
as that which he reached in the classification of the vegetable king-
dom adopted by him in the monumental work which he produced
in collaboration with Bentham, the “Genera Plantarum” (3 vols.,
octavo, 1862-1883). This conclusion was that, while we are still
seeking a closer knowledge of the phyletic connections of the floras
and faunas of the world, it is, in view of practical purposes (that is
to say, for facilitating the accumulation and orderly arrangement
of our knowledge), better to adopt a frankly arbitrary series of
grcups and provinces agreed upon and accepted because they are
traditional and serviceable for purposes of reference, than to as-
sume prematurely that we are in a position to define the limits and
connections of all natural phyto-geographical provinces and of all
phyletic groups. To do this we have not yet (he thought) sufficient
knowledge, though we already see clearly much of the outlines and
the needful lines of inquiry.

The means and the causes of the migration of plants were matters
of extreme importance in the great problem of distribution and the
closely connected problem of the changes cf land and water on the
earth’s surface. These were the subject of speculation and inquiry
by both Darwin and Hooker. Hooker had at first put forward the
hypothesis of a lost circumpolar continent in order to account for
the facts of plant distribution in the southern hemisphere. But
Darwin favored the view of the persistence even from Silurian
times of the great continental masses at present existing, and the
radiation from the northern temperate and subarctic region of
successive floras by spreading along the cold mountain chains which
extend through the tongue-like southward projections of continental
land—to-day traceable as South America, Africa, and Indo-Malaya.
Transport of seeds, ete., by ocean currents, by wind, and by birds
and other such agencies was shown experimentally by Darwin to be
possible in many cases, but the emergence and submergence of large
tracts of land as bridges or connections across the deep ocean beds
were rejected by him. Hooker writes to Darwin in 1881:

Were you not the first to insist on this [the permanence since the Silurian
period of the present continents and oceans], or at least to point this out? Do
you not think that Wallace’s summing up of the proof of it is good? I know
I once disputed the doctrine or rather could not take it in; but let that pass.
(Vol. ii, p. 224.)

He goes on to say, in reference to the address which he was pre-
paring for the British association meeting at York, in which after
many years’ labor he expressed his final conclusions on geographical
distribution:

I must wind up with the doctrine of general distribution being primarily from
nerth to south with no similar general flow from south to north—thus support-

=

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 595

ing the doctrine which has its last expression in Dyer’s essay read before the
geograph. society and referred to in my last R. S. address (1879).

The conclusions at present held on this great subject, which so long
oceupied Hooker’s attention as well as that of his friends Darwin and
Wallace, are fully and admirably stated by Hooker’s son-in-law and
successor at Kew in his article on the “Distribution of Plants” in
the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica—an essay which
permanently associates the name of Sir William Thiselton Dyer
with those of Hooker and Darwin as a great master in this many-
sided field of scientific speculation.

While Hooker never ceased to carry on by his own individual work
and that of his staff the preparation and publication of systematic
“floras” of all parts of the British Empire, with a view to a full
understanding of the origin of species and their geographical distri-
bution (perhaps we should reverse the order of those terms), his
botanical work was by no means limited to this. The “Life” gives a
full picture of his activities, which we may briefly summarize by
mentioning some of his publications, while his letters, there repro-
duced, to his father, to Lyell, Darwin, Harvey (of Dublin), Bentham,
Bryan Hodgson, Asa Gray, Huxley, Paget, and a host of other
friends and fellow-workers, reveal the methods of his scientific work
as well as his aims and struggles, the steps of his official and public
career, and his family life. From them, too, we can gather his views
not only on scientific problems, but on art, literature, politics, educa-
tion, and religion.

From the long list of his works (other than those already cited) we
select first that on The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-
1851), edited by his father from material sent home by him while
he was away collecting, drawing and mapping in the Himalayas. It
is a sample of the beauty of form and color which entrances the true
naturalist, however austere may be his devotion (as was Hooker’s)
to pure science. He writes:

It is a far grander and better pook than even I expected. * * * All the
Indian world is in love with my Rhododendron book.

Then we have his Himalayan Journals; or Notes of a Naturalist
in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains,
etc., (1854, reissued 1905), a book like Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle
and Wallace’s Malay Archipelago for all to read and enjoy; his
Students’ Flora of the British Islands (1870), which has run through
three editions; and his Primer of Botany (1876), which has been
reprinted 20 times in three editions—“the rashest and most profitable
of all my undertakings,” as he called it in a letter to Asa Gray. His
paper “On the Diatomaceous Vegetation of the Antarctic Ocean”

596 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918,

(Brit. Assoc. Reports, 1847), was the forerunner of that study of
oceanic deposits which many years later became (especially in con-
nection with the voyage of the Challenger a great and important
branch of research. Similarly his papers on Stigmaria and Lepidos-
trobi in the memoirs of the Geological Survey, 1848, were the start-
ing point of the study of the tissues of ancient fossil plants by means
of the miscroscope. He was the first to have sections of fossils cut
sufficiently transparent for that purpose, a method which in the
hands of a later generation has yielded very important results.

In the domain of physiology, besides some other contributions,
there stands out his remarkable work on the attraction, capture, and
digestion of insects by the pitcher plants (Brit. Assoc. Reports,
Belfast, 1874, and “ Nature,” 1870). The work was suggested by
Darwin when investigating the carnivorous habits of the sundew
(Drosera.) Experiments as to the digestive ferment and micro-
scopical investigation of the glands, etc., were made by Hooker,
aided by Dyer, at Kew. In the special study and exploration of
remarkable morphological characters, Hooker’s investigation of the
root parasites known as Balanophoreae—curiously simple in struc-
ture, without leaves or petals—formerly thought to be allied to the
fungi, but shown by Hooker to be degenerate mistletoes, is a sample
of his morphological work (On the Structure and Affinities of the
Balanophoreae, Linnean Society Transactions, 1856). He made
acquaintance with these strange plants both in New Zealand and in
the Himalayas.

But the most striking thing which he did in this way was his
description of the morphology, development and histology, and the
determination of the affinities of a weird-looking South African
plant discovered by Dr. Welwitsch in dry country inland from
Walfisch Bay, and sent by him to Kew. Hooker named it after its
discoverer; and specimens of it (since received through other travel-
ers) have been kept in cultivation ever since in one of the hothouses
at Kew (On Welwitschia, a new Genus of Gnetacez, Trans. Linn.
Soc., 1863). Hooker’s triumph in this investigation was that of
showing, by microscopic examination of the tissues and of the re-
productive structures and their development, that this strange-looking
plant is one of the Gnetacez, a family including the little European
Ephedra and grouped with the Cycads, the Gingko trees, and the
Conifers in the great assemblage called Gymnosperms. In the Life
and Letters we have a delightful picture (which will stir the
sympathy of every morphologist) of his excitement, his hard work
with the microscope, his reasoning, his results, and the reaction that
followed. He writes (Jan. 20, 1862), to Huxley—

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 59T

This blessed angola plant has proved even more wonderful than I expected—
figurez vous a Dicotyledonous embryo, expanding like a dream into a huge
broad woody brown disk, eight years old and of texture and surface like an
overdone loaf, 5 feet diam. by 13 high above the ground, and never growing
higher, and whose two cotyledons become the two and only two leaves the
plant ever has, and these each a good fathom long. From the edges of this
disk above the two leaves, rise branched annual pannicles, bearing cones some-
thing like pine cones, which contain either all female flowers, or all herma-
phrodite flowers; the hermaphrodite flowers consist of one naked ovule
absolutely the same as of Ephedra, in the organic axis of the flower, sur-
rounded by six stamens and a four-leaved perigone. The female flower is
quite different.

Lastly, fancy my joy at discovering the key to the development of this
hypertrophical embryo taking to become a plant after the fashion it does; and
at my being able to show that * * * it is undoubtedly a member of the
family Gnetaceae amongst Gymnosperms, as the structure of the ovule and
development of the seed and embryo clearly show. It is out of all question
the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country—and the very ugliest.
It reopens the whole question of Gymnosperms as a class, and will (in the
eyes of most) raise these, as I always said they would be raised, to equivalence
in these respects with Angiosperms.

At this moment he was fortunate enough to receive five splendid
specimens from a Mr. Monteiro, of Loanda, who “ like a trump ” sent
down the coast at his request to get them. Much help, he says, was
given by one of his staff, Professor Oliver, who had been examining
the tissues where he had left off, making “ some charming drawings
that will save me a world of trouble.” The completed monograph
was read at the Linnean Society in December, 1862, and published
in the “Transactions.” The reaction after a heavy and exciting
piece of work set in, as so many ardent investigators know it has a
way of doing. When it was finished he wrote to Darwin:

My wife went to Cambridge and enjoyed it; I stayed at home (and enjoyed
it), working away at ‘‘ Welwitschia’’ every day and almost every night. I
entirely agree with you, by the way, that after long working at a subject,
and after making something of it, one invariably finds that it all seems dull,
flat, stale, and unprofitable. This feeling, however, you will observe, only
comes (most mercifully) after you really have made out something worth
knowing. I feel as if everybody must know more of Welwitschia than I do,
and yet I can not but believe I have, ill or well, expounded and faithfully
recorded a heap of the most curious facts regarding a single plant that have
been brought to light for many years. The whole thing is, however, a dry
record of singular structures, and sinks down to the level of the dullest descrip-
tive account of dead matter beside your jolly dancing facts anent orchid-life
and bee-life. I have looked at an orchid or two since reading the orchid
book, and feel that I could never have made out one of your points, even
had I limitless leisure, zeal and material. I am a dull dog, a very dull dog.
I may content myself with the per contra reflection that you could not (be
dull enough to) write a ‘“ Genera Plantarum” which is just what I am best
fitted for. I feel that I have a call that way and you the other.

136650°—20——_39

598 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

A splendid and illuminating revelation of a generous and too
modest character.

As a concluding item in our necessarily incomplete but representa-
tive selection from the long list of Hooker’s varied work in and
for science, we must cite his action when president of the Royal
Society in 1878 in raising a fund of £10,000 (chiefly by subscription
from wealthy friends of his own among the Fellows of the Society),
by which new Fellows were relieved of the large entrance fee and
all were in future to pay a reduced annual subscription of only £3.
This admirable measure, entirely due to Hooker’s initiative, had
the result that, as Mr. Leonard Huxley writes, “no man henceforth
need be kept outside the society on the score of money.” Of the
many services in economic botany, which under his direction Kew
rendered and continues to render to distant parts of the Empire,
we have no space to say more than that they comprise the intro-
duction from South America to India of the quinine plant, and of
the rubber tree (Hevea), and the scientific supervision of the culti-
vation in the West Indies of the neglected sources of wealth—the
sugar cane, tobacco, and Jamaica oranges.

When we examine, as the Life and Letters and our own observa-
tion of him enable us to do, the personal qualities which carried
Hooker through his exceptionally long life with such splendid
success, such unfailing spirit and contentment, and such lasting
benefit to humanity (he was, we learn, selected by the Japanese, soon
after his death, as “one of the 29 heroes of the world that modern
time has produced”), we find that the emergence of those qualities
was not due to heredity alone, but largely to the training which they
received from a gifted and affectionate father, for whom he had
profound sympathy and filial devotion. Hooker was born with a
vigorous constitution and great physical endurance. He had an
inborn tenacity of purpose and single-minded attitude to life, and
was as remarkable for his frank honesty as for his courage. He
inherited from his father and his maternal grandfather (both
botanists) his aptitude for botanical science, but it was the teaching
and example of his father which, from his earliest years, trained
and developed that aptitude. He modestly but with characteristic
insight said of himself when at the age of 70 he received the Copley
medal of the Royal Society, that he had no genius, no exceptional
powers or exceptional talent, but that he possessed that mward
motive power—some heat, some fervor, which compels us to exercise
our faculties and to ripen the fruits of our labors—which he would
call “the wish to do well,” expressed in the modest motto chosen
for himself 400 years ago by Prince Henry the Navigator, “Talent
de bien faire.”

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 599

His constant association, from boyhood onwards, with his father
in the garden and herbarium created by the latter in Glasgow after
his appointment as professor, made botany a part of his very exist-
ence. At the same time the aptitude for it must have been born in
him. It was not inherited by his elder brother, William, who, having
the same opportunities, showed no liking for the subject, and,
though more vivacious than his younger brother, displayed no
scientific bent. From this point of view it is interesting to note
that not one of Joseph Hooker’s six sons has been attracted by
botany or by scientific research. Sir William Hooker, a man of
distinction in science and of influence in the official world, was able
to communicate to his son his own tastes and ambitions, and to secure
for him that early official employment which started him on his
career as an investigator and established him for life in the great
center of botanical science created by Sir William.

The intimate association of father and son, and the complete
devotion of the younger man to the development of the elder’s
cherished projects, find a parallel in the life work of Alexander
Agassiz, who realized, on a magnificent scale, the plans for a great
museum and institution of zoological research at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, designed by his father Louis Agassiz, but only in part
carried into execution. Alexander Agassiz, as a young man, delib-
erately set to work as a mining engineer in order to procure that
pecuniary independence which he decided to be necessary in the
United States for one who wished to become a great zoologist. Be-
fore he was 30 years of age a copper mine in Michigan made him a
millionaire and stood to him in the place of the official income and
vast state supported apparatus which awaited Joseph Hooker at
Kew. Both men became great leaders in their science, and, in
greatly developing and completing their fathers’ work, left splendid
monuments of their heritage and their devotion. It is interesting
to note that the sons of Alexander Agassiz, like those of Joseph
Hooker, though always on terms of affectionate intimacy with their
father, have not become “ men of science.”

Hooker frequently acted in younger days, as examiner in botany
for various boards and universities. He was a member of the senate
of the University of London. Some valuable records of his views
on education, which deserve special consideration at this critical
moment, are to be found in these volumes. His views are of especial
value because he was, above all things, a practical man, seeing his
aim clearly and bringing his trained judgment and vast experience
of men to bear on the means to be pursued in order to attain it. He
was also absolutely frank and fearless in the expression of his con-
clusions. We quote below (“ Life,” vol. ii, p. 329) a letter of his

600 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918.

to his friend the Rev. J. D. La Touche, dated May 24, 1893.
He says:

You must not think that I oppose education of the laboring classes, but I
should like it conducted toward the future life of the average, and not to the
high education of the few who can profit by the complex education of the board
schools. Mind you, I am just as much against the higher school and college
education of the masses of the upper classes. Surely it would be far better
if much of their teaching were devoted to making them more useful members
of society. * * * To return to technical education, my notion of it is that
it should be begun early, at the expense of some of the board’s literature,
classical English, etc., and be accompanied throughout by semi-scientific teach-
ing; i. e., the cobbler should be taught what tanning is, what bristles are, and
how developed, and so forth. If any board school child shows a genius for the
higher education, push him on by all means to school and college; but it is
no use trying to “make silk purses out of sows’ ears.”

From his earliest days onwards, Hooker shrank from public
speaking; he disliked lecturing, and never held a professorial post.
He detested newspaper discussions as well as the pomps and vanities
of official ceremony. They all seemed to him as using up the time
and strength which he ought to give to his one purpose—the increase
of science. His natural and strong determination was to the most
thorough and strenuous work in pure scientific investigation. He
desired no popularity, but cared only for intimacy with and ap-
proval by the select few who were able to participate in his scien-
tific work and thought, or were bound to him by long association.
He was a man of the family, not a man of society. Nevertheless
his long life, his high position, and wide-reaching activities brought
to him a vast number of acquaintances, inspired by admiration and
affection for his kindly, frank, and energetic character. With his
children and numerous family connections he found relaxation and
refreshment in music and dancing and in reading works of fiction and
romance. He became an enthusiastic admirer and collector of Wedg-
wood ware, and fully indulged in the collector’s joy of picking up
good pieces in the shops of second-hand dealers. He retained from
early life the habit of constant, regular, and uninterrupted work,
and the simplest tastes in regard to food. He attributed his long
life and the preservation of his health and mental power (as he said
to the writer, who visited him on his ninetieth birthday) to the fact
that he had made it his practice throughout his life to dine in the
middle of the day, drinking only a hght wine, and to take nothing
but a light tea in the evening.

Hooker was, it is true, fortunate in his friends—fortunate because
he merited such fortune. We read in these volumes of their passing
away one by one—until he at last was left alone, but not downcast.
His mind, to the end, was full of happy memories, and he still had
new plants to describe and was tended by his wife and interested

SIR JOSEPH HOOKER—LANKESTER. 601

in his garden. His long and fraternal association with Darwin was
of vital importance to each of them. The genius and originality of
his friend fed, as it were, on Hooker’s immense stores of botanical
knowledge; and Hooker, in turn, was stimulated by Darwin’s in-
quiries into new lines of activity and acquired, in aiding his friend
in those inquiries, a convincing proof of the decisive value of his
own vast labors in building up the knowledge of plants. The Life
and Letters form a fascinating record of that romantic, well-nigh
legendary period in the history of biological science, when great
men ravished the globe of its secrets and revolutionized human
thought.. It was the privilege of the present writer to be personally
associated—in many cases intimately so—with the heroes of this
story from Lyell onwards, to grow up in their midst and to be
thrilled by the daily triumphs of those mighty warriors. Many
long years ago he was greeted by Hooker as “a friend and the son
of a friend” and it is with those words ringing in his memory that
he closes the book of that great man’s life.

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INDEX.

A
Page.
Abbot, Dr. C. G., director, Astrophysical Observatory... .. XII, 20, 88, 108, 121, 185
Abbott, Dr. W. i shendbeeoecuods cad oo os GOSH ROA GOB Sees bonsece 4,17, 27, 30, 110, 114
eB BSR 0 rl Seas ec Ra ee Spe i A a eS eae ee ees XI, XII
Neeolnt OL hewise of navigation (Curtiss)=. 2.2 .-': . . eekisdcaccn sack tee e See 127
Wdsrondackand White: Mountains, erassesOf.. <= 52.022 scclsenne 3.cee s+ dode- cs 9
Advisory. Committee for Acronautics, National...........2.....-:.-.25.4.s0nss 2,113
Advisory Committee on Printing and Publication (Smithsonian)............. 101
Agriculture, Secretary of (member of the Institution)........................ xI
AOUISENTD [BCCI Lae Spe ae eon Ge BEG OME Eee ete ee mets Se Aye st Pe
UNE Tako Ing DE Bie a nek. Oe eae Gees = ee XII, 21, 83, 84, 85, 87
PRULOMMORECH Ob AMMO GING nee es eG eerie wane ninet sles foe oc 1 Sed Oe eS Se 15
AUCrICH nara Gt tenes dies ONO!” 2 kao. ene es bs Sek EE oe 10
ET eTICAMG ET SL OEICOL SASHOCIA IONS 5. cee need cemciot aencad 2s sess sade s ses e seo
American Indian, Museum of, Heye Foundation ..........--.....---.-.-+-2. 27
PAUMericam Neds oross.ospital atiNeuilly......:.---+---.e-csss- ese nese se eee 3:
Anthropological collections, National Museum ...................---.--..--- 27
Anthropological studies on old American families.............-.-..-.....---- 10
Appalachian and Ohio valleys, geological work in..........................-- |
ADO: DEAT ECS he Se Stl oa SO ae rece ae ae re 5
Ere onton Oa ORES Mua OTChet ye oe os we cre snc oe Soon oe Re 29
Anmiv and Nawy, United States, researches for the_.-... =. .,2. -i< -6- 55 060 20
ENS TGUIN ESET OR Dike ater NYC Gg nk | ee GR eel oy 31,115
Basiscanbesecretannwwot the. Institution... ..-. 2... --.asé2dsqeensen ne ceoe XI, x11, 110
acEn gel CalObservatony,. 240. ooo 3-5. cw ce en sec cs a - oe ee RD, Dy AD 20, ls
JOU GTA TUTTO We Re te Re oterns eae ties ate ee es Eee toe aL gaat moor oe 4,103
PUVCn EVO DEhGs tamtons((bECUeSst) <n. 422502524202 stm cae eae 2.0 eige ee lie 103
ARiratIOne, OxPeLlimMentalwOlKiO!s.25 26515 5<sss222 2 -ees-sea-- ess eee ees 3
1B
ibackeround iol fotemism thei (a opkans) Pesos erecta secsae eases ee sei 573
Ballem ete tice Onis were prae scree Shoei, Set eo, ore cera aac ae tae Rar oie, JP 18
TBP ECe bs salalce 1 Bese Ses ae a ae ey eS a ge a Een Es SEEN One ee 1 x
baler wrong blenny uD) <0 So acs 8 2 ooo 2 opel tere ed Eh She Sai ras ore ee Ic 67
Baker, Newton Diehl, Secretary of War (member of the Institution).......... pal
JB aC Siyal) ire each Foe Sees AS en he nee es eee ENE. eae eer cui (NE
Bassler Drake Saeeees«.. EE Nana oS ie Ae IRS ae ee oh See oe xu, 7, 8, 33, 34
Baumann Gustavies.ceterp ee = eae nets Sates ot sisi se eee 29
Byers sone, UE eee ny se ng eee 5 Se Sa, Ene nn Ne RROMPEN As Se ee SE 6 far. XII
Bell Alexander. Graham: (Rerenit) 2:2 ate wee ee reais = pease ee x1, 2, 106
LRVEIKO UTS od Bed BR 0 Te ak pet 2 Re 2 Sn ee Ne a ey Ly eee XII
Peete, CO eer kay SEs ee eer i Ja 5 o's Siwiss oo cease Se see eee ae 33
PSR iO eh hs or Siac ihn ey atag ous aiato is, « ojainiefu! esi as =u ae 7
Benedactenlames) ty: 522 92s <p erte aye Sere cae ew eercitine oe oem eee a xi

604 INDEX.

Page.
Benjamin, Dr; Mareus sou3-c Se tess sae oe S252 2 ee ee xu, 100
Bequests... 0.2 st accom sae aa See aie Se oes Sears ae enema ee ee 3
Bernadou; Mrs. J. 3B: (bequest: 23...52s.. cs tee ee ee ee 29
Berry, Prof: 6. W i... 2 Ree oer: org: eh ee ee ee eee eee 35
(Paleobotany: A sketch of the origin and evolution of
HIOLAB) "=, oS = 20:5 a ie ee a eee ee ee See eee 289
Biological collections, National. Museum: aes seen ee Ses ee 30
Biological: work in North China): 022525222 Soke rane ee ees 114
Birdsong, sexual selection and. (Hawkins) i215. 2.2. sci - oe ae ne ee ee 461
Bliss, Eleanora (Some problems of international readjustment of mineral
supplies as indicated in recent foreign literature)................-.-.---.-- 251
Boas, Dr. Franz...... SESH DE eee Ss) Sees c ae Se eee ee ey ye ee are Yau}
Borneo and Celebes expedition!.<= 2222...) See a ee a) bee 114
Bouvier, E. L.: (The psychic hife.of insects)ie=ss ees as ee eet 451
Braechlein, J. Ges.css soho ese se OA OT a Od TET I a 27
Bridgman, Dr. P. W., the experiments of, on the properties of matter when
under hign ee (Abbott Rais b Sahel 40 SEH EPR EEE | Jd. SAE aes eS 185
‘Brocketh, Pauls: 72 c22 25202 RIE foo hee shes Ne XI, 93
Brown, Edward! Jl o<sc.cn cite tie ses st rend nee cep eens eae eee 32
Brown; S82 Co.c. casos ens ak eS e e x
Bryant, His Ss 522s0 00 soe se asks ss wae ee ee XII
Bushnell, Dil, fetuses scoreerss eons ee ee ee ee 53
Burleson, Albert Sidney, Postmaster General (member of the Institution)... .. XI
C.
Caldwellt Johns ti5s2 68s. ccc Jas 2 aE Ti ae ee eer ual
Carlill; James:(Wind power): ==. - 52-3 229-22 Pa. eT ee ee es 147
Carroll, B. Harvey < o552 52522552 2422 coke seed Shs eae Sana Re 29
Case, Prot. Wi Cs) acc Sse Soe eh os ee Se 35
Catalogue of scientific literature, international .................-.- xu, 1, 5,15, 22, 94
Cave deposit of Western Maryland, a Pleistocene (Gidley).-.............-....- 281
Celebes and ‘Borneo expedition < «eto sie ee ee ne ee ee ee 114
Celebes' expedition:=~< ..:05sis.sic2222< Steins een tes Same eee eee 4
Chamberlain, Col. Weston P. (History of military medicine and its contribu-
tions to science) ©: 2..k2 Saat tices eek See et a ee Be 235
Chamberlain fund........ ~Risestarseteaesn ith nses Ol AI Se ao 4,103
Chancellor’ ofthe Institution 24.7024. «ote. cece ese eee me ee ee eee XI, 2
Chetverikov, 8. 8. (The fundamental factor of insect evolution)..............- 44]
Chief Justice of the United States (member of the Institution). ..... x1, 1, 2,107,111
Choate, Charles*F:; jr (Regent): 24s. -s422252 2s Sect Sess oe wee ee ee Ee, 2
Chubb; -Gawrence Sse: ssh eae acess sees eee a ee eee 32
Clark, A. Howard, editor ofthe Imstitwtions s<.-=222 2-25. 2--.6 eee Xi x, L501.
Clarke: D1 cB Wil Seen eee GORE 12 SEEDERS FEE a) Ie: ST exiere ee XII
Clayton; "Dr: HW: Wn. oon ets cee a eat ee ee ee ee 84.
Clementa"Gabrielle de‘ Vs. 222s e25e Be eos So ee eee eee 29
Coagulation of albumen by pressure (Bridgman). ........-.----------------- 195
Cohn,,Prof. Adolphe: 255+... +... see tetedcteesenensece: kere cee cee oes 59
Collections, Bureau of American Ethnology... ........------------------+--- 56
Collections NationaleMuseumias = +2eee epee eee eee eee eee eee ot heed Se 27
Collins; 7A Miss cso beees sees tse 5252s See eae Be eeeee hee ee eee 114
Collins-Garner Congo expedition ........ine-en-aeenmrene one eee eer 31, 109, 114

Colorado and Utah, ethnological explorations in. ................-2-2-+-e-e- 12

INDEX. 605

Page.

Coloration of tropical fishes, marine camoufleurs and their camouflage: the
present and prospective significance of facts regarding the (Longley)........ 475
Commerce, Secretary of (member of the Institution).......................2- XI
sem OOM UNO oni clacs Se cae eee wae een Sess stasc-etivsetnumieee tl. 4

Constitutional league of peace in the Stone Age of America. The league of
the Iroquois and its constitution (Hewitt).......... eect Te Cee eee 527
Cooke Ont (hoat-plow scoriculturejin Peru) .....<cc..s0-.kebrictional.ca 2. eee 487
CounciloimNational Metenseees 15!) 5 sc) seoewsl. Hoabdeh ddec sed. lace ckk 25113
OG lear PalViar ees perenne es ete Shey Ech kaise Baloce sls otere heiwiets < ois gare held XII
COESCHIOU, he CB so sa Bsr a oe aa A a a 3 XII
Curtiss, R. H. (An account of the rise of navigation).................2.2.02-- 127

D;
LOSE IDE AWA rene Oe 3.8 oe te eS eee eae ea xu, 91
Daniels, Josephus, Secretary of the Navy (member of the Institution). ....... XI
Daughiers of the American Revolution, report of........--.---...2...2...--- 101
Degeneracy, the problem of (Tredgold)...........-.- aioe so ee ee 547
USSR Cs Stee eee ene OSS iS Soe oo ae ae eee ene oe eee Tepe a oe XII
Wengisy Representative Mueonidas: 2 ca58 6 oe) Se tin Sea ee ei a wo tees Fein ee 14
elas ObS wr Pan CON Re Timea sae Mee ite oo ards 2k Sb woe caa dw tadecaels 53, 56
Director of the Astrophysical Observatory............---...- xu, 20, 88, 108, 121, 185
Discovery of helium and what came of it, the (Abbot).................-..-.-. 121
Dorsey, Harry W., chief clerk of the Institution...........-..-.-.-----2..2s- XI
De ate D EAT EINOM Ace e804, 3 Snes ite Roe ec otic wed nee S Cats od aoicts hewield eTectee 31
E.

ESN era ero fap tes Seto eka ere States cvs icrse ciel wicin ia a Sele eeenjnepoe seis sme ieie scostonine aa.s 34
Hehimodenus, springer collection Of -. .. 5-22-2222. + sci an dese St caecaams Sen’ 4
Helapee.of thesun,/June.8,,1918, observations of: ... . os. jens 8s once nce cece 5
Hiditors ot the Institution and: branches... :.< ..-/........ << -.5-5 XI, x, 15, 100, 101
Riddupnomerercand: M.. HH. GOnations.: obrr522'-j. 5. acs cece ete see cme n set 18, 39
EM iorigcia te COlleCiOn rs = avast tiee ecicicie c's Saisie d wax Lhe Shien thee Re ee 28
Environment and evolution, the direct action of (Kropotkin)...-.....-....-. 409
EORRTIN Ga ROWE eS ee ae eee ene eee ee een Li 2i
Ethnological explorations in Colorado and Utah.........-..-...2.------.----- 12
EpimnGlocy, wisareawol AMEN CAR. <.)<.2.<.< <0 ec 2m cce soe tase: Mair, 155, 12,05, 19, 112
|| \ eh geen = te Bea pe ee eS a 55, 92
MMBMMISERIP SI Aee) esas eke oceans es ok a oe 54
Pub Gross oy: =e tapas el ee 54, 101
GN sac cs ceoe cece see ee adeet es cess aeonces 45
Te TIN GO deh ois ht RE ces Os ee a SAI, Sa nah Sahl eee a ten Se 28, 66
Evolution, environment and, the direct action of (Kropotkin).-.............. 409
Evolution, insect, the fundamental factor of (Chetverikov)........-...-.-..-- 441
Evolution, irreversible, on the law of (Petronievics) ..........------------- 429
Pe eannmery HIbernatOnalse soos tee cae ee aye ees a ses soles x1, 1,5, 15, 21
RACV Us cons s0n6 ss panbss sen seccesesssonagsseasssa6 58
Executive Committee of the Board of Regents.......-...-------------------- XI
FOMOri Glider 8s: tohc osc esas nee 103

Experiments of Dr. P. W. Bridgman on the properties of matter under high
Py BESTE ERO OE pie Oe a ap OMe AS ee An er Seo eee 185

ectmerlianasanit TCSCAT CHER. f= cc. ate c= oe eee == As 3/6 eee sawp camee aie x 5, 44

606 . INDEX.

F
: Page..
Fairbanks, Charles'Warren (Regent) 72 9oeits 2sfue eae eee ee 9. 98
Harmer, Moses G2.222,2 ) Ait Sane eI as STs PR STS: faite eee 3
Farmer,Miss.8..J.- (bequest)=<- eerie, SI 3s ea) ee Vise - oa 3
Ferris, Representative Scott (Regent)...........--.----.--2.2--200-00- QT,
Fewkes, J. Walter, Chief, Bureau of American Ethnology. xm, 12, 16, 43, 45, 46, 55, 57
(Sun worship of the Hopi Indians).-................-..... 493
Hinanees of. the Institution... ...= .-.<.-s 97s Se Oe 4
Fishes, tropical, the present and prospective significance of facts regarding the
coloration of: marine camoufleurs and their camouflage (Longley). -.-.-..-.-- 475
BING, Ij Miba sa wanes anaes d qos ma hs SAA ASAIN ST SESS BOS 93 oe ee ro eR 91
Foot-plow agriculture in Peru (Cook). -...-...- JRET ION USA ROOEALE bot 487
Foreign depositories of United States governmental documents. .....-...---- 61
Horcion exchangeacencies 5.52.67 a sf set fae ce ee eee ee eC eee eee 63
Howle hr Wit coe Sekt Sas tape entre S oie ete ae See Seren Sateen xu, 20, 21, 83
Rrachtenbere, Wr Geo do. ss iladiecoes a ttele otter a etre Noein serra ae ee oe ee 51, 57
Hreer Art Gallery =o 225...2 ses cece e ss Li, Si sl ke ee pico 18, 38, 108, 111
Freer--Gharles is. $2 2252222 ra 2it teh sasec Soe neces ae eee teat ree 39, 108.
iHreer:collection*® thei Charl ests ts en 2 oe ae ae ee ee 88)
Fundamental factor of insect evolution, the (Chetverikov)..-.....-...-..---.-- 441
ONIGS? ES 955 2222 DSSS S ES ETS SSIES SSS ee ee ee aS re ae a 4
: G.
GarnerehRalies sett teers asec sathoe tes eee eee siecle ete ee emisieisecr eee erete 114
Gatscice yD Mem Ns a aaa tas Ae Sa SSS SNES ae Sa Se ee eee eSpace saa eee 46, 51
Geolosical:collections, National: Museum. 220 425 6. .2s-cee aaa e ee 2 asses 32
Geological work in the Appalachian and Ohio valleys..............--..-.---- 7
Genlomiealework in central Kentucky 22! Se Soe sa naan nee ste ee eee 8
Geological workin Mary land=:*32 22525552805 sett Stee sec ccemee a eyoeme eee if
Geolovical work imthe Rocky Mountams:.---.----* 02-2 os eee eee eee 6
Gidley, J. W. (A Pleistocene cave deposit of western Maryland)..........--- 281
Gailtise oe Sass Se Se ES Se SSS creed ee ae alee cia ee ROE eee eater enc eee 4
Gilbert: Chester Gi. t.2tc cots cbse st ste cece ne ges Sik Seca meee eee xu, 3, 38
Gall SWobanre Gyre = tia 8 crease oetrceetrasraiaie ce eee ei oan eater ee eae XI, 52,
Galle Mirs: Niet Wis 22S Sons 2 Stes ae eee eee Se oie ee are ea ee eee ee 70
Gilmore< Charles Wine S225 252 Seren fo mere ce emcee ecto at oe ere teeter a eee 271
Goldsmith Us Seyi See swt See eee cee eee mie se ere eevee eerie eee XII
Grasses of the Adirondack and White Mountains...............-------------- 9
(GEA Grennge (LCs CTL) aspen ae oe ene eee ieee eee eg a ee xt, 2, 106, 107
Greene; Representative Frank I (Regent): 5. - 35-0 - 2-1 eee se Se xi, 2
Gregory, Thomas Watt, Attorney General (member of the Gnseienran) Bes Se ts x
Cunmell «deonardiG., 82 te ssc ae oe en a oe eee oe eee See eee oo. | XESS
Gurleyicd > Giff 252i Stes cs oe Ot eee ie ane ale Oe ae sere eres eee eee 54
Ee
Wabeluna cs. pena 5eee oe e e se e eeeee ae eee eee ee eee 4
Haeberhin Mir str sto oo cos se eee ee © Ne nee Te ee 52
Haiti and’ Santo, Domingo expeditions. -~ 2 oy - heen a ne eee ee 114
Seleerintlitiomyfutrid ¢ 5S Set ho tT Ee ene ean ened ee 4
Ehammictle Jonni oe secre Seis ec se ote ctr crete eee er if
lElieuerimp Gon Wola ge". erga oh alee re ee pee xu, 51
Hat wilcullt "ex Ca vations att csc c= a. one cee ge cotter cece erate gee ree eee 44,112
Hawkins, Chauncey J. (Sexual selection and bird song). .-.-------- LS ee 461

Bay, Dr. Oo Piss c center 35, 91

INDEX. 607

Page
Helium, the discovery of, and what came of it (Abbot). ..........2...2....-- 121
ender ON | CROP OMt) nj .0. 5 02 cee ee ae oss eee Sesee Sok 25107100
TENG S8 Ds Le tea a ce cree aS ae 32
TD ERG die dNlgd BS este AOR DA one Meee an a a rn We = suee xu, 47
(A constitutional league of peace in the Stone Age of America.
The league of the Iroquois and its constitution)........._.- boi
LELENTeLity MUGS RO) OVSTE pe lle ck Fe a eR IR aE ea a 30
High pressure, experiments of Dr. P. W. Bridgman on the properties of matter
when wander (introductory note—Abbot)-.. 1: s2.t2.s-c2e beed )5.eeeee lean 185
Hish pressure and five kinds’ of ice (Bridgman)... . ... 2.2.2 205 c2eceecccese 186
Hen eel eel een aera tt cyte eee cet APs otc ats Sk ee ee ete emlawe’s a een Jue Xi
Pu enranG mR Wy Reeete a meee alee toe NSU iit his dead OL 5. 34
History of military medicine and its contributions to science (Chamberlain)... 235. -
SUN AN DOO lea GL Ott1@) eee epee eae eel chr eis si nice a wom ep nice nid more cape ere 563
ithe emele wen Sas mem eey rcs a yaee ale Swieleis diaicisic op nie soe owt ee nent eee ioe yee 9,31
Skala. 1 AW le sae ae os ee is i a 16, 43, 44, 45, 57
HEE ch Belts SeRUINCl totes ee ee eet Oni coe ewriziss Sposa s wei oe 4, 21, 55, 58, 103, 108, 113
Hollis; Senator Henry Hrench (Regent). 2.2.2.2 2222.22.20 e eee eee ee xa, 2,107
Hollister, N., superintendent, National Zoological Park................... xu, 15, 81
[Blo nn@syd Dye, Mmm eer & Lee oe eerie Sires giana apr ene TE e Kme52090
Hooker, Sir Joseph—a great naturalist (Lankester).........................- 585
Hopkins, E. Washburn (The background of totemism)..................22..-- 573
BLOW Ty ID NCU 8 Ia ils Ret te ae eae KA 2 se
Houston, David Franklin, Secretary of Agriculture (member of the Institution). XI
ilovenweep National Monuments as - seco. cesossscaciecce cscs ceceecseecec eae 46
EVO Wie BO eit Olsen ts toe roe eee name MoE eae nie cas tune cacl we eaetes es XII
lined neta Dyas PAN Cu eeeareyae stare a erate Se ee ore e NATE te wie icc wrasenn ec cereals xd0g oy I) Ilse
HEttets HERR UCO CUA nk eA tes nina eee ee Sic cin ieee in se we eeiode cases 3
Pusher len. bruce (bequest)ce ine sess eens seen enact ees ect ness cence 3
i
Melanin see ane ieee eiterete Kee ney ee ene eee ee fico bh asinecsoe sAobooteasiee 34
HePeOT HON late wns t Util Omer ye so enews ree see eres £2 co SMT LS See 5
Bach secret fae Bayrenstalbes ati Oe ee Saree se ce Ay ects re nh oe ok ee a ld
Insect evolution, the fundamental factor of (Chetverikov)...................- 441
inGertereOenariniemiueeasm 4 pues Con a kale. SUE | SOUT SIO aR 12,19
LEON ONU YC! JES Ta Pe TST eA CCX acts i a eR ee 13
Interior, Secretary of the (member of the Institution)................4..-...- XI
International catalogue of scientifie literature. ................--- xi, 1,5, 15, 22, 94
iinbermagonmealeexehaneen ees 55556 )0s oa oe Sana ace nede de ecaeeceees xo 15; Tose
REDOING 6 a Go bo aenObbe San aoe Rese ou BADOOUSaScere Ere 58
Interparliamentary exchange of official journals...............-.....--------- 63
Irreversible evolution, on the law of (Petronievics).........-..------.-.----5- 429
6
SE] Oto, 1 Ea ROLE NYS) Bie NS Oe ES 0 ee ee ee 32
Tio inser Wea Sem COTS ULM NIGISOI lyst ese yaoi 2)2)- -\c clewic oic/o-, ctais,o s1esecyars estes 33, 110
AGS OS DE Sige Scere ea ery set 70
BUTE Nd ls Vile ey ee Mee ne cn. wae e'e sienna es aioem oer 27, 52
. K.
Ts@lbyatal, 1Lorro ls Sees ase Se boise iS A'S Sees le See a 29
ioe ro pkesemiative) Wal iamem meee eae ns. fo sec. et te ew ncccc cee enencnels 13

Reuiucky, eeolosical work i Centialess+.. 0222-20005. c5l leeds ccee teenie sees 8

608 INDEX.
Page.
Killip, Ellsworth Be 2s 5222s: Cae eh 22 SES RE Se eee 31
Kings Samtelbes 2s c..ctctheces mds (cdot. 2c dee ee ree Ad
Bnoche; DrwWalters\1s stage ccee ees a Lon See eee eee ee eee eee 85
‘Kenowilles;{ Wir Asasiss tinea atin: fiat asa Powe SERS ne oe One ee xu
Knowlton) Dre Sood ALS ete te Ried fat et ae ER ee 35
Koren, John... ..«.5 FEES EE? BLE BE EROS TES) eB OEE os a steno 35
Kramer yAct Sten bees eusekt whence dee cot eek Me me creme tere ee een aS ae eee 82, 85
Rroeber,) Dry Ae Tages yGi Ss Lk SO BEE Cpe eae ne Ope ere ss Fp 53
Kropotkin, Prince (The direct action of environment and evolution)........-.. 409
L.

Labor, Secretary of (member of the Institution).......................-.-..- XI
ab Plesche, Rranisst: se .c0 nas cies coe ait a es oem one en ee x11, 48, 49, 50
Lane, Franklin Knight, Secretary of the Interior (member of the Institution). Ba
Vareley Acrod ynamical’ baboratory =. oc. seer seas: acne ee ee 2 108-113
Taneley Wield no's ee ote ose oe = cticlare senile sere ee ee BES Se a 3
Mangley: flyine machine. as: so. ocac ns Some sen yk ae nee ee ee eee 3, 28, 114
Taneley. Same Prerpont er sae cere oe a oe eee eee ee 3, 28, 114
pioneer in practical aviation. A tribute (Leffmann) 157
Lankester, Sir Ray (A great naturalist—Sir Joseph Hooker).........-- ae 585
Lansing, Robert, Secretary of State (member of the Institution).............-. 5 ai
B DAG: W es = al fe oem meena ts EP eA NE ett Nee ae 70

League of the Iroquois and its constitution. A constitutional league of peace
im they stone Age of America, (Hewitt)=cece a. 22 eons see eee sera Oa
WEG AV ey ULES om nm eerie wlasa nsw. eywi uolere tw slase munia's sate eae Orie =e XU, 55

Leffmann, Henry (A tribute—Samuel Pierpont Langley: Pioneer in practical
DVAIMLION) 5 oc sane on. 5 «mois Siaegniamienia oleicis otaioislace ae Sata siete a ee 157
ewton, Rrederick Lie i... 55 .cs-eissne oaicie eee e ot o esha ieee ei eet ae XII
Laberty Lean: Bondso Ul .S:4U Bird: on csa anes ei een reat, ee 5
fabrariés of the Institution and branches:-( .-222..055525-ee- © see 16, 42, 55, 89
summary of accessions.............-- 93
Ikindgren, ‘Prot. Waldemar: 52-2 1228- =< sey. <eere ane 3 oe oe eee ee 34
Iloyds James" [i.<.= 0352 32 Rosa et ae oe eeees se Satine ecetiie tac pet eee ae 2
Tioan exhibitions, National Museums ates ceo Pep ee ee er ee 39
Lodee, Senator Henry Caboti(Rezent): 2-2. cane so eee ee Kp, LOG delel

Longley, W. H. (Marine camoufleurs and their camouflage: The present and
prospective significance of facts regarding the coloration of tropical fishes)... 475

Tuo woblan SD iGe cess ET 22 so cei a Se ge ea tay a a ae Ae cue 34
M.
McAdoo, William Gibbs, Secretary of the Treasury (member of the Institution). XI
MeClellan::Hon. George Bess #55209 PRT ee Se eee ee 29, 109
MeKanney, Mrs: ‘Glenn, Kord\.. 2-2) 2 eine ee eee eee 29
Melieammalsb <2) 2. oo vec cae EO PEA Beer Oe ae Ee iss A Peed
Mactarlane: Henty.B Bev oS eo ek oso ete a eee ere eee 13
Manuscripts, cthinolopieals | 2)... 24 en oe oe eee wee eae ae ee 54
Marine camoufleurs and their camouflage: The present and prospective signifi-
cance of facts regarding the coloration of tropical fishes (Longley)...-.-.-..-- 475
Marshall, Thomas R., Vice President of the United States (member of the
distatution) 222-2} aes toes 302 = Peeeee ee a Aaa. x1, 107
Martin; Profs Do S2n0.8 / edie bes les See ee eee ee 34

Martine Dre AG. cc ui eis cetera acta ate 5 ee See ee ae ore 33

INDEX. 609

Page
MiormenidMpen ricalewOrkK an. 22.52.0022 JEU. oe kas ch 7
Matter when under high pressure, the experiments of Dr. P. W. Bridgman on
PRCRPEGDEEIES ICH (AID Ob )spotiete cts scce toca Saks owes foe lo Sees tasbcc cee 185
1 ESTES GEOR a el AMA SoU Se Oe xu, 91
ES TTRENSTL. CST e 5h Oa Res SE ES a a OO xu, 91
Meetings and congresses in the National Museum......................2...--- 40
Meraisers Omi ne mMmsiOMiOH ast aS. cas oso obey bes de eshaesk ss saseneoce xI
Mere ton CORPO n sme itasa che sptew oa 3)s's)ioiniaw at soa atlas aes sce see's a2 xu, 16, 33
Meaney ender Natonmalababkere eee. OAS 212 5 2 ay 0k. oie siete einen Beep sackets 12, 45
Metals, electrical resistance of, under pressure (Bridgman).................... 200
Rae GNM eset RONIAT es oc < So acai e a picts oi sos sand 6 sos eos eee Sees sicce te. xu, 50, 51
Military medicine, history of, and its contributions to science (Chamberlain).. 235
Mat Cee Dr DA yGOR! Onc case me tePe ence ces mice kesesce bce see se wawcdcweececce 53
NUE MD res (CS dal PSN py ama ols cs Oe rc ee eee xu, 91
Micon. Re A. (hwentienh censuny physics) -. 2.2 ....0-. 00.522. - eee ce. 169
Mineral supplies, some problems of international readjustment of, as indicated
am FeeCenE 1Oreion IMLETATULO (MGA) a2 se ces accss occe cess te ccceescccccencees 251
Mineral technology, collections representative of, National Museum.......... 37
Minerals and Derivatives, Joint Information Board of....................-.-..- 3
Wh ROSS EPE Ws fel DEES Be asa SS a ane ae xu, 46
2G TIRE DANN Dy ae Fe a ee a 21, 85
Mp iLeR OTe Vikas Menem eee cas Sane ise wie MOUS cow eg ide owes ee Se 91
Matte Wilson OpseIVvalory. WONG Abo: mos. nc cie cess -sc sss cnc e cc ec sees 86
Mommtaamecrs Or Venmessee. ssn cin S222 See eerie fae e-toc ens be anes 10
yigire [olhuai See Bas ae LES = Se cee a See ee Ae ee ee 56
Munroe, ERG Cie ee Oe toe SCE oie ae erste s «a's oa ohne see 3 54
Museum of the American Indian, Heyemoundation..- 20-0622 2.225. fe. 2 nc DH
N.
Wational Advisory, Committee tor Aeronautics... 2. 2... 225 ---- +--+. 2 ee: Doles
Nationa leDctense mC ouncihotapy see seec eee ae oem oe aes nes scones es es 113
Pc ridomi a ncn Ue Tay (Ole AT Gers yee AE pis Sect e See gee sia syh ss ae 3, 18, 38, 40, 41, 110
NEW RG TES | LM ea MA Gop (Co Vena 10) 01) hee eo Oi en Re ese ee 110
IN Eilers aU PM Bees fee ooh he ore al eRe weet me yom eee xu, 1,2, 3, 5,15, 16, 41, 109
| FUSS BENS As ees SS RE aR HE IE a oe 42,90
Meetings and CONCTCSSES IN) <2. 222+ 2-2 e sent en weet ee 40
(DUELS UTIGIS OES ae al Sie ey ee es ere a a eon 41, 100
IRQ OWING 5 J SoHE Ree OR H EM SESS eSeE Aer aan ae as See eee 25
leeiby. Government departments: -...:-.-...2222-.2222<- 40
InN WSTUHROTE LETT est Ua USSG 2) COTE ee oh ee ea 14
Netionaliharks Biducational Committee. soo.: 022.5 22 oos)es odes ee fo eekiee shee 1/83
members oles Tasha eee ae 14
LNW EGTOEL 1Pba sera vel Coy nb ives |= a ee ree gee Se aio
IS rere Voges trea ven Eb 3 ae A xu, 1, 2,5, 15,19, 112
CC ORSLOTE See ies IPRS the ars ihe. Seaton eee 66
alteration of western boundary....2:5:. <2. 22% eet 27
annals. pheieollectiony:/.\22 522.22). seit: 2d. 7
ODN Clie coe Seon DRL OR ee ee ee ere eee 78
RRA GR AT REC SS oe Ws cc - Seidel ke SE 79
DENA IWOAPENEN OTs, oc. eS re ae ae ees 77
filsratye meee se ete WSs oss. as. 2e dk tec eee et 92
INEINTLOWED Sto byt lege cee ee ee eee Se eee ey 70
12) SOARS Jy Geko, 4 is aa 66

610 INDEX.

Page
Navigation, an account of thetrise of (Curtiss)... ---= 2. 333beee tee ee 127
Navy and: Army}, mited States 22 22 neclecn o> 41> ese aod ek hee eee 25
Netrolopy..« 2-662 4- gas eee s-sin os 4 <2 ee ee eee ek eee 99
Neuilly,,, American Red: Cross Hospital at... 2.22353. 2 eee eee 3
Nichols, Prof. George E. (Sphagnum moss: war substitute for cotton in absor-
bent surgical dressings)... .--. --2sk:oen 48 Jase eee aera ae tees 221
Oy
Observations, ‘eclipse:of the sun, June 8; 1918-25----.:-. 223 a ee 5
Officialsiof-the Institution-— 2552222 2 eens sete eee ee ee XI
Orcutt.-C.ARe ss t2.sfts sheesh sec Seer ee ee eee ee eee 32
P:
Padgett, Representative Lemuel P: (Regent)... ... == 2-2 =e eo = May
Pain esa Gh oi rh see th We eho a eRe ae ce eee ee 91
Paleobotany: A sketch of the origin and evolution of floras (Berry)....-..--.- 289
Palmer William. | a. .pes sss te te ot a ee ee ee 91
Benne: Joseph: i... sc 2-32) S2eagas ee ae ee eee eo ee ee 39, 41, 111
Berelma,, OBSID sie as sicieses cid alate ae See eee 18, 59, 110
Permanent: Committee, Board: of Wesentss: 952-425 5- 545-4 4e eee 108
Petrie, W. M. Plinders\(Historyan teols)- 2. s-o24-45-2250- 05+ <55 oe eee 563
Petronievics, Branislay (On the law of irreversible evolution).............---- 429
Phosphorus, two new modifications of (Bridgman). ........-....------------ 195
Rhysics: Gwentieth century \(Mallvkan)rs: [222-3082 eee See ace 169
Rickerme,, Director inl... ce psec nao e ee Se Ae ee 86
Pleistocene cave deposit of western Maryland, a (Gidley).......-..---..--..- 281
Poore tund.laieyT -and“George Ws 2 tase e one cee eee eee 4, 103
Postmaster General (member of the Institution). ......-..-.-.----.-..------ XI
President of the United States (member of the Institution). ........-..-.--- xT 29
Prmting allotments: .<..5 Pitons csc: Gok CS ee eee eee 15
Printing and publication (advisory committee on)........---.--.----------- 15, 101
Problem of degeneracy, the\(Tredgold)2 <= 2-25.22 = See eee ee es eee 547
Problenyokradioactive lead, the (Richards)--:=-2-2_ 2255 -5-6 sees eee eee 205
Eroceedings'of the Board: of Regents. .2 22.22.20 =.) ee ee ee eee 107
Esyehie lifeiot msects,; the (Bolivier)= S520 25522 eye eee Ser ieee eee 451
PublacRark Serviee: directomotst 2 cc sek $2522 o2c toe oe eee ete eee 13, 46
Publications... Cshyy ssh. Sete Gee at ee he een ele en ee meee ree 15, 97
R.
Radioactive lead, the problem,of (Richards) aes s2eeeer = taeee ieee: see See 205
Rathbun, Richard, assistant secretary of the Institution. ......--..-. XI, xu, 25, 110
VaNVeD wlan a. ee ee ees Ser ee eres See Oe Me oo doe A 4, 27, 30, 110, 114
RA WeNe EBWire de CH Risers cic acne eee earE Danae MM Fein lnoN xu, 16, 42
Receipts and disbursements, statement of-.........-....-+-----------+------- 104
Red Cross, Smithsonian Auxiliary of D.C. Chapter of..-.:.....-....--.------ 3
Redfield, William Cox, Secretary of Commerce (member of the Institution)... Sel
Rerents of thevmstiiuhlon ss ocischiaslet eee eee Oe eo ee (eee eee ae Nacceoal
med, Addison Ty. dhunds)\22.4- de catetad .. SROs eee te = Soe eee 4,103
Remey,; Charles: Masons2 Se). 23 2s. Sass So ee: oe ees ee 39
Reptile reconstruction in the United States National Museum (Gilmore)..... 271
Researches\and: explorations.<: 22s... 8iacactice Eee eee eee 5, 44
Researches on the structure of the trilobites (Walcott). ...........--...------ if

Resserss Dn. Gs Wise e 51) crac ty veee eae ee ee 7

INDEX. 611

Page.
PRINCES ING aaacaic es hs caese ceasshecssdse Sac cece cor scc code ccc eet oe eae 4,103
iRachards.Weeineodore Weiss sccccsatnicadadedeeds. -- Cheelee ME OR La 32
(The problem of radioactive lead).............-..- 205
ichmondatOrM Oye <cseeceoc552522a522 eet ced occc sss to POEL 91
IpO WRN, 1800655 = sobeb cope ne SSeS oma poop cise Gop enc BoSASdon gnc tooo Cree xi
Rise of navigation, an account of the (Curtiss)..............22..-222--2..2086 127
Roberts, sernest+wes(hezent)) <2 222 824) 27S e Ee nee 2,107, 108, 111
op bines donmaWilhiamssssaes 422222 25c2e 0522 SPOR Ree Le 29
Rocky Mountains, geological workin the. -v....-..--.---....5.----i..-sce2ee- 6
POnnor nope pines nee seers esa scl ee aiois/~.o)= 2 6 Siete suas. < ots ws ee ee 5 tee 27
Horen ames INe Weyer oe. << aref rate ecee ess Scie = ~[- 15) So =. NEP omc ey em othe 67
Tia: TDL. Neat eoe ee ORS OES e toe Sota a ae eae ep FEMS Win Perrys xi
POPOV ALLCE: Bl Norn eh hio. baer cia ros crs in 8c Se tt cis Zia ee te qeea ieee 56
oOVeuOnmtario Maseund Of MOTONTOsss2 se oe < -c.' 22! = = SSS ees ese wisisle 17, 28
S.
ummbond a GeOroe heen MUNI eet me ere eerie sams ews sb ois wea) s ma oles siecle ecie 4,103
Santo Woninco and AMatexpedumon-ss--t6- 2520-52. 2.25822. eas cease 114
SaToCui ere HOmer es cemeteries. Sale men ow ae oe ee eee 52
SIRT CLD DE Net ory Medan eee ree eee nae cine ceo = gies be Lat taal clemeeee x
Neanlessns bal eves ce eee tearm eee etree ite ei cris cc cee ow etn sie airine e Sreys xu, 54, 57
Scerotarvaotmthommoimh iON we tcc. patie geese ne oS cicisis cee esas sees secs 1, Xb Xo,
1, 3, 6, 7, 13, 32, 34, 42, 43, 57, 65, 81, 84, 88, 91, 93, 96, 101, 107, 109, 110
Sexual selection and bird song (Hawkins)..............------------ De) AE ae 461
Sihoema ce nin © MV Varro ee mete rae ates ornate ieee ment eta, ee irik leer Kah aed cates Ha xu, 65
SiemalOonps. Waited Staves APM neces cenaeees acne oc tc Sees cm cease 3
Sir Joseph Hooker—a great naturalist (Lankester)............-.------------- 585
SMithsomund=... 22.5. BOR SEL Re REE a5 8 eA 2 RN PNR Rett nt ae eds i 4,103
PSHRAUUSVOVS(@EOMIEH aN NaN TORN Ls 55 00) <n a te aa ree ae A ce ede Rn nese nea ae 98
Smithsonianvestablishmentes 5.2 -4sscesece. oss s552 555. Behe ae pass ah Sorell
Ns SEDW A EUS(OREW ZT: 4 NU OTE NA Sole RA Re aS aoe el Metre cog ry 89
Smithsonian Miscellaneous @ollee ions Bisa Oe orek ahs bon he Se eee ae 97
Smithsonian Red Cross Auxiliary of 1): ©: 'Chapter-.-./22:i:...-222-5.225- oe 3
SoutheAmerican solar radiation expedition==2222525..2.555.1. 45222225252 -.26 84
SOVIET ON AeA UIUC Oe ee ae Sern Re ee sgn ere SS. ce Ne Svcs aetna enn gear e 31,114
Sphagnum moss: war substitute for bain in absorbent surgical dressings
(ONGC IGS ener ieet terete a oes re eels otet ene ae gehen ese 221
Special exhibitions in the National Mineoumiseetie te toy aah ya ae 40
Special publications. 2220525222352 020.- Ea ON AOS BES AWS SOs 1 aS EEN SN 100
Speciuimesearches (ehanolooie@al)\e ca. ease noe ashes acme ys eos OZ
Spuneer collection o1echinoderms: © 4 4-08..2 .c- 52. s2e+ ee ee 55 55- Seen wos) ole?
Speman er lr stoner ea es ss. oa ee SEN eo ke St RES eee Re AL Te
Spemerer mor. Weonhard .. sco. ase sence oe << Be Te es eae nee ha PRR ze xu, 15
Stone, senator William J. (Regent)..-.....-...-s2-...- Soa PURE a ote L222, lid
Sum worhrp ot the Hopi Indians (Pewkes)-2 =< =. 222.2. -62-s<-----2e-- +++ ee 493
pei ecyal ona 16 bs eae ee a Bes Settee = Ss ON are yee oe SES rc ad 91
SIV INL OM PMID Te MIN Ic < acts, oc, nN meee esp nd vg meme aD xu, 46, 47, 56
SSNGIVITIN COSINE CLINE oes = ra ce oes a Re tee eg: 2.) 2c ateate Salone 7
AV
Su TRANG Nee NY ARN Da de one ae ee De en ed tee ee 0 oh eee a 69
Mienmessee min OUNLAIMECCIS Olek so nee a oteiek erasers el I AIS ee 1a Se ae aeisie cine aie 10
Wemnlccollcctions, National Museums\..5-i0so4e0=-5-096t ssc --soe- ees c cess 35
iomgcnscuntor CharlesiS, (Regent) .oss2-2 5.02 <-20teee. o< Sosete- sss... KT,
Tornadoes of the United States (Ward)........-..-.-..--:------ Bes onoe secre 139

Morontostoyal Ontario Museum Obs. --20 05+." <2 4.0.25 5-- S22. eee eb eo bee ae 17, 28

612 INDEX.

Page

Total solar eclipse: 3 «4-5 ease, ot wa aes ss sean aoe ees eee 85

Totemism, the background of (Hopkins)......-.-2<.+:saqnseer See oe ee ce 573

Townsend, Bvt. Maj..Gen: Bdward W252. ts-wezslaciy pd TNs eee eee eee 29

Treasury Department: .2io.5265 sania: 32. 2 25e'ss ge 5s ese oy ea ee 26

Treasury, Secretary of (member of the eceiapien ee etielis. £466 foie ae 16

Tredgold,, A. F. (The,problem of degeneracy) -'35.schie be desu eee se aa tted<e ee eee

Trilobites, researches on the structure of the (Walcott).................-----. 7

Twentieth century physics (Milliken): - 32)... ..22-<ce.s205.+ ame eee eee ek 169
V.

Vanderbilt, George: Wo: ac22s2c2ce sescsesnse tsetse hs iss 32s ees 16

Vanderbilt; Mrs. ‘George W222. 232222522552 5552 Ss a5nee nes Te eee 16, 90

Vanishing indian, the... 5225.22 sesso een ne ee Se te 11

Vice President of the United States (member of the Institution). ............ 12
W.

Waleott, Dr. Charles:D-; Secretary of the Institiition. <9: 52-22...) 2 42e2 se II,

XI, x11, 1, 3, 6, 7, 32, 34, 42, 43, 57, 65, 81, 88, 91, 93, 96, 101, 107, 109, 110

War activities: National’ Museum)... .. 2s icc... csc cease cee. cee eee re eee 25

War Department: 2200's 2... oo) 2 Ss ie se eee nenece ss ee eee ee ee eee 3

War) Industries: Board's 225-222. See nt6e. oot he een een nein eee 3

Warhisk tnsdtance (Bureatior- ss o-ee es tot aso ol tee eee e Soe. oa eens 16, 26, 111

Ward, Prof. Robert DeC. (Tornadoes of the United States).............-...-- 139

Washineton, Dr:sHenty Sosss22 2.2 ofc st bogs as este ea oe eae 34

Weather Bureau, United States (Hodgkins grant).....-........------------ 108, 113

Weebl -aWalternb sti 5720070 Note tte. fete nt Seen oe 2 CSU E Se en a ee ees SL

Wherry. Dr. Wdpar Ts fs 02252 o3: 25.0 t ons ie SEE ace 22

Whites Asidtew Do's. 2 56222 Ss ices -aae as Neade een ane ee 107

White, Edward Douglass, Chief Justice of the United States (member of the

MMStIbULION Jens. St SAS aeenicecte ee oe sees eee oes ee ne tees x, 152, 107 ee

Werte Dawidis. isi set Sod See ote saree Sie etree Ses cee ee nae etree ree ee XII

White; Hrenry“(Revent)-. 2222222 ess0 526252 ee x1, 2, 106, 107, 108, 111

Wiener. Capt. Clarence: 322.4 Saas 22 SS See os Se. oes Seance rere aay 28

Wilson; Bemeceoasoet sso Dukes Se ee Se a aR one eee 67

Wilson, aDr Memieks bss. 332.2 2 oe see the Seas ane rhe ee 7

Wilson, William Bauchop, Secretary of Labor (member of the Institution). . XI

Wilson, Woodrow, President of the U nited States (member of the Tactiencieaye xen, 129)

Wand power: (@artill)\s oe ere ae ao ep a eee 147

N\Vayoveleno, vehi. ClENeWORSS 6 Seneeohs Seas Sec e ou osouebeasgaccessedseuedence 85, 86

Wore i PEN 20 sperarsre wisiacsce cca eas = Speers ete reat eee eee eae 28
mi

Yard; ‘Robert Sterling: 2222223 Ste 2 Se eee ae oc eee ee 13
Z.

Zoological Park,: National .2.3 00... 2.22 Stee eden ec-ool XM tA, 0; hogy eee

ACCCSSIONS= <2 2452s oo cm eee ee aeio < Semen ae =, See 66.

alteration of the western boundary. ....------------ 79

animals in the collections 24202 22-e2 3-2 eee 71

flora, Of 52 525 ae eS c eae 78

amiportant needs: —— 4! case se 2 ee ae 79

HbPAry «cep se ee ee 92

removals... ~;~=--.015425--2 et eee een se 70

T@POMt =... -.5-. 205 ee Dee rots sone 66

VASICOTS. co socecc tet eee ee. eee =e er eee 77

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