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APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY

WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. XLIX

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1 896

Public Library,

^EMCtM

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NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1896

COPTBIGHT, 1896,

bt d. appleton and company.

.Axls-;^i<^-^i&i^;;iii,:^--;$v;i;v^

HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND.

fublk

Library^

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MOI^THLY.

MAY, 1896.

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE.

By J. W. SPENCER, A. M., Pii. D., F. G. S.

""NTTIAGARA Falls in History.— Guided by an Indian chief,
-^^ La Salle and Hennepin visited Niagara Falls in 1678, but it
was not until 1697 that Hennepin published his picture of the
cataracts, which, in spite of the rude perspective of two cen-
turies ago and the prominence of the voyageurs, is famous for
having been the first pictorial representation of the falls of Ni-
agara (Fig. 1).

The existence of the falls was known a century and a half
earlier than Hennepin's narrative through reports of the Indians
to Jacques Cartier (1535). In the early part of the seventeenth
century, Champlain and several Jesuit fathers mention the cata-
ract, which was mapped by two of them under the name of
'' Onigara." Reproductions of Hennepin's picture were frequent-
ly made, but there appear to be no fairly good drawings of the
falls preserved older than that of Lieutenant William Pierie, of
date of 1768 (Fig. 2).

The scenery and even the geology of the Niagara district have
been known for nearly half a century, and hundreds and perhaps
thousands of papers have been published upon the falls of Ni-
agara. Yet " problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude
men absorbed in action demand renewed attention and show
themselves to be unread riddles . . . when men have time to
think." Even now it is scarcely fifteen years since the history of
the falls began to be known.

If we look at a picture of the Falls of Montmorency, near Que-
bec (Fig. 3), cascading about two hundred and seventy-five feet
over the wall of the St. Lawrence almost directly into the river

VOL. XLIX. 1

, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

itself, without flowing through any cafSon whatever, and then
riance at the gorge of Niagara River, seven miles long, of which
oS; a fra^ent L be seen in a picture (Fig. 4), the striking dif-
Lence a^kens inquiry. The cause does not lie in either the
magnitude of the streams or in the character of the rocks; it is a
question of the difference of the age, for Niagara Falls once cas-
caded from the edge of the mountain wall (Fig. 16) directly into
the expanded waters of the Ontario basin just as the Montmor-
ency stream is pouring into the St. Lawrence River to-day.

Early Estimates of the Age of Niagara Falls.— All at-
tempts at reducing geological time to solar years meet with great
difficulties, yet Niagara Falls have been used as a chronometer as

FiQ, 1. — Facsimile of a View of Niagara Falls by Father Hennepin.

frequently as any other natural phenomenon, and indeed Niagara
is perhaps the best measurer that we have. Even at an early date,
when the antiquity of the earth was not a popular doctrine, An-
drew Ellicott (in 1790) divided the length of the gorge by the sup-
posed rate of recession of the falls, and assigned fifty-five thou-
sand years as the age of the cataract. Forty years later Bake-
well reduced the time to twelve thousand years, and a few years
afterward Ly ell's estimate of thirty- six thousand years became
popular and remained so until about fifteen years ago. This
method of dividing the length of the chasm by the rate of reces-
sion was correct as far as it went, but even the rate was not then
known.

Method of Computing the Age of the Falls. — Many years

^ POPULAR SCIMNGE MONTHLY.

ago Prof. James Hall laid the foundation of aU future calculations
when he made the first instrumental survey of the crest of the falls.
The changes in the crest have been measured three times since,
and from these surveys the mean recession for nearly half a cen-
tury is now known and has been found to be much more rapid
than was formerly supposed. If the whole history of the falls of
Niagara were thus told, then it would appear that their age is

Fio. 3.— Falls of Montmobenoy. (About 275 Icct liigb.)

about nine thousand or ten thousand years. Indeed, some writers,
among others Mr. Gilbert, took this reduced estimate and minim-
ized it to seven thousand years, not knowing or overlooking the
history of the river which tells of the changing conditions ; but
these views he now abandons. The chronometer needed correc-
tion. During a term of several years of actual work, but ex-
tended through a decade and a half, for the investigations were
often blocked with difi&culties, the writer has been able to decipher

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE.

5

many phases in the history of the lakes in their bearing upon the
growth of the falls, and only after that field work could any at-
tempts at computing the age of the falls be made. A few of the
necessary discoveries may be referred to : (a) The Niagara River
did not drain the Erie basin in ancient times, and consequently
there was no ancient river channel ready for the modern stream.
(6) All the features of the chasm are modern, and only very slight-
ly modified by the older forms of land sculpturing, (c) After the
birth of the river, Huron and the sister lakes did not empty into
the Niagara drainage until comparatively recent times, and there-
fore, on account of draining only the Erie basin, the volume of the
water cascading over the early falls was small. {6) Then the de-
scent of the river varied greatly, being for very long ages less
than now, and again temporarily much greater. (The observa-
tion of the greater height of the falls was made by Prof. G. K.
Gilbert, who has followed the writer in the other important
points named.) (e) The determination of the amount of work
accomplished by the falls during each of the episodes of the river
seemed the most difficult, but this has been accomplished with
partial success. These things have been mentioned to show that
the computation of the approximate age of the falls has been a
complex question and also one of tedious delays, yet a problem
that will continue to awaken interest so long as men endeavor
to ascertain the antiquity of the ice age and the correlated an-
tiquity of man. Niagara River is perhaps our best chronometer,
and by applying the age of the falls to the deserted shore lines
the antiquity of possibly man-inhabited river banks of distant
regions and forgotten times will be discovered. Directly the
determination of the age of the falls is a stepping stone to the
date of the close of the ice age. Under these circumstances the
investigations seem to justify the presentation of the results to
the general reader, leaving to the essayist the repetitions of the
other geographical or picturesque features or the pretty stories
of Niagara. Even the great Lyell had no better means of ascer-
taining the antiquity of the falls than mere conjecture, for a long
period of observation was necessary. Strangely, however, his
suggestion was not far from the computations based upon our
increased knowledge. This coincidence arose from the occurrence
of compensating errors, those corrected on the side of reduction
of time used alone giving results further from the truth than the
mere conjecture, as the varying conditions of the river which
increase its antiquity were not known.

Some Modern and Ancient Features of the Niagara
District. — The map of the Niagara district (Fig. 5) shows a
table-land a few feet above the surface of Lake Erie, and extend-
ing northward for nineteen miles to the edge of the Niagara

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE, 7

escarpment, where there is a sudden descent of two hundred and
forty feet to the lower plain, that gradually slopes for eight miles
farther to the present shores of Lake Ontario, whose waters are
three hundred and twenty- six feet below the surface of Lake
Erie.

The features of the plain which have a bearing upon the de-
velopment of the Niagara River are, a low ridge crossing the river
just north of the outlet of Lake Erie ; a comparatively level plain
underlaid by soft rocks, extending thence to near the head of the
rapids above the falls, north of which, to the brow of the escarp-
ment, the country rests upon hard limestones, with underlying
strata of soft shales and occasional layers of more persisting rocks.
These softer shales form the foundation of the country between
the end of the gorge at the brow of the mountain near Queens-

FiG. 5. — Bird's-eye View of the Niagaka District (Pohlman). The buried channel or
valley from the falls to the edge of the mountain at St. Davids is about a mile and a
half broad, but it is not anywhere nearly as deep as the Niagara gorge.

ton (and Lewiston) and Lake Ontario. The work of the river has
been to remove the soft rocks and undermine the thick and hard
capping limestones. The chasm of the Niagara River is simply
chiseled out of an elevated table-land, whose surface is a remark-
ably level plain, covered with towns, villages, and farms, extend-
ing apparently without a break until one is surprised at coming
suddenly upon the brink of an abyss, without meeting with the
sloping features which constitute the usual approaches to deep
valleys. The feature of the gorge with unbroken perpendicular
walls is shown in Figs. 6 and 7, which are characteristic forms of
modern canons. If the valley were of great antiquity it should
have been two miles or more in width, in place of a gorge of a
quarter of a mile wide, and it should have had scarcely any frag-
ments of perpendicular walls standing. Indeed, an old valley,
buried beneath some ninety feet of drift, does cross the course

8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the modern river in the region of the falls themselves, but this
is a mile and a half wide. Its section is shown beneath the drift

in Fig. 8.

Indeed, there was no ancient outlet of the Erie basin in the
vicinity of Niagara River, but the ancient drainage course was

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Flo. 6.— Skotion across the Narrows just Fig. 7.— Section Half a Mile from the

North of the Railway Bridges (dd,
Fig. 9). 6, Original bank of the river ;
r, surface of the river ; L O, level of lake ;
floor of canon eighty feet below lake
lovei.

End of the Canon {(/g, Fig. 9). bb, Ter-
races of river at the original level ; L 0,
level of Lake Ontario; bottom of river
about eighty feet below the surface of
Lake Ontario.

discovered about fifteen years ago to have been some forty miles
farther west, where is now the buried channel of the ancient
Erigan River, terminating in the extreme western end of Lake
Ontario. Thus the necessity of a preglacial Niagara River was
removed.

To describe the features of the Niagara River more accurately, so as to
interest special readers, it may be added that from Lake Erie to the rapids
above the falls the river is from half a mile to more than a mile wide, and
flowing at the surface of the country with banks only a few feet high. The
gorge is thirty-six thousand five hundred feet long and varies from nine

hundred feet to fourteen
hundred feet wide at the top.
and it is three hundred and
forty feet deep near the out-
let. The width of the river
itself at the narrows is only
three hundred feet and four
hundred at outlet of whirl-
pool, although elsewhere
much broader. The rubbish
in the chasm forms loose
heaps of broken rock, which
is constantly falling from
the sides, and building up
sloping banks along the wa-
ter's edge, where the rains and river are constantly washing them away,
and thus the canon is slowly being widened into a common form of an old
valley. The river, both near the foot of the falls and seven miles below,
at the outlet of the gorge, is nearly one hundred feet in depth, descends
fifty feet by the rapids above the falls, which leaps one hundred and
fifty-eight feet into the abyss, from which it further descends another
hundred and ten feet by the rapids below the falls. These features are

Fig. 8.— Section at the Site of the Falls, showing
THK Transverse buried Tonawanua Valley, F, cut
out of limestones for breadth of a mile and a halt and
depth of ninety feet ; rectangular shading represents
the Niagara limestones ; L 0, level of Lake Ontario ;
F, foot of falls.

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE.

shown on the map of the gorge (Fig. 9), and in the longitudinal section
in Fig. 16.

The Whirlpool and its Ravine. — The elbow of the Niagara
gorge at the whirlpool
has given rise to much
speculation and has
led to great confusion.
Fifty years ago Sir
Charles Lyell sup-
posed that it indicated
an ancient course of
the river itself, which
extended thence to
the St. Davids' Val-
ley, about four or
five miles distant, al-
though the country
forms a level floor
which told of no bur-
ied channel (see Fig.
5). This mistake arose
from the perpendicu-
lar walls of the whirl-
pool basin, without the
necessity of sloping
sides for ancient val-
leys being then per-
fectly known, and
without the author evi-
dently going through
the ravine where rocks
were exposed. The se-
rious feature of the
mistake was that it led
to the supposition that
perhaps much of the
gorge above the whirl-
pool was older than
that portion below,
and, becoming filled
with drift, the river
had only the drift fill-
ing to remove in mod-
ern times. This idea
caused Dr. Pohlman to reduce the age of the falls to three thou-
sand years. But almost universally the error of a deep preglacial

AGARA

Grass Id.

Fig. 9. — Map op the Niagara Gorge (United States Lake
Survey), showing its Variable Width and Cross-
sections.

10

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Fio. 10. — Map of thk Whirlpool Ravine.
bb, Position of section (Fig. 11).

gorge was followed, as most authors absorb the work of others
without verifying it throughout. In this matter even the present
writer, in the beginning of these investigations (1881), partially

accepted Lyell's idea, but
distinctly showed that the
buried ravine from the
whirlpool was not pre-
glacial but probably that
of a small interglacial
stream, and not that of
the Niagara River. Prof.
Claypole found rocks in
the ravine, and then the
writer immediately cor-
rected his statements (1887), and later explained the whole his-
tory ; but apparently Prof. Gilbert had forgotten these observa-
tions and went back to Lyell's views in their entirety. The
mistake was easily corrected by going through the ravine, where
rocks three hundred feet above the bottom of the river are ex-
posed, as shown in Figs. 10 and 11. The exposed rocks along the
western side of the ravine show the slope as in section, which is
a characteristic form of ancient valleys in contrast to the vertical
walls of the canon (Figs. 6 and 7), while on the eastern side the
rocks are covered with drift and landslides, but at the same time
demanding sloping walls beneath. Thus the presence of rocks
so high in the ravine removes from the calculations of the work
of the river the obstructions of early observers, and relegates the
hamlet of St. Davids, made famous the world over, to its peaceful
repose.

It is perhaps necessary to explain the form of the whirlpool
basin. A moderately shallow valley, now buried, was formed in
ancient times by a stream
flowing from near the
railway bridges, and ex-
tending down by way of
the buried ravine (which
has given so much trou-
ble) to join the ancient
Tonawanda River a little
to the west (see Fig. 5). Most of the capping limestones in the an-
cient little ravine near the site of the whirlpool had been removed,
leaving at or near the surface only soft, shaly rocks, yet three hun-
dred feet above the bottom of the river. When the modern falls
had receded so as to reach the edge of the little buried valley,
it found the surface occupied by loose materials which for a
short distance the river easily swept out, and thus by the cir-

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Fig. 11. — Section across the Whirlpool Ravine:
located at bh (Fig. 10).

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE. u

culating currents was the form of the basin started, and after-
ward deepened in the soft shales. The rocks at the end of the
basin are always obscured by the landslides of the overlying drift
materials.

Niagara Falls crossing the Ancient and Buried Tona-
WANDA River. — Reference has been made to the ancient buried
valley westward of the Niagara. In olden days the rains, rills,
and rivulets were everywhere acting upon the surface of the land
and producing broad, flattened features which are characteristic
of old topography. Through such a valley flowed the ancient
Tonawanda River (partially recognized by Dr. J. Pohlman), drain-
ing the Niagara district (as indicated in Fig. 5). This valley in
the vicinity of the falls was about a mile and a half wide and
ninety feet lower than the rocky rim which bordered the northern
side (see Fig. 8), which barrier is now exposed between the rail-
way and the carriage bridges over the river. In wells this an-
cient valley has been found to extend in the direction of the St.
Davids Valley (Fig. 5), which is comparable in size to it, in place
of turning off at right angles, as does the modern river at the
location of the falls. This ancient Tonawanda River never
drained the Erie basin, and when it afterward became filled with
drift it did not determine the character of the modern river, ex-
cept to give rise to the magnificent rapids above the falls (as
shown in Fig. 17).

Effects of the Depressions of the Ancient Surface and
THE Geological Structure upon the Recession of the
Falls. — The partial scooping out of the superficial limestones in
the vicinity of the falls and at the whirlpool is the only impor-
tant feature which has noticeably affected the excavation of the
modern river channel, and this only to a very small extent, for
the ancient depressions were filled with the rubbish of the drift
period, which loose material was protected from being carried
away by the flowing currents ; and even after the last barrier of
rock had been removed by the retreat of the falls, the river had
nearly as much work as ever to do, for the recession of the falls
is by the undermining of the capping limestones, and not on ac-
count of their being worn away by the river to an appreciable
extent. Furthermore, the regularity of the recession has been
largely maintained by the remarkably uniform character of the
beds of rocks, which for a considerable portion of the length of
the canon are almost horizontal, and only at the lower end do
they dip as much as fifteen or twenty feet in a mile. Now all
these explanations mean that the character of the country and
the geological formations would not cause any great variation in
the rate of the recession of the falls, but those changes were due
to the other and farther reaching causes.

12

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Modern Recession op the FALLS.-The modern rate of re-
treat of the cataract during forty-eight years has been determined
by comparing the crest of the falls, carefully mapped by four
surveys-the first by Prof. James Hall in 1842 and the last by Mr.

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FiQ. 12. — The Four Scr\'ey8 of the Canadian Falls, showing the Eetreat of the
Cataract, in wnicH some Inaccuracies are Apparent. (Kibbe.)

Augustus S. Kibbe in 1890. Between the times of these surveys
not merely the historic Table Rock, but six acres of rocks form-
ing the floor of the river fell away by the undermining action of
the falls, and the center of the cataract moved upward for a dis-
tance of two hundred and twenty feet. From the 275,400 square
feet thus removed it is found that the mean annual recession has
been four feet and a sixth a year for the Canadian falls and two
thirds of a foot for the American cataract. The recession is
shown in Fig. 12.

The work of the falls is not uniform, for there are years of
rapid central recession and slow lateral expansion, followed by
even a total central rest and rapid lateral enlargement of the
curve. From an approximate estimate of the variation in the
amount of work due to the physical and geological structure of
the district, the mean rate of recession of the falls under existing
volume of water and descent of the river may perhaps be reduced
to 375 feet a year, which factor alone would indicate the age of
the cataract to be ten thousand years. But this simple story
would leave out of consideration the variability of the volume of
Niagara River and the descent of the cascades.

The Story of the Lakes^ and the Birth of Niagara
Falls. — At the close of the ice age, and after the geological

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE. 13

broom had swept the accumulated dirt of ages from the northern
country and filled up the great valleys, the lake region was cov-
ered with water ; whether arms of the sea, as is probable, or as
lakes, of which the barriers are not indicated, is immaterial in the
history of the river, for under either condition the old shores were
produced, and these we have surveyed. From them we learn the
story that all the lakes formed one broad sheet named the Warren
water. From time to time its surface was lowered, and at each
pause new stands were formed, only to be abandoned by further
sinking of the water. At last the aboriginal Warren water sub-
sided so that it became divided in two smaller sheets — the Algon-
quin gulf, occupying more or less of the basins of Lakes Huron,
Michigan, and Superior, and the Lundy gulf, extending over
much of the Erie and the Ontario basins. With the continued
lowering of the gulf, or, more correctly, the rising of the land, for
no evidence of lake barriers has been found, the Lundy gulf be-
came dismembered, forming Lake Erie, then much smaller than
now, and the Iroquois gulf occupying the Ontario basin, the de-
serted shores of which have now an elevation much above the

Fig. 13. — View of the American Falls.

present altitude of the lake. Then Niagara Falls had their birth,
and the river descended only a little more than half as great a
height as to-day into the gulf (Fig. IG) which came to the mouth
of the gorge. The lowering continued until the descent of the
river was much greater than at present, and the shores of the lake
receded not merely eight miles to the present margin of the

»+

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Fig. 14.— Map of the Gorge at Foster's Flats.
F, Location of the cross-section (Fig. 15).

lake, but four miles farther. Again, the waters of Ontario were
raised and the descent of the river was reduced to the present
amount. Thus it is apparent that at the birth of Niagara Falls

the cataract was much
smaller than now, and
very much resembled the
size of the American
Falls as shown in Fig. 13.
With the discovery of
the history as here set
forth, we had to wait sev-
eral years before any clew
was obtained as to how
far the falls receded dur-
ing each of the episodes. But at last the inquiry was partially
successful ; for at Foster's Flats (Fig. 14, see also Fig. 9), about
two miles and a half above the mouth of the gorge, the remains
of an old terrace occur (Fig. 15) at the height which shows that
the falls had receded to that point before the descent of the river
was greatly increased or the volume of the water enlarged to the
drainage of all the upper lakes.

In this determination of the distance to which the falls had
probably receded before Lake Huron drained into Lake Erie,
Prof. Gilbert has followed the writer. Now, by applying the
laws of the variability of erosion to the observed modern rate of
recession of the falls, an ap-
proximate determination of
their antiquity became pos-
sible.

Causes of Fluctua-
tion IN THE Volume and
Descent of Niagara Riv-
er.— In the survey of the de-
serted shores it was found
that since they were formed
as old water-lines they have
been tilted upward toward
the north and east at vari-

FiG. 15. — Section of the Gorge at Foster's Flats
(FT, Fior. 9). Platform (F j of the old river floor
projecting into the canon. Its section is shown
in broken shading, but with ravines descending
from both sides of it ; T, rock terrace surmounted
by huge blocks of Niagara limestones ; J, origi-
nal river terrace ; r, surface of river ; L O, sur-
face of Lake Ontario. Bottom of river about
eighty feet below the surftice of the lake.

able rates, from a few inches in a mile at the southwest to four
or even seven feet per mile in the opposite direction. The phe-
nomenon belongs to the consideration of the history of the lakes,
but its effect was to tilt the lake basins so that the water ran
over the southern rim of Lake Huron into the Niagara drainage.
So, also, the tilting of the Ontario basin raised the barrier at the
outlet and caused the waters to rise and flood the lower lands at
the head of the lake, and shorten the Niagara River by four miles

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE.

»5

or more, and reduce the descent
of the river by eighty feet or
more.

Episodes of the Niagara
River and their Duration.—
At first the river flowed without
falls, as shown by the old banks
and terraces, for a period esti-
mated at a thousand years.
Then the waters of the lower
lake began to subside, where-
upon the Niagara Falls had
their birth. The new cataract
slowly grew in height, although
characterized by temporary
pauses, until the river cascaded
two hundred feet from the table-
land into the edge of the gulf
or lake which occupied the On-
tario basin, as shown in Fig. 16.

The volume of the water of
Lake Erie is about one fourth
that of all the upper lakes, and
only this proportion of the dis-
charge of the modern Niagara
River formed the abrading agent
of the falls at that early date.
This general condition lasted
for seventeen thousand two hun-
dred years.* After this episode,
the descent of the river was in-
creased to four hundred and
twenty feet, and the lake receded
twelve miles from the foot of
the mountain, and then there
was a series of three cascades,
the lower always gaining upon
the upper on account of the soft-
er rocks. Yet the increased
amount of work to be done, even
though easier than the recession

* For the methods of computation of the
duration of the episodes of Niagara Falls see I %\
Duration of Niagara Falls and the History of
the Great Lakes, pp. 1-126, 1895. Also see Duration
of Science, December, 1894, pp. 455-472— both works

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of Niagara Falls, American Journal
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i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of the upper cascade, prolonged the episode to six thousand years,
when Foster's Flats were passed. By this time the waters of
Lake Huron were probably turned into the Niagara by way of
Lake Erie. With the increased magnitude of the river the falls
are thought to have receded as far as the head of the whirlpool,
requiring four thousand years. By the close of this stage there
were some important changes in the river, as when the narrows
of the whirlpool rapids were excavated, and the three cataracts of
the second episode appear to have been united into one great fall.
With the increased volume of water at the maximum height of
the falls, as at the apex of the modern horseshoe cataract, the
recession was very rapid, so that the falls receded to above the
railroad bridges in eight hundred years more. It was in the next
episode that the descent of the river was reduced from four hun-
dred and twenty feet to three hundred and twenty-six feet, which
is that of the present day. These changes of height of falls and
volume of the river must not be supposed to have been sudden,
and, although they were secular, yet there were long periods of
rest, as shown by the landmarks, which are mostly obliterated
where they were imperfectly engraved during short epochs of
repose. The first stage of the last episode is characterized by the
retreat of the falls through the great rocky barrier (Johnson's
Ridge, e e, Fig. 9) on the northern side of the buried Tonawanda
Valley. Beyond this barrier the river speedily removed some
ninety feet of drift for a distance of a mile and a half to the head
of the rapids above the horseshoe cataract, and the recession across
the buried valley has been the last stage of the present episode
of the falls. Here the necessary time for the retreat of the falls
since passing the railway bridges has been three thousand years.

Adding the duration of the various stages of the river to-
gether, the age of the falls is computed at thirty-one thousand
years, or of the river thirty-two thousand years. These figures
are based upon the severest analytical methods at present attain-
able, but the discoveries in the physics of the river cover most
of the doubtful points ; yet in the determination of the amount of
work performed in the middle episodes some points are open to
revision, but the errors they cover form only a small portion of
the life of the cataract, and a little time, more or less, would not
greatly change the results given. No general guesses or objec-
tions have been found worthy of consideration: The determina-
tions had to be attempted in parts, and the aggregate results have
been confirmed by two other sets of investigations : one on the
relative amount of tilting of the deserted shores, and the other
upon the rate of the rising of the land in the Niagara district,
which has been found to be about one foot and a quarter a cen-
tury, but much more rapidly to the north and east.

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE.

7

Niagara Falls narrowly escaped Extinction.— Fifteen
hundred years ago the terrestrial movements raised the Johnson
barrier to the Erie basin so high that the waters of that lake
reached not merely the level of Lake Michigan, but the point of
turning all the water of the upper lakes into the Mississippi drain-
age by way of Chicago. But the falls were then cutting through
the ridge, and when this was accomplished, before the change of
drainage was completed, the surface of Lake Erie was suddenly
lowered by many feet, and thus the falls were re-established for
some time longer.

Death of the Falls. — Slowly, year by year, one sees the cata-
ract wearing back and suggesting the time when the river will be
turned into a series of rapids ; but another silent cause is at work,
and one not easily seen — namely, the effects of the changing of
level of the earth's crust. From the computations already referred
to it was found that for the first twenty- four thousand years of
the life of the river only the Erie waters flowed by way of the
Niagara River, and for only eight thousand years have all the
waters of the upper lakes been feeding the falls. If the terres-
trial movements continue as at present, and there appears no
reason to doubt it, for the continent was formerly vastly higher
than now, then in about five thousand years the rim of the Erie
basin promises to be raised so high that all the waters of the
upper lakes will flow out by way of the Chicago Canal. Thus the
duration of Niagara Falls will have continued about thirty- seven
thousand years. But the lakes will endure beyond the calcula-
tions of the boldest horologist.

Relation of the Falls to the Ice Age.— In telling of the
times of the great mutations in the physical history of the lake
region, the story of Niagara Falls seems completed, but as a time-
piece they are much more important in being used as a stepping
stone back to the great period of frost which separated the former
order of the continent from the modern. Having ascertained the
approximate amount of the rising of the land recorded in the de-
serted beaches, before and since the birth of Niagara Falls, and
the rate of the rising of the land, and applying it to the movement
recorded in the abandoned shores, it is concluded that the epoch
when the lake region formed great expansions of more or less
open water commenced fifty or sixty thousand years since. Going
so far back in time, other conditions may have obtained to vary
the rate, but these have been allowed for as far as possible.

Beyond the lake epoch the vicissitudes between the periods
of great regional submergence and the earlier high continental
elevation of the ice age proper are apparent, but the events
are certainly unexplained, for what was done by glacial action
and what by waves has not been determined. Niagara Falls

VOL. XLIX. — 2

NIAGARA AS A TIMEPIECE. 19

shows that the end of the Glacial period in the lake region was
lon^ a^o.

How Niagara Falls may be used to ascertain the An-
tiquity OF Man. — The relation of Niagara Falls to the deserted
shores of the lake region and the high terraces is now pretty-
well known, and the old water margins have been traced over
wide areas ; but these may be much further extended and their re-
lations to other regions beyond the drainage basins of the Great
Lakes be ascertained, so that we may hope that Niagara Falls may
be used as a means of at least roughly estimating the age of the
deserted river banks on which the oldest inhabitants left their
scanty treasures long ago. Concerning this application, it seems
as only a question of the work of so many men and so much time.

To the geologist, the birth, life, and death of Niagara Falls
show no more rapid changes than come within the limit of modern
observations. There have been no sensational catastrophes, al-
though in the popular mind these changes come with new and
startling revelations, so that the most conservative observer may
be surprised. The changes in the history of Niagara have now
been told, so far as we know them. We can still watch the river
performing its wonderful amount of work and the slow recession
of the falls, as shown in Fig. 17.

If the reader of this sketch of the history of Niagara Falls de-
sires the fuller information upon which this study is based, he is
referred to Duration of Niagara Falls and the History of the Great
Lakes, by the present writer, whose labors have been brought to-
gether by the Commissioners of Niagara Falls Reservation, un-
der the presidency of the Hon. Andrew H. Green, whose liberal
policy is not merely to preserve the falls as an international park,
but to make known their scientific history.

In the ascension of the balloon Phenix, made from Stassfurt, Prussia,
in December, 1894, the weather being misty at starting, the temperature at
first increased up to a considerable height, but afterward fell, and at 32,150
feet stood at —20° C. At about 29,500 feet the balloon passed through a
veil-like stratum of cirrus clouds, consisting of perfectly formed flakes of
snow. At 31,500 feet the thermometer dropped to —54°, and indicated only
—11° in the sun's rays. The highest temperature recorded was 43°. Dur-
ing the ascent of three hours and the descent of two hours and twenty
minutes the balloon traveled one hundred and eighty-six miles, although
it was almost calm at the surface.

Observing the growth of bamboos in the Botanical Garden of Buiten-
zorg, Java, Mr. Gregory Kraus noticed one plant which added to its length
22'9 centimetres a day for fifty-eight days. Another plant grew 19*9 cen-
timetres, and a third nineteen centimetres a day for sixty days. The longest
single day's growth observed was 42 45 centimetres.

20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM.

By LOGAN G. McPHERSON.

THE consideration of every problem concerning the welfare of
humanity compels, first, the understanding of what consti-
tutes that welfare. That is, recognition must be had of the fac-
tors that forward civilization, which is the condition that permits
the attainment by each individual of the highest harmonious,
physical, mental, and moral development of which he is capable.
To the highest physical life it is necessary that the body be nour-
ished by a regular and sufficient supply of food ; that it be pro-
tected by appropriate clothing and properly housed ; that it re-
ceive the exercise and the care and attendance that contribute to
the maintenance of the bodily functions. To attain the highest
mental life it is necessary that knowledge of that which mankind
has said and done shall be brought to the mind of each individual,
to the extent that such knowledge will the more thoroughly adapt
him to his environment and enable him to most effectively react
upon that environment. In the agencies that lead to these ends —
that is, in the production and distribution of food and clothing ;
in the erection and furnishing of houses ; in the processes of
manufacture that result in the various articles of personal use ;
in the production of newspapers, books, paintings, and statues ;
in the composition and rendition of music, and in all the other
functions that contribute to bodily and mental welfare and grati-
fication— are employed the efforts of by far the greater number of
the adult male population and of a considerable number of the
female population of the civilized world. As this effort is so
interwoven that it is almost if not quite literally true that the
work of all contributes to the welfare of each, and the work of
each contributes to the welfare of all, it is manifest that there
must be some means whereby the portion of welfare accruing to
each individual from the totality of effort may be measured out
to him, and as human effort has become the more closely inter-
woven has this means changed in becoming the more adapted to
its purpose.

In prehistoric time, the man whose home was a cave, whose
clothing was the untanned skins of beasts, and whose food their
flesh and berries and fruit, knew not money and needed not
money — the satisfaction of his wants resulted immediately and
directly from his own exertion. And so likewise throughout the
untold years during which he learned to cook with fire made by
the spark of flint and to fashion the flint into spear heads, he
needed not of the effort of others. But through the ages, as his
developing brain led his hands to other uses, as he learned to

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 21

mold and harden the clay into pots, to fashion and wield the oar,
to weave the bands of willow into mat and basket, it became
impossible for any one man to accomplish for himself all that
man had learned to do. There was division of labor, first perhaps
between a man and the women of his household, but in time the
efforts of the members of any one family alone became impossible
to supply its wants. There was a further division of labor, and
the exchange of the results of effort is the more marked as the
division of labor increases. When one man traded pots of clay to
another for flesh obtained in the chase, the efforts of the one in
digging, molding, and baking were exchanged for the efforts of the
other in hunting, killing, and delivering the game. This was barter
and barter, or the exchange of effort as embodied in desired com-
modities, without the intervention of other commodities, endured
over much of the earth for centuries, complicated by the customs
of slavery, feudalism, and absolutism. But as man learned in a
greater number of ways to produce a greater variety of articles,
barter became inadequate to effect their exchange. A weaver
might want a bow and a dozen arrows, and a maker of bows and
arrows might want a bolt of cloth ; but the weaver, perceiving
that he had to work six days to make the cloth, while six bows
and as many dozen arrows might be made in that time, of mate-
rial no more difficult to obtain and by a man no more skillful
than himself, would properly refuse to exchange the cloth for
fewer than that number of bows and arrows — that is, a bolt of
cloth would be worth six bows and six dozen arrows. If, however,
the exchange were so made, the weaver would have five bows and
five dozen arrows which he did not need. He, therefore, would
not obtain the reward for his own use of his effort in producing
the bolt of cloth until he had exchanged the five bows and five
dozen arrows for articles that he could use. Consequently, if bar-
ter were persisted in, each purchaser would accumulate a number
of articles of different kinds for which he had no need, and he
might have no place wherein to store them. Each producer would
be endeavoring to exchange articles made by every other pro-
ducer, and so have his time absorbed that his efforts in production
would be lessened. The process of exchange would be of inex-
tricable confusion. If, however, there were some one commodity
for which each producer would readily exchange his products at
any time, so that, therefore, each person could at any time ex-
change this commodity for any other commodity that he might
need, the process of exchange would be simplified. It is evident
that such a commodity must occupy little space, so that it could
be readily stored, that it must not be perishable, and that it must
be so divisible that different portions of it might be exchanged
for different commodities in proportion to their value — that is, in

22

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

proportion to such quantity of the commodity as might be accepted
by the seller for and yielded by the buyer to obtain the article
exchanged. Such a commodity used for the convenience of ex-
change is money ; and all peoples who at different places on the
earth's surface at different times have step by step risen from
barbarism through barter have made use of money. Different
commodities at different places and with different peoples have
served for this purpose — skins with one tribe, shells with another,
beads with another, and even in our own country, within the last
two hundred years, the leaves of the tobacco plant. But no other
substances known to man have so completely possessed the attri-
butes of permanence of form, durability, and divisibility as the
metals ; and therefore lead, tin, copper, silver, and gold have been
very extensively used as money.

Another characteristic essential for a commodity used as
money is its acceptability, not only among the persons of a par-
ticular locality, whose efforts are interchanged, but among the
people of all localities whose efforts are interchanged. The shells
accepted by the members of one tribe might not be acceptable as
money by the members of another tribe among whom skins were
used for that purpose. If the members of the tribe using shells
as money wove mats and molded pots, which were acceptable for
exchange for tools made by the tribe using skins as money, and
the money of neither tribe were acceptable to members of the
other, there would be direct barter of the tools of one tribe for
the mats and pots of the other. But as barter between individ-
uals of one locality results in confusion, so also does barter be-
tween individuals of different localities, and the confusion in the
processes of exchange by barter becomes the more inextricable as
an increasing number of people in an increasing number of local-
ities produce an increasing number of articles acceptable for
exchange among the different peoples of the different localities.
With the extension of intercourse between tribe and tribe, race
and race, has therefore increased the tendency toward the use as
money of commodities acceptable as money over the more ex-
tended territory occupied by the peoples whose efforts were inter-
changed. With the increase of this tendency the use of metals
as money inpreased. They have been found in nearly all parts
of the earth, and because of their general acceptability— that is,
because of a certain common estimation in which they have been
held— they have attained to a degree uniformity of value, which
has the more nearly approximated perfect uniformity of value as
the use of metals as money has become restricted to the metals
meeting in greatest degree the requirements of money, which are
silver and gold. And as the common needs of similarly situated
groups of people have resulted in the formation of the more or

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 23

less coherent bodies known as states and nations, the use of gold
and silver as money has the more extensively been sustained by
coinage — that is, the weight and fineness, and therefore to a degree
the value, of different portions of these metals have been evi-
denced by the stamp of the administrative bodies of states and
nations, and this use of gold and silver has been enhanced by
their exquisite luster.

As commodities were exchanged in larger volume, metals of
the greatest value were coined. The extensions of intercourse
between races incident to the conquests of Philip and Alexander
were marked by the coinage of gold. At the time of the decem-
virs, the Romans passed from barter to the use of copper coins ;
as their commerce increased^ the southern settlements along the
sea made use of silver, and, finally, after gold bullion had long
been the medium of exchange in Eastern commerce, Julius Csesar
opened the mints to gold. After the submersion of the Roman
Empire the coinage of gold was not resumed until the florin was
issued at Florence in 1252 — the extensive commerce initiated by
the Crusades demanding a more valuable medium than silver.

The different weights, sizes, and shapes of coins made by dif-
ferent nations, the different units of value by which they have
been measured, and the different languages in which their values
have been expressed, have caused much confusion, as different
tribes, races, and nations have passed beyond restricted inter-
course between their own members to commercial intercourse
one with the other, or rather, as individuals of particular tribes,
races, and nations have undertaken commercial intercourse with
individuals of other tribes, races, and nations. Hence the money-
changers of antiquity, the remote forerunners of bankers who
arrange international exchanges to-day. With the combination
and recombination of tribes and races under governments, whose
administration has extended over considerable areas, the mone-
tary systems have become correspondingly fewer — the imperial
coinage of the German Empire supplanted seventy different coin-
age systems of the combined states — and coins of the different
nations have the more nearly approached uniformity in shape,
weight, size, and value.

But even the precious metals, although they satisfy the re-
quirements for money better than any other commodities, do not
meet those requirements in perfection.

In the first place, the amount of silver and gold in existence at
any one time is never in the same proportion to the volume and
value of the exchanges of that time as it is to the volume and value
of exchanges at other times — that is, the volume of gold and sil-
ver does not expand and contract in exact accord with the ex-
pansion and contraction of commerce. Nor is it conceivable that

24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the rapidity of circulation of either gold or silver varies in exact
ratio with the variations of trade. The growth of commerce,
for example, that began in Europe during the thirteenth century,
so far outstripped the increase in the supply of the precious
metals that each of the petty states and principalities was in a
continual fight with the others for the possession of a sufficient
supply of gold and silver whereby the exchange of effort as evi-
denced by the exchange of commodities between its own subjects
could be rewarded. The world's product of gold was nearly four
times as great in 1850-60 as during the preceding decade ; it was
about twenty-five per cent less in 1880-'90, and during the present
decade promises to exceed that of 1880-90 by one hundred per
cent.

And the supply of neither metal increases in the same ratio as
the other ; therefore, that pursuit after a constant ratio between
gold and silver which has continued to this day is vain as the
cruise of the Flying Dutchman.

And as it is estimated that at the present time actual coin
passes in less than ten per cent of the exchanges, it is signifi-
cant that a medium of exchange has largely taken the place of
coins. This medium consists of paper representatives of value.

And, again, the quantity even of gold necessary to effect any
considerable exchange is of such weight that its transportation
is a matter of inconvenience, and for any person or association of
persons to keep safely on hand all the gold that might be amassed
at any one time would necessitate expensive precaution. Ob-
viously these inconveniences are avoided by the deposit of silver
or gold coin or bullion in the charge of a person or persons re-
sponsible for its safe keeping, and for its transfer from the owner
to another as he may direct. Hence banks of deposit and pay-
ment by check, the use as money of paper representatives of
money. For if B is willing to accept the check of A upon banker
C in the belief that he can obtain the money for which it calls
upon presentation, why should not D accept the same check from
B upon B's assurance that it is good ?

If A, buying merchandise from B, says that he will have the
money wherewith to pay for it when he has resold the merchan-
dise, or at the end of a particular time, B may be willing to ac-
cept his written promise to pay ; usually, however, with the stipu-
lation that A surrender an additional sum as compensation to B
for waiting for the payment. This sum is interest. And upon
B's guarantee that the promise is good, D may be willing to ac-
cept the promise from B as payment for other merchandise.
Or if B need the money in advance of the time specified in A's
promise to pay, he may perhaps deliver the promise to D in re-
turn for the money. Or, as would be more likely, he would seek

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 25

to obtain the money from banker C in exchange for the promise
of A guaranteed by himself. It is obvious that should D or
banker C pay to B the full amount of money specified in the
promise of A, he would be dispossessed thereof from the time it
was given to B until it was repaid by B — that is, he would have
rendered a service without compensation. It is equally obvious
that compensation would be obtained if a portion of the sum
specified in the promise were withheld by C. This sum is the
discount. Banker C, by making a practice of thus advancing
money on such promises, may obtain a considerable revenue.
Hence banks of discount.

There are banks which not only make money by discounting
from the amount of deposits over and above what they estimate
will be required for daily needs, but which issue promises to
pay in the form of bank notes, the funds available for use in
discounting being, therefore, increased. Hence banks of circu-
lation.

The development of banks, therefore, has been from simple
repositories of the commodity used as a medium of exchange
into purveyors of the currency that is superseding coin, the pro-
viders of funds for commercial transactions, and the centers
through which instruments of exchange are balanced.

Besides the checks and promissory notes issued by individuals,
which have a limited circulation, and the notes issued by banks,
which have a more extended circulation, many governments issue
notes directly that circulate generally among their peoples. As,
however, the precious metals are the only commodities generally
accepted as money throughout the world, all promises to pay are
based upon one or another of them, but the aggregate of value
represented by these promises to pay is so great that their ful-
fillment at any one time in coin or bullion would be impossible,
the ratio between the volume of exchanges effected by the use
of paper representatives of money to the volume effected by
coin or bullion itself being, as has been said, greater than nine
to one.

This fact, that the total value called for by the paper repre-
sentatives of value at any time in existence, although expressed
in terms of the units of value originally designating coins, vastly
exceeds the value of the metals as coined or held in bullion by
the sources whence coins are issued, together with the fact that
no man willingly and knowingly exchanges commodities for
paper representatives of value without believing that he can
obtain the worth called for by these representatives, l^ads to the
perception that, after all, it is not the metals, however precious,
but property of all kinds that is their basis, and that these paper
representatives of value are succeeding coins in designating and

VOL, XLIX. — 3

26 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

measuring the value of the commodities for which they are ex-
changed. And as the value of commodities depends upon the
efforts expended, under the law of supply and demand, in pro-
ducing and delivering them at the place of need, the ultimate
function of paper representatives of value is to measure and
reward human effort.

By way of example, let it be supposed that a tailor sells a suit
of clothes and receives in payment therefor a check for, say,
fifty dollars. He deposits that check in a bank in the belief that
he can obtain a definite worth for it in whatever commodities
or services he may choose to invest it, and the bank likewise
accepts and places it to his credit, in the belief in the ability of
the signer and indorser to produce commodities or services of
the value for which it calls. If the tailor buys a set of furniture
and gives his check for fifty dollars therefor, what he has done
has been to exchange the value of cloth as measured, cut, sewed,
and trimmed into particular shape for timber, cut, joined, and
varnished into a particular shape of what he deems an equal
value. The value of the efforts of men expended in producing
the clothes has been balanced against the value of the efforts of
men expended in producing the furniture. If fifty dollars in coin
were received for the clothes and given for the furniture, the
effort expended in producing the clothes would be measured
against the effort expended in producing the furniture, by the
use of an intermediate commodity ; if a check were received for
the clothes and a check paid for the furniture, effort would be
measured against effort by means of paper representatives of
value through the agency of a bank. If the tailor, instead of
purchasing furniture worth fifty dollars, purchases a number of
articles aggregating^ fifty dollars in value, the result is the same.
The efforts of men* in producing the number of articles have
been measured against the efforts of men in producing the suit
of clothes, and this is the function performed by money in every
exchange, whether great or small, and whether the money is
coin or a paper representative of value. Effort as expressed by
result is measured against other effort as expressed by other
result.

The test of the efficiency of a paper representative of value,
therefore, is the extent to which it can be exchanged for the
value which it expresses. But as the value of a paper repre-
sentative of value is expressed in terms that also express the
value of coins, it is a measure of so much value as is represented
by the coins, and a paper representative of value is at present
almost universally considered as such only to the extent that it
is the representative of coin. A certain amount of coin, or the
bullion from which it is derived, has a definite and known value

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 27

as coin or bullion, without qualification or condition, through-
out civilization, but a piece of paper representing the value of
that amount of coin or bullion considered simply as paper,
whether covered by writing or impressed by an engraved block,
is without intrinsic value. That is, for example, twenty- nine
grammes, 448'02o grains, of fine gold, whether in bullion or
coined into a hundred-franc piece, can readily be exchanged
throughout Europe and almost as readily throughout America for
an approximately similar amount of commodities ; but a piece of
paper known as a National Bank of Belgium one-hundred-franc
note can be exchanged for commodities to this value only among
peoples who feel confident that it can readily be exchanged
again in return for commodities to the value of one hundred
francs, and such peoples in great numbers do not exist outside
the kingdom of Belgium, because other than the Belgian peo-
ple are not generally familiar with the language in which the
note is printed, and therefore do not understand the value of
the units of value in which the note is expressed, and they are
not sufficiently familiar with the Belgian banking system to
know that the note is secure — that is, that twenty-nine grammes,
448 025 grains, of fine gold, can readily be obtained for it. The
extent to which a paper representative of value, which in itself
has no intrinsic value as a commodity, will circulate is therefore
at present determined by the number of people who believe that
it can readily be exchanged for coin or bullion to the value ex-
pressed by it. Essential to this belief are confidence in the
honesty and ability of the issuer. Therefore, when a people
among whom paper representatives of money of a particular issue
have been freely circulating begin to lose confidence in their
ability to readily exchange them for the coin for which they call,
there arises a tendency to exchange commodities and services
only for coin. As this tendency increases, as the lack of confi-
dence in the paper grows, there is soon reached a time when the
exchange of commodities and services is greatly diminished, be-
cause there is only sufficient coin in existence to effect a small
fraction of the normal value of exchanges.

But, as measures of value in the last analysis are measures of
human effort as determined by its results, it is obvious that, were
every paper representative of value so secured that the holder
thereof might be certain that at any time he could obtain in
exchange for it the result of human effort to the measure of the
value called for by it, in a form acceptable to him, such paper
representatives of value would obtain free and general circulation
among all people believing in their security. The more extended
the territory throughout which, and the greater the number of
people among whom, such a currency would circulate, the less

28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would be the need over such territory for the use of bullion or
coin as money or the basis of paper representatives of value.
And the monetary systems of the peoples among whom com-
merce has obtained the greatest development are gradually reach-
ing such a basis. The paper representatives of value, which at
first were direct representatives of coin, are tending more and
more to become the representatives of value, as expressed by the
result of effort, without the intervention of coin, and in the fur-
therance of this tendency banks perform an essential part. In
the evolution of the social organism banks become the ganglia
through which the action of the different parts of the organism is
measured and made reciprocal.

And as the use of bank notes, checks, bills of exchange, gov-
ernment notes, and other paper representatives of value is most
marked among the peoples through whose exertions commerce
has attained its highest development, so also the members of a
highly civilized community most concerned in commerce make
greater use of these paper representatives of value than other
members of such a community. In any large city the transac-
tions of the principal manufacturers and merchants are chiefly
conducted by means of checks, bills, and notes, while clerks,
artisans, and laborers, who are principally paid in coin or the
direct representatives of coin, secure needed commodities by the
immediate exchange of coin or the direct representatives of coin
for them. The development of representatives of value not based
upon coin to the extent of rendering them generally acceptable
for exchange among clerks, artisans, and laborers would still
further decrease the dependence upon coin or bullion as money
or the basis of money, leaving coin and bullion freer for use in
effecting exchanges between peoples of different nationalities who
are so separated by language, habits, or institutions that com-
mercial intercourse between them must be upon a bullion basis.

One of the incidents of the recent deep-sea dredging expedition of the
Prince of Monaco most fruitful in scientific results was the capture of a
sperm whale. It occurring to the prince that the food collections in the
animal's stomach might include specimens of creatures still unknown, the
ship was held near the whale till it died. In its convulsions it threw up a
mass of fragments of very curious cephalopods, which were beginning to
float away and be scattered and lost to science, when the ship's screw
was reversed to create a counter current, under the advantage of which
specimens of two entirely new species, quite difl:erent from any hitherto
known, were recovered. The body of one was covered with scales, and
was more than ninety centimetres long. The other had a crown of ten-
tacles armed with suckers bearing claws like those of the larger birds
of prey.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 29

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

By DAVID A. "WELLS, LL.D., D. C.L.,

OOEKESPONDANT DB l'iNSTITUT DJS rBAKCE, ETC.

II. — THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY.

PART IV.

TAXATION IN France. — No chapter in history is more re-
plete with interest and instruction than that which exhibits
the system for exacting contributions for the support of the
state which characterized the fiscal policy and administration of
France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
which is now acknowledged to have been mainly instrumental
in bringing on the memorable revolution in the closing years of
the latter century.

Feudalism in France, previous to 1789, had come to find its
expression almost exclusively, in the claims on the part of the
various and multiplied representatives of authority — nobility and
clergy — to regulate taxation, in respect to both imposition and
exemption.

The kingdom was divided into departments, with an officer
called an " intendant,'' or " farmer-general " (fermier general)
at the head of each, into whose hands the whole power of the
crown in respect to revenue matters was delegated. Each depart-
ment was then sub-divided, and at the head of each of these sub-
divisions a deputy was appointed by the intendant. The rolls
or lists of the various crown taxes, for polls, service, incomes,
" proportions," and the like, were distributed by the intendants to
their deputies, who had the power to exempt, change, add to, or
diminish the list at their pleasure.

It must be obvious, that the friends of the intendant and of
all his deputies, and the friends of their friends, might be favored
at the expense of the helpless masses ; and that great noblemen
in favor at the court, to whom the intendant himself would
naturally look for protection, would especially find little difficulty
in transferring most or all of the burden of tribute rightfully
due from them to the state, to others who had no such influence.
The result was that taxation in France at the period mentioned
had become in the highest degree arbitrary, and a scarcely dis-
guised form of plunder ; and the methods of assessment were
so crude and defective that it is probable that the state never
received fifty per cent of the amount collected, and in many
cases no more than forty or thirty per cent. The expenditures
of the revenues received were, moreover, characterized by so
little system as to render it difficult to exercise any efficient check

30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

upon them, or to ascertain accurately at any one time (as was
especially the case during the latter third of the eighteenth
century) the true state of the national exchequer ; all of which
fostered indefensible waste and extravagance. At the death of
Louis XV in 1774, the annual expenditure of the king and his
household probably amounted to one eighth of the entire revenue
of the state,* and the total indebtedness of the state in 1789, the
year of the commencement of the revolution, was estimated as
being in excess of $1,000,000,000, carrying an annual interest of
$206,000,000 ; and it is to be remembered that these figures must
be at least doubled to represent the corresponding sums of the
present day. All this indebtedness, and all that was subsequently
incurred through the issue of irredeemable "assignats" (paper
or fiat money), was ultimately, through one means or another,
entirely repudiated.

In the collection of levies the ijiquisitorial, infinitesimal as-
sessment and dooming penalty system, the like of which still
finds favor in Massachusetts, was carried out to perfection ; and
the only rule of practice which in different districts could prefer
any claim to uniformity, was the rule of inequality of assessment,
and harshness and cruelty in collection. Arthur Young, an Eng-
lish gentleman of culture and keen powers of observation, who
traveled in France in 1787-89, states, in recording the above
experiences, that " he shuddered at the oppression of which he
became cognizant."

One of the chief sources of revenue to the state was from
an exaction known as the taille,\ which was mainly in the nature
of a direct tax on land, though in some provinces it was a levy
on both polls and land. The history of this exaction has been
carefully investigated and is not a little interesting. It origi-
nated iri the early feudal period, and was imposed on persons
originally bondsmen, or on persons who held in "farm" or lease,
or resided on the lands of a noble or suzerain, and from which
the proprietors or suzerains of the land were exempt. And as no
vassal could at will divest himself of servitude or allegiance to his
lord or suzerain, so the obligation to pay tribute (taxes ?) always
remained upon him as a personal servitude, wherever he might be
In other words, the condition of the masses in France during the
middle ages was not unlike the condition of the slaves in the
United States previous to emancipation. These had property in

* There were seventy-five officers connected with the king's chapel alone ; forty-eight
physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries attached to his person; and three hundred and
eighty- three men and one hundred and thirty- three boys employed for his table.

f The taille was the equivalent of the English " tallage." But the discretionary power
of levying the impost was taken away from the English crown and nobility by the pro-
visions of Magna Charta.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 31

their possession, and spoke of themselves as owners of property,
but in reality their property followed the condition of the servi-
tude of their persons, and both persons and property belonged
equally to the masters. The tailley furthermore, as a badge of
servitude, was supposed to dishonor whoever was subject to it,
and degrade him not only below the rank of a gentleman, but of
that of a " burgher," or inhabitant of a borough or town ; " and
no gentleman, or even any burgher," writes Adam Smith in 1775,
" will submit to this degradation."

(Repulsive and barbarous as was the tailley it is curious to
note that the principle involved in it still survives and finds
recognition and practice in States claiming a high civilization ;
as, for example, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where personal
property is held to owe a servitude to the State and to be subject
to taxation by it in virtue of the citizenship or personal domicile
of its owner, although the property itself may be located beyond
the territory and jurisdiction of the taxing power.)

The hardship and injustice of the practical working of the
taille may be thus illustrated : In all cases the nobility and the
clergy were exempt from its payment, as were also the holders of
a multitude of minor Government offices, which, however, did not
carry with them any patent of nobility. These exempt classes,
which in the time of Louis XYI are believed to have numbered
some 300,000 out of a total estimated population of 25,000,000 in
the kingdom, owned about one half of the whole soil of France ;
so that the burden of the taille^ amounting in 1789 to 110,000,000
livres (francs), fell exclusively on the rural classes; especially
upon the agricultural interests, which it would have been sound
policy on the part of the State to favor.

" But the mode in which the taille was levied still further illus-
trates its iniquity. The Comptroller- General of the Finances, in
the first instance, decreed that a certain aggregate sum was to be
raised, and then two subordinate officials and the local landlords
in each province and parish were left to decide among themselves
how the prescribed amount was to be exacted from the taxpayers.
The combined forces of jobbery and absolute authority rendered
its incidence grossly unfair, the poorer localities generally paying
the larger share, while the richer ones escaped lightly. Thus
there was brought about a condition of things in which the most
miserable sections of the community were made to feel their
inferiority in every relation of life. They were humbled in all
their feelings, and they could not but loathe those whom birth or
favoritism had placed above them." *

Besides the taille, two other forms of direct exaction were in-

* The Financial Causes of the French Revolution. By Ferdinand Rothschild.

32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eluded in the fiscal policy of France at the period under consid-
eration—namely, a so-called capitation tax, which was a kind of
graduated tax on capital, and from the incidence of which there
was theoretically no exemption ; and the vingtUme (one twen-
tieth), instituted by Colbert, which was an income tax, and sup-
posed to be levied on every class. Owing, however, to ineflQcient
administration, and to the circumstance that the clergy occasion-
ally bought exemption for themselves for a term of years by the
payment of a lump sum, the revenue derived from these sources
was always much less than it ought to have been, the privileged
class to a large extent evading assessments.

The almost complete exemption of the clergy of France dur-
ing the ante-revolutionary period from taxation, whereby those
who were supposed to preach and practice charity were so intent
upon securing worldly vantage as to have thrown nearly all their
duties and responsibilities to the state upon the poor, constitutes
one of those striking contradictions which so often confront us in
history.

The indirect taxes were very numerous ; comprising the cus-
toms, the octroi, the excise, and special taxes on wines, cards,
tobacco, salt, and on a great variety of manufactured products ;
and in their collection the arbitrary, inquisitorial, infinitesimal,
and penalty system was carried out to perfection. It was this
class of taxes which undoubtedly pressed most heavily on the
French poor, and from the direct incidence of which the Church
and nobility managed in a great degree to escape. Very curi-
ously, also, they constituted an inducement to the peasantry to
seem poorer than perhaps they actually were, and to live in low,
thatched cottages, without floors or glass in the windows, inas-
much as any improvement of their dwellings meant an increase
of their taxes. Custom duties were levied, not only at frontiers of
the kingdom, but between every province of France. The taille
was exacted with military severity. " Carriages and carts were
stopped on the highway and searched by the tax collectors ; no
private house was safe from them by day or by night ; and on
the slightest suspicion they used the power of arrest that was
vested in them. Prosecutions for unpaid taxes were carried on
with the utmost rigor. The clothes of the poor were seized, and
even their last measure of flour, and the latches on their doors.
Collectors, accompanied by locksmiths, forced open doors and
carried away and sold furniture for one quarter of its value, the
expenses exceeding the amount of the tax." — Taine.

The most vexatious, arbitrary, and extraordinary tax of this
period was that imposed on salt, and known as the " gahelle " ; and
to one who now acquaints himself with its history and details it
must seem almost inconceivable that any country claiming to

PBINCIPLES OF taxation; 33

be civilized ever could have had such an experience. In order to
effectually secure at the outset the payment of this tax, the right
to produce and sell salt was vested exclusively in the state. By
an ordinance in 1780, every person over seven years of age was
required to purchase, not at convenience, but on one stated day of
each year, seven pounds of salt, which in a peasant's family of
four, according to Taine, entailed an expense equal to the average
wage receipts of nineteen days' work. It was forbidden also to
divert a single ounce of the seven obligatory pounds to any use
but the "pot and the salt cellar." If any one failed in these
observances he was fined ; and he was also fined if he purchased a
smaller quantity than the law prescribed. To supplement the use
of salt with water from the ocean, or from saline springs, or to
water cattle in marshes or other places containing salt, was for-
bidden under severe penalties. In certain departments of France
it was also made incumbent on officials periodically to destroy,
often by defilement, all deposits of salt which were formed natu-
rally. No retail dealing in salt was permitted, but Government
warehouses were established, often at places at considerable dis-
tances from towns and villages, where their inhabitants were
compelled to make their purchases. According to a report made
by the comptroller-general in 1787, the salt tax at that time
annually occasioned " four thousand domiciliary seizures, three
thousand four hundred imprisonments, and five hundred sen-
tences to flogging, exile, and the galleys."

But in addition to the so-called national system, which im-
posed a great variety of taxes upon all persons and property
in France which could not through favor procure exemption,
which exemption embraced practically all the nobility, clergy,
and gentry, there were a great number of taxes peculiar to
separate estates or seigniories, but at the same time more or less
general. Thus, all the various operations involved in production
and consumption were made, as far as possible, the occasion for
tax assessments. The tenants, or vassals, were bound to grind
their corn at the mill of the seigneur only ; to bake their bread
exclusively at his ovens ; to press their grapes and apples exclu-
sively at his presses ; and for every such industrial conversion a
toll or tithe was collected. One of the memoirs touching the
condition of the Tiers Etat, as the common people were called,
published about the time of the meeting of the National Con-
vention, expresses a hope that posterity may be ignorant that
feudal tyranny in Brittany, armed with judicial power, did not
blush at breaking hand mills and selling annually to the mis-
erable people the privilege of bruising between two stones a
measure of buckwheat or barley.

Movements of persons or property from one town or parish to

34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

another always involved taxation. If a farmer or laborer moved
from one parish to another, it was held that he could not separate
himself from a residence once adopted, but remained there for
taxation, although he might actually and permanently have left
it and be paying taxes in another place. All movements of
property and persons were discouraged ; and it not infrequently
happened that there was grievous famine in some departments
of France, and a surplus of food at the same time in others, not
very far distant, because of the inability of producers in the lat-
ter to dispose of an abundant harvest for lack of any remuner-
ative market or demand. Every sale or transfer of property
also carried in it a payment to the seignior, or lord of the manor,
to the extent of one eighth, and sometimes one sixth of the en-
tire equivalent received in consideration. And it is interesting
here to note that this exaction was recognized and enforced in
French Canada until the abolition of seignioral tenure, forty
years ago. Arthur Young states that at the time he traveled in
France, 1787-'89, the very terms used to designate the taxes im-
posed on the peasantry were in many instances untranslatable into
English; and from a long list of such terms as he recorded, very
few can be found and defined in any ordinary French lexicon.*
In order, however, in some degree to satisfy curiosity as to the
nature of these abominations, it may be mentioned that one of
the local taxes in Brittany, which remained in force down to
1789, and was known as the "silence des grenouilles" was a
money payment in lieu of an ancient feudal obligation incum-
bent on the residents of marshy districts to keep the frogs still,
by beating the waters, that the lady of the seigneur might not
be disturbed " when she lies in " ; while another exaction, still
more outrageous, which was not repealed until the French revo-
lutionary convention in 1790 swept it from the statute book, was
a tax known as cuissage, or " droit du seigneur ," which was paid
to the seignior as a substitute for his ancient and formerly undis-
puted right to the possession before marriage of the person of
every female, the daughter of any of his serfs or more dependent
vassals, t

* Of such terms Mr. Young mentions the following as expressive of the tortures of the
peasantry in Bretagne (Brittany) without attempting to define their exact meaning : " Che-
vauclics, quintaines, soule, saut de poisson, baiser de marices, chansons^ transport d'oeuf un
charrette, silence des grenouilles, corvee d muericordes, milods, leide, couponage, cartilage, borage^
fouage, marechaussSe, ban vin, ban d^aout, trozisses, gelinage, civerage, taillabilite, vingtain,
sterlage, bordelage, minage, ban de vendanges, droit d^accapite,^' etc.

f This exaction, the reality of which has been called in question, would seem to be a
necessary incidence or outcome of slavery or serfdom, inasmuch as the condition of
slavery implies no rights on the part of a slave that the master is bound to respect. Mr.
Thorold Rogers is authority for the fact that this droit du seigneur was recognized under

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 35

Another relic of old feudalism which prevailed in France
down to the period of the Revolution, and which, indirectly a
tax, was most oppressive and impoverishing to the French rural
population, was an obligation termed the corvee, imposed upon
them to keep the main roads of the kingdom in repair without
being remunerated for their labor or for the services of their
animals. They were thus frequently forced away with their
teams from their fields, at the demand of any traveling noble or
important personage in either church or state, and often at a time
of sowing or harvesting, when they could be least spared ; and
were occasionally required to travel long distances in order to
reach their allotted work. While they were thus compelled to
keep the main roads of the kingdom in repair, which were gener-
ally of little use to them, the local or parish roads, on which they
were dependent for their communication with adjacent towns or
villages, were allowed by the Government to remain neglected.*
For many years previous to the Revolution, the institution of the
corvee undoubtedly meant to the French peasantry a period every
year of from twelve to fifteen days of forced labor for the con-
struction and repair of roads, for which the nobility, clergy, and
town merchants contributed not a sou, or an hour of work.

And now comes an exceedingly interesting but little-known
chapter in French history. There were men of large hearts and
great intelligence in France during the reign of Louis XIV —
1643-1715 — who were not only keenly appreciative of the oppres-
sions and sufferings of the French people by reason of their hor-
rible system of taxation, but also of the certain destructive influ-
ence of this system on the industry, society, and government of
the kingdom, t Among these was the celebrated Marshal Vauban,
who, although a soldier by profession, and holding one of the
highest ofiices among the privileged nobility, had made a study
of the misery of his countrymen, and had discerned in a great
degree its cause, and was seeking for its remedy. The knowledge
that his office as marshal of France gave him of the necessity for
great expenditures — the country being almost always at war — and
the little hope he had that the king would retrench in matters of
splendor and amusement, left him no other alternative but to try

various names, as jambage^ mercheta, and mantagium^ in France in the thirteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and that fines in recognition and in lieu of this ancient manorial right
were probably paid in England almost as late as the administration of Cromwell.

* This practice or institution of the corvee h as undoubtedly of ancient Eastern origin,
and until recently existed in Egypt ; a very considerable part of the labor employed in con-
structing the Suez Canal having been performed, in accordance with the orders of the then
ruling Khedive, under its conditions.

t During the eighteenth century famine periodically decimated the rural population of
France, and forty million acres went out of cultivation.

36 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to find some method by which the burden of the multitudinous
taxes imposed for defraying these expenditures might not be
enormously and unnecessarily augmented by their method of
taking. He accordingly proposed what was in effect a single tax
—namely, that the king should annually take by one act or pay-
ment a royal tithe or iQnih—dixme royale—oi all the property of
each community, or of each person in the kingdom ; and that this
simple and sole tax, which would suffice for all, and which would
pass directly into the coffers of the king, should be the means by
which every other form of tax or exaction from the people, with
all its complicated, inquisitorial machinery for collection, should
be abolished. About the same time a lieutenant-general of France
— one Boisguilbert, of Rouen— took up the investigation of the
same subject, and published a really learned and profound book ;
in which he also proposed a new system of taxation, which he
claimed would at once relieve the people of many taxes, and the
state of the necessity of great expenditure, by providing that the
proceeds of every tax should go at once into the treasury of the
king, instead of enriching first the farmers-general, the finance
ministers, and their deputies.

The system of Boisguilbert was analogous to that proposed by
Vauban, with the exception that the former advocated the con-
tinuance of some taxes on foreign commerce and upon foods, and
the latter desired especially to abolish all such forms of taxation.

Admirable in many respects as were these proposed reforms ;
clearly based as they undoubtedly were upon what are now recog-
nized as sound economic principles, they had one great defect.
They prescribed a course which if followed would have taken
away the means of livelihood of a very large number of officials.
It would have compelled them to live at their own expense, in-
stead of at the expense of the public. This was enough to insure
their failure. All the people whose interests, fortunes, and emol-
uments were threatened arrayed themselves in opposition; for
they reasoned truly that place, power, wealth, and social position
would fly from their grasp if the counsels of Vauban were to be
followed. It is not to be wondered, then, that the king listened to
the advice of the multitude who were privileged to talk with him,
rather than to his one clear-headed, unselfish, faithful servitor ; or
that when Marshal Vauban presented him with a book embodying
and explaining his fiscal views and system, he received it with a
very ill grace. His ministers also, even if they were contrary dis-
posed, which is not probable, could not do otherwise than follow
the views of the king, and from that moment the splendid ser-
vices of the marshal, his military genius, his virtues, the former
affection the king had had for him — all were forgotten. He stood
in the position of one courting the favor of the people, and con-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION-.

37

temning and weakening lawful authority. The circulation of
his book was forbidden, and all the copies which the state could
reach were destroyed ; while the unhappy marshal, unable to
survive the loss of the king^s favor, or stand up against the enmi-
ties he had created, soon died of a broken heart.

His friend Boisguilbert, whom these events ought to have
made prudent, could not restrain himself, but published a book
vindicating Vauban, and answering one of the principal objections
to his system — namely, the impracticability of making any radical
changes during a great war — by asking if it was necessary to
wait for peace before abolishing great abuses. This was a more
offensive contemning of authority than Yauban had committed ;
and Boisguilbert was stripped of his functions, severely repri-
manded, and sent into exile. For this he was in a degree recom-
pensed by the acclamations and approbation of the people wher-
ever he went.

The system and abuses which Vauban and Boisguilbert en-
deavored to reform accordingly continued ; but as years went on,
and the misfortunes of France accumulated and culminated in
the total defeat of her armies by Marlborough, the necessity of
larger revenues to meet larger expenditures became most urgent ;
but how to provide them was a problem which brought no little
embarrassment to Louis XIVs ministers. At last Desmarets, who
was Comptroller- General of the Finances, proposed to the Council
of State, as a way out of their difficulties, that they should, in
addition to all existing numerous and abominable taxes, establish
or take on the system of a royal tenth, which had been proposed
by Vauban and Boisguilbert as a substitute for all other taxes ;
with all the new machinery, officials, and valuations which such
a system entailed. The proposition, after a brief consideration,
was approved by the Council, and Desmarets was authorized to
present it to the king ; who, although long accustomed to various
and extravagant exactions, is related at first to have been greatly
terrified, and to have exhibited for some eight or ten days a pro-
found melancholy. At the expiration of this period he regained
his usual calmness, and gave the following explanation of the
cause of his trouble : He said that he had been much tormented
that the extremity of his affairs required him to take so much of
the wealth of his subjects ; and that at last he unbosomed himself
to the P^re Tellier (his confessor) ; who after a few days returned
and reported that he had laid the matter before the most eminent
doctors (theologians) of the Sorbonne, by whom it was decided,
that all the wealth of his subjects was the king's, and that when
he took of it he only took what belonged to him. The king added
that this decision had taken away all his scruples, and had re-
stored to him all the calm and cheerfulness that he had lost. After

38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the king had been thus satisfied by his confessor, no time was
lost in establishing the tax. The effect upon the masses was one
of great sadness, but there was no revolt. Many of the property
holders in the kingdom endeavored to convince the state officials
that under the former condition of affairs they did not enjoy a
tenth part of their income, and representatives of the province of
Languedoc offered to give up its entire wealth to the crown, if
they might be allowed to enjoy, free of every tax, the tenth part
of it. All these remonstrances and propositions were not only
not listened to, but their presentation was regarded in the light
of insubordination.

The product of this new tax was not nearly so much as had
been expected ; and its most marked result was, that it enabled
the king to augment all his infantry to the extent of five men per
company.

In this record of tax experience, which, commencing at least
as far back as 1667, under Louis XIV, continued with increasing
popular oppression and misery until 1789, we find the origin
and the horrors of the French Revolution which began in the
latter year. During its continuance six thousand persons, mostly
of the ranks of the nobility, clergy, and gentry, are said to
have perished under the hands of public executioners and upon
the scaffold. But when one calls to mind the multitudes that, for
many successive generations, were starved and tortured out of
existence by a system of exactions under the name of taxation,
and for which system the king, the nobility, the clergy, and the
influential classes of France were responsible, the wonder is, that
the masses of a brutalized and infuriated people should have
shown so much clemency and restraint in the hour of their ven-
geance and of triumph.*

* On this point, Arthur Young, whose observations on the condition of the French
people were made before the great revolution had culminated, or in 1V89, writes: "It is
impossible to justify the excesses of the people or their taking of arms. They were clearly
guilty of great cruelties. But is it really the people to whom we are to impute the whole,
or to their oppressors, who had kept them so long in a state of bondage ? He who chooses
to be served by slaves, and by ill-treated slaves, must know that he holds both his property
and life by a tenure far different from those who prefer the service of well-treated freemen ;
and he who dines to the music of groaning sufferers, must not, in the moment of insurrec-
tion, complain that his daughters are ravished and then destroyed, and that his sons' throats
are cut. When such evils happen they surely are more imputable to the tyranny of the
master than to the cruelty of the servant. The analogy holds with the French peasants.
The murder of a seigneur, or a chateau in flames, is recorded in every newspaper. The
rank of the person who suffers attracts notice. But where do we find the register of that
seigneur's oppressions of his peasantry, and his exactions of feudal service from those
whose children were dying arouQd them for want of bread ? Where do we find the minutes
that assigned these starving wretches to be fleeced by impositions, and a mockery in the
seigneural court? Who gives us the award of the intendant and his sub-delegues, who

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 39

It is interestiDg also to note in this connection tLat against no
one class, when the revolutionary element became ascendant in
France, was popular hatred more intense than to the farmers-
general, to whom the collection of taxes in the different provinces
of the kingdom was farmed out or contracted. The extravagant
expenditure which, as a rule, characterized their living, was re-
garded by the masses as all-sufficient evidence of the enormous
profits unjustly accruing to them from these contracts ; and the
power continually exercised by their agents to make domiciliary
visits, seize goods, inflict fines, and take other measures of an arbi-
trary, obnoxious character to enforce compliance with extortions,
all contributed to make them objects of execration by nearly the
entire people. And this animosity under the revolutionary gov-
ernment speedily manifested itself, by sending thirty-two out of
the whole number — sixty — of these high officials to the guillotine ;
among whom were undoubtedly some honest and conscientious
financiers and otherwise distinguished men, such as Lavoisier,
the father of modern chemistry.

One of the great results of the French Revolution, which ought
to be duly weighed in reckoning up the good and evil of that mighty
popular convulsion, is that it swept away the feudal land laws of
old France and made landowners of several millions of men who
were formerly serfs. Fully one half of the land of France at the
present time is owned by small farmers or peasants ; and in their
hands has been demonstrated afresh what Arthur Young called
the magic power of property to turn sand to gold. Regions
which he visited in 1788, and found barren and deserted, a hun-
dred years later were clothed with vines and gardens under the
tillage of peasant proprietors.

From the foregoing consideration of France in the last cen-
tury, experiencing through the abuse of taxation the most awful
revolution in history, let us turn to a country of our own time
and continent, and observe methods of taxation yet surviving the
vigor and barbarism of the mediseval period.

Taxation in Mexico. — Until recently, and to a great extent
at present, the system of taxation operative in Mexico, the ori-
gin or evolution of which may in no small part be attributed
to a sparseness of population, lack of accumulated wealth or capi-
tal, limited wants, and low civilization of the masses, is especially
worthy of notice, and most instructive from the circumstance that
nothing like it exists in any other country.

took off the taxes from the man of fashion, and laid them with accumulated weight on the
poor who were so unfortunate as to be his neighbors ? Who has dwelt sufficiently on ex-
plaining all the ramifications of despotism, regal, aristocratical, and ecclesiastical, pervading
the whole mass of the people, reaching like a circulating fluid the most distant capillary
tubes of poverty and wretchedness ? " — Young^s Travels in France.

40 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The duties levied on imports into Mexico are so excessive that
the average rate of the Mexican tariff is probably greater than
that adopted by any other country claiming to be civilized, with
the possible exception of Russia. The favorite modern idea of
making the tariff subserve two purposes— namely, the raising of
revenue and the regulation of trade— does not appear as yet to
have greatly interested either the people or Government of Mexico,
as revenue, through the necessities of the state, is the supreme
consideration ; and for securing this no other rule seems to have
been recognized and followed in imposing duties on imports than
that the higher the duty (or tax) the greater will be the accruing
revenue.

But with this general characterization of the Mexican tariff
there comes in the following other most anomalous feature : Thus,
in all commercial countries, save those which permit the levy by
certain municipalities of the so-called octroi taxes, when for-
eign articles or merchandise have once satisfied all customs re-
quirements at a port, or place of entry, and have been permitted
to pass the frontier, they are exempted from any further taxation
as imports so long as they retain such a distinctive character.
In the United States, for example, it is held that the right to im-
port carries with it a right to sell (i. e., in the original packages)
without further restrictions. And the Supreme Court of the
United States has decided that a license tax imposed by a State of
the Federal Union, as a prerequisite to the right to sell an im-
ported article, is equivalent to a duty on imports, and in violation
of the provision of the Federal Constitution which prohibits the
States from imposing import duties ; and this decision has been
carefully recognized by the authorities of the several States in
dealing with imported liquors under local license, or other re-
strictive laws.

But, in Mexico, each State of the republic has had practically
its own custom-house system, and levies taxes on all goods — do-
mestic and foreign — passing into its territory for the purpose of use
or consumption ; and then, in turn, the several towns of the States
again assess all goods entering their respective precincts. The
rate of State taxation, being determined by the several State legis-
latures, varies, and varies continually, with each State. In the
Federal District — i. e., the city of Mexico — the rate was recently
two per cent of the national tariff ; but in the adjoining State of
Hidalgo it was ten per cent, and in others it has been as high as
sixteen per cent. The rate levied by the towns is said to be about
nine per cent of what the State has exacted ; but in this there is
no common rule. Nor is this all. For the transit of every terri-
torial boundary necessitates inspection, assessment, the prepara-
tion of bills of charges, and permits for entry ; and all these trans-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 41

actions and papers involve tlie payment of fees, or the purchase
and affixing of stamps. Thus, by section 377 of the tariff law of
December, 1884, it is ordained that "the custom house shall give
to every individual who makes any importation, upon the pay-
ment of duties, a certificate of the sum paid, which certificate, on
being presented to the administrator of the stamp office in the
place of importation, shall be changed for an equal amount in
custom-house stamps. For this operation the interested party
shall pay, to the administrator of whom he received the stamps,
two per cent in money (coin) of the total value of the stamps."
All imports into Mexico are liable, therefore, to these multiple
assessments ; and the extent to which they act as a prohibition on
trade may be best illustrated by a practical example.

In 1885 an American gentleman, residing in the city of Mexico
as the representative of certain New England business interests,
with a view of increasing his personal comfort, induced the land-
lady of the hotel where he resided (who, although by birth a
Mexican, was of Scotch parentage) to order from St. Louis an
American cooking stove, with its customary adjuncts of pipes,
kettles, pans, etc. In due time the stove arrived ; and the follow-
ing is an exact transcript of the bills contingent, which were
rendered and paid upon its delivery :

Original Invoice:

1 Btove weight 282 pounds.

1 box pipe " 69 "

1 box stove furniture " 86 "

Total 43*7 pounds, or 199-8 kilos.

Cost in St. Louis, United States currency $26 60

Exchange at 20 per cent 6 80

Total $31 80

Freight from St. Louis to city of Mexico (rail), at $3.16 per 100 pounds $15 76

Mexican consular fee at El Paso 4 86

Stamps at El Paso...'. 46

Cartage and labor on boxes examined by custom house at El Paso 60

Forwarding commission, El Paso 2 00

Exchange 16§ per cent on $7.64 freight advanced by Mexican Central
Railroad 1 25

Import Duties:

1 box, 128 kilos (stove), iron, without brass or copper ornaments, at 19

cents per kilo $24 42

1 box, 81*8 kilos, iron pipe, at 24 cents per kilo 7 61

1 box iron pots, with brass handles, at 24 cents per kilo 9 48

$41 41
Add 4 per cent as per tariff. 1 66

$43 06
Package duty, 60 cents per 100 kilos 1 00

$44 06
VOL. XLI2C — 4

$66 60

42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Add 6 per cent as per tariff ^^ ^^

$46 26

Add 2 per cent municipal duty ^

$47 19

Add 6 per cent consumption duty 2 36

$49 66

Dispatch of goods at Buena Vista station, city of Mexico 88

Stamps for permit 50 ^^^ ^^

$107 03
Cartage in city of Mexico ''S

Total $107 78

SisiTMi:

Original cost of stove, with exchange $31 80

Freight, consular fees, and forwarding 24 80

Import duties 60 43

Cartage '75

Total $107 78

Under sucli a system articles of the most common use in the
United States are from their increase of price necessarily made
articles of luxury.

Again, the Mexican tariff provides that the effects of immi-
grants shall be admitted free. " But this is rendered practically
a dead letter, from the fact that the interior duties are levied on
everything the immigrant has before he gets settled ; and these
are so heavy that immigration has been greatly discouraged. A
carpenter, or other mechanic, who desires to get employment in
Mexico, has such heavy duties levied on his tools on passing the
national or State frontiers that few are willing or able to pay
them. Hence, few American mechanics find their way into the
country, unless in accordance with special contract."

The existence in a state of the New World of a system of taxa-
tion so antagonistic to all modern ideas, and so destructive of all
commercial freedom, is certainly very curious, and prompts to
the following reflections : First, how great were the wisdom and
foresight of the framers of the Constitution of the United States
in providing, at the very commencement of the Federal Union,
that no power to tax in this manner, and for their own use or
benefit, should ever be permitted to the States that might com-
pose it (Article I, section 10). Second, how did such a system
come to be ingrafted on Mexico, for it is not a modern contriv-
ance ? All are agreed that it is an old-time practice and a legacy
of Spanish domination. But, further than this, may it not be an-
other of those numerous relics of European mediaevalism which,
having utterly disappeared in the countries of their origin, seem
to have become embalmed, as it were, in what were the old Spanish

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 43

provinces of America — a system filtered down through Spanish
traditions from the times when the imposition of taxes and the
regulation of local trade were regarded by cities and communities
in the light of an affirmation of their right to self-government,
and as a barrier against feudal interference and tyranny; and
when the idea of protecting industry through like devices was
not limited as now to international commerce, but was made ap-
plicable to the commercial intercourse of cities and communities
of the same country, and even to separate trades or " guilds " of
the same city ? Whether such speculations have any warrant in
fact or not, it is at least certain that we have in the Mexico of to-
day a perfect example of what was common in Europe in the
middle ages ; namely, of protection to separate interests (through
taxation) carried out to its fullest and logical extent, and also of
its commercial and industrial consequences.

So much for the tariff system of Mexico and its adjuncts. The
" excise " or " internal revenue " system of the country is no less
extraordinary. It is essentially a tax on sales, collected in great
part through the agency of stamps, and is a repetition of the old
" alcalvala " tax of Spain, even to the extent of retaining its name
slightly modified from alca vala to " dlca hala " ; and which Adam
Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, describes as one of the worst
forms of taxation that could be inflicted upon a country, and as
largely responsible for the decay of Spanish manufactures and
agriculture. Thus a Federal statute of Mexico, enacted in 1885,
imposed a tax of " one half of one per cent upon the value in ex-
cess of twenty dollars of transactions of buying or selling of every
kind of merchandise, whether at wholesale or retail, in whatever
place throughout the whole republic." Also, one half of one per
cent " on all sales and resales of country or city property ; upon
all exchanges of movable or immovable property ; on mortgages,
transfers, or gifts, collateral or bequeathed inheritances ; on bonds,
rents of farms, when the rent exceeds two thousand dollars an-
nually ; and on all contracts with the Federal, State, or municipal
governments." Every inhabitant of the republic who sells goods
to the value of over twenty dollars must give to the buyer " an
invoice, note, or other document accrediting the purchase," and
affix to the same, and cancel, a stamp corresponding to the value
of the sale. Sales at retail are exempt from this tax ; and retail
sales are defined to be " sales made with a single buyer, whose
value does not exceed twenty dollars. The reunion, in a single
invoice, of various parcels, one of which does not amount to
twenty dollars, but which in the aggregate exceed that quan-
tity," remains subject to the tax. Retail sales in the public mar-
kets, or by ambulatory sellers, or licensed establishments whose
capital does not exceed three hundred dollars, are also exempt.

44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Tickets of all descriptions — railroad, theater, etc. — must have a
stamp, as must each page of the reports of meetings, each leaf of
a merchant's ledger, day or cash book, and every cigar sold singly,
which must be delivered to the buyer in a stamped wrapper.
Sales of imported spirits pay eight per cent on the duties levied
on their importation, and a half of one per cent in addition when
retailed. Domestic spirits pay three per cent when sold by pro-
ducers or dealers at wholesale, and a half of one per cent additional
when sold at retail. Gross receipts of city railroads pay four per
cent ; public amusements, two per cent upon the amount paid for
entrance ; playing cards, fifty per cent — paid in stamps — on the
retail price; and manufactured tobacco a variety of taxes, pro-
portioned to quality and value. Mercantile drafts are taxed at
a dollar on every hundred.

Farms, haciendas, and town estates are required to be taxed at
the rate of three dollars per each thousand dollars of the val-
uation, but such is the influence of the landowners that the
valuation is almost nominal. In Vera Cruz the rate is reported
at about two mills on the dollar for the most productive portions
of country estates ; while in the Pacific State of Colima the rate
is said to be one and a half per cent. Land and buildings not
actually producing income are exempt from taxation, notwith-
standing they may be continually enhancing in value. This sys-
tem of exempting unoccupied realty from taxation also prevails
in Portugal ; and the Mexican usage was probably derived from
that country, where the theory in justification of the practice is,
that the use of a thing defines its measure of value, and that to
tax unused property is confiscation.

A recent Mexican statute for the taxation of land contains
forty-seven different sections, each providing the ways and
means of enforcing the tax and prescribing penalties for its in-
fraction. In the towns and cities of Mexico this system of infini-
tesimal taxation is indefinitely repeated, the towns acting as col-
lectors of revenue for the Federal and State governments, as well
as for their own municipal requirements. All industries pay a
monthly fee : As tanneries, fifty cents ; soap factories, one dollar.
So also all shops for the sale of goods pay according to their 'Class,
from a few dollars down to a few cents per month. Each beef
animal, on leaving a town, pays fifty cents ; each fat pig, twenty-
five cents; each sheep, twelve cents; each load of corn, fruit,
vegetables, or charcoal, six cents (as a supposed road tax), and so
on; and, on entering another town, all these exactions are re-
peated. A miller, in Mexico, it is said, is obliged to pay thirty-
two separate taxes on his wheat before he can get it from the
field and offer it, in the form of flour, on the market for consump-
tion. As a matter of necessity, furthermore, every center of popu-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 45

lation — small and big, city, town, or hamlet — swarms with petty
officials, who are paid to see that not an item of agricultural prod-
uce, of manufactured goods, or an operation of trade or commerce
or even a social event, like o, fandango, a christening, a marriage,
or a funeral, escapes the payment of tribute.

In fact, trade has been so hampered by this system of taxa-
tion that one can readily understand and accept the assertion
that has been made, that people with capital in Mexico really
dread to enter into business, and prefer to hoard their wealth, or
restrict their investments to land (which, as before pointed out, is
practically exempt from taxation), rather than subject themselves
to the never-ending inquisitions and annoyances which are attend-
ant upon almost every active employment of persons and capi-
tal, even were all other conditions favorable. Mexico, from the
influence of this system of taxation alone, must, therefore, remain
poor and undeveloped ; and no argument to the contrary can in any
degree weaken this assertion. Doubtless there are many intelli-
gent people in Mexico who recognize the gravity of the situation,
and are most anxious that something should be done in the way
of reform. But what can be done ? If autocratic powers were to
be given to a trained financier, thoroughly versed in all the prin-
ciples of taxation and of economic sciences, and conversant with
the results of actual experience, the problem of making things
speedily and radically better in this department of the Mexican
state is so difficult that he might well shrink from grappling
with it.

In the first place, the great mass of the Mexican people have
little or no visible tangible property which is capable of direct
assessment.

Again, in any permanent system of taxation, taxes in every
country or community, in common with all the elements of the
cost of production and subsistence — wages, profits, interest, de-
preciation, and materials — must be substantially drawn from each
year's product. Now, the annual product of Mexico is compara-
tively very small. Thus, for example, the annual product of one
of the least developed States of the Federal Union — South Caro-
lina— was in 1888 absolutely two and a half times — or, propor-
tionally to area, twenty- five times — as valuable as the then an-
nual product of the entire northern half of Mexico ; and the
Argentine Republic of South America, with only one third the
population of Mexico, has a revenue twenty per cent greater, and
double the amount of foreign commerce. Product being small,
consumption must of necessity be also small. " The average cost
of living (food and drink) to a laboring man in the city of Mexico
is about twenty-five cents per day ; in the country, from twelve
and a half to eighteen cents. The average annual cost of a man's

46 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dress is probably not over five dollars ; that of a woman, double
that sum, with an undetermined margin for gewgaws and cheap
jewelry." Mr. Lambert, United States consul at San Bias, re-
ported under date of May, 1884 : " The average laborer and me-
chanic of this country may be fortunate enough, if luck be not too
uncharitable toward him, to get a suit of tanned goatskin, costing
him about six dollars, which will last him as many years." Of
household goods, the mass of the Mexican people are almost desti-
tute. A few untanned hides are used for beds, and dressed goat
or sheep skins serve for mattress and covering.

The food of the masses consists mainly of agricultural prod-
ucts— corn (tortillas), beans (frijoles), and fruits — which are for
the most part the direct results of the labor of the consumer, and
not obtained through any mechanism of purchase or exchange.

Persons conversant with the foreign commerce of Mexico are
also of the opinion that not more than five per cent of its popula-
tion buy at the present time any imported article whatever, and
that for all purposes of trade in American or European manufac-
tures, the consuming population is not much in excess of half a
million. Revenue in Mexico from any tariff on imports must
therefore be limited, and this limitation is rendered much greater
than it need be by absurdly high duties, which (as notably is the
case of cheap cotton fabrics) enrich the smuggler and a few mill
proprietors to the great detriment of the national exchequer.

It is clear, therefore, that the basis available to the Government
for obtaining revenue through the taxation of articles of domestic
consumption, either in the processes of production or through the
machinery of distribution, is of necessity very narrow ; and that
if the state is to get anything, either directly or indirectly, from
this source, there would really seem to be hardly any method
open to it other than that of an infinitesimal, inquisitorial sys-
tem of assessment and obstruction akin to what is already in
existence.

But the greatest obstacle in the way of tax reform in Mexico
is to be found in the fact that a comparatively few people — not
six thousand out of a possible ten million — own all the land and
constitute in the main the governing class of the country, and the
influence of this class has thus far been sufficiently potent practi-
cally to exempt land from taxation. So long as this condition of
things prevails it is difficult to see how there is ever going to be a
middle class (as there is none now worthy of mention) occupying
a position intermediate between the rich and a vast ignorant
lower class that take no interest in public affairs, and is only
kept from turbulence through military restraint. Such a class in
every truly civilized and progressive country is numerically the
largest, and comprising the great body of producers, consumers.

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES. 47

and taxpayers, is the one most interested in the promotion and
maintenance of good government. A tax policy, however, which
would compel the landowners to cut up and sell their immense
holdings, especially if they are unwilling to develop them, would
be the first step toward the creation of such a middle class. But
it is not unlikely that Mexico would have to go through one
more revolution, worse than any she has yet experienced, before
any such result could be accomplished. At present, furthermore,
there is no evidence that the mass of the Mexican people, who
would be most benefited by any wise scheme for the partition of
the great estates and for tax reform, feel any interest whatever in
the matter or would vigorously support any leader of the upper
class who might desire to take the initiative in promoting such
changes ; and herein is the greatest discouragement to every one
who wishes well for the country.*

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES.

By JAMES WEIK, Je., M. D.

IT is highly probable that at one time or another most of the
civilized nations of the world knew of certain small, under-
sized men, and that they constructed and built up legends and
myths about them. The ancient Talmudic writers, however,
were probably unacquainted with these little people, for no-
where in the Old Testament nor in any of the ancient Hebrew
writings are they mentioned. The giant plays a prominent part
in more than one biblical drama, but his direct opposite, the
pygmy, never appears in any role. But long before the Israel-
itish captivity and exodus, and thousands of years before the
five Nasamonians of Herodotus made their memorable journey
of exploration into the deserts of Libya, the earliest of known
historiographers, the Egyptians, had made his acquaintance, and
had made note of his peculiarities of form. Marriette Bey has
seen the figure of a pygmy on a monument of the old empire, and

* During the year 1892 the present enlightened President of the Mexican Republic,
fully recognizing the great obstruction to trade and commerce which the complicated tax
system as above described entails upon the country, created a commission of eminently
qualified persons to consider the subject with a view of instituting a better fiscal system.
And as one result of its investigations the present Congress of Mexico has adopted an amend-
ment to its Federal Constitution, by which the alcahalas shall be definitely abolished in the
course of the present year, 1896. Every State in Mexico is accordingly now engaged in
modifying its old system of taxation and replacing it with something better. So far as
the city of Mexico is concerned, direct taxes have already been substituted for the alcabaUu
on a number of important revenue-producing articles, as, for example, on brandy, alcohol,
and pulque.

48 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lias deciphered his name, Ahha (the name by which he is known
to this day), written beside him.

The legend of the storks and the pygmies has been familiar
to us since our earliest childhood, and I dare say many of us
believed in it with a child's unhesitating belief for some years
after we had escaped from the thralldom of the nursery. I know
that I did, and whenever I would see cranes winging their way
southward I would conjure up a mental picture of an army of
little men mounted on rams and goats, and engaged in a san-
guinary battle with myriads of cranes. I would then lift up my
childish voice and shriek out the warning, " Beware of the pyg-
mies ! " to the birds flying high above my head. Homer is the
first of the classical writers who makes mention of this legend,
and he probably borrows from beliefs much older than his time.
Says he in the Iliad, Book III, when speaking of the advancing
Trojans, whom he likens to a cloud of birds :

Thus by their leader's care, each martial band
Moves into ranks, and stretches o'er the land ;
With shouts the Trojans, rushing from afar,
Proclaim their motions, and provoke the war ;
So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order, through the midway sky:
To pygmy nations wounds and death they bring,
And all the war descends upon the wing.

Pope.

Although Homer does not mention the country of the pyg-
mies in this passage, he does say that the cranes " fly over the
ocean" (Pope takes advantage of a poet's license and does not
give a literal translation) ; hence he must have located them un-
questionably in Africa.

Aristotle, in his History of Animals, mentions these little men
in his description of storks. After stating that these birds pass
from Scythia to the marshes of Egypt, "toward the sources of
the Nile," he declares that " this is the district that the pygmies
inhabit, whose existence is not a fable." A hundred years before
Aristotle, however, Herodotus had written of these homuncules,
for he says that certain Nasamonians, five in number, had con-
ceived the idea of exploring the deserts of Libya. After they
had been traveling in the desert for several days they saw trees
in the distance. They made toward these welcome objects, and
when they had reached them, and while they were eating the
fruit which grew on them in great abundance, they were sudden-
ly surrounded and seized " by a large company of very small men
who were much below the average height, and who dragged them

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES.

49

away with them. They did not understand the language of the
Nasamonians, nor did the latter understand that of their captors.
They were conducted by these little men across a marshy coun-
try, into a town whose inhabitants were black. A large stream
flowed before this town from west to east, and there were croco-
diles in it."

Authorities now unhesitatingly state that this river could
have been no other than the Djoliba, or Niger as it is called by
cartographers and geographers. This river rises in a canon of

Tasmania^. From The Pygmies, Quatrefages.

the mountainous plateau of eastern Senegambia, where it is
known as the Djoliba or Joliba, flows northeast, then west, and
then southeast, to empty into the Gulf of Guinea near Cape For-
mosa.

In the neighborhood of Timbuktu, 18° 5' 10" north latitude,
and 40° 5' 10" west longitude ; the river flows from west to east.
Says De Quatrefages, in Pygmies: "There" (Timbuktu) "the
river bends abruptly, and flows almost directly from west to east
as far as Bourroum, over a distance of over three degrees of
longitude, before turning toward the south to reach the Gulf of
Guinea. It is, then, between the first and the fourth degree of

VOL. XLIX. — 5

50 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

west longitude that the Nasamonea reached the Niger." (It
should be noted here that a large proportion of our former slave
population was brought from a section of Africa only a degree or
so south and east of Timbuktu.) The above- quoted author very
correctly states that the town in which the Nasamonians were
held captave could not have been the famous Timbuktu, for
Ahmed Baba, the celebrated Arab historian and annalist, declares
that the town was not founded until the fifth century of the He-
gira, or 1100 A. D. But, taking everything into consideration, I am
inclined to believe that it was really in this neighborhood that
these adventurous explorers met the pygmies, and that the latter
at that time had a town on the banks of the river Niger. The
incursions of stronger and more warlike peoples probably drove
these little men southward, out of the immediate neighborhood
of the present site of Timbuktu.

The older writers, notably Pliny, located the pygmies in more
than one country. Pliny not only locates them in Africa, but
also in India, and modern research has declared that this his-
torian was correct.

In the Vindhya Mountains, Malwa, India (20° to 25° north lati-
tude, and 75° to 80° east longitude), M. Rousselet has found the
Sandra Loks (" man monkeys "), true pygmies, less than five feet
in height. These people are, unquestionably, bona fide negritos
("little negroes"). Saint-Pol Lias also found negritos in the
province of Perak, called Sakaies. These little negroes were all
five feet or under, and presented all the characteristic marks of
the African pygmies, with the single exception of the protuberant
abdomen. This modification of form is probably due to their sur-
roundings. Not only are the negritos to be found in India, but
they are to be observed in the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal ;
in the Malayan Archipelago ; in Melonesia and Polynesia ; and in
Australia. This race has penetrated as far north as Japan, for
Dr. Maget has found true negritos among the Japanese. They
are also to be found in the archipelago of Loo Choo and in For-
mosa.

The Andamanese probably approximate more nearly in stature
and form the pygmies of the United States than do any other
tribe of little people save the Akha and Bushmen of Africa. The
Tasmanians, however, resemble our negritos very much, as far as
facial angle and expression are concerned. I have, therefore, in-
troduced the portrait of a Tasmanian for the sake of comparison.
In recent times explorers have penetrated Central Africa, and have
found the smallest of all little people in the region of the country
ruled over by King Munza, sovereign of the Monbuttos (1868-
1871). Here Schweinfurth found a small colony of pygmies sup-
ported by King Munza; their chief, Adimokou, told Schwein-

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES.

51

furth that liis race dwelt farther south. From information given
him by this negrito chieftain, this eminent traveler and scientist
came to the conclusion that the country of the pygmies was situ-
ated about 30° north latitude and 25° east longitude. (I may state,
parenthetically, that the pygmies of Africa are called negrillos by
some anthropologists ; why, I know not, for it is generally con-
ceded that the eastern and western pygmies are generically of
the same stock. If this be denied, the doctrine of polygenesis
must be accepted as true. But while a firm
believer in polygenesis, I yet believe that these
widely separated tribes of negritos originally
sprang from the same root-stock. Their dis-
semination over such a wide area has been due
to one of two causes : either, in times long
past, some of them have been carried across
the Indian Ocean by storms, or at one time
Africa extended across the ocean even as far
as Australia. The mighty cataclysm that
changed the Sea of Sahara into the Desert of
Sahara, by elevating the northern portion of
Africa, probably occasioned a corresponding
subsidence, and the eastern portion of the con-
tinent, save Australia, the Andaman Islands,
and the Malayan Archipelago, was covered by
the ocean.)

Chailld-Long says, in Three Prophets, when
returning from the countrj^ of King Munza :
" I brought back with me, besides the six hun-
dred Niam-Niam warriors, who had joined me
in the battles against inimical tribes, ... a
specimen adult woman of the Ticki-Ticki, or
Akka pygmy race. Ticki-Ticki is now in
Cairo, and is a favorite plaything — being quite
an acrobat — in the harem of the Khedive's
mother." That adventurous Frenchman and
most entertaining writer, Paul du Chaillu, met
with pygmies at Niembonai, latitude 1° 58' 54"
south, and longitude 11° 56' 38" east. Here
they were known as Ohongos. He says, in Equatorial Africa,
that during his stay in the village of Niembonai he succeeded
in measuring six adults, all women save one — a young adult
man. The height of the women ranged from four feet four and
a half inches to five feet, while the height of the young man was
four feet six inches. Finally, Stanley came across these little
people at Avatiko, a village near the river Lenda. Two of the
pygmies, a man and a woman, were captured by his men and car-

Akka. From The Pyg-
mies, Quatrefages.

52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ried into camp. The height of the man was four feet ; his hands
and feet were small and delicate ; his body was rounded and well-
proportioned, and his abdomen protuberant ; the hair on his body
was almost furlike, being nearly half an inch in length. On
viewing this little man, Stanley rhapsodizes as follows : " Not one
London editor could guess the feeling with which I regarded this
manikin from the solitudes of the vast African forest. To me he
was more venerable than the Memnonium of Thebes. That little
body of his represented the oldest types of primitive man, de-
scended from the outcasts of the earliest ages — the Ishmaelites of
the primitive race — forever shunning the haunts of workers, de-
prived of the joy and delight of the home hearth, eternally exiled
by their vice to live the life of human beasts in morass and fen
and jungle wild. Think of it ! Twenty-six centuries ago his
ancestors captured the five young Nasamonian explorers, and
made merry with them, at their village on the Niger " (In Darkest
Africa). Stanley saw pygmies on several occasions after this, and
Emin Pasha gives some interesting measurements in Stanley's
book ; so, I think, from the evidence adduced, that we can safely
assert that there are tribes of pygmies, both continental and insu-
lar, in Asia, and that they are likewise still extant in Africa.
All of these little negroes, both in Asia and in Africa, have cer-
tain anatomical, physiological, and skeletal characteristics in
common, which declare that originally they must have come
from the same stock. The true negro is dolichocephalic (long-
headed) ; is of an average height as compared with the white
race ; his form is not rounded, but, on the contrary, is generally
spare and angular ; he is not at all hairy, and a strong, acrid,
hircic, and disgusting odor emanates from his person. The ne-
grito or pygmy, wherever found, is, on the contrary, brachyce-
phalic (round-headed) or subbrachycephalic ; he is far below the
average height ; his form is rounded ; his body is generally cov-
ered with a soft, downy fell, and no appreciable odor is given off
from his person. The true negro has large feet and hands, while
in the negrito these members are small and delicately shaped.

While looking over some old papers published in New Orleans
in 1842, 1 found a short description of a batch of, presumably,
freshly imported slaves. Among them were " six or eight very
small negroes, men and women, all of whom were under five feet

in height. Who ran in this cargo is not known, but Mr. has

the disposal of them." An old bill of sale, now in the possession
of Mr. Wolfgang Werner, of Savanna.h, dated April 23, 1810,
gives a description of two adult slaves, male and female, in
which the height of the male is declared to be "four feet six
inches (4 ft. 6 in.), and the female four feet three inches (4 ft.
3 in.)." Finally, in the possession of the Armistede family, of

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES.

53

Virginia, there is a letter dated " The Oaks,'' February 20, 1773,
and written by Miss Judith Graeme to her friend Miss Sarah
Armistede. In this letter Miss Graeme bewails the fact that " Pa
has bought four of those trifling, good-for-nothing little ' ginny
niggers,' who will steal the cloathes off your back if you give
them half a chaunce." After giving a page or so of local gos-
sip. Miss Judith closes her letter with a postscript anent the little
negroes, who seemed to have aroused her bitterest animosity.
Says she, " The biggest one
of those nasty little ' ginny
niggers' is not five feet
high/' Thus we see that
over a hundred years ago
negritos were brought to
America and sold as slaves.
For all I know to the con-
trary, these little negroes
had been coming into the
country ever since slavery
was first instituted. This
is probably the reason that
pygmies are no longer
found in the region of the
Niger or in Ashantee. The
incursions of the Arab
slave dealers have driven
them farther and farther
inland, until they now in-
habit the dense forest soli-
tudes of equatorial Africa.
I do not believe that any
of the Akka have ever been
brought to America and
sold as slaves, for the evi-
dence shows that they have

occupied the same region of country (Central Africa) for hundreds
of years, but negritos closely akin to them and springing from
the same root-stock were undoubtedly brought from the west and
east coasts of Africa and sold as slaves in America. The descend-
ants of these negritos are our American pygmies, who can be
found in large numbers either living in colonies like that in the
neighborhood of Charleston, S. C, or Bayou Goula, La., or scat-
tered along the South Atlantic and Gulf seaboards. Hon. W. T.
Ellis, member of Congress, who has made a study of these little
negroes, says that they speak a language intelligible to them-
selves alone ; that they have undoubtedly retained a large num-

A Pygmy of thk United States.

54

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ber of the words of their ancestral vocabulary; and that they
have retained and make use of their original idioms. Of course,
many English words have crept in, but these are so commingled
with their native speech that their meaning is utterly lost unless
one is familiar with the peculiar patois that these diminutive
individuals make use of. Captain Ellis, of course, has reference
to one particular colony, that near Charleston, S. C. In Louisiana
these negritos use words borrowed from the French, but so cor-
rupted that it would be diffi-
cult for the most expert phi-
lologist to trace out their
derivation and meaning.

Crossing has done much
toward obliterating the pure
type, many of these little peo-
ple having only their under-
sized bodies and brachyce-
phalic heads to indicate their
origin ; and, whenever there
is a strain of negrito blood
in an individual, he is very
apt to possess one or both of
these striking characteris-
tics. I have examined a num-
ber of these half-breeds and
have invariably found them
round-headed and of short
stature. In some localities,
however, the pure type is
very prevalent, and one may
see the full-blooded negrito who possesses all the distinguishing
features of his African or Asiatic brother. Such is the individ-
ual whom I have chosen to illustrate this paper. He was born in
Bayou la Teche, La., of negrito parents, if his description of them
is correct, and came to Kentucky with his " ole mistiss " when
about fifty years old. He is four feet nine inches tall, and is
perfectly proportioned. A glance at his photograph will show
that his feet, notwithstanding the fact that they are covered by
rough and unsightly brogans, are small and well made. His
hands, although somewhat knotted by rheumatism and hard
work, still show traces of their former slimness and delicate out-
line. His skin presents the characteristic texture of the full-
blooded negrito, feeling like velvet to the touch, and is covered
by a soft and downy fell. I have known him intimately for
years, and have never detected the slightest odor emanating from
his person. Finally, he is decidedly brachycephalic, and slightly

American Negrito. Bayou la Teche, La.

THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES. 55

hypsistenocephalic. * (The vertical diameter is corapared with the
transverse diameter ; when the former is equal to or exceeds the
latter, the skull is hypsistenocephalic.) Notwithstanding his age
(according to his count he is nearly seventy years old) he is quite
strong and active. Mr. A. E. Davenport says that these negritos
of the Southern States, notwithstanding their diminutive stature,
are very strong and exceedingly active. De Quatrefages says
the same of the Andamanese. I have examined a large number of
these American pygmies, and have been very much surprised at
their strength and agility.

In a number of localities, notably in Florida and Louisiana,
the negrito has abandoned civilization and relapsed into sav-
agery. He supports himself by hunting and fishing, and never
leaves his haunts in morass and forest, unless compelled so to
do by lack of ammunition or other necessary supplies. He is
a devil worshiper, paying more attention toward propitiating
the Evil One, in order to "keep out of his clutches," than
to God, who does not need propitiation because he is good and
merciful. Youdou and Walla- walla dances and incantation cere-
monies are of almost nightly occurrence among these people.
Every hollow tree, every tangled brake, and every miry morass
is the dwelling place of either a ghost or an evil spirit. The
fetich is greatly in evidence, every hunter carrying about with
him some peculiarly formed root or stone, or perhaps a "con-
jure bag," which he wears securely tied about his neck, and
which has been furnished him by some noted "conjure doctor."
So much afraid of ghosts and spirits are these negritos that they
will rarely leave their hovels at night. Whenever they do go out
at night they never go alone, but always in companies. Court-
ship and marriage among these half-savage negritos possess some
peculiarities which have partially originated with themselves;
yet some of their customs in these social rites seem to be only
modifications of similar ceremonies handed down to them by
their ancestors. For instance, the young negrito man will leave
a basket of fruit at the door of his sweetheart's hut some time
during the night ; if she takes it in the next day, he knows that
his suit has met with favor. The Sakies of India and Ohongos of
Africa go through the same performance. Marriage, however,
especially among the Florida negritos, is simply a mating of the
two individuals. Where these little people still live in the neigh-
borhood of towns and thickly settled portions of the country,
they generally seek the services of a minister or magistrate,
though not always.

The dead present awful and awe-inspiring attributes to the
pygmies ; the ghost of the departed is his hete noire ; hence, when
one of these individuals departs this life, his body is treated

56 POPULAR science: MONTHLY,

with the greatest reverence. If he happens to be a negrito of
the Bayou Goula, Bayou St. Martins, or Bayou la Teche neigh-
borhood, or if he be one of those little people who dwell among
the morasses and swamps of central Florida, his corpse is wrapped
in bark, securely corded about with strips of hide, and hidden
away in some secret place in the almost impenetrable forest.
His ghost is supposed to linger in the neighborhood of his body ;
hence no negrito will ever approach the vicinity of his grave for
fear of giving ojffense, and thereby incurring the enmity of the
dead man, which would entail untold and unmentionable horrors.

These little men make splendid hunters, for they seem to have
regained (if they have ever lost, which I greatly doubt) that
acuteness of sight, smell, and hearing which makes their proto-
types in India the very best of shikaris. There is no animal in
all the woods their equal in cunning; there is no fish in any
landlocked bayou or swiftly running stream which can avoid
their rude but cunningly set nets and traps.

With their return to savagery these pygmies of the United
States seem to have lost all desire for the comforts and refine-
ments of civilization. Their huts among the moss-covered trees
lining the bayous of Louisiana, or their still more miserable
hutches in the Everglades of Florida, remind one very much of
the pictured burrows of the Akka, their kinsmen, who dwell in
the vast forest solitudes of Central Africa. Like that remnant
of the Seminoles also living among the labyrinthine fastnesses of
that vast waste of swamp, brake, and forest — the Everglades —
these black manikins shun the haunts of men, and when discuss-
ing them one quotes almost involuntarily the thoughts of Stan-
ley when he first saw the pygmy of Avatiko. When the wave of
immigration turns southward, which it will eventually do, these
little people will lose forever their individuality and become
merged into the general population. Crossing will finally oblit-
erate the pure type, but we will still continue to find, for an in-
definite length of time, among our colored population, individu-
als with round heads and undersized bodies who will serve to
show that once the pygmies dwelt among us.

Some great advantages are claimed for the metal glucinum which may
eventually give it a considerable position in electrical industry. Its resist-
ance to traction is greater than that of iron, and its electrical conductivity
is equivalent to that of silver. It should therefore have a greater mechan-
ical resistance than iron, be a better conductor than copper, and, having a
specific gravity of only 2, be lighter than aluminum ; and these qualities,
according to the Journal des Inventeurs, have been verified by experiment.
Its commercial value is given as equivalent to about one hundred and sixty
times less per volume and ten times less by weight than that of platinum.

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 57
PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS.

By a. E. OUTERBRIDGE, Jr.

IN studying the important question of management of employees
of industrial establishments from a common-sense as well as
just and humanitarian point of view, it is necessary to remember
that a factory is not an eleemosynary institution ; the functions
of the two are radically different, and experience has proved that
modern manufacturing industries can not be practically con-
ducted under the old idea of paternal or patriarchal regulations.
The operative is jealous of his personal freedom and suspicious of
purely philanthropic schemes originating within the establish-
ment, and he resents any beneficial regulations savoring of char-
ity. He does not complain of the strict enforcement of just rules,
but he is quick to take advantage of laxity on the part of over-
seers, which, if continued, soon leads to chaos. On the other
hand, unjust regulations can not be permanently enforced under
the modern labor restrictions, for labor legislation in this country
is extremely comprehensive, and takes cognizance of such infrac-
tions.* In some instances where labor legislation has been elabo-
rated to a degree which was unduly oppressive to employers,
it has served to restrict industrial development, reacting upon
the intended beneficiary — the employee — and has necessitated the
abandonment of such policy. The " granger legislation " relating
to railroads in some of the Western States affords a well-known
illustration of this tendency. Employees are no longer ignorant
of their rights or privileges, and employers, as a rule, neither care
nor dare to trample upon them ; but experience has also proved
that wherever numbers of men are massed together, a certain
degree of strict rule is essential to the preservation of order and
proper conduct of business.

Many of the rules and regulations of workshops and factories
which appear harsh or unjust to the uninitiated are in reality
necessary to protect the faithful employee from impositions of

* The labor laws differ greatly in the different States. Massachusetts has led the way
in such legislation, and the other States are following in her footsteps. Most of these laws
increase the responsibilities of employers, thus : Methods of protection from fire and acci-
dent must be provided in all factories and workshops, and employers can not by contract
exempt themselves from liability for injuries to an employee. The buildings must be pro-
vided with proper sanitary arrangements ; each room where machinery is placed must be
connected with the engine room by speaking tubes, electric bells, or appliances to control
the motive power.

The most minute regulations relating to the entire economic system of factory construc-
tion, operation, and inspection exist ; and laws governing the payment of wages, exemption
from fines or garnishment of wages or tools of trade for debts, etc., cover every phase of
employment growing out of the factory system and are distinctly favorable to labor.
TOL. XLIX— 6

58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

shirkers, of whom there are always a certain number even in the
best-regulated establishments.

It is a favorite observation with writers on social and political
economy that the world is continually passing through periods of
" social evolution " ; one of the latest and most popular of these
authors (Benjamin Kidd) calls the present time "the most re-
markable epoch in the history of human thought." Portents of
impending changes in the established order of things, affecting
the very foundations of society and the welfare of mankind, are
frequently revealed to the innate perceptions of such writers ; and
it would seem from some of these— more especially the German
authors — that the industrial world is now upon the verge of a
social cataclysm, out of which a new civilization, the resultant
of many opposing forces, would be evolved. Such prophecies
(like Benner's) have hitherto apparently obeyed the "law of
averages " with respect to the proportion of hits and misses ; yet
new forecasters of future social conditions, who believe that they
perceive shadows of "coming events" cast before, continue to
decipher these signs according to their introspective vision rather
than through the light of past experience.

The fundamental principle of the Malthusian theory, that
population tends to increase in geometrical progression and that
the supply of food and other necessaries of life can only be in-
creased in arithmetical progression, tersely expressed the social
problem of Malthus's generation ; but the subsequent wresting
from Nature of virgin soil of vast extent in India, Russia, America,
and other parts of the globe, affording feeding ground for count-
less flocks and herds, together with facilities for plowing, sow-
ing, and reaping unlimited crops through the aid of modern agri-
cultural machinery, and the modern methods of rapid distribution,
changed all the former conditions, rendering the law inoperative
during the century which has elapsed since its promulgation.
Some of the more recent prophecies have proved equally abor-
tive, and others are likely to share the same fate in the near
future.

The growth of socialism in Europe during the past quarter of
a century is one of the " signs of the times " which is just now
affording a fruitful field for such speculations. If we permit
ourselves to view the present state of civilization through the
spectacles of some of these theorists, or if we countenance the
foreign socialistic propaganda, we must, it seems to me, close our
eyes to countless evidences of truly wonderful progress which
has been made by the wage-earning class in America during this
period in mental, moral, and material welfare. The operative of
to-day is not only the peer but the superior of his predecessor in
all the qualifications that form the mental gauge by which we

PENDING PROBLEMS FOE WAGE-EARNERS. 59

may measure tlie intellectual and social relations that an indi-
vidual bears to the community in which he lives.

We may freely admit the statement of the socialist that " the
rich are growing richer," but it does not follow as a corollary that
the poor are growing poorer. It is true that capital through
combination has vastly increased its power to organize and prose-
cute industrial pursuits on a scale of unprecedented magnitude,
and that, especially as the result of energetic exploitation of new
inventions, large rewards have. been gained by bold investors;
but I claim that, in the aggregate, labor has gained a much
larger share of these benefits without incurring any of the risks.

The rich pecuniary rewards which have been reaped by Sir
Henry Bessemer, and by other manufacturers who were far-seeing
and courageous enough to develop his cheap process of steel-mak-
ing and its later modifications, make but a small item when com-
pared to the countless millions paid to labor during the past thirty
years as the result of the development of these discoveries through
the aid of capital. The Bessemer process of steel-making did more
than this for labor : it sounded the death knell of the most exhaust-
ing form of toil known to man, that inferno of labor, the pud-
dling of boiling iron by human hands. Many similar illustrations
could be given.

I claim that modern mechanical inventions have in all cases
proved to be distinctively beneficial to the wage-earner: he is,
through their aid, better housed, better fed, better clothed, better
educated, has more numerous and better amusements, and is thus
approaching more nearly to the condition of the employer. Indeed,
the wage-earner to-day enjoys many advantages of civilization
which were unknown to employers of former generations.

Herr Liebknecht, the leader of the Social Democrats in the
Reichstag, presented to American readers The Programme of Ger-
man Socialism in The Forum. I carefully studied his paper with
the view of discovering, if possible, some rational explanation of
the problem, " How is socialism going to benefit the condition of
the working class in America ? " but the question remains unan-
swered. It is true that figures are given showing the marvelous
growth of social democracy in the German Empire since 1890, and
the author glories in the title which he gives to German Social-
Democracy, viz., " the party of the discontented " ; he also per-
ceives signs of " an impending social crisis" ; he likens the struggle
between socialism and the Government to the fable of the Goblin
and the Peasant ; tut the introduction of such a movement into
this country could, I think, be more appropriately likened to the
fable of the killing of the goose that laid the golden Qgg,

The recent presence in this country of more than one agitator
from abroad, and the industrious dissemination of socialistic lit-

6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

erature among our workingmen with the evident intention of
making proselytes, thereby disturbing the peace of mind of the
operative, endangering the stability of our industrial laws, and
tending to nullify the gain which has come to wage-earners in
America through the comparative freedom from such disturbing
elements, is a subject of concern to all friends of the working-
men.

In Germany the literature of socialism has not confined itself
to agitation of labor questions, but has catered to the demand for
popular reading and also for popular education. In this way it
gained the confidence of the people. " It has abused this confi-
dence by giving distorted views of the writings of many of the
greatest thinkers and educators " ; it has used popular education
as a club with which to beat into ignorant skulls socialistic propa-
ganda. The enormous socialistic vote in Germany proves the
success of the force used. Such a force, if properly applied, would
be immensely beneficial to humanity ; but improperly used, social-
ism is, as Herbert Spencer declares, " the greatest calamity that
has ever befallen the human race."

The most intelligible exposition of modern German socialism
may be found in a little book entitled Three Months in a Work-
shop, written by a student, Paul Gohre. In a prefatory note to
the English translation, by Prof. Richard T. Ely, it appears that
" Mr. Gohre, perplexed by conflicting theories and reports touch-
ing the lot of the German wage- earners, determines to become a
wage-earner himself, and, donning the garb of a workman, finds
employment in a large establishment for the manufacture of
machine tools in Saxony ; he mingles for three months with his
fellows, who never supposed him to be anything else than a wage-
earner ; he shares their life, participates in their amusements,
attends their political meetings, and then tells what he has seen
with that simplicity which is itself literary art of a high order.
The narrative is plain, straightforward, truthful."

The book is more than this : it is a practical view of a subject
which has been clouded in mists. The writer has shown himself
a keen observer, a disinterested and enthusiastic investigator,
having nerve to enter the factory on the lowest rung of the ladder
and to live and toil with the humblest employees, for the definite
purpose of grasping the bottom facts of socialism as it is compre-
hended by the workingmen themselves, not as presented to the
world by the leaders in the movement, many of whom do not
really belong to the class they assume to represent. That Mr.
Gohre should have succeeded, under these heroic conditions, in
showing in his little book a clearer insight into the labor ques-
tion and social democracy in Germany than can be found in many
more elaborate treatises, is not altogether surprising. In the

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 61

chapters Work in the Factory, and The Material Condition of my
Fellow- Workmen, the American student and operative will recog-
nize abuses still existing in Germany which our more progressive
establishments have eliminated. The contrast also in rates of
wages and quality of living with wage-earners in America will
excite sympathy, but will also weld the American more firmly to
the belief that the condition of the wage- earner in this country is
a happy and fortunate one by comparison ; that its stability must
not be jeopardized by countenancing socialistic agitation.*

In the chapters on Political Tendencies of my Fellow- Work-
men and Social Democracy the student of industrial sociology
will find much valuable information. In the chapters on Moral
Conditions, and Education and Religion, ethical questions are
plainly discussed. The final chapter, on Results and Demands,
will interest all readers. It is shown that the labor question is
not merely a wage question with the vast majority of the laboring
class. It is only one factor in the movement — perhaps the most
tangible, but not the most important or determinative one.
" There is an ardent longing on the part of the whole class of
factory labor for more respect and recognition, for greater actual
and social equality in addition to the formal and political equality
which is theirs already. ... It is the irresistible impulse to a
larger intellectual freedom, the craving for the benefits of knowl-
edge and education, and for a fuller understanding of those high
and lofty problems of the human soul which, despite the univer-
sal pursuit of wealth and externals, rise up before humanity to-
day, new riddles in new forms. All this, rough, discordant, full

* On entering the shops, Mr. Gohre received twenty pfcnnige (4 8 cents) per hour.
Compulsory deductions were made for assessments for sick-benefits, insurance, fines for
lateness or carelessness, etc.

Men working at the vise earned fifteen to twenty-one marks ($3.60 to $5.04) per week ;
their foremen, $5.28 to $6.72 ; drillers working on time, $3.60 to $4.56. " Piece workers "
made considerably more. A specially skilled workman " would receive as much as forty
marks ($9.60) per week." It thus appears that the highest wage of the most skilled oper-
ative slightly exceeds the lowest wage for unskilled labor in this country. The home life of
the men was shown to be on a plane far below that of the average wage-earner in America.

Some suggestive and important information is to be gathered from a book just issued by
the British Board of Trade, giving the statistics of wages paid for manual labor in Great
Britain. From this it seems that the average earned by men is $6.03 a week ; by women,
$3.08 ; by boys, $2.24 ; and by girls, $1.56. These are the averages of the wages of 816,-
106 persons. In Scotland the rates are lower than in England by ten and in Ireland by
some twenty per cent. The best-paid trade is that of builders, and then, in order, distillers,
brewers, metal workers, engineers, sawmill workers, coach builders, and printers. Railroad
men average five dollars a week. The chances of earning ten dollars a week are not com-
mon. Thirty-seven per cent of the printers, thirty-three per cent of the tinplate workers,
thirteen per cent of the shipbuilders, eleven per cent of copper and brass workers, and ten
per cent of coopers attain that amount. On the whole, the report indicates that wages ia
, all British ti-ades are on the increase, but at a very slow rate of progress.

62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of anomalies and extravagancies, yet plainly visible to the observ-
ant eye, stamps the beginning of the labor movement in Ger-
many."

If confined to such lofty aims, the mission of socialism would
be worthy of, and would command the sympathy and hearty co-
operation of all enlightened people ; but Mr. Gohre shows that it
is necessary first to unmask the hypocrisy of social- democratic
literature, to oppose the true to the false, the impartial to the
partisan; he tells us that "German Social Democracy is to-day
not merely a political party, not merely the promoter of a new
system of economics, or even both of these and nothing more ; it
is also the embodiment of a philosophy, a logical, anti- Christian,
materialistic conception of the universe. Upon this materialistic
system it founds its economic and political system. This principle,
the caricature of a so-called science, worshiped by its followers, is
the corner stone of the party, gives it authority and ideals, and
exercises the most fatal and lasting influence, not so much on the
social and political tendencies as on the intellectual and ethical
character of the whole German laboring class." This new gospel
of socialism ran like wildfire among the hundreds of thousands
of German workingmen. Herr Liebknecht tells us that " nearly
two millions of men voted for the socialistic programme on the 15th
of June, 1893, to whom must be added nearly a million of voteless
young men between the ages of twenty and twenty-five years."

The spread of socialism in Germany has now reached the de-
gree which is popularly termed with us a " craze." Its earliest con-
verts became its new prophets, its inspired preachers ; from inner
conviction they gave their whole strength, their utmost capacity,
to the cause. " Wherever two or three met together men set forth
and discussed the thoughts they had imbibed from one book or
half a dozen books . of the new literature ; sometimes fairly
grasped, sometimes only half comprehended and more than half
forgotten, but always brought afresh to their minds by the arti-
cles in their social-democratic paper. ... The effect of this agita-
tion was the one desired. Under its pressure all the old youthful
training of the workman gave way and is still giving way in
every individual who brings such training with him to a factory
where the spirit of social democracy prevails."

If, now, we cull out these true and noble yearnings of the work-
ingmen, discarding the sophistries of their self-elected leaders, we
find that their aims are those which have already been largely
attained by the wage-earning class in America through educa-
tion ; and while we may reasonably sympathize with the German
" party of the discontented," we have nothing to gain by the dis-
semination of their socialistic literature, though they have much
to learn from us.

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 63

In England the socialistic movement presents a different phase
of development ; there are fewer factions or cliques of social-
ists, and the tendency toward anarchism, while not so rabid as
among the most radical wing of the party in Germany, is appar-
ently even more generally diffused. Some of the recent social-
istic literature published in England has a decided flavor of an-
archism, at least in so far as it preaches the overthrow of laws by
which land is held in private ownership ; the private or corporate
ownership of all kinds of property, factories, railroads, telegraphs,
etc. ; and evidences are not lacking of widespread discontent and
unrest among the industrial population, which devours such litera-
ture with avidity. It is reported that a million copies of a single
book of this character have recently been sold to workingmen in
England.

The latest cabled reports indicate that a reaction in labor senti-
ment has set in in England. There was recently a " Free Labor
Congress " in session at Newcastle. The president's opening ad-
dress is reported to have been " a vigorous attack on trades unions,
which, he declared, were manipulated by self-seekers, whose tyr-
anny disgraced the cause of labor." His association, he said, had
already formed " boards of conciliation " at many important cen-
ters. These boards were formed of equal numbers of masters and
operatives, and were all working in perfect harmony. An editorial
writer, commenting upon this cablegram, says : " The revolt from
trades unions was not unexpected. It was bound to come as soon
as the more intelligent workmen perceived that they could no
longer own themselves, but were virtually made slaves of the
lazy and inefficient members of the organization. It is singular
that this should have been perceived first in England instead of
in America." This writer is evidently not well posted in the his-
tory of the rise and fall of several labor unions in this country,
which a few years ago counted their members by thousands
where they now number units. Compared with a period of four
or five years ago the majority of the unions have sunk into a con-
dition of " innocuous desuetude," controlled by cranks.

Labor unions, however, should not all be classed under one
category, for some of these are beneficial organizations, with high
motives, sound constitutions, and, above all, wise leaders. Such
organizations are opposed to violence and disorder, encourage
harmony and arbitration, and are mutually beneficial and helpful
to employer and employee ; they are aiding to discourage the
spread of anarchism and socialism in this country.

Socialistic theories are inimical to American ideas and princi-
ples, for the humblest workman is a free citizen, to whom a path-
way is opened to the highest positions of honor and wealth.
Many of our foremost men have risen from lowest origin, and

64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have no cause to be ashamed thereof. Socialism can offer no
commensurate advantages ; its tendency is not to raise the masses
to a higher plane, but to reduce the competent to the level of the
incompetent. The world is always crowded with incompetent op-
eratives, while there is at the same time an unsatisfied demand for
the absolutely competent.

In daily friendly intercourse with workingmen, extending over
a period of twenty years, I have found a prevalent idea in many
minds that employers of labor are, as a class, jealous of the mate-
rial advancement of wage-earners beyond a certain point ; that a
maximum wage is soon reached beyond which they can not hope to
pass, and that extra effort on their part would result merely in an
increase of tasks without a corresponding increase of pay. This
impression is more generally inculcated in the minds of opera-
tives than employers realize, and it operates to their mutual dis-
advantage. Modern " piece-work " systems of pay have been de-
vised (and are now generally practiced) with a view of stimulating
workmen to produce the greatest output and largest percentage
of perfect work ; but these elaborate systems are to a certain ex-
tent rendered inoperative . by reason of the suspicion mentioned.
That there may have been, and may still be, some ground for
such impressions I do not dispute, but I do believe that a more
enlightened view of the mutual • relations existing between em-
ployer and employee is gradually permeating the industrial
world.

The great development of mechanical invention has not only
increased the demand for skilled labor by increasing the output
and opening constantly new fields of labor, but it has increased
tenfold, and in some instances one hundredfold, the possible
product of labor per capita. This is the reason why the Amer-
ican employer, paying the high-est wages in the world, is never-
theless able to compete in the markets of Europe with so-called
" pauper labor " in many manufactured articles.*

* Mr. Mulhall, the English statistician, has recently published some tables relating to
the producing power of the different nations of the earth. They show an enormous in-
crease during the latter half of the century of the productive power of the people of this
country, and they prove, moreover, that no other nations possess equal producing power jt)<?r
caput. By the figures which he has tabulated Mr. Mulhall shows that from 1820 to 1890
the " foot-ton " power of the United States increased from 4,292,000,000 of foot tons daily
to 129,306,000,000 foot tons. A foot ton is a method that statisticians have of measuring
the producing powers of a country. It signifies the ability of a man to accomplish with
ordinary exertion in ten hours an amount of work equal to raising 300 tons one foot high.
In 1820 the forces at the command of the Americans were equal to 446 foot tons of power
per caput of the population. By 1890 the productive forces had increased to 1,940 foot
tons per caput. These forces are now busily engaged in developing the resources of the
country, in cultivating the soil, working the mines, operating the industries, carrying on the
commerce, or in looking after the development of the mental powers and the enlightenment

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS., 65

It has been proved by actual experiment on a large scale in
certain sections of this country that ignorant foreign pauper labor
in manufacturing industries is ultimately the most costly, and the
aim of enlightened employers to-day is not to obtain the cheapest
labor but the most intelligent service. The true policy of the
workingman is, therefore, not agitation but education.*

The organization through the aid of capital of large industrial
operations, superseding former small independent industries, is a
frequent source of lamentation on the part of well-meaning philan-
thropists and others, on the theory that the small merchant has
been injured thereby. This is probably true in isolated instances,
but the evidence that the wage-earner (the subject of our discus-
sion) has been benefited by improved regulations, superior fac-
tory buildings, and amelioration of exhausting toil, under mod-
ern methods, is overwhelming.

Moreover, the employment of large capital and improved ma-
chinery has enormously increased production and decreased cost
to the consumer. Wages are higher and cost of living is lower
than formerly. The average wage- earner in America lives to-
day in a manner quite superior to the small manufacturer of for-
mer days. The large factories employ armies of skilled opera-
tives many of whom would be incompetent to conduct even small
industries successfully. They are reasonably insured of a fixed
income, and are often enabled, by saving a portion of their wages,
to become small capitalists themselves. Capital is, after all,
nothing more than the aggregate savings of labor. The great
financial operations are conducted by the aid of these savings of
the masses, otherwise the thrifty workingman could receive no
interest on his deposit in the savings bank. The individual mil-
lionaire is a much less important factor in the world's work than
the socialistic agitator would have us believe.

The " good old times " are hallowed in our recollections and in
our traditions, but when subjected to critical comparison with the
improved civilization of modern times, we find, I think, that the

of the people, whereby their producing powers may be still further increased. Next to
America in the scale comes Great Britain, the producing power of which is 1,470 foot
tons to the inhabitant daily. Germany's forces amount to 902 foot tons for each person
daily, those of France to 910 foot tons, those of Spain to 590 foot tons, those of Austria to
660 foot tons, and those of Italy to 380 foot tons.

* Thomas Carlyle, in his essay on Labor, said : " The latest gospel in the world is. Know
thy work and do it ; . . . for labor is life ; from the inmost heart of the worker rises this
God-given force. . . . Knowledge, that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that, for
Nature herself accredits that, says ' Yea ' to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge
but what thou hast got by working ; the rest is all a hypothesis of knowledge — a thing to
be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic voi-tices, ' till we try
it and fix it.'"

66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

masses have gained immeasurably in all the comforts and con-
veniences of life, in social position, in political power, in freedom
from care, in health and happiness.

The coming conflict between proletariat and plutocrat is a
favorite theme with socialistic writers. According to these,
wealth is per se criminal, and its chief employment the oppression
of the poor. I claim that modern experience proves the antithesis
of this statement, which selects exceptional instances of financial
crimes and attempts to use these as a blanket with which to
smother all the good deeds and grand undertakings in which
capital is ever engaging. Patriotic sentiment also protests against
such statements. The aid of capital has been the means within
little more than a century of raising the United States of America
from the condition of an insignificant agricultural colony, which
was not permitted under monarchical rule to manufacture the
simplest articles for home consumption, into the greatest work-
shop of the world, and has placed it in the front rank of wealth
and power among nations.*

Capital has stimulated the inventive faculty of the people and
thereby aided the operative in many instances to emerge from the
condition of the laborer into that of the capitalist. Very many,
perhaps a majority of employers in this country, are men who
have risen from the ranks of labor.

The reckless denunciation of wealth by foreign socialistic
agitators is the chief danger confronting the industrial class in
America to-day, since it tends to retard investment of capital in
industrial enterprises, and thus to restrict the employment of
labor. It is far easier for the agitator to " kill the goose that
lays the golden eg^ " than it is for the mischief-maker to turn his
hand to honest labor. The free soil of America is not adapted to
the growth of such noxious weeds, and the sooner such pernicious
doctrines are eradicated the sooner will our industrial population
reap the rewards to be gained in the returning prosperity for
which it has so long and patiently waited.

* The first spinning jenny ever seen in America was secretly imported from England
and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1775. In 1774 the British Parliament enacted strmgent
laws prohibiting the exportation to America of textile machinery. It was provided (by 21
George III, chap. 37) that " any person who packed or put on board, or caused to be brought
to any place in order to be put on any vessel for exportation, any machine, engine, tool,
press, paper, utensil, or silk manufacture of the kingdom, or goods wherein wool, cotton,
linen, or silk are used, or any model or plan of such machiivery, tool, engine, press, utensil,
or implement, should forfeit every such machine, etc., and all goods packed therewith, and
£200, and suffer imprisonment for one year." In 1782 a law was enacted which prohibited,
under penalty of £500, the exportation or attempt to export " blocks, plates, engines, tools,
or utensils used in, or which are proper for, the preparing or finishing of calico, muslin,
etc." The same act prohibited transportation of tools employed in iron and steel manu-
factures.— United States Tenth Census, vol. ii, p. 537.

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 67

APPENDIX.

The Cost and Danger of Strikes. — Few persons are aware of the
enormous annual loss of wages due to strikes. Startling figures are fur-
nished by the Labor Bureau at Washington in a recent publication cover-
ing the period from 1881 to 1894 inclusive.

It appears that no less than 3,714,406 persons were thrown out of em-
ployment, suffering a loss in wages of $163,807,866. Fifty-five and a half
per cent of the strikes failed entirely ; thirty-two per cent are classed as
successful, and twelve and a half per cent as doubtful or partly success-
ful. Labor organizations contributed $10,914,406 to assist strikers.

The promoters of strikes argue to their comrades that unsuccessful
efforts are nevertheless ultimately beneficial ; but study of the subject has
led me to take the opposite view, viz., that all strikes of skilled workmen
are, in the end, harmful to the participants. No one single cause has done
more, in my opinion, to hasten the introduction of entirely automatic
machinery in operations where a certain degree of skilled labor was con-
sidered indispensable, than strikes on the part of such skilled employees.
Numerous instances might be recalled where large manufacturers have, on
account of strikes, cheerfully expended immense sums of money in per-
fecting automatic machinery, not primarily to effect economy in wages, but
as an insurance against future danger from such causes.

A notable instance of this nature occurred a few years ago at one of
the largest iron and steel works in the world. In a certain department
specially skilled men were able to make wages which now seem incredible;
they were, however, paid a percentage upon the tonnage, and, owing to
enormous output, the profits of these operatives exceeded in some years that
of many successful manufacturers having large capital at stake. These
men considered themselves indispensable, and struck, not for higher wages
or shorter hours but at the dictation of outsiders. When work was re-
sumed they found their occupation gone forever: automatic machinery had
supplanted the former skilled labor.

I do not believe that any employee (I am one myself) is indispensable,
and many highly skilled and otherwise valuable operatives have, unfor-
tunately for themselves, failed to appreciate this fact until too late.

The danger I have indicated regarding the effect upon skilled labor of
strikes does not appear to have presented itself to the minds of the work-
ingmen, and if their leaders have perceived it they have concealed it. I
regard the strike as a barbaric w^eapon of attack, resembling somewhat the
boomerang, which, we are told, frequently returns and injures its pro-
jector.

Another element of danger to the workingman which usually accom-
panies a strike is the license which it affords to the irresponsible and law-
less element of society to commit depredations, endangering the lives and
property of innocent persons, and sometimes compelling the use of armed
force for its suppression. The strikers, though innocent of these overt
acts, are injured thereby, and the suspicion lurking in many minds is not
without foundation, that some leaders of strikes, while openly exhorting
their followers to preserve the peace, secretly count upon this outside
aid ; and if they do not, they are strangely blind to the result of past ex-
perience.

68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The Eight-hour Agitation. —This is the fundamental principle or
philosophy of the trade-union movement in this country, and in 1888 " the
American Federation of Labor," numerically one of the strongest of the
unions, voted to unite with the " Eight-hour League," and thenceforth to
concentrate all effort on the struggle for eight hours. Their jjrogramme
was then to take charge of one trade at a time. Thus, in 1890, the gage of
battle fell to the lot of the carpenters, who accordingly struck, under
orders, for an eight-hour day on May 1st, and won temporary victories in
one hundred and thirty-seven cities. Plans were laid for the miners to
strike, on May 1, 1891, for eight hours, but the conditions were not then
favorable, and although these plans have since been in abeyance owing to.
depressed conditions of trade, they have not been abandoned, and I have
reason to believe that employers in almost all trades will be called upon to
meet this question in the not very distant future.

The argument of the eight-hour philosophers is that, by restricting the
hours of work, more laborers must be employed and the idle surplus pro-
vided for ; I consider that this is specious reasoning. The overflowing
stream of immigration from European countries, attracted to America by
comparatively high wages, sufiices even now to produce a permanent
flood, at least in the fields of unskilled labor. If to this we add a still more
powerful attraction of eight hours forming a legal working day, the tidal
wave flowing from all the less favored countries in the world would swamp
our native industrial population and induce a condition which would be far
less favorable to them than that which now obtains.*

* I am able to substantiate these views by figures bearing upon the subject. The official
statistician of Paris, M. Berthelot, gives th^ proportion of foreigners in that city as 7 '5 per
cent ; these are chiefly wealthy persons who distribute a portion of their funds among the
tradespeople. London and Vienna have each 2-2 per cent, Berlin has 1*1 per cent of
foreigners, also mainly persons of wealth.

The foreigners residing in American cities are chiefly poor immigrants who compete
with the native working class for wages, and are accustomed and content to live in compara-
tive squalor. The percentages of "foreign born" to total population in five principal
American cities are as follows: Philadelphia, 25*'74 per cent; Boston, 35-27 per cent; New
York, 42-23 per cent; Chicago, 40-98 per cent; Milwaukee, 38-92 per cent. More than
thirty per cent of the foreign-born males, twenty-one years of age and over, in the five cities
named, are aliens. The percentages of " persons of foreign parentage " to total population
in these cities are as follows: Philadelphia, 56-58 percent; Boston, 67*96 percent; Chi-
cago, 77-90 per cent; New York, 80*46 per cent; Milwaukee, 86-36 per cent. This infor-
mation was courteously furnished by the Chief of Census Division, Department of the Inte-
rior, Washington, March 12, 1896,

More rigid enforcement of contract-labor laws has decreased importation of foreign
labor imder direct or written contract, but there is ample evidence that Italian labor pur-
veyors still influence such immigration. Immigrant inspectors Birmingham and Hinkle
reported (under date of January 11, 1895) to the Secretary of the Immigration Investigation
Committee, among other facts, as follows : " Mr. Desabadia (an Italian padrone of New
York) informed us that he was regularly engaged in supplying Italian laborers in any num-
bers to contractors or others desiring labor done; that he was prepared now to furnish
from two to six hundred men (Italians) for work of any nature ; that he could furnish
stonemasons, carpenters, or men of almost any of the building operations,"

The equivalent of the padrone system is not confined to Italians, Poles, Hungarians,
Greeks, and other foreigners, temporarily camping in this country, are forwarded " on call "

PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 69

The eight-hour party has succeeded through political influence in mak-
ing eight hours a legal working day in governmental employment, and
largely also in municipal contracts, and violators of the law have been
rigorously prosecuted. A remarkable case occurred in Buffalo,* which
worked great hardship upon a citizen, and led to the decision of Justice
White, of the Superior Court at Buffalo, declaring the eight-hour law un-
constitutional, based upon the clause of the Constitution which provides
that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of the law." That provision of the Constitution has been construed
to mean that the rights and privileges of a citizen to make contracts relat-

wherever large operations are in progress, crowding out American labor by accepting lower
wages. In Texas and other border States invasions of Mexicans occur at regular intervals,
especially at sheep-shearing time ; these people contribute nothing to the wealth of the
country, and patronize the railways by walking home on the ties !

An investigation made by the Senate Committee on Immigration in 1893 (Senator Hill
chairman) developed the startling fact that Italian bankers remitted to Italy from New
York city alone twenty-five to thirty millions of dollars a year, largely savings of " Dago "
laborers, and a marked increase in wealth in certain sections of Italy has been traced
directly to money earned in the United States by these " birds of passage." Italians who
have become domiciled here for a few years are beginning to make incursions into skilled
labor fields where they were unknown formerly, and where even such a suggestion would
have been ridiculed. In the shoe trade, for example, it is said that large numbers of
Italians have been substituted for American workmen who went out on strike some
time ago.

The facts stated in these various footnotes have been gathered at different times during
several years by the writer from a variety of independent sources, and it is only when
placed in juxtaposition that their true significance becomes apparent. These illustrations
are but a few samples of facts at hand that are too numerous to mention, and they present
practical problems for legislators and workers of far more importance than any theoretical
discussions.

* "Henry J. Warren, Superintendent of the Barber Asphalt Company, was convicted by
a police court in Buffalo of a misdemeanor for a violation of this (eight-hour) section of the
Buffalo charter, and punished by imprisonment. From his conviction he appealed to the
Court of Sessions and to the General Term of the Supreme Court, where the conviction was
affirmed, the courts holding the act constitutional and the conviction valid. As Warren
could not by law appeal to the Court of Appeals in that case, he sued out a writ of habeas
corpus in the Supreme Court, to test the questions affecting the validity of the conviction,
and to inquire by what authority he was restrained of his liberty. This proceeding is a
good illustration of the efficacy of the ancient writ of habeas corpus, for, although the Special
and General Terms of the Supreme Court dismissed the writ, and again declared the pro-
hibitory statute constitutional and the accused properly convicted ; yet upon an appeal to the
Court of Appeals the decisions of the lower courts were reversed, and the arrest, trial, and
conviction declared without jurisdiction and void.

" After this long and tedious fight Warren was released, only to be arrested again for a
violation of the eight-hour law, this time for employing an alien Italian laborer. He was
indicted by the grand jury, and convicted in the Superior Court at Buffalo. His counsel
contended that the act in question, so far as it seemed to prohibit the employment of alien
laborers upon public works, was repugnant to the Federal and State Constitutions and to
the treaty between the United States and Italy. Upon an appeal to the General Term of
the Superior Court, the act, so far as relates to the employment of aliens, was declared un-
constitutional, and Warren was discharged." (People vs. Warren, W Hun., 120 ; People
ex ret. Warren vs. Sheriff, 144 N. Y., 225.)

70 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ing to his business or property can not be interfered with by legislation.
It has been declared by the courts that liberty, in its broad sense, as under-
stood in this country, means the right not only of freedom from actual im-
prisonment, but the right of one to use his faculties in all lawful ways, to
live and work where he will, to earn his livelihood in any lawful calling,
and to pursue any lawful trade or vocation. All laws, therefore, which
impair or trammel these rights, which limit one in his choice of a trade or
profession, or confine him to work or live in a specified locality, or exclude
him from his own house, or restrain his otherwise lawful movements, ex-
cept where the public health or safety intervenes, are infringements upon
his fundamental rights of liberty, which are under constitutional pro-
tection. (People vs. Warren, 34 N. Y. Supp. Superior Court, Buffalo, 942.)

The impossibility of regulating the rate and hours of labor by legisla-
tion unless in the exercise of the police power, or law of public health and
safety, was recognized years ago by Chief-Justice Euger, in McCarthy vs.
Mayor, who said in reference to the original eight-hour law then under
discussion :

'' It is well to premise that this act was not intended to affect or regulate
the rate of wages which should govern as between employer and employee.
That subject is left by the act, as it always must remain, open, to be fixed by
the agreement of the parties intending to enter into those relations. Expe-
rience has shown that legislation on the subject must always be futile and
ineffectual, for the reason that it is controlled by the natural laws determin-
ing the value of labor and property, and which are as much beyond the
power of statutes to affect as they are above the control of the wishes of the
parties interested therein. "

I do not mean to imply from the foregoing statements that I am opposed
to shorter hours for labor ; on the contrary, I believe that a shorter working
day, wherever it is practicable, is beneficial alike to employee and employer ;
but under present conditions, it appears to me, after a careful survey of the
field, that there are some prominent obstructions which must be removed
before an eight-hour day can be universally adopted, or before the opera-
tives who now work ten hours a day can reasonably hope for a general
reduction to eight hours without a corresponding reduction of wages.

Wise men usually count the cost of any new undertaking before embark-
ing in it, and a very simple calculation will show surprising figures as to
the additional cost of manufacture should employers be called upon to pay
the same wage for eight hours' that they now pay for ten hours' work. Let
us assume that an establishment employs a thousand hands (there are fac-
tories having capacity for four or five times this number), a reduction of
two hours per day per man would mean an aggregate of two thousand
hours' reduction per day in the shop. Assuming the average wage to be ten
cents an hour (this is much below the true average), the additional cost for
this item alone would be two hundred dollars per day ; while the loss from
decreased output and increased fixed charges, rate of interest on plant, etc.,
per unit of product, would, I believe, extinguish any margin of profit ob-
tained under present prices in any manufactured article whei'e competition
is keen. It is of course possible that in those occupations in which the
output depends more upon manual dexterity than upon the mere tending
of automatic machinery a decrease of hours may be partly offset by an
increase of effort ; but this would, I think, prove an exception, the effect of

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS. 71

which is discounted, in part at least, by the low figure selected to represent
average wages.

It is apparent that a rearrangement of some kind would be necessary ; is
it not likely that this rearrangement would be found in a corresponding
reduction of wages ?

Sympathizing as I do with all legitimate efforts of workingmen to bet-
ter their condition, it appears to me that the aim of their organizations
should be to secure a reduction in the hours of those workers who are com-
pelled to submit to clearly excessive consecutive hours of attention to duty
— conditions that are not only deleterious to the welfare and happiness of
the laborer himself, but in some instances increasing the danger to life and
limb of others whose interest and sympathy would be a powerful lever, if
properly applied, to help to remove this incubus resting at present upon the
boasted freedom of labor in this country.

If the views which I have here advanced shall have the effect of tend-
ing, on the one hand, to discourage unwise and impracticable schemes of
some misguided wage- workers, and, on the other hand, to stimulate keener
and more general interest on the part of employers of labor in the welfare
of their operatives, and thus to foster a closer union between these two great
interdependent elements of society, I shall feel that my efforts have been
repaid. The nature of my occupation for the past fifteen years has per-
haps afforded unusually favorable opportunities for viewing both sides of
the sociological questions here discussed ; it has certainly aroused keen per-
sonal interest in the subject and has stimulated study of these problems.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS.

By D. T. MACDOUGAL,
assistant professor of botany in the university of minnesota.

THAT the color exhibited by the roots, stems, leaves, and
especially flowers and fruits of plants received serious atten-
tion at a very early date is well attested by ancient record. It
was only in comparatively recent time, however, that the daring
conjecture was hazarded that even such an abundant, widely
distributed, and characteristic color as chlorophyll (leaf-green)
subserved a purpose in the life-process of plants. Doubtless
certain masses of marked color, or combination of pronounced
tints, must have afforded a gratification to man's sense of beauty
quite, early in his development. At the same time and earlier
these colors were also used as a distinguishing mark in the
selection of plants for food, and later they were taken to be indic-
ative of the absence or presence of magical curative properties.
The first-named feature is still valid, and forms the basis of the
art of the gardener and florist to-day. The last-named aspect of
plant colors received its greatest attention during the prevalence
of the practices of the Grecian Rhizotomoi and Pharmakopoli,
and later in the "doctrine of signatures." The doctrine of

72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

signatures supposed that the color and form of plants indicated
their relations, good or evil, to the human race, in reference to
which they were especially created. This crude superstition
attained greatest favor in the sixteenth century, and is still
prevalent in obscure form among the lower classes in certain
portions of Europe. The use of colors as a distinguishing
mark between species, families, and groups began quite early in
the history of attempts at classification, and still forms a minor
character in modern systems. A wholly new point of view was
that taken by Konrad Sprengel, in his history of the biological
significance of color (Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im Bau
und Befruchtung der Blumen ; Berlin, 1793). To Sprengel is due
the idea that the colors of the secondary reproductive organs are
a device for the attraction of insects, thus securing cross-ferti-
lization. Investigations in many directions from this idea have
revealed the fact that plants in a similar manner attract insects
and other animals for many other purposes besides fertilization,
and in some instances avoid such visitors, for various reasons
connected with their development, in a similar manner. Such an
amount of attention has been given to these ecologic color adap-
tations that the aggregate mass of the results recorded is nothing
short of colossal. That these results are of immense value and
importance goes without saying : yet, given such a thesis, it is
impossible that the observations of both trained and amateur
workers should not contain a large number of misinterpreted
facts. The general principle has been drawn upon to furnish
solutions to complicated or unusual arrangements of color, in a
manner highly improbable and unscientific and in many instances
verging upon the impossible and ridiculous. That it can not be
assumed a priori that the colors exhibited by the flowers or any
other organs of the plant are devices to attract and guide insect
visitors is becoming more and more apparent. Timely attention
has been called to the perversion of this principle by the writer
of a recent article on floral biology (Willis, Science Progress, No.
21, 1895). That great care is necessary in the interpretation of
areas of color in plants is emphasized by the fact that accumu-
lating observations tend to show that a color sense is wholly lack-
ing except among the higher insects, and that if the colors of
flowers were fashioned to attract insect visitors the directive im-
pulse must have been received at a very recent date — that is, since
the acquisition of the color sense by insects. It is by no means
the purpose of this article to discredit the great mass of well-con-
firmed facts concerning the uses of the colors as an adaptation
to insect visitors, but chiefly to call attention to conclusions
afforded by the last fifteen years of research upon the formation
and physiological uses of color in plants. The functions sub-

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS,

73

served by many of the coloring substances besides chlorophyll
are by no means secondary in distribution or importance to the
individual plant to the exterior adaptations described above.

The principal coloring matters among the higher plants besides
chlorophyll (leaf- green) are those which have been grouped under
the terms erythrophyll, xanthophyll, and anthocyan. Of these
substances the chemical and physical properties of chlorophyll
are best known, although its exact composition is yet undeter-
mined. Not only is our chemical knowledge of the non-green
colors very vague, but it is thought that a great number of differ-
ent substances are grouped under each of the above and other
color terms. Thus, for instance, anthocyan is made to include the
large number of substances to which are due the red, blue, violet.

a B C

III.

Fio.

1. — I. Spectrum of CnLOROPHYLL showing Seven Absorption Bands, The two in the
red-yellow between B and D, and the three in the blue-violet, beyond F, are the most
important and characteristic. The bands between D and E are most marked in the spectra
of solutions which have been exposed to the air and light some time, and are believed to
be due to disintegration products of chlorophyll.

II. Spectrum of Amaranth-red. All the rays except those falling between B and D
have been absorbed.

III. Spectrum of Autumnal Color of Leaves of Ampelopsis. All the rays except a
part of those falling between C and D have been absorbed.

and purple colors of such plants as the violet, beet, canna, rose
and amaranth. Only so much is known of the formation of these
color substances as to justify the assertion that many of them
are produced as disintegration products of the glucosides and
others from a mother substance — chromogen.

The coloring matters of plants may be in solution in the cell
sap as in the beet and amaranth, in irregular solid masses in the
sap or protoplasm, as in nasturtium (TropcBolum) ; or may be in-
corporated in the cell wall, as in logwood (Hcematoxylon) ; or

VOL. XLIX. — Y

74

POPULAR SCIEJSCE MONTHLY.

dissolved in minute oil drops suspended in special masses of
protoplasm, as is the case with chlorophyll.

Although this article is particularly concerned with the non-
green colors of plants, yet it will be necessary to outline the func-
tion and adaptations of chlorophyll, to which these substances

Disintegration,

Red

Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet

Fig.

2,— Corves showing Brightness and Synthetic, Thermal and Disintegrating
Effects of the Kegions of the Solar Spectrum.

bear a special relation. Chlorophyll is perhaps the most impor-
tant coloring substance in the world, for upon this substance
depends the characteristic activity of plants, the synthesis of
complex compounds from carbon dioxide and water — a process
upon which the existence of all living things is ultimately condi-
tioned. Only in a very few unimportant forms devoid of chloro-
phyll can the synthesis of complex from simple compounds or
from the elements be accomplished. The function of chlorophyll
may only be comprehended when its chief physical properties are
understood. These may be best illustrated if a solution of the
substance is obtained by placing a gramme of chopped leaves of
grass or geranium in a few cubic centimetres of strong alcohol
for an hour. Such a solution will be of a bright, clear green color,
and when the vessel containing it is held in such a manner that
the sunlight is reflected from the surface of the liquid it will
appear blood-red, due to its property of fluorescence, that of
changing the wave length of the rays of light of the violet end
of the spectrum in such manner as to make them coincide with
those of the red end. It is by examination of light which has
passed through a solution of chlorophyll, however, that the great-
est insight into its physical properties may be gained. If such a
ray of such light is passed through a prism and spread out on a
screen, it may be seen that there are several large intervals or
dark bands in the spectrum. The rays of light which would have
occupied these spaces have been absorbed by the chlorophyll, and

TEE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS,

75

converted into heat and other forms of energy. This energy is
directly available to the protoplasm containing the chlorophyll,
and by means of it the synthesis of complex substance may be ac-
complished. Moreover, the amount of synthesis accomplished by
plants exposed to separate portions of the spectrum will be directly
proportional to the amount of that portion which can be absorbed
and converted into useful forms of energy. This is graphically
illustrated in Fig. 2. The amount of synthesis is shown to be
greatest in the red light between B and C, where the greatest
absorption takes place. (See Fig. 1, 1.)

Chlorophyll is a very complex and highly unstable substance,
and during the absorption of light it is slowly broken down, but
ordinarily it is rebuilt by the
protoplasm as fast as it is de-
composed. If, however, the
chlorophyll and the leaf con-
taining it are exposed to a light
of such intensity that the chlo-
rophyll is decomposed faster
than it can be rebuilt, then
damage must ensue, which if
sufficiently extensive will re-
sult in the death of the entire
leaf. The intensity of the light
which induces a maximum of
activity in any plant, and which
it may receive without damage,
is determined by its specific
constitution. The intensity of
light falling on a plant in an
open plain during twenty-four
hours ranges from almost total
darkness to the blaze of the
noonday sun, and varies almost
momentarily. As an adjust-
ment to this condition many
plants are able to regulate the
intensity of the light impinging on the chlorophyll-bearing masses
of protoplasm by altering the position of the surfaces of the leaves.
In others in which this movement is not possible — such, for ex-
ample, as the leafl.ike duckweeds which float on the surface of the
water — the intensity of the light received is regulated by alterna-
tions in the position and distance of the chlorophyll from the sur-
face of the organ. (See Fig. 3.)

In many plants growing in the bright glare of the sun a thick-
ened cuticle or a heavy coat of hairs serves to protect the chloro^

Fig. 3. — Transverse Sections through the
Frond of Lemna Trisulca (Duckweed),
SHOWING Different Positions of Chloro-
phyll Bodies. A, position in diifuse light ;
B, in strong light striking the surface per-
pendicularly ; C, in darkn&ss.

1^

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

phyll against the more intense action of the rays. It is also in
this purpose of protection of the chlorophyll that many of the
colors grouped under anthocyan find their chief function in the
plant. In such instances the color is generally in solution in
the sap of the layers of cells exterior to the chlorophyll, and
light must pass through the coloring matter in order to reach
the interior of the leaf. This may be seen by reference to
Fig. 4, in which is shown a cross-section of a portion of a leaf of
coleus.

That such layers of coloring matter do materially alter the
light which passes through them may be demonstrated if the spec-
trum of light which has passed through a solution of them is
examined in the manner described above. Water, instead of alco-
hol, is used as a solvent,
however. If the color of
the leaf of the amaranth
is used, it will be found
that nearly all the light
has been absorbed ex-
cept a portion between
B and D (Fig. 1, II).

It may be seen that
a large proportion of
the light is absorbed by
the anthocyan and con-
verted into heat, and
furthermore it is inclu-
sive of the portion of
the spectrum which ex-
ercises the most violent
disintegrating effect on
chlorophyll, as may be
seen by reference to Fig.
2. The portion which
promotes synthesis of food materials, on the other hand, is trans-
mitted almost unchanged to the chlorophyll beneath. That the
anthocyan does partially retard the disintegration of chlorophyll
by light may be seen if two vessels containing solutions of chloro-
phyll are so arranged that the light which strikes on one of them
shall first pass through a parallel- walled vessel containing water,
and that which strikes the other through a similar vessel con-
taining a solution of anthocyan. The chlorophyll in the first will
soon become much more discolored than in the second, which has
received light transmitted through anthocyan. The number of
plants in which coloring substance is present in the cell sap or
walls of the outer layers of leaves is extremely large, and em-

epi-

FiG. 4. — Cross-section of Leaf of Coleus. A, A,
dermal cells tilled with reddish cell sap ; B, cells con-
taining chlorophyll bodies.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS. 77

braces many well-known species, among which are the " foliage "
plants of the gardener.

A very large category of plants have become adapted to living
in the deep recesses of swamps and jungles, and in underbrush,
where the direct rays of the sun never penetrate. These plants
must carry on the synthesis of food material by the aid of the
diffuse light which reaches them, and stand a little danger from
its over-intensity. Still another group is found upon the higher
slopes of mountains in regions of low air temperatures. In both
instances these plants need all the energy they may be able to
derive from the light which falls upon them. They are not able
by means of their chlorophyll to absorb all this light, and some
of it would ordinarily be transmitted through the leaf without
advantage to the plant. As an adaptation to this condition, their
leaves are provided with layers of coloring matter, which are
placed near the lower surfaces in such manner that any light
passing the chlorophyll will be absorbed and converted into heat.
It is noticeable that plants growing in the swamps and on the
mountain tops are not provided with layers of coloring matter, if
the leaves are arranged in such manner that light passing the
upper leaves will fall on those underneath. The heat-saving
color screen is not needed in this instance, but is present most
frequently in leaves which form a low, simple rosette, or which
lie close to the ground. That the presence of anthocyan in flowers
is also often for the purpose of converting light into heat seems
well authenticated, from the number of plants which bear color-
less petals or glumes at ordinary temperatures, yet develop color
in these organs at lower temperatures at the beginning or end of
the season, or at higher altitudes. That these bright colors in
living plants do convert light rays into heat follows as a conclu-
sion of the following experiment devised by Kny : Three similar
glass vessels with parallel walls were filled with distilled water.
In one vessel a number of green leaves of canna were placed, and
in another such number as to offer the same amount of surface as
those in the first, but which contain a large amount of anthocyan.
The third vessel is left unchanged, and all are placed in sunlight
of equal intensity. A certain rise in temperature naturally ensues
in the water in the third vessel ; a greater rise occurs in the
first, showing that chlorophyll converts a portion of the light into
heat, while the greatest increase takes place in the second, where,
in addition to the action of the chlorophyll, the converting power
of the anthocyan is exerted. The difference between the tem-
perature of the vessels containing the green and red leaves often
amounts to 4° C, which is due entirely to the action of the antho-
cyan.

It is often necessary for the plant to transport complex food

78 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

substances from one portion of the vegetative tract to another
along conduits which lie near the surface. On such compounds,
as well as on chlorophyll, the blue- violet raj^s (see Fig. 2) exercise
a disintegrating effect. In quite a large number of plants, the
lines of vessels in stalks, midribs, and petioles of leaves are
shielded from the direct action of such rays by means of external
layers or bands of anthocyan, of some shade of red or purple. It
is possible in some instances to trace the line of the conducting
vessels by the lines of color appearing near the surface. The
direct connection between the food substances and the presence
of the coloring matter is strongly indicated by the example de-
tailed by Kerner, in which the pearly- whit^ rhizome of Dentaria
when taken from the soil and exposed to the light will become a
deep violet in a few hours. Whether the connection is a direct
one or not, it is also true that many young and rapidly growing
shoots exhibit marked reddish or violet colors at a time when
reserve food is being conveyed to them in greatest quantity, and
when the thin, tender tissues are otherwise so translucent as to
allow the sun^s rays to strike through them in a manner calcu-
lated to work great damage in the complex compounds in the
young leaves. When the leaves mature and are not so pervious
to light, the colors may disappear. This is well illustrated by the
behavior of the young leaves of rhubarb, cherry, and grape.
Many instances of this character are known, as well as the fact
that storage organs are often provided with coloring layers or
shields, when partially exposed to the light under normal con-
ditions. In plants with deciduous leaves, or the shoots which die
down to the root stock each year, it is highly important that the
material in the protoplasmic structures of the portion dying away
should not be entirely lost, as it represents a large outlay of en-
ergy. As a matter of fact, in plants of this character the proto-
plasm, chlorophyll, and other nitrogenous substances are usually
broken down and begin to be gradually withdrawn into the sur-
viving portion of the plant about the time of the formation of the
first stages of the absciss layer which finally cuts off the leaf
stalk, or about the time the activity of the herbaceous shoot be-
gins to slow down. The disintegration of the chlorophyll would
leave the leaf almost colorless and translucent, and the sun's rays
would strike directly through it, resulting in the total decompo-
sition of the proteids and a consequent waste to the plant, but
during the decomposition of the chlorophyll there occurs, as a
result or accompaniment of the process, the formation of much
brilliant coloring matter of various shades, to which are due the
brilliant autumnal tints of deciduous leaves. These coloring mat-
ters sustain the same general relation to sunlight as the other
colors described above. They generally absorb the entire violet

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLOR IN PLANTS. 79

end of the spectrum, which, as has been pointed out, is the one
which causes disintegration in the cells, as well as the lower red
and infra-red rays. The spectrum of the autumnal red coloring
of the leaves of the Virginia creeper (Ampelopsis) is shown in
Fig. 1, III. It may be safely asserted that the above- described
occurrences of coloring matter are undoubtedly marked factors
in the physiology of a large number of plants, without reference
to the manner in which such coloring screens and shields have
arisen. It is also true, however, that a large number of plants
contain coloring matters in the interior of organs or disposed in
such other manner that they could sustain no possible relation
either to light or to animals furnished with a color sense ; still,
many other occurrences of color are to be noted in which a physi-
ological function is quite possible but is not proved. Among
the latter is the color formation which ensues in evergreen leaves
on the approach of a cold season, or in other leaves on the ap-
proach of a dry season. It must be admitted that in some in-
stances physiologists have been led to conclusions concerning the
use of colors quite as little justified as many of those reached by
enthusiastic students of " adaptation to insect visitors." It is now
somewhat generally admitted that color substances must very
often be regarded as simply by-products in the chemical processes
carried on by plants ; a view which is undeniably valid of color
masses in the interior of underground roots or tubers, or massive
aerial organs, and also in a large number of instances in flowers.
This latter application is further justified by the fact that some
flower colors may change during the season without any relation
to light conditions, insect visitors, or other ecologic factors. It is
quite within the range of possibility that color masses in aerial
organs bear an important modifying relation to the forms of
irritability to radiant energy acquired by the plant.

As a summation of the foregoing, it may be stated that color-
ing matters stand in the following relations to the plants :

1. Chlorophyll converts light into energy by the aid of which
protoplasm containing it is able to build up foods from carbon
dioxide and water.

2. Non-green coloring substances serve as a screen between
the chlorophyll and the too violent rays of the sun, at the same
time converting the absorbed portion of the rays into useful heat.

3. Non-green coloring substances convert the light which has
passed the chlorophyll bodies into useful heat.

4. Coloring substances absorb the blue-violet rays and prevent
their disintegrating effect on nitrogenous compounds in situ or in
transit in the interior of the plant.

5. Non-green coloring substances are in some instances simply
by-products or waste matter from the physiological processes, and

8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

in the present stage of development and under ordinary condi-
tions are of no use to the plant containing them.

6. Colors serve as an attractive, guiding, or warning device for
insects and other animals, more especially for the purpose of se-
curing cross-fertilization and protection from injury.

THE POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN.

By GEORGE F. TALBOT.

THE political enfranchisement of women is so prominent a
topic of discussion among all people that live under repre-
sentative governments that no apology seems required for a
contribution to the debate. It does not, however, seem necessary
to recapitulate the arguments for and against the concession of
the ballot to women — as if that alone was the ultimate or princi-
pal part of their demand — or to sum up and formulate any judi-
cial finding on the basis of these arguments.

It is not difficult to perceive that the usual ground might be
gone over, the usual arguments for woman suffrage stated and
conceded, without touching any of the vital issues involved in
the proposed change. The fact is, that the right to vote, in
giving reasons against which the conservative thinker is always
at disadvantage — always obliged to be more or less illogical and
inconsistent — is not what is really asked, but something beyond it
very much more radical and questionable. Let us see if we can
not by an appeal secure from discontented womanhood a frank
acknowledgment of the real ultimatum of demand, the specific
redress of what is deemed the actual grievance.

There are two alternatives which might be proposed to the
Woman Suffrage Association, or whatever other body has a right
to represent the political demands of women :

1. Let the ballot be given to all women of full age who are
citizens, with the condition, however, in the article or act itself in
which this right is given, that they shall not be eligible to any
executive, legislative, or judicial office, under the national, State,
or municipal governments, except certain clerical and subordinate
offices now open to women under custom or law, such as post-
master, register of deeds, member of school committee, etc.

2. Let such women as petition for it be admitted to full citi-
zenship, with the right to vote and hold office, on proving their
qualifications before the courts to whom jurisdiction over such
petitions may be assigned. The judge listens to the application
and the proof offered, that the petitioner is fairly intelligent, that
her moral character is irreproachable, and she has not and is not

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN, 81

liable to have any domestic duties or relations which will disen-
able her from performance of all the employments which citizen-
ship might impose upon her. To require her to hold herself
liable to be drafted as a soldier in case of invasion or rebellion
might not seem in these times of peace necessary, but that she
could and would perform the duties of any office to which she
would be liable by the very franchise she had sought to obtain,
without pleading any exemption or disability due to her perma-
nent condition as woman, would seem a not unreasonable require-
ment. If, in the discretion of the judge, she should successfully
pass this preliminary examination, let her be admitted to full
citizenship, with the right to be an elector, and to be elected to
office on the same terms with men ; while women generally, who
do not desire even to vote, who are appalled at the thought of
competing for office, and for whom the duties of any office are
utterly incompatible with their fidelity as wives and mothers,
are left in the political status which they prefer.

It is not assuming too much to anticipate that both these
alternative propositions, if submitted as a definite settlement of
the woman question to those persons of both sexes who, on either
side of the Atlantic, have by their zeal and devotion earned
the right to be considered as the leaders of what is called the
woman movement, would be listened to with disdainful satire
and scorn. It is avowed by all these persons, who speak frankly,
that women want the ballot in order that they may become can-
didates and officeholders, and so be able in the interest of their
own sex to affect local,. State, and national legislation. We may,
therefore, lay on the table the specific question of giving the bal-
lot to women — ^leave it unsettled — conceding that, if it were only
that, the matter might be arranged to meet the wishes of the
petitioners, and confine ourselves in this discussion to the rights
and qualifications of women to be the administrators of political
power, and the effect which the exercise by women of those polit-
ical functions now performed exclusively by men would have
upon the welfare and character of women generally.

I. To the complete performance of such political functions
there is this serious natural impediment : four fifths of the women
all the world over, between the ages of twenty and sixty, are
occupied with paramount domestic obligations quite incompatible
with that integrity of devotion to public duties which all the
great executive, judicial, and legislative offices demand of those
who fill them. Under this disability of Nature, or closely related
to it, all the objections to the exercise of political functions by
women may be classed, so that no other objection need be consid-
ered. If the mother of a family of young children should give
to the office of President, Governor, judge, or sheriff that entire

TOL. XLIX. — 8

82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

devotion of energy, time, and thought which her official oath
exacted of her, she would be obliged to do it at the expense of
that assiduous care, watchfulness, and service which her wifely
and maternal relations demand.

Let us consider contingencies quite likely to occur under a
regime which divided fairly between men and women the respon-
sibilities of civic and public life. Would a husband of the city
where this is written, going early to and returning late from his
business — say that of chief salesman in a large retail store, or a con-
tractor engaged in erecting a block of buildings — enjoy the honor
of his wife's election to the Legislature, if while she were shut up
in committee rooms with men, or interviewed at her lodgings by
lobbyists, or waiting to mingle her shrill voice in the melee of a
general debate in the House, the measles or the scarlatina should
break out in the forlorn group of his motherless children ? The
banker, who had been harassed all day by the intelligence of* a
financial crash that threatened his own fortunes and the funds of
widows and orphans of whom he was the trustee, would have a
still stronger claim on the public sympathy if, coming home at
night for fellowship and cheerful words, and asking his eldest
daughter where her mother was, he should be told : " Oh, you know
she is out on the jury with eleven men on that dreadful murder
case, and it is not thought they can come in before morning."

I know the answer to this objection generally made: Yes,
there are many women, as there are also some men, whose health,
whose business, whose domestic cares, render them averse to office
and exempt them from its responsibility. The good sense of the
voters may be trusted not to select such engaged persons as candi-
dates ; and if they should be selected the good sense of the candi-
date can be trusted to decline the office, and that will end it.

But is this answer quite satisfactory ? It is a question of re-
considering and readjusting the occupations respectively of men
and women, which all civilized and uncivilized peoples, without
concert among themselves, have established and built into their
social institutions. An arrangement of this permanence and
universality may be considered an arrangement of Nature.
Nature evidently regards as of supreme importance the perpetua-
tion of the race, and imposes presumably, and at least potentially,
upon all women a paramount duty in accomplishing this purpose.
The political disability, whether extending actually to four fifths
of womankind or potentially to all womankind, is one irrevocably
connected with that very office and raison d'etre, which called
woman into existence. An objection to employment in public
office good as against four fifths of the female sex ought to be
good as to the whole sex, just as if it were a question of enlist-
ing women as soldiers, or shipping them as seamen, or engaging

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 83

them as miners or engineers — a disability affecting the greater
number would be likely to disenable the whole.

This is the situation. The great body of men — the men in the
prime of their physical and mental powers — have no employments
or duties imposed upon them by Nature incompatible with the
strict performance of the obligations of public office. A man may
be a punctual and industrious executive officer, a studious judge, a
commanding general successfully conducting a campaign, and be
no whit less a faithful and helpful husband, a wise and provident
father. This very excellence in these purely private and do-
mestic virtues, while it would add to his popularity, would never
be thought of as impairing his efficiency as a public servant.

Now it happens that women during the same period of their
physical and mental prime are by their ruling instincts and their
dominant sentiments assigned to duties which leave neither time
nor faculty for any absorbing and responsible public station. It
might be invidious to say that the best women are in this cate-
gory of disability; it must be said, however, that the women
whom men think the best — at least the best to be wives and the
mothers of their children — are not eligible to public office.

In this actual condition of things what will be the probable
result of sharing with all women, by a sweeping enfranchisement,
the privileges of all political offices ? Only those will be likely
to be proposed as candidates, or at least will consent to be candi-
dates, who have no incompatible domestic duties — unmarried
women, who have no pleasant homes, or fathers, brothers, or sons
with whom they can live harmoniously, and all the forlorn class,
who have failed to come into agreeable relations with other per-
sons, or who have made shipwreck of their domestic ventures. I
question whether the great body of virtuous and intelligent
women, the mothers, wives, and sisters of the citizens, would be so
well satisfied to be represented by such persons as by those citi-
zens themselves. Our domestic experiences appoint and maintain
relations between women and men far more tender and intimate
than are possible between women and women, or betwen men and
other men.

Nor is the contingent disability one to be lightly overlooked.
There hangs over the fortunes of every woman, at least during
the early periods of her career, the liability to the grande passion
that so greatly affects human destiny and character. Every
housekeeper knows how precarious is the engagement of her
domestic servant. If you have secured an exceptionally excellent
person in your kitchen, and have begun to look forward to
months and years of wholesome cooking and economic adminis-
tration, along comes the inopportune lover and carries off your
prize. You think her an admirable assistant ; so does he, and

84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Tinder the spell of his superior attraction your vision of domestic
quiet and order vanishes. The same fortune befalls female clerks
in stores, in banks, and in public ofi&ces, and teachers in all schools,
public and private. Almost invariably we lose our clerks, our
teachers, when they become wives ; almost invariably we do not
lose our clerks and teachers when they become husbands, never
except when they pass to a higher grade of service or to partner-
ship or an independent business.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above.

Let us suppose that in this congressional district, under the
regime of full woman suffrage, some brilliant, educated, and
accomplished lady, whose eloquence on the stump in a political
campaign had electrified thousands of listening voters, had been
nominated and elected as representative to Congress. Among
the auditors whom she had fascinated might not one every-way
eligible man have been bold enough to make confession of a per-
sonal attachment before the eloquent pleadings of which this
young Jeanne d'Arc of politics should find herself compelled to
forego her ambition for public distinction, and take upon herself
the humbler but sweeter duty of consecration to a single man ?
The same accident would befall everywhere. Only the intelligent
and agreeable women would be popular, and only the popular
women would be candidates and elected. To put them in office
would of itself expose them everywhere to appropriation by men
brought by the occasions of public business into the circle of their
acquaintance. I dare not pursue further this dangerous argu-
ment.

Will the female suffragists consent to a self-denying ordinance
that shall exclude from office ? I apprehend not. That is the
very thing they will not listen to with patience. They have
avowed that what they demand is that women shall have an
opportunity to try their hands at law-making and law-adminis-
tering, with a view of bettering both. They wish to vote in order
that they may vote for each other, and no way has been proposed
or seems practicable of making women electors that will not also
make them potentially the elected.

As soon as the naturalized Irishmen in Portland became an
appreciable element of the voting population, they began to be
put upon the electoral tickets for municipal and State offices by
both parties. In Boston and in New York, where they compose
a majority of the voters, they get the majority of candidacies for
places under the city government. When by a heroic effort we
lifted a million of ignorant and degraded slaves to the rank of
citizens and electors, the immediate result was negro justices of

POLITICAL BIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEK, 85

the peace, negro judges of the courts, negro members of Congress,
and in more than one State negro Legislatures, which proceeded
in a summary way to confiscate the property of the late masters
by taxation, ostensibly expended in public works and largely
wasted by private plunder. If the effect of raising to the grade
of voters the whole mass of illiterate slaves was to give them the
whole political control of several States, why will not this com-
plete, enfranchisement of women give them the political control in
all the older States, where they will be in the numerical majority ?

If it be urged that the great body of women in this country
have no taste for politics and do not desire office, and that their
domestic duties exempt them from the responsibility of office, the
same conditions might have been urged in behalf of the f reedmen.
They knew nothing about politics, did not care for office, and
were under the necessity of earning their living and getting for
themselves and their children homes, fortunes, and the rudiments
of education. In that very condition a few bright colored men,
native and immigrant, and many cunning white men, carpet-hag
adventurers, intervened as the freed men^s special friends and took
the offices the negroes could not hold. May not a like experience
follow woman suffrage ? A few restless women, mostly those
whose domestic relations are out of gear or who have failed in a
congenial social career, will find themselves at leisure to pose as
nominees and candidates to represent their whole sex, and they
will remember, in the distribution of such offices as they do not
aspire for, those cunning men who, believing that the millennium
of woman's rights was coming, had made themselves prominent
in advocating them.

II. What wrongs are there affecting society which the women's
vote and the political power it gives will set right ? What dis-
ability or oppression does woman suffer at the hands of man,
which she must rise in her physical might to redress ? Every
other agitation for social or political reform now rife, or that has
been rife in my day, has been able to justify itself by a flagrant
abuse repugnant to the universal sentiments of mankind. Slavery,
intemperance, the poverty and privations that have been caused
by unjust distribution of the products of industry — all these arq
palpable evils that denunciation can not exaggerate nor eloquence
winged by strong emotion overstate. But the woman's grievance
against man in these modern times, in any civilized country, what
is it ? The moment you begin to sum it up, the moment you un-
dertake to tabulate and itemize it, you provoke the indignation of
all generous and intelligent women. The moment you attempt
to inflate its emptiness with the breath of invective you have to
deal with hysteric fancies rather than hard facts, or consciously
to enact a make-believe.

86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

I am careful to say that woman has no grievance against man,
I do not say she has no grievance. In common with all sentient
creatures she does complain of the hard conditions of universal
existence — conditions which it has been the long, slow effort of
what we call civilization to amend and improve. The special
hardship of the lot appointed to her by Nature is, that the pains,
burdens, and weary cares that parentage imposes upon each gen-
eration, in order to provide for the succession of the race, have
been unequally and cruelly laden upon one of the sexes. Through
the long uncivilized ages, before man had wrung from niggard
Nature any material comforts, any security against impending
death, any leisure for thought, culture, or enjoyment, the condi-
tions of the male and female were more nearly balanced in what
each was called to endure. If on the latter fell the pangs of child-
birth, and the long vigils of nurture for the feeblest younglings
among living creatures, on the former came the brunt of inter-
necine battles with fierce brutes and fiercer fellow-men. Civiliza-
tion increasing the leisure, lightening the toil of man, and reliev-
ing him in a large degree from the wars in which he was mutilated
and slain, has not been able, in any appreciable degree, to redeem
woman from the primitive sufferings by which she consecrated
her motherhood ; and so the unequal fortunes of the two branches
of the human race have become under the improved fortunes of
the race more pronounced.

Woman does not put this into her bill of grievances, nor with
her instinctive delicacy is she likely to do so. Symptoms that in-
dicate disease sometimes mislead as to the character and actual
seat of the disease. What woman will not ask for herself the re-
spect and sense of justice of man must award her, and that is the
complete sovereignty over all those functions engaged in the per-
petuation of the race, insured by physical structure itself to the
females of the inferior orders of living creatures. Woman has
earned by her sufferings, by the enormous surplus of her contribu-
tion of time and strength and feeling to the maintenance of the
family life, the right to control it, to initiate by her selection and
the promptings of her own sentiments and preferences all its per-
mitted intimacies. But all this, so difficult to formulate, must be
left out in a discussion of a distinct though related subject.

Leaving out, then, whatever offense a cruel Nature has com-
mitted against woman, let us see if men have fairly acquitted
themselves of their natural obligations to her. Take the present
legal status of woman. Since men began to make laws they have
made them for women, and in what situation has their deliberate
sense of justice left women before the law ? One after the other
they have obliterated from the statute book all laws that dis-
criminated against women in respect to their personal rights, and

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 87

to the acquirement, possession, and disposal of their property —
old laws that had their origin in the barbaric spirit that made
woman the slave of man, and, it must be confessed, which found
no little sanction in that dogma of our accredited Christianity,
which taught, too plainly to be misunderstood, that woman was
as much below man in the scale of being as man was below the
angels, her paramount duty being to be subject to him. But all
this barbarism. Christian and un-Christian, has been swept away,
and that too not by woman's suffrage, actual or prospective, nor
by woman's petition or any political agitation prompted by her,
but by man's own sense of equity and right.

No, women are not an oppressed class, least so in the United
States, in England, in any country whose people have inherited
the Teutonic sentiment which in the ancient Germany described
by Tacitus made women counselors and advisers in the affairs
of war, government, and business, as well as in matters purely
domestic. Women are a privileged class.

When I say, and say after much careful thought, that women
in this country are a privileged class, I have not in my mind those
courtesies and civilities that have become established customs in
all good society. I do not mean the respect which prompts all
well-bred men to lift their hats to every woman of their acquaint-
ance whom they pass in the street, that starts to his feet even the
aged citizen when a robust girl gets into a horse-car or a thronged
public meeting, even when the occasion of it may be to affect an
election in which only men are concerned. All these are graceful
offices for men to render, pleasant attentions for women to receive ;
but they are trivial, and to magnify them into substantial equiva-
lents for political disfranchisement is to add insult to injury.

Let me make a brief inventory of some of the more substantial
immunities and exemptions which women as women possess and
enjoy, which mitigate for them the stress and strain of life, which
affect their character, happiness, and destiny, as the usages and
etiquette of social intercourse do not and can not, which, if not a
compensation for political privileges, and for that excess of burden
that maternity bears in caring for the perpetuation of the race, is
a generous attempt on the part of men to make for their mates
and yoke-fellows an easier pathway through a rugged world. To
most of these exemptions and immunities the sex have become so
accustomed that they are rather regarded as a part of the order of
Nature than as a conventionality dictated by a generous senti-
ment.

III. Women are exempted from the perils, wounds, and deaths
incident to war.

When we study man through his long history, we are com-
pelled to confess that he is a fighting animal. Whatever other

88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

employments lie has had on this planet, he has been largely occu-
pied in killing his fellow-men. We have looked forward to an
impending millennium of peace for the world. We Americans
have assured ourselves that our country, strong in wealth and in
numbers and in its remoteness from the great warring nations of
Europe constantly watching each other in arms, would never be
engaged in those wars that have decimated the human race
through the boasted ages of civilization and Christianization.
But what has befallen us^? Our grandfathers passed through the
long and wasting War of Independence ; our fathers — a favored
generation — had only the brief British and Mexican Wars ; and,
to compensate for this immunity, there fell upon us, the grand-
children, one of the most destructive and bloody wars of history.
To this war the State in which I live contributed seventy-two
thousand men — more than a tenth of its population, two thirds of
its arms-bearing people. So far, even in this asylum of peace,
war has made its demand on the human life of each successive
generation.

The requisition which wars have made upon human life dur-
ing the comparatively brief historic period is something frightful
to contemplate, and this requisition has been decidedly upon one
sex. It is true that myriads of women and children have perished
in the massacres, famines, and pestilences that have supplemented
battles and sieges ; but it was nevertheless always the chief care
of the fighters on both sides not to expose their women to these
casualties, and the first condition of making men courageous sol-
diers is to assure them of the safety of wives and children.

To what is the exemption of women from military service due ?
The hasty answer may be, to their physical and mental unfitness.
The physical strength of the average woman is perhaps twenty
per cent less than that of the average man. This disparity could
be readily adjusted by adapting the labor and discipline of the
two classes of recruits to it. Make the regulation musket for the
female regiments twenty per cent lighter than the standard, and
so the personal baggage ; and if twenty miles is a fair day's march
for men soldiers, require of the women soldiers but fifteen miles.
The nerves of women might more quickly than those of men suc-
cumb to the terror of shot and shell, or of a bayonet charge, but
actual wounds and mutilations they would endure with more
patience.

In the few instances of an exceptional custom preserved in
history, natural disability had ceased to be a factor. There is a
Greek legend of the Amazons, a race of women in Asia, so for-
midable as to terrorize all the early Grecian settlements, and to
require such valorous heroes as Bellerophon and Hercules to sub-
due them. Travelers more trustworthy than Baron Munchausen

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN, 89

tell us of an African king, whose standing army is of women — a
fierce and terrible array.

It is even possible that in this judgment an effect has been
mistaken for a cause. Women have not been exempted from
military service on account of their congenital delicacy, but their
characteristic delicacy is the slow result of their exemption from
this and other hardships submitted to by men.

Certain phenomena open to general observation warn us that
it will not do to trust too implicitly the permanence of natural
laws, and that physical structure and accompanying mental en-
dowments may be greatly modified by continued unfavorable
environments. Among certain orders — the bee, for example — sex
itself may be determined by a continuous special regimen and
diet, when the exigencies of the community require it. Among
domestic animals the cow, especially honored for the service ren-
dered to men by her maternal functions, has been exempted from
the yoke of labor and maintained in an indolent isolation of
respect nearly equal to that of the queen bee in the hive. The
result has been such a differentiation in bulk and build as almost
to declare a difference of species between herself and her congener
of the other sex. Among horses, sheep, and swine, a substantial
uniformity of regimen and discipline brings the two sexes into
physical conditions with no appreciable differences in size, form,
and strength. So, too, with the carnivora : a community of em-
ployment, of exposure, of activity in predaceous warfare, tends to
bring size, shape, and color into a uniformity of type, while among
other wild orders, like the stag, the greater bulk, the exaggeration,
of the parts serviceable in combats is clearly due to continuous
fighting assigned to the males alone.

To what, then, must the anthropologist attribute that custom,
almost immemorial and universal, which savage and civilized
men have concurred in establishing, of exempting women from
the service of fighting ? To that which will be found to be the
spring and source of most of their customs and institutions — sen-
timent ; a sentiment in man of mingled pity, respect, and affec-
tion— a sentiment, like most others of somewhat low origin, be-
ginning, it may be, in selfishness and the promptings of instinct,
but flowering out in its complete evolution into a noble and divine
virtue.

Facts of our own national history illustrate, if they do not
confirm, this judgment. Our civil war called out, as I have
already said, two thirds of the whole arms-bearing population of
one State, and probably the same proportion for all the North. It
called out three thirds of the arms-bearing people of the South.
The war ended simply because one section had, and the other had
not, a reserve of one third to fall back upon. Probably no two

90 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

peoples ever entered into a strife so fiercely and so unanimously
as did the rebels, men and women, to win their independence, and
the loyalists, men and women, to save the Union. And yet, ear-
nest as we were in the struggle, recruiting our armies by volun-
teers, by enlistments, and by conscriptions ; putting into the field
patriots and scholars, citizens and aliens, philanthropists, cler-
gymen, and criminals, and finally thousands of negro slaves, so
deeply is the sentiment grounded in the heart of all civilized and
savage men that women must not be put into the actual peril of
battle, that the North would have given up the Union and the
South its independence rather than have called into the field a
single company of arms-bearing women.

There is plausibility in the contention that the ballot and the
rule that the minority must submit to the majority are nothing
but a development of primitive war. War puts all questions to
the arbitrament of strength, and in the actual trial non-combat-
ants do not count. The ballot is the count of the potential
fighters, and presupposes and discounts a virtual combat. The
right to rule belonging to the superior strength, the array of the
combatants declares which is the stronger.

All through the earlier periods of English history, when some
ambitious or reforming chief wished to get an obnoxious law
repealed, or to displace an odious minister, or to change a hated
dynasty, instead of starting newspapers, holding public discus-
sions, and canvassing the country for votes, he summoned his
retainers and fellow-chieftains to arms, took the field, and began
to lay siege to towns and strongholds. The Government turned
out its army and its adherents and met the malcontents in battle.
If it was strong enough to overcome them, the leaders were be-
headed and their estates confiscated, while the defeated followers
were punished and dispersed. If the rebels were victorious, a
new order succeeded — a new ministry, a new national policy, per-
haps a new dynasty. All the great changes in government in
England were effected in just this way down to the middle of the
last century. In Mexico and the South American republics,
though they have written Constitutions and periodic elections,
voting seems to be considered a slow method of redressing griev-
ances; the actual working system is pronunciamientos — that is,
armed revolts against the administration in power, and the real
battle J not yet evolved into the modern ballot.

Now, when the two forces — the one for, the other against, the
Government — stood confronting each other, what could be more
sensible than to anticipate and discount the result of the fighting ?
" How many fighting men," asks the loyal general, summoning a
conference, " have you on your side ? " " Fifteen thousand," re-
plies the rebel chief. " Then why fight it out ? for I have but ten

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 91

thousand, and yours are the best armed." Instead of a battle,
there is a count of the combatants and a settlement in favor of
the numerically stronger. So a count of the fighting forces took
the place of a trial at arms, and the appeal to the majority of
men capable of becoming soldiers, and so able to enforce their
will against the weaker minority, took the place of insurrection
as a method of political agitation. This view may not justify,
but it does account for, the exclusion from enumeration in the
class that decide political issues of the whole class of non-com-
batants.

IV. The next great immunity which, in recognition of the
offices they exercise in the social system, and having its origin in
the same sentiment, women enjoy, is exemption from all kinds of
labor dangerous to life or exposing to hardship and privation.
Thousands of men among all civilized and some barbarous people
pass their lives from childhood to old age on the ocean as seamen.
Their terra firma is the sloping deck of ships staggering through
the restless billows, the sport of fickle winds. They fare hard;
their sleep is liable to rude interruption ; their toil, though not
constant, is liable to crises of exertion and danger. At the word
of command, enforced by brutal blows, they climb the slippery
ropes or icy spars at the risk of being shaken into the boiling
waves or, with fractured skulls, upon the reeling deck. This em-
ployment, from which women are excused, is only slightly less
fatal to life than that of the soldier, and the ingenuity of man
has devised no means considerably to lessen its annual roll of pre-
mature and appalling deaths.

In the same category belong those occupations that take thou-
sands of workingmen into our northern forests, where they pass
three months of each year contending with frosts and snows,
sleeping upon hemlock boughs in smoky camps, and maintaining
an exceptional vigor expended in continuous labor by the abun-
dance of their rude fare. A shorter interval of more dangerous
labor succeeds this long exile in the forest, when the timber the
winter's industry has gathered is driven to the place of manufac-
ture and sale through wide lakes and over dangerous rapids.

All the hard, repulsive, life-wearing work under ground in
coal, mineral, and metallic mines is generally assigned to men,
and they alone are exposed to those perils which beset engineers,
train-men, the handlers of explosives, and the tenders of ma-
chinery.

It is certainly apparent that man, as the stronger sex, has not
made an ungenerous use of his strength in his assignments.
Having, in the right of his strength, the opportunity to deter-
mine the customs of society, he has taken upon himself, and ex-
empted his mate from, all those vocations that expose to prema-

92 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ture death or to great physical suffering, as well as those which
segregate men from the social enjoyments of home and doom them
to long exile in cold, storm, and darkness.

V. The last privilege of the sex — for only the great, cardinal
privileges of womanhood need be enumerated — is woman's vir-
tual exemption from the care of earning her livelihood and that
of her offspring. Here, as in what has been said heretofore, I
have disregarded exceptional and abnormal instances, and traced
industrial and social customs, as men following the promptings
of their dominant sentiments have been able to establish them.
I have taken, too — and this seems legitimate — my illustrations
from the most advanced types of civilization, rather than from
the inchoate manhood of the savage and barbaric epochs and con-
ditions. I do not forget to have seen women tugging baskets of
manure to their miserable fields, or buried under burdens of hay,
in Switzerland ; nor the Sunday I drove by women mixing mortar
and carrying hods of bricks up shaking ladders in the elegant
city of Vienna ; nor how all-prevalent poverty has equalized the
lot of the two sexes in Russia.*

No law of social completeness is to be drawn from such ex-
ceptional instances. It is only on those broad lines where the
instinctive tendencies of the dominant sex have not been hindered
in their complete development by conditions imposed by primitive
barbarism or slavery that the natural growth of a social status is
to be studied.

But even in our times and among the most advanced races
there are many exceptions to the general assignment to men of
the primal care for daily bread. Very many men, through acci-
dent, sickness, and mental or moral incapacity, get disabled in the
struggle for life, and the burden they were appointed to carry
falls unnaturally upon a wife, a sister, a daughter. Widows
carry on successfully the farms which a dead husband had
cleared. Sisters take places in stores, in schools, engage as copy-
ists, and contribute to periodicals, and so bring to the family fund
the stipend which a deceased father, a dissipated husband, or an
invalid brother ought to have earned. The social organism
gets mutilated and wounded, and these are Nature's efforts at

* " The women are more diligent than the men ; and the hardest work is often turned
over to them, as is generally the case where peasant properties prevail. They are only
' females of the male,' and have few womanly qualities. They toil at the same task as men
in the fields, ride astride like them, often without saddles ; and the mortality is excessive
among the neglected children, who are carried out into the fields, where the babies lie the
whole day with a bough over them, and covered with flies, while the poor mother is at
work. Eight out of ten children are said to die before ten years old in rural Russia." —
(From a Review of F. P. Verney's Rural Life in Russia, in the Nineteenth Century, of
January, ISSY.)

POLITICAL EIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 93

recuperation and supply. In the healthy normal society — such
as man establishes wherever he can — the true order seems to be
that " man must work and woman must weep " — unless a cheer-
ful temperament shall convert her weeping into a song, while
waitiug on the weariness of her yoke-fellow with affection and
the ministry of a lighter service.

How few men in all civilized countries are from youth to old
age exempt from the absorbing, imperious, ever-recurring neces-
sity of earning the daily sustenance of themselves, of their wives,
of the children they have dared to summon into a world bristling
with hard conditions — a responsibility that sobers so many lives,
and issues so often in insanity, suicide, or crime ! If a census-
taker should visit any day the homes of the well-to-do people of
this or any other Eastern or Western American city, how would
he be likely to find the sexes — of course, with the exceptions of idle
men and too hard-working women — respectively employed ? The
men rise in the morning — some it may be leisurely and late —
and go to their shops, their stores, their offices, their out-of-doors
employments, spending the whole day in absorbing labor, the
fruit of which tells directly upon the family income. If this
mode of life, yvhich becomes habit and routine, is ever inter-
rupted, it is by some errand of business to Washington, to some
commercial city, to the West, and, for a favored few, a genuine
vacation of relaxation for two weeks at the mountains or the
seaside. The women, after the oversight of the female laborers
who perform the tasks of cook and chambermaid, and needle-
work largely of an ornamental kind, pass the day in reading
the magazines, the current novels, in the amateur practice of
music or some other fine art, and in making and receiving
social calls.

The understanding that custom has established in New Eng-
land is, that when there are boys and girls in any well-condi-
tioned family, the boys shall pass directly from school into some
employment for wages, that shall occupy every working day of
their lives ; and that the girls shall be at liberty to cultivate their
tastes and enjoy the pleasures of refined society, and be main-
tained by the labor past, present, and future of their fathers, their
husbands, their brothers, or their sons. This is an arrangement
that the modern man, following his controlling sentiments, has
voluntarily made, and one that he insists shall be maintained.
Accident, calamity, very often incapacity or vice, make men fail
in the accomplishment of their generous purpose, and throw upon
women unnaturally and abnormally the sterner cares and toils
of earning the common livelihood. Men are defeated sometimes
in realizing the careers that seemed open to their ambition ; but
these are exceptional cases, and social laws and tendencies are not

94 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

to be studied in their irregular and unusual development, but in
their normal evolution.

If a capable and ambitious girl declares that she will teach
school, or solicit a clerkship, or literary work in a newspaper
ofi&ce, or open a store, it will be the father and brothers who will
protest, and not the mother and sisters. The men of the family
are apt to feel that it will compromise their respectability if they
have a daughter of the house earning anything. Fathers of sons
and daughters have been reported, who have said : " I shall leave
what little property I have to my girls, who will need it ; the boys
can take care of themselves.'^ Many persons are cognizant of the
fact that among their circle of acquaintance are a few men, high-
spirited, conscientious, alive to the demands of nobly living, who
have denied themselves the solace of marriage because they be-
longed to families where there were unmarried sisters, and the
home could not be respectably maintained if their personal in-
come was used in supporting another household.

VI. Now, putting any just valuation upon these great exemp-
tions which the majority of women enjoy, and which all women
enjoy so far as the appointment of men as a whole can predeter-
mine their lot, can it be for a moment claimed that the position of
women is one of oppression, and not of privilege ?

I do not wish to say that men and women ever made a formal
compact that the latter should surrender to the former all their
natural political rights, as a condition for enjoying these privi-
leges which have been awarded to them. None of the established
customs of society, not even the forms of political government,
were made in this artificial way. They were not made at all, but
grew spontaneously. Rousseau's doctrine of a social contract is
less in vogue than it was in the political philosophy of our fa-
thers. But what I do wish emphatically to say is that, bargain or
no bargain, the weaker sex has not been taken advantage of, and
that its immunities and privileges are a full equivalent for all the
political rights of which it may have been deprived.

For all the last century, perhaps for all the next, the stress and
activity of the world have been and will be directed toward the
development of a more pronounced individualism. Everybody is
in intense pursuit of his rights. Everybody passionately asks:
What of the common goods of existence can I appropriate to my
own personal advantage and enjoyment ? While this passion rules,
nothing is to be expected but revolution and revulsion, the tear-
ing down of the existing social and political institutions. When
shall begin that more noble, more religious inquisition, not for
rights, but for duties, when it shall be asked : What can I do to
render some equivalent for the boon of life ? What of my rights
and my possessions can I surrender and sacrifice for the general

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN. 95

good ? then will the era of social and political construction upon a
grander order begin. Meantime, to the chorus of the citizen, the
workingman, the serf, the slave, all accusing the old tyrannies of
denied justice, is added the shrill note of "insurgent" woman-
hood— not universal womanhood, for universal womanhood, ac-
quiescent and content in the spheres of service which her lot as
wife and mother and other equally helpful relations to society
give her, has not joined in the revolt.

The formula of the demand of " insurgent " womanhood is the
ballot, but the ballot must be considered with all the power to
make and administer the laws which it confers, with the probable
changes in social customs it involves, and the new conditions it
will present under which the struggle for life will go on.

I have assumed that the concession of the ballot, pure and
simple, will not be satisfactory to those bodies that represent
what is called the Woman^s Cause. Senator Hoar, perhaps the
most conspicuous man who has appeared as their champion,
specially says : " I am quite willing to agree that no class of per-
sons who are permitted to vote should be excluded as a class from
holding office."

We may as well consider what changes in human society, and
especially in the character and fortunes of woman, the new order
of things sought to be inaugurated will be likely to bring about.

Immediately, and in one generation, not very many or consid-
erable. Character, that has been slowly molded by certain influ-
ences, acting for long periods, will not be modified immediately
by the withdrawal of those influences. Whatever deterioration
occurs, whatever new hardships make the lot of woman more
tragic, will only appear after adverse influences have had their
full term of operation.

Neither in readjusting the duties toward society of the sexes
respectively are men likely to insist that, in taking full political
powers, women shall surrender any or all of their present immu-
nities and privileges. The relation of the contracting parties is
not one that will make any such rigid and hard bargain possible.
But that surrender will inevitably be brought about by the indig-
nant disdain of the women, who will have effected the social revo-
lution, at being the recipients of any privileges which differentiate
their situation or hamper them in their complete development.
The inevitable ultimate result of subjecting the two human sexes
to the same labors, the same employments, the same cares, will be
just the same as when domestic animals have been subjected for
long periods to the same conditions : sexual differences, physical
and mental, will tend to disappear, and the two branches of the
race will approximate a common type.

He has inadequately considered the nature of the demands

96 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

made by that section of womanhood in insurrection against the
present social order, and the implications which lie behind their
specific demands, who does not see the radical changes that will
come finally as a result of conceding these demands. However
disastrously the experiment may issue, the difficulties of either
turning back or arresting the movement will be nearly insur-
mountable.

Certain discontented women say they want the ballot, in order
that they may with it open to themselves, on the same terms and
for the same compensation, a free career in all the professions and
occupations in which men are engaged. They want to place all
women in the condition of service and hardship in which the
casualties of life and the precarious fortunes of business now
place a few women. They wish to make wounds which the pres-
ent social structure now receives here and there parts of its
normal status. For they want to be lawyers and physicians
charging the same fees, ministers having the same salaries, arti-
sans and workmen having the same wages as men. The greater
competition among the many women as against the few men in
the occupations now open to women they propose to counteract
by a statutory equalization of wages for the same kind of work.

The great labor crises and the imperiled industrial equilib-
rium in the whole civilized world being confessedly due to the
excessive number of competitors for such paying work as machin-
ery has left to be done, it is proposed to aggravate the situation
by turning into the competition the whole mass of able-bodied
women, not hitherto generally reckoned among the working
class.

In the woman-suffrage movement the " insurgent women " vir-
tually serve notice upon us men, that they do not desire any of
our courtesies, which are a badge of their servitude, and that our
politeness in giving them the best places in the concert room and
the horse- car is superserviceable and compromises their sense of
independence. They do not longer care to be petted or exempted
from perils and hardships or to be maintained by labor not their
own. They only want an equal chance to "paddle their own
canoe " in quest of their own fortunes.

Whatever the answer to this demand may be, it will not be
likely to be this : Very well, please yourselves ; rough it with us
in the struggle for life, asking no favors if such a contest invites
you. Enlist in the military companies and stand the drill, and
when the next war comes, go to the front. Join the fire com-
pany in your ward, and run with the machine, when the next
fire calls you out at midnight. There is a ship in port bound
round Cape Horn, on a year's voyage ; the owners have had such
bad luck with drunken men, that they mean to try a crew of

POLITICAL BIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN, 97

athletic girls. Go up the Penobscot and live next winter in a
camp, and come back next spring balancing yourself with a pick-
pole on the floating, slippery logs you have cut. Go down into
the mines, and with your pickaxe and shovel dig coal and iron.
Offer your services at the going wages to run a locomotive, to
blast rocks, or handle dynamite.

Men who are husbands, fathers, and sons will not say this or
anything like it. But when the lawyer finds his female competi-
tor by the charms of her beauty and eloquence winning his cli-
ents ; and the doctor, that the woman physician by her motherly
tenderness has seduced his patients ; and the minister, that some
reverend lady by her superior sanctity has supplanted him in his
parish ; and all men in all their vocations, high and low, by whose
toils they had gained bread for their families, are pressed with
the competition of those it had been their chief spur to industry
and their pride to maintain without the necessity of repulsive
work, will not the feeling become universal that men are released
from their obligations of duty and support toward the weaker sex ?

The naturalists tell us that the human race acquired its strong
parental affections by performing the needed offices of care and
help which the prolonged infancy of its young — so much longer
than among all lower animals — made necessary. We know that
the tenderness, affection, and sympathy which are the essential
grace and charm of womanhood, as well as the courage, disinter-
estedness, and chivalric sentiment which form the nobility of
manhood, have sprung from that very relation of strong to weak,
protector and protected, which have for ages subsisted among all
the civilized races. What guarantee can they give us who are
seeking to destroy that relation, or at least the cause and reason
of its existence, that those cardinal virtues that adorn and dignify
both sexes will not be involved in its destruction ? For one, I
should not dare to vote to drag woman from the high estate in
which man honors himself in being her minister and servant, until
at least the intelligent majority of women deliberately express
their judgment in favor of a social change so consequential.

Harvard College Observatory has adopted the plan of sending out
circulars to the scientific press and other interested parties, to announce
discoveries as they are made, and secure earlier publication of them. The
first of these circulars announces the discovery by Mrs. Fleming, from
examination of the Draper memorial photographs, of a new star, Nova
Carince, which appeared in the constellation Carina in the spring of 1895.
A comparison of its spectrum with those of Nova Aurigae and Nova Normae
shows close resemblance and apparent identity in essential features. Be-
tween April 8 and July 1, 1895, the photographic brightness of the star
appears to have diminished from the eighth to the eleventh magnitude.

VOJU XLIX.— 9

98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NATURAL SCIENCE IN A LITERARY EDUCATION.

By albert H. TOLMAN,
a8sistakt professor of english literature in the university of chicago.

THE greatest forms of literature hold the mirror up to Nature
— that is, to life. Literary conventions, even, go back at some
point to real life. Because actual Sicilian shepherds once piped
their happy songs where Theocritus heard them, the world has
had its long line of pastoral poetry, an intolerable deal of the
sack of empty repetition and formalism to one half pennyworth
of the bread of reality. In spite of traditions, however, the more
important literature of the world has kept in touch with actual
life. Of Shakespeare and Chaucer we can confidently say that,
though each had a library at home, he found another and a better
one upon the street.

Modern science has invaded modern life ; its devices meet us
at every turn, its great conceptions fill our minds. What shall
be the attitude toward science of those students who wish a
literary education ? Shall they devote themselves entirely to the
study of the classic productions in the languages of ancient and
modern nations ? or shall they take up also those advancing lines
of scientific investigation and speculation which are producing
new instruments for everyday life and new themes for thought, and
which are fashioning anew the very minds and language of men ?

The clearness with which Wordsworth foresaw, in 1800, that
poetry itself would in the time to come draw its subject-matter
more and more from the domain of science, seems truly marvel-
ous. He said in that year, in the preface which he wrote for the
second edition of the Lyrical Ballads :

" If the labors of men of science should ever create any mate-
rial revolution ... in our condition and in the impressions which
we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at
present ; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of sci-
ence. . . . The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist,
or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet^s art as any
upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come
when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under
which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective
sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoy-
ing and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when
what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be
ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet
will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will
welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate
of the household of man."

NATURAL SCIENCE IN A LITERARY EDUCATION. 99

The literature of an age takes up into itself the whole mental
life of the time. He who would adequately interpret modern
literature should know modern life, and in that life science is a
marked element. A general knowledge of contemporary science
is needed to interpret contemporary literature. Tennyson, for
example, constantly refers to the great scientific discoveries and
conceptions of his time. How shall a reader ignorant of those
conceptions fully appreciate him ? Prof. William H. Hudson, in
a remarkable article,* speaks of "Tennyson's keen interest in
science ; his sympathetic hold upon the vast movements in prog-
ress around him ; his manly attitude toward the changes that life
and thought were everywhere undergoing." Even the casual
reader of Tennyson must have noted how deep is his interest in
scientific study, and how fully the great conceptions of modern
science find expression in his poetry. Indeed, there seems to be a
prophetic element in this. As Miss Scudder notes in her recent
volume,t it is hard to realize in reading some parts of In Memo-
riam that it was published in 1850, nine years before Darwin's
Origin of Species.

Great forms of thought, mighty molds which of necessity give
shape to our thinking and then to our very imaginings — these
come to us from the study of things, not from the study of lan-
guage. Literature itself must largely find its raw material, its
great metaphors and similes, its vivid pictures and mighty sym-
bols, within the domain of natural science, and this increasingly
as the years go by. The chemist's law of definite and multiple
proportions; the laws of motion; the phenomena and laws of
light, heat, and electricity ; the strata, the glaciers, and the pro-
cesses of earth- sculpture of the geologist ; the winds, tides, and
ocean currents ; the theories of animal evolution ; the struggle
for existence, the survival of the fittest ; the mighty phenomena,
the impressive uniformities, the nebular hypothesis of astronomy
— these are great forms of thought as well as facts and theories of
science. A man who is unacquainted with modern science can
not well understand the language of educated men, and he can
not interpret sympathetically and adequately the literature of his
own day. Were any writer completely ignorant of these facts
and conceptions, he would be unable to make use of some of the
most powerful symbols that exist for the expression of ideas.
Standing in the midst of a mighty speaking universe, he would
find himself, in a measure, tongue-tied because deaf.

Prof. Drummond's suggestive book. Natural Law in the Spir-
itual World, shows what powerful instruments science furnishes

* Poetry and Science, Popular Science Monthly, October, 1894.
f The Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets.

100 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

for the exposition and enforcement of thought. The fundamental
importance to the speaker and writer of finding effective symbols
for his thought is perhaps best illustrated by the parables of
Christ ; " without a parable spake he not unto them/'

The larger facts of modern science constitute an incomparable
challenge and stimulus to the imagination. The electric thrill
circles the earth ere a swift-footed Achilles could gird up his
loins to run. An instructor in rhetoric in the University of Chi-
cago recently stated that the most vivid and imaginative themes
which came to him from a certain class were written by some
pupils interested in geology upon simple topics connected with
the history of the earth. Some of the great writers of coming
days are already

. . . nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science.

The value of scientific study is not to be measured, of course,
by the extent to which it ministers to the production and appre-
ciation of good literature. The necessity of some knowledge of
science, in order that the educated man may possess his intel-
lectual birthright as a member of his own generation, furnishes a
fundamental and unanswerable argument for such study. That
ideal of education will never go entirely out of fashion which de-
mands that each student make a brave and earnest attempt, even
though it can never be more than partially successful, "to see
life steadily, and see it whole." This ideal will always appeal to
some minds, and its advocates will judge colleges and universities
by their success in furnishing education of this type.

Is there any practical difficulty besides the obvious limitations
of time and strength which prevents students of literature from
obtaining an outline knowledge of the more important branches
of modern science ? Unquestionably, the great difficulty is a con-
viction on the part of these students themselves that scientific
study is without value for them. But in some cases this is not
the only obstacle. Some of the introductory courses in science in
the American institutions of collegiate grade seem to be planned
for those who wish to make specialties of the sciences. Brief,
synoptic culture courses — such as can be covered, let us say, by
means of a daily class exercise for a period of twelve weeks — are
accessible in many institutions, and sometimes in all of the major
sciences ; but in other cases they are disbelieved in and are not
offered. In study of this sort, of course, two or three hours of
field or laboratory work often take the place of a lecture or recita-
tion. Sometimes the first course in a particular science, while
brief enough to come under the description given above, is evi-
dently planned entirely as " first steps," not as a synoptic course
that shall by itself minister to a broad culture.

NATURAL SCIENCE IN A LITERARY EDUCATION, loi

I grant that literary students should study some one funda-
mental science more fully than I have indicated, as a guard
against habits of superficiality ; but if they are to make any such
acquaintance as it seems to me that they should with the " circle of
the sciences," it must be by means of synoptic culture courses, since
their literary studies will of necessity claim most of their time.

Some scientists will think my proposal foolish and imprac-
ticable. It will seem to them absurd that a man should try to
study chemistry, for example, especially on the side of its value
for mental culture; that he should be vitally interested in the
fundamental facts of metallurgy, in the law of definite and mul-
tiple proportions, and the atomic theory, and have only a very
languid interest in bad smells and the details of the chemical
laboratory. But I know that there are scientists whose standing
is unquestioned who believe in the value and practicability of the
courses that I am advocating.

Undoubtedly some work in natural science can be satisfac-
torily accomplished in the schools preparatory to college. The
more external study of plants and animals should be made promi-
nent here. Ornithology in particular, now that Mr. Chapman's
admirable handbook and helpful works by others have been pub-
lished, may well furnish delight and refreshment to the youth of
the present and coming generations. Who can fail to be inter-
ested in birds — in voiced sunshine and winged music — especially
when the appeal is re-enforced by such writers as John Burroughs,
Olive Thorne Miller, Bradford Torrey, and Frank Bolles ?

I can not think, however, that other branches of natural sci-
ence can be handled in a manner adequate to the needs of a broad
education in the secondary schools. A certain preparedness of
mind for college courses and a very moderate amount of acquire-
ment seem to be all that can be expected in many departments of
science from such preparatory work ; but I am not entitled to
have a very definite opinion on this point.

If I say a few words in favor of natural science as a mental
discipline, I shall take a line of argument that is not now popu-
lar. Still, the educational world has its fashions. Our present
way of thinking, therefore, may change, at least to some degree ;
and mental discipline in education, the old idea of to-day, may
become one of the new ideas of to-morrow.

Since Harvard University gave to its undergraduates practi-
cally complete freedom in the choice of the courses which lead to
something that it was nevertheless decided to call the A. B. de-
gree, the principle of election in undergraduate study has had
free course and been glorified. Some perspns would even claim
that the various departments of study are substantially equal and
identical in disciplinary power and general educational value.

102 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

This proposition I can not accept. Literature, for example, is an
indispensable element in an education, but it does not give all
kinds of knowledge and mental training. Those students who
look upon literature as in itself an education will find — or others
will find it out if they do not — that they have accepted it in some
measure instead of an education. One can not omit the other
great subjects from his training, and then make up for their loss
by reading his Browning, his Chaucer, or even his Shakespeare,
more often and more strenuously. The mathematics and the
more exact physical sciences help, as no other branches of study
can, to give to the mind habits of accuracy and a sense of propor-
tion. In a class in literature many questions do not admit of
exact answers ; the personal element must come in ; the answers
of the most careful instructor are only an approximation to the
truth; the answers of the most superficial scholar will not be
entirely wrong. Indeed, since a literary masterpiece makes its
appeal primarily to the emotions and the imagination, the whole
conception of definite, exact answers to specific questions has but
a limited application to the work of the class in literature. In
mathematics and the more exact physical sciences each problem
is specific, and has one answer that is exactly right ; all other pos-
sible answers are exactly and entirely wrong. Every man needs
the discipline of such study.

Let the man interested in literature study mechanics. When
he learns that many forces differing in quantity and direction
can all combine in a single resultant motion, he will not be quite
so ready in studying literary movements to fix the attention upon
one force or circumstance and neglect all the others. Let him
study chemistry ; let him determine all the elements in a given
compound, and how much of each is present ; then he will not be
quite so apt, when analyzing a piece of literature, to fix the atten-
tion upon one quality and ignore everything else.

Even professional literary critics are often decidedly lacking
in proportion, poise, and sharpness of outline. Let me illustrate.
Mr. Swinburne speaks thus of Collins : " He could put more spirit
of color into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single
note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labors
of their lives." * The same critic comments as follows upon some
of the poems of Keats : " The Ode to a Nightingale, one of the
final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages, is
immediately preceded in all editions now current by some of the
most vulgar and fulsome doggerel ever whimpered by a vapid and
effeminate rhymester in the sickly stage of whelphood." f

* Ward's English Poets, iii, p. 282.

\ Encyclopaedia Britannica, article upon Keats.

RECENT WORK ON THE X RAYS, 103

I do not care now to object to the qualitative judgments here
expressed ; but how about the quantity of praise and blame that is
bestowed ? Is it probable that the writer of these words ever had
much thorough training in the mathematics and physical sci-
ences ? Indeed, can he ever have studied anything quantita-
tively ?

It is not my main purpose, however, to argue for the disci-
plinary value of scientific study ; its more direct and substantive
value for the student of literature is what I have wished espe-
cially to set forth. There seem to be two great types of col-
legiate education, the literary and the scientific. That natural
science has an important role to play in the ideal literary edu-
cation I firmly believe ; and in support of this position I appeal
to the prophecy of Wordsworth, to the poetry of Tennyson, and
to the reason of the case.

RECENT WORK ON THE X RAYS.

THE general interest which the so-called Rontgen rays have
excited among the unscientific as well as among the special-
ists seems to justify a more extended treatment than their actual
value to humanity, so far as at present known, would warrant.
The following extracts are taken from the published state-
ments of some of the more prominent physicists. They are more
or less tentative, as all such work at present must necessarily be ;
but they are of interest, as showing the lines along which experi-
mentation is going on, and they perhaps offer some indication of
the probable future of this curious form of energy.

In a paper read before the Paris Academy of Sciences M. Jean
Perrin says : " Two hypotheses have been propounded to explain
the properties ' of the cathode rays. Some physicists think with
Goldstein, Hertz, and Lenard, that this phenomenon is, like light,
due to vibrations of the ether, or even that it is light of short wave
length. It is easily understood that such waves may have a recti-
linear path, excite phosphorescence, and affect photographic plates.
Others think, with Crookes and J. J. Thompson, that these rays
are formed by matter which is negatively charged and moving
with great velocity, and on this hypothesis their mechanical prop-
erties, as well as the manner in which they become curved in a
magnetic field, are readily explicable." A series of experiments
which the author made, and which are given in Nature for Janu-
ary 30th, lead him to the following conclusions. " These results as
a whole do not appear capable of being easily reconciled with the
theory which regards the cathode rays as being ultra-violet light.
On the other hand, they agree well with the theory which regards

104 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

them as a material radiation, and which, as it appears to me,
might be thus enunciated. In the neighborhood of the cathode,
the electric field is sufficiently intense to break into pieces (into
ions) certain of the molecules of the residual gas. The negative
ions move toward the region where the potential is increasing,
acquire a considerable speed, and form the cathode rays ; their
electric charge, and consequently their mass (at the rate of one
valence-gramme for a hundred thousand coulombs), is easily meas-
urable. The positive ions move in the opposite direction ; they
form a diffused brush, sensitive to the magnet, and not a radiation
in the correct sense of the word."

Nikola Tesla, in a recent Electrical Review, describes the fol-
lowing experiment, which seems to support the view that these
rays are material radiations : When an exhausted bulb is attached
to the terminal of a disruptive coil, small streamers are observed
which often break through the side of the bulb, producing a fine
hole. " Now, the extraordinary thing is that, in spite of the con-
nection to the outer atmosphere, the air can not rush into the
bulb as long as the hole is very small. The glass at the place
where the rupture is may grow very hot — to such a degree as to
soften; but it will not collapse, but rather hulge out, showing
that a pressure from the inside greater than that of the atmos-
phere exists. On frequent occasions the hole becomes so large
as to be perfectly distinguishable to the eye. As the matter is
expelled from the bulb the rarefaction increases and the streamer
becomes less and less intense, whereupon the glass closes again,
hermetically sealing the opening.'^ He reports producing strong
pictures at a distance of forty feet by the use of a bulb with a
single terminal, which permits the use of practically any desired
potential.

An account of some important experiments by L. Benoist and
D. Hurmuzeson appears in the Comptes Bendus. They caused
the rays of a Crookes tube, incited by a powerful coil, to act upon
the gold leaves of a Hurmuzeson electroscope at the distance of
about twenty centimetres from the tube, and alternately charged
with positive and negative electricity. The insulation obtained
by a disk of dielectrine which closes the tube admits of the per-
fect preservation of its charge for several months. The X rays
immediately and completely discharge the electroscope, more
rapidly if the charge is negative than if it is positive. " We have
thus," they say, "a new way of investigation applicable to the
study of these rays, and enabling us to gain important informa-
tion as to their real nature. The plate to be studied being put
in its place, the electroscope charged to about a divergence of
forty degrees, the keeping tube replaced, and the Crookes tube
set in activity, we have observed :

RECENT WORK ON THE X RAYS, 105

'' 1. Black paper (sixteen leaves interposed). The collapse of
the gold leaves is immediate and complete in a few seconds ; they
do not rise again. 2. Plate of brass (two tenths of a millimetre
in thickness). No change in the divergence of the gold leaves.
3. Plate of aluminum (one tenth of a millimetre). Immediate
fall, complete in a few seconds ; same result with plates of alumi-
num up to one millimetre, and even upward, and the Crookes tube
being removed to the distance of thirty centimetres. The sub-
stances easily traversed are silver in beaten leaves, leaves of
paper steeped in metallic solutions, vulcanized fiber, gelatin, cel-
luloid, ebonite, etc. The substances not traversed, at least in the
thicknesses employed, are brass, zinc, glass, and unglazed porce-
lain (three millimetres). Similar results have since been an-
nounced from several other investigators.^'

A paper by G. Jaumann, under the title of Longitudinal
Light, is described in Nature: "It is based upon the law of
electric discharge enunciated by Jaumann in 1888, according to
which electric rays impinging at right angles upon a cathode
surface favor the dissipation of the charge upon it. Hence, the
writer argues, light vibrations must have a component in the
direction of propagation; they must, in fact, contain longitudi-
nal as well as transverse waves. It then becomes a question of
how Maxweirs electro-magnetic equations, which do not admit
of any but purely transverse vibrations, can be made to agree
with these conclusions. Jaumann gives a simple answer. Let
it be admitted that the specific induction capacity of a medium
and its magnetic permeability are affected by the oscillations
themselves. These 'constants' will then be variable, and when
introduced as such into the equations longitudinal vibrations are
at once seen to be possible. Each pencil of light will then be vi-
brating transversely along its center line, and toward the outer
edge the vibrations will become more and more longitudinal. The
author claims that this theory affords a natural and simple expla-
nation of a large number of discharge phenomena."

Prof. Oliver Lodge, of University College, Liverpool, is reported
as having said that he felt inclined to adopt the view that the new
rays were longitudinal waves in the ether ; and that if this were
so the discovery would open up a department of physics as large
as light, sound, or electricity. Later, in a letter to Nature, dis-
cussing the theory of the anodal origin of the X rays, he says :
" The term ' anode rays ' for the rays discovered with so much
idat by Prof. Rontgen, whether they be the same as those pre-
viously discovered by Dr. Lenard or not, is suggested by the
remarks of Mr. A. W. Porter at a recent meeting of the Royal
Society. They certainly do not start from the cathode, but from
some opposed surface — a surface which may be an actual anode.

io6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and which always has some anodic properties. From each point
of such a surface rays start in all directions ; this is proved by
the shadows they cast of slits, holes, and wires."

Prof. S. P. Thompson takes exception to the term anodic, as
applied to the X rays. He says : " Is it quite correct, as Prof.
Lodge puts it, to call the X rays anodic, because they start from
a point opposite the cathode ? It may be true that a surface
upon which the cathodic discharges are being directed acquires
thereby some properties common to the anode, but it is not an
actual anode ; . . . hence I submit that anti-cathodic would be a
more correct term to use in describing them."

Prof. A. W. Porter, of University College, London, in a letter
to Nature, says : " In your last issue, in the account of the work
in the Comptes Eendus, you state that M. de Heen ' proves con-
clusively that the X rays proceed from the anode and not the
cathode.' May I point out that I have proved that this is un-
doubtedly true for the bulb I have been using throughout my
experiments on the X radiation ? The bulb is one in which the
negative electrode is concave, and the negative stream is thereby
focused to a point on the anode, which is a platinic disk placed
near the center of the bulb. By measuring the positions of differ-
•ent parts of a radiograph of a series of concentric zones of tin foil
placed in a measured position, I have shown that the actinic rays
diverge from the anode disk."

It was announced from Rome that Prof. Salvioni, of Perugia,
had discovered a means by which these radiations could be made
to so far assist the eye as to enable it to see through all objects
which the rays could penetrate, so that the contents of a closed
space were revealed.

From Prof. Salvioni's description of the apparatus, which fol-
lows, it will be seen that he has made no new discovery, and that
it is quite incorrect to say that the observer actually sees the
objects. He simply sees the shadows on the phosphorescent
screen. The fluorescent light affects the retina like ordinary
light, and is quite distinct from the X rays. What is really seen
is a shadow picture of the object.

The apparatus is very simple, and is thus described by Prof.
Salvioni : " This cryptoscope consists of a small cardboard tube
about eight centimetres high. One end is closed by a sheet of
black paper, on which is spread a layer of fish glue and calcium
sulphide ; this substance I have found to be very phosphorescent
under the action of Pontgen rays. Within the cardboard tube,
at the other end, at which the eye is placed, is fixed a lens, giving
a clear image of the phosphorescent paper. On looking through
this cryptoscope one can see, even in a light room, the shape and
position of metallic bodies inclosed in boxes of cardboard, wood.

RECENT WORK ON THE X RAYS. 107

aluminum, and within the flesh/' These experiments have since
been repeated by many other investigators with perfect success ;
the observer in one case examining the bones of his own hand.

Gustave le Bon, in the Revue Scientifique, in summing up the
results of his experiments on the X rays, says : " These experi-
ments, which have been varied in all ways, are fundamental.
They show us that the degree of thickness of the opaque plates is
absolutely without importance in the passage of the 'lumidre
noire/ They also indicate that the ' lumiere noire ' is propagated
under other laws than those which govern ordinary light. . . .
This light can be transformed into radiations which propagate
themselves as electric currents. They are not, however, electric
radiations, because they produce effects which ordinary electric
currents will not produce. "We find ourselves, then, in the pres-
ence of a form of energy which is not light, as it only has part of
light's properties and does not obey the laws of the propagation
of light, and which is not electricity, since electricity in all known
forms does not produce the same effects. The * lumiere noire'
must be considered as a new force added to the few of these which
we already know."

In a letter to Nature, Lord Blytheswood describes the following
experiment with a Wimshurst electrical machine of one hundred
and twenty- eight three-foot plates, the machine being driven by a
motor of about one horse power and a half. " A thick sheet of
lead was placed upright between the poles of the electric machine,
as a screen, and was connected to the ground, the two poles being
insulated. A sensitive dry plate was put into the camera dark
slide, with a metallic object to be photographed (a steel washer
with holes in it), and this was connected by a wire which passed
out of the dark slide to the ground. The whole was wrapped up
in four folds of a black velvet focusing cloth, and was put in
some cases between the negative pole and the lead screen, and in
other cases between the positive pole and the lead screen, the
plane of the slide being perpendicular to the line of discharge.
In all cases good strong negatives were obtained with exposures
of about twenty minutes. The machine was arranged to give a
silent brush discharge during the experiments,'' Several other
physicists have reported obtaining shadow pictures without the
aid of a Crookes tube, by using an electric current or simple sun-
light, and a fluorescent screen, after very long exposures. Henri
Becquerel recounts the following interesting experiment : " I in-
close a photographic plate in two folds of very thick paper, so
that the plate does not become shaded on exposure to the sun
for a day. On the outside of this paper a plate of phosphorescent
material is placed, and the whole is exposed to the direct rays of
the sun for several hours. When the plate is developed we find

io8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in
black on the proof. If a coin is interposed between the phospho-
rescent substance and the paper, its image appears on the proof.
A thin sheet of glass may be interposed to preclude the possibility
of chemical action."

It is announced by Mr. Edison that calcium tungstate (prop-
erly crystallized) gives a splendid fluorescence with the Rontgen
rays, far exceeding that of platino-cyanide.

A rather ingenious explanation of the X rays is offered by Mr.
J. W. Gifford. He likens the Crookes tube to a vibrating tuning
fork, which, if sounding simple A, would set an A violin string
vibrating not only A but its octave and the fifth to its octave,
and quite a host of other overtones or harmonics of rapidly de-
creasing wave length which would seem to have no theoretical
limit. The waves of long period from a Crookes tube would pass
through wood, paper, or the human body, without much resistance,
but would be absorbed or reflected by the denser metals. But if
objects capable of taking up their vibrations lay in the path of
these long rays they would set them vibrating like the violin
string, and might in the same way produce overtones which did
not before exist. These overtones may include waves of such
short lengths as to cause the objects themselves to become lumi-
nous. If so, the light waves in question, although they are dis-
tinctly instrumental in darkening a photographic plate exposed
to them, have nevertheless not passed through, and could never
pass through the obstacles easily traversed by the electric waves
which gave them origin.

Prof. Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia College, has quite recently
published in Science an account of some important work on the
reflection of these " rays.'' The mirror used was a new sheet of
ordinary platinum foil. Great care was taken to prevent any
rectilinear emanations from the discharge tube reaching the sen-
sitive plate, which was contained in an ordinary plate holder,
being covered with two sheets of aluminum, each 0*17 millimetre
in thickness, and the draw slide, and over the whole was fastened
a netting of iron wire. " After an exposure of ten hours it was
found that a good image of the netting had been produced on the
vertical strip of the plate exposed to the reflected rays. This
image had various deformations, the vertical lines representing
the netting being, as a general thing, most distinct; in some
places, however, the horizontal lines had the upper hand, and
there were a few spots where both were equally distinct. These
facts and the character of the deformations point very strongly
to the conclusion that in the act of reflection from a metallic
surface the Rontgen rays behave like ordinary light.'' Further
experiments were made to ascertain the percentage of the rays

RECENT WORK ON THE X RAYS. 109

reflected. The result arrived at, whicli Prof. Eood says is only to
be regarded as a first approximation, was that platinum foil re-
flects the one two-hundred-and-sixtieth part of the X rays inci-
dent on it at an angle of forty-five degrees. Prof. G. Vicentini
and Dr. G. Pacher, in a paper read before the Reale Istituto
Veneto di Scienze, report having found distinct evidence of an
irregular refraction from a parabolic brass mirror.

Regarding the value of these rays in surgery there are at pres-
ent hardly sufficient data to warrant a positive conclusion. How-
ever, a most thorough and profusely illustrated article appeared
in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for March, 1896,
entitled The Clinical Application of the Rontgen Rays. It is much
the best exposition which this branch of the subject has yet re-
ceived, and if one can depend on the pictures, the new agent
promises to be, if nothing more, at least a great aid to diagnosis.

An interesting commercial application of the rays is an-
nounced by Bugnet and Goscard in the Comjptes Rendus. " The
proofs which we have the honor to submit to the Academy show
in juxtaposition silhouettes of genuine diamonds and of imita-
tions, both loose and set. Prolonged exposure soon succeeds in
causing the silhouettes of genuine diamonds to disappear, while
false diamonds continue to behave like opaque substances. The
same procedure has also enabled us to distinguish natural jet
from its mineral imitation.^'

At a meeting of the Royal Society, on February 13th papers
on the Rontgen rays were read by Lord Kelvin and Prof. J. J.
Thompson. A discussion followed, the general tone of which
showed that, although many interesting points have been cleared
up, there is still considerable difference of opinion among the au-
thorities regarding fundamentals, and, while extremely valuable
experimental work has been done, we are yet far from a final ex-
planation of the origin and properties of this new (?) form of
energy.

The following, from an unbeliever, may perhaps be of interest :
Ch. V. Zenger says, in speaking of some pictures obtained by
Domalip, Professor of Electrotechnics at the Polytechnicum of
Prague: "The interesting point is that Domalip has obtained
electric images on a plate by means of plates of copper, brass,
zinc, lead, and steel. This is, in my opinion, the proof that there
is here merely a phenomenon of electric induction producing
phosphorescence of the gelatin, and at the same time an electric
discharge in the gelatin, and, lastly, the fluorescence of the am-
bient air, and as in case of the dark discharge of electricity. In
my opinion, these are the three agents which determine the de-
composition of the silver salts in the sensitive layer. There are
no special radiations, no X rays, and no dark lighf

no POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

SKETCH OF HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND.

By CHAKLES EDWAKD LLOYD.

A MONO the distinguished physicists America has produced
^LJL. Prof. Henry Augustus Rowland, of Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity is unanimously accorded a leading place. He was born
at Honesdale, Pa., November 27, 1848. His forefathers were
among the earliest settlers of Fairfield, Conn. Three gener-
ations of clergymen of well-known prominence in the Oongre-
gationalist Church of Windsor, Conn., are his immediate paternal
ancestors. His father, the Rev. Henry Augustus Rowland, had a
great love for all scientific pursuits, and only gave them up for
what he considered a higher calling. Prof. Rowland^s mother is
descended from representatives of several Knickerbocker families
of Manhattan Island. She was Harriette Heyer, the daughter
of a wealthy merchant of New York. Her mother was Miss
Suydam.

In 1855 Prof. Rowland's father removed to Newark, N. J. He
died there in 1859. Prior to his death, however, he had discovered
the scientific bent of his young son, and heartily sympathized
with and encouraged it. During the residence of his family in
Newark the boy spent most of his time making chemical experi-
ments. He used a book on chemistry belonging to an older sis-
ter, and worked in a crude laboratory he made for himself in the
cellar of his father's house. Between the ages of eleven and
fifteen he also commenced experiments in electricity and mag-
netism, making many small electric motors, electric machines,
and repeating all the experiments he could find mentioned in
the few scientific books to which he had access.

When he was about sixteen years old his mother sent him to
Andover, Mass., to prepare for college. While here he was so
engrossed in his electrical and magnetic experiments that his
Greek and Latin studies were neglected. He was severely repri-
manded by Mr. Taylor, the head of the school. This lecture, de-
livered to him in an arbitrary manner, without any inquiry as to
the cause and with no word of kindness or sympathy, made a pro-
found impression on the boy and increased, if possible, his dislike
for the stones of the Latin and Greek languages which were forced
upon him when he was starving for the bread of scientific knowl-
edge. On returning home from Andover he expressed his dislike
for this course of study so strongly to his mother that she deter-
mined to send him to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at
Troy, N. Y., at that time the leading engineering school in the
country. Here the young man maintained a good position in his
classes, although much of his time was spent in his own experi-

SKETCH OF HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND. m

ments and studies. The subjects taught, however, were so con-
genial to him that one reading of the lessons assigned him was
sufficient to insure a creditable recitation.

Owing to an injury to his knee during a snowball fight, he
gave up his classes in Troy and studied chemistry for half a year
at the Sheffield Scientific School. Here he invented and made
the first continuous current dynamo ever constructed, which has
since been exhibited at the World's Fair at Chicago. Young
as he was, he was busily engaged in researches and experiments
on magnetism. He was an earnest student of Faraday's Re-
searches, Tyndairs Heat, Youmans's Conservation of Energy, and
books of similar nature, although he had never studied the sub-
ject of physics under a competent teacher.

He returned to Troy and was graduated in 1870 with the degree
of C. E. On his return home he continued to work on his favor-
ite subjects of electricity and magnetism. About this time he
published his first paper, a letter to the Scientific American de-
scribing a visit to an inventor, who professed to obtain great
power from a single cell of a battery. Mr. Rowland, being fa-
miliar with the laws of the conservation of energy, knew there
must be some swindling device somewhere, and finally exposed it,
although a number of capitalists had already been defrauded of
large sums of money by this man's claims. For part of a year
Mr. Rowland was connected with a railroad in western New York
as civil engineer, but routine work of this nature was so distaste-
ful to him that he accepted the place of Instructor in Natural
Science in Wooster University in Ohio. After a few months' ex-
perience here, he went to Troy, K Y., to teach physics. During
this period he had been engaged in researches on magnetic dis-
tribution, and what is now called magnetic permeability, using
a system of absolute magnetic units of his own invention and
calculating many cases of magnetic distribution by the method
of the magnetic circuit, now always used for the calculation of
dynamos and motors, and often ascribed to Hopkinson, but really
due to Rowland. These researches he rewrote three separate
times, and sent for three consecutive years to the leading scien-
tific journal of America. Each time the editor, who was not a
physicist, said that he had consulted the most eminent physicists
of the country, and their advice to Mr. Rowland was that he had
better study the subject before attempting to write any more
papers. This criticism naturally discouraged and depressed the
ambitious and studious man. Since his earliest youth he had
studied electricity and magnetism in spite of all opposition, trav-
eling from place to place with his trunks full of galvanic batteries
and electrical material, never receiving one word of encourage-
ment, but always looked at askance as one no better than he

112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

OTight to be, or reprimanded by ignorant pedagogues for not
studying languages, dead in every sense to one who could judge
of the relative value of things. This repeated rejection of his
manuscript by the leading American journal was the most de-
pressing factor in his life.

About this time. Maxwell's great work on Electricity and
Magnetism appeared, and Mr. Rowland recognized there the sys-
tem of units which he had himself invented, as well as many other
of his ideas. He also recognized in the author a master mind of
the very highest order. He compared this work with his rejected
manuscript and said to himself: "This is the judge I want; I
am either a fool, suitable for an asylum only, or my work is good.
I shall send my papers to this great man and find out." The
paper went, and the kindest of letters from the great Maxwell
came back, saying that the paper was of the highest value, and
had been sent to the Philosophical Magazine of London! This
verdict naturally eliminated the "depressing factor'^ above re-
ferred to.

This "paper" appeared promptly and established Mr. Row-
land's reputation. It is considered to-day the beginning of the
modern exact study of magnetism. It was, perhaps, the main
cause of his selection for the chair of Physics in the Johns Hop-
kins University.

While teaching at Troy, he visited his uncle, who was chap-
lain at West Point. Here he first met Prof. Gilman, who had just
been elected President of the projected Johns Hopkins University.
Prof. Rowland had been cordially introduced to Prof. Gilman by
Prof. Michie. President Gilman was anxious to secure the best
man in both hemispheres for the chair of Physics in the new
university, over which he was to preside, and at his suggestion
the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins University wrote to
Clerk Maxwell, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Kelvin (then Sir William
Thompson), Baron von Helmholtz, and other European scientists
for the name of the ablest physicist known to them. With sin-
gular unanimity these foreign specialists replied that the most
original thinker in the domain of physics was, in their opinion,
an American named Rowland, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic In-
stitute, of Troy, N. Y. ! Thus indorsed by Europe and America,
the position was offered to Prof. Rowland and accepted. He still
holds it.

When this flattering offer was accepted, Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity was not prepared to open its doors to students, and
President Gilman suggested that Prof. Rowland should take a
year's leave of absence. This suggestion coincided perfectly with
Prof. Rowland's plans. He went abroad, and was for a while
the guest of the great Maxwell. Now, for the first time, he

SKETCH OF HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND. 113

was able to converse with one who knew more about his favorite
subjects than he did. The wonderful and profound knowl-
edge of Clerk Maxwell, combined with a childish simplicity and
the kindliest of natures, made a great impression on Prof. Row-
land. He looks back to this visit as one of the most notable
events of his life. From England he went to France, thence to
Germany, where he entered the laboratory of Baron von Helm-
holtz. It was here he carried out his research on the magnetic
action of electric convection — an idea he had conceived in 1868
while reading Faraday's Researches. He returned to America in
1876, and assumed his duties as Professor of Physics in the Johns
Hopkins University.

Prof. Rowland was at this time only twenty-seven years of age,
a period at which many of his graduate students now begin the
study of physics under his able tutelage. His students are sin-

FlRST CONTINTTOUS-CURBENT AbMATURE, MADE BY PbOF. EoWLAND IN 1869.

cerely attached to him, and have so profound a respect for his
knowledge and ability that many of them emulate his example
and gladly spend hours of extra time in testing interesting ex-
periments suggested by his lectures.

During the early years of Prof. Rowland's life in Baltimore
he made a new determination of the mechanical equivalent of
heat, in which he introduced exact thermometry for the first
time. He made a considerable correction in Joule's value. He
also discovered that water had a minimum value of its specific
heat, a fact unnoticed before. Soon after he made a determi-
nation of the unit of electrical resistance, the ohm, which dem-
onstrated the error of the British Association Committee. This
experiment he repeated with a Government appropriation as a
member of the International Congress for fixing this standard.
When this congress met at Paris, in 1884, Prof. Rowland pro-
tested against the value there adopted, as it did not agree with
his experiment. At the Congress of Electricians, held at the
Centennial Exposition at Chicago, in 1893, the International
Chamber of Delegates, of which Prof. Rowland was president,

VOL. XLIX. — 10

114 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

decided Tinanimously to adopt the value advocated in 1884, and
this is now the standard of the civilized world, a triumph of
which Prof. Rowland is very proud.

Prof. Rowland's work in physics not only includes that pub-
lished under his own name, but his influence is felt in the theses
of his students who aspire to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
One of the most notable of these was written by S. H. Hall, and
describes a new phenomenon now known as the " Hall effect." The
experiment leading to this discovery was described by Prof. Row-
land in his lectures, and Mr. Hall was encouraged by his teacher
to carry it out to a successful termination. The influence of Prof.
Rowland's students in the recent revival of interest in physics,
including electricity and magnetism, has been considerable, and
the highest position in practical electricity available to an Ameri-
can is held by Dr. Louis Duncan, President of the Society of Elec-
trical Engineers, who is associated with Prof. Rowland and is
one of his students.

Prof. Rowland has, with rare exceptions, devoted his time to
pure research, and has never endeavored to accumulate a fortune.
If he had patented his dynamo, which was finished ten years
before Edison applied for a patent, his bank account would be
large enough to enable him to perfect any idea he might con-
ceive. Of late years Prof. Rowland has devoted himself princi-
pally to the improvement of the apparatus for use in spectrum
analysis. He has made three dividing engines for ruling the
gratings used, each better than the one before it, and each pro-
ducing gratings better than those of Mr. Rutherford, hitherto
admitted to have been the best. At the present time, all the work
of the world in spectroscopy requiring high dispersion is made
with " Rowland's gratings."

Prof. Rowland has also invented the concave grating which
can be used without lenses, and with which photographic work is
best done. These results have been achieved principally by Prof.
Rowland's skill as a mechanical designer, and his dividing en-
gines have been constructed not only after his own design, but by
processes invented by him and carried out under his own eye. So
far nobody has been able even to copy the machines, although the
processes have been freely described in his article Screw in the
Encyclopsedia Britannica.

" Rowland's grating" is made by ruling parallel lines on a con-
cave plate of what is known as speculum metal. This metal is an
alloy of two parts copper and one part tin. The parallel grooves
are made with a delicately adjusted diamond point. The machine
on which the grating was made was manufactured after eighteen
months' hard work by Theodore C. Schneider, the machinist at the
university (a pupil of George M. Phelps, of Brooklyn), from the

ii6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

designs of and by processes invented by Prof. Rowland, who was
constantly at hand to direct every movement. This machine is in
a dark vault under the laboratory. When a " grating " is being
made, it runs night and day. The vault is locked, and no one is
allowed to enter it, for the machine is so sensitive that the tem-
perature of a human body would disarrange it. When a new
diamond point is being tested, as is now the case, Prof. Rowland
will permit a few people to visit it. Sir William Thomson, the
Earl of Rosse, Lord Rayleigh, Prof. Ball, Astronomer Royal of
Ireland, the late Prof. Helmholtz, of Berlin, Prof. Mascart, of
Paris, and Prof. Lemstrom, of Sweden, are among those to whom
this courtesy has been extended. The motive power of the ma-
chine is a hydraulic engine. The water is kept at a constant
height in a tank near the roof, to insure unvarying speed. It is
driven by a belt attached to a solid brass driving wheel on the
machine. A crank is turned by the same on the other end of the
shaft. This crank moves the carriage that conveys the diamond
point back and forth over the surface of the " grating " or plate.
This carriage rests on two steel ways, which are flat on top and
slanting slightly outward, so that there are three points on one
way or rail on which the carriage rests. These "ways" are
ground so as to make them as nearly accurate as possible. But
they can not be made perfect, for Mr. Rowland tested them with a
microscope and found that they were " out " — that is, not exactly
perfect — by one fifty-thousandth of an inch. He did not attempt
to improve them.

One of the most difficult problems that Prof. Rowland and Mr.
Schneider have to solve is to find a diamond point that is exactly
right. Some are too blunt, some have one defect, some another,
and it generally takes from two to eight months to find an avail-
able diamond.

As the diamond carriage moves exactly in the same line back-
ward and forward every time, the metal plate or grating beneath
must move slightly when the diamond makes a stroke. These
tiny grooves must be exactly the same distance apart, and as
there must be from ten thousand to forty-eight thousand parallel
grooves or lines made within the space of one inch, it is readily
seen that the lateral movement of the metal plate is very small.
At every stroke of the diamond, the carriage carrying the plate is
moved by means of a steel screw. It is the only absolutely exact
screw ever made. The " ways " mentioned above, when tested by
the microscope, are one fifty thousandth part of an inch " out " of
the exact, but the strongest microscope can find no flaw in the
exactness of the screw. In order to manufacture this screw, it
was necessary to make it under water, which was kept at a cer-
tain temperature. If it had been made in the air, or the tempera-

SKETCH OF HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND. 117

ture of the water changed, the slight expansion caused by the
friction would have made the threads vary slightly. This would
have caused the carriage that runs on it to vary slightly, and con-
sequently the spaces between the grooves on the " grating " would
vary, and render it useless for scientific purposes. The screw is
turned by a solid steel wheel with seven hundred and fifty teeth
on the ring, which is moved the space of one tooth at a time
by an ingenious contrivance attached to the driving shaft. The
screw having twenty threads, the carriage is moved one fifteen-
thousandth part of an inch each time, thus making that many
grooves to the inch on the metal "grating." The number of
grooves may be regulated. " Gratings " have been made with
forty-eight thousand grooves to the inch. By the strongest micro-
scope made, the human eye could not see the lines if there were
more than a hundred and twenty- five thousand to the inch. Prof.
Eowland says he gets the best results from " gratings " with fif-
teen thousand grooves to the inch. The machine now in use at
Johns Hopkins University is the third of the kind made. The
first was completed years ago, and is still in use in the vault.
The European, and especially the German universities, have tried
repeatedly to make a machine of the kind, but have never suc-
ceeded. Hence all their best universities get the " gratings " for
their spectroscopes from the machine at the Hopkins.

When a " grating " is completed, it is taken out, tested, packed
in a handsome hardwood case, and sent to Mr. Brashear in Alle-
gheny, Pa. This gentleman attends to the sale of the valuable
" gratings," which cost from twenty to three hundred dollars. The
proceeds are divided between Mr. Brashear and the university.

When these tiny grooves, cut with a diamond point on the
polished metal plate, are completed and are perfect, the grating
breaks up a ray of light into its various colors as a prism does.
Some of the gratings produce " ghosts," and are then considered
imperfect. Prof. Rowland deals with these " ghosts " of the spec-
trum in a recent article in the Astro-Physical Journal, of Chi-
cago. He says: "A periodic displacement of one millionth of
an inch in a grating will produce visible ghosts which are seen
in the second spectrum and are troublesome in the third. With
very bright spectra these might even be seen in the first spec-
trum. An over-exposed photographic plate would readily bring
them out."

With the concave grating Prof. Rowland has made an im-
mense photographic map of the solar spectrum, and has deter-
mined a system of standard wave lengths which is now univer-
sally adopted. He is now having measured the wave length of
every line of the solar spectrum and is determining the elements
to which they all belong. This is a work of years, as is also the

ii8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

measurement of the wave lengths of the spectrum lines of all the
elements.

These measurements are carried on mostly by assistants, and
are paid for by appropriations made from the Rumford fund, the
Bruce fund, or the Bache fund. But, at times, money for this
work is very scarce. Nothing can come from Johns Hopkins
University, as it has lost so much of its endowment that its work
is greatly hampered. Thus, Prof. Rowland, in the prime of his
life, and at the age of greatest mental activity, finds himself com-
pelled to relinquish carrying out many of his best ideas. He has
determined, if possible, to remedy the defect himself. Whether
he will be able to do so remains to be seen, but he has never
failed to accomplish his purposes, and those who know him best
have found that discouragements only spur him to greater effort.

In this connection, however, he remembers one of the most
disagreeable incidents of his life. Recently he worked six months
for the Cataract Construction Company, of New York, in develop-
ing the plans for the transmission of the power of Niagara, in
which he overthrew the plans of their engineers and substituted
rational ones. He consulted two friends as to the bill he should
render for his services. He accepted their advice, as they were
admitted to be the most competent judges in such matters. The
company sent him a check for one third of the amount, accom-
panied by an insulting letter ! Although abhorring petty disputes
about money, his sense of justice was so shocked at this treatment
that he immediately brought suit against them, rejecting all
offers of compromise. In spite of the fact that the company was
backed by half the money power of New York and its best lawyer,
a jury of twelve intelligent and impartial gentlemen unanimously
pronounced his bill correct and just.

During the course of Prof. Rowland's life he has received
many honors, mostly from abroad, where he is probably best
known and most thoroughly appreciated. In 1881 he became a
chevalier of the Legion of Honor of Paris, and in 1896, at the cen-
tennial of the Institute of France, of which he is a corresponding
member, he was nominated officer of the Legion of Honor. At
the exposition at Paris, in 1890, his gratings and map of the spec-
trum received a grand prize and gold medal. About 1881 he re-
ceived the grand prize of the Venice Academy of Sciences for an
essay on the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat. In 1884 Prof. Row-
land received the Rumford medal from the American Academy
of Sciences in Boston for his researches in light and heat. In
1890 the Draper medal was awarded him for his researches in
spectroscopy.

He is an associate fellow of the American Academy of Sci-
ences of Boston, and member of the National Academy of Sci-

SKETCH OF HENRY AUGUSTUS ROWLAND. 119

ences, Washington ; honorary member of the Royal Society, of
London; one of the twelve honorary members of the London
Physical Society ; one of the ten honorary members of the Paris
Physical Society ; honorary member of the Royal Society of Got-
tingen; of the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome; Academy of Sci-
ences, Catania, Sicily ; of the Manchester Literary and Scientific
Society ; of the Cambridge (England) Philosophical Society ; of
the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, of the Italian So-
ciety of Spectroscopists, etc. He is corresponding member of the
British Association, of the Institute of France, etc.

In 1883 he presided over the Section of Physics of the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Science at Minneapolis,
before which body he delivered an address, A Plea for Pure Sci-
ence, which was published and read with great interest through-
out the world.

He was foremost among the members of the Electrical Con-
gress at Chicago, and was President of the International Chamber
of Delegates for the establishment of electrical units. The stu-
dents of the University of Chicago, who occupied front seats in
the Academy of Fine Arts when this body of learned men was
called to order, regarded Henry Augustus Rowland as second
only to his great teacher, the late Baron von Helmholtz. It is
possible that those who were privileged to be present on that oc-
casion will never again see, on a single platform, so many men of
international reputations.

In 1880 the Johns Hopkins University conferred on him the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In 1895 Yale University con-
ferred on him the degree of LL. D.

In 1890 Prof. Rowland was married to Miss Henrietta Harri-
son, of Baltimore, who is thoroughly interested in his work, and
is in perfect sympathy with him. They have two bright and
interesting children. His oldest, a little daughter, Harriette,
named for his mother, is four years old. His son, Henry Augus-
tus Rowland, though only three years of age, already bids fair to
follow in the footsteps of his distinguished father. The lad is
very fond of visiting the physical laboratory, and will for a long
time watch with silent and absorbed interest the movements of
the intricate machinery, which is kept constantly going under the
supervision of Mr. Schneider.

Prof. Rowland is a tall, strongly built man, and can frequently
be seen at one of the windows in the basement of the physical
laboratory of Johns Hopkins University industriously working
and deeply absorbed in making investigations and experiments
which the vast majority of his fellow-citizens would not compre-
hend. Every one who approaches him is at once impressed by
his genuineness. His favorite exercise is horseback riding. Dur-

120 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ing the winter lie rides every day many miles in the country
around Baltimore, and sits his horse like a Centaur. He especially
enjoys a fox-hunt of the old-fashioned sort, for which Maryland
has been famous for a century, the first requisite of which is such
perfect horsemanship that seven- rail fences and deep ditches are
not considered obstacles to the chase. A " paper chase " he would
probably regard with as much contempt as he does the pamphlets
in his " crank library," a collection of so-called scientific papers
written by people who know nothing of science. He intends to
deliver a lecture soon on the contents of this " crank library."

His vacation is usually spent in his native New England. He
cruises along the coast in a small yacht of his own design, in
whose seagoing capacity he has great confidence. It is said by
some of his students, who assume to know more of nautical sci-
ence than of physics, that this yacht does not " ride the waves "
properly, and that some day they expect to hear that their teacher
has been drowned in a rough sea oflp the Atlantic coast. These
critics are not aware of the fact that during his boyhood a
part of Prof. Rowland's vacations were spent in New York city,
and that his favorite pastime was rowing or sailing his own boat
in New York harbor. A glance at the shipping in that port,
with steamships and sailing vessels coming from and going to all
parts of the world, with ferryboats constantly passing from pier
to pier, and the shrill whistle of the omnipresent tugboat con-
stantly rising above the roar of commerce, ought to convince the
most skeptical that even as a boy he was a seaman who knew his
business.

This sketch of Prof. Rowland's life should be read with pride
and interest by every one of his fellow-citizens. It should en-
courage every ambitious and gifted American youth to persevere
in an effort to overcome obstacles which prejudice and ignorance
often interpose to obstruct the career of those who are born with
mental powers too great to be trammeled by ancient traditions or
to be made pliant to an uncongenial routine.

The thumb is regarded by Mr. B. Whitehead as one of the most impor-
tant factors of civilization. Without it, or with only a rudimentary and
imperfect thumb such as the monkeys have, men could never have made
or used arms of offense or defense, and would never have been able to
exercise a number of industrial arts by means of which they have improved
the conditions of their existence. No monkey can throw a harpoon or
draw an arrow with any precision, turn a spindle or twist a cord. This
importance of the thumb has been observed by primitive peoples. Sir Johu
Lubbock mentions savages in Australia and Africa who are accustomed to
cut oft' the thumbs of dead enemies to disable them from making reprisals,
upon them.

CORRESP ONDENCE,

121

^^xxts'^tsxi&tntt.

PROFESSOR OSTWALD ON THE
MECHANICAL THEORY.

EdiU/r Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : In the last number of your valuable
publication appeared an address by Prof.
W. Ostwald, of Leipsic, on The Failure of
Scientific Materialism, the reading of which
suggested the following considerations :

Leaving aside the intrinsic value of his
Btatements, I wish to call attention to the sen-
sational manner in which they are announced,
and to the implied claims on them as original
thoughts, or, indeed, as the author himself
says, as indisputable, though startling, scien-
tific discoveries. He tells us that the atomo-
mechanical theory, which he styles "scien-
tific materialism," has proved an absolute
. failure ; that he proposes to deal it its death-
blow, and lay the foundations of a new and
truly scientific doctrine — the "energistic
theory " ; that, whatever effects his discovery
may have on the ethical and religious systems
of the world, he is under moral obligation to
make known what he has found in Nature ;
that he is like a sailor who, having discerned
** breakers ahead," must warn his fellows of
the impending danger ; that he has " a duty
to discharge," and " should consider it wrong
if he failed to speak of what he has seen."
Further on he says that, although he is not
exactly the discoverer of the new truth
*' which the departing century can offer the
dawning one," he is the first one to see that
" we have been in possession of the truth for
half a century without knowing it."

Without intending any disrespect to Prof.
Ostwald, I must say that the body of his
article greatly disappoints the expectations
naturally aroused by this solemn preface.
While we prepare to see it demonstrated
that Newton's law of gravitation is a meta-
physical superstition ; that the human species
is doomed to disappear within the next gen-
eration, or some other wonderful and awful
novelty, we find nothing but very common
theories and hypotheses, which, however im-
portant and interesting in themselves, are
topics with which we have been acquainted
for a long time. His main contention is, that
we do not know of matter apart from its
" properties " ; that these properties are
nothing but manifestations of energy; and
that, therefore, energy is the only reality of
which we can speak with certainty, the be-
lief in a " substratum " or *' bearer " of this
energy not being warranted by observation
or experiment. But whatever the validity
of these propositions may be, they are cer-
tainly as old as Aristotle, have been repeated
by Boscovich, Faraday, and others, and

VOL. XLIX 11

adopted as an ultimate truth, as the funda-
mental principle of all science and philos-
ophy, by Mr. Herbert Spencer ; while among
metaphysicians it has been a common doc-
trine that energy, or resistance^ is the final
criterion of reality. (See J. B. Stallo, Con-
cepts and Theories of Modem Physics, second
edition, chap, x ; Spencer's First Principles,
sees. 63, 68, 71, 73, 74, etc. ; Mansel's Meta-
physics, third edition, pp. 346-348, 328, 829.)
And if, pushing these speculations to their
logical consequences, we say that nothing is
known to us except as a mental impression,
or that, in ultimate analysis, the only reality,
or at least the only certainty, is our con-
sciousness, or the aggregate of our mental
states, and that we have no knowledge of
things in themselves, we shall only be re-
peating the theories of Berkeley, Hume,
Tracy, Kant, Bain, Mill, and almost all mod-
ern thinkers, as well as of the old Skeptics.
(See Bain's Mental Science, book ii, chap,
viii : Kant's Pure Reason, " Esthetic " ;
Tracy, Ideologic, tome iv ; Hume's Human
Nature, etc. Tracy is one of the ablest ex-
pounders of this doctrine. Some of his
views are quoted and approved by Bain in
Emotions and Will, jin.)

We look in vain for any new fact* in
Prof. Ostwald's article; and apart from a
few hints, as a passing notice of electrical
phenomena, his real scientijic argument
against the mechanical theory is the irrever-
sibility of the phenomenal world, in contrast
with the reversibility of the mathematico-
mechanical formulas purporting to represent
the former (page 595). Without stopping
to show that his interpretation of mathe-
matical formulas is entirely inadequate, that
there is nothing intrinsically impossible
in the reversibility of natural phenomena,
and that his argument applies to " energis-
tics" as well as to the mechanical theory,
since the mechanical formulas have nothing
to do with " matter," but with energy (mass
being defined in terms of force — Rankine's
Applied Mechanics, sec. 521), I shall again
have to say that the professor is here repeat-
ing the law of the Dissipation of Energy,
deduced by Sir William Thomson from ther-
modynamical principles; a consequence of
said law being a constant loss of the avail-
ability of energy and a tendency to universal
equilibrium. This law has been further
generalized by Prof. Delboeuf into " the law
of the fixation of force," according to which
no force, after being transmuted into an-
other, can restore itself to its original form.
Here are some of his statements: "Tout
changement a pour effet de faire passer la
force de I'^tat transformable k I'^tat intrans-

122

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

formable; il consomme done de la transforma-
bilit6. . . . La fixation d'une force libre n' est
autre chose que sa combinaison avec une
autre force qui par 1^ aliene comme elle une
partie de sa liberty." Although there is a
tendency toward equilibrium, equilibrium will
never be reached, " parce que la vitesse avec
laquelle se fait le nivellement est une f onction

directe de la difference mSme des niveaux,'*
He also insists on the absurdity of a tree retro-
grading into a seed, an old man into a child,
etc. (See Revue philosophique, 1880, 1882.)
Yours very respectfully,

Antonio Llako.

419 St. Nicholas Avbntte, New Yobk,
March 16, 1896.

%Siii(sx^s ^aMje*

PATRIOTISM AND MILITARISM.

PATKIOTISM is one of those vir-
tues which have suffered so
much from counterfeit and alloy that
the word has come to have a very
doubtful sound to experienced ears.
So seriously, indeed, has it been
damaged that one would in general
prefer to use some other term to
convey whatever respectable mean-
ing it has hitherto covered. To a
large section of the community,
there is too much reason to fear,
patriotism means little else than a
vicious hatred of other countries, in
so far as they come into any kind
of rivalry or competition with our
own. It stands for noisy, offen-
sive, and vulgar national self-glori-
fication, for truculence in the dis-
cussion of international questions,
and a readiness to cast justice to the
winds in any transaction with a
foreign state. Patriotism of this
type commends itself only too readi-
ly to boyhood with its as yet unde-
veloped moral sentiments, and there-
fore to adopt any special measures
for inculcating it on the youthful
citizen is, to say the least, most un-
necessary. The true view of patriot-
ism embraces none of the elements
mentioned. To be a patriot a man
does not need to hate or despise for-
eign nations ; he does not need to in-
dulge in vainglorious language, or
even in vainglorious thoughts in re-
gard to his own country ; nor does he

require to cultivate an insensibility to
justice in regard to any internation-
al dispute in which his country may
be engaged. Patriotism in the true
sense implies simply such a love for
one's country as inclines to disinter-
ested service at all times and under
all circumstances — a love which
does not need the stimulus of quarrel
with a foreign state to call it into
activity.

To get a true measure and com-
prehension of the subject we should
compare patriotism with certain
other recognized virtues. The fa-
ther of a family owes love and
protection to his family. What
should we think, then, of the father
who, neglecting or even abusing his
family at other times, showed his
paternal feeling chiefly in espousing
their quarrels, just or unjust, wdth
other families, and greedily embrac-
ing every opportunity thus afforded
for acts of hostility to his neighbors ?
We could only say that he was a
man of a very low type, whose ac-
tions were mainly determined and
governed by hatred and malice.
Quite in the same way we are en-
titled to judge the citizen's love for
his country, not by the blindness
of his partisanship in questions in
which his country is involved, nor
by the rancor he displays in speak-
ing or writing of foreign states, but
by the interest he takes at other
times, and at all times, in his coun-

EDITOR'S TABLE,

123

try's welfare, and the service lie ren-
ders to the cause of good govern-
ment, and the general amelioration
of the social and political life of the
nation. We think it will in general
be found that the citizen who is
earnestly engaged in useful social
work, and whose ordinary course of
life affords an example worthy of
imitation, will not be a patriot of
the malignant type. His voice will
not be cast for war on trivial occa-
sions, nor will he take a ferocious
delight in thinking of the disasters
and humiliations which his country-
could inflict on a foreign foe. The
man who truly loves his own coun-
try will find it impossible to hate
any other. The good father of a
family is a man who can be counted
on for friendly oflBces beyond the
limits of his family. He enters into
the feelings of other fathers, and con-
siders family life in general a sacred
thing. So with the man who has a
true feeling of devotion to his own
country : he learns through it to
love humanity at large.

Who, then, is likely to be what
we have called the malignant pa-
triot ? The spoilsman makes a good
one. Living as he does on the cor-
ruption of politics, the least he can
do is to shout for the flag, and pour
contempt on foreigners on every
occasion, suitable or unsuitable. If
he did not thus protest his love for
his native land, people might think
he was a parasite or saprophyte
pure and simple ; but thus he makes
an effort, which we may take for
what it is worth, to redeem his char-
acter. And with the spoilsman we
find, vociferous for war and cynic-
ally indifferent to justice and hu-
manity, a large body of individuals
who, without being spoilsmen in the
full political sense, are spoilsmen
in a general everyday sense, in that
they live by arts more or less inim-
ical to the general welfare. These

have no sense of organic union with
the community, and the expression
of hatred toward other nations
affords them an emotional outlet
which they could ill spare. Then
we have the considerable number
of those who, though they may, in
their way, be tolerably useful citi-
zens, are persons whose moral and
intellectual natures are but poorly
developed, and who perhaps sincere-
ly think that hatred of the foreigner
is at least a function of love of
one's own fellow-citizens. These con-
stitute a class of whom, perhaps,
better might be made, but who in
the meantime raise their voices
very vigorously and inconsiderately
for every aggressive foreign policy
which mischief-making demagogues
may suggest.

If patriotism in the true sense
were more common throughout the
civilized world, wars would cease,
because patriotism would induce
those reasonable, humane, and pacific
feelings which are wholly opposed
to injustice and aggression, whether
practiced by individuals or by states.
Unfortunately, the type of feeling
which is most in evidence to-day is
not patriotism, but militarism, a verjr
different thing. The true patriot
wishes his country to be in the right
and to do the right in all international
questions : the devotee of militarism
wishes his country to be strong, so
that, whether right or wrong, she
may be able to impose her will upon
others. It is not too much to say
that the military spirit is fundamen-
tally inconsistent with a love of justice
for its own sake. It is a very tame
business for enormous force to be al-
ways tied to exact rules of right ; the
temptation is almost overwhelming-
ly strong to blow right some fine day
from the mouth of an eight-inch
gun, and so set the war fiends danc-
ing. The nation that sets out to
have enormous armaments does not

124

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

thereby intimate to the world, nor
yet to its own citizens, its desire and
intention to be always in the right,
to pursue undeviatingly the path of
justice, but a desire and intention to
be able to pursue whatever course
may be indicated by national ambi-
tion. No one can doubt that in our
own country the disposition to trust
to right in our dealings with other
nations has been growing feebler
just as our armaments have been
growing stronger. Every new bat-
tleship makes it a matter of less ac-
count—in the eyes of a large part of
the nation at least — that we should
be in the right at all. By and by, if
things advance much further in the
same direction, national honor will
be held to demand that we commit
some great wrong, and prove at the
cannon's mouth that we are able to
stand by it.

We confess that this is not what
we were hoping for. Some twenty
or twenty-five years ago, when the
minds of our people seemed turning
in the direction of a sound philos-
ophy, we were very far from antici-
pating that at this date there would
be a recrudescence of the spirit
which derides philosophy and en-
thrones brute force in its place. We
feel like asking what our schools
and universities have been doing all
this time. Have they been teaching
our youth that, in the matter of citi-
zenship, the highest honor any man
can enjoy is to belong to a state
whose respect for itself binds it to
respect for others, and whose aim is
far more to show the possibilities of
civilized life at home than to make
an imposing display of strength
abroad ? Do they teach that, if a
nation can, without sacrifice of honor
or betrayal of the just interests of its
citizens, live at peace with all the
world, it is its bounden duty, both
for its own sake and as an example
to mankind, to do so ? Do they

teach that war and liberty are essen-
tially antagonistic, and that, only by
parting with a large share of domes-
tic liberty, can any nation take its
place among the great fighting pow-
ers of the world ? We fear that,
whatever has been done in the way
of inculcating these truths, the in-
struction has been far from adequate.
At the same time it is satisfactory to
note that, so far as men of scholar-
ship and learning have spoken in the
recent discussions of international
questions, their voices have almost
uniformly been raised on behalf of
wide, humane, and reasonable views
of national policy.

It was with special pleasure that
we noted not long ago a " Symposium
on Patriotism in the Public Schools "
in the Interstate School Review, of
Chicago, in which some excellent
sentiments were expressed. One
writer, U. J. Hoffman, says: "Let
children study the lives of patriots,
let them read the thoughts of pa-
triots, such as Hawthorne, Bryant,
Longfellow, and love of our native
land will take care of itself. The re-
quirement of the flag law, that the
flag shall float every day, has caused
the purpose of the law to be de-
feated." Another, William D. Kel-
ley, says most excellently : '* In our
selection of subjects for hero wor-
ship we need not choose war heroes
rather than those who are eminent
in the acts of peace and charity.
The man who stands up resolutely
in the common council or the town
meeting for what is right and against
what is corrupt and wrong, is a pa-
triot, and often a hero, and may be
made as truly an example for chil-
dren as those far removed from them
in time, and whose fame is national
or World-wide. The teacher should
show that governments can commit
sins as well as individuals. I would
teach a love for the Revolutionary
principles and a dislike for our

EDITOR'S TABLE,

»25

country's attitude in the Mexican
War." A third writer, A. Califf,
says : " I believe in teaching* patriot-
ism, but I do not believe in trying to
legislate patriotism into people. I
consider the ' flag law ' a total fail-
ure, so far as the teaching of patriot-
ism is concerned." A fourth, M. W.
Marvin, gets to the root of the matter
in the observation that "the teach-
ing which tends to develop properly
the pupil's sense of right and wrong,
of humanity and justice, that which
makes him better acquainted with
his duty to himself, his neighbor,
and his country, better prepares him
for the future duties of a patriotic
citizen."

If the teaching given in our
schools and other educational insti-
tutions on the subject of patriotism
were all on these lines, there would
be nothing to complain of; on the
contrary, there would be much cause
for congratulation, and much reason
to hope for good results at no distant
day. Unfortunately, what with flag
laws and other nonsense, it is diffi-
cult for the schools in some of our
States not to be made subservient to
the spirit and aims of militarism;
and if the mind of youth is thus per-
verted, what will the harvest be?
These are times when well-disposed
citizens should take earnest and fre-
quent counsel together as to the best
means to antagonize the hurtful in-
fluences that are abroad, and to up-
hold the ideal of peaceful civiliza-
tion as the true goal of national
progress.

THE BONTQEN rat.

Prof. Rontgen's discovery of the
X ray crowns two as alluring courses
of investigation as ever called forth
the resources of experimental skill.
One of the pillars from which sprang
the achievement of the Bavarian
teacher rose from the observation by
an Italian cobbler, Vincenzo Casca-

riolo, who three hundred years ago
picked up near Bologna a bit of sul-
phate of barium. It might, he hoped,
have some value in alchemy, for it
glowed in the dark as if with sun-
shine it had stored by day. This
singular property of phosphorescence
has since been noted in a wide diver-
sity of minerals, in nasturtium and
other blossoms, in fungi and decayed
wood, in a host of flying and creep-
ing things of kin to the common fire-
fly and glow-worm. As means of de-
tection are refined, it becomes more
and more probable that phosphores-
cence, while highly characteristic of
but a few substances, really manifests
itself in matter of all kinds. In this
it may share the universality of
many other properties.

And phosphorescence, half a cen-
tury ago, was discovered in direct
alliance with other curious qualities.
Of high importance was the discov-
ery, in which Prof. Stokes took an
honored part, that rays which enter
the eye only to prove it blind can be
brought within the compass of vision
if suitably modified; that when ul-
tra-violet rays of the spectrum trav-
erse solutions of sulphate of quinine
and other compounds, or take their
way through uranium glass, they are
so reduced in refrangibility as to fall
within the range of perception. The
light thus indirectly brought to view
is fluorescence, the continuous phase
of what in brief and fitful gleams is
phosphorescence. Among the com-
pounds fluorescent in an eminent
degree is the platinocyanide of that
same barium whose sulphate aroused
the wonder of the Bologna cobbler.

While one group of explorers was
running down the facts of phospho-
rescence and fluorescence, another
group was examining the behavior
of attenuated gases when excited by
electricity of high tension. The
familiar tubes of Geissler now shone
with a radiance resembling the au-

126

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rora of the northern sky. After
Geissler came Prof. Crookes, and
other physicists, who vaped their
queries in many ingenious ways.
They replaced air with other gases,
they hrought exhaustion to a close
approach to perfection, they changed
the forms of tubes, the material of
the electrode or current carriers, they
increased and diminished the inten-
sity of the electric discharge. Most
significant of all, they placed fluores-
cent substances in the tubes, and
brought them to vivid radiance.

Now came the epoch-making ex-
periments of Hertz, which demon-
strated Maxwell's theory that light
is an electro-magnetic phenomenon ;
that light and electricity move
through the same medium and at the
same rate. Incidentally, Hertz pro-
duced electric waves of new ampli-
tudes, which readily took their way
through wooden doors and stone
walls. In his vacuum tubes, by their
capacity to excite fluorescence, he
found that cathode rays penetrated
thin sheets of gold, copper, aluminum,
and other metals, while, strange to
say, they were arrested by the glass
of the tube itself. Hertz had abun-
dant reason to think that, given a
concordant ray, any substance what-
ever offers it a free and open path.
His researches, cut short by his la-
mented death, were continued by his
assistant, Prof. Paul Lenard, who in-
serted in the wall of a vacuum tube a
tiny window of aluminum. Through
this window he succeeded in bring-
ing a cathode ray into the outer air
for a distance of some three inches.
This ray had all the characteristic
tokens of light ; it was capable of re-
flection, refraction, and polarization ;
it excited fluorescence; it had pho-
tographic power.

At this point Prof. Rontgen
comes upon the scene, repeats the ex-
periments of Prof. Lenard, and, by
such a stroke of good fortune as be-

falls only the man who earns it, he
incloses an excited vacuum tube in
blackened cardboard treated with
barium platinocyanide. To his de-
light he discovers that the cathode
beam is accompanied by a radiance
hitherto unknown, which, although
of fluorescent and photographic qual-
ity, can scarcely be any form of
light. It is not susceptible of refrac-
tion or polarization ; indeed, it seems
as if it might be a stream of infini-
tesimal particles, since its path is less
impeded in a light metal, aluminum,
than in a dense one, such as plati-
num.

Thus culminate the experiments
of two companies of students — those
devoted to inquiry regarding phos-
phorescence, and fluorescence and
those who investigated the conduct
of attenuated gases excited by elec-
tricity in vacua. It was many a
weary day before the explorers came
within sight of each other, before
they could join hands on the com-
mon ground where all research meets
at last in Nature's fundamental unity.
At every step but the final one, the
observer intent solely on ''results"
might well have asked, "What's
the good?" And yet results of pro-
found import to science and art lay
bound up in quests not to be sus-
pected of the most averted wooing of
utility. The eye and its wonderful
supplement, the photographic plate,
now find disclosed what had been
deemed forever hidden from sight
and light. The physician and the
surgeon rejoice in new powers of re-
lieving pain and saving life. The
physicist enlarges his conceptions of
both matter and energy ; he explores
by a new path the mazes of molecular
structure and motion. Once more
it is emphasized that Truth is won
only by her disinterested lovers, who,
nevertheless, ever find her dowered
with wealth greater than fortune-
hunter ever dared pursue.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

127

In practical applications of the
Rontgen ray America is taking a
leading part. But is it to her credit
that here, as in so many other cases,
she should be willing to have the
pioneer work of science performed
abroad? Do the planters and water-
ers of American universities fully
realize that if there is to be applied
science there must first of all be
science to apply, that original re-
search has the first claim upon their
regard? "There is that scattereth
and yet increaseth ; and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but
it tendeth to poverty."

BEOENERA TION AND SCIENTIFIC
ETHICS.

NORDAU has been answered. An
anonymous author has done it in a
book entitled Regeneration.* This
champion declares pretty nearly
everything sound which Nordaii
finds degenerate, and charges Nor-
dau himself with German, philis-
tine, and irreligious bias, though
conceding "value as telling factors
in the development of our race " to
him and his work. With this crit-
ic's discussion of literary and artistic
matters we will not concern our-
selves ; but he has one chapter, or,
more accurately, a chapter heading,
which we hope will not be taken
too seriously. This is The Bank-
ruptcy of Science. The charge that
science is bankrupt — that it has not
redeemed its promises — arose with
the French symbolists. In his ex-
amination of these writers Nordau
repels the charge, and cites a con-
siderable list of scientific achieve-
ments as evidence of the solvency of
science. Our author does not find
this conclusive; for, he says: "The
promises which the symbolists refer
to as being dishonored by science

* London : Archibald Constable & Co. ; New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.

are not of the kind that could pos-
sibly be redeemed by the achieve-
ments referred to in Nordau's splen-
did list. They allude to promises
not really made by science, but by
rash and prejudiced scientists." In
other words, these promises are for-
geries, and any one who would call
science bankrupt because of its in-
ability to redeem all the forgeries
made in its name must be degenerate
indeed. The fact that such fraudu-
lent promises have been made and
accepted, and of sufficient numbers
and face value to attract attention, is
really as impressive a testimony to
the high standing of science as any-
thing that Dr. Nordau has advanced
in its behalf. No knave is ever
fool enough to forge large drafts
upon a concern that has not proved
its ability to meet heavy obliga-
tions.

Our author next tells what these
unauthorized promises were — that
science was to furnish substitutes
for religion and morality and to
lead the human race into an ideal
mode of life— and goes on through
a dozen pages charging evil conse-
quences to their nonfulfillment, and
denouncing the scientists who made
them. Although he says all this
under the heading The Bankruptcy
of Science, he is careful everywhere
not to charge the dishonored prom-
ises in question to science itself, but
to the "rash and prejudiced scien-
tists," before mentioned, with whom
he declares Nordau to be in sympa-
thy. Our author's aggressive chap-
ter heading is, therefore, merely a
convenient phrase borrowed from
the symbolists, and he is guilty of a
petty deceit in using it without quo-
tation marks or other qualification
over pages which do not prove nor
even charge bankruptcy against sci-
ence itself.

In discussing the promises of the
"rash and prejudiced scientists,"

128

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which he does at length and with
much vigor, our author shows that
he can not or will not understand
the ethics which the scientists are
developing. He says: "As to moral-
ity, the religion of humanity seemed
extremely untrustworthy ; for the
removal of all personal responsibil-
ity, and the certainty of complete
annihilation after death, seemed to
give the strong-minded and clever
people the strongest possible induce-
ment to make their fellow-beings
tools for their own happiness." Go-
ing on, he draws a dreadful picture
of the effect which the ethics of the
scientists has produced upon ordi-
nary mortals who, " caring little for
what would happen to the next gen-
eration, or still less to generations
thousands of years hence," have
lived for self -gratification. He re-
turns to this subject in a later chap-
ter and instances " the case of a poor
laborer who, in the usual course, will
work and suffer during his whole life
and die in poverty. To escape such
a destiny," says our author, " many
roads are open to him if he have
courage, exceptional ability, and no
belief in a hereafter. . . . He might
even avoid violent and vulgar crimes
and operate in a safer manner. He
might blackmail a rich man. . . .
He might turn first a usurer, then a
financier. He might keep a degrad-
ing public house or a gigantic im-
moral place of amusement. He
might issue a debasing newspaper,
write corrupting books and dramat-
ic pieces." A careful revision of his
manuscript or a sense of humor, such
as he denies to Max Nordau, ought
to have shown our author that he
has here created an impossible char-
acter. A "poor laborer" with the
"courage" and "exceptional abili-
ty" to do any one of these things,
would not " in the usual course work
and suffer during his whole life and
die in poverty." He could secure

ease and a competency in many an
entirely moral calling.

We feel well enough acquainted
with the ethics of the scientists which
our author denounces to say that one
of its cardinal principles is the inevi-
table sequence of cause and effect.
From this law it follows that no one
can do evil without evil being re-
turned. Circumstances may post-
pone the effects of his acts until
after his death, but he can never
count on this, and every one sees
cases in which the reaction is swift
and terrible. Even if he were sure
that the consequences of his evil
deeds would be borne mainly or
wholly by the next generation, there
would still be a restraining influence
upon him. How can a more agoniz-
ing punishment be inflicted upon a
mother than through her children,
or a stronger appeal be addressed to
her than one for their welfare ? And
it is a question whether the love of
a father for his offspring is not as
strong as that of a mother, even if
less intense. But aside from ties of
blood we do care for those who are
to survive or come after us. The
conduct and labors of many a per-
son have been avowedly governed
by the desire that men should speak
well of him after his death. Count-
less lives have been heroically sacri-
ficed through devotion to fellow-crea-
tures or native land, perhaps mingled
with a wild delight in conquering ob-
stacles, but without thought of reward
hereafter.

The central idea of the ethics of
the scientists, as we understand it,
is conformity to the order of the uni-
verse. Any one who violates this
order in his relations to his fellow-
men is just as sure of provoking a
punitive reaction as when he comes
in conflict with the law of gravita-
tion. This truth would be more evi-
dent if scientific ethics were more
generally taken as a guide. The

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

129

only reason why the man whom our
author supposes as preying upon his
fellows can be presumed to succeed
at all in his career is that he would
be alone in a community which had
a different moral code. If we sup-
pose him to be surrounded by men
like himself, as many depredations
would be committed upon him as he
committed upon others, and he would
quickly abandon his policy as un-
profitable. To accept the dictum that
nothing but a belief in reward or pun-
ishment after death can keep a man
from taking every possible advan-
tage of his fellows is to put human
beings lower than the beasts. It is
not a hope of immortal happiness that
causes ants of the same colony or bees
of the same swarm to be just, consid-
erate, and even generous toward one
another, that constrains the old males
of herbivorous quadrupeds to stand
guard over the rest of the herd, or
that makes it practicable for certain
carnivores to hunt in packs. Experi-
ence, individual or inherited, has
given them a controlling sense of
what conduct pays best in the long
run. Those creatures which do not
co-operate in communities are yet far
from trespassing upon others of the

same species in the manner of our
author's " poor laborer. " If the beasts
can perceive so much of the order of
the universe as to keep their conduct
from becoming unduly egoistic, is
not man capable of learning the same
lesson ? The ethics of the scientists
is far from being such an empty husk
as our author represents. It is im-
perfect, to be sure, but can a com-
plete solution of so great a problem
be expected in a few short years ?
Moreover, some allowance for any
partial failure that may be observed
in its application should be made
on account of the frailty of human
nature and the disturbing influence
of unsympathetic associates.

Nordau being one of the scientists
who upholds the new ethical theory
must, his critic thinks, have a bias
against the adherents of revealed re-
ligion. The critic claims to find evi-
dence of such a bias in Nordau's
book, and a large part of his criti-
cism is based upon this claim. Re-
generation is largely an effort to
impeach the fairness of Nordau's
judgment, and to discredit his diag-
nosis by an appeal to religious pre-
judice. As such it should be esti-
mated.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Dr. A, F. Chamberlain has chosen for a folklore study a field made
doubly attractive by the newly aroused interest in the psychology of the
child.* Truly he has garnered an abundant harvest. It would be difficult
to think of any activity or relation of children that is not represented in the
thirty-three chapters in which he has arranged his material. From the cry
that it utters and the more or less ceremonial care that it receives on its
entrance into the world up to its admission to the society of adults, each
phase of childish thought or action and of parental care has its wealth of
customs and sayings. Thus Dr. Chamberlain tells us, on the authority of

* The Child and Childhood in Folk-thonght. By Alexander Francis Chamberlain. Pp. 464, 8vo.
London and New York : Macmillan & Co, Price, $3.
YOL. XLIX. — 12

130 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Boas, that Songish and Nootka Indian mothers press and rub certain parts
of the newborn infant's body in order to give it the shape that they deem
beautiful. Many are the modes of expressing affection for children among
different peoples, but it seems strange to find under this head the custom of
burying a live infant with the mother who has died in giving it birth, for
the practice often has an element of vindictiveness. There is a considerable
mythology connected with childhood, including lore about guardian spirits
and bogeys, also the myths made to answer children's questions as to where
the latest addition to the family came from. The folklore connecting chil-
dren with plants and with animals is an especially delightful branch of the
subject. The firstborn child becomes a social factor among some peoples
the moment it sees the light, for its birth changes the status of its parents
in the community. Its rights of heritage, etc., and the marriage that is
contracted for it in its early years among some peoples — even in England
in the sixteenth century — are other features of its social importance. At
school and in the societies, secret or open, which they form among them-
selves, including the street gangs of large cities, children reveal the traits
that are brought out only by close association with one's equals. The
efforts of the child in learning and making language, and as an actor,
inventor, poet, musician, and judge, afford an instructive insight into his
mind, while his elevation to the position of oracle, weather-maker, healer,
priest, hero, and deity shows us the adult mind of many primitive peoples.
This volume is not absolutely restricted to lore in which the child is the
central figure ; thus three of the early chapters are devoted to motherhood
and fatherhood, while legends about the origin of certain peoples and the
admission of women to the priesthood among others have no obvious con-
nection with childhood. The author gives us a bibliography of five hundred
and forty-nine titles, and, with few exceptions, his lore and legends are re-
ferred to this list by volume and page. One of the evils attending the
great benefits that have been derived by Americans from the study of
German authorities is the practice of dividing indexes that is beginning to
creep into American books. In this respect Dr. Chamberlain out-Germans
the Germans. His collection of child-lore proverbs (which is a feature of
the book worthy of special mention) has two indexes — one of the peoples, the
other of the authors, from which they are drawn; his bibliography, which
follows these, is divided into three classes, each arranged in a separate
alphabet by authors, and each followed by an independent subject index;
then comes the general index to the volume, the entries of which are divided
into three classes, each arranged in its own alphabet. Obviously the user
must spend more time in getting at the right subdivision of such lists than
in finding his reference. But in spite of this systematic confusion at the
end there is not a dry page in the book nor one without scientific value.

The art of depicting the successive positions passed through by animals
and other bodies in motion, which aroused much public interest a few years
ago, has not been allowed to stand still since that time. Great advances in
processes and execution have been made and more difiicult problems have
been solved, so that the results which M. Marey is now able to present to
the public are remarkable for their range and definiteness.* The camera

♦Movement. By E. J. Marey. International Scientific Series, No. 73. Pp. 323, 12mo. London:
William Heineman, Price, la. <Sd. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $1.75.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 131

used by him for chronophotography, as lie calls this art, has for its chief
peculiarity two circular diaphragms behind the object glass which revolve
in opposite directions. There are openings in these disks, and when two of
them come opposite the lens there is a momentary exposure of the photo-
graphic plate. With suitable accessories, including a specially constructed
tank, the same apparatus is used for photographing the movements of
aquatic creatures and the motion of waves. When it is desired to take a
large number of images per second the apparatus must be modified so as to
use a moving film instead of a fixed plate, and for photographing free birds
and some other objects whose motion can not be controlled, the photo-
graphic gun is employed'with the film. In the volume before us the author
describes the results he has obtained with these forms of apparatus in
recording the movements of man, the horse, birds, fish, starfish, jellyfish,
reptiles, the crawling and flying of insects, the squirm of the eel, and the
pollywog's wiggle. The methods that have been devised for meeting spe-
cial difficulties are remarkably ingenious. Thus, when the movements of a
running inan are to be pictured at such short intervals that the successive
images would be partly superposed and hence give a confused picture, the
subject is dressed in black with white marks on the head, arm, and leg.
The result, which consists of images of these marks only, suggests the march
of a file of skeletons at the double quick, and can be very readily studied.
After the same manner the trajectory of an insect's wing is sometimes
made visible by gilding its tip, or that of a crow's wing by affixing a bit of
white paper to the end of one of the feathers. Chronophotography has
also been applied to experimental physiology, and M. Marey gives us a
series of pictures represeuting the movements of the heart of a tortoise
under artificial circulation. Moreover, movements visible only under the
microscope can be pictured by this process, but only a beginning has been
made in the latter field. The volume appears in the familiar form of the
International Series, and is illustrated with over two hundred figures.

One who would know the birds of Britain can hardly do better than
allow himself to be introduced to them by Mr. Hudson.^ This author
writes for the general reader and the amateur rather than the ornithologist;
hence he gives the coloring and size of each species in from three to six
lines, and follows this with a popular description of its feeding and nesting,
habits, song, etc. He describes all the species that reside permanently, or
for a portion of each year, within the limits of the British Islands, and takes
pains to distinguish from these the occasional visitors and the stragglers,
to which he gives only brief mention. In his descriptions, especially of
song, he frequently quotes John Burroughs, with whom he generally finds
himself in agreement. But though the book is untechnical, let no one sup-
pose that it is unscientific. The species are grouped by orders, and follow
the arrangement of the British Ornithologists' Union. There is also a
chapter on the structure and classification of birds, by Frank E. Beddard.
The illustrations of the volume deserve especial mention. There are, first,
eight colored plates, from original drawings by A. Thorburn, representing
the golden eagle, bearded titmouse, goldfinch, bittern, common teal, ptarmi-

* British Birds. By W. H. Hudson. Pp. 863, crown 8vo. London and New York : Longmans
Green & Co. Price, 12*. 6<?., $3.50.

132

POPULAR SCIEJSrCE MONTHLY,

gan, dotterel, and roseate tern ; there are also eight plates and one hundred
figures in hlack and white from original drawings, by G. E. Lodge, and
three illustrations from photographs from Nature by R. B. Lodge. The
execution of both illustrations and letterpress is excellent. It is perhaps
too much to expect immaculate diction as well as scientific accuracy and a
pleasing style in the same writer, but it does seem that a second thought
would have prevented Mr. Hudson from saying, " The food of the cuckoo is
exclusively insectivorous."

GENERAL NOTICES.

Dr. Ostwald has again laid the chemists
of the world under obligations to him by a
helpful discussion of the principles underly-
ing a department of their science.* Feeling
that the scientific side of analytical chemis-
try had been left too far behind by the
technique of the subject, he has undertaken
to make available recent advances in chem-
ical theory that are capable of throwing
much light upon the processes of the ana-
lytical laboratory. The author pomts out
that for the recognition of a substance only
a few of its properties need be ascertained,
for if the substance under examination
agrees perfectly in some of its properties
with a known substance, it will agree in all.
It usually happens that we have a mixture
of substances to examine, and the separation
of these must precede their recognition.
He next shows that separation is a me-
chanical operation and usually depends on
transforming one substance after another
into a different state of aggregation from the
rest of a mixture. Chemical separation con-
sists in such transformations, and is hence
really a preparation for mechanical separa-
tion. In treating these processes the author
discusses the theory of solution, an impor-
tant law of which is that salts do not exist
as such in aqueous solution, but are dissoci-
ated more or less completely into their con-
stituents or ions. Other laws concerned in
chemical separation are those of chemical
equilibrium, the course of chemical reac-
tions, precipitation, and those governing re-
actions attended with the liberation or ab-
sorption of gas and reactions accompanying
the extraction of a dissolved substance from

* The Scientific Foundations of Analytical
Chemistry. By Wilhelm Ostwald. Pp.207, 12mo.
London and New York : Macmillan & Co. Price,
5s. net, $1.60.

one solvent by means of another. To this
chapter the author has added a section on
electrolytic separation. Dr. Ostwald touches
upon the measurement of the quantity of a
substance that has been separated and rec-
ognized, or quantitative analysis, and then
passes to the application of the laws just
enunciated. This part of the work is ar-
ranged according to the usual analytic
groups, and the behavior with reference to
their ionic state of the substances treated is
made especially prominent. The author holds
that *' if we adhere constantly to the point
of view that analytical reactions are with
very few exceptions reactions of ions, then
a review of the facts of analytical chemistry
becomes at once infinitely simpler."

One of the latest additions to the Library
of Useful Stories is a popular sketch of
geology.* The author first calls attention
to the earth's internal heat and to its effects
in producing the rocks of mountains and
volcanoes. He then shows how the ma^
terials of stratified rocks are produced and
laid down and what a variety of fossil vege-
table and animal forms are included in them.
This brings him to the descriptions of the
successive geological formations, from the
Archaean to the gravels, which occupy the
rest of the volume. The aim of the author
has been " to tell the story of the Earth so
that its past history helps to explain its
present condition." To this end he con-
stantly points out how familiar appearances
result from the processes which he is de-
scribing, and he also draws especial attention
to the information which fossils give us con-

* The Story of the Earth in Past Ages. By H.
G. Seeley, P. R. S. Pp. 186, 24mo. London :
George Newnes, Ltd. Price, Is. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Price, 40 cents.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

133

ceming the rocks in which they are found.
The text is illustrated with forty outs.

The inscription on the back of a volume
before us is a most unfortunate one,* for if
the student does not take the trouble to look
between the covers he is led to believe that
the book is an extensive monograph on Peri-
patitt, with forms closely related to this ex-
traordinary animal. If he passes it in con-
sequence of this misleading title, he will
have missed an exceedingly condensed and
clear account of the external features, hab-
its, and anatomy of Peripatus by Mr. Sedg-
wick, filling twenty-six pages ; a most valu-
able chapter of fifty pages on the Myriapoda^
by F. G. Sinclair ; and another chapter on the
orders Aptera, Orthoptera, Neuroptera^ and
Hymmoptera^ by David Sharp, of five hun-
dred pages ! As the other orders of Insecta
are to be dealt with in Volume VI of this
series, one wonders what the lettering on the
back of Volume VI will be — possibly Peri-
paluSy etc., by Sedgwick, see Volume V, or,
as it will begin with the Coleopiera, some
low and aberrant form will be selected, and
on the back the comprehensive title Sty-
lops, etc, will stand for the great orders
Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, and Hemip-
tera I With this criticism, we can only say
that the book upholds the reputation already
established for the series. The illustrations
are many and beautiful, the descriptions
and grouping of the material clear, and the
work an indispensable one to the general
student of this great class of animals.

In two text- books on zoology recently
received provision is made for two modes
of instruction. In the onef the scientific
method of acquiring knowledge of natural
history — through field study and laboratory
work — is consistently carried out. A com-
paratively small number of typical forms
(thirty-two), ranging from the amoeba to the
rabbit, are chosen for study, all being such
as may be easily obtained at inland points as
well as near the sea. The chapter on insects
shows the method of the book. It begins
with directions for collecting specimens.

* The Cambridge Natural History. Vol. V.
Peripatus, etc. Sedgwick. Macmillan & Co.

t Elementary Lessons in ZoOlogy. By James
G. Needham. Pp. 302, 12mo. New York : Amer-
ican Book Co. Price, 90 cents.

The sulphur butterfly is the first species to
be studied, and enough of its characteristics
are given to enable the student to recognize
it. He is directed to collect specimens for
study, and while collecting to observe such
things as the kind of flowers on which they
are found feeding, whether they feed on the
wing or not, the organ used in obtaining
food, its position when in use and when not
in use, its shape and length. Other observa-
tions are to be made on a specimen liberated
indoors before a closed window. The study
"is continued with dead specimens. At the
end of the chapter on insects is a general
account of the life process in this group of
creatures. This is followed by a review ex-
ercise which involves considerable observa-
tion, and after this a lesson in classification
is given. An appendix contains lists of
books and reagents, full directions for ob-
taining and preparing material for study, a
glossary, etc. There are one or more illus-
trations for each species studied.

Kecognizing the fact that in many large
schools, especially in cities, it is impossible
to secure provision for either laboratory
work or field excursions by classes, Miss
Burnet has aimed to provide as good a sub-
stitute as may be in book form.* Not being
limited to animals everywhere procurable,
she ranges through the whole kingdom from
amoeba to man, and gives brief descriptions
of a large number of species, including many
salt-water dwellers. Independent collecting
by the pupil is encouraged to supply the
deficiencies of text-book study, directions
for taking specimens and preparing them
for the cabinet being given in some detaiL
There are one hundred and ninety-seven
illustrations.

The author of this book,f to whom the
original structure of the universe has long
been a favorite subject of study, has here
presented a modified form of the nebular
theory of Laplace, based on certain calcula-
tions and new ideas of his own. As a start-
ing point, he suggests the possibility of a
more attenuated form of matter than we

* Zoology for High Schools and Academies.
By Margaretta Biu-net. Pp. 216, 12mo. New
York : American Book Co. Price, 75 cents.

t Notes on the Nebular Theory. By William
Ford Stanley. Pp. 259, 8vo. London: Eegan
Paul, Trench, Trtlbner & Co. Price, 9».

'34

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

conceive as nebula, consisting of particles
smaller than the chemical atoms, and to
this he gives the name " pneuma." He sup-
poses the pneuma to consist not of a single
nor a few elements, but of a much larger
number than we now know — possibly ex-
ceeding ten thousand. He then goes on to
describe how these particles might combine
to form atoms and how an immense pneuma
might condense to form a core around which
revolved masses formed from rings that had
been detached as the process advanced. In
this, and in accounting for the rotation of
the several members of such a system, he is
not greatly at variance with current theories.
His view of comets makes them quite regu-
lar members of a planetary system. In the
more particular examination of the history
and present condition of the earth, which
follows, he suggests the possibility of some
continental elevations being formed by the
projection of cold planetoids upon the molten
globe. The probable effect upon the con-
densing earth of the formation of the inferior
planets is then discussed, and, in conclusion,
an effort is made to correlate the geological
periods, including the Glacial epoch, with as-
tronomical phenomena. The author has
read papers upon some of the topics dis-
cussed in this book before various learned
societies in England. The volume is illus-
trated with several plates and small cuts.

Food Products of the World is the title of
an interesting volume by M. E. Green^ M. D.
(Chicago, The Hotel World). The original
intention of the author, who was one of the
Judges of food products at the Columbian
Exposition in 1893, was simply to give an
account of the foods there exhibited ; but as
the work progressed it was deemed desirable
to expand the treatment somewhat and make
a popular treatise, which should in a fairly
thorough manner cover the whole subject.
Each food stuff is first treated in a general
way. Its history, preparation, cooking, and
keeping qualities ; its habitat, if animal or
vegetable; and, finally, the chemical com-
position and dietetic value, are given.

Since the appearance of the first edition
of this work, Sedgwick and Wilson's Intro-
duction to General Biology (Holt, $1.75), in
1886, the original intention of the authors,
to publish a second volume which was to

form the main body of the work, and to in-
elude the study of a series of type forms, has
been abandoned. The present volume, in
consequence of this, differs in several par-
ticulars from the first edition. The intro-
duction has been extended so as to include
representatives of the unicellular organisms,
amoeba^ infusoria, protococcus, yeasts, bacteria.
The study of the animal is placed before that
of the plant, and the laboratory directions,
which occur in the first edition, having been
found unsuitable, are omitted. The general
subject matter has been revised and many
additions made, especially on the physiologi-
cal side.

We are convinced from an examination
of the text-book on Organic Cfiemisiry : the
Fatty Compounds, by R. Lloyd Whiteley
(Longmans, 3s. 6c?. — $1), that its author pos-
sesses a high degree of the teaching faculty.
He seems to build up a knowledge of the
carbon compounds in the student's mind by
starting with a few general ideas and adding
others in the order and manner in which
they can be best assimilated. He is careful
also to distinguish what is demonstrable ex-
perimentally from what is obtained by rea-
soning or is assumed as a means of express-
ing empirical results. He is concise, too,
managing to describe in a small volume the
fatty hydrocarbons, haloid paraffins, mono-
hydric alcohols and their several classes of
derivatives, the cyanogen and carbonic-acid
derivatives, the derivatives of unsaturated
hydrocarbons, and the dihydric and polyhy-
dric alcohols and their derivatives. Processes
for the preparation of a large number of
compounds are given, a distinguishing mark
being placed against those most suitable for
students' work. Commercial processes for
producing the most important substances
are outlined. There are forty-five cuts,
nearly all of laboratory apparatus.

In Essentials of Vegetable Pharmacog-
nosy the gross structure of plants is set forth
by Henry H. Rusby, M. D., and their minute
structure by Smith E. JelUffe, M. D. (Haynes,
New York). The former monograph begins
with the structure of the flower, and passes
on to its functions and the production of
fruit. The root, stem, and leaf are then con-
sidered in succession, after which phyllotaxy
and anthotaxy are discussed. The treat-

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

35

ment is full but condensed, and no effort has
been made to avoid technical terms. The
second portion of the work is prefaced by
descriptions of various simple magnifiers and
of the compound microscope. The structure
and contents of the plant cell are then de-
scribed, after which the tissues, grouped ac-
cording to function, receive attention. The
volume is designed mainly for students of
phai'macy and medicine, and both parts are
fully illustrated.

The Bulletin of the Department of Labor ^
a bimonthly publication authorized by the
United States Congress, began with a num-
ber for November, 1895. The Bulletin is
designed to present results of investigations
by the department of less magnitude than
those usually embodied in the annual or spe-
cial reports, also digests of foreign and State
labor reports, new State and national laws
relating to labor, and brief items of interest.
The first number contains a record of strikes
and lockouts in the United States and other
countries in recent years, a statement of pri-
vate and public debt in the United States, a
digest of recent reports of State labor bu-
reaus, statistics of employment of women
and girls in England and Wales, and a state-
ment of the legal relations between employer
and employee.

The Third Series of Essays by Lady Cook
on Social Topics (Universal Publishing Co.,
London, 6c?.) consists of thirteen essays point-
ing out the need of reforms in the relations
between the sexes. In these papers Lady
Cook advocates nothing unreasonable, while
her mode of presentation is forcible, serious,
and free from prolixity.

In two p&mTphlets— Discussions on the
Gypsies and Social Emancipation of the Gyp-
sies—^m effort is made by James Simson to
obtain better social recognition for this peo-
ple and to prove that John Bunyan was one
of their number (The Author, 43 Exchange
Place, New York ; 70 cents and 30 cents).
Unfortunately, the author has neither the
faculty for investigation nor the art of pre-
senting a subject in proportion to his interest
in the matters that he discusses. .

The Report of the State Geological Sur-
vey of New Jersey for 1894 represents work
in surface geology in both the northern and
southern parts of the State. The areal work

in the glaciated area was completed, and
good progress was made in the region farther
south, especially in the western part of the
State — Mercer, Burlington, and Monmouth
Counties. These areas were studied in much
detail. A map accompanying the report —
Geological Map of the Valley of the Passaic
— indicates the extent of the work which has
virtually been accomplished. It presents an
instructive view of the geological features,
streams, and towns. Further light is thrown
by the results recorded concerning the con-
siderable influence of stagnant ice upon the
deposition of the stratified drift of the val-
leys of the northern part of the State, and
the general position already taken concern-
ing the history of the yellow gravel forma-
tions. Many facts of great interest are given
concerning the artesian wells of southern
New Jersey and the forestry of the State, to
which the second and third parts of the re-
port are devoted.

The Revista della Beneficenza Pubblica
delle Istituzioni di Provideyiza e di Igiene So-
ciale (Review of State Philanthropic and
Provident Institutions and of Social Welfare),
Bologna and Rome, Avvocate G. Scotti, di-
rector, was started with the beginning of
1896. Besides general articles, it gives no-
tices of the publications of benevolent insti-
tutions, social studies of the laboring classes,
legal events, and official reports pertaining
to subjects within the scope described by its
title. The principal article in the January
number is on True Beneficence and Legal
Beneficence.

II Pensiero Moderno is a new semi-month-
ly periodical published at Rome which will
deal with all that concerns the modern so-
ciological movement, and the fields of sci-
ence, literature, and art. The name of Prof.
G. Sergi stands at the head of its list of col-
laborators. The first number contains arti-
cles on social hygiene and education. A
regular feature will be the fortnightly notes
on the more important intellectual and social
events within its scope.

We find matter of great interest and
value in the Ethnologisches Notizblatt of the
Direction of the Royal Museum fiir Volker-
kunde in Berlin, The articles are mostly
by the director. Dr. A. Bastian, and his as-
sistants. Profs. A. Griinnedel and W. Grube,

136

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

and Drs. F. Von Luscher, W. Seler, F. W.
K. Muller, and Wenle. In Heft 2 for 1895
we find papers on two old canoe-carvings
from New Zealand, various anthropological
objects from India, a Japanese picture of
the world-mountain, Meru, a number of re-
cent Siamese books and manuscripts, a col-
lection of Chinese idols from Amoy, the latest
crossing of Africa, the twenty-fifth annual
meeting of the German Anthropological So-
ciety, the Siamese art work Trai-Phum^ or
Three Worlds, color studies, the report of our
Ethnological Bureau, and a large number of
notices of books, societies, etc., relating to
anthropology.

A very elaborate examination of the de-
velopment of Kant's philosophical system is
presented in the Kant-Stvdien of Dr. Erich
Addickes (Kiel and Leipsic: Lipsius and
Fischer). In the first part of the essay,
which is devoted to this subject specially.

the course of the German theory of knowl-
edge from Leibnitz to Kant is reviewed, with
analyses of the systems of Leibnitz, Wolff
and his followers, and Crusius, after which
follow sections on Kant's original point of
view, his so-called empiristic period, his con-
version in the year 1769, and the inaugu-
ral dissertation and Kant's further develop-
ment. The second part is on the period of
the composition of the Kritik of Pure Reason.

A volume of Chemical Experiments, con-
taining something over two hundred experi-
ments, has been prepared by Ira Remsen and
Wyatt W. Randall to accompany Prof. Rem-
sen's Introduction to the Study of Chemistry
(Holt, 60 cents). This laboratory manual
includes the experiments in the last edition
of the Introduction, minor changes having
been made in many of them, and essential
changes in a few. There have been also
some additions.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Adams, Martha D. Eeport of First Annual
Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference on In-
ternational Arbitration. Pp. 83.

Anthimus, Patriarch of Constantinople, and
others. Reply of the Holy and Apostolic Ortho-
dox Church of the East to the Encyclical of Pope
Leo XIII on Reunion. Literally translated.
New York: Oflace of The Atlantis. London:
John and E. Bumpus, Ltd. Pp. 16. 25 cents.

Baldwin, James. (Eclectic School Readings.)
Old Stories of the East. New York : American
Book Co. Pp.215. 45 cents.

Bottone, S. R. The Dynamo. New York :
Macmillan & Co. London : Swan, Sonnenschem
& Co. Pp. 113. 90 cents.

Brorup, R. P. Christianity and Our Times.
Chicago : International Book Co. Pp. 228. 25
cents.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Reports, Reprints, etc.
Agricultural Experiment Stations. New York Sta-
tion: Corn Silage for Milch Cows.— Ohio Station:
The Smut of Oats and lis Prevention; Potatoes
—Purdue University Station: Hog Cholera and
Swine Pla^e in Indiana.— United States Depart-
ment, Division of Forestry: Facts and Figures
regarding our Forest Resources briefly stated.—
Weather Bureau: North Dakota Weather and
Crop Service for January and February, 1896.—
Bangs, Ontram. Notes on the Synonymy of the
North American Mink, etc. (From Proceedings of
Boston Society of Natural History, vol. xxvii.)
— Cobum, F. W. loci locosi. Acta Saturnali-
bus New York: Ethical Culture Schools, 669
Madison Avenue.— Dickson, P. 8. Blackwood's
History of the United States. Philadelphia :
Geo ge H. Buchanan & Co. Pp. 27.— Dubois, Hon.
F. T. Need of a Forest Policy for the Western
States. Washington : National Geographic Soci-
ety. Pp. 8.-Evermann, B. W. Fishes of the
Neuse River Basin and a Preliminary Report upon
Salmon Investigations in Idaho in 1894 (From Bul-
letin of United States Pish Commission for 1895.)
— Fontana, Constantin. Fusairs et IJranes. Ma-
chines Aeriennes d' Aluminium. Paris : Bernard
Tignol. Pp. 37.— Goler, G. W. The Sanitation
of Rochester. Rochester: The Post-Express

Print. Pp. 14.— Grafton, W. McC. Railway Sig-
naling. (From Bulletin University of Wisconsin.)
Pp. 40.— Groszmann, M. P. E. The Common
School and the New Education. New York :
Simpson & Lyall. Pp. 46; and The Problem of
the Co-ordination of Studies. — Johns Hopkins
University Circulars, vol. xv. No. 123.— Keen,
W. W., M. D. Amputation of Entire Upper Ex-
tremity, etc., and Remarks on Operations on the
Gassenian Ganglion. (From American Journal of
the Medical Sciences, January, 1896.)— Loree, L. P.
Emergencies in Railroad Work. Bulletin Uni-
versity of Wisconsin. English Series, Vol. I,
No. 7. Pp. 45. 85 cents.— Magie, William F.,
Keen, W. W., and Davis, E. P. The Clinical Ap-
plication of the ROntgen Rays. (From American
Journal of the Medical Sciences, March, 1896.)—
Mescal Buttons. Reprinted from Therapeutic Ga-
zette, January, 1896.— Old South Leaflets. Wash-
ington's Address to the Churches.- Penfield, S. L.
Fayalite from Rockport, Mass., etc. (From
American Journal of Science, vol. i, 1896.) —
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science. Pro-
ceedings, 1896. Pp. 25 to 107.— Richards, J. W.
Modern Theories of Electrolysis. (From Journal
of Franklin Institute, March, 1896.)— State Board
of Health Bulletins. Iowa. VoL IX, No. 9 and
No. 10; Tennessee. Vol. XI, No. 7.— University
of Oregon, Bulletin of. F,;bruary, 1896.— Volk,
Douglas. Art Instruction in the Public School.
Pp. 15. 10 cents.

Curtis, H. H. Voice Building and Tone Plac-
ing. New York: D. Appleton «fe Co. Pp.215. $2.

Fletcher, W. I., and Bowker, R. R. The An-
nual Literary Index, 1895. New York : Oflice of
Publishers' Weekly. Pp. 259.

Glazebrook, R. F. James Clerk Maxwell and
Modem Physics. New York : Macnullan & Co.
Pp.224. $125.

Hall, Lyman. The Elements of Algebra. New
York : American Book Co. Pp. 368. $1.

Halsted, Byron D. Report of Botanical De-
partment of New Jersey. Agricultural College
Experiment Station. Pp. 130.

Harley, Lewis R. A History of the Public
Education Association of Philadelphia. Phila-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

137

delphia : Public Edncation Association. Pp. 52;
and Francis Lieber. the Political Philosopher.
Bloomington, 111.: The University Press. Pp.32.

Hillem, W. von. HOher als die Kirche. New
York: American Book Co. Pp. 96, 25 cents.

Homo,NovnB. Ye Thoroughbred. New York:
The Health Culture Co. Pp. 129.

Interstate Commerce Reports. Vol. VI, No.
21. Pp. 449 to 512.

Justice, Maibelle. Love Affairs of a Worldly
Man. Chicago : F. Tennyson Neely. Pp. 311.

King, R. M. School Interests and Duties.
New York : American Book Co. Pp. 336. $1.

Lombard, Louis. Observations of a Bachelor.
Utica : L. C. Childs & Son. Pp. 148.

Matthews, Brander. An Introduction to the
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ican Book Co. Pp. 256. $1.

New York Academy of Sciences. Memoir I.
The Variation of Latitude at New York City.
Part I. Declination and Proper Motion of Fifty-
six Stars. Pp. 105.

New York State Board of Charities. Annual
Report. Pp. 90.

North, S. N. D. Factory Legislation in New
England. (From Bulletin of National Association
of Wool Manufacturers.) Boston, 1895.

Nuttall, L.W. Flora of West Virginia. (Field
Columbian Museum. Publication 9. Botanical
Series. Vol. I, No. 2.) Pp.200.

Palmer, T. S. The Jack Rabbits of the United
States. United States Department of Agriculture.
Bulletin No. 8. Pp. 84.

Perkins Institution, Sixty-fourth Annual Re-
port of the Trustees of. Boston. Pp. 275.

Romanes, G. J., The Life and Letters of. Ed-
ited by his Wife. New York and London : Long-
mans, Green & Co. Pp. 360. $4.

Salazar, A. E., Newman, I. K. Kosto kom-
paratibo en Chile del Gas i de la ElektrLzidad
como Sistemas de Distribuzion de Energia. San-
tiago de Chile, 1896. Pp. 72.

Savage, R. H. The Spider of Truxillo. Chi-
cago : F. Tennyson Neely. Pp. 326.

SchQtzenberger. Lea Fermentations. Paris :
Felix Alcan. Pp.314.

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vonBamhelm; Goethe: Die KrOnung Josefs II;
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Trout, Grace Wilbur. A Mormon Wife. Chi-
cago : E. A. Weeks Co. Pp. 111.

Zahm, Rev. J. A. Evolution and Dogma.
Chicago : D. H. McBride & Co. Pp. 461. $2.

^raflmjetxts xrE M^titutt.

€omm«ree and Drought. — The serious
loss which a prolonged drought may cause,
not simply to agriculture, but in an even
more marked degree to commerce, is drawn
attention to by Prof. L. M. Haupt, in a recent
number of the Journal of the Franklin Insti-
tute. He says : " One of the most impres-
sive lessons to be derived from the absence
of sufficient water for commerce is to be
found in the experience of the communities
on the upper Ohio River during the past sea-
son of exceptional drought. The harbor of
Pittsburg, which is made by the movable dam
at Davis Island, and the fixed dams of the
Monongahela slackwater system, forms a con-
venient basin in which to make up the tows
of coal boats and barges which supply the
Mississippi and its tributaries. It is the
custom to assemble these tows above the
dam and await the pleasure of Pluvius to
provide a flood with sufficient depth of water
to carry them out. During the past season
there has been no coal shipped by river be-
tween the 18th of April and the 28th of No-
vember (over seven months), and the accu-
mulation of the product had gone on until

the tonnage tied up exceeded that of any
harbor in the world. For miles on both
banks of the river the steamers and their
fleets lined the shores, and the danger of their
being frozen in all winter was imminent,
when a heavy rain released two hundred thou-
sand tons ; but a part of these met a watery
grave on the shoals of Dead Man's Ripple, a
short distance below Pittsburg. The extent
of this congestion can not be appreciated by
one who has not seen it, and it is far-reach-
ing in its effects, as it directly concerns the
industries of millions of people. The actual
value of the plant tied up in the harbor
of Pittsburg alone, as stated by Hon. John
F. Dravo, Secretary of the Coal Exchange,
on November 7, 1895, was $6,600,000.
At the present time it is costing about two
thousand dollars per day to keep this ton-
nage afloat, besides interest on the invest-
ment. This ' tie-up ' of Nature has seriously
crippled the entire valley, as the railroads
can not do more than maintain a partial sup-
ply, and the price of fuel has risen in some
of the larger cities one dollar a ton." The
author cites the above incidents as showing

38

POPULAR SCIENQE MONTHLY.

that a more liberal policy in spending public
money for river and harbor improvements
would, in the long run, be the most eco-
nomical.

The Bamboo as a Food.— Young bam-
boo shoots are eaten by the Chinese and
Japanese as we eat asparagus. Dr. Lamou-
nier, who has a collection in his garden at
Vemeuil, France, tried two or three species
at a right age, and found them excellent.
The stalks should be taken very young
during the first fortnight of spring growth,
and should not be more than fifteen cen-
timetres thick. The outer envelopes of
spathes are taken off, and the soft substance
is left, crisp and brittle, and yielding easily
to the pressure of the finger. Dr. Lamou-
nier says they have the general taste and fla-
vor of Brussels sprouts, and that they are
wholesome, easily digestible, and economical.
But all depends on the time of cutting and the
preparation. Some canned bamboo, exhib-
ited by the Japanese at Paris in 1889, was
found hard and flavorless. We have these
differences, too, in asparagus and all vege-
tables, while we judge the quality of the
same from their best, not from their worst.

Tnbercnlosis and Meat Inspection. — In

a paper presented to the New York Academy
of Medicine during last November, Prof.
Leonard Pearson, of the University of Penn-
sylvania, gave a resume of the recent work of
foreign veterinarians on bovine tuberculosis.
We take the following points from a reprint
of the address in the Dietetic and Hygenic
Gazette. " This subject," he says, " has
been a live one in Europe for many years,
and has received much attention ever since
it was shown by Villiraen, in 1868, that the
disease could be transmitted from one ani-
mal to another, and more especially since the
discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Koch in
1882 and the consequent establishment of
the fact that the tuberculosis of men and
the lower animals is the same disease and
caused by the same germ. Most of the Eu-
ropean countries now have a system of
meat inspection, which is carried out most
carefully in the great centers of population,
and usually assures the consumer against
harmful flesh. The question as to what
shall be done with tuberculous carcasses has

excited much discussion. There is prac-
tically unanimity regarding the immediate
and entire destruction of the carcasses of
animals that show generalized tuberculosis,
or tuberculosis with marked emaciation, but
the cases of localized tuberculosis are much
more common, amounting in some places to
fifteen or eighteen per cent of all cattle
slaughtered. The careful experiments, how-
ever, of Chauveau, Nocard, Bollinger, Bang,
and McFadyan have shown that the flesh of
animals with local tuberculosis is not infec-
tious. It has been shown, however, that if
there are any tuberculous spots the butcher
is likely to get infected material from this
spot on his knife and spread it more or less
generally over the carcass. At the Inter-
national Veterinary Congress held last Sep-
tember in Berne, it was decided by resolu-
tion that the flesh of tuberculous animals
should be condemned when the carcass is
emaciated, when it has a general bad ap-
pearance, when tubercles are found in the
muscular portions, and when alterations are
found in several organs. It was also recom-
mended, in relation to the flesh of slightly
tuberculous animals, that it be permitted to
go on the market, but that it be sold in
special shops or stalls, or sterilized and sold
as cooked meat. In Germany the pi;actice is
to condemn the worst cases, sterilize those
that are less extensive, and to pass as sound
the slightly developed cases, after destroying
the affected parts. A very important point
in connection with this subject is in refer-
ence to the payment of indemnity to the
owner of the condemned animal or carcass.
It is felt that, as the animal is condemned
for the good of the public, they should bear
part of the loss. Already in France it is the
custom to compensate the owners of infect-
ed animals which are destroyed. The con-
sideration of the milk from tuberculous cows
is also of great importance. Numerous in-
vestigations have demonstrated that the milk
of cows with tuberculosis of the udder will
cause tuberculosis in a very large percentage
of the animals fed upon it. Ostertag recom-
mends that the milk from cows with tuber-
culosis of the udder should be excluded from
consumption, and that from cows which re-
act to tuberculin, but show no evidence of
tuberculosis of the udder, should be sterilized
before sale. In a recent report from the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

139

Royal Commission on Tuberculosis in Ani-
mals the statement is made that ' the with-
drawal from dairies of every cow that has
any disease whatever of the udder would
form some approach to security against the
serious danger incurred by man from the use
of tuberculous milk, but it would not be an
adequate security.' The presence in a dairy
of a tuberculous cow, the report says, is a
decided source of danger to the public, espe-
cially having regard to what has been learned
respecting the rapid development of tuber-
culosis of the udder. Regarding the value
of tuberculin injections as a diagnostic agent,
the following resolutions were adopted at the
International Veterinary Congress held last
September, and hence represent the opinions
of the foremost veterinarians of Europe : ' No.
1. Tuberculin is a very valuable diagnostic
agent and can yield the greatest assistance
in combating tuberculosis. There is no
reason for objecting to its general applica-
tion on the ground that it may aggravate
pre-existing tuberculous lesions. No. 2. The
congress expresses the desire that govern-
ments shall order the employment of tuber-
culin in herds in which the existence of
tuberculosis has been established.' The offi-
cial veterinarians of Germany are advised to
use tuberculin, and are supplied with it at a
low cost from the government laboratories."

Tibetan Women. — As described by Mr.
W. W. Rockhill, the Tibetan women are
usually stouter than the men, with fuller
faces, and do not entirely lose their good
looks before they are thirty or thirty-five
years old. They are as strong as or perhaps
even stronger than the men, because, being
obliged to do hard work from childhood,
their muscles are more fully developed than
those of the men, who do not carry water on
their backs, work at the loom, or tend the
cattle. Their hair is long and coarse, but not
very thick ; it remains black, or only mixed
with a little white, to extreme old age ; and
both men and women with white hair are
rarely seen. The skin of the Tibetan is
coarse and greasy, light brown in color, fre-
quently nearly white, except when exposed
to the weather, when it becomes a dark
brown, nearly the color of our American In-
dians. Rosy cheeks are common among the
younger women. The Tibetans' voices are

powerful, those of the men deep, those of
the women full and not very shrill. Their
hearing is good, and they can converse free-
ly from one side of a valley to the other, a
distance of half a mile, without ever having
to repeat phrases or perceptibly raise the
voice. They can endure exposure without
any apparent inconvenience, the women do-
ing their work with the right side of the
body completely exposed, and small children
going naked, or with only a pair of boots on,
except in the coldest weather. They can
also endure hunger, and are at all times
small eaters.

A New Glass Constrnetion. — We take the
following from a report presented by Dr,
Schott to the French Society for the Encour-
agement of National Industry : For siliceous
glasses the expansion increases with the pro-
portion of alkali. Boric acid produces a
striking decrease of expansion. In super-
posing upon each other two glasses of dif-
ferent compositions, it is requisite that there
should exist a certain relation between the
relative thickness of the two layers of glass
and their coefiicients of expansion. Thus at
Jena they solder normal thermometer glass,
the coefficient of cubic expansion of which
between 0° and 100° = 0*0000244, to an
aluminous sodium borosilicate, the expansion
of which = 0-00001 77. The former kind of
glass must be placed externally and the sec-
ond internally in order to form a hollow ves-
sel or tube. We may also join together three
or more layers of two or more glasses. Of
two layers of glass with different expansions
after cooling, that with the greatest expan-
sion will be in a state of tension and the
other in a state of compression. External
layers in a state of compression increase in a
striking manner the resistance of glass to
mechanical actions and to rapid changes of
temperature. Flasks thus manufactured
may be strongly heated (to a temperature of
184°), and may then be sprinkled with cold
water without injury. Such glasses are not
liable to the sudden rupture which is apt
to occur in glass tempered by the process of
De la Bastie.

In African Village Scene.—" I doubt,"
says Dr. D. Kerr-Cross, " if finer villages
or better built houses exist anywhere in un-

140

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

civilized Africa than are found among the
' Wa-nyakyusa ' people " of the district north
of Lake Nyassa. Round houses are occu-
pied by the married people, but they also
build square houses and long cattle-folds.
The walls are of bamboo set into the ground
at an angle of about 100°. Small bricks
about the size of an ostrich egg are fitted
neatly, while plastic, into the framework.
The whole is a huge basket of bamboo reeds
and mud. The reeds on the roof are tied
in wavy lines in the form of a dome, the
thatch is laid with great skill, and the house
is scrupulously clean. Large villages are
uncommon, but on the plains one village is
connected with another by banana groves
which often extend for miles. Trees are
planted for utility and for ornamentation,
and are regarded with pride. There are no
stockaded villages, but a kind of poisonous
cactus is grown as a defense. All manual
work in cultivation is done with giant hoes.
Their fields look as if they had been deep-
ly plowed, and every furrow is perfectly
straight. They are a tall, muscular race, of
few wants, desiring nothing of strangers.
They appreciate cloth, but have little idea of
its value. They are in what one might call
the *' brass-wire age." That is their medium
of exchange, and anything can be bought for
it. Iron is found in the King's Mountains,
and is extensively wrought. They make
iron, copper, and brass belts as thick as
one's little finger, and wear them on the
waist. Six or more of such belts may be
worn on the person of one individual. Their
word for riches means iron. The Nkonde
spears are famed. Though not so large as
those of the Masai, their spears and bill-
hooks are cruel-looking weapons, with long
barbs. The shafts are made of a dark, hard
wood, and are frequently dyed black. They
are ornamented, and often beautifully inlaid
with a delicate tracery of brass, copper, or
iron. They have fifteen varieties of spears,
bearing different names.

The Storing of Aeetylene. — In a recent
letter to the Engineering News, Frederick
H. Lewis gives the result of some instructive
calculations. It has been claimed, it seems,
by several concerns that acetylene gas may
be liquefied and stored in metal " bottles,"
and in this form advantageously handled and

transported. " The writer," says Mr. Lewis,
" had occasion some time since to ascertain
whether a small cylinder of about one half
cubic foot capacity could possibly contain
the amount of gas that the company's orator
in Philadelphia had declared it to hold. A
little calculation showed that if the gas was
present, as stated, its density must be nearly
equal to that of cast iron." Mr. Lewis cal-
culates that a cylinder containing sufficient
gas to supply a private house for a month
would have to be about eight feet and a
half long, and would weigh three hundred
pounds. " But," he says, " even this state-
ment of the case is entirely too favorable.
The fact which the acetylene-gas people
must face is this, that it is entirely imsafe
to liquefy gas whose critical point is only
98° F., and subject such cylinders to the in-
cidents of transportation and of ordinary use
in dwelling houses. It has been found neces-
sary to adopt this view in the case of nitrous
oxide for dentists' use, and it will be neces-
sary with acetylene."

Gont and Genins. — From an interesting
little essay in the Lancet, by Mr. J. F. This-
elton Dyer, on the folklore of gout, we take
the following : Many years ago one Misausus
wrote a curious little book in honor of the
gout, with the object of proving that it was
a blessing for which mankind could not be
too thankful, arguing that if Paracelsus could
make men proof against death his secret
consisted in inoculating them with gout
But when it was suggested that gouty people
do die, he replied that men know not when
they are well off, but must needs be curing
the gout, and therefore deal with death's fac-
tor, the physician. It was, however, a popu-
lar notion that gout lengthened life, and
statistics at the present day show that it is not
answerable for more than one death in every
seventeen hundred and eighty. For a long
time gout had the reputation of being pre-
eminently the rich man's disease, and Syden-
ham, who, it may be remembered, was the
first man minutely to study the disease, re-
marked that, unlike any other complaint, " it
kills more rich than poor; more wise than
simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, ad-
mirals, and philosophers have died of gout."
In one of Pitt's last letters to the Marquess
Wellesley, he alludes to his slow recovery

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

141

from severe attacks of gout, and both the
Earl of Chatham and Fox were afflicted by
it. Horace Walpole was another victim, and,
after comically describing himself as wrapped
in flannels, like the picture of a Morocco
ambassador, he says : " If either my father or
mother had had it, I should not dislike it so
much. I am herald enough to approve it if
descended genealogically, but it is an abso-
lute upstart in me, and, what is more provok-
ing, I had trusted to my great abstinence for
keeping me from it ; but thus it is." Sydney
Smith, when writing to the Countess of Car-
lisle in his seventy-first year, speaks of his
gout, and humorously says : " What a very
singular disease it is! It seems as if the
stomach fell down into the feet. The small-
est deviation from right diet is immediately
punished by limping and lameness, and the
innocent ankle and blameless instep are tor-
tured for the vices of the nobler organs."
The fact that gout occurs among the poor
and temperate Faroe islanders, and that it
may be generated by a low diet and absti-
nence carried to extremes, would seem to in-
dicate that it is not always caused by over-
feeding. Among some of the literary men
and poets who have suffered from gout may
be mentioned Fielding, Newton, Linnaeus,
Milton, Congreve, and Dryden, and of war-
riors included among its victims Lord Howe,
Marshal Saxe, Wallenstein, and Cond6. Dr.
CuUen was strongly of opinion that all gout
must be considered hereditary. Modem sci-
ence has somewhat qualified this assertion,
maintaining that three out of every five cases
may be regarded as inherited. It is worthy
of note that where there is a predisposition
for gout a fit may be induced by the most
opposite causes; and whereas Kingsley's
" northeast wind " will excite it in some in-
stances, a mathematical problem has been
known to produce it in another. It seems
incredible that any one should desire gout,
and yet it is said that Archbishop Sheldon
not only wished for it, but actually offered
as much as five thousand dollars to any per-
son who would keep him to it ; for he looked
upon gout as " the only remedy for the dis-
tress in his head." Gout is not confined to
any one class, and has afflicted some of the
ablest men in all ages, although, strange to
say, it is five times more frequent in men
than in women.

The Unapproachable Antarctic Conti-
nent,— Whether it will ever be possible to
make a satisfactory exploration of the ant-
arctic continent is a matter of doubt, on
which very little if any light is shed by the
reports of Mr. Borchgrevink, the latest navi-
gator who has tried to penetrate the region.
The defenses of the shores against approach
are considerably more formidable than those
of the arctic seas, and consist of the
"pack," a moving mass of icebergs of enor-
mous size, and floating ice ; within this, a rim
of compact ice, fringing the greater part of
the shore, and extending out often several
hundred miles from the land ; and the ice
barrier of the land itself. Captain Cook did
not believe that any man would venture far-
ther toward the pole than he had gone ; but
in 1 823 a Captain Weddell found an unusually
extended break in the ice fringe, and reached
74° 15' S., but not the mainland. Yet he
found the antarctic islands almost inacces-
sible, constantly covered with snow, except
some perpendicular rocks, and nearly desti-
tute of vegetation. Sir James Ross sailed in
sight of the antarctic mountains, a hundred
miles away, but was not able to make a
landing. Wilkes saw land at several points,
but could not pierce the ice barrier. Even
if a landing were made, the country does
not seem to afford even the poor facilities
for exploration which the arctic regions fur-
nish ; it has few known animals and no in-
habitants, of which arctic travelers are often
able to make considerable use.

Metallic Iron in Water Purification.—

Mr. F. A. Anderson recently delivered an in-
teresting address before the Society of Arts
on the purification of water by means of
metallic iron. While this method is not a
new one, and has been in use in various
English towns for some years, Mr. Ander-
son's paper is worthy of attention as giving
a very clear description of the apparatus and
methods of the process. He says: "The
idea of purifying water by agitating it with
metallic iron is due to Sir Frederick AbeL
The revolving purifier is a cylindrical vessel,
supported horizontally upon hollow trunnions,
through one of which the water to be puri-
fied enters ; after traversing the cylinder it
leaves by the other trunnion. The cylinder
is caused to rotate about its axis by means

142

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of a gearing. A number of curved shelves
running longitudinally are fixed inside of the
cylinder. The iron may be in any conven-
ient form, but the most commonly employed
in practice is the burrs or punchings from
plates. The charge varies, of course, with
the size of the cylinder, a purifier capable of
treating a million gallons of water in twenty-
four hours requiring about two tons. When
the machine is set in motion, the curved
shelves scoop up the charge of iron and
shower it down through the water, thus caus-
ing a constant falling of iron across the cur-
rent of the water. The effect upon the wa-
ter of the agitation with iron is simply to
cause a small quantity of iron, from one
tenth to one fifth of a grain per gallon, to be
dissolved. The water emerges from the pu-
rifier and passes to settling tanks, where the
ferrous hydrate, which has been formed, is
oxidized into ferric hydrate, and settles to
the bottom of the tank. From the settling
arrangement the water passes on to the fil-
ters, which are sand beds of ordinary con-
struction; through these filters the water
passes at the rate of from eighty to one hun-
dred gallons per square foot per twenty-four
hours, and emerges pure and free from any
trace of iron. It was formerly considered
that the iron had a more or less pronounced
chemical action upon the dissolved organic
impurities of the water; the oxide formed
was considered to act as a carrier of oxygen,
by means of which the organic matters were
actually burned up and destroyed. It is tol-
erably certain now, however, that the real
action is one of coagulation ; the formation
of a precipitate in the water tending to
throw out of solution the dissolved organic
substances, which form with the ferric hy-
drate insoluble compounds, so to speak,
which are removed from the water by settle-
ment and filtration. This view of the action
of the iron upon the organic impurities of a
water applies equally well to its action upon
microbes. The germs are entangled in the
gelatinous precipitate, and either subside
with it to the bottom of the settling tank, or
remain behind on the surface of the filter.
Moreover, the film of oxide which covers the
surface of the sand appears to act like a
Chamberland-Pasteur filter, retaining the
microbes while allowing the water to pass
freely. A very important feature of the

iron process consists in the rapidity with
which perfect results are secured. A sand
filter of ordinary construction will remove a
very large proportion of the microbes in a
water when its surface has become suffi-
ciently blocked by the layer of matter, living
and dead, separated from the water being
filtered. To obtain this result, however, it is
necessary to work the filter for days, deliver-
ing all the while imperfectly filtered water,
until this layer has time to form. With the
iron process, however, no such thing occurs.
The practice is, when a filter is restarted
after cleaning, to refill it from below with
purified water from another filter until the
surface of the sand is submerged ; and then
to admit from above water direct from the
outlet of the purifiers, containing in suspen-
sion the whole of the iron oxide supplied to
it. This turbid water as it settles immedi-
ately forms the desired film. Then the filter
is set to work, and yields, from the first,
water containing the minimum number of
germs. The film thus formed is quite clean,
and is never slimy or offensive.

Reeent Experiments in Flying.— In an

interesting article in Nature describing and
picturing the flying appliances of Herr Otto
Lilienthal, who has been experimenting for
some time past near Berlin, it is said that his
experiments " have from the very beginning
been rewarded with a distinct success ; and
it seems that, given time, he may present us
if not with a method of flying, then with an
approximation to it, which perhaps at some
later date may be more fully developed."
He has already succeeded in making fairly
long flights with perfect safety. His pres-
ent apparatus consists of two parallel planes
one above the other, the upper being about
three fourths of a wing breadth above the
lower. Each plane has an area of nine
square metres. The planes are slightly con-
cave on the lower side, and each one is di-
vided into two wings by a fore-and-aft hinge.
There are two rudders at right angles to each
other fastened to the rear end of the lower
plane. With this new apparatus Herr Lilien-
thal has already found that a step in the right
direction has been made. The energetic
movement of the center of gravity, and the
consequent more safe management of the ap-
paratus, had led him to practice in winds

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

H3

blowing at times over ten metres per second.
" These experiments," he says^ " have given
the most interesting results that I have ar-
rived at since I began." With a wind ve-
locity of six or seven metres per second, the
sailing surface of eighteen square metres
carried him against the wind in a nearly
horizontal direction from the top of the hill
without even having to run at the start, as
is generally necessary. In a stronger wind
he allows himself to be ' simply lifted by the
wind from the hilltop and sail slowly against
it. As experiments have shown, the sailing
path is directed strongly upward by increas-
ing wind force, and this fact causes him
sometimes to be higher in the air than he
was at his original starting point. In this

position his apparatus has occasionally come
to a standstill ; and this leads him to make
the following interesting statement: "At
these times I feel very certain that if I leaned
a little to one side, and so described a circle,
and further partook of the motion of the
lifting air around me, I should sustain my
position. The wind itself tends to direct this
motion. I have made up my mind by means
of either a stronger wind or by flapping the
wings to get higher up and farther away
from the hill, so that, sailing round in cir-
cles, I can follow the strong uplifting cur-
rents and have suflScient air space under and
about me to complete with safety a circle,
and lastly to come up against the wind again
to land."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

I

In a recent report to the French Academy
of Medicine, M. Henri Monod says that from
January, 1895, since the knowledge of anti-
diphtheritic serum and its uses has been
extensively diffused throughout France, the
statistics have shown a marked diminution in
the mortality from the disease. In the popu-
lation of one hundred and eight cities in
France, each having more than twenty thou-
sand inhabitants (the only places from which
the reports are sent to the central administra-
tion), during the first six months of the seven
years preceding 1895 — that is, from 1888 to
1894 — the average number of deaths was
twenty-six hundred and twenty-seven. Dur-
ing the first six months of 1895 the diminu-
tion was 65"6 per cent. This diminution it
not simply continuous, but is steadily increas-
ing, as is proved by statistics from month to
month. In a little pamphlet on this subject by
Dr. Welch, of the Smithsonian Institution, he
says that " the study so far of the results of
the treatment of over seven thousand cases
of diphtheria by antitoxine demonstrates be-
yond all reasonable doubt that antidiphth cri-
tic serum is a specific curative agent for
diphtheria, surpassing in its efficacy all other
known methods of treatment for this dis-
ease," while " the essential harmlessness of
the serum has been demonstrated by over a
hundred thousand injections."

An accident of considerable scientific in-
terest recently resulted m the photographing

of a meteor. On November 23d last, at about
ten minutes past twelve at night, Mr. C. P.
Butler, of Knightsbridge, with the intention
of focusing and testing the field of a new
lens, placed a quarter-plate camera on the
window sill, pointed it roughly at the region
near the boundaries of Perseus, Andromeda,
and Aries, and exposed it for about ten min-
utes. Upon developing the plate, the track
of a meteor was the first impression to be
perceived. Confirmation of the occurrence
of the meteor is given by its having been ob-
served from the South Kensington Observa-
tory, both the time of the fall and the esti-
mated region of its path being identical with
the above observations.

M. Bebthelot, says Industries and Iron,
with the view of avoiding the inaccuracy
arising from the unknown or irregular ex-
pansion of the containing vessel of the gas
thermometer, has recently been experiment-
ing with a new method of measuring tem-
peratures. He employs the varying refrac-
tive power of gases at different densities. A
given refraction always corresponds to a
given density, though the pressure and tem-
perature may be different. The principle is
applied by the method of interference. A
luminous beam is split up into two parts,
which traverse two tubes filled with the same
gas, and the initial appearance of the inter-
ference fringes Is noted. One of the tubes
is then raised to the temperature which it is

144

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

desired to measure, the pressure remaining
constant and being that of the atmosphere.
As the density of the gas diminishes, the in-
terference fringes become displaced. By re-
ducing the pressure of the gas in the second
or cold tube, the fringes are brought back to
their initial position ; and this means that
the density is then the same in both tubes.
Now, the refraction of a gas is always exactly
proportional to its density: the density of
the gas in the cold tube is known from its
pressure. Hence the density of the hot tube
is also known, and from this its temperature
is deduced. The method is thought to be
well adapted for the measurement of high
temperatures, such as those of furnaces.

NOTES.

Abundant testimony is cited by Mr.
Walter Hough to the fact that the use of
body armor was at one time general if not
universal among the North American Indian
tribes. The form was usually that of a
sleeveless jacket, coat, or wide band, going
around the trunk, suspended from the shoul-
ders. At the period of its disuse, six types
of armor were found on this continent and
in contiguous regions — viz., rows of overlap-
ping plates, perforated and lashed ; wooden
slats twined together ; wooden rods twined
together; bands of skin arranged in tele-
scope fashion ; coats of hardened hide ; and
cotton-padded armor.

Prof. Marshall Ward has found from
his experimental work of the past few years
that the appearance of colonies of the same
bacterium, when grown under different con-
ditions, are often very unlike. Distinctions
of species, therefore, should not be based
only upon the appearance of the colony, but
should be drawn after study of all the con-
ditions of the medium.

Dr. Treub, director of the botanical gar-
dens of Buitenzorg, Java, gave an account,
in the British Association, of the formation
of hydrocyanic acid in the pangia tree (Fajv-
gium edule)^ and especially of the relation
of the acid to the formation of nitrogenous
material in plants. He considers that it
is, in pangium at least, the first detectable
nitrogenous material, and suggested, as an
inference, that it is possibly very widely dis-
tributed in the vegetable kingdom as a transi-
tory substance which becomes rapidly trans-
formed into more complex substances.

The agitation of a proposition to rename
one of the boulevards of Paris after Pasteur
has developed the fact that besides there
being already a rue Pasteur, twenty-one
streets in Paris are named after chemists.
Among the men thus remembered are Chev-

reul, Gay-Lussac, Lavoisier, Raspail, Davy,
and Berzelius. Seven botanists are thus
honored, one alchemist — Nicholas Flannel,
of the fourteenth century — and twenty-nine
doctors and surgeons.

We gather from an article in Science
that the Conseil SupSrieur de V Instruction
Puhlique has issued a decree, removing the
restrictions upon the admission of American
and other foreign students to the French
universities, and giving them a status sub-
stantially similar to that accorded by the
German imiversities.

The gold medal of the Royal Astronom-
ical Society has this year been awarded to
Dr. S. C. Chandler, of Boston. Dr. Chand-
ler's astronomical labors have been exceed-
ingly numerous ; but that which has attracted
most attention is an investigation showing
the probability that some small fluctuations
of latitude, which had been noticed in par-
ticular places, were due to a motion of the
earth's axis causing the poles to describe
circles, thirty feet in radius, round a center,
the period of this motion" being about four-
teen months.

A RECENT improvement in the simple
pendulum for purposes of measurement is
reported as having been made by G. Gugliel-
mo. The simple pendulum oscillates about
its point of suspension in all directions. The
compound pendulum rests on a knife edge,
or essentially on two points some distance
apart, and therefore oscillates always in
the same plane. A bob suspended by two
threads will do the same. But for some pur-
poses it is highly desirable to have a body
oscillating in the same plane and parallel to
itself. Sgr. Guglielmo has accomplished this
by taking two such bifilar pendulums and
joining them by a horizontal rod placed in
their plane of vibration. A very useful ap-
plication of it is an anemometer designed on
this plan.

The average weekly earnings of laboring
men in the United Kingdom are computed
in the latest Blue Book to be 2'7s. 7c?., or
£64 ($320) a year. But while this is the
average, it is made up by balancing the wages
of those who earn more and those who earn
less ; and it further appears that twenty-four
per cent of the laboring men of the coimtry
have less than £1, or $5, per week.

LuDwiG RiJTiMEYER, the distinguished
naturalist, who died on the 26th of last No-
vember, was born at Biglen, in the Canton
Bern, in 1825. His father was the parish
clergyman, and the son intended to follow in
his father's footsteps ; but he was from his
youth more interested in natural history
than in theology. In 1848 he began the
study of medicine, and for the rest of his
life devoted himself to the study of compara-
tive anatomy.

JAMES BLYTHE ROGERS.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1896.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

Bt DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L.,

00BRK8PONDANT DE L'iNSTITUT DE FBANOK, ETC.

II.— THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY.

PART V.

TAXATION IN Egypt.— Herodotus, the Father of History, in
writing more than two thousand years ago about Egypt, char-
acterized it as a land of wonders, "containing more marvelous
things than any other country,^' and in this opinion the judgment
of succeeding ages, finding an all-sufficient warrant in primeval,
stupendous, and mysterious monuments, has been compelled, as it
were, fully to acquiesce. At this latter day, however, there has
been added to Egyptian history what may be rightfully termed
another wonder, namely, the most interesting and instructive ex-
perience in taxation in the world's history. Interesting and in-
structive because it affords the most striking and unprecedented
illustrations of the results contingent on an arbitrary and unin-
telligent treatment of a heavy annual requirement of revenue for
the support of a state, as contrasted with the results which have
been the sequence of a wise and practical policy for a like purpose
in the same country and under similar conditions.

Previous to the military occupation of Egypt by the British
forces in 1882, consequent upon the suppression of the rebellion
under the lead of Arabi Pasha, the condition of the country was
wretched almost beyond conception. Its revenue system, in
accordance with Asiatic ideas, comprehended nearly every form of
iniquitous extortion. The principal source of revenue was essen-
tially in the nature of a land tax ; and for the dusky fellah, who
represents the bulk of the Egyptian population, and who with a

VOL, ZLIZ. — 13

146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

grimy white shirt girded about his loins, plows, sows, and reaps
to-day as his forefathers have done before him for thousands and
thousands of years, this tax meant that his houses, his cattle, and
his lands " were but so much food placed before the lips of our
lord (the Khedive) that he might eat thereof and have his fill."

" The seed was often barely sown for the coming crop before
the tax-gatherer appeared with the usurer as his familiar spirit at
his heels, claiming not only heavy tithes of the treasury, but the
many tithes of those tithes which never reached the treasury, way-
laid on the road along the steep ascending gradients of a predatory
hierarchy. For what purposes or to what amount he could be
mulcted the fellah had no means of knowing. The only record he
kept was the number of strokes from the koorbash which had
wrung from him his last piastre. The only certainty he acquired
by long and bitter experience was that, let his harvest be good
or bad, only so much would be left to him as would barely suf-
fice to keep body and soul together. Every year brought fresh
imposts, and every new tax became in the hands of a corrupt ad-
ministration a fresh pretext for unlawful exactions. To satisfy
them the land was made to yield more frequent and more valuable
but also more exhausting crops, until the soil itself caught the
contagion of universal impoverishment. Still the arrears of taxa-
tion grew, and with them arrears of private indebtedness," until
at last whole villages not infrequently petitioned the pasha " to
accept the fee simple of their lands on condition merely that they
should be allowed to rent them from him at an annual rental
greater than the land tax itself, but still vastly less than the total
amount of illegitimate imposts grafted on to the land tax."

Extortion for the purpose of obtaining revenue for the state,
and plunder for the ofi&cials intrusted with its collection, was not
the only form of oppression to which the miserable Egyptian peas-
antry were subjected. By an ancient Asiatic institution called
the corvee, the fellah was liable at any moment to be seized and
dragged perhaps off to some distant part of the country to work
under constant dread of the taskmaster's whip at any task sug-
gested by the caprice of the Khedive or some powerful pasha ; and
it was under this system of compulsory, unpaid, severe, unfed
labor, and with great attendant sacrifice of the lives of his sub-
jects, that the then Khedive, Ismail Pasha, mainly built the Suez
Canal. In addition there was a system of " military conscription
invested with the terrors of the press-gang ; there was the water
supply for irrigation, generally inadequate and often dependent
upon the caprice of some local magistrate or corrupt official ; there
was the greed of unjust judges ; there was the whole hungry
bureaucracy, feeding upon those beneath it in order that it might
in turn feed those above it."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION,

H7

Such, then, was the life that the fellah " lived in the days of
the oppression " ; not in the dim twilight of the past, but less than
twenty years ago ; not in remotely hidden corners of Egypt, but
throughout its entire length and breadth.

In 1879 the exactions in Egypt, nominally for revenue, had be-
come so oppressive, that the population refused to pay them, and,
rising in revolt, drove Ismail Pasha from power and installed his
son, Mohammed Tewfik, in his place. The new pasha found the
finances of the country in such confusion, that he was obliged to
invoke the aid of European Governments in order to obtain the
means necessary to pay the interest on the public debt ; and in
this way the British and French Governments, as representing a
large majority of the creditors, or holders of the debt, were prac-
tically given control of all the Egyptian sources of revenue. This
condition of affairs was, however, in turn so repugnant to the peo-
ple that in the spring of 1882 a revolt broke out, headed by Arabi
Pasha, the then Minister of War, which, with a popular cry of
" Egypt for Egyptians ! " seemed for a time likely to be success-
ful. But with the utter defeat of Arabi at the battle of Tel-el-
Kebir, in September, 1882, the rebellion collapsed ; Tewfik Pasha
was restored to power, while the British forces, for the pur-
pose mainly of maintaining the situation and insuring peace,
practically retained possession of the country. It was under
such circumstances that a reconstruction of the antiquated,
arbitrary, and unequal Egyptian system of collecting revenue
was entered upon as an immediate and imperative necessity
for the establishment of a new and better national fiscal policy,
and the attainment thereby of some degree of national pros-
perity.*

The career of Ismail Pasha, who as Khedive ruled over Egypt
from 1863 to 1879, was a remarkable one. He was *' as fine a type
of the spendthrift as can well be found, whether in history or fic-
tion. No equally reckless prodigal ever possessed equally unlim-
ited control of equally vast resources. He came to the throne at
a moment when there seemed to be no limit to the potential wealth
of Egypt. The whole land was his to do what he liked with it.
All the world was ready to lend money to develop it.'' The
results of his government may be rightfully characterized from

* Notwithstanding the adverse criticism that has been made on the action and policy of
Great Britain, under the then existing circumstances, subsequent experience has proved
that it saved Egypt from barbarism and anarchy, and all the nations interested in that
country " from incalculable losses in blood and treasure, to say nothing of the deep dis-
honor which these losses, foreseen and yet unhindered, would have brought on civilized
mankind. The Arabist movement possessed great destructive force, but it had not within
itself the elements necessary for the construction of anything enduring." — {England in
Egypt, Sir Alfred Milner.)

148 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

almost every point of view as appalling. When lie commenced to
rule in 1863 " the debt of Egypt was a little over three million
pounds sterling ($15,000,000). The annual revenue of the country
was amply suflQcient to meet all needful expenditure. Yet at the
end of 1876 the debt had risen to £89,000,000 ($445,000,000). A
country of six million inhabitants and only five million acres of
cultivated land had added to its burdens at the rate of £7,000,000
(135,000,000) a year. At the same time the taxation of land had
been increased by something like fifty per cent. There is nothing
in the fiscal history of any country, from the remotest ages to the
present time, equal to this carnival of extravagance and oppres-
sion.'^ (England in Egypt, by Sir Alfred Milner, late Under-Sec-
retary for Finance in Egypt. London, 1894.)

The revenue annually collected under Ismail Pasha is probably
not accurately known, and has been reported as high as £15,000,-
000 ($75,000,000) from an estimated population in 1873 of 5,203,000.
But, whatever the amount, it is certain that a very considerable
portion of what was wrung from the miserable peasantry, never
found its way into any official ledger, or reached the national treas-
ury. Of a great loan of £32,000,000 effected by the Khedive in
1873, only £20,700,000 reached the Egyptian treasury. The total
amount sunk by the Government in the Suez Canal is estimated at
£16,075,000 ($80,375,000). Yet Egypt has no share in the vast
profits of the undertaking. It was not, however, the amount of
taxation, crushing as it was in many cases, which worked the
greatest mischief. " It was, above all, the cruel and arbitrary man-
ner in which the taxes were collected. The fellah was seldom
sure of the amount that would be demanded of him. He was
never sure of the moment when the demand would be made. The
moment might, as likely as not, be the very one in which he was
least able to pay. Called upon to find ready money while his
crops were still in the ground, he was simply driven into the arms
of the money-lender. His choice lay between so many blows of
the hoorhash and the acceptance of the usurer^s terms, however
onerous. Under these circumstances money was borrowed at as
much as sixty per cent per annum. Worse than that, it was often
obtained by the sale of the growing crops, which were estimated
for the purpose of the advance at half or less than half their
value. This state of things was bad enough, and it was pretty
general, but the ruin of the cultivator was consummated in many
instances by positive collusion with the usurer on the hint of cor-
rupt officials. The latter would demand the payment of taxes by
the peasant, who was already in debt, at the very time when the
interest on his debt was due. If he had any cash at all the au-
thorities were bound to get it. When the usurer came after them,
there was nothing left to the fellah but to surrender his land and

Jii

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION-. 149

cattle, or renew his bond on still more ruinous terms. He was, in
fact, entirely at the mercy of the lender."

That some betterment of such a condition of affairs was im-
perative if civilization was to be maintained and the substantial
dissolution of Egyptian society prevented, seemed evident, and to
effect it most rationally and speedily, an experiment was insti-
tuted that, as respects its nature and results, finds no parallel in
the world^s history. This in brief was the creation of a fiscal
commission, by Sir Evelyn Baring, then British agent and consul
general in Egypt (but now Lord Cromer, minister plenipotentiary),
the members of which were selected solely by reason of their
recognized qualifications for the work in hand and invested with
almost autocratic powers. To this commission was intrusted the
task of examining and reconstructing a revenue system of long
duration and fortified by the precedents, customs, and prejudices,
of an entire country, with a not inconsiderable population. The
commission when organized in 1884-'85 entered upon its work
under exceedingly unfavorable circumstances. The financial pres-
sure was most acute. The magnitude of the national debt was
apparently overwhelming ; and the prices of the leading agricul-
tural staples of the country, depressed in an extraordinary degree
by world-wide competition, consequent upon improved conditions
of production and transportation, seemed to preclude all possi-
bility of obtaining any increased revenues from the masses by a
continuance of the old, or even by any new methods of extortion.
The first step taken was to abolish as rapidly and as far as pos-
sible all unnecessary and unproductive expenditures ; and for this
there was large opportunity. A diminution was made in the pen-
sion list, and in the number of superfluous and highly paid of-
ficials. By the concurrent action of the great powers of Europe
the rate of interest on the funded debt of Egypt was also some-
what reduced.

The next important measure that claimed the attention of the
commission was the grievance of the corvee, or system of enforced
labor on the part of the peasantry on the public works ; which,
if entitled to be called taxation, was taxation of the worst and
most wasteful kind, entailing sacrifices upon the people out of
all proportion to the money which it saved to the state. It was
not, however, found practical at the outset to abolish it alto-
gether. The old practice by which the fellahs might be dragged
away from their villages at any moment for any purpose, public
or private, upon which the Khedive might choose to employ them,
was at once totally abrogated. On the other hand, the agricul-
ture of Egypt, the main source of support of her people, depends
upon the water of the Nile, distributed through irrigating ditches
or canals ; and in order that these should fulfill their purpose, it is

150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

necessary to keep them clear of the mud which the Nile at the
period of its annual overflow brings down in large quantities ; and
to effect this, no other labor than that of the fellahs' is available.
Finding that this indispensable work could be done by contract
and paid labor, for about £400,000 ($2,000,000) per annum, the
commission appropriated, from the funds made available from
loans and the reduced expenses of the Government, the sum of
£250,000, to be paid annually as compensation for such service,
and thereby at once reduced by more than fifty per cent the num-
ber of men formerly called out and compelled to perform service ;
without payment. In addition, the employment of skilled engi-
neers and the introduction of improved machinery for dredging
and excavating, still further reduced both the necessity for the
labor of individuals and the general aggregate of former expendi-
tures. Whatever of the obligation of the corvee is still incum-
bent on the fellah, as, for example, when he is called in any sud-
den emergency to prevent breaks in embankments in time of
flood, or keep clear the irrigation of his own land, is therefore
largely in his own interest, and even this will probably at no dis-
tant day be abolished. But, be this as it may, it is certain that
what of the corvee the commission has felt compelled to retain
does not represent one tithe of the awful incubus which the old
corvee represented " in the days of the oppression." The use of
the koorbash, or lash, which was the former invariable accompani-
ment of unpaid labor in Egypt, has also been absolutely prohib-
ited. Of other forms of relief to the people of Egypt, effected by
the English fiscal commission, the following may be mentioned :

An abandonment of a tax on sheep, goats, and camels, which
was very obnoxious to the agriculturists ; a tax on weighing and
measuring ; octroi taxes on rice, oil, and other commodities ; and
a tax on all trades and crafts, in the nature of licenses on business
and professions, which was collected in innumerable small sums
from the poorest of the people. The price of salt, the supply and
sale of which was a monopoly of the state, has been reduced to
the extent of forty per cent, while large abatements have been
made in judicial fees, postal and telegraph rates, and in railway
rates and fares.

As formerly, the tax on land is yet the corner stone of Egyp-
tian finance, and can not be rapidly or radically disturbed ; but
large measures of relief have nevertheless been instituted. A
vexatious diversity of rates at which land has been assessed in
different parts of the country has been simplified to the extent
that a former total number of fourteen hundred different rates
has been brought down to two hundred. The value of land varies
greatly, according to its proximity to the Nile, and the extent to
which it can be profitably supplied with water for irrigating pur-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 151

poses — ^land devoted to growing rice crops requiring constant
watering, but which must never be inundated, " From time im-
memorial Egyptian law has recognized an intimate connection
between the land tax and water supply. The land which, in any
given year, gets no water, is for that year legally exempt from all
taxation whatever. As soon as it gets water its liability is estab-
lished. But it is evident that the mere fact of receiving some
water, though it may set up the liability of the cultivator to pay,
does not insure his capacity to do so. In order to insure that, he
must get his water in proper quantities, and at the proper times.
But this is just what, in thousands of instances, he could not get,
as long as the irrigation system remained in the state of unutter-
able neglect and confusion into which it had fallen in the period
previous to the British occupation of the country." Arrears of
land taxes throughout the whole country to the amount of about
$5,000,000 have been remitted altogether by the commission, while
lands incapable of cultivation, but heretofore made subject to
taxation, have to a great extent been relieved.*

The area of land under cultivation in Egypt in 1894 was about
five millions of acres; and in the least prosperous part of the
country the tax on the same has been reduced, since the creation
of the commission, to an extent of at least thirty per cent. The
revenue from the taxation of land, which is at present estimated
as not exceeding on an average £1 (|5) per acre, constitutes fully
one half of the total receipts of the Egyptian treasury.

In 1886, before the reduction in this tax had been made.

* " A considerable class of lands, called mazroof^ sold many years ago by the Govern-
ment at a quitrent which in the course of time had come to be looked upon as a specially
high rate of land tax, has also been assimilated to the surrounding districts.

" Another measure of great importance for the future has been the adoption of more
liberal fiscal regulations with regard to land brought for the first time under cultivation.
Formerly the first attempt to reclaim a piece of imcultivated land brought down the tax-
gatherer, who at once subjected it to the full burden of the land tax. Now it remains un-
taxed until it yields the first remunerative crop, and then for two years it pays only half
the normal rate. In the same broad spirit, facilities have been granted to people who are
found without proper title in possession of land belonging to the Government, but on which
they have spent labor and money in developing. Such occupiers can nowadays be confirmed
in possession on very easy terms, in which full account is taken of all improvements.
Finally, a scheme has been devised, and has been already applied with considerable success,
for securing relief, without having to enter upon a general reassessment, in those no longer
very numerous cases where the existing land tax is really excessive. Instead of allowing,
as hitherto, arrears to accumulate which have ultimately to be remitted, the defaulting land
is seized and put up for sale, but on such terms as to facilitate the re-entry of the owner
on a lighter rating wherever the arrears are shown to be due to a prohibitive assessment in
the past.

" Thus, not only the huge accumulation of arrears and the many smaller obstacles have
been removed which blocked the approaches to the land tax, but the land tax itself has been
cleared of its most mischievous excrescences."

152 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its revenue product was £5,116,000 ($25,580,000— the Egyptian
pound being about £1 05. 6d). In 1891 its product, after the
large reductions noted, was £5,098,000 ($25,490,000) ; a result con-
stituting a new and striking illustration of a little regarded
principle of taxation, that low or moderate taxes are as a rule
more prolific of revenue than comparatively high taxes. It is
also worthy of note that the land taxes of Egypt under the re-
duced rates' are collected with greater facility and much less ex-
pense than under the old system.

Viewed, as it should be, rather as ^ rent than as a tax, the
present Egyptian tax on land can hardly be regarded as oppress-
ive. The number of land proprietors in Egypt, according to the
revenue returns for 1893, was 1,025,000. In only 8,569 cases were
the fiscal officers obliged to seize crops in payment of the land
tax. In three out of four of such cases the mere seizure acted as
a sufficient threat to induce payment, and in only 2,158 cases was
it necessary actually to sell the defaulters' crops. As for the
seizure and forced sale of the land itself, there were only 1,865
cases of seizure and less than one in nine of actual sale — viz.,
204. The number of expropriations for failure to pay the land
tax had therefore been reduced to the infinitesimal proportion of
one in five thousand.

The total revenue receipts of the Egyptian treasury during
the year 1886, after the commission had begun to exert an influ-
ence on the fiscal affairs of the country, was £7,337,000. In 1890
they had increased to £8,040,000, and in 1891 to £8,366,000 ($41,-
830,000). To the extent of about one third, this augmentation
was due to heavier taxes on tobacco, and a few new taxes, as a
tax on house occupancy, from which all foreigners previous to
1887 were exempt. In general, the increase in revenue receipts
consequent upon new taxes imposed since 1885 has been about
£570,000 ; but the reductions of taxation have at the same time
been notably in excess of this amount. The public debt of Egypt,
which was nearly £99,000,000 in 1880, has been increased in recent
years to the extent of between two and three millions ; but this
increase has been mainly devoted to the redemption of pensions
and to reproductive public works.

The general results that have been attained in Egypt under
the fiscal and administrative policy of the British commission
are, therefore, worthy at least of being characterized as extraor-
dinary. They can not, moreover, be properly exemplified by any
mere exhibit of figures. The benefit that has accrued to the
Egyptian people can not be properly measured by a reduction of
their taxes, but rather by the increase in their means of bearing
the burden that remains. " The greatest vice of all in their old
system of government was that, while the demands made upon

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 153

the people were constantly increasing, their capacity to meet those
demands were being steadily impaired. The Government took
from them twice as much as it was entitled to take, and did not
give them in return what it was bound to give ; while the coffers
of the state and the pockets of its servants were being filled by
the plunderer of the peasantry. The soil was deteriorating from
the neglect of those great public works upon which its fertility
depended."

All this abuse has now been entirely abrogated. For the first
time since the days of the Roman administration, order and pros-
perity reign in the valley of the Nile.

At no previous period since Egypt began to have a name has
the fellah lived under a government so careful to protect his rights.
For the first time he is allowed to control the fruits of his labor.
To-day, under British domination, every Egyptian peasant knows
exactly the amount of taxes he has to pay, and when he has to
pay them ; and that when he has once paid the legal amount, no
official, big or small, has the power to extort from him one single
piaster beyond it.* He knows, too, that he can not at any moment
be seized and dragged off as formerly, perhaps to some different
part of the country, to work under constant dread of the whip, at
any task suggested by the caprice of the Khedive or of some
powerful pasha. Under such circumstances Egypt has never,
certainly not within a recent period, enjoyed so large a measure
of prosperity. Notwithstanding the recent universal decline in
price of agricultural staples, the Egyptian products and exports
of cotton, sugar, tobacco, wheat, etc., have rapidly increased, and
at present are much greater than at any former period. The an-
nual increase in the great staple product of Egyptian agriculture
—cotton— from the average of 1884-'89 to that of 1893-94 was
nearly a hundred per cent, whereby the cultivator was not only
able to pay his taxes more easily, but has more money left for
his own needs.

When England first occupied the country the four-per-cent
Egyptian debt securities were quoted at about 50, and not long
before had been quoted as low as 27. To-day their quotation is
over 100, with a reduction of their originally stipulated interest.

One of the most recent results of the British occupation of

* " The poorest peasant in the country is now annually furnished with a tax-paper, wird,
as it is called, which shows him exactly what he has to pay to the Grovernment, and at
what seasons the installments are due. The dates of these installments, moreover, which
vary in different provinces, have been arranged so as to correspond as nearly as possible
with the seasons when the cultivator realizes his produce, and is therefore in the best posi-
tion to discharge his debt to the state. The necessity no longer exists of resorting to
bribery as a protection against the extortion of sums not due on the part of the tax-
gatherer."

154 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Egypt has been a practical abolition of human slavery. Under
existing regulations every slave in Egypt (the former great mar-
ket for enslaved people of Africa) may demand his manumission
if he chooses ; and if the Soudan be retaken by Egyptian troops
under British leadership, it will be equivalent to opening the
prison doors to hundreds of thousands of captives.

In 1876 the district known as the " Fayoum/' on the west side
of the Nile, southwest of Cairo, was, according to a correspondent
of the London Times, " reduced by misrule to the greatest depths
of misery ever probably experienced in modern times in Egypt.
The burden of taxation and oppression had produced an amount
of want which almost bordered on starvation. At the present
time (1894) it is one of the most prosperous and contented of prov-
inces, and bids fair to become in the future the very garden of
Egypt."

A further striking proof of the prosperity of Egypt under
British administration is afforded by the financial report for 1895,
made by Lord Cromer, the British diplomatic agent, which shows
a revenue in excess of all expenditures for that year of £1,088,000
($5,440,000).

That the continued prosperity and development of Egypt are
dependent on the continued administration of the country by the
British Government seems too clear to admit of questioning ; and
it is also not less evident that if Egypt should now be abandoned
by it, all that has been done for it would be speedily undone.*

Finally, in considering the recent and remarkable fiscal experi-
ence of Egypt, one point of great economic interest should not be
overlooked — namely, the lesson it teaches of the closeness of the
relations of the finances of a state to the welfare of its people ;
and that these relations, which are apt to be obscured, or even
wholly lost sight of, under conditions of high and complex civiliza-
tion, speedily make themselves apparent, and are therefore more
easily traced and studied in a country of limited area and simple
conditions of living on the part of its people. This experience
historically groups itself under three separate and distinct peri-
ods : First, the period of reckless prodigality under the reign of
Ismail Pasha, from 1863 to 1879, of sixteen years. Second, a period
of sudden retribution fraught with widespread misery, from 1879

* In a recent debate (1896) in the British House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain, the
Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, said : " It would be impossible to pass judg-
ment upon the policy of the Government unless the Government first made up its mind
definitely in regard to the immediate evacuation of Egypt. Nothing in recent history could
be looked back to with more pride and satisfaction than the peaceful revolution in Egyptian
affairs which had been accomplished with a handful of men and a British civil administra-
tion. If Egypt should be abandoned, all this would be undone. Egypt must be defended
if her prosperity was to continue."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION

155

I

to 1886. Third, a period of recovery from utter collapse, from 1886
to the present time, the result of intelligent fiscal administration
so signal and complete as to be without precedent in history. It
remains to be seen what will happen in the future in the event of
the withdrawal of British occupation and governmental admin-
istration of the country in compliance with the wishes of all the
other great powers of Europe.

An illustration of how history in Egypt has seemingly re-
peated itself in respect to taxation is here pertinent to the subject.
Prior to the nineteenth century a key to the hieroglyphic writ-
ing of Egypt or of the so-called " demotic," which was a short-
hand or abridged form of the true hieroglyphics, had not
been discovered, and there was little probability that it ever
would be.

In 1799, however, during the French occupation of Egypt, a
large slab of black granite (now in the British Museum), which
originally had been a monument in some public edifice, was dis-
covered in excavating for military purposes near the village of
Rosetta, a place in Lower Egypt not far distant from Alexandria
and the western mouth of the Nile. The slab had on it three in-
scriptions— the first in hieroglyphic text, the second in the demotic
character, and the third in Greek letters ; and a study and com-
parison of them, mainly by Champollion, a French scholar, led to
a solution of the problem of deciphering the hieroglyphic writing,
which previously had almost completely baffled analysis. It was
then found that the trilingual inscriptions were in the main a
copy of a decree in honor of Ptolemy Y, Epiphines, King of Egypt,
who, about 193 B. c, had conferred great benefit on his country
and its people by remitting certain taxes and reducing others, and
read as follows :

Considering that the King Ptolemy, ever living, the well-beloved of
Phtah, most gracious son of the King Ptolemy and of the Queen Arsinoe —
gods philopatores (father-loving)— has done all kinds of good; . . . that he
has not neglected any of the means within his power to perform acts of
humanity ; that in order that in his kingdom the people and in general all
the citizens should be in prosperity, he has suppressed altogether some of
the taxes and imposts established in Egypt, and has diminished the onus
of others: . . , It has therefore pleased the priests of all the temples of the
land to decree that all the honors belonging to the king shall be consider-
ably augmented ; that his statue shall be erected in the most conspicuous
spot in each temple ; that the priests shall perform three times each day
religious service to these statues ; and that in all great solemnities all the
honors due to other deities shall be paid them. . . .

More than two thousand years have elapsed since the service
rendered by Ptolemy to Egypt and its people by the remission
and readjustment of taxes was thus commemorated. King,

156 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

priests, and people have long since passed away ; but if they
could return, their gratitude to the English tax commission
for the service rendered to their country and to their de-
scendants would certainly again be recognized and fitly com-
memorated.

Another point of historical and fiscal interest in connection
with Egypt is worthy of notice. Of the conquest and occupation
of Egypt by the French, 1798-1801, the masses of its people have
but little knowledge ; but the name of General KMber, to whom
the government of the country was intrusted by Napoleon on his
return to France, is still held in grateful remembrance, coupled
with the highest title that the Arabs could bestow upon him —
namely, " The Just " — because under his rule, as popular expres-
sion has it, " he levied taxes only once." *

Taxation in Brazil. — A most striking and instructive ex-
ample of the strangulation of the commerce of a country, and its
consequent impoverishment by reason of a vicious system for the
collection of revenues, is to be found in the recent experience of
the South American state of Brazil. Its Government derives its
support mainly from export and import duties, and every prov-
ince, whether maritime or interior, collects a separate duty of
generally about four or five per cent on its exports, to which in
some instances a municipal tax is added. There is no taxation
upon either real or personal property ; but when a piece of real
estate is sold, the purchaser is required to pay a fee to the Govern-
ment of five per cent on the selling price. All stores are obliged
to obtain a license, for which a fee is exacted, the amount varying
with the kind of trade. The duties on imports are extremely
heavy, and on many articles, especially foods, are in excess of their
original cost at their place of production. On some of the princi-
pal articles of export the duties have been as high as twenty- three
per cent ad valorem, on rubber and cocoa fourteen per cent, and
thirteen per cent on coffee. Few countries have greater commer-
cial and industrial possibilities than Brazil ; but Nature's prodigal
efforts have been rendered futile by a vicious system of taxation,
which has so restricted the development of her resources that the
increase of exports in recent years has been mainly confined to the
single article of India rubber, for the supply of which the country
has practically a monopoly. What is raised in Brazil is taxed ;

* For the material which has furnished the basis for the foregoing narrative of the
recent fiscal (tax) experience of Egypt, the writer has been mainly indebted to a book,
England in Egypt, London, 1894, by Sir Alfred Milner, formeriy a member of the Egyptian
Fiscal Commission, and now chairman of the British Board of Inland Revenue ; to a series
of letters published in the London Times in 1894 ; to various official documents, and inter-
views with those personally conversant with the subject under consideration.

HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT. 157

what is bought by her is taxed ; while taxes are levied on her prod-
uct of labor and on the payments for such products. The gen-
eral result, therefore, has been that the world can buy compara-
tively little of the Brazilian, and the Brazilian has comparatively
little with which to buy of the world.

HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT.

Bt J. W. SPENCEK, Ph. D., F. G. S.

THE framing of the continent was a work of great antiquity
Upon that foundation the plains and mountains were slowly
built, and out of them the valleys have since been carved. The
last touch in the completion of the continent has been the mak-
ing of the lakes. The work is geologically new, and the knowl-
edge of how the lakes were produced is only a few years old — or
about a decade and a half since the students have been seriously
attempting to disentangle the complex history of the lakes, and
from the maze of disorderly speculation to bring together an or-
derly assemblage of scattered facts and events. To have partially
accomplished this effort, it required tedious waiting for the dis-
covery of connecting links which were not always obtained in
their logical order ; and it was often necessary to learn how to
look for them, and so the footsteps had to be retraced many
times before the lost trails were recovered. Many new things
have been learned in studying the history of the lakes, but the
most striking physical changes have been during the period im-
mediately preceding and reaching into modern times.

High Continental Altitude of Former Times.— In very
ancient times the lake district formed a great plateau at a consid-
erable altitude above the sea, with some bordering mountains or
high lands. Those ancient plains have since been molded into
rolling hills and broad valleys, and the mountains have been
worn down to almost plains themselves. When mountain ridges
are close upon the sea or adjacent low plains, at so slight an ele-
vation that the streams are all sluggish, then, aided by chemical
action, the rains and streams are always washing down the ele-
vated lands, first making ravines and valleys, and then enlarging
them into broad plains with low hills, for the level has been
reached below which the agents of destruction can scarcely affect
the slightly elevated lands, as is illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2.

If the plains were always to remain at low altitudes, increas-
ing slightly in elevation in proceeding landward, above the drain-
age basins, and with the high lands gone or going, the country
would become monotonous without any bold reliefs or the possi-

158

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fio. 1. — Section showing a Hillside {d c) beino

■WASHED DOWN TO THE BaSB PlANE OF ErOSION
(C i), WHICH IS ITSELF ALMOST EEDTJOED TO SeA

Level.

bility of the formation of any deep valleys. While snch finished
conditions may often occur over large districts, yet such is not

the character of very great
regions, as Nature seldom
allows the completion of
these processes, for with
the wearing down of one
area another quarter is ele-
vated by internal forces,
until new plateaus rise in
bold relief. The rains gather into streams and cut out gorges and
valleys with their forms depending upon the character of the
rocks and the length of time that the erosion is in progress. The
gorges and valleys grow in length, like the Niagara canon, until
the slopes of the streams become so gentle that they can not
deepen their channels any more. After that stage, the only work
of the river is to carry away the rocks dissolved or washed from
the sides of the valleys, which are thus
widened into broad flats, and in their
later stages great plains. Such a forma-
tion of base planes of erosion is illus-
trated in Fig. 2.

Applying this process of denuda-
tion to the lake region, it becomes evi-
dent that the land must have stood
high enough above the sea for the riv-
ers to remove the debris washed into
them by the millions of little streams
— that is to say, the continent was suffi-
ciently high for the excavation of the
deepest valleys now beneath the lake
waters. As the sea was very distant
from the lakes, much farther than now,
and the upper lake basins were still
farther inland, the altitude of the con-
tinent must have been even greater
than the depth of the deepest lake basin
below the sea level. On the other hand,
the slope of the land must have been

gentle, with the elevation just high enough to allow the drainage
of the valleys, without the production of canons through them,
and to enable the streams to widen them into broad, rolling hills
and plains scores or hundreds of miles wide. (See Figs. 13 and
14.) The necessary altitude may have varied from time to time,
but the duration of the proper conditions was very long. The
elevation was not merely high enough to allow the reduction of

Fig. 2.— Map of a Plateau being
transformed into a v alley
{c c c), which is broadening
OUT INTO A Plain {p p). The
sluggish river is only acting as
a carrier for the removal of the
land washes.

irOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT,

159

the table lands to a depth, of five hundred feet below sea level, as
is shown in the Ontario basin at this day, and the upper lakes to
nearly as great a depth (Lake Erie alone being shallow, but with
deep buried channels running through it), but high enough to
allow for the necessary slope down the St. Lawrence Valley, not
merely to the present gulf, but to the edge of the continent, some
eight hundred miles from the present outlet of Lake Ontario. In
short, the lake region was elevated more than twelve hundred feet
higher than now, which amount itself is indicated by the sound-
ings of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

While the lake district was thus moderately elevated for long
ages, there was an extraordinary altitude of the continent lasting
for a comparatively short time, as is seen in the drowned valleys
near the coastal margin of the continent ; but this elevation did
not last long enough for the great canons to be cut back to Lake
Ontario.

The lake basins are simply fragments of the old valleys of the
St. Lawrence River and its tributaries. These normal but ancient
depressions have since been obstructed so as not to allow a free
drainage and are thus turned into lake basins with the district
further depressed, partially below sea level. The manner in
which these things were accomplished is now our theme.

Drowned and Buried Valleys.— Fragments of the ancient
valleys which existed in the lake region are discovered by the

Fig. 3. — Section across Lake Ontario from Point Peter to Pultneyville, showing the
suhmerged valley with the bounding escarpment.

soundings in the lakes. Throughout or across some of them great,
broad channels, resembling old land valleys, such as are seen in
every country, extend, and are bounded on one side or another by
the steep slopes of some drowned mountain or escarpment, three
hundred or four hundred feet high. Such a valley occurs in the
Ontario basin, of which Fig. 3 is a cross-section. An equally
good example may be seen in Lake Huron and other lakes. But
at the surface these drowned valleys do not appear connected.
What do they mean ? We shall see.

In the lake district wells have been sunk for considerable
depths for water, oil, and gas. On the now level plains the bor-
ings have often penetrated great depths of loose rock and dirt

i6o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

deposits before reaching the solid strata, yet, perhaps in prox-
imity, the bedded rocks appear near the surface of the country.
These depressions are portions of ancient valleys which have been

filled often to depths of
•^ -^7 fi'^® hundred feet, and in

some cases probably to a
thousand feet. By chains
of borings the buried
valleys may be traced.
Their general course is
frequently shown by the
surface features ; but
without the borings their
great depth would not
be suspected. Thus the
Dundas Valley may be
taken as an example. It
is situated at the head
of Lake Ontario and
bounded by mountain
walls, but is also deeply
buried by drift, as shown
in Fig. 4. Some of the
filled valleys are chiefly
occupied with bowlder
clay ; in other cases with
both till and stratified
materials ; so that their burial is not always alike. Not merely
have many of the old valleys been filled with the sweepings of
the highlands, but they have been further obscured by the sub-
mergence of the district beneath the modern lake waters.

The Course of the Ancient St. Lawrence compared
WITH THAT OF THE MoDERN EiVER. — In Seeking for the explana-
tion of the drowned and buried valleys, discoveries have been
made showing that some of them can be connected, and thus is
the change in the course of the ancient Laurentian (so named to
distinguish the old water way from the modern) River established.
The modern St. Lawrence River is characterized by the most re-
markable system of lakes in the world. The basins are very deep,
and not mere expansions of a river having no noteworthy depth.
In the soundings of the lakes and in the buried valleys the con-
necting links of a great chain of evidence are welded together,
showing that the ancient water way did not pursue the present
eccentric course, but was an ordinary river valley of large size,
yet its course was not everywhere coincident with that of the
modern stream.

Fig. 4. — 1, Hudson River formation ; 2, Medina shales ;
8, Niagara and Clinton dolomites with some shales ;
A, C, D,B, modem valley at meridian of Burling-
ton Heights ; a, C, D, &, modem valley at meridian
of Dundas ; o, c, d^ e, b, sections across, deeply ex-
cavated in beds of streams in western part of the
Dundas Valley ; 4, bowlder clay filling ancient val-
ley ; 5, Erie clay ; 6, talus from sides of escarpment ;
7, old beach, one hundred and sixteen feet above lake
at Burlington Heights ; G, Desjardin's Canal leading
from Dundas marsh to Burlington Bay ; W, W, well
at Eoyal Hotel, Hamilton ; W, another well at
Dundas ; L, 0, level of Lake Ontario ; L, E, level
of Lake Erie. Valley at Dundas two miles and a
half wide and depth five hundred feet.

ffOW THE GREAT. LAKES WERE BUILT.

161

From the northern portion of the Michigan basin the channel
of the ancient Laurentian River is more or less buried beneath

\

drift and also submerged in extending by way of Mackinac
Straits to the Huron basin, across which its course is plainly
marked at the foot of an escarpment from three hundred and fifty

VOL. XLIX. — 14

i62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to four hundred and fifty feet high, and the whole somewhat fur-
ther submerged. Again it passes through the narrows across the
broken mountain ridge into Georgian Bay, where the deep chan-
nel skirts the foot of another high escarpment. The old water
way across these lakes is shown on map (Fig. 5).

From Georgian Bay the ancient channel is buried below drift
deposits to a known depth of seven hundred feet, and almost cer-
tainly the drift reaches to a depth of one thousand feet beneath
the highest obstructing ridges. The course of the channel passes
through Lake Simcoe and enters the Ontario Valley about twenty
miles east of Toronto, where the deep trench is made known by
the soundings in the lake. The buried valley w^as broad and
comparable to the portions through the lakes. On its western
side, but some miles away, it is paralleled by the " mountain " or
Niagara escarpment, which reaches to more than fifteen hundred
feet above the sea. On the eastern side of the valley the plains
are underlaid by solid rock, although these are often covered by
drift ridges. Between these rocky boundaries the drift has been
penetrated to great depths in many places, yet in the center of
the channel the bottom of the filling has never been reached.

Throughout the Ontario Valley the Laurentian River flowed
at the foot of a high escarpment now submerged (see Figs. 3, 5,
11). At the eastern end of Lake Ontario the channel turned
toward the present outlet of the lake and then down what is now
the modern course of the St. Lawrence to the sea. The origin of
the barrier across the present outlet of Lake Ontario will be no-
ticed later.

One of the great tributaries was the Huronian River, crossing
the southern portion of Michigan, as shown upon the map (Fig.
5), and extending through Saginaw Bay to join the Laurentian
River farther north. The Superior outlet is supposed to have
crossed the upper peninsula of Michigan and joined the branch
draining from the northern end of what is now Lake Michigan.

The now shallow Erie basin was then a portion of a plain
across which the ancient Erigan River flowed in a valley two
hundred feet or more in depth. One of the buried and submerged
tributaries at Cleveland was described by Dr. J. S. Newberry,
others by Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, and those near Buffalo by Dr. J.
Pohlman. From the Erie basin the Erigan River crossed by a
channel about forty miles west of the Niagara River, which did
not then exist, and passed down the Dundas Valley (Fig. 4) into the
head of the Ontario basin, and farther eastward joined the Lauren-
tian River (Fig. 5). All the features of the ancient and drowned
valleys are those characterizing ancient topography; that is to
say, without the boldnesses and abruptnesses of youthful features
and without great waterfalls, although rapids must have existed.

HOW THJ£ GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT. 163

Reversals of Ancient Rivers in Pennsylvania and New
York. — The great changes in the water way of the Laurentian
River had their counterpart in the highlands to the south of the
lakes where the ancient streams were tributary to the Lau-
rentian, in place of to the modern Ohio and Susquehanna Rivers.
Among the more notable changes, the Alleghany (discovered by
Mr. J. F. Carll) flowed to the Erie basin, as did also the upper
Ohio (suggested by the writer, and further explained by Dr. P.
Max Foshay and Mr. F. Leverett). These and other streams now
reversed were tributaries of the Erigan River. In New York the
upper Susquehanna and some tributaries descended through the
"finger lakes" to the Laurentian River as it passed through the
Ontario basin. All the old streams coming from the high-
lands south of the lake basins flowed through broad, V-shaped
valleys, of ancient form, although of considerable depth. These
valleys became filled with drift which turned the waters of the
Ohio and Susquehanna Rivers to the south. This reversal in the
drainage has been further assisted by the recent northward tilt-
ing of the land, to be explained later.

How the Ancient Valleys were Obstructed. — The Lau-
rentian Valley and its tributaries were completed before the ice
age. Indeed, the high elevation of the continent during the cul-
mination of that period did not last long enough for the deepen-
ing of the channels of the main valley, as they could scarcely be
affected until a great canon had been excavated from the conti-
nental margin for eight hundred miles to the Ontario basin,
which was not the case.

As for the modification of the ancient topography by glacial
action, it could have been only slight, and does not appear to have
been more than the sweeping of loose geological dust into the val-
leys, or on to the highlands to the south. The absence of any
great plow is shown by the direction of the scratches on the rock
surfaces, which lines are everywhere at great angles to the walls
and sides of the lake basins, and nowhere parallel to them, as
must have been the case if the valleys had been plowed out by
ice in any form. This crucial test and many other features had
not been applied fifteen years ago, when the writer commenced
these researches. Now this fancy of closet geologists has van-
ished before the application of facts. Yet the work of the ice age
was complex, and it is immaterial to the study of the lakes how
it was performed. In one way only does it come within the limit
of this subject, and that is in the phenomena of the ancient valleys
being filled by drift, whether stratified or not. It was this filling
of the old channels with drift that closed the ancient drainage of
the Laurentian Valley, which at a later date gave rise to the
lake basins. But the barriers of the lakes were further exagger-

164

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 6. — Section showing the Floor of a Cut
Terrace on which rests a Beach, h and c,
beaches broken into ridgelets ; d, a frontal
sand bar ; "W, old water level.

ated by the tilting of the land, which will be noted later. The
closing of the old water ways ends the history of the ancient Lau-
rentian River. When the river began to flow again, the lacus-
trine epoch was established.

Submergence and Re-elevation of the Lake District. —
After the obstruction of the valleys with drift, the whole lake

region was submerged; but

this depression is best treated
of in the rising of the land
which has brought the evi-
dence to view.

As the waves beat upon the
shores, the beaches, terraces,
sea cliffs, sea caves, etc., be-
come characteristic of coast
lines. When the water sinks
or the land rises, the various
stages of the deserted shore re-
main and record the recession of the waves. The preservation of
the old coast lines is often so perfect as to furnish easy identifi-
cation of their character, as may be seen in Figs. 6 and 7, which
represent sections of old beaches. Behind them lagoons often
occur, and the entrances of bays are often barred across with
beaches, as is shown in Fig. 8.

The resemblance between modern and ancient shores is further
illustrated in Figs. 9 and 10, where great bowlder pavements are
shown, marking the modern
and deserted strands. In val-
leys, although broad, beaches
do not occur, but they are re-
placed by terraces.

The deserted beaches and
terraces in the lake region oc-
cur at all altitudes, where such
could be preserved. But in
order to find the remains of
old shore lines continuous over
long distances, it is necessary
to descend to the levels where the water was more or less con-
fined in the western and central portions of the lake district, for
until a recent date there were no barriers toward the northeast
sufficiently high to hold the waters of the lakes above tide. In
the prenatal lake epoch, such an embayment called for in the last
sentence covered two hundred thousand square miles of the lake
region, and has been named Warren Gulf. As there was no land
barrier to this gulf in the northeastern direction, and for the

Fig. 7. — Section showing the Floor of a Cut
Terrace without Beach, but with Bowl-
der Pavement. P, bowlder pavement;
W, old water level.

BOW THJ£ GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT.

165

exclusion of the sea, of which there is no evidence, some have
supposed that these waters of the lake district were held at high
altitudes by glacial
dams for long ages.
This hypothesis, not-
ably advocated by
Prof. G. K. Gilbert,
although based up-
on negative evi-
dence to explain
some difficulties,
which are also ap-
plicable to southern
regions even with-
in the tropics, has ^ig. S.—Map of the Westekn End of Lake Ontario.
retarded the re- b, Burlington Beach, separating Burlington Bay from the

searches into the his- ^^^^^ ' ^' ^^^li'^g*'^^ Heights, an ancient beach one hundred

i!j.T_ 1 1 J and eight to one hundred and sixteen feet high, separating

tory of the lakes, and Pundas marsh from Burlington Bay.

had it been followed

would have prevented the discovery of some of the greatest
changes in the geography of northeastern America. Indeed, the
greater portion of the modern elevation of the region has been

Fig. 9.— .Modern Howldkk 1'avkment on Georgian Bay, east of the end of Blue Moun-
tains of Collingwood, Ontario.

recorded in the tilting of the beach lines recognized by all. But
the period of glacial conditions was prior to the lacustrine.

1 66

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which commenced with the submergence of the lake district to
sea level.

The Tilting of the Ancient Shore Lines. — The shore lines
of ponds, lakes, or seas are alike water levels. In this respect the

Fig. 10. — Ancient Bowlder Pavement of Algonquin Beach, whose crest rises one hundred
and eighty-seven feet above Georgian Bay, upon the northeast side of Blue Mountains
of ColUngwood, Ontario.

elevated coast lines present a striking difference from those now
being formed, for the abandoned strands are everywhere tilted
toward the northeast (see Figs. 11, 12, 15).

The tilted beach represents the deformation of the Algonquin
beach. At the head of Lake Erie the deformation of the old
water planes is not over a very few inches in a mile, while it

s

>oco

p

TiUiTiaof

^ . ^

^O

BcacK^ .

4

-^

y

_____ 1---^,^.^^ 1

W^^M^:^^S^M^^^^i-i5ZS^'^^^^^!>^-:^

5^^^^;^^'2

^^^^^^

^^

Fig. 11. — Section of the Lake District from the Highlands of New York to those of
THE Laurentian Hills North of Lake Huron, along a Line passing through Buffalo
AND La.ke Nipissing. Length of section, four hundred miles ; heights given in feet; tis
a ridge of drift north of Lake Ontario. The tilted beach represents the Algonquin plain
deformed.

increases toward the northeast, so that it amounts to four feet per
mile northeast of Lake Huron, and seven feet per mile near the
outlet of Lake Ontario and north of the Adirondack Mountains,
to which locality the writer himself has traced the deserted shores

HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT. 167

all the way from the head of Lake Michigan. This gentle defor-
mation of the surface of the country when carried over such long
distances gives rise to the great physical reliefs of the mountain
regions of the north and east, which were much lower before the
lake epoch than now, as is apparent if the tilting be straightened
out, as may be seen in the sections given. Furthermore, the char-
acter of the riv6r courses at the surface of the country north of
the lake regions indicates that even in the ice age the relatively
high reliefs north of the lakes did not obtain.

The Gulf Epoch. — In the re- elevation of the lake district
after the post-glacial submergence, when the continent was high
enough to partially inclose a large gulf, already referred to, to
which the name of Warren Water has been given, or more correctly
Gulf, there were several water connections through the valleys
to the south and west of it. Its last stage as one body of water
is marked by the Forest beach, as shown on the map (Fig. 13).
Upon the further rise of the land the surface of Warren Gulf fell
below the level of the Forest beach for a depth of a hundred
and fifty feet. The movement was gradual, without striking

Fio. 12. — Section from the Michigan Highlands back of Alpina to the Laukentian
Highlands beyond Lake Nipissing. Length of section, three hundred and tliirty miles.
The tilted beach represents the deformation of the Algonquin beach.

interruptions, for there is no intervening strand, as the water did
not remain at one level long enough to leave beaches. Warren
water was now broken np into two great gulfs ; the one called
the Algonquin, occupying the basins of Lakes Superior, Michigan,
and Huron, and opening to the northeast, through the strait to
the Ottawa Valley, as is shown on the map (Fig. 13) ; the other
was the Lundy Gulf, occupying most of Erie basin, and extend-
ing over the Ontario Valley at a great height. In the region of
Nipissing Strait the two gulfs united.

From the deserted shores of these waters, which are now tilted
up so much to the northeast, free communication between the lake
region and Hudson Bay is indicated, for the Laurentian high-
lands are now rarely more than fifteen hundred feet above the sea
and commonly less. Of course, there was free communication to
the Atlantic Ocean by way of the St. Lawrence and also south-
ward of the Adirondacks. These various characteristics and
changing conditions would require a volume to tell all that we
know about them, and this has been partly done in Duration of

BOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT. 169

Niagara Falls and the History of the Great Lakes, by the writer,
and published by the Commissioners of Niagara Falls Reserva-
tion, under the presidency of Hon. Andrew H. Green.*

The Birth of the Great Lakes. — This marks only an epi-
sode in the chain of events which are being described, when the
waters fell three hundred feet below the Algonquin and Lundy
planes. Although the subsidence of the waters was not continu-
ous and left some evidences of temporary pauses, yet the long rest
was not reached until they had sunk to the level of the Iroquois
beach. By this time the land had risen so high, and, as there were
no sufficient barriers, the upper lakes sunk far within their pres-
ent basins, as is shown on the map (Fig. 14). Still, the waters of
these upper lakes discharged by way of the narrow Nipissing
Strait.

Lake Erie at this time had its birth, but then it was a very
small body of water, as shown on the map. The Niagara district
was then covered with a strait expanded into a lakelet, and after-
ward a river at first without a fall. In the further sinking of the
water to the Iroquois level the falls of Niagara commenced their
history, and then there was a comparatively long rest, but Onta-
rio was still a gulf, as shown on the map (Fig. 14).

The plane of the Iroquois shore was at identically or nearly
the same level as the Nipissing beach (of Taylor) at the outlet of
Lake Huron by way of the Ottawa Valley. It is not apparent,
and it is theoretically improbable, that the Nipissing River was
characterized by more than a gentle slope, for by the time that
the land rose high enough to produce a rapid river the water of
the upper lakes had changed their outlet into Lake Erie. The
proof of these changes rests in the tilting of the beaches, which
aggregates several hundred feet (see Fig. 12).

Barrier to Lake Ontario. — Still, the land has continued to
rise, and the deformation since the Iroquois episode amounts to
more than before that date. The tilting at the head of Lake On-
tario becomes an absolute elevation above the sea, amounting to
three hundred and sixty-three feet, and at the northeastern corner
of the Adirondacks it is fifteen hundred feet, while near the outlet
of Lake Ontario it is seven hundred and thirty feet. This warp-
ing of the continent is illustrated in Fig. 15, and to it is due the
barrier (to a large extent) which retains the waters of the Ontario
basin at an elevation of two hundred and forty-seven feet above
the sea.

Sinking and Subsequent Growth of the Modern Lakes
and Change of Outlets. — The continuing elevation of the con-

* The surveys of the deserted shore lines of the lakes have been mostly made by Messrs
J. W. Spencer, G. K. Gilbert, A. C. Lawson, and F. B. Taylor.
VOL. XLIX. — 15

70

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tinent lowered all the waters of the lake region until their levels
depended upon the rims of the lake basins from which the waters
overflowed. The upper lakes were the first to sink far within

firjMMS^ ■■■' \

mm ' ^

V

m

■ — >^-.''"'"»

JIOIV THE GREAT LAKES WERE BUILT. 171

their basins (see Fig. 14), but later even the Iroquois Gulf was
contracted so as not to occupy even the head of the present On-
tario basin (see Fig. 14).

The great deformation of the whole region since the close of
the Iroquois episode has from that day to this been slowly raising
the northeastern rims of the lake basins so as to cause them to
flood more and more the lowlands and valleys at their southwest-
ern extremities, and even to raise the waters so high as to cover
some of the deserted shores in those directions. At the same
time the waters are leaving their old margins at their northeast-
ern ends, as shown on the map (Fig. 14).

The changes have not been quite simultaneous in the different
basins^ as the heights of the lake barriers and the rate of terres-
trial movements have not been uniform. Thus, in terms of Niag-
ara Falls, it is estimated that the Iroquois Gulf sank below the
Iroquois plane about fourteen thousand years ago ; but that the

Fig, 15. — Section showing the Tilting of the Iroquois Beach South of Lake Ontario
AND THE St. Lawrence Eiver as far as the Northeast Corner of the Adirondacks.

waters of Lake Huron, which had been emptying by way of the
Nipissing Strait for twenty-four thousand years, were turned into
Lake Erie only eight thousand years ago. Again, after the
waters of the Ontario basin had sunk much below the present
western margin of the lakes, they were rising again to near their
present height only some three thousand years ago.

Of the absolute amount of rise of the continent we do not
know, for the axis of uplift has not been ascertained, but it is evi-
dently in the interior of the continent. The differential rate of
elevation varies, being about a foot and a quarter a century in the
Niagara district, two feet northeast of Lake Huron, and nearly
four feet north of the Adirondacks.

The Future Drainage of the Upper Lakes into the Mis-
sissippi River. — With the land rising as at present, it will be
only a matter of time until the northeastern rim of Lake Erie
will be so high that the drainage must turn into Lake Huron, and
thence by way of Lake Michigan and the Chicago Canal into the
Mississippi, and Niagara Falls will then end their life history.
Some fifteen hundred years ago there was a barrier about a mile
north of the present site of the falls that had risen so high in the
general regional uplift as to actually cause some of the waters of
the upper lakes to overflow where the Chicago Canal is now being
built ; but, owing to the peculiar buried valley just behind this
ridge crossing Niagara River, when the falls had passed the bar-
rier, before the change of outlet of the upper lakes from the Ni-

172 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

agara to the Mississippi was completed, the upper lakes were
rapidly lowered, and this re-established the life of the Niagara
for some time longer. Upon the basis of calculations made it
would appear that the change of outlet for the upper lakes from
the Niagara to the Mississippi will- not be more than another five
thousand years hence — to us living a matter of indifference, but
only showing how the present days are simply passing events in
the history of the lakes. In the meanwhile the waters of Lake
Ontario will more and more flood the head of its basin. However,
the end of the lakes is so far removed in geological time that, until
such great changes in the configuration of the land shall have ob-
tained of which we have no prophetic vision, the lakes will con-
tinue to exist.

Age of the Great Lakes. — When the rate of movement of
the earth^s crust, as determined in the history of Niagara Falls, is
applied to the deserted strands of Warren Water and its success-
sors, it is estimated that since the commencement of the Warren
epoch fifty thousand or sixty thousand years have elapsed. This
estimate, although based upon the most analytical knowledge ob-
tainable, can, after all, be regarded as only approximate. The
time ratio tells us that the lakes are still youthful; although
in terms of solar years very old, yet perhaps not older than the
human race.

The vicissitudes between the end of the ice age proper and the
birth of Warren Water are too little known to enter into any pro-
portional division of time, except that the ice age culminated prior
to or at the date of the closing of the old valleys with drift.

The Great Lakes are the most striking feature of the eastern
part of the continent, yet what we know of their history has been
mostly discovered within the last few years. In this sketch only
some of the more important and generalized results have been
given. Many of the observations are beyond doubt, but there is
plenty of room for students to add to our knowledge and correct
our imperfect work. While the history of the lakes can be told
with considerable certainty, the attempt at computing their age
in terms of solar years has the same fascination, although not so
extravagant, as the speculations concerning the antiquity of the
earth itself, as the former question probably comes within the
human period.

Harvard College Observatory publishes a list of fourteen new variable
stars of long period, in addition to those previously announced, which have
been discovered by Mrs. Fleming from the examination of Henry Draper
memorial photographs. The spectrum of one of these stars is of the fourth
type, while all the other stars have spectra of the third type, with the hydro-
gen lines also bright.

DR. NAN SEN'S ''THROWING STICKr 173

DR. NANSEN'S "THROWING STICK."

By JOHN MURDOCH.

THE report that reached us last February to the effect that Dr.
Nanseii's adventurous expedition had actually succeeded in
reaching the pole, naturally set everybody to reviewing the rea-
sons which led him to adopt his peculiar plan. Among the facts
which led him to believe that there was a steady current flowing
westward across the pole, there has been frequent mention of an
Alaskan throwing stick picked up on the southwest coast of
Greenland.

Many have doubtless wished to know what a " throwing stick "
is, and how it could be thought to give such conclusive evidence
of a drift from western America to Greenland. As I had a hand
in collecting and working out the evidence that made this little
piece of wood so valuable, I propose to try and answer these two
questions.

In the first place, a " throwing stick," " throwing board," or
"spear thrower," as it is sometimes called, is a contrivance for
casting a javelin or harpoon, which is employed by various sav-
age races, such as the Australians, some South American tribes,
and especially by the Eskimos, among whom its use is almost
universal. Roughly speaking, it is a narrow grooved board a
foot or so long, with one end cut into a handle and the other pro-
vided with a stud or spur for the butt of the spear to rest against.
It is* used thus : Grasping the handle as he would a sword, the
man fits the shaft of the spear into the groove, with the butt rest-
ing against the stud, steadying the spear with the finger. Then,
extending his arm and bending back his hand till the spear lies
horizontal, he aims at the mark and propels the weapon by
a quick forward jerk of the stick. In this way I have seen
the Eskimo boys casting their forked javelins at wounded
waterfowl.

There is a very large number of Eskimo throwing sticks in the
National Museum at Washington, collected from all the different
branches of the race. These have been very carefully studied by
Prof. Otis T. Mason, one of the curators of the museum, and he has
found that these implements differ greatly from each other in
their details, while all are made on the same general plan. For
instance, one kind will have a plain handle, while another will
have projecting pegs, or holes or sockets, to give a firmer hold for
the fingers, and so on.

Moreover, he has shown that each division of the Eskimo race
has its own pattern of throwing stick, so that, with the help of
his illustrations, one can tell, on seeing a throwing stick, whether

174 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it came from Greenland or Hudson Bay, or from Alaska, and even
what part of Alaska it came from.

I had spent two years among the Alaskan Eskimos when I
was one of the naturalists of the Point Barrow Expedition in
1881-'83, and was especially interested in anything concerning
them, particularly about their implements and weapons, as I had
made a thorough study of these while preparing the report on the
ethnological results of the expedition. Consequently, my curi-
osity was immediately aroused by a little notice that I accident-
ally ran across in the Norwegian scientific paper Naturen. Speak-
ing of the meeting of the Videnskabs-selskab (Scientific Society)
of Christiania, on June 11, 1886, the paper said that the curator of
the museum exhibited a throwing stick found among driftwood
at Godthaab, Greenland, different from those used in Greenland,
but just like those used in Alaska. It was suggested that it had
made the same journey as the " Jeannette relics " found at Ju-
lianehaab. Now, I have heretofore been inclined to be rather
skeptical about the " Jeannette relics," but here, it seemed to me,
was something that could be corroborated. I felt sure that if I
could see the specimen, or a good drawing of it, I could, with the
help of the museum collections (I was employed at the Smithso-
nian Institution at the time), make absolutely sure whether it was
Alaskan or not.

At that time I was in correspondence with Dr. Rink, the
famous authority on the Eskimos of Greenland, since deceased,
but who was then living in Christiania. So I wrote to him for
information, and soon received all that I wanted, with a carefully
drawn outline of the specimen. There was no doubt about it at
all ! It was perfectly Alaskan in pattern, and, moreover, so like
specimens from a certain region near Bering Strait that one
could almost be certain that it came from there. I at once wrote
to Dr. Rink, telling him of my conclusions.

On the strength of my identification of the specimen Dr. Rink
published an article in the journal of the Danish Geographical
Society, reviewing the whole history of the implement, and in
doing so produced more evidence of the authenticity of the
"find." It seems that Dr. Rink picked up the specimen himself
while serving as an official of the Danish Government at Godt-
haab. This at once disposes of any suspicion of its being a
"plant." It was lying on the beach among the driftwood, and
though he and his Eskimo companions recognized it as different
from anything used in Danish Greenland, he laid it aside with-
out paying particular attention to it, fancying it came from East
Greenland, as it is well known that the driftwood found on the
west coast of Greenland comes down the eastern shore with the
current and turns up round Cape Farewell. He kept it till 1886,

I

DR. NANSEN'S '' THROWING STICK:' 175

when the museum at Christiania received a valuable collection of
Eskimo implements from East Greenland, collected by the expe-
dition of Captain Holm and Lieutenant Garde. He then gave
his " throwing stick " to the museum, as probably coming from
the same region. To his surprise, it was found entirely different
from the East Greenland implements, and the Norwegian trav-
eler Jakobsen, who had spent many years in Alaska, suggested
the resemblance to the Alaskan pattern, which gave rise to the
notice that I saw in Naturen.

So, from all this, two things were pretty certain : First, that
the stick was made in Alaska ; and, second, that it was picked up
on the beach at Godthaab. Now, how could it have got there ?
It surely could not have drifted round by way of the Northwest
Passage, for that way is barred by such a network of islands that
the stick would undoubtedly have been stranded long before it
reached Greenland.

Some people have said, " A sailor on an American whaleship
might have brought it home with him from Bering Sea, and
taken it to Greenland,^' but any one who is familiar with the
customs of American whalemen knows that the same ships never
go to the North Pacific and to Davis Strait, and that very few
men in the fleet have been to both regions. Moreover, the Amer-
ican whaleships keep over on the other side of the strait. It is
very unlikely that the stick could have reached Godthaab in that
way. As for the suggestion which has been made that it was
dropped somewhere off the Atlantic coast from a ship coming
home to New Bedford from Bering Sea, that may be dismissed in
a few words. If it were dropped near shore, it would fall into
the inshore current and drift south; while if it were dropped
farther off, the Gulf Stream would take it to Iceland or Norway.

But it is well known that a current sets north through Bering
Strait into the Arctic Ocean, and that north of the strait the
current moves steadily westward, as shown by the drift of the
Jeannette. It is very easy to believe that the stick drifted in
this way, keeping on till it met the current that sweeps down be-
tween Iceland and Greenland, and then turned northward again
round Cape Farewell. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could have
got there otherwise.

So this is the way that the finding of this little piece of wood
came to be a link in the chain of evidence that led Dr. Nansen to
form his adventurous plan of trusting his stout little vessel to the
current which he believed would take him over the very pole.

For my part, I believe that he was right, and that, even if the
present rumor turns out to be untrue, there is a very good pros-
pect that he will attain his object.

176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

CO-ORDINATION OF OUR EDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS.

By Dr. EDWARD H. MAGILL,

EX-PKESIDENT OF 8WART11M0RE COLLEGE.

THE common consensus of thoughtful minds in these latter
days has been gradually tending more and more toward the
proper co-ordina(ion and correlation of our educational institu-
tions. In a comparatively new country like ours it may naturally
be supposed that, as the need for various grades of these institu-
tions has arisen, the want has not always been supplied with a
sufficiently careful consideration of the needs of those of other
grades, and that, as a result, the general educational interests of
the country require some readjustment and reorganization. It
should be observed in the beginning that no censure is intended
to be applied to any institution or class of institutions for their
present status, as this has resulted from the progressive stages of
their growth and development, and no sudden or violent change
is contemplated or desired. The general outline here to be pre-
sented is rather an ideal system for future realization, toward
which all may gradually work as their surroundings and circum-
stances may permit.

Within the past few years a new class of educational institu-
tions has been introduced from abroad, which have received, in
their name, the impress of their foreign origin. Of course^ we
allude to the kindergarten schools, which may now be regarded
as the foundation of our present educational system, the culminat-
ing point of which is the university. The value of this new im-
portation is no longer seriously questioned by educators, and we
cordially accept it here as supplying a need which may be satis-
factorily filled by the devotion to it of about three years of the
life of a child. In these three years, from the age of three to six,
with competent trained teachers, the little ones receive a training
of the hand, the eye, the ear, the voice, and the mind that tells
powerfully upon all the subsequent years of their school and col-
lege life ; and the social, moral, and unsectarian religious element
of their natures receives in these early years a most profound and
lasting impression. With this foundation, entering upon the pri-
mary grade at six, this can well be completed in three years, from
six to nine, and after these six years of school life the intermediate
grade can be well covered in three years more, from the age of
nine to twelve. This outline presupposes also the saving of much
valuable time by omitting studies which belong to a more mature
stage of mental development, and especially much of the time
devoted to the foundation of mathematical studies, which should

EDUCATIONAL CO-ORDINATION. vjj

come chiefly later in the course, language studies taking their just
place in the earlier years. We next come to the grammar-school
grade, so called, and educators are now beginning to see that this
grade, occupying four years, from the age of twelve to sixteen,
after the admirable preparation received in the lower grades,
should prepare students to enter upon a college course. To this
end, too, the requirements for admission to college should be ma-
terially lowered instead of being as now too often advanced. This
was distinctly announced by Prof. Remsen at Johns Hopkins
University in his address before the College Association of the
Middle States and Maryland last year, when he made it perfectly
evident to all that the best educational interests would be ad-
vanced by calling a halt to the colleges which are raising their
requirements for admission, thus admitting students younger and
graduating them earlier to continue their work in the universities
or enter upon the duties of active life. From the age of sixteen
to twenty should be devoted to the college course, beginning with
few electives in the Freshman year and gradually increasing their
number as the course approaches completion. On graduating from
college the students should receive their first degrees from these
institutions, and all subsequent post-graduate degrees should be
earned in and conferred by the universities, in which all college
graduates who can devote the additional time and means required
should be encouraged to pursue their studies for three or perhaps
four years more. As the university course would include the pro-
fessional courses, students would thus come out at twenty-three
or twenty-four years of age equipped thoroughly, so far as our
educational institutions can equip them, to cope successfully with
the important problems and duties of active life.

It will be seen that for the thorough application of such an
outline of study, each institution, of whatever grade, should aim
to do its own work most thoroughly and well, and attempt no part
of that of an institution of a higher or lower grade. Thus the
student should pass from the kindergarten to the primary, from
the primary to the intermediate, from the intermediate to the
grammar school, from the grammar school to the college, and
from the college to the university, entering each institution, as the
rule (remarkable exceptions will occur, but they should not change
the rule), in the lowest class of that institution, and passing
through its entire curriculum in the department selected. No
other course than this can assure the successful working of any
regularly organized system of instruction.

It is very true that most of our colleges had connected with
them in their origin preparatory departments as a necessity of
their existence. This necessity has existed, and in some cases
still continues to exist, and it is no part of this paper to condemn

VOL. XLIX. 16

1/8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

such union while circumstances require it. Our universities are
of later growth, and are with scarcely an exception in this tran-
sition period, with large undergraduate classes. With these, as
with the colleges, we have no controversy, for they are doing ex-
cellent work, and their circumstances in these earlier stages seem
to require this union, which, under other circumstances, we should
earnestly deprecate.

We say they are doing excellent work, but this is because of
the completeness of their organization in other respects and the
able faculties which they employ. But surely they could do
worthier work were these faculties free to give their time and
attention to graduate students, and no longer hampered and hin-
dered by the instruction of large classes of undergraduates. And
the present condition of things is equally a disadvantage to our
colleges, whose students, to rival those of universities, aspire to
what is quite beyond undergraduate work, and thus wholly over-
look the plain line of distinction between a college and a univer-
sity, consisting as it does so largely of the separating line between
acquisition of the known and investigation of the unknown. And
hence it is, too, that a number of colleges, even those of low grade,,
and especially those of low grade, aspire to be called universities.
The changes proposed will do away with all this, and colleges and
universities will each do better work in their respective fields.

We shall then hail with joy, as advancing the best interests of
education in this country, the time when all our universities
shall have reached the stage of admitting to their courses no-
undergraduate students.

It will be seen that to adopt the outline here presented to our
educg-tional system it will be needful, in the four grammar-school
years (high schools and academies being left out of the scheme), to
prepare students properly for entering upon one of the courses in
college, the ancient or the modern letters course, or the science
course, the requirements for the admission to each being now rap-
idly equalized by our best colleges. With the nine years of most
thorough training in the three earlier grades, from the age of three
to twelve, and under teachers who are themselves no mere experi-
menters, but thoroughly trained to their work, this will be found
quite possible, and the preparation will be even better made than
under our present system. Of course, the plan involves a com-
plete training in all the grades, including a professional train-
ing for teaching in the university before entering upon the
responsible position of teacher of the young in any one of the
grades, even of the lowest. When this time arrives, teaching as a
means of eking out a scanty subsistence, or as a stepping-stone to
something higher, with wholly inadequate professional prepara-
tion, will be done away. It is, indeed, an expensive method of

FROGS AND THEIR USES, 179

supporting those in limited circumstances to intrust them with
the delicate and most responsible duties of training the young for
their life's work, and so future generations will undoubtedly
regard it.

As we said in the beginning, we present this co-ordination and
correlation of our educational institutions as an ideal scheme,
toward which we should ever aspire, but which we can not expect
to see realized by any sudden or violent changes, or, indeed, in
full operation within the next quarter of a century. But that
something analogous to that which is here presented will be
found feasible and practicable, and to harmonize fully with the
institutions of this free country of ours, and enable us to attract
students from abroad in great numbers instead of sending them,
as now, to complete their education in Germany, France, or Eng-
land, we are most thoroughly convinced. And the more hopefully
do we look forward at this time to such a consummation now
that the favorite scheme of Washington and our other early
Presidents for a great national university at Washington, as the
crowning glory of our educational institutions, is likely to be
realized at an early day and provided for by an adequate -endow-
ment.

FROGS AND THEIR USES.

By H. W. SHUFELDT, M. D.

DURING the last half century or more, and especially during
the latter part of this time. Science has made use of a variety
of natural objects and living animals in her laboratories to demon-
strate the laws and facts of biology. The fundamental phenom-
ena of plant and animal life have been taught by Huxley by
placing before his students in the laboratory such material as
yeast, and such types of vegetable and animal organization as
protococcus, proteus animalculse, bacteria, molds, stoneworts,
ferns, bean plant, bell animalculae, polyps, mussels, crayfish, and
frogs. Foster and Balfour wrote an entire work upon the ele-
ments of embryology, using for the purpose only the egg and
chick of the common barnyard fowl. For what is true of the
hen's Qgg and its complete development is true in the main for
the eggs and development of all forms of animal life, from the
highest mammal to the lowest vertebrate known. In the selec-
tion of these types for work in the scientific laboratory, teachers
have been chiefly guided in their choice by the accessibility of
the form selected to the largest number of students of all coun-
tries, and by taking an animal of the widest geographical distri-
bution. Thus Cuvier selected the perch as a type for the study

i8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the structure of fishes ; frogs^ 6ggs, tadpoles, and frogs have
been almost universally used, while birds and mammals have
been largely studied through our investigation of the fowl, the
pigeon, and the rabbit. Of course, hundreds upon hundreds of
other plant and animal organizations have been most exhaust-
ively worked out, but students always, or very frequently, date
back to the manuals upon the biology of these old standbys.
Gray's Human Anatomy is a very good example of one of these
aids to the study of a single vertebrate species — a monograph, as
it were. Some day, Mivart's Cat will hold a similar place as a
work of reference. I have already referred above to the use of
the frog as an animal whereby the biological student may gain
much information ; indeed, I do not believe there is a single ani-
mal anywhere that, for this or other purposes, has come into more
general use. If a common frog be fully studied in all its phases,
and a comparative study be made of its entire structure, together
with its physiology and habits, the student has made a long stride
toward the comprehension of life processes in general, and will
find himself landed far within the domain of biology, and very
liberally equipped to investigate almost any problem zoology may
have to offer. In addition to this, ever since physiology came to
be a science, frogs have been used by the researchers in that de-
partment whereby to demonstrate some of the grandest truths
that men have brought to light. Especially is this true with re-
spect to the study of the muscular and nervous systems. Physi-
cists also use them extensively, and the medical expert in experi-
menting with, or detecting the presence of, a variety of poisons.
The circulation of the blood, and the processes of inflammation as
seen under the microscope, are now studied by thousands of stu-
dents in the laboratories the world over, and they are nowhere
better seen than in the web of a frog's foot. Some of the more
obscure actions of the heart have been made clear by the study of
the entire circulatory apparatus of this useful batrachian. The
action of woorara in destroying the properties of the motor nerves
has been demonstrated by Bernard upon frogs ; while Matteucci,
by the use of a frog's leg, has shown the contrasted action of the
direct and the inverse current. The remarkable experiments of
Marshall Hall and of Pflliger, on the reflex action of the spinal
cord, where the most delicate animal organization was necessary,
were made possible by the use of frogs ; while another experi-
menter has worked out through them the physiological action of
strychnine. Indeed, some of the most important facts in physiol-
ogy have been, and constantly are to-day being, demonstrated upon
frogs ; and the list of such conquests, and the light they shed upon
this most useful kind of knowledge, are altogether too long to enter
upon here. Much is to be learned by simply studying the action

FROGS AND THEIR USES.

i«i

of a large, healthy frog in a tub of water. His mode of respira-
tion under such circumstances is a lesson of itself, while the beau-
tiful rhythmic action of his limbs in propelling himself through
the water or diving beneath it is almost a complete treatise on
the art of swimming. Its action upon land is quite as instructive,
and the marvelous leaps and dives of one of these creatures can
be studied for a long time with a very considerable degree of
profit. Colton, in his Practical Zoology, especially invites the
student to "notice how the frog sits when at rest," and I can
heartily indorse the suggestion. Artists frequently miss it when

Common Bullfrog. One half natural size. From a photograph by Dr. Shufeldt.

they come to represent a frog in the normal attitude of rest ; and
in my Scientific Taxidermy for Museums I was particular to de-
vote an entire plate to this subject, showing the plaster cast of a
large bullfrog taken from one of them in this position. But it is
the camera that catches these attitudes the best of all for us, and
last summer 1 paid very considerable attention to the photography
of adult living frogs. Most of these results were as fine as could
be desired, and one of the best of them is presented here as an
example (see figure). If one will take the trouble to compare this
with almost any of the pictures of frogs — upon direct lateral
aspect — that illustrate the very numerous works upon natural

i82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

history, lie will be surprised to find how wide many of the latter
are of the mark with respect to the attitude the animal really
assumes in Nature.

When a frog is at rest in this sitting position he presents us
with a number of external characters that are very interesting to
study. It will be noticed that the little apertures forming the
nostrils open and shut alternately, while at the same time the
mouth is closed, and the rising and falling of the skin covering the
throat show that a pumping operation is going on. This is just
exactly what is taking place, and the air pouring in through the
nostrils has to be swallowed in order to be conveyed to the lungs.
There being no ribs, the chest can not enter into this respiratory
act, so a frog can be easily suffocated by prying its mouth open
for a time. The skin in these creatures also forms a very impor-
tant part of the respiratory apparatus, and a frog can be killed
with ease by tying him out in the hot sun, for the cutaneous sur-
face must be kept continually moist in order to have its functions
preserved. This is insured in very dry weather by its power to
absorb a quantity of water which is stored away for use in an
internal nonurinary reservoir, from which receptacle it is excreted
over the surface of the body. When one suddenly picks up a frog
during the long, dry months of summer, it often voids a quantity
of this clear water in a succession of jets. The large, round eye
of the bullfrog is peculiar in some respects, for, if we tickle its
corneal surface with some light object, as a straw, it will be no-
ticed that the thick upper lid, covered as it is by the common in-
teguments, has very little movement, while on the other hand, as
the animal rotates its eyeball inward and beneath this, there at
the same time passes up over the organ the thinner, somewhat
transparent, lower eyelid. This shield, entirely covering the ball,
as it does, reminds one of the structure seen in birds, and called
the nictitating membrane. As soon as the irritation is with-
drawn, the animal again opens his eye, which, by the way, with
its truly beautiful iris, is, in my opinion, one of the most elegant
structures seen in Nature. Posterior to and below the eye we
meet with a flat, oval area, also covered by the skin, which is the
tympanum of the ear. One might possibly mistake this for a thin
flat bone in the skin, but this latter tissue in frogs is perfectly
smooth and is completely devoid of either scales or osseous plates.
There is an American genus of frogs, however (Ceratophrys), a
few representatives of which form an exception to this rule. If
we puncture the eardrum in the frog, it will be found that a fine
pig's bristle may be passed by a natural passage through the
opening made into the mouth. It goes through the Eustachian
tube, a canal which is also present in man and other vertebrates,
permitting, as it does, the vibrations of the tympanum. The fact

FROGS AND THEIR USES, 183

that the frog is devoid of any neck ; that its spine makes a hump
near the middle of its back ; the characters of its two pairs of
limbs ; and other external features, are all too well known to the
intelligent observer and reader to require special description here.
There is another thing we must notice, however, and its pres-
ence is not generally observed, nor appreciated. If we watch
carefully at the distal end of the backbone, upon either side of it,
it will be seen that the skin pulsates at those points with sufficient
force to make it apparent to the eye. These pulsations are per-
formed by the posterior pair of lymph hearts. Now, the lymph
hearts have nothing to do with the circulation of the blood as
performed by the heart, but they, on the other hand, pump the
lymph contained in the large lymphatic vessels into the veins.
There are two pairs of these lymph hearts — the pair just noticed
and an anterior pair, which are below the margin of the shoulder
blade, upon either side, and near the lateral processes of the third
vertebra. They are muscular organs endowed with the power of
contraction, and are extremely important ones in the internal
economy of the frog.

In a brief essay, such as I am now writing, it will by no means
be practicable to enter upon the extremely interesting subject
of the internal structure of the frog. Even to touch upon this
ever so lightly would require a small volume to print it. Not a
few books are in circulation now devoted largely to the anatomy
of these animals, and others no doubt will appear from time to
time. A few years ago the distinguished British naturalist. Prof.
St. George Mivart, devoted an entire treatise to The Common
Frog, and it is truly a most instructive work. In it he describes a
number of different kinds of frogs, but what gives the book its
special biological significance is that he discusses the life history
of these tailless batrachians, and their anatomy and physiology,
with a variety of other forms that are either closely affined to
them or more or less remotely connected. In summing tfp. Prof.
Mivart shows the differences existing between a frog and a fish,
a frog and a reptile, a frog and a bird, a mammal, and so on ; and
indeed what a frog really is, and he claims it to be " a tailless,
lung-breathing, branchiate vertebrate, with four limbs typically
differentiated, undergoing a complete metamorphosis, and pro-
vided with teeth along the margins of the upper jaw." This last
character is one that distinguishes the frogs from the toads, while
from other batrachians the frogs are at once separated by the ab-
sence of a tail.

In the United States we have at least fifty or sixty different
species and subspecies of frogs and tree frogs, belonging to a
number of different genera. The typical genus is £he genus Eana,
and to it belongs our common bullfrog {Rana Catesbiana), it at

i84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the same time being the species that furnishes the legs so much
enjoyed by many epicures. When Huxley gave his biological
chapter on these animals, he used the Anglo-continental types, R.
temporaria and R. esculenta, the latter form being the one used
for the table in Europe. One of the most interesting species that
have been described is the one discovered by Mr. Wallace in Bor-
neo a number of years ago. It has been popularly called the " fly-
ing frog,^' from the fact that it has toes of great length, and these
are fully webbed to the tips. If the animal wishes to descend
from the top of a high tree it has only to make the leap, and by
spreading out its toes it converts its feet into four veritable para-
chutes, and thus this little aerial batrachian reaches terra firma
in safety. Among the most curious types are the tree frogs ; and
Gibson says these " are readily distinguished from all others by
having the ends of their toes dilated into knobs or disks, gener-
ally provided with a sticky secretion, by means of which they can
cling to the leaves and branches of trees. They are small, elegant,
and exceedingly active creatures, the males possessing loud voices,
of which they make copious use during the breeding season and
on the approach of rain." Frogs have from remote times been
regarded as weather prophets, and at the present day, in some
parts of Germany, the European tree frog {Hyla arhorea) is used
as a barometer. A few of them are placed in a tall bottle pro-
vided with miniature ladders, the steps of which they ascend dur-
ing fine weather, seeking the bottom again on the approach of
rain.

Anatomical structures of a variety of kinds are characteristic
of different species of frogs, having to do with the voice organs.
So it is that many croak, some chirp, and some almost bellow.
Many emit noises most disagreeable to all ears, while others give
vent to sounds that under some circumstances are quite enjoy-
able. Darwin says, " Near Rio de Janeiro I used often to sit in
the evening to listen to a number of little Hylo^- [tree frogs],
which, perched on blades of grass close to the water, sent forth
sweet, chirping notes in harmony." This, however, is not the case
with another species that occurs in Surinam, also a tree frog, en-
dowed with an extremely disagreeable voice, and, what is worse,
they congregate together in great numbers, and then, when they
unite in their piping, they have been known to drown the orches-
tra of the Paramaribo theater.

Frogs live principally upon insects, and these they capture
with their peculiarly formed tongue. This organ is soft and
extensible, being at the same time covered with a viscid secretion.
Anteriorly it is closely attached to the floor of the mouth, while
behind it is to a large degree free. The free part is thrust for-
ward when the frog desires to capture an insect, and the latter

FROGS AND THEIR USES, 185

sticking to the tongue, it is with marvelous rapidity whipped
back to the frog's throat and swallowed. Frogs will also seize
some of their prey in other ways, and for this purpose they use
their jaws and teeth, which latter are to be found on the palate
and upper jaw. I have frequently taken them with hook and
line, the former being baited only with a small piece of red flan-
nel. So far as I know at present there is no species of frog that
has come to the knowledge of science that possesses a poison gland
or apparatus. Some of them, however, secrete from their skin
pungent and disagreeable secretions. These are protective in a
way, and prevent other animals from preying upon them. In a
species of Hyla I met with upon the island of Cuba this secretion
was so strong as to bring water to the eyes, and upon one occasion
when handling one of these creatures and then rubbing my eyes
the lids of the latter swelled tremendously, and this condition
was only reduced after proper treatment lasting over three or four
days. There is another tree frog {Hyla micans) in which this
secretion of the body is slimy and profuse, and it at the same time
possesses luminous properties, which probably also serves to pro-
tect the animal from its enemies. There are many beautiful ex-
amples of protective mimicry to be seen among frogs, especially
among the brown or the green tree frogs, or other arboreal forms
that are mottled and shaded with greens, grays, and browns.
These species usually feed at night and are still all day, being
detected only with difficulty, as they rest upon leaves, limbs, or
rocks. Some are brilliantly colored, but they are nonedible varie-
ties, and so their high-colored skins serve them as a protection.

Fossil frogs first occur in the Tertiary, but they become more
abundant in the Miocene period.

A SCIENTIFIC way to settle international boundary disputes is sug-gested
by Mr. Hugh Robert Mill, who, speaking of the proposal of the Interna-
tional Geographical Congress for a series of official maps on a uniform
scale, says, in Nature : " If the governments of all countries were jointly to
take this matter up, survey all unsurveyed lands which they claim, and
submit the uncertain boundaries, which are yet uncomplicated by gold
mines, to an international commission of geographers, to be decided on the
basis of a new map on purely geographical principles, the expense would
be many times saved by the security which well-defined frontiers give, and
a magnificent contribution to science would be effected."

The region of the delta of the Yukon is described by W. H. Dall, in his
paper on Alaska as it Was and Is, as remarkable for being the breeding
place of myriads of waterfowl, some of which are peculiar to the Alaskan
region. Nearly a hundred species gather there, and one of them comes all
the way from north Australia, by the coasts of China and Japan, to lay its
eggs and rear its young in this spot.

TOL. XLIX. — 1*7

i86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE METRIC SYSTEM.*

By HEEBEET SPENCEE.
( With a Letter from Sir Frederick Bramwdl.)

I.

A DVOCATES of the metric system allege that all opposition
-^L_L to it results from " ignorant prejudice/' This is far from
being the fact. There are strong grounds for rational opposition,
special and general ; some already assigned and others which re-
main to be assigned. I may fitly put first a carefully-reasoned
expression of dissent from a late man of science of high authority.

In 1863 Sir John Herschel published an essay, in which, after
referring to an attempt made during the preceding session to
carry through Parliament a bill establishing the French metrical
system in this country, and anticipating that the bill (said to
have been confirmed in principle) would be again brought for-
ward, he proceeded to contrast that system with a better one to
be reached by making a minute modification in our own unit of
measure. The following extract will sufficiently indicate the line
of his argument : —

Let us now see how far the French metre as it stands fulfills the re-
quirements of scientific and ideal perfection. It professes to be the
10,000,000th part of the quadrant of the meridian passing through France
from Dunkirk to Formentera, and is, therefore, scientifically speaking, a
local and national and not a universal measure. ... The metre, as rep-
resented by the material standard adopted as its representative, is too short
by a sensible and measurable quantity, though one which certainly might
be easily corrected.

[In the appendix it is shown that according to the latest measurements
the error is l-163d part of an inch on the metre.]

Sir John goes on to say that " were the question an open one
what standard a new nation, unprovided with one and unfettered
by usages of any sort, should select, there could be no hesitation
as to its adoption (with that very slight correction above pointed
out) " ; and he then continues —

The question now arising is quite another thing, viz. : — Whether we are
to throw overboard an existing, established, and, so to speak, ingrained sys-
tem— adopt the metre as it stands for our standard — adopt, moreover, its
decimal subdivisions, and carry out the change into all its train of conse-
quences, to the rejection of our entire system of weights, measures, and
coins. If we adopt the metre we can not stop short of this. It would be a

* Most of the matter in this article appeared originally in the form of unsigned letters
n the London Times. The interest in the subject in the United States warrants its repub-
ication in the Monthly, with a view to which Mr. Spencer has kindly consented to allow his
authorship of the letters to be made known.

THE METRIC SYSTEM, 187

standing reproach and anomaly— a change for changing's sake. The
change, if we make it, must be complete and thorough. And this is in the
face of the fact that England is heyond all question the nation whose com
mercial relations, hoth internal and external, are the greatest in the world,
and that the British system of measures is received and used, not only
throughout the whole British Empire (for the Indian '' Hath " or revenue
standard is defined by law to be 18 British imperial inches), but throughout
the whole North American continent, and (so far as the measure of length
is concerned) also throughout the Kussian Empire. . . . Taking commerce,
population, and area of soil then into account, there would seem to be far
better reason for our Continental neighbors to conform to our linear unit
could it advance the same or a better a priori claim than for the move to
come from our side. (I say nothing at present of decimalization.)

Sir John Herschel then argues that the 10,000,000th part of
the quadrant of a meridian, which is the specified length of the
metre, is, on the face of it, not a good unit of measure, inasmuch
as it refers to a natural dimension not of the simplest kind, and
he continues thus : —

Taking the polar axis of the earth as the best unit of dimension which
the terrestrial spheroid affords (a better a priori unit than that of the met-
rical system), we have seen that it consists of 41,708,088 imperial feet^
which, reduced to inches, is 500,497,056 imperial inches. Now, this diffei*s
only by 2,944 inches, or by 82 yards, from 500,500,000 such inches, and
this would be the whole error on a length of 8,000 miles which would
arise from the adoption of this precise round number of inches for its
length, or from making the inch, so defined, our fundamental unit of
length.

After pointing out that the calculation required for correlat-
ing a dimension so stated with the earth's axis is a shorter one
than that required for correlating such dimension with the quad-
rant of a meridian. Sir John Herschel argues that —

If we are to legislate at all on the subject, then the enactment ought to
be to increase our present standard yard (and, of course, all its multiples and
submultiples) by one precise thousandth part of their present lengths, and
we should then be in possession of a system of linear measure the purest
and most ideally perfect imaginable. The change, so far as relates to any
practical transaction, commercial, engineering, or architectural, would be
absolutely unfelt, as there is no contract for work even on the largest scale,
and no question of ordinary mercantile profit or loss, in which one per
mille in measure or in coin would create the smallest difficulty.

Hithei'to I have said nothing about our weights and measures of ca-
pacity. Now, as they stand at present, nothing can be more clumsy and
awkward than the numerical connection between these and our unit of
length.

And then, after pointing out the way in which the slight modi-
fication of the unit of linear measure described by him could be
readily brought into such relation with the measures of capacity
and weight as to regularize them, he goes on : —

And thus the change which would place our system of linear measure

i88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on a perfectly faultless basis would, at the same time, rescue our weights
and measures of capacity from their present utter confusion.

In presence of the opinion thus expressed and thus supported
by evidence, we ought, I think, to hear nothing more about
"ignorant prejudice" as the only ground for opposition to the
metric system now being urged upon us. But, before proceeding
to give adverse reasons of my own, let me quote a further objec-
tion— not, it may be, of the gravest kind, but one which must be
taken into account. Writing from Washington, Prof. H. A.
Hazen, of the United States Weather Bureau, published in Na-
ture of January 2, this year, a letter of which the following
extracts convey the essential points : —

The metric system usually carries with it the Centigrade scale on the
thermometer, and here the whole English-speaking world should give no
uncertain sound. In meteorology it would be difficult to find a worse scale
than the Centigrade. The plea that we must have just 100° between the
freezing and boiling points does not hold; any convenient number of
degrees would do. The Centigrade degree (1°*8 F.) is just twice too large
for ordinary studies. The worst difficulty, however, is in the use of the
Centigrade scale below freezing. Any one who has had to study figures
half of which have minus signs before them knows the amount of labor
involved. To average a column of 30 figures half of which are minus
takes nearly double time that figures all on one side would take, and the
liability to error is more than twice as great. I have found scores of errors
in foreign publications where the Centigrade scale was employed, all due
to this most inconvenient minus sign. If any one ever gets a "bee in his
bonnet " on this subject and desires to make the change on general prin-
ciples it is very much to be hoped that he will write down a column of 30
figures half below 32° F., then convert them to the Centigrade scale, and
try to average them. I am sure no English meteorologist who has ever
used the Centigrade scale will ever desire to touch it.

But now, having noted these defects, which may perhaps be
considered defects of detail, since they do not touch the funda-
mental principle of the metric system, I propose, with your per-
mission, to show that its fundamental principle is essentially
imperfect and that its faults are great and incurable.

II.

In reply to my inquiries, a French friend, member of the Con-
seil d'Etat, after giving instances of nonconformity to the metric
system, ended by saying : — " En adoptant le syst^me m^trique deci-
mal, on n'a pas fait disparaitre tout k fait les denominations
anciennes, mais on en a fortement rdduit Temploi." [By adopt-
ing the decimal metric system, we have not made the old denomi-
nations to disappear entirely, but we have greatly reduced their
use.]

It is now more than a century since, in the midst of the French
Kevolution, the metric system was established. Adoption of it

THE METRIC SYSTEM, 189

has been in the main compulsory. As French citizens have "been
obliged to use francs and centimes, so must they have been obliged
to use the State-authorized weights and measures. But the im-
plication of the above statement is that the old customs have sur-
vived where survival was possible ; the people can still talk in
sous and ask for fourths, and they do so. Doubtless " ignorant
prejudice " will be assigned as the cause for this. But one might
have thought that after three generations, daily use of the new
system would have entailed entire disappearance of the old, had
it been in all respects better.

Allied evidence exists. While in the land of its origin the
triumph of the metric system is still incomplete, in one of the
lands of its partial adoption, America, the system has been de-
parted from. It will be admitted that men engaged in active
business are, by their experience, rendered the best judges of con-
venience in monetary transactions ; and it will be admitted that
a Stock Exchange is, above all places, the focus of business where
facilitation is most important. Well, what has happened on the
New York Stock Exchange ? Are the quotations of prices in dol-
lars, tenths, and cents ? Not at all. They are in dollars, halves,
quarters, eighths ; and the list of prices of American securities in
England shows that on the English Stock Exchange quotations
are not only in quarters and eighths, but in sixteenths and even
thirty-seconds. That is to say, the decimal divisions of the dollar
are in both countries absolutely ignored, and the division into
parts produced by halving, re-halving, and again halving is
adopted. Worse has happened. A friend writes : — " When I was
in California some twenty years ago the ordinary usage was to
give prices in * bits,' the eighth of a dollar — a ' long bit ' was fifteen
cents, a ' short bit ' was ten cents. If one had a long bit and paid
it one got no change — if one gave a short one no supplement was
asked." Thus lack of appropriate divisibility led to inexact pay-
ments— a retrogression.

Perhaps an imaginary dialogue will most conveniently bring
out the various reasons for dissent. Let us suppose that one who
is urging adoption of the metric system is put under cross-exami-
nation by a skeptical official. Some of his questions might run
thus : —

What do you propose to do with the circle ? At present it is divided into
360 degrees, each degree into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds.
I suppose you would divide it into 100 degrees, each degree into 100 minutes,
and each of these into 100 seconds.

The French have decimalized the quadrant, but I fear their division will
not be adopted. Astronomical observations throughout a long past have
been registered by the existing mode of measurement, and works for nauti-
cal guidance are based upon it. It would be impracticable to alter this
arrangement.

ipo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

You are right. The arrangement was practically dictated by Nature.
The division of the circle was the outcome of the Chaldean division of the
heavens to fit their calendar: a degree heing, within l-60th, equivalent to a
day's apparent motion of the Sun on the ecliptic. And that reminds me
that I do not find in your scheme any proposal for redivision of the year.
Why do you not make 10 months instead of 12 ?

A partial decimalization of the calendar was attempted at the time of the
French Revolution ; a week of ten days was appointed, but the plan failed.
Of course, the 365 days of the year do not admit of division into tenths ; or,
if ten months were made, there could be no tenths of these^ Moreover,
even were it otherwise, certain deeply-rooted customs stand in the way.
Many trading transactions, especially the letting of houses and the hiring
of assistants, have brought the quarter-year into such constant use that it
would be very difficult to introduce a redivision of the year into tenths.

Just so ; and it occurs to me that there is a deeper reason. Ignoring the
slight ellipticity of the earth's orbit, a quarter of a year is the period in
which the Earth describes a fourth of its annual journey round the Sun,
and the seasons are thus determined — the interval between the shortest day
and the vernal equinox, between that and the longest day, and so on with
the other divisions.

The order of Nature is doubtless against us here.

It is against you here in a double way. Not only the behavior of the
Earth, but also the behavior of the Moon conflicts with your scheme. By
an astronomical accident it happens that there are 12 full moons or ap-
proximately 12 synodic lunations in the year; and this, first recognized by
the Chaldeans, originated the 12-month calendar, which civilized peoples in
general have adopted after compromising the disagreements in one or other
way. But there is another division of time in which you are not so ob-
viously thus restrained. You have not, so far as I see, proposed to sub-
stitute 10 hours for 12, or to make the day and night 20 hours instead of 24.
Why not?

Centuries ago it might have been practicable to do this; but now that
timekeepers have become universal we could not make such a redivision.
We might get all the church clocks altered, but people would refuse to re-
place their old watches by new ones.

I fancy conservatism will be too strong for you in another case — that of
the compass. The divisions of this are, like many other sets of divisions,
made by halving and re-halving and again halving until 32 points are ob-
tained. Is it that the habits of sailors are so fixed as to make hopeless the
adoption of decimal divisions ?

Another reason has prevented — the natural relation of the cardinal
points. The intervals included between them are necessarily four right
angles, and this precludes a division into tenths.

Just so. Here, as before, Nature is against you. The quadrant results
from space-relations which are unchangeable and necessarily impose, in this
as in other cases, division into quarters. Nature's lead has been followed
by mankind in various ways. Beyond the quarter of a year we have the
moon's four quarters. The quarter of an hour is a familiar division, and
also the quarter of a mile. Though the yard is divided into feet and inches,
yet in every draper's shop yards are measured out in halves, quarters,
eighths, and sixteenths or nails. Then we have a wine merchant's quarter-

THE METRIC SYSTEM.

191

cask, we have the fourth of a gallon or quart, and, beyond that, we have
for wine and beer, the quarter of a quart, or half -pint. Even that does not
end the quartering of measures, for at the bar of a tavern quarterns of gin,
that is quarter-pints of gin, are sold. Evidently we must have quarters.
What do you do about them ? Ten will not divide by four.

The Americans have quarter dollars.

And are inconsistent in having them. Just as in France, notwithstand-
ing the metric system, they speak of a quarter of a litre and a quarter of a
livre, so in the United States they divide the dollars into quarters, and in
so doing depart from the professed mode of division in the very act of
adopting it — depart in a double way. For the tenths of a dollar play but
an inconspicuous part. They do not quote prices in dollars and dimes. I
continually see books advertised at 25c., 75c., $1.25c., $1.75c., and so forth,
but I do not see any advertised as $1.3 dimes or 4 dimes, etc. So that, while
not practically using the division theoretically appointed, they use the
division theoretically ignored.

It may be somewhat inconsistent, but there is no practical incon-
venience.

I beg your pardon. If they had a 12-division of the dollar, instead of a
10-division, these prices $1.25 and $1.75 would be $1..3 and |1..9. And not
only would there be a saving in speech, writing, and printing, but there
would be a saving in calculation. Only one column of figures would need
adding up where now there are two to add up ; and, besides decreased time
and trouble, there would be fewer mistakes. But leaving this case of the
dollar, let us pass to other cases. Are we in all weights, all measures of
length, all areas and volumes, to have no quarters ?

Quarters can always be marked as '25.

So that in our trading transactions of every kind we are to make this
familiar quantity — a quarter, by taking two-tenths and five-hundredths ?
But now let me ask a further question— What about thirds ? In our daily
life division by three often occurs. Not uncommonly there are three per-
sons to whom equal shares of property have to be given. Then in talk
about wills of intestates one hears of widows' thirds ; and in Acts of Par-
liament the two-thirds majority often figures. Occasionally a buyer will
say — " A half is more than I want and a quarter is not enough ; I will
take a third." Frequently, too, in medicines where half a grain is too
much or not enough, one-third of a grain or two-thirds of a grain is or-
dered. Continually thirds are wanted. How do you arrange ? Three
threes do not make ten.

We can not make a complete third.

You mean we must use a makeshift third, as a makeshift quarter is to
be used ?

No ; unfortunately that can not be done. We signify a third by '3333,
etc.

That is to say, you make a third by taking 3 tenths, plus 3 hundredths,
plus 3 thousandths, pZws 3 ten-thousandths, and so on to infinity!

Doubtless the method is unsatisfactory, but we can do no better.

Nevertheless, you really think it desirable to adopt universally for meas-
urements of weight, length, area, capacity, value, a system which gives us
only a makeshift quarter and no exact third.

These inconveniences are merely set-offs against the great conveniences.

192 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Set-offs you call them! To me it seems that the inconveniences out-
weigh the conveniences.

But surely you can not deny those enormous evils entailed by our pres-
ent mixed system which the proposed change would exclude.

I demur to your assertion. I have shown you that the mixed system
wouJd in large part remain. You can not get rid of the established divi-
sions of the circle and the points of the compass. You can not escape from
those quarters which the order of Nature in several ways forces on us.
You can not change the divisions of the year and the day and the hour.
It is impossible to avoid all these incongruities by your method, but there
is another method by which they may be avoided.

You astonish me. What else is possible ?

I will tell you. We agree in condemning the existing arrangements
under which our scheme of numeration and our modes of calculation based
on it proceed in one way, while our various measures of length, area, ca-
pacity, weight, value, proceed in other ways. Doubtless, the two methods of
procedure should be unified ; but how ? You assume that, as a matter of
course, the measure system should be made to agree with the numeration
system ; but it may be contended that, conversely, the numeration system
should be made to agree with the measure system — with the dominant
measure system, I mean.

I do not see how that can be done.

Perhaps you will see if you join me in looking back upon the origins of
these systems. Unable to count by giving a name to each additional unit,
men fell into the habit of counting by groups of units and compound
groups. Ten is a bundle of fingers, as you may still see in the Eoman
numerals, where the joined fingers of one hand and the joined fingers of
the two hands are symbolized. Then, above these, the numbering was con-
tinued by counting two tens, three tens, four tens, etc., or 20, 30, 40 as we
call them, until ten bundles of ten had been reached. Proceeding simi-
larly, these compound bundles of tens, called hundreds, were accumulated
until there came a doubly compound bundle of a thousand ; and so on.
Now, this process of counting by groups and compound groups, tied to-
gether by names, is equally practicable with other groups than 10. We
may form our numerical system by taking a group of 12, then 12 groups of
12, then 12 of these compound groups ; and so on as before. The 12-group
has an enormous advantage over the 10-group. Ten is divisible only by 5
and 2. Twelve is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. If the fifth in the one case
and the sixth in the other be eliminated as of no great use, it remains
that the one group has three times the divisibility of the other. Doubt-
less it is this great divisibility which has made men in such various cases
fall into the habit of dividing into twelfths. For beyond the 12 divi-
sions of the zodiac and the originally associated twelvemonth, and beyond
the twelfths of the day, and beyond those fourths — submultiples of 12—
which in sundry cases Nature insists upon and which in so many
cases are adopted in trade, we have 12 ounces to the pound troy, 12
inches to the foot, 12 lines to the inch, 12 sacks to the last ; and of mul-
tiples of 12 we have 24 grains to the pennyweight, 24 sheets to the quire.
Moreover, large sales of small articles are habitually made by the gross (12
times 12) and great gross (12 x 12 x 12). Again, we have made our multipli-
cation table go up to 12 times 1^2^ and we habitually talk of dozens. Now,

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 193

though these particular 12-divisions are undesirable, as being most of them
arbitrary and unrelated to one another, yet the facts make it clear that a
general system of twelfths is called for by trading needs and industrial
needs ; and such a system might claim something like universality, since
it would fall into harmony with those natural divisions of twelfths and
fourths which the metric system necessarily leaves outside as incongruities.

But what about the immense facilities which the method of decimal cal-
culations gives us ? You seem ready to sacrifice all these ?

Not in the least. It needs only a small alteration in our method of
numbering to make calculation by groups of 12 exactly similar to calcula-
tion by groups of 10 ; yielding just the same facilities as those now sup-
posed to belong only to decimals. This seems a surprising statement; but
I leave you to think about it, and if you can not make out how it may be I
will explain presently.

m.

The promised explanation may most conveniently be given by
reproducing, with, various alterations and additions, a letter I
wrote about the matter last November twelvemonth to a dis-
tinguished man of science. Omitting the name, the letter ran
thus : —

The inclosed memoranda concerning advantages to be derived from
the use of 13 as a fundamental number were written more than 50 years
ago, and have since been lying unused among my papers.

I send them to you because you have lately been expressing a strong
opinion in favor of the metric system, and of course your opinion will
weigh heavily. From the days when the accompanying memoranda were
set down I have never ceased to regret the spreading adoption of a system
which has such great defects, and I hold that its universal adoption would
be an immense disaster.

Of course I do not call in question the great advantages to be derived
from the ability to carry the method of decimal calculation into quantities
and values, and of course I do not call in question the desirableness of hav-
ing some rationally originated unit from which all measures of lengths,
weights, forces, etc., shall be derived. That as promising to end the pres-
ent chaos the metric system has merits goes without saying. But I object
to it on the ground that it is inconvenient for various purposes of daily
life, and that the conveniences it achieves may be achieved without entail-
ing any inconveniences.

One single fact should suffice to give us pause. This fact is that, not-
withstanding the existence of the decimal notation, men have in so many
cases fallen into systems of division at variance with it, and especially
duodecimal division. Numeration by tens and multiples of ten has pre-
vailed among civilized races from early times. What then has made them
desert this mode of numeration in their tables of weights, measures, and
values? They can not have done this without a strong reason. The
strong reason is conspicuous — the need for easy division into aliquot parts.
For a long period they were hindered in regularizing their weights and
measures by the circumstance that these had been derived from organic
bodies and organic lengths — the carat and grain, for instance, or the cubit,
foot, and digit. Organic weights and lengths thus derived were not defl-

194 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nite multiples one of another, and where they were approximate multiples
the numbers of these were irregular— would not conform to any system.
But there early began, as among the Chaldeans, arrangements for bring-
ing these natural measures into commensurable relations. By sexagesimal
divisions (60 being the first number divisible both by 10 and 12), the Baby-
lonian cubit was brought into relation with the Babylonian foot. The
stages of change from nation to nation and from age to age can not, of
course, be traced, but it suffices to recognize the fact that the tendency has
been toward systems of easily-divisible quantities— the avoirdupois pound
of 16 ounces, for instance, which is divisible into halves, into quarters, into
eighths. But, above all, men have gravitated toward a 12-division, because
12 is more divisible into aliquot parts than any other number — halves,
quarters, thirds, sixths — and their reason for having in so many cases
adopted the duodecimal division is that this divisibility has greatly facili-
tated their transactions. When counting by twelves instead of by tens,
they have been in far fewer cases troubled by fragmentary numbers.
There has been an economy of time and mental effort. These practical
advantages are of greater importance than the advantages of theoretical
completeness. Thus, even were there no means of combining the benefits
achieved by a method like that of decimals with the benefits achieved by
duodecimal division, it would still be a question whether the benefits of the
one with its evils were or were not to be preferred to the benefits of the
other with its evils — a question to be carefully considered before making
any change.

But now the important fact, at present ignored, and to which I draw
your attention, is that it is perfectly possible to have all the facilities which
a method of notation like that of decimals gives, along with all the facili-
ties which duodecimal division gives. It needs only to introduce two addi-
tional digits for 10 and 11 to unite the advantages of both systems. The
methods of calculation which now go along with the decimal system of
numeration would be equally available were 12 made the basic number in-
stead of 10. In consequence of the association of ideas established in them
in early days and perpetually repeated throughout life, nearly all people
suppose that there is something natural in a method of calculation by tens
and compoundings of tens. But I need hardly say that this current notion
is utterly baseless. The existing system has resulted from the fact that we
have five fingers on each hand. If we had had six on each there would
never have been any trouble. No man would ever have dreamt of num-
bering by tens, and the advantages of duodecimal division with a mode of
calculation like that of decimals would have come as a matter of course.

Even while writing I am still more struck with the way in which pre-
dominant needs have affected our usages. Take our coinage as an example.
Beginning at the bottom we have the farthing (J penny), the halfpenny
and penny (or one-twelfth of a shilling) ; next we have the threepenny
piece (i shilling), the M. piece (i shilling), and the shilling; and then
above them we have the eighth of a pound {2s. 6(i.), the quarter of a pound
(5s.), and half pound (10s.). That is to say, daily usage has made us gravi-
tate into a system of doubling and again doubling and redoubling; and
when until recently there existed the Ad, piece we had the convenience of
a third as well as a half and a quarter — a convenience which would have
been retained but for the likeness of the 3d. and 4d. coins. And observe

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 195

that this system of multiples and sub-multiples has its most conspicuous
illustration in the commonest of all processes — retail payments — and that,
too, in the usages of a nation which is above all others mercantile.

Now it seems to me that the two facts — first, that in early days men di-
verged from the decimal division into modes of division which furnished
convenient aliquot parts, and, second, that where, as in America, the deci-
mal system has been adopted for coinage, they have in the focus of busi-
ness fallen into the use of aliquot parts in spite of the tacit governmental
dictation— not only prove the need for this mode of division, but imply
that, if the metric system were universally established, it would be every-
where traversed by other systems. To ignore this need, and to ignore the con-
sequences of disregarding it, is surely unwise. Inevitably the result must be
a prevention of the desired unity of method ; there will be perpetual incon-
veniences from the conflict of two irreconcilable systems. [At the time
this prophecy was made, I did not know that in California the " long bits "
and "short bits" of the dollar already illustrated this conflict of systems
and its evils.]

I fully recognize the difficulties that stand in the way of making such
changes as those indicated — difficulties greater than those implied by the
changes which adoption of the metric system involves. The two have in
common to overcome the resistance to altering ouir tables of weights, meas-
ures, and values ; and they both have the inconvenience that all distances,
quantities, and values named in records of the past must be differently ex-
pressed. But there would be further obstacles in the way of a 12-notatioa
system. To prevent confusion different names and different symbols would
be needed for the digits, and to acquire familiarity vrith these, and with the
resulting multiplication table, would, of course, be troublesome; perhaps
not more troublesome, however, than learning the present system of nu-
meration and calculation as carried on in another language. There would
also be the serious evil that, throughout all historical statements, the dates
would have to be differently expressed ; though this inconvenience, so long
as it lasted, would be without great difficulty met by inclosing in parenthe-
ses in each case the equivalent number in the old notation.

But, admitting all this, it may still be reasonably held that it would be
a great misfortune were there established for all peoples and for all time
a very imperfect system when with a little more trouble a perfect system
might be established.

Thus far the letter. And now let me sum up tlie evidence.
Professedly aiming to introduce uniformity of method, the
metric system can not be brought into harmony with certain
unalterable divisions of space nor with certain natural divisions
of time, nor with the artificial divisions of time which all civil-
ized men have adopted. As 10 is divisible only by 5 and 2 (of
which the resulting fifth is useless), its divisibility is of the
smallest ; and having only a makeshift fourth and no exact third,
it will not lend itself to that division into aliquot parts so needful
for the purposes of daily life. From this indivisibility it has
resulted that, though men from the beginning had in their ten
fingers the decimal system ready made, they have, in proportion

196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

as civilization has progressed, adopted, for purposes of measure-
ment and exchange, easily divisible groups of units; and in a
recent case, where the 10-division of money has been imposed
upon them, they have, under pressure of business needs, aban-
doned it for the system of division into halves, quarters, eighths,
sixteenths. On the other hand, the number 12 is unique in its
divisibility — yields two classes of aliquot parts — and for this
reason has been in so many cases adopted for weights, measures,
and values. At the same time it harmonizes with those chief di-
visions of time which Nature has imposed upon us and with the
artificial divisions of time by which men have supplemented
them ; while its sub-multiple, 4, harmonizes with certain unal-
terable divisions of space, and with those divisions into quarters
which men use in so many cases. Meanwhile, if two new digits
for 10 and 11 be used, there arises a system of calculation per-
fectly parallel to the system known as decimals, and yielding just
the same facilities for computation — sometimes, indeed, greater
facilities, for, as shown in the memoranda named in the above
letter, it is even better for certain arithmetical processes.

Do I think this system will be adopted ? Certainly not at
present — certainly not for many generations. In our days the
mass of people, educated as well as uneducated, think only of im-
mediate results; their imaginations of remote consequences are
too shadowy to influence their acts. Little effect will be pro-
duced upon them by showing that, if the metric system should
be established universally, myriads of transactions every day will
for untold thousands of years be impeded by a very imperfect
system. But it is, I think, not an unreasonable belief that further
intellectual progress may bring the conviction that since a better
system would facilitate both the thoughts and actions of men,
and in so far diminish the friction of life throughout the future,
the task of establishing it should be undertaken.

Hence I contend that adoption of the metric system, while it
would entail a long period of trouble and confusion, would in-
crease the obstacles to the adoption of a perfect system — perhaps
even rendering them insuperable — and that, therefore, it will be
far better to submit for a time to the evils which our present
mixed system entails.

P. S. — A mathematician and astronomer, who writes — " I am
much interested in your letters and agree with almost everything,"
makes some comments. He says : — " It has always been an aston-
ishing thing to me that the advocates of decimalization do not
perceive that its only advantage is in computation. In every
other process it is a detriment." Concerning the 12-notation, he
remarks that "the advantages are notorious to all mathemati-
cians." Apparently less impressed than I am with the advance

THE METRIC SYSTEM, 197

of knowledge from tmcivilized times to our own and the breaking
down of habits, now going on with accelerated rapidity, he does
not share the expectation that the 12-notation "will ever be
adopted in practice,^' the obstacles to the change being too great.
But without opposing the metric system as threatening to stand
in the way of a more perfect system, he opposes it as intrinsically
undesirable, saying : — " I think that all that can be done is to make
our coinage and measures as little decimal as possible, and our
computation as decimal as may be."

IV.

From one who every month has to act as auditor, I have re-
ceived a letter in which he says : " I had to go over more than
£20,000 of accounts yesterday, and was very thankful that it was
not in francs."

This statement, coming from a man of business, has suggested
to me the question. By whose advice is it that the metric system
of weights, measures, and values is to be adopted ? Is it by the
advice of those who spend their lives in weighing and measuring
and receiving payments for goods ? Is it that the men who alone
are concerned in portioning out commodities of one or other kind
to customers, and who have every minute need for using this or
that division or subdivision of weights or measures, have de-
manded to use the decimal system ? Far from it. I venture to
say that in no case has the retail trader been consulted. There
lies before me an imposing list of the countries that have fol-
lowed the lead of France. It is headed Progress of the Metric
System. It might fitly have been headed Progress of Bureau-
cratic Coercion. When, fifty years after its nominal establish-
ment in France, the metric system was made compulsory, it was
not because those who had to measure out commodities to cus-
tomers wished to use it, but because the Government commanded
them to do so ; and when it was adopted in Germany under the
Bismarckian regime, we may be sure that the opinions of shop-
keepers were not asked. Similarly elsewhere, its adoption has
resulted from the official will and not from the popular will.

Why has this happened ? For an answer we must go back to
the time of the French Revolution, when scientific men were in-
trusted with the task of forming a rational system of weights,
measures, and values for universal use. The idea was a great one,
and, allowing for the fundamental defect on which I have been
insisting, it was admirably carried out. As this defect does not
diminish its great convenience for scientific purposes, the system
has been gradually adopted by scientific men all over the world ;
the great advantage being that measurements registered by a sci-
entific man of one nation are without any trouble made intelli-

ipS POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

gible to those of other nations. Evidently moved by the desire
for human welfare at large, scientific men have been of late years
urging that the metric system should be made universal, in the
belief that immense advantages, like those which they themselves
find, will be found by all who are engaged in trade. Here comes
in the error. They have identified two quite different require-
ments. For what purpose does the man of science use the metric
system ? For processes of measurement. For what purpose is
the trader to use it ? For processes of measurement plus processes
of exchange. This additional element alters the problem essen-
tially. It matters not to a chemist whether the volumes he speci-
fies in cubic centimetres or the weights he gives in grammes are
or are not easily divisible with exactness. Whether the quanti-
ties of liquids or gases which the physicist states in litres can or
can not be readily divided into aliquot parts is indifferent. And
to the morphologist or microscopist who writes down dimensions
in subdivisions of the metre, the easy divisibility of the lengths
he states is utterly irrelevant. But it is far otherwise with the
man who, all day long, has to portion out commodities to cus-
tomers and receive money in return. To satisfy the various
wants of those multitudes whose purchases are in small quanti-
ties, he needs measures that fall into easy divisions and a coinage
which facilitates calculation and the giving of change. Ask him
to do his business in tenths, and he will inevitably be impeded.

" But you forget that the metric system is approved by many
mercantile men, and that its adoption is urged by the chambers
of commerce." No, I have not forgotten ; and if I had I should
have been reminded of the fact by the fears now expressed that
our commerce will suffer if we do not follow in the steps of
sundry other nations. The fears are absurd. French and Ger-
man merchants, when sending goods to England, find no diffi-
culty in marking them or invoicing them in English measures.
And if English merchants imply that they are too stupid to
follow the example in a converse way, they can scarcely expect
to be believed. Surely the manufacturers who supply them with
piece goods will make these up in so many metres instead of in so
many yards, if asked to do so ; and similarly in all cases. Or, if
not, it needs but a table on the wall in the clerk's office, giving in
parallel columns the equivalents of quantity in English denomi-
nations and French denominations, to make easy the needful in-
voicing and labeling. But it is not on this flimsiest of reasons
that I wish chiefly to comment. The fact here to be specially
emphasized is that merchants are not in the least concerned with
the chief uses of the metric system. Their bales and chests and
casks contain large quantities — dozens of yards, hundredweights,
gallons. They do not deal with subdivisions of these. Whether

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 199

the retailer is or is not facilitated in portioning out these large
quantities into small quantities is a question having no business
interest for them. More than this is true. Not only have they
never in their lives measured out fractional amounts in return for
small sums of money, but they have rarely witnessed the process.
Their domestic supplies are obtained by deputy, usually in con-
siderable quantities; and neither behind the counter nor before
it have they with any frequency seen the need for easy divisi-
bility into aliquot parts. Their testimony is supposed to be that
of practical men, while in respect of the essential issue — the use
of weights and measures for retail trade — they have had no
practice whatever.

See, then, the strange position. The vast majority of our
population consists of working people, people of narrow incomes,
and the minor shopkeepers who minister to their wants. And
these wants daily lead to myriads of purchases of small quan-
tities for small sums, involving fractional divisions of measures
and money — measuring transactions probably fifty times as nu-
merous as those of the men of science and the wholesale traders
put together. These two small classes, however, unfamiliar with
retail measuring transactions, have decided that they will be
bkter carried on by the metric system than by the existing sys-
tem. Those who have no experimental knowledge of the matter
propose to regulate those who have ! The methods followed by
the experienced are to be rearranged by the inexperienced !

To the Editor of the Times,

Sir : I am one of those who believe that this system, in con-
junction with its inevitable concomitant, decimals, is one which
is absolutely incompatible with mental arithmetic, and that,
whatever theorists may say to the contrary, it demands more
figures to perform most ordinary sums than does our present sys-
tem, when rightly applied ; and, further, is much more likely to
lead to error, owing to the very multiplicity of figures, and, above
all, to the common error in placing the decimal point.

But, without further obtruding my views, which I am aware
will carry but little weight with your readers, I desire to be al-
lowed to send to you an extract from the Comte de Montholon's
book, vol. iv, pages 213 to 218, stating the views of the First Na-
poleon on this point, thinking that probably this will be read with
interest.

I send also an extract from " Littrd,'' giving the meaning of
the (to me) unusual term " nombre complexe" for which I know
of no English equivalent.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

Frederick Bramvtell.

200 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Nombre complexe (or compound number). Littre gives the following
definition of it under "Complexe": "Complexe; Terme d'arithmetique.
Nombre complexe, nombre compose d'unites difi'erentes, comme nos an-
ciennes mesures : 1 toise, 5 pieds, 9 pouces ; 25 livres, 13 sous, 6 deniers,
sont des nombres complexes." (Translation: "Arithmetical term, com-
pound number; a number composed of different kinds of units, like our
old measures : 1 toise, 5 feet, and 9 inches ; 35 livres, 13 sous, and 6 deniers
are compound numbers."

(Translation.)

Memoranda for use in a History of France under Napoleon, written at
St. Helena by General Comte de Montholon, Volume IV, pp. 213-218 :

The need of uniformity in weights and measures has been felt in all
ages; the States -General have pointed it out many times. This good gift
was expected from the Revolution. A suflBcient simple law to assure
it might have been drawn up in twenty-four hours, adopted, and put in
operation in all France in less than a year. All that was needed was to
make the unit of weights and measures of the city of Paris common to all
the provinces. The Government and the artists have used them for many
centuries; by sending the standards into all the communes, and enjoining
the administrative officers and the courts from admitting any others, the
benefit would have been operative without effort, without restriction, and
without coercive laws. Instead, geometricians and algebraists were con-
sulted upon a question which was of administrative jurisdiction. They
thought that the unit of weights and measures should be deduced from a
natural constant, so that it might be adopted by all nations. They thought
it was not enough to provide for the advantage of forty million men ; they
wanted the whole universe to participate in it. They found that the metre
was an aliquot part of the meridian ; they made the demonstration of it
and proclaimed it in an assembly composed of French, Italian, Spanish,
and Dutch geometricians.

From that time a new unit of weights and measures was decreed, which
did not square with the rules of the public administration, or with the tables
of dimensions of all the arts, or with those of any existing machines.

There was no advantage in extending this system to the whole universe.
That was, besides, impossible. The national spirit of the English and Ger-
mans was opposed to it. That Gregory VII, in reforming the calendar, made
it common to all Europe, was because the reform pertained to religious
ideas, and was not made by a nation, but by the power of the Church.

Meanwhile the good of present generations was sacrificed to abstractions
and vain hopes, for to make an old nation adopt a new unit of weights and
measures it is necessary to make over again all the rules of public adminis-
tration, all the calculations of the arts — a task to frighten reason. The new
unit of weights and measures, whatever it may be, has an ascending and
descending scale which does not accord in simple numbers with the scale
of the unit of weights and measures which has been used for centuries by
the Government, men of science, and artists.

No transfer can be made from one nomenclature to the other, because
what is expressed by the simplest number in the old system will have to
take a composite number in the new. It will be necessary, then, to in-
crease or diminish the amount by some fraction, so that the space or the

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 201

weight expressed in the new nomenclature shall be in simple numbers.
Thus, for example, the ration of the soldier is expressed in the old nomen-
clature as twenty-four ounces; this is a very simple number. Translated
into the new nomenclature, it gives seven hundred and thirty-four grammes
and two hundred and fifty-nine thousandths. It is, then, evident that it is
necessary to increase or diminish the weight so as to make seven hundred
and thirty-four or seven hundred and thirty-five grammes.

All the component pieces or lines of architecture ; all the pieces and
tools used in watch-making, jewelry, book-selling, and all the arts ; all in-
struments and machines, have been devised and calculated in the old
nomenclature, and are expressed in simple numbers, which can be trans-
lated in the new system only into numbers composed of five or six figures.
It will be necessary, therefore, to do everything over again.

The scientific men also conceived another idea wholly foreign to the ben-
efit of unity of weights and measures : they adopted the decimal numera-
tion, taking the metre for the unit; they suppressed all complex numbers.
Nothing is more contrary to the organization of the mind, the memory, and
the imagination. A toise, a foot, an inch, a line, a point, are fixed portions
of extension, which the imagination conceives independently of their rela-
tions to one another ; if, then, we ask for the third of an inch, the mind
goes into instant operation. The length called an inch is divided into
three parts. By the new system, on the contrary, the mind has, not to di-
vide an inch into thirds, but a metre into a hundred and eleven parts. The
experience of all ages had made the difficulty of dividing a space or a
weight by more than twelve so evident that a new name was created for
each of the divisions. If the twelfth of an inch was asked for — the opera-
tion was already performed — we had the measure called the line.

The decimal numeration was applied to all the complex numbers as a
unit ; and if we wanted a hundredth of a point, a hundredth of a line, a
hundredth was written. By the new system, if we want to express a hun-
dredth of a line, we have to consider its relation to the metre, and this
involves us in an infinite calculation.

The divisor 12 was preferred to the divisor 10, because 10 has only two
factors, 2 and 5, while 12 has four factors, 2, 3, 4, and 6.

It is true that the decimal system, generalized and adapted to the metre
as the unit, gives facilities to astronomers and calculators ; but these advan-
tages are far from compensating for the inconvenience of rendering
thought more difficult. The prime characteristic of every method should
be that of aiding the conception and the imagination, of facilitating the
memory, of giving more force to the thought.

The compound numbers are as old as man, because they are in the
nature of his organization, quite as it is in the nature of the decimal numera-
tion to adapt itself to every unit, to every complex number, and not exclu-
sively to one unit.

. Finally, they use Greek roots, and that augments the difficulties ; the
denominations, which may be useful for men of science, were not good for
the people. The system of weights and measures was one of the greatest
achievements of the Directory. Instead of letting time do its work, and be-
ing satisfied to encourage the new system by means of example and fash-
ion, it made coercive laws and executed them vigorously.

The merchants and the citizens were vexed by affairs indifferent in

VOL. XLIX. — 18

202 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

themselves, and this contributed to make uiii)opular an administration
which put itself away from the wants and the reach of the people, violently-
broke with their usages, habits, and customs, as a Greek or Tartar con-
queror might have done, who with uplifted rod intended to compel obe-
dience to all his desires based upon his own prejudices and interests,
regardless of those of the conquered.

The new system of weights and measures will be a subject of embarrass-
ment and difficulties for many generations; and the first commission
charged with the verification of the measure of the meridian will probably
find that there are some corrections to be made. This is tormenting the
people with caprices.

THE MONETARY PROBLEM.

By LOGAN G. McPHEESON.

AS has been perceived, it is by the constant exchange of human
-^^ effort that human vsrelfare is promoted, and therefore is
necessarily a means whereby each portion of effort contributing
to the total welfare may be measured and rewarded. This means
or medium of exchange is money, and its development has been
as follows :

First, there was barter, or the direct exchange of commodity
for commodity. Next, there was the disposal of commodities in
exchange for a generally acceptable and readily disposed of com-
modity, the first form of money. By reason of their suitability,
one or another of the metals becomes generally used as such a
commodity, and as commodities are exchanged in larger volume,
metals of the greatest value are coined. Then, there is the use of
paper promises to pay coin issued from various sources and ac-
cepted to the extent that their security is believed in. Then these
representatives of coin gradually pass into paper representatives
of value, as evidenced by the result of effort, and by means of
banks paper representatives of value are offset against other
paper representatives of value without the intervention of coin
at all.

But the progression through barter and the use of metals as
money to the use of paper representatives of value has not been
uniform either in time or place. There are still tribes in out-of-
the-way regions who make rude exchanges by barter, and there
are races between the individuals of whom the exchange of effort
is uncertain and irregular, whose currencies are composed almost
exclusively of lead, tin, copper, and iron. There are not only
marked points of difference between the monetary systems of dif-
ferent nations, but in many instances one and the same nation
still uses coins of different metals, of different weights, and differ-
ent degrees of fineness, the values of which are not in definite

THE MONETARY PROBLEM, 203

regular ratio, and notably in the United States there are paper
currencies issued from different sources and resting upon differ-
ent bases.

The money in circulation in the United States amounts to be-
tween one and a half and one and three-quarter billions of dollars,
divided approximately as follows : Nickel and copper coins, twenty
millions of dollars ; silver coin, one hundred and twenty millions
of dollars ; gold coin, four hundred and eighty millions of dollars ;
paper currency, one thousand millions of dollars.

Statistics gathered by the Comptroller of the Currency show
that, of the receipts of national banks, checks form an average of
about ninety per cent, only about ten per cent being composed of
paper currency and coin. Other statistics, also gathered by the
Comptroller of the Currency, show that in retail transactions
throughout the United States the medium of exchange is com-
posed, on an average, to the extent of about forty per cent of
checks and sixty per cent of paper currency and coin. The
smaller retail transactions are effected almost entirely by the use
of coin; as the transactions become of greater value, the more
does paper currency enter into them ; as their value further in-
creases, the greater is the use of checks, and transactions of magni-
tude between different localities are settled by drafts and bills of
exchange.

This progression in the medium of exchange, corresponding
with the progression in value of coexistent transactions, agrees
with the progression in the medium of exchange in correspond-
ence with the progression in value of transactions, as they have
developed throughout history, and makes manifest the fact that
the most important monetary factors at present are paper repre-
sentatives, of value consisting, first, of bank notes or govern-
ment notes circulating generally as currency, issued under gov-
ernment regulation, and secured upon widely known bases ; second,
of checks, drafts, promissory notes, bills of exchange, and other
instruments depending for their security upon the resources of
the drawers and indorsers, the extent of which is not generally
known.

As these paper representatives of value form by far the greater
portion of the medium of exchange, the most important point of
the monetary problem is raised by the question —

How may paper representatives of value be secured, to most
satisfactorily meet the requirements of a medium of exchange ?

Let the conditions incident to the issue and acceptance of a
paper representative of value in a simple case be considered.
When, a few years ago, a humble laborer, bereft of home, property,
and family by the Johnstown flood, applied to the manager of
a Pittsburg mill for work, he was provided with some immediate

204 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

necessaries in exchange for his duebill, which called for five
dollars. That duebill was practically his promise to expend
effort in the service of the mill, to balance the efforts of others
expended in producing the necessities provided him, and the
manager accepted it in the belief that the laborer's effort to that
value would be forthcoming. That duebill was returned to the
laborer the next pay day as part of his wages, its purpose having
been effected without the use of coin or bullion.

It will be perceived that the duebill, the representative of
value in this instance, was accepted —

1. Because the acceptor believed in the ability of the issuer
to produce desired result of human effort to the value called for
by it.

2. Because the acceptor believed in the intention of the issuer
to produce desired result of human effort to the value called for
by it.

3. Because the value of the effort called for was definitely
understood between the issuer and the acceptor, the unit of the
measure of that value being one dollar, and the total measure of
that value five dollars.

The duebill could not have been given general circulation,
because not many people would have been confident that its
value would be forthcoming. This lack of confidence may
have proceeded from ignorance of the ability and intention
of the issuer through lack of acquaintance with him, or from
doubt in the minds of those acquainted with him as to his ability
and intention. If, however, the promise of the laborer had been
re-enforced by the promise of the manager that he would make its
value good if the laborer did not, the duebill doubtless could
have been given a certain circulation among those having knowl-
edge of the manager's honesty and resources, and believing in the
genuineness of his indorsement.

In other communities, however, among persons knowing
neither the laborer nor the manager, circulation for the duebill
could not have been expected. A representative of value, there-
fore, to have wide circulation, must be issued and assured from a
source widely known to be able and honest in the intention to
produce the value of effort to the amount for which it calls.

As it is by transition from the use of coin that paper repre-
sentatives of value come into use, they are at first usually direct
representatives of coin, and are generally accepted on the assur-
ance that they can readily be exchanged for the amount of coin
for which they call. This assurance is nearly always given by a
government directly or indirectly. If it be required that gold, to
the full value specified by circulating notes, be held as a basis for
a paper currency, such a currency will never be adequate to supply

THE MONETARY PROBLEM, 205

the monetary needs of so vast a nation as the United States. It is
doubtful that even the vast increase, both present and prospec-
tive, in the production of gold will yield a supply, the proportion
of which coming to the United States would be sufficient for its
monetary needs under such a requirement. To the evils of a
paper currency issued against silver, reference will be made
hereinafter.

If paper currency apparently based upon gold be issued to a
value greatly in excess of that of the gold held for its redemp-
tion, the excess of the currency above the gold, in the absence of
other guarantee of its security, is speculative and unstable. If
a guarantee of its security other than gold or other metal in
coin or bullion be given, a new factor enters into the monetary
sphere.

The United States bonds are promises to pay, based upon the
ability of the Government of the United States to obtain the result
of human effort to the extent of their value by the power of taxa-
tion ; and as a United States national bank is required to deposit
numbers of these bonds as a basis for the bank notes issued by it,
the security for these notes is really the Government's power of
taxation, or ultimately the result of human effort elicited by the
use of that power. A considerable portion of the security for the
notes of the Bank of England consists of indebtedness of the nation
to the bank ; and the Dominion notes of Canada are largely based
upon the Government's indebtedness. A new factor succeeding and
supplementing gold as the basis for monetary issue is therefore
the assurance of the result of human effort to the extent necessary
to maintain the expressed value of the currency.

To perceive that a paper representative of value so secured
will perform every function of a coin of equal value needs only
an instant's reflection. A five- dollar national bank note, for ex-
ample, one of hundreds of such notes, drawn from a bank by the
paymaster of a woolen mill, may be paid to one of the operatives
as the measure and reward in part of the expenditure of his effort
in guiding the loom. It may be paid by him to his grocer, there-
by measuring and rewarding in part the efforts of men expended
in producing and bringing to him potatoes, flour, coffee, sugar,
bacon. It may be paid by the grocer to his landlord, and so
measure and reward him in part for effort expended under his
direction in erecting and finishing the building containing the
grocery. It may be paid by the landlord to a servant, as the
measure and reward of effort expended in keeping his house clean
and preparing food for his family. It may be given by her to a
shoe dealer, measuring and rewarding in part the efforts of men
expended in killing cattle, tanning hides, working them into shoes,
and bringing the shoes to the store whence she obtained them.

2o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

And thus that five-dollar bill may go round and round until it is
deposited by some recipient in a bank, whence it may emerge and
perform round after round of other service, and so on perhaps
for years. In all its circuits, the thought of exchanging it for
gold or silver may not enter the mind of a single person through
whose hands it passes. It measures and rewards human effort ;
it is generally accepted because its recipients have ample confi-
dence in the assurance of the bank, guaranteed by the Govern-
ment that its value, as expressed on its face, will be preserved
and maintained. They have confidence in the ability of the
issuer to that end ; they have confidence in the intention of the
issuer to that end. The measure of value expressed by five dollars
is definitely understood by them.

If other proof is required that neither coin nor bullion is es-
sentially necessary to effect the exchange of human effort, atten-
tion need only be called to the emergency currency brought into
existence by the currency famine of August and September,
1893. Clearing-house certificates, clearing-house duebills, certi-
fied checks, pay checks, negotiable certificates of deposit, bond
certificates, grain-purchase notes, store orders, improvement fund
orders, teachers' warrants and shingle scrip, sprang into being
and measurably facilitated the exchange of human effort in many
localities, especially in the West and Southwest, where mills, mines,
and stores would have closed had there been nothing to take the
place of the ordinary currency of the nation. These instruments
in each instance were paper representatives of value as evidenced
by the result of human effort ; they each attained a circulation
among those believing in the intention and ability of the issuers
to make their expressed value good.

As it is by use of the results of human effort that further
effort is made possible, as it is to obtain the result of human
effort that human effort is put forth, what more logical, what
more inevitable, than that the medium whereby human effort is
exchanged, whereby it is measured and rewarded, be based upon
the results of human effort ? That is, it is by the exchange of
human effort that we are fed and housed and clothed. It is by
use of houses, food, and clothing that we are enabled to construct
machines, build bridges and railroads. By the use of machines,
bridges, and railroads other houses are built, other food, other
clothing is prepared and distributed. To obtain houses, food, and
clothing our effort is put forth. The medium which rewards us
should assure us the possession of that for which we toil. As it
is human effort that supplies human wants, and as human effort
is known by its results, the medium of exchange and measure of
value should be based directly upon the results of human effort ;
that is, effort of a certain quantity and quality, as evidenced by

THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 207

its result, should be rewarded by that which, under the law of
supply and demand, will assure the possession of the result of
other human effort of a certain quantity and quality in an accept-
able form. Human effort should be measured by human effort,
not by any one commodity, however precious, the supply of which
is inconstant ; human effort should be rewarded by human effort,
not by any one commodity, however precious, the value of which
is unstable. The attainment of this end is the final step of that
evolution which began with barter, and through the use of coin
and paper representatives of coin we are taking that step so
gradually that we notice not its meaning.

Obviously it must not be that the assurance of reward be
based upon the result of human effort, as evidenced solely by any
one commodity. Cloth, corn, leather, each varies in quantity
from year to year, and the supply is not always in the same ratio
to the demand — that is, neither one of these commodities is of a
definite value that is permanent. This same objection applies,
but in greater degree, to both gold and silver. The assurance
of the reward of human effort must not be based solely upon
the result of human effort as embodied in houses, naills, factories,
railways, canals, ships, machinery, for these structures are not
indestructible. Even those that endure for centuries may fluctu-
ate in value as they increase or decrease in their capacity for
service to society, because of change in the currents of the law of
supply and demand, or as they are honestly and capably or dis-
honestly and incapably managed. As it is for the results of
human effort in all their varied forms that the aggregate of
human effort is put forth, its reward should be the assurance of a
given measure of effort as embodied in desired results.

A paper currency, therefore, should be based directly upon the
assurance of the result of human effort to make its value good
unqualifiedly and unconditionally; and that it may attain the
utmost confidence, such assurance must be universally known to
be sufficient and reliable. This can only be when a group of
people, the members of which, perceiving a secure currency to be
vital to their prosperity, combine in giving that assurance. Such
a group of people cohering by the force of common need, consti-
tuting a state or nation, can give assurance of their combined
effort through enactment of their administrative body known as
the government. The instrument whereby that enactment can
be made good is the power of taxation, which is the power of the
government to take from its people a portion of their effort for
the attainment of ends necessary to their common good. The
acceptance of such a currency among a people will depend in
natural course upon the degree of their coherence as evidenced
by their confidence in the honesty and ability of their own gov-

2o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

eminent to make the currency good, and also upon the knowledge
of the values represented by the different representatives of value
constituting the currency. Its acceptance among other peoples
will depend also upon the facility with which it can be exchanged
for currency in general use in their countries.

That a paper representative of value, resting upon the power
of taxation, may attain a high degree of confidence, is evidenced
by the United States bonds themselves, which are eagerly sought
throughout Europe and America; and the national bank notes,
which rest upon the same basis as the bonds, are readily accepted
throughout the entire country. But there is a respect wherein
the provision for currency, if limited to the issue of bank notes
secured by Government bonds deposited by the issuing source, has
been seriously defective. In every country, and especially in one
covering so extensive a territory and with such varied resources
as the United States, the processes of production and distribution
do not proceed with evenness and regularity week by week, month
by month, or year by year. In the spring, great quantities of fruit
are shipped North from the semitropical lands of the South ; in
the autumn, innumerable train loads and vast cargoes of grain
come from the Western plains to the Atlantic seaboard ; the great
mills and factories in every line of industry are busier at one time
of the year than another. Currency in greater abundance is
therefore needed at the times of greater activity than during the
periods of comparative dullness. If there be sufficient national
bank notes for the times of activity, there is during the times of
dullness a plethora which is an incentive to overtrading and
speculation. If their issue is only sufficient for the ordinary
needs of exchange, there is a scarcity at the times of greater de-
mand, with the result that exchange is hindered, the processes of
industry retarded ; that is, the currency provided by our present
national bank note system is not elastic, and the restrictions im-
posed by the Government have made its issue so little profitable
that the banks are often loath to increase the supply, which at
the present amounts to but about two hundred millions of dollars.

The paper currency of the United States issued directly by the
Government is composed principally of United States notes, the
" legal-tender " legacies of the war, to the extent of $346,000,000,
which, like the bonds, are based directly upon the power of taxa-
tion ; certificates issued directly against and redeemable in silver
to the amount of $345,000,000 ; Treasury notes issued against silver,
but redeemable in either gold or silver, to the extent of $137,000,-
000 ; and certificates issued directly against and redeemable ex-
clusively in gold to the extent of $45,000,000. The lack of elas-
ticity is an objection to each of these issues of currency, and that
they are open to other objections recent discussion has made

THE MONETARY PROBLEM.

209

evident. Gold, the standard of value in international exchange,
has for many years exceeded silver in value in greater ratio than
that deemed by the United States to exist between them. As it
has been the declared intention of the Government to keep all
the paper currencies issued by it of the same value as though they
had been issued against gold, its currency must be exchanged for
gold upon the request of the holders. But as the legal tenders,
when accepted in exchange for gold by congressional enactment,
must be immediately paid out again, to be again exchanged for
gold if the holders so request, and so on without limit, the supply
of gold in the Government's possession has been kept at so low an
ebb that it has often been feared that it would not be able to
maintain its intention of keeping all its issues of currency as good
as gold. To avert this fear, the Government has increased its in-
debtedness by several issues of bonds which have been exchanged
for gold, which the legal tenders have immediately again begun
to drain. It is obvious that this and other evils of the immediate
situation must be removed. But, without further reference to
them, this article must return to the discussion of an ideal system
of note issue.

The experience of the United States, as referred to in the pre-
ceding paragraph, makes important in that discussion the reply to
the question —

Should the paper representatives of value which serve as cur-
rency be issued directly by the Government ?

The determination from time to time of the amount of currency
necessary for a nation's exchanges at all places within the territory
of that nation would require the services of a large number of in-
telligent men, thoroughly organized ; and that the currency might
expand and contract according to the nation's needs, a govern-
mental mechanism would have to be provided that is difficult of
conception, and its maintenance in efficiency would be more diffi-
cult. The losses occasioned by the errors of the officials would
fall directly on the Government, and therefore entirely upon the
whole people ; and as the issue of currency in any event must be
closely allied to the business of banking, if not always practically
an incident thereof, the maintenance of a governmental organiza-
tion for that purpose would impose a superfluous burden upon
the people, as the banking organizations are capable of the same
function.

As it is the banks that, by making loans and discounts and
cashing checks, can the most readily get notes into circulation
and can profit by so doing ; as it is the banks that come directly
into contact with the business pulse of entire communities, it is
evidently proper that banks should be empowered to issue repre-
sentatives of value for use as currency upon such resources as

210 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would assure the value of such represeutatives of value, and
under such checks and restrictions as would insure the expansion
and contraction of issue in accordance with the law of supply
and demand, not only in particular localities but throughout the
nation. But as it is vital to the prosperity of the entire nation
that its currency be incontestably and unquestionably secure, the
guarantee of the whole people given through their Government
should be the ultimate assurance of the security of their currency.
The checks and restrictions upon its issue by banks should pro-
vide, therefore, that the liability for loss lie as far as possible
with the banks, reducing to a minimum the responsibility, in any
event, of the Government. To insure elasticity, these checks
should be such as to necessitate the expansion and contraction of
the currency in accordance with the law of supply and demand,
by providing that, should there be insufficient currency, the banks
would suffer loss, and that they also would suffer loss should
there be an overabundance. The issue of currency by banks
under governmental regulation and control should secure to, the
people the benefits that flow from competition reacting upon
enterprise, and the benefits that come from the solidity of govern-
mental backing. It should avoid the evils of overissue and specu-
lative issue into which private enterprise is apt to be induced by
greed and overcompetition, and the evils of that inertness which
is characteristic of operations conducted entirely under bureau-
cratic control.

That such a system is not impossible of attainment, may be
disclosed by an examination of different banking systems in force
at different times and places, each of which has been characterized
by one or more of the points of excellence which have just been
specified.

Under the Scotch banking system, which has bravely stood
the test of time, circulating notes are issued directly against the
assurance of the forthcoming of human effort given by the drawers
and indorsers of promissory notes. These promissory notes are
paid with the results of the effort elicited by the circulating notes
obtained in exchange for them. Although many of the old State
banks are of unhappy memory, the Bank of Indiana and the banks
of Louisiana were efficient in supplying currency for the com-
mercial needs of their sections and are of honorable record.

An existing banking system of admirable performance is that
of the Dominion of Canada. Under the Canadian banking act,
adventurers and light-weight financiers are debarred from estab-
lishing banks by the fact that a charter is not issued for less than
a capital of five hundred thousand dollars, of which at least two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars must be paid up, and the char-
acter of the applicants is subjected to close scrutiny by the Minis-

THE MONETARY PROBLEM, 211

ter of Finance. Notes are a first charge against all the assets of
the issuing bank, and there is a penalty for excessive issue. The
shareholders are liable for double the amount of their stock. There
must be monthly returns to the Minister of Finance, and there is a
rigid system of inspection. To insure the stability of the entire
bank-note issue, each bank is required to keep on deposit with the
Minister of Finance a sum equal to five per cent of its circulation,
as a contribution to the Bank Circulation Redemption Fund, held
by the Government to make good the notes of suspended banks.
A most noteworthy and beneficent feature of the system is the
practice of branch banking, the thirty-eight Canadian banks hav-
ing four hundred and sixty ofl&ces. By their means the banking
facilities of circulation, deposit, and discount are given not only
to communities of considerable population, as in the United States,
but even to hamlets remote from commercial centers. The com-
petition of the different banks throughout their various branches,
each striving for as large a proportion of the note circulation as
possible, together with the governmental restrictions upon over-
issue, insure to the millions of people inhabiting the Dominion a
supply of currency, that at all times sufficient for their needs, ex-
pands and contracts as the demand for it rises and falls. The
principle of branch banking places the available funds of the
entire Dominion at the disposal of the communities needing them
at the times of need, whereas in the United States, because of the
narrow sphere of operation of each bank, there is frequently an
overabundance of currency at one point, while the healthy ex-
change of effort is retarded at other points because of a deficiency.
The "Baltimore plan*' proposed in 1894 by the American
Bankers' Association, and the bill introduced by the present na-
tional administration in Congress in December, 1894, were in their
essential characteristics substantially similar to the Canadian
banking law, and it was the opinion then expressed of most
competent financiers, that the adoption of such an act would have
relieved the country of the most crying evils of the present sys-
tem, and have provided the foundation for a most wholesome cur-
rency hereafter. It is noteworthy that the provisions of the Cana-
dian act were largely the outcome of the recommendation of the
leading bankers of Canada called in conference by the Canadian
Government, while financial authorities, among the highest in the
United States, found members of both Houses of Congress deaf
to their recommendations during the discussion of the adminis-
tration measure, which was finally defeated by the votes of dema-
gogues subserving selfish interests. It, however, goes without
saying, that the province of true statesmanship is often not to per-
sist in seeking the immediate attainment of an ideal when it is
unquestionable that opposition makes that immediate attainment

212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

impossible, but to better existing conditions to tlie extent that
betterment may be possible.

The steps that followed the defeat of the administration bill
are well known. There have been additional issues of bonds
which may serve as the basis for additional bank-note circulation
under present laws. A better system will doubtless be adopted
in time, but enlightenment as to the ultimate basis of representa-
tives of value, and their use in forwarding civilization by effecting
the exchange of human effort, will need to spread in great waves
to the minds of many people before there is the adoption of an
ideal monetary system, and before such a system will diminish
the need for money changers by effecting exchanges of effort
without their aid.

And it should be perceived that the adoption of a monetary
system consisting of paper representatives of value, based upon
the result of human effort, will be an important step toward the
determination of an absolute standard or measure of value. The
attempts to invest gold or silver, or both, with the attributes of
such a standard are the underlying causes of a current phase of
the monetary problem that is uppermost in discussion. To the
word " bimetallism " many different meanings have been at-
tached. But, as even the most pronounced advocates of the gold
standard do not oppose the use of silver for subsidiary currency,
the question evidently has not now to do with the abolishment of
silver as money ; and as the most pronounced advocates of silver
at present, in demanding even the unlimited coinage of that metal,
insist that its value always bears a definite and fixed ratio to the
value of gold, the question evidently has not now to do with the
maintenance of a double standard of value, for if the ratio be-
tween the metals can be constant, there necessarily is but a single
standard. That neither silver nor gold throughout the past has
afforded an absolute standard of value is abundantly shown by
the frequent fluctuations in the value of these metals, both as com-
pared one with the other and either with other commodities.

The ratio between the value of silver and gold that was fairly
level from the beginning of the expansion of mediaeval commerce
to the middle of the sixteenth century, was violently disturbed by
the great yield of the silver mines of Potosi. The instability in-
creased with the variations in the supply of silver as mines were
opened in Mexico, and in the supply of gold as that metal was
found in Brazil. The disturbance became feverish with the dis-
covery of gold in California, and the oscillations in the ratio have
since that time not ceased, having been affected by the output of
silver from the Western States, and apprehension is now being felt
as to the effect of the development of new gold fields in Colorado,
Siberia, South America, and Africa.

THE MONETARY PROBLEM, 213

During the Christian era the ratio between the values of
the two metals has varied from eleven to one to thirty- two
to one, which is about the commercial ratio to-day. The ques-
tion at the root of the present bimetallic controversy, there-
fore, is :

Can a definite ratio be preserved between the values of silver
and gold, notwithstanding that under the law of supply and de-
mand the ratio rises and falls ?

There are those who think that such a definite ratio can be
fixed and maintained by legislative enactment, either national or
international, but the possibility of the maintenance of a fixed
ratio is negatived by the history of at least five centuries. This
is nowhere shown more clearly than in the valuable History of
Currency, by W. A. Shaw ; the verdict is " clear, crushing, and
final " — that is, the purchasing power of a pound of gold or a
pound of silver in the markets of the world is never a matter of
certainty for any extended period. This is not alone because of
the fluctuation in the value of other commodities, but also be-
cause of the unequal fluctuations in the value of these commodi-
ties themselves. The results that naturally follow these fluctua-
tions legislation is powerless to change. Since 1890 the United
States has been learning this fact through bitter experience. As
stated on a previous page, the nation has incurred an indebted-
ness that will approximate three hundred millions of dollars in
the effort to maintain the ratio of 15*98 to one.

It was long claimed by radical advocates of silver, that if the
mints were open to the unrestricted coinage of that metal, as they
are to the unrestricted coinage of gold, coins of the two metals
would circulate together, and a double standard be thereby estab-
lished. But it is clear that the silver coins would inevitably be
accepted at their bullion value only. The effort of the national
administration* to maintain the parity of the two metals, which
has been strained even under the restricted use of silver, would be
broken by the deluge that its unrestricted use would bring. The
four hundred and twelve and a half grains of silver that were
worth one dollar in gold a generation ago would be worth but
fifty cents in gold to-day. If four hundred and twelve and a half
grains of silver were still molded and stamped as one dollar, gold
dollars would be worth twice as much as silver dollars: there
would be two separate and distinct standards of value. ' If, not-
withstanding this, it should be the edict of Congress that dollars
of the two metals should circulate side by side, it is evident that
gold dollars would be hoarded, sent out of the country or melted,
for no one would pay a gold dollar for an article that could be
purchased with a silver dollar worth but half as much. The cur-
rency of the country would fall to the silver basis, and, as the bul-

214 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

lion price of silver is subject to great and continual fluctuation,
all values would be uncertain, commerce would be restricted,
manufacturing retarded. And it is obvious that the objections
to the too extensive use of silver apply also to the use of paper
representatives of value based upon silver.

But it must be recognized that the taking of such a step, dis-
astrous as its total consequences would be, would not be absolutely
without warrant of justice. Because of improved appliances and
improved methods of production and distribution, the prices of
nearly all the great staple products — clothing, shoes, furniture,
grain, nails, tools, watches, drugs, glass, carpets — have in the last
generation fallen in about the same degree that the price of silver
has fallen. Therefore a silver dollar of four hundred and twelve
and a half grains, taken at its bullion value to-day, will now buy
about as much of the most needed results of human effort as a
silver dollar of four hundred and twelve and a half grains thirty-
five years ago, taken at its bullion value then, would buy of the
most needed results of human effort at that time. Therefore a
debt of one hundred dollars incurred thirty-five years ago, if paid
to-day in gold, would inure to the creditor double the amount of
benefit that the borrower obtained at the time the debt was in-
curred. Apply this reasoning to the indebtedness of the United
States. It is claimed that, notwithstanding the great reduction
in this debt since the war, the decrease in the prices of staple
commodities, as measured by gold, has been so great that the
amount of gold necessary to pay the present indebtedness would
purchase at this time as much of the staple commodities as gold
to the total of the indebtedness at the close of the war would have
purchased at that time. That is, although the indebtedness of
the Government, as expressed in gold dollars, has been vastly
reduced, that indebtedness, as expressed by universally desired
results of human effort, has not been reduced at all. In this con-
nection it is significant that the depreciation in the price of silver
has not led the people of Mexico to adopt other than the silver
standard. Indeed, the depreciation has scarcely been noticed by
them, largely because of the greater depreciation in the value of
other commodities.

But as there are two sides to every question, so also are there
two sides to every phase of every question. Wages, salaries, and
incomes of all sorts, on the average, are far higher to-day than
they were a generation ago. In many a pursuit it is easier for a
man in a given time to earn two hundred dollars in gold to-day
than it would have been for a man in the same pursuit to have
earned one hundred dollars in gold then. So that the payment of
a debt of one hundred dollars incurred then, in its gold equiva-
lent now, would work no injustice to him. But this is not the

THE MONETARY PROBLEM.

215

case in all pursuits. And does the application hold good with
the United States bonds, whose holders in many cases have ac-
quired them by inheritance and have throughout their lives
made no contribution to that totality of effort from which is
poured into their purses an annual interest that constantly in-
creases in purchasing power ? And the original holders of these
bonds may have procured them by means of the revenue obtained
from land that has appreciated in value through no possible effort
or foresight of theirs. Do not all these considerations point to
the fact that a standard of value which may measure justice to
all and injustice to none must be based directly upon the results
of human effort ? It is not for an instant to be intimated that
existing obligations shall be repudiated, nor can it be conceived
that such an ideal standard will be attained save through slow
and painful development. But the theoretical demonstration of
such an ideal may even at this time not be beyond the bounds of
possibility. And there may be all the more need for such demon-
stration because of the increase, both present and prospective, in
the production of gold, which may at some future time cause the
fluctuations in the value of that commodity to be no less than
they have been in the value of silver.

But even the adoption of an ideal monetary system would not
entirely deprive the precious metals of a positive monetary func-
tion. Until one such system were adopted by all of civilization,
gold would be needed in international exchange ; and for various
reasons, perhaps, whether the basis for circulating notes were the
assurance of the result of human effort as given in promissory
notes, or whether it were stocks, bonds, or other securities depend-
ing for their value upon the result of human effort, it might now
and then happen that the holders of the notes might want to
make an immediate test of their value. The issuing source to
preserve confidence in the notes emitted by it must be able to sat-
isfy this test. As the medium of exchange that antedated notes
and that has not been entirely superseded by the issue of notes is
coin ; as coin has a definite intrinsic value, which notes have not ;
as coin is durable, portable, and readily exchangeable — it follows
that a natural and practical immediate test of a note's security is
the readiness with which it may be exchanged for coin. To this
end, when authority to issue notes has been given, it has usually
been required that specie in a certain minimum ratio to the value
of the note circulation be held by the issuing source for the re-
demption of notes presented for that purpose. The facility for
the exchange of notes for coin may be not only a test of their
security, but, as in the Dominion of Canada, a means whereby
through the competition of various banks the note circulation
may be contracted as need for it is lessened, each of the Canadian

2i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

banks iDeing required to redeem daily sucli of its notes as are pre-
sented for that purpose.

And this last reference to the Canadian banking system gives
rise again to the thought that perhaps, if there could yet be
adopted in the United States a banking system modeled upon
something of the same plan as that of Canada, it would give the
nation more relief than could any other step that is now at all
practicable in connection with monetary issue. Such a system
would provide within safe limits the abundance of currency that
the farmer and the laborer struggling for a livelihood in the
West and Southwest are led by fallacious reasoning to believe
can only be obtained by the free coinage of silver.

WHY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS.

By GEOEGE ILES.

AS master of electricity man is crowned the king of Nature.
-^^ A brief glance at what electricity has done and promises to
do may have interest in itself ; it may have yet more in disclos-
ing the law by which art and science march onward with ever-
hastened pace, how it comes about that the history of modern
progress is little else than a story of revolution. We shall see
that the subjugation of electricity means for thought and work
not an addition merely, but a multiplier. It marries the resources
of the mechanic, the engineer, the chemist, the artist, with issue
attested by all its own fertility, while it annexes province after
province unimagined before its advent. Because the latest up-
ward stride in knowledge and faculty has fallen to the lot of the
electrician, he has broadened the scientific horizon vastly more
than any earlier explorer ; beyond any predecessor he has found
more in the field wherewith to prove the fecundity that infallibly
stamps every supremely great agent of discovery. As we trace a
few of the unending interlacements of electrical science and art
with other sciences and arts, we shall be reminded of a series of
permutations where the newest of the factors, because newest,
multiplies all the factors that went before by an unexampled
leap.* We shall find reason to believe that this is not merely
probable, but really is as a tendency true, and not alone of the

* Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two : 1, 2 ; 2, 1 ; or a, b ; b, a.
Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3) six : 1, 2, 3 ; 1, 3, 2 ; 2, 1, 3 ; 2, 3, 1 ;
3, 1, 2 ; 3, 2, 1 ; or a, b, c ; a, c, b ; 6, a, c ; b, c, a; c, a, b ; c, b, a. Of four elements the
permutations are (1x2x3x4) twenty-four ; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and
so on. A new element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the permutations
it finds.

Wirr PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 217

gains which follow in the train of conquered electricity, but also
with regard to every other signal victory which has brought man
to his present pinnacle of power and insight. If in former ad-
vances this permutative principle has been undetected, it stands
forth in clearest relief in that latest and therefore utmost stride
of skill and interpretation ushered in by Franklin, Volta, and
Faraday. And we shall presently note that this permutative
tendency offers a key to some puzzling chapters in the biography
of the creatures which man has far outstripped in the race of life,
and may also shed a needed ray on the story of the planet where
they and he have together struggled and vanquished or suc-
cumbed. If all this may be maintained, a permutative tendency
can perhaps be suggested with respect to evolution in general as
colorably as with regard to development in particular realms. Is
this a large claim ? To the evidence, then :

By way of preface, let us for a moment consider the achieve-
ment most worthy to be compared with the conquest of electricity,
and, indeed, its necessary precursor.

When man first kindled fire, he rose to a new primacy among
created beings. Long before that fateful day he must have no-
ticed how the blaze of a tree riven by lightning could bring roots
and herbs to refreshing palatability, or, as a far volcano welled
forth its lava, how welcome the radiance in wintry air. What, he
may have thought, if I can summon fire at my bidding instead of
waiting upon heaven to let it fall or earth to belch it forth ? How
the wish came to fulfillment has been the subject of many an in-
genious guess. The likeliest of them imagines that in striking a
bit of quartz against a flint to point an arrow, a spark fell on dry
tinder, and that what at first was accident was soon repeated by
design. No piecemeal acquisition this, like learning to hit a
mark with stone or bolt. The man barely able to light a fire was
enormously advantaged as compared with his fellow, however
dexterous, who just fell short of this skill. At once the fire-
maker took a bound forward that decisively withdrew him from
his next of kin. It was as if the globe had expanded itself be-
neath his tread ; for now, no longer chained by the sunbeam, all
the frozen north was added to his hunting ground. The burning
brand cleared his path through the forest or shaped from a tree
trunk his rude canoe. It lifted the dreary pall of night. His
hearth, heaped with boughs, cheered with light as well as warmth,
and became the family rallying place and altar. Baneful roots
buried in its embers lost their poison and furnished a toothsome
meal, while food of many kinds when roasted or seethed was im-
proved in flavor and could be longer stored to abridge the seesaw
between plenty and want. As the cook daubed clay on her roast-
ing tray of twigs that it might the better withstand flame, she

VOL. XLIX.— 19

2i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

soon learned that clay by itself was a capital material for oven,
pot, or kettle, and Sevres and Worcester, with all their varied art,
here took their rise. As primitive fisherman and hunter, man
employed fire to lure his prey, to affright the beasts to which he
himself was prey, or to yield protecting smoke against insect pests
scarcely less to be dreaded. In later ages as mariner he erected
on storm-beaten coasts beacons whose carefully tended blaze gave
warning or comfort to drifting voyagers, the flickering ray fore-
telling the sunlike beam of Sandy Hook or Skerryvore. As war-
rior he crowned the hills with similar flares to voice alarm to
scattered allies,, prefiguring every modern telegraph. Again, as
warrior, having profited by the hardness fire conferred upon his
wooden spear, he was to receive gifts yet greater. Where, as on
the shores of Lake Superior, native copper almost pure lay upon
the ground, it was laboriously pounded into the primitive knife
or hammer. With fire his servant, the savage was independent
of such rare finds. Wherever he came upon an earthy mass, glit-
tering with however small a fraction of metal, he had but to
bring the ore to his hearth to free copper or iron from its bond-
age. There and then the art of the founder began to take the
place of the drudgery of the smith — a supersedure characteristic
enough and one of an uncounted series where good has had to
make way for better, where the worker and the fighter himself
has been overcome by stronger thews and keener wits. No tri-
umph of miner or chemist, of engineer on land or sea, that does
not date from the memorable hour when a savage just a little
cleverer than his fellows kindled for himself a blaze. Plainly,
then, fire came among the resources of man as a permutator of
exalted power. It gave an impulse to food-getting, to tool and
weapon making, to building, to migration, to every art that
cheered and adorned the home. It was an influence as pregnant
as any that has made man human and brought the empire of
Nature to his feet.

Through the course of all the ages since, almost down to our
own day, flame had beside her a twin force all unrecognized.
Elusive as a wood nymph she glinted as lightning, or as the
aurora streamed fitfully across the sky. Anon she condescended
to the amber of the sea beach, which under gentle friction drew
to itself fragments of fallen leaves, of withered straw. In yet
other guise she defied the downward tendency of unsupported
masses, and, as the legend tells us, sorely puzzled a shepherd in
bidding his crook cling fast to the ceiling of a cave roofed, as we
would say now, with magnetic ore. At a later day the magnet
became something more than an empty marvel, and as the com-
pass assumed the office of guiding sun and star when these wei e
hidden. Little wonder that so various a masquerade was long

WHY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 219

impenetrable, that Franklin less than five generations ago should
detect that lightning and electricity are one, and that only in our
day at the hands of Hertz has it been demonstrated that the elec-
tric pulse differs only from the wave of heat or light in being
longer. This discovery of Hertz was long ago foreshadowed in
the observation that heat can have electric origin. One of the
first fruits of electrical study was the finding that some metals
transmit electricity better than others, and that the efficacy of a
conductor depends in part on its size. When a conducting wire
was reduced to extreme tenuity, the resistance to the current's
passage, with striking resemblance to common friction, expressed
itself as vivid heat. The miner and the gunner at once saw their
opportunity to use electricity to touch off their fuses and to ex-
plode at the same instant, with an effect before impossible, a round
of separate charges.

Copying the methods of the miner, the mechanic and the
chemist very often find electric heat the most advantageous they
can employ. When the broken blade of a propeller is to be re-
paired, the electric welder can be taken to its work instead of the
work having to go to a stationary welder. When electric heat is
carried into a crucible through almost impenetrable walls of gyp-
sum, it enters the very heart of its task without the offense and
waste of flame. Thus to-day is flame face to face with a sup-
planter in the shape of its long undetected twin. Until this gen-
eration flame alone was the source not only of heat, but of the
beam of candle, lamp, and gas jet. To-day myriads of electric
bulbs are aglow without flame — indeed, just because combustion is
rendered impossible by the rigid exclusion of air. As these in-
candescent lamps were long ago prophesied in the miner's electric
fuse, so also has the first simple process of the electroplater led
up to an art incomparably more important. To-day not surfaces
merely, but large masses, chiefly of statuary, are built in cool
tanks by electricity. Let the current become cheaper still, and
the founder may find the remainder of his business transferred to
this formidable rival, the warping heats of sand molds banished,
the scorching temperature of crucible and ladle a reminiscence.
The same fate may be in store for the smelting furnace. Already
vast quantities of copper are refined electrolytically, and an au-
spicious beginning has been made in using, electricity for the whole
process of parting metal from ore. Thus methods which com-
menced in dismissing flame end boldly by eliminating heat itself.
This usurping electricity, it may be said, usually finds its source,
after all, in fire under a steam boiler. True, but mark the harness-
ing of Niagara, of the Lachine Rapids near Montreal, of a thou-
sand streams elsewhere. In the years of the near future motive
power of Nature's giving is to be wasted less and less, and per-

220 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

force will more and more exclude heat from the chain of trans-
formations which issue in the locomotive^s flight, in the whirl of
factory and mill; and thus in some degree is allayed the fear,
never well grounded, that when the coal fields of the world are
spent, civilization must collapse. As the electrician hears this
foreboding, he recalls how much fuel is wasted in converting heat
into electricity. He looks beyond either turbine or shaft turned
by wind or tide, and, remembering that the zinc dissolved in his
battery yields at his will its full content of energy, either as heat
or electricity, he asks. Why may not coal and forest tree, which
are but other kinds of fuel, be made to do the same ?

In another field let us observe electricity as a factor of fruit-
f alness quite as singular. It was at first the chemist who eman-
cipated electricity for new and myriad uses. His successor to-day
is the engineer, who wins his spurs by bringing his generator to
practical perfection, by improving his steam and gas engines to
double their efficiency of thirty years ago. If to the engineer and
mechanic the electric art owes much, magnificently has the debt
been repaid. As we discover in replacing at our street door an
old-fashioned moving bell pull by an electric wire armed with a
push button, electricity transmits motion without movement of
its conductor as a mass. Availing himself of this golden property,
the machinist removes from his shop a labyrinth of wheels and
belts and puts in their stead a few wires at rest, each in charge
of the motor actuating a machine. Manifold gains result. The
power needed to whirl these wheels and belts is saved, and when
but one or two machines of a large number are to be set in motion
the economy rises to a high figure, while the workshop is lighter,
cleaner, more wholesome in every way. Since electricity is of all
phases of energy the easiest to preserve from losses resembling
leakage or friction, the current can not only be distributed
throughout the largest workshop with convenience and economy,
it can be sent to the shop from an engine or a water wheel many
miles away, as in connecting motors at Buffalo to dynamos at
Niagara, twenty- seven miles distant. With the transmission of
electricity for distances vastly exceeding twenty- seven miles we
have long been familiar in the telegraph. It is by improving the
coverings which prevent the current escaping from its wire, by
taking advantage of the fact that a wire can almost as well carry
a current of high tension as of low, and, above all, by increasing
the quantity of the current so as to make the enterprise worth
while, that the telegraphy of power has followed upon the teleg-
raphy of mere signals.

In the telegraph at work over long distances a remarkable
peculiarity of electricity displays itself. In days of yore, when
lettex'S were intrusted to a chain of messengers, each of whom bore

WHY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 221

the poucli for a stage of its journey, a carrier might come to the
end of his trip utterly fagged out; but if he had barely the
strength to pass his burden to the next man it was enough.
Much the same is the system of relays when a telegram takes its
way from New York to Tacoma. First it goes to Buffalo, where
the current, faint after its run of four hundred and forty miles,
touches off a second powerful current born in Buffalo. This in
its turn bears the dispatch to Chicago. There a third current is
impressed into service, and so on, until at the end of a succession
of transfers the words are clicked out in Tacoma. This whole
process is committed to self-acting repeaters that do their work in
the fraction of a second. It is in pulling triggers in such fashion
as this, in liberating forces indefinitely greater than the initial
impulse, that electricity brings to muscles of brass and steel some-
thing very like a nervous system, so that the merest touch directs
the course of a steamship through the tempest-tossed Atlantic.
Engineer, workman, and artist can thus reserve their strength for
tasks more profitable than muscular dead lift and find their sweep
of initiation and control broadened to the utmost bound. In the
field of war, for instance, a torpedo can be launched, propelled,
steered, and exploded by a telegraph key a mile or two away ; the
constructor may, indeed, confidently give all his orders in advance
and build a torpedo which will fulfill a fate of both murder and
suicide predestined in its cams and magnets. Or a camera, under
the control of an operator at the safe end of a wire, is sent soar-
ing in a balloon car above an enemy ^s camp, effectively playing
the spy.

Another apparatus electric and photographic, happily less un-
common, is employed for observatory records which, as near Are-
quipa, in Peru, without supervision keeps itself busy for a fort-
night together. Still more remarkable is Mr. Muybridge's round
of cameras, timed as only electricity can time them, which seize
practically instantaneous views of figures in rapid motion, as
horses trotting. In Mr. Edison^s kinetoscope photographs made
at each forty- sixth of a second follow one another so quickly
under an eyepiece as to fuse with the effect of life and action.
Pictures of birds thus caught on the wing may prove seed corn
for harvests to be reaped by the experimenter in mechanical
flight — an achievement which, strange to say, attracts the interest
of military rather than business men. In the service of war and
peace one would suppose the ordinary telegraph to be speedy
enough. Not so, thinks the inventor. In the latest process a dis-
patch wings its way from New York to Chicago at the rate of
one thousand words a minute, to Philadelphia thrice as fast. The
telegram is taken first to a machine which symbolizes each letter
as perforations on a strip of paper ; then the strip is run between

222. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

metallic springs of exquisite delicacy. At each perforation the
springs touch and the current takes its way through the wire.
At the receiving station the delay involved in the arousal and
action of electro-magnets is abolished. The current instant by in-
stant writes its message on a moving ribbon of paper sensitized so
as to change color under an electric flow. ' This instance is typical
of what ingenuity can do when electricity is added to its armory.
A task is divided between an operator and an automatic machine
in such wise that intelligence is allotted only that part for which
intelligence is required, while for the remaining part the utmost
speed of electrical and chemical action is invoked — a pace which
in this particular case sixtyfold outstrips the most dexterous
manipulation.

Another means by which inventors have expedited telegraphy
has been by transmitting several messages simultaneously over a
single wire. Of these multiplex systems certain are synchronous
in principle and seem to have suggested to Prof. Elisha Gray his
telautograph, an instrument that imitates exactly the motion of a
pencil, in say Boston, by the motion of another, in say Baltimore,
reproducing with equal facility either handwriting or outline
drawing. To understand the principle involved, let us glance at
an everyday application of electricity in keeping scores of clock
pendulums, no matter how far apart, in perfect step. If two pen-
dulums at right angles to each other are attached to a moving
pencil their motions may be communicated to a distance by two
currents which actuate two pendulums in control of a second and
copying pencil. The electric clock at which we have just been
looking can, if we please, be sealed in a glazed box, secure from
dust and dampness. Here opens a fresh path to the inventor who
wishes to avoid the resistance or leakage entailed when a rod
moves through a slot or a stufling box. It is often of cardinal
importance that a bit of metal at rest should throb with a pulse
strong enough to do severe drudgery or tell a tale which other-
wise would go untold. If an engineer wishes to know how much
heat wastes itself through the walls of a steam cylinder, his ques-
tion is answered through a motionless wire attached to a delicate
metallic thermometer buried in the cylinder's mass. In experi-
menting with new alloys the same method informs the chemist of
changes of temperature at the core of his crucible, changes often
abrupt and transient and at times denoting qualities he seeks to
detain or reproduce. In a very different domain of exploration
the engineer uses the telephone to expose perilous defects in metal
beams.

As we prove when we unhook a telephone, or lift an incan-
descent lamp, electricity readily traverses a flexible wire : this un-
bars a fresh resource to invention. To-day rock drills, coal cut-

WBY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 223

ters, and deck planers are designed in forms whicli combine motor
and tool ; so much is thereby gained in adaptability that a re-
modeling is in progress of much light machinery in its first estate
rigidly limited in play by shafts, belts, or gearing. Dentistry
and other arts of refined manipulation are indebted for novel
facilities to the flexible mechanical shaft — a tightly wound coil of
steel wire. This device is in turn being shown to the door by the
new partnership between an electric thread and a tool. And the
wire, however slender, which binds a reservoir of power to its
work, can on occasion be discarded, as in the rolling contact of
the electric trolley wheel. And even contact can be dispensed
with if strict economy is not imperative. We are familiar with
the annoyance, due to induction, of being obliged in a telephone
circuit to overhear other subscribers, whose wires are often far
distant from our own. A hint in this for the engineer at the head
of the British telegraphs, Mr. Preece. Utilizing induction, he has
established a telegraph between Oban and Auchnacraig, divided
by six miles of sea, using wires strung along the opposite shores.
Electricity, light, heat, and chemical action are all in essence
motion ; electricity is the most desirable of them all, because it
can most readily and fully become the source or issue of any
other. The pre-eminent sensitiveness of electrical apparatus
makes it a surpassing means of measuring minute portions of
space or time, of light, heat, chemical activity, or mechanical
motion. Hence a brood of telltales of widely contrasted pur-
pose. Selenium, a metalloid of the same lineage as sulphur, and
betraying its descent by a striking family resemblance, has the
curious property of transmitting electricity more freely in light
than in darkness ; a stick of selenium, therefore, is the pivot of a
device to give warning when extinction befalls a lamp charged
with important duty. In thermometers a circuit broken or com-
pleted acts as a fire signal, or, on shipboard, heralds the ap-
proach of an- iceberg. Electric fingers sound a gong when the
water recedes below the safety level in a steam boiler, or report
an attempted breach of bolt or bar by the burglar's jimmy.
Each of these warnings can be registered at a distance, so that in
case of neglect by an attendant there can be no disputing the fact.
Now, if an electric alarm can summon a servant to duty, why may
not the inventor go further, and so add to his device that it shall
of its own motion do what needs to be done ? Accordingly, we
find furnaces fitted up with electrical control, so that the draft is
opened or fuel added when the temperature falls too low, or the
reverse, when the flame is too fierce ; when the fuel is gas this
stoking leaves nothing to be desired. New mechanism of this
kind is constantly being contrived. The inventor who began by
conferring electric nerves on muscles of brass and iron has.

224 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thanks to electricity, gone the length of combining his wires and
magnets into something very like a conscious and responsive
brain : his intelligence culminates in duplicating itself.

Prodigal as electricity is of gifts to the mechanic and engineer,
it as generously multiplies the resources of their friend and part-
ner, the chemist. Electricity, we must not forget, was presented
to the world as a stream of tolerably even flow, by a process of
chemical undoing, in Volta's crown of cups. If chemical taking
apart can yield a current, a current can in turn be used to build,
as every piece of plating proves. Yet to construct a battery in
which both processes shall alternate, without undue weight or
waste of material, is a task as yet not satisfactorily accomplished,
despite constant and ingenious attack. A thoroughly good and
simple storage battery would mean nearly as much for electric
art as the dynamo. From a dynamo it would receive currents de-
rived from wind or water powers, or from engines temporarily
laden below their capacity, and use these currents to restore a
metal from its solution by a process exactly that of electroplat-
ing. Then, on demand, it would yield electricity once more by
surrendering this metal to solution, as a common voltaic battery
does. If the chemist has thus far been somewhat bafified by the
problems of the storage battery, he has had better fortune in
other fields of endeavor. Electricity joined to heat hands him a
two-edged sword of irresistible cleaving power. Compounds,
such as those of chromium, of peculiar refractoriness, are readily
parted in the electric furnace of Moissan, and elements once ex-
tremely rare are now marketed in quantity at prices steadily fall-
ing. A generation ago aluminum was so scarce and dear that it
was formed into jewelry ; to-day the metal has been so cheapened
by electricity that it finds a ready sale as kitchen ware. Minute
diamonds and rubies of electric manufacture are now competing
with the product of the mine, and materials used on a gigantic
scale in the arts — caustic soda, bleaching powder, and the like — are
produced at less cost than ever by electrical agency. The chemist,
when he chooses, can beat his electrical sword into a trowel, and
build compounds which seem prophetic of the day when the slow
elaborations of the farm and orchard shall make way for the arti-
ficial synthesis of sugars, oils, and starch.

Greater than all the wealth created by electricity in workshop
or laboratory are its aids to pure research. The chief physical
generalization of our time, the persistence of force, came into
view only when electricity was recognized as a phase of energy,
only when electrical means of measurement had become trust-
worthy. It is because men of absolutely disinterested spirit, like
Faraday and Henry, devoted themselves to ascertaining the laws
of electricity that we have to-day the telegraph, the telephone, and

WRY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 225

the electric furnace. " Before there can be applied science there
must be science to apply," and it is in enabling the investigator
to know Nature under a fresh aspect that electricity rises to its
highest office. As a case in point, take the bolometer of Prof. S.
P. Langley : its delicate wire, sensitive to one millionth of a de-
gree centigrade, is moved by minute steps through the invisible
areas of the solar spectrum ; each indication of temperature,
automatically photographed, comes out in a series of dark and
bright lines. This process, repeated with each chemical element,
promises that one day the physicist will have before him a full
or tolerably complete map of every distinctive spectrum. He
can then ask. Given such and such vibrations, how is the body
constituted that sent them forth ? — much as a musician might try
to reason from the tone and timbre of a note to the structure of
the instrument which uttered the note. In further uses of pho-
tography the physicist, by means of instantaneous contacts, is
beginning to find out what goes on in the critical moments when
chemical collisions in the voltaic cell are gliding into electric
waves — an inquiry which bears on the prime question of electric
art, namely, how the chemical energy contained in coal can be
transformed into a current without the enormous levies imposed
by the steam engine. Hertz, in the purely scientific excursion by
which he generated electric waves intermediate in length be-
tween those of sound and light, came upon a discovery of pro-
found interest — that, given its appropriate ray, every substance
whatever offers it a free and open path. It remained for Prof.
Rontgen to complete the proof that certain of these rays, while
refusing obedience to the laws of light, can, nevertheless, exert
photographic power. His apparatus combines in the happiest way
the utmost resources of both the electrician and the photogra-
pher ; at a vital point it employs the singular capacity for fluores-
cence whereby the compounds of barium and other substances
can convert to visibility an otherwise invisible image. Apart
from such a triumph as this, rich in possibilities for art and
science, the common routine of ascertaining electrical constants
has high value in research ; to know the conductivity, polariza-
bility, and other electrical properties of matter is to peer at its
architecture through new windows ; to detect many of the links
which bind atom to atom, molecule to molecule. A new orches-
tration of inquiry is possible through the instruments created by
the electrician, through the advances in method which these in-
struments suggest. Hence to-day a surround is in progress which
may early in the twentieth century make atom and molecule as
obedient to the chemist as brick and stone are to the builder now.
But, however much new knowledge may do with electricity,
some of its best work is already done. It is not likely in the f u-

226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ture to perform a greater feat tLau placing all mankind within
earshot of each other. Were electricity unmastered, there could
be no democratic government of the' United States. To-day the
drama of national affairs is more directly in the view of every
American citizen than a century ago the public business of Dela-
ware could be to the men of that little State. Railroads, with all
they mean for civilization, could not have been born without the
telegraph; and railroads and telegraphs are the sinews and
nerves of national life, the prime agencies in welding together
the diverse and widely separated States and Territories of the
Union. A Boston merchant builds a cotton mill in Georgia ; an
Illinois manufacturer establishes an agency in Seattle ; the tele-
graph, which informs them day by day how their investments
prosper, tells idle men where they can find work, where work
can seek idle men. Chicago is laid in ashes, Charleston topples
in earthquake, Johnstown is whelmed in flood, and instantly a
continent rises to their relief. And benefits denied to charity
issue in the strictly commercial services of the telegraph. Its
click has exorcised the fiend of famine from every quarter of the
civilized globe ; for, with its finger on the throttle-valves of loco-
motive and steamship, no longer does food rot here when thou-
sands lack bread there ; the markets of the world are merged, and
that one great market reaches every man^s door.

In a less conspicuous way electricity works equal good. Its
motor, freeing us from the horse^s deliberate pace, is spreading
out our towns and cities into their adjoining country ; field and
garden compete with narrow streets ; the sunny cottage is in
rivalry with the odious tenement house. Electric lines, at first
suburban, are now fast linking town to town and city to city,
while as auxiliaries to steam railroads they place sparsely settled
districts in the arterial current of the world. Great as are the
blessings which electricity brings to country folk, it stands ready
to bestow yet more in the hives of population. Until a few dec-
ades ago the water supply of cities was drawn in part from wells
here and there, from lines of piping laid in favored areas, and al-
ways insufficient. To-day a supply such as that of New York is
abundant and cheap because it enters every house. Let a single
electrical service enjoy a like privilege, and it can offer a current
which is heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power at a wage
lower than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the
electrical engineer is a political reformer of high degree. All
that he asks is that this municipal electricity shall be under con-
trol at once competent and honest. Let us hope that his plea,
joined to others as weighty, may quicken the spirit of civic right-
eousness so that some of the richest fruits ever borne in the gar-
den of art and science may not be proffered in vain.

WHY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS. 227

This rapid survey of what electricity has done and yet may
do has shown it the creator of a thousand material resources:
the corner stone of physical generalization; a stimulus to the
moral sense, by making what otherwise were an empty wish
rise to sympathy fulfilled ; while, in more closely binding up the
good of the bee with the welfare of the hive, it is an educator
and confirmer of every social bond. Are we not, then, justified
in holding electricity to be a multiplier of faculty and insight,
a means of dignifying mind and soul, unexampled since man first
kindled fire and rejoiced ?

And the advances due to electricity have significance still
unexhausted. It was in 1800, on the threshold of the nineteenth
century, that Yolta devised the first battery — the crown of cups.
In less than a hundred years the force then liberated has vitally
interwoven itself with every art and science, with fruitage not
to be imagined even by men of the stature of Watt, Lavoisier,
or Humboldt. Compare this rapidity of conquest with the slow
adaptation, through age after age, of fire to cooking, smelting,
tempering. Yet it was partly because the use of fire had drawn
out man's intelligence that he was ready so quickly to seize
upon electricity and subdue it. The principle of permutation,
illustrated in both victories, interprets not only the vast expan-
sion of human empire won by a new weapon of ^ prime power, it
explains also why these accessions are brought under rule with
ever-accelerated pace. Every new talent but clears the way for
the talents newer still which are born from it.

And a fresh mode of mastery entails other consequences well
worthy of remark. Suppose two contending armies face each
other, fairly matched, except that one has the telegraph and the
other has not. Which will win ? In less striking fashion, but
still decisively, must every factor of prime rank as it made its
appearance have told in the battles of early man. Let us turn
from discovery and invention to some consideration of the primi-
tive discoverer and inventor, and try to recall the epoch when his
inarticulate cries were becoming the rudiments of speech. Let
us imagine him a hunter returning to his fellows from a solitary
expedition. He tells that he saw a deer quench its thirst at a
brookside, but found the animal too fleet for his arrow ; how he
heard in the distance a bear's fierce growl, and fortunately came
upon a cave where he took refuge till the brute had passed.
Such a faculty of communication as this, even in its beginnings,
would give a tribe enjoying it an incalculable advantage over its
unspeaking kin. Speech makes the distant as if present in space,
makes the past as if present in time ; it is the first and most
signal step, therefore, by which man conquers both space and
time. No elephant or dog, however intelligent, has means to tell

228 POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY,

what lie saw here an hour ago, or what is to be found there
beyond the range of the eye. Because in early times speech thus
placed the experience of one man at the service of other men,
the possessors of this matchless power could, if they chose, exert
deadly rivalry against their mute next of kin, and either anni-
hilate them, or banish them to sterile wilds, or degrade them to
servitude. What is probable here is probable in other fields of
struggle, and we have a hint as to why connecting links in the
plexus of organic life are either very rare or wholly lacking.
The introduction of a radically new weapon, or tool, would so re-
double the strength of the creature able to grasp and wield it
that its war on competitors would end so soon as to leave scarcely
a relic on the field.

Speech led to another great achievement when it called to its
aid the carved or painted symbol, the word-picture, and at last
the alphabet. Then the recorder, the priest, the teacher, was no
longer a mere speaker who had to be present when he told his
story. Ages after his death, his annals, prophecies, parables, re-
mained to be read, to echo his voice — and this perhaps on shores
many leagues remote from the penman's home or grave. Knowl-
edge could now be accumulated as never before, for every man
could begin where the experience of his predecessors had left off.
The culmination of this mighty art issues to-day in two wonderful
instruments — the phonograph, which bids the spoken word record
and repeat itself with all its characteristic tones; the camera,
which instantly limns all the eye can see and more, which prints
much that the tongue and the pen must leave unsaid. In a mas-
terly discussion of the origin of languages and the antiquity of
speaking man, Mr. Horatio Hale concludes that the acquirement
of speech dates back but eight to ten thousand years. He credits
speech and writing with the sudden and wonderful flowering of
human genius which developed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia,
Northern India, and China a high and varied civilization, whose
memorials, in their works of art and literature, astonish us at this
day, and in some respects defy imitation.*

To paint and to write implies a free and supple hand ; gesture,
upon which philologists are substantially agreed that primitive
speech largely depended, requires the like freedom of hand and
arm. Hence, before man could paint, or write, or even gesticu-
late, it was necessary that he should be erect. Man's assumption
of the upright attitude marks one of the supreme stages of his
progress. What have since become arms and hands, relieved
from tasks of locomotion, were able to come into contact with

* Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buffalo,
1886, p. 315.

WHY PROGRESS IS BY LEAPS, 229

things and know them more fully and exactly than ever before.
The brain, informed and stimulated by its new harvest of impres-
sions, imagined fresh feats of skill and directed them. The rude
stone, lifted from the ground and used as a hammer, was gradually
shaped as an axe, a scraper, a chisel, an arrowhead. There lay
the germ of the ingenuity which blossoms to-day in the locomo-
tive and steamship, in the observatory camera which multiplies
the known universe a thousand times, which in the telephone
catches the echo of storms sweeping the solar disk. As with the
faculty of speech, so doubtless also when the hand began to handle
and to tell the brain what it could feel and do. A gain so preg-
nant as dexterity, even in its feeble inception, would come as an
irresistible wedge between the fighters and the workers who had
it and their fellows who missed it by however little.

The permutative tendency which we are tracing has dug other
gulfs than those which part man and anthropoid. Let us glance
for a moment at creatures far beneath mankind in the scale of
being. Birds are clearly derived from reptiles, but how far apart
to-day are the bird and the reptile ! It was the power of flight,
with all that it involved in transforming every organ of the body,
in revolutionizing habit, that stood at the parting of the ways.
Even in its beginnings this power would promote escape from
enemies, the procuring food in places otherwise inaccessible. In
the process of natural selection here would be the faculty valu-
able beyond any other, and therefore first seized in its favoring
variations. Flight beyond any other capacity would thus be
developed and increased as one generation succeeded another,
until at last the flier could disregard its unwinged enemies, seek
food on steepest crag or farthest islet, and there lay its eggs and
nurse its brood with none to make it afraid. As far as the fossil
record has been pieced together, it amply warrants this view of the
early history of the avian race.

Take passage now to a widely different realm and note the per-
mutative effect wrought when insects supplant the winds at the
business of fertilizing flowers. Nectar secreted near the pollen of
a plant attracts flies and moths brushed by this pollen ; they sail
away to other flowers and tie a marriage knot with an effective-
ness impossible to the aimless air. The consequence is that sim-
ply through such woolliness of vesture as enables them to catch
dust on their clothes, insects of narrowest intelligence are un-
knowingly the painters, sculptors, and perfumers of unnumbered
varieties of blossoms. And indefinitely prior to either flower or
reptile was the day when the earth, a fiery cloud, had come to the
critical point, in its gradual loss of heat, where atom stood almost
within the attractive range of atom, when the latent combinability
of matter we call chemical was ready to be born. Was not the

230

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

releasing touch of cold a permutator of highest degree ? Ifc made
every other possible, it forged the first link in the chain of forces,
vital, mental, moral, in the life of earth and man.

What is here indicated in outline was suggested by the writer
in the Popular Science Monthly for June, 1876. He has since
gathered from men of mark in diverse walks of science data from
which inferences such as those here set forth may be deduced
in ample detail. These data he expects in due time to offer to
the public, together with consideration of the facts which mask
or qualify the permutative principle in evolution — a principle
which accounts for the leaps of progress, human and general, for
the accelerations of that progress, and for there being chapters
missing in its story.

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION.

By Prof. WILLIAM EOMAINE NEWBOLD.

IN my two preceding articles (March and April numbers) I have
discussed what may be termed categorical suggestions and
other closely related topics. I shall now take up certain other
forms of suggestion.

From the conception of suggestibility it follows that any
mental state, however initiated, tends to produce certain results.
The most familiar method of initiation is through the instrumen-
tality of language, but there are other methods. What is known
as waxlike catalepsy, for example {flexibilitas cerea), is merely a
form of suggestibility to motor impressions. When I take the
arm of a cataleptic patient and bend it into a given position it re-
mains fixed v/here I put it. In bending it I produce certain sensa-
tions, approximately those of a movement ; among the possible
results of such sensations is the production of the movement in
question, and in the patient^s disordinated condition this is the only
apparent and perhaps the only actual result. It is also true that
a pseudo-catalepsy may be found in less complete forms of dis-
ordination, in which the movement which I impress upon the arm
is felt by the drowsy upper consciousness and accepted as indica-
tive of a command. I saw some years ago a very curious illustra-
tion of an analogous motor suggestion in the case of a man who
was subject to hystero-epileptic convulsions. Dr. B had hypno-
tized him standing ; he then fell backward, and we allowed him to
recline with his heels on the floor and his back flat upon the bed.
This brought him into a very uncomfortable position, in which
his head was bent backward toward his heels. He at once began
to show signs of a convulsion, and, in spite of our imperative sug-
gestions to keep quiet, grew worse every second. Then it oc-

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION 231

curred to me that the attitude in which he was lying was one of
the stages through which the patient regularly passes in the
course of the hystero-epileptic convulsion — it is known as the
opisthotonic position — and that the convulsion might be due to
the tactile-motor suggestion given by the feeling of the attitude.
As soon as we put him in a sitting posture the symptoms of con-
vulsion disappeared.

The mode in which the suggestion is initiated is not essential
to the theory, biit it is often important in practice. Commands
are usually realized more readily than mere suggestions, but the
latter are sometimes the more efficacious. In general, the phenom-
ena differ in degree only and not in kind from those of normal
life, and just as a categorical suggestion may be realized at once,
so may a hypothetical suggestion be realized under the circum-
stances indicated by the operator. Most of the illustrations which
I have been using belonged to the former type ; to the latter be-
long the still more curious phenomena of deferred and posthyp-
notic suggestion.

Simple deferred suggestions executed during the state of
heightened suggestibility may be dismissed with a mere mention.
The really interesting cases are those in which the execution of
the suggestion given during a suggestible condition is deferred
until the patient has returned to the normal state. As the phe-
nomena have been studied chiefly in hypnotic states, artificially
produced deferred suggestions of this kind are termed posthyp-
notic suggestions.

Analogous phenomena are found, however, as we would expect,
under other circumstances. We are familiar, for example, with
the effect sometimes wrought by dreams upon the waking life of
the succeeding day. A happy mood or its reverse can often be
traced to the effect of some vivid dream, and doubtless many of
the mornings on which we " get out of bed on the wrong side "
have been preceded by nights filled with disagreeable but forgot-
ten dreams. M , of whom I have before spoken, has given me

an excellent illustration of the possible after-effect of a forgotten
dream. He once told me that he had been for some months tor-
mented by an apparition. He would wake in the middle of the
night to find a hideous man beside him. The man held in his
hand a knife, looked at him threateningly, then slowly moved
backward, and, when at a considerable distance, vanished. Occa-
sionally he saw in the place of the man a young woman with a
black shawl wrapped about her head. He knew that these figures
were unreal and had no belief in ghosts, yet they always left him
terrified and suffering from nervous shock. I questioned him
closely, but could get no clew to their origin. He had never had a
dream in which they figured, and had never heard any story that

232 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

could have suggested them, save that he had heard when a child
of a young woman having been strangled by her lover on the site
of his father's barn, out in the country. There was no knife in
that case, however, and he was sure it could have nothing to do
with the apparitions. I then hypnotized him, and he at once told
me the whole story. I had to question him somewhat, but I was
keenly alive to the danger of asking leading questions, and am
convinced that the story was told spontaneously. The girl had
had her throat cut, he said ; a coachman had claimed to have seen
her ghost in the barn and had told him of it. After that, four or
five coachmen in succession declared they had seen the ghost, and

left the employ of M 's father rather than sleep in the barn.

M was greatly frightened and began dreaming about it. After

the lapse of some years the dreams ceased, but about two years
ago they began again. He never saw the apparition, he said, ex-
cept when he had been dreaming about the murder, I told him he
would never have such a dream again and would never see the
ghosts. That was in August last, and in November he told me he
had had no recurrence. I have not seen him recently. Another

most interesting fact in this case was that, although M had

totally forgotten all this in his waking state before being hyp-
notized, and although after being awakened he had not the slight-
est recollection of anything that passed while he was hj^pnotized,
he did then remember most of the facts he had just been talking
of and told me them again, expressing surprise that he could not
do it when I first asked him.

Now, here we have a true posthypnotic phenomenon. It is
precisely parallel to those cases in which the hypnotized patient
is told that at a certain time and place, while awake, he will see
John Smith, who will say this or that to him ; the time comes ; a
phantom John Smith walks into the room and does what is ex-
pected of him. But the state which in M 's case survived the

shock of waking was not a suggested state in the common sense,
nor was it revived upon the occurrence of some appointed condi-
tion or signal. The story is of interest as showing how purely
arbitrary is the line which some writers would draw between the
" normal " and " abnormal " in this field.

There are three especially interesting problems connected with
posthypnotic suggestion : 1. What is the relation of the suggestion
to the signal ? 2. In what form does the suggestion exist between
the time of awaking, when it is usually unknown to the upper
consciousness, and the moment of execution ? 3. What is its rela-
tion to the upper consciousness in which it reappears ?

To the first of these questions no very clear answer can be
given. We can say that the suggestion is " associated " with the
signal, and it of course is, but that does not explain to my mind

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION 233

the reason why this dynamic state remains inactive iintil the
signal sets it in operation. In some few cases, when a sensory
signal is to call a posthypnotic hallucination into the upper con-
sciousness, we can conceive of the sensory stimulus as the spark
necessary to explode the stored-up energy of the cells and raise
the idea to sensory level— make a thought seem vivid, intense, and
external like a perception. But this conception is of limited ap-
plication. The signal need not be sensory at all. It may even be a
process of the higher orders, such as a perception of resemblance
or difference, or even may consist in the lapse of time. I gave

T some numbers to multiply and told him that if the figures

1 and 4 happened to stand side by side in the course of his work he
would tear the whole up. When the numbers appeared in that
relation he at once noted it and carefully tore the paper to tiny
fragments. It is not easy to conceive of the suggestion as held in
check by the mere lack of such a complex process of reasoning as
this. Such difficulties I can not, I confess, explain away, and as
long as they remain unexplained, the theory with which they are
connected can not be accepted as final. It is to avoid them that
some writers have introduced the conception of a subconscious
personality which hears, remembers, and obeys without reference
to the condition of the upper consciousness, and this brings me to
the second question.

We usually conceive of our potential memories as existing in
the form of a functional predisposition on the part of the nervous
mechanism, and as having no actual mental existence while we
are not thinking of them. At the first glance one would suppose
that the posthypnotic suggestion exists in the same form. But
cases have been reported which seem to prove that sometimes
at least the posthypnotic suggestion enjoys an actual existence,
even while the upper consciousness knows nothing of it. Thus Mr.

Gurney says of P 11, one of his patients : " He was told on March

26th that on the one hundred and twenty-third day from then he
was to put a blank sheet of paper in an envelope and send it to a
friend of mine whose name and residence he knew but whom he
had never seen. The subject was not referred to again until April
18th, when he was hypnotized and asked whether he remembered
anything in connection with this gentleman. He at once repeated
the order and said : ' This is the twenty-third day ; a hundred

more.' S . * How do you know ? Have you noted each day ? '

P ^11. ' No, it seems natural.^ S . ' Have you thought of it

often ? ' P 11. ' It generally strikes me in the morning early.

Something seems to say to me. You've got to count.' S . ' Does

that happen every day ? ' P 11. * No, not every day, perhaps

more like every other day. It goes from my mind ; I never think
of it during the day. I only know it's got to be done.' "

TOL. ILIX. — 20

234 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Here it is conceivable that tlie counting was merely forgotten
and not strictly subconscious ; but sometimes the suggestion can
be elicited by automatic writing while the upper consciousness is
apparently quite normal and entirely unaware of what is written.
At other times the subconscious state seems to effect partial union

with the upper consciousness. Thus P 11 was told " The baking

trade is failing." Next day while awake he put his hand upon
the planchette and the instrument slowly produced the words
" The baking trade is failing." While the writing was proceeding
he said that some one seemed to be " hallooing in his ear some-
thing, he could not make out what, about the baking trade." An-
other of Mr. Gurney's patients, when told to see his wife, thought
he saw a face in an air ball. It was dim and soon faded away.
Later, the suggestion having been repeated, he said he " saw a lot
of faces floating before his eyes " that night. Such cases are pre-
cious as throwing light upon the origin of the " spirit voices "
and " visions " which many automatists hear and see.

Mr. Gurney also got interesting evidence of subconscious time

reckoning. The patient, W s, was " told in trance on March 19th

that, when he came next, he was to poke the fire six minutes after
his arrival, and that when he wrote he was to record the number
of minutes that had run. On March 21st he arrived at 6.57i, and
I set him down to the planchette in about a minute. The writing,
which it took about a minute to produce, was ' 2, — Si more.' . . .
He was told on March 23d that a quarter of an hour after his
next arrival he was to open and shut the door of the room and
note the course of time as usual. The next time he arrived at
7.6i. He was set to the planchette at 7.19. The writing, pro-
duced at once, was ' 13 minutes and 2 more.' " At 7.22 he exe-
cuted the suggestion.

Analogous phenomena in normal life are familiar. Many per-
sons, of whom I am one, by giving themselves a suggestion upon
going to bed to wake at a given time next morning, can make
themselves wake at or about the time appointed. When the time
is fixed by habit there is still more striking evidence of subcon-
scious processes. For several months it was my practice to get
up at 6.50 every morning. Not only did I usually wake about
that time, but I would also often, after lying awake for some time,
get out of bed suddenly without any clear intention of doing so
or thought of the time. While busily thinking of something else
I would suddenly find myself out of bed and beginning to dress ;
then, looking at my watch, I would find it was within a few min-
utes of 6.50. There was no striking clock within my hearing or
other means of consciously reckoning time, as also there was not
n these experiments of Mr. Gurney's.

It is upon such phenomena that the doctrine of subconscious

I

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION, 235

mental states rests, and to my mind the evidence for their exist-
ence is strong. Yet I do not think that we are compelled to infer
that all posthypnotic suggestions exist actually nor yet that all
potential memories have an actual existence. For the present I
would rather regard the subconscious state as something to be ac-
cepted only when definite evidence of its existence is forthcoming.
Nor would I ascribe these states in all cases to a secondary or sub-
conscious " self," although I regard the existence of such a self
distinct from the upper self as in some cases probable. Subcon-
scious states when they do exist are probably like our dreams.

The emergence of the suggested state into the upper conscious-
ness sometimes seems to have no appreciable effect upon its con-
stitution. The new element presents itself to the patient much as
other elements do, and may meet with opposition from those al-
ready existing as would any other. Thus one of Mr. Gurney's
patients " was told to bring the spoons out of the dining room into
the drawing room, which was properly the maid's duty. She was
left to wake in the dining room, and presently followed the rest
of the party into the drawing room, saying, ' I know what you
want me to do, but I don^t mean to do it; it is too absurd.'" She
had no recollection of what she had been told, but when the irra-
tional impulse presented itself she suspected its origin and refused
to obey it.

At other times, by a species of illusion of memory, the sug-
gested impulse is referred by the patient to some consideration
from which it might very well have sprung. A friend of mine
hypnotized a young girl, and told her that when he coughed three
times she would say good-night to the assembled company and
leave the room as if going to bed, but at the foot of the stairs she
would turn back. She did it punctually. When we asked her
next day why she changed her mind, she said that as she got to
the foot of the stairs it occurred to her how rude it was of her to
go to bed while the callers were still there, so she turned back.

When a posthypnotic hallucination presents itself to an ap-
proximately normal consciousness of this kind it is received with
appropriate emotions, and the same is true of negative hallucina-
tions. X was told that after waking he would be blind to me.

I then took a pencil and, holding it by one end, wagged it to and
fro. The patient stared at it with a puzzled and somewhat frigh-
tened air. " There ain't nothing to hold it," he said, " but it stands
right up and wags. Guess it must be hung by a string to the
ceiling." But a diligent search revealed no string. I then grasped
the pencil by two fingers about the middle. He became still more
troubled, stooped as near the pencil as he could and examined it
closely. " Somehow I can't see the middle of it," he said. " There
are just two ends and no middle." It is dangerous to give a

236 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

patient of this type an alarming suggestion, for the terror which
it inspires may do more mischief than the operator can readily
undo.

Sometimes while the upper consciousness is apparently unaf-
fected it will be found that the performance of the suggestion is
either forgotten or entirely unnoticed. Prof. Janet says of his
patient Lucie : " She seemed at the moment quite normal, talked
and kept record well enough of the acts she performed spontane-
ously, but in the midst of all these normal acts she also performed
as if by distraction the acts commanded in sleep. Not only did
she forget them when performed like most subjects, but she did
not seem to be conscious of them the moment she did them. I tell
her to raise her arms over her head after waking. Scarcely is she
in her normal condition before she raises her arms above her head,
but she does not inconvenience herself thereby. She goes, comes,
talks, and all the while keeps her arms overhead. If asked what
her arms are doing, she is astonished at such a question and says :
' My hands are doing nothing at all ; they are like yours.' By
this method I make her put her fingers to her nose and walk
across the room. I command her to cry, and upon awaking she
actually sobs, but in the midst of her tears talks of the most cheer-
ful matters. The sobs over, there remains not a trace of her
grief ; indeed, she seems to have been unconscious of it."

These may be regarded as the extreme types, the posthypnotic
suggestion in the one case coalescing with the upper conscious-
ness, and in the other remaining absolutely dissociated from it.
There remains a third type in which the suggestion emerges into
the upper consciousness, but in so doing seems to disordinate it to
a greater or less degree, thus reducing the patient to a condition
analogous to that in which he was when the suggestion was
given.

The disturbance is often very slight and it is then not easy to
detect or define it. It may be limited to a transient look of ab-
straction, of vacancy, as if a cloud were passing over the mind.
What I have described as failure to coalesce may be conceived as
a form of interference in which the suggested state expels from
consciousness all inconsistent states without much affecting the
balance. At other times if one gives a suggestion the execution
of which takes some time, the patient will be found sensitive to
fresh suggestions while the first is being executed, or will be found
to recollect at that time previous states of somnambulism which
are forgotten in his normal condition and are again forgotten, to-
gether with the act just performed, a moment afterward. Some-
times the disturbance of the upper consciousness goes further and
results in complete disordination or " unconsciousness." I have
often seen this as the result of giving suggestions which were too

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMtNAL SUGGESTION, 237

difficult for the patient's already partly disordinated conscious-
ness to execute or were resisted by elements already present. A
good case of the latter type is quoted by Mr. Gurney from Prof.
Delboeuf . " He told the patient to straighten a crooked knitting
needle at a future moment when he foresaw that to do so would
necessitate drawing the needle out of the stocking and spoiling
the work. When the moment arrived she solved the difficulty by
going to sleep and dreaming that she straightened the needle.^' I

told T that he could not see two chairs, and then caused him to

walk into them. Asked what impeded his progress, he said " The
wall." When I showed him that could not be true, and insisted
upon his telling me what it was, he fell into a deep lethargy and
collapsed in a heap on the floor. He nearly always falls asleep
when told to execute any complicated suggestion. Patients who
pass into a secondary state during the execution of a suggestion
often manifest no more surprise at the most extraordinary hallu-
cinations than one usually feels when confronted with the marvels
of dreamland. T described in all detail how a cup of choco-
late, which was held by a person I had forbidden him to see, was
hanging in the air all alone, how the spoon was traveling around
in it quite of its own accord, but he seemed to find it entirely
natural. This is due to the fact that surprise is one of the ideal
emotions originated in the clash of inconsistent states. Here the
hallucination found no sensations or thoughts in the disordinated
state with which to clash.

The whole question as to the relation between the posthypnotic
suggestion and the normal consciousness is involved in much
obscurity, which is the more to be regretted when one considers
that upon it depends the solution of that other vexed question as
to whether suggestions can be used to further a criminal end.

To the best of my knowledge, no indubitable cases are on
record in which a person was impelled by posthypnotic sugges-
tion to the commission of a crime which he would not have
committed of his own motion, although there are a few cases re-
ported in which criminal assault was probably committed during
the hypnotic state. The evidence, therefore, is almost entirely
experimental.

It is clear that the control of the operator over the patient
during the hypnotic state is often almost unlimited, and un-
doubtedly might be used for the commission of crimes which
could be completed during the state without danger of detection
to the suggester. There are, however, not many crimes that could
so be committed. Signatures could be got by such means, but even
when got the suggester would often have difficulty in making use
of a signature which was not witnessed or which was repudiated
as a forgery by the man who was supposed to have written it.

238 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The possibilities of posthypnotic suggestion would seem at
first glance to open a wider field for criminal suggestion, but the
evidence does not, I think, justify much apprehension on that
score.

When the patient's consciousness is much disordinated by the
suggestion, he is usually unable to co-ordinate himself to his envi-
ronment, and is, of course, not fitted to do anything requiring
alert mental powers, much less a crime. When the suggested
idea expels inconsistent states the case is almost as bad. Prof.
Lidgeois dissolved a white powder in water and told Mme.

C , one of his patients, that it was arsenic. "I said to her:

'See M. D , he is thirsty, he is always wanting something

to drink ; you will offer him this.* * Yes, monsieur.' But D

asked a question which I had not foreseen ; he asked what was
in the glass proffered him. With a candor which set aside all

thought of simulation, Mme. C replied, 'It is arsenic.'"

Clearly it would not do to intrust to Mme. C the execution of

a suggested crime.

Again, when the emergence of the posthypnotic suggestion
does not affect the upper consciousness at all but coalesces with
it, it is apt, as I have already pointed out, to meet with resistance
from the patient's habitual principles of conduct. Dr. De Jong
reports that a little Jewish girl of ten, whom he found very sug-
gestible, repeatedly obeyed his posthypnotic suggestion that she
should steal a piece of money left lying upon the table, but one
Saturday she disobeyed. When asked why, she said : " It is the
Sabbath day ; I can not touch money." Another of his patients
performed all manner of make-believe crimes at his suggestion,
but, when he suggested something the performance of which
would have shocked her modesty, she refused, and she refused
also to betray a trivial secret which he had got his cook to con-
fide to her.

When one contrasts cases of this sort (and they are common)
with the long series of "laboratory crimes" recorded in the
annals of hypnotic literature — murder committed with sugared
water, with a roll of newspaper, with an unloaded pistol, the
theft of purely imaginary objects, or of articles obviously the
property of the man who suggests that they be stolen, etc. — it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that for evidential purposes such
experiments are almost worthless. And in the few cases where
it seems probable that the patient has really committed what he
believes to be a crime, it is often not shown that the crime would
have been especially abhorrent to his normal self. This objection
attaches, I think, to one of the most striking cases on record,

recently reported by Prof. Li^beault. A certain Dr. X and

himself gave a young fellow of seventeen or eighteen years of

POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION. 239

age the following suggestion : " To-morrow, at 11.30, you will go

to call upon M. F . You will be received in his room and

will see upon the chimney-piece two statuettes ; you will carefully
possess yourself of them after talking of sundry things, and will
carry them off hidden under your clothes. But day after to-mor-
row you will repent of what you have done, and, seized with

remorse, will return the statuettes to M. F at about the same

time of day/' Then, just before Prof. Li^beault awakened the

patient. Dr. X said : " You will steal, you understand ; you will

steal.'' The suggestion was punctually executed. Two months
later the boy was arrested for the theft of an overcoat which he
took in a very stupid and obvious fashion, and upon his person
was found a written list of petty thefts recently committed,
among them being that of some visiting cards. Dr. Li^eault,

believing that the indeterminate suggestion given by Dr. X

was at the bottom of the whole matter, got a lawyer to undertake
the defense, and secured the diminution of the penalty to two
months' imprisonment. Four years later, when the boy came of
age. Prof. Lidbeault hypnotized him again, his parents not allow-
ing it while he was a minor. In the hypnotic state he claimed

that about the time he stole the overcoat " he had met Dr. X

in the street, had gone with him to a cafe, had been hypnotized
and told to steal watches, pocketbooks, gloves, etc." The theft
of the overcoat was specifically suggested. This case proves
that theft can be occasioned by suggestion, but it does not prove
that it could be successfully suggested to an honest and upright
patient. For aught that appears, the boy would have stolen if a
companion had put the idea in his head in his waking state.

A still better illustration is given by M. Focachon, which I
take from Prof. Lidgeois : J. D is a seamstress, aged twenty-
seven, nervous, not hysterical, not very intelligent, uneducated,
of recognized honesty. While hypnotized, M. Focachon suggested
to her that she should steal from the closet of one of her employ-
ers some cloth, should bring it to M. Focachon's house, and should

borrow the use of the sewing machine to make it up. " J. D

at first protested very vigorously, asked what I took her for, wept
and begged me to wake her, that she might no longer hear such
propositions, but quieting her little by little, minimizing the
importance of the theft, telling her it would never be known,
and playing upon her vanity, I finally got her to say she would
think about it." The suggestion was obeyed, but before she made
the goods up M. Focachon hypnotized her again, took it from
her, and abolished her recollection of the whole matter.

If such cases put it beyond question that suggestion may be
used for the performance of crime, they also, I think, make it
evident that the danger is not one of great magnitude. If there

240 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are in the community a few individuals who, although of good
natural disposition, are so weak that they can be used as passive
instruments for the performance of crimes, there are probably
very few of them ; those few are seldom known ; if known, they
will seldom fall into the hands of a person inclined to abuse their
weakness, and, if they do, the part played by the hypnotizer will
frequently be detected.

But if the dangers of criminal suggestion do not appear seri-
ous, there is a real danger connected with its possibility. The
plea of " emotional insanity " often adopted by sympathetic juries
is becoming somewhat timeworn, and in hypnotic suggestion
adroit lawyers may find an even more dangerous substitute.

Suppose, for example, that A is accused of a crime for which

no adequate motive can be shown. But B had a motive for

its commission ; B is acquainted with the phenomena of sug-
gestion, A is known to be extremely suggestible, and B

has had ample opportunity of influencing him. In such a case

no amount of evidence that A committed the crime could set

aside in my mind a " reasonable doubt " of A ^s guilt. The

occasional escape of a criminal on this pretext I would not regard
as a great matter, but the stigma which his acquittal would cast

upon B , a stigma not the less real because incapable of proof

or disproof, is a serious thing.

A similar line of reasoning has been used once at least with
what seem to me more happy results. On the 25th of January,

1888, a young married woman — Mme. G , the wife of a French

engineer living in Algiers, and said to be one of the most beauti-
ful women in the country — was found lying dead not far from
her home, with two bullets through her head. Near by lay a
man named Chambige, a friend of her husband's, seriously

wounded but living. Chambige claimed that Mme. G had

been in love with him and he with her, and that they had agreed,
in view of the hopelessness of their passion, to die together ; he
had shot her first and then himself. There was not a shred of evi-
dence to show that Mme. G had ever had more than a friendly

regard for Chambige, mingled perhaps with the pity a happy
woman feels for a lonely and disappointed man. To all appear-
ance she had always been a most loving and virtuous wife, with
no thought for anything but her husband and children. It was
proved that on the day of her death she had seemed as placid and
cheerful as usual, showing not a sign of mental perturbation;
that she was in the highest degree hypnotizable and suggestible,
and had frequently unwittingly hypnotized herself by looking
too long at a fixed point. It was also shown that Chambige had
been madly in love with her, that he probably was acquainted
with hypnotism, that he was a restless and unbalanced spirit

WOMAIi AND TEE BALLOT, 241

without religion and without morality. Prof. Li^geois, of the
Faculty of Law at Nancy, has published a study of the case, in
which he endeavors to show that Mme. G was in all prob-
ability innocent, that Chambige hypnotized her in the parlor of
her own home on the morning of the day of her murder, and then
lured her to ruin and death by a posthypnotic suggestion. No
one, I think, who is at all acquainted with the possibilities of
suggestion will deny that Prof. Liegeois's interpretation is within
the realm of possibility, and for my own part I am inclined to
regard it as more probable than the tale told by Chambige. If
the theory of suggestion had done no more than clear this young
wife's memory from the stain cast upon it by her murderer, it
would be worthy of serious consideration.

To sum up, I believe, with Prof. Delboeuf, that the danger
from criminal suggestions, although real, is not much greater
than that arising from criminal dreams. It is known that crimes
have been committed by somnambulists as the result of the
dreams which possess and control them, but we do not regard the
fact as a reasonable ground of apprehension. We can not lay too
much stress upon the fact that the phenomena of hypnotic sug-
gestion, strange as they appear to the uninitiated, find their near-
est normal analogues in those of sleep and dreams, and are sub-
ject to much the same limitations.

WOMAN AND THE BALLOT.

By ALICE B. TWEED i!-.

IF every man considered it a matter of conscience to give voice
in his vote to the feminine element in his household, it would
put another aspect upon the demand for woman suffrage. If,
after a family conclave, the husband, father, or brother quietly
pocketed his own conflicting opinion, sallied forth and supported
the measures favored by the home majority, what right-minded
woman could complain ? It would be merely an extension of the
main principle of republican government. Only those women
without male relatives would be unrepresented, and for them spe-
cial provision could be made.

This hypothetical condition, however, is so far from fact that
it sounds facetious, and the picture of a household wherein a gen-
tle-minded man revises his sentiments to adequately set forth the
contrary views of his womankind seems altogether Utopian, yet
such a situation is one in which it might be justly claimed that
men were the actual political representatives of women.

Some men there are, though rarissimcz aves, fair enough to

242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acknowledge that woman ought to be represented in this fashion,
or else allowed to deposit a ballot for herself. The proposition of
woman suffrage alone does not trouble them, but they stumble
over the corollaries of political life and officeholding, and, rightly
judging that the trio are logically involved and claimed by suf-
fragists, they demur at the result or reject all together.

Political avocations seem to them utterly alien to the womanly
nature, or at least to what they know of it ; and since their concep-
tion of this elusive quality is undoubtedly founded on the particu-
lar instances which have fallen within their experience, it would
be useless to oppose it with a flurry of words. One of their num-
ber, however, in a paper on The Political Rights and Duties of
Woman, is explicit, and furnishes us with several statements which
may be debated. To the performance of political functions by
women, he holds there is " a serious natural impediment " that
" four fifths of the women all the world over, between the ages of
twenty and sixty, are occupied with paramount domestic obliga-
tions incompatible with public service." " Under this disability
of Nature, or closely related to it, all the objections to the exercise
of political functions by women may be classed, so that no other
objection need be considered."

It is no longer, then, a vaporous theory that confronts us, but
an array of questionable facts. The condition of four fifths of
the women " all the world over " is certainly beside the issue. We
have no reliable statistics regarding them, and we are not at pres-
ent concerned with their political disabilities. The ballot is de-
manded only for the women of civilized communities, where the
right of suffrage is already possessed by men, and the question is
immediately pertinent to those in the United States. Here statis-
tics are available, and in New York State they run as follows :

Women between the ages of nineteen and sixty-five.

Total number 1,707,655

Married women 1,244,291

Mothers * 1,238,070

Mothers disqualified for public service 550,252

Eligible women 1,157,403

= 67 per cent of the whole.

Comparing men, we find certain classes among them ineligible
to political office by reason of their professional or business duties,
yet disfranchisement of their sex on that account has never been
considered. Priests and ministers of the gospel, even if devoting
some time to politics, could not give to public office " that entirety

* The general proportion of mothers among married women is ninety-five per cent. Of
these, the maximum number disqualified would be four ninths.

A

WOMAJ}^ AND THE BALLOT, 243

of energy which an official oath exacts " without disregarding the
spiritual welfare of their flocks ; and if they are true pastors, it
would not be amiss to compare them in the multiplicity of their
cares to the mothers of young families. Physicians in active
practice can not well be judges or sheriffs without neglecting the
vocation for which they are especially fitted. Scientific men en-
gaged in original research are not expected to abandon their
laboratories, where they may be on the eve of bringing forth the
fruit of lives wedded to patient observation, even if a mistaken
populace should nominate them for mayors or Congressmen. Man-
ufacturers and business men have even been known to decline
senatorial honors, since these conflicted with the responsibilities
of their callings.

If a count could be made of all these men who, for various
reasons, will not accept political candidacy, it might be found to
equal in number the mothers who are disqualified for office-
holding.

It is to be observed that at any given time only a minority of
mothers are even thus conditioned. That four fifths of woman-
kind between the ages of twenty and sixty are ineligible for
public office proves thus to be an exaggeration.

Planted upon this astounding proposition, our antisuffragist
then proceeds to discuss the complications that may arise if
women enter upon political life. While they attend committee
meetings, the scarlet fever may invade the nursery. If they en-
gage in jury duty, the husband, fretted with financial cares, will
fail to find sympathy at home.

It may be presumed that women with young children will not
generally accept candidacy for public office ; but should they in
some cases think best to do so, such contingencies are not unlike
those that occur outside of political life. A wife is called to the
bedside of a dying mother, one thousand miles away. She leares
her children ; the measles breaks out among them, and the father,
although an inexperienced man, nurses the flock back to health.
Instances are not wanting in which men have wrestled victori-
ously also with other diseases, so that a great gloom need not
settle down upon mankind at the prospect of a mother's occa-
sional attendance upon a committee meeting.

The dearth of sympathy at home is no matter for jesting. No
doubt thousands of women, in times of anxiety, have gone entirely
unconsoled while their husbands were jurymen. If men have a
taste of this experience, where is the injustice ?

Not very relevantly our opponent breaks in here with the as-
sertion that " the suffrage is a question of readjusting the occupa-
tions of men and women as established by all civilized and unciv-
ilized people." As the occupations of men and women vary with

244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the state of civilization and the industrial development of a
country, this generalization is valueless. The employments of
men and women also depend upon the condition of the nation,
whether militant or peaceful, and in regard to certain kinds of
work no universal rule can be made. Women act as horse-car
conductors in South America ; Chinamen prefer the laundry in
the United States ; while in East Central Africa men insist upon
sewing their own and their wives' garments, leaving the women
to build the houses and hoe the corn. The modern readjustment
of vocation in our midst arises, as it has been pointed out, from
the increased leisure afforded women by the introduction of
machinery. It is a wonderful evolution for woman, proceeding
as noiselessly as the spinning of countless cocoons, liberating
many who would have grubbed a hundred years ago to try their
wings to-day if they will.

The next statement volleyed at us is very like an explosive
used by Mrs. Lynn Linton in one of her harangues against
women.* " The political disability is one irrevocably connected
with that very office and raison d'etre which called woman into
existence."

Despite our advancement in science it seems next to impossible
to extricate some minds from the mire of tradition. Brushing
biology and common sense aside, these primitive souls continue to
regard woman as the mythical rib of Adam. Those of us who
have progressed beyond this dogma look upon it just as flatly
contradictory to Nature as the biblical view of the earth as a
plane. Woman's sexual life is shorter than that of man, her in-
dividual life longer. Therefore, if either was " called into exist-
ence " for the office of parenthood, it was obviously the man, not
the woman. From a biological point of view the functions of
life are two — nutrition and reproduction ; and there is as much
sense in saying that nutrition is the reason of man's existence as
to state that motherhood — if that be " the office " meant — is the
" raison d'etre " for women.

As for us, we frankly confess we do not know anything about
" reasons of being " or causes of existence. If Mrs. Lynn Linton,
Mr. Talbot, et al., have been taken into the creative confidence,
no doubt they have interesting revelations to offer the world !

Our antisuffragist, not being quite content with delving into
prehistoric purposes, next hazards a prophecy of the feminine
officeholder. As wives and mothers are, according to his premises,
ineligible, only " those who have made shipwreck of their domes-
tic ventures,'' the forlorn and dedassees, will pose as nominees.

* The Wild Women as Politicians. Mrs. E. Lynn Linton. Nineteenth Century, July,
1891.

WOMA]}^ AND THE BALLOT, 245

He provides, however, " a contin gent disability/' that of getting
married, which may overtake these. As our prophet waxes elo-
quent over matrimony he forgets what manner of woman he has
pictured as a politician, and tells us " only intelligent and agree-
able women will be popular, and only popular women would be
candidates and elected." The forlorn and declassee woman is meta-
morphosed into " the brilliant, educated, and accomplished lady
stump speaker," and when she marries, what can be left for the
suffragists ?

Having thus disposed of the phantasmagoria of his creation,
he asks two momentous questions :

1. What wrongs are there affecting society which the women's
vote will set right ?

2. What oppression does woman suffer at the hands of man
which she must rise in her might to redress ?

I am not aware that woman suffrage is proposed as a panacea
for social evils, or that it will usher in a millennial condition.
Man would be disfranchised if such requirement was made of his
vote. Legislation does not beget character, and man is not made
temperate and pure by law. Stringent laws, however, are needed
to prevent various evils and to make certain offenses punishable.
Women are quick to recognize vicious tendencies that men with a
greed for money-getting often overlook. The work of Mrs. Faw-
cett in England, and of many earnest women in the United States,
shows what good would accrue to society if women helped to
frame the laws. •

Our opponent does not pause to consider whether woman's
vote would be beneficial or not to the community, but spends his
full strength in fortifying the second query. "The woman's
grievance against man, what is it ? " he asks. " The moment you
attempt to inflate its emptiness . . . you are dealing with hysteric
fancies rather than hard facts. . . . Woman has no grievance
against man. . . . Cruel Nature has committed an offense against
woman."

English law is more nearly defined as " a hard fact " than as
"a hysteric fancy," and English law contains a long "bill of
grievances " which woman may publish against man.* True, in
this land of boasted freedom most of these laws have been re-
pealed, many others are a dead letter, and still others have been
enacted that favor woman. These changes have been brought
about by the growth of the sense of justice, but also directly
through the efforts of women agitators who have pleaded and
written against decrees of oppression. These writings and argu-
ments are a matter of record, and they antedate all betterment of

• * John Stuart Mill. Subjection of Woman, pp. 66-58.

246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the laws relating to women. Without them we do not know
when "man^s own sense of equity and right" would have im-
pelled him to annul the obnoxious statutes. Even here in New
York we come occasionally upon instances which betray the
defects of a masculine code ; * while in the civilized countries of
Europe the laws generally discriminate in man's favor.

Outside of unjust enactments, the former subjection of woman
is stamped on our customs, our literature, and our language. It
is hardly possible for any one to investigate the origin of many of
our conventionalities, titles, terms of obloquy, without coming
unexpectedly upon proof of man's injustice to woman.

It is not intended to reproach the present generation of men
for these or any other sins of their forefathers, as I hold all an-
tagonism of the sexes as unnatural and vicious. Had women pos-
sessed the physical force, I think it very likely they would have
acted as badly as their male ancestors. Yet it is instructive to
note the tendencies and results of abuse of power, and an exclu-
sive manhood suffrage is in this age and country a retention of
power unwarranted by reason.

In primeval society, our antisuff ragist allows that " the male
and female were more nearly balanced in what each was called
upon to endure." He adds that, although civilization has im-
proved the lot of man, it has not " redeemed woman from the
primitive sufferings by which she consecrated her motherhood."
As to what sufferings primitive woman had I do not feel quite
sure, but can agree that civilization has not yet accomplished a
physical redemption for woman, although it is now alive to the
fact that she has a physique to be developed. On the contrary, it
has hitherto distorted her and artificially increased her weakness
under the pretense of differentiating her from man. Her own stu-
pidity and vanity are occasionally at fault, but man is not guilt-
less, and if another distinct grievance is wished for, it is here.
Nature is not cruel; according to the words of the old hymn,
" only man is vile." Let us say instead, man is a blunderer.

Our opponent reaches at length his principal tenet: women
are a privileged class. Their privileges consist not in the minor
courtesies of life, but in various immunities and exemptions
which are " a generous attempt on the part of men to make for
their mates and yoke-fellows an easier pathway through a rugged
world. . . . Having in the right of his strength the opportunity to
determine the customs of society, he has exempted his mate from

* A woman appointed administratrix refused to pay an exorbitant bill. Her arrest for
contempt of court resulted in the death of her babe. The surrogate said it was a case of
great injustice, but the code made it mandatory upon him to issue the order (New York
Times, June 11, 1890).

WOMAJV AND THE BALLOT, 247

all those vocations that expose to premature death or great phys-
ical suffering." An inventory of these exemptions follows :

1. From the perils, wounds, and deaths incident to war.

2. From all kinds of labor dangerous to life or exposing to
hardship and privation.

3. From the care of earning her livelihood and that of her
offspring.

One is at first sight aghast at this record of masculine arro-
gance. Women might retort, and say Men have exempted them-

1. From the care of their progeny.

2. From the preparation of clothes, food, and household toil.

3. From nursing the sick.

All these "exemptions" are misnomers. Men have "ex-
empted " women from nothing. They have excluded women in
former times, and still exclude them in some degree, from the
higher institutions of learning, the professions, and government.
These exclusions, however, would form another "bill of griev-
ances." The immunities mentioned are purely imaginary. Man
chooses to fight, to sail the seas, to dig for gold and iron, to hew
wood, and cut his own pathway in the world because he is a man
and likes it, not to save any woman nor womankind from such
tasks. He has the combative instinct that greets a struggle, the
well-knit muscles that crave vigorous action, the adventurous
spirit that courts the unknown, and the courage that defies dan-
ger. Does a boy wrestle with his playfellow to spare his sister ;
or run away to sea, or to the gold mines of South Africa, from an
altruistic feeling for womankind ?

Neither do men go to war or enter upon any dangerous calling
with the purpose of exempting women. When John takes the
peach and hands Jane the apple, we do not say," Jane is exempted
from eating the peach." Were all womankind swept from the
earth to-morrow, men would not bury their weapons nor let
the ships drift. Love of the other sex is a spur to the endeavor
of either, but the choice of occupations calling for physical force
is instinctive with the sex possessing it in greatest degree.
All intellectual pursuits are feminizing in tendency, and it is
only with men engaged in these, only with the smaller number
among them who have allowed their masculine instincts to be-
come atrophied, that the fallacy of " exemption " would take root.
The wrestler, the sailor, the Alpine hunter, the blacksmith, would
laugh such a creed to scorn. Men have not exempted women
from deeds of force, from war, from labor, nor from self-support.
They have generally chosen these offices for themselves, and left
women to do the things that were left undone.

Woman is not only weighted by these gratuitous immunities.

248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

but, according to this document, her natural delicacy is owing to
them, and she is warned that she may part with womanhood if
she persists in her unnatural endeavor to change her occupations.
The bee is cited as an example that " sex itself may be determined
by continuous special regimen or diet."

Now, so far as any naturalist has observed, sex is not altered *
by any regimen or diet ; and as the subject of our inquiry is not
a neutral bit of protoplasm, but a developed individual, woman,
we do not need to study the origin of her differentiation so much
as its possible modification.

The bees, with instinctive wisdom, feed the male and female
larvae differently, just as we, regardful of distinct uses, furnish
varying food to the cow and ox. Yet, as the utmost change in
nutrition does not result in transference of function in the mature
organism, we need not fear that a different environment will ever
rob woman of her essential womanhood. This specter, used to
frighten girls from a higher education, is still the favorite totem
of the tribe of viriolaters.

Our antisuffragist falls into another grave error when he
seeks for " the instinctive tendencies of the dominant sex " in an
era and in localities where woman has partial sway. It is not
generally in the United States — certainly not in a city of New
England — that we should look for the gross masculine ignorance
that makes woman a beast of burden. It is in primitive com-
munities that the anthropologist investigates the habits of man
as the best exponents of his natural instincts. If we find in all
such states of society the male is not inclined to relieve the female
from hardship and toil, we can hardly argue that the divisions of
labor found among civilized people arise from man's wish to
exempt his mate from the arduous tasks of life. The Russian
mother toiling in the fields, the Viennese woman laying bricks,
the peasant girl harnessed to a cart, are better instances of man's
" instinctive tendencies " than any to be found in American cities,
where men have learned in some degree to subordinate instinct to
reason.

Yet if one, being a woman, was forced to choose between toil
in the fields, laying bricks in the sun, or a day at the washtub, it
is not altogether certain that the last would be regarded as a
privilege. It is possible that some women might prefer the first
employments and desire exemption from the scrubbing-board.
Moreover, if a child is needed to complicate the case, its chances
of life may be vastly better with the flies in the open air than
with the germ-laden atmosphere of a tenement.

* The genesis of sex in certain orders seems to depend upon difCering temperature and
nutrition.

WOMAJSr AND THE BALLOT, 249

Thousands of women work in the mines of Belgium, England,
and Cornwall.* In the first-named country they formerly worked
from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with no Sunday rest.f The
linen-thread spinners of New Jersey, according to the report of
the Labor Commissioner, are "in one branch of the industry com-
pelled to stand on a stone floor in water the year round, most of
the time barefoot, with a spray of water from a revolving cylinder
flying constantly against the breast ; and the coldest night in
winter, as well as the warmest in summer, these poor creatures
must go to their homes with water dripping from their under-
clothing along their path, because there could not be space or a
few moments allowed them wherein to change their clothing/' \
Yet women are " exempted" from labor attended by hardship !

Despite these washerwomen, miners, and linen-thread spinners,
we are told "it is woman's privilege generally to be exempted
from the care of earning her livelihood and that of her offspring/'

It would seem to be time that this libel upon woman should be
scorned by fair-minded men. From all antiquity the majority of
women have been faithful workers, rendering a full equivalent in
labor for their scanty share of the world's goods. The origin of
every industry bears testimony to this. In our own era, while
women were still homekeepers, did they not earn their livelihood ?
What was the weaving, the sewing, the cooking, the doctoring,
the nursing, the child-care, "the work that was never done," if it
was not earning a subsistence ? Even in these days, when woman
goes forth and receives the reward of her labor as publicly as
man, she is no more worthy of hor hire.* Her ancestress — sweet
and saintly soul ! — did not dream of recompense. || But was it not
her due ; and shall we refuse to credit it because man was then a
self-sufficient ignoramus who deemed himself the only one fit to
acquire property ?

One by one the old industries have been transplanted from the
home, and still man constructs new schemes of enterprise from
the little tasks that once rounded out woman's day of toil. In the

* Census of England and Wales, 1891, vol. cvi, table 6. Miners, female— coa/, 3,267;
copper^ lead, tin, and ironstone, 1,425.

f Vide Report of Reichstag, 1889, forbidding women to work in the mines of Belgium
on Sunday and at night.

X Report of Bureau of Labor, State of New Jersey, 1888.

* " The never ceasing industry of the women was the principal factor in the development
of a manufacture that was probably contributing more directly to the personal prosperity
and comfort of the people than any other then in existence in 1790" (Industrial Evolution
in the United States, p. 20). Carroll D. Wright.

I Women colonists rarely worked for wages ; . . . they carded the wool, spun the yarn,
and wove the cloth for the male members of the family. In many instances they worked
on the land, and did their share in every way to enable the family not only to secure a live-
lihood but to build itself upon stable lines (Industrial Evolution in the United States, p. 112).
VOL. XJ.IX. — 21

250 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

census of 1890, three hundred and sixty-nine groups of industrial
work are enumerated, and in all but nine of these women are
employed, the actual ratio of women workers to men being 1 to
4*4. The United States Commissioner of Labor writes : " A care-
ful examination of the actual earnings of women discloses the
fact that in many industries their average earnings equal or ex-
ceed the earnings of the men."

It may be difficult for those not conversant with manufactur-
ing towns to realize that as far back as 1850 there were over
two hundred and twenty-five thousand women engaged in factory
work, or 27*30 per cent of the whole number of employees. To-
day, however, when women have swarmed into nearly all hives
of labor, statistics are scarcely needed to prove that, whether
" exempted " or not, they earn their livelihood in visible fashion.
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi asks the observer to "station himself,
on Broadway at six o'clock in the evening and watch the crowds
pouring out of the retail stores, the binderies, printing establish-
ments, and newspaper offices, or to visit the ring of ferries encir-
cling the city, and analyze into their component sexes the vast
throngs returning from work ; or, at the station of some manu-
facturing town, see the operatives disembarking for the day, and
after such inspection he will find it hard to believe that any
women remain at home to sew, dust, sweep, or mind the babies.
... To his imagination the women of leisure would disappear
as completely as in the United States the men of leisure are wiped
out of the national census."

This phase of the industrial evolution is unrecognized by our
antisuffragist, and he depicts for us how a census-taker would
find the sexes relatively employed — the man going to work and
the women engaged at home in household supervision and social
duties. He admits that now and then women teach, act as clerks,
or do literary work, but these are exceptions.* " In the healthy
normal society the true order seems to be that ' men must work
and women must weep,' unless a cheerful temperament converts
the weeping into a song." This, which might answer for a poet-
ical view of the lives of the fisher-folk of whom it was written, was
not typical of the general social condition even in Charles Kings-
ley's time. To-day it is not true of a respectable fraction. The
number of women who live in absolute leisure is an insignificant
item and is constantly diminishing.

* The percentage of women workers for the United States in 1880 was forty-nine. In
1890 the gain is stated to be ten per cent. The number of women employed in mechanical
and manufacturing industries for 1890 was 505,712. They received as wages $139,329,-
719. There are 549,804 women in New York city over fifteen years of age. Those regu-
larly employed number over 250,000.

WOMAJV AND THE BALLOT. 251

It is not the casualties of life nor of business that drive
women as a class into industrial occupations, but the constant
inventions that liberate their time, once useful in the house.
Woman's work has always been one of the main stays of the
home, although men have cherished the fiction that they "sup-
ported " it. Now that man has laid violent hands on woman's
former employments — cutting children's garments by machinery,
baking, pickling, and preserving for the nation — it is inconceiv-
able that woman, industrious woman, should fold her hands and
sit in a corner. She has gone forth and sought for work ; she has
become " an economic factor," and this status is the precedent, not
the consequent, of the ballot.

We are, however, informed that " women want the ballot in
order that they may open to themselves a free career in all the
professions and occupations in which men are engaged. . . . They
wish to make wounds which the present social structure now
receives its chronic status."

This diagnosis is faulty, the caution too late. The wounds
were rifts in the larval envelope that woman has cast from her.
She asks recognition now in the new order to which she is ad-
mitted.

It is to be deprecated that individualism in seeking its due
should overlook what it owes to others. Women, in the past at
least, have sought much more actively for duties than for rights,
so that it is superserviceable for a man to suggest this course to
them. Even yet some women need to be informed that they
have any rights, such rights as the Constitution of the United
States avers belong to every man — life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.

Our antisuffragist again brings forth the bugaboo which is
dear to the conservative heart : the threat of unsexing woman.

" The inevitable ultimate result of subjecting the two human
sexes to the same labors, the same employments, the same cares,
will be just the same as when domestic animals have been
subjected for long periods to the same conditions. Sexual dif-
ferences, physical and mental, will tend to disappear, and the
two branches of the race will tend to approximate a common
type."

We can safely let the matter of sex rest entirely with Nature.
It is a fundamental fact of our being, not to be disturbed by any
little transformation scenes that we can bring about. We may go
for analogies to the domestic animals, birds, or fishes, and in none
of them will we find sexual differences disappearing or tending to
disappear. What are called secondary sexual characteristics are
very fickle in their nature, and do for various reasons often desert
the sex with which they are identified. These are characters

252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

merely associated with, one sex but having no essential connection
with the sex itself, such as the brilliant plumage of the peacock,
or, as Mr. Darwin suggested, the baldness of Englishmen. These
in a majority of instances depend upon the preferences of the op-
posite sex, the last example being a probable exception. So men
have only themselves to blame if an undesirable type of woman
persists.

In addition to these, artificial differences, mere resultants of
specific treatment, may also disappear. The foot of a Chinese
woman is quite unlike that of a man, and possibly an aristocratic
Celestial dame would be fearful of approaching the masculine type
if she allowed her daughter's feet a natural development. Bar-
barous nations are not usually content with Nature ; they delight
in differentiating their women from men by blackening their
teeth or boring holes in their lips, ears, and noses. We follow
their fashions in a mild way and have created several artificial
types of women, but it is hardly scientific to call the exaggerations
which distinguish them " sexual differences.'^

Among animals we can, by breeding and training* through
several generations, increase desirable qualities, such as the pace
of horses or flight of pigeons, but it is not claimed by any breeder
or zoologist that the sexes are any nearer each other than they
were in protozoan times. It is also an assumption to declare that
the " graces of womanhood — affection, tenderness, and sympathy "
— have sprung from the relation of the sexes. According to all
authorities, the general relation of the sexes in all but recent
times has been characterized by anything but " affection, tender-
ness, and sympathy." So far as we have proof of the origin of
these qualities, they have arisen from the offices of motherhood ;
and just in the degree that we elevate, ennoble, and endow the
mother with moral, mental, and political responsibility, do we
put it in her power to exercise the wisest affection toward her
offspring, the fullest sympathy with her mate.

Our antisuffragist " fears to drag woman from her high estate
wherein man is her servant.'' This has for me the melodramatic
ring of " a hysteric fancy." With all the opportunities for prog-
ress which recent years have given her, it does not appear to me
that woman is yet on so high a plane as man. She is, however,
climbing step by step, and all unprejudiced men and women will
welcome the day when she may stand beside him as his coworker
in life. That the ballot, officeholding, or any other right which
she can exercise or pursuit which she will undertake can render
her less a woman, is a hypothesis without a grain of evidence. No

* In every case of change, breeding is certified to be more potent than mere condition-
ing ; vide Alfred Russel Wallace, in the Popular Science Monthly, vol. xxxviii, p. 94.

THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MIDROI. 253

biologist can hold it with any consistency. Over and over again
such a result was predicted of education. As she was not edu-
cated out of womanhood, so she can not be metamorphosed by
politics, and will remain, when acknowledged as an individual,
still the counterpart of man.

THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MIDROI.

By Dr. PAUL RAYMOND.

THE investigations in palethnology which I have been pur-
suing for several years in the departments of Gard, Ar-
d^che, and Yaucluse, France, have led me to explore the subter-
ranean cavities, avens, caverns, and rivers which furrow the
region of the Gausses. In this way I discovered, in 1894, the sub-
terranean river of Midroi, and found it so curious that I am im-
pelled to describe it for those who are interested in explorations
of the depths of the earth. The river Midroi is situated on the
left bank of the canon of the Ard^che, at the beginning of the
defile of la Madeleine. Its mouth, marked by the rich vegetation
that clothes the rocks around, is at a level of about twenty-feet
above the average height of the river. Starting to explore this
river on August 28, 1895, and carrying our instruments, our photo-
graphic apparatus, and our boat, the Microbe, with considerable
difficulty across the slippery clay bottom, we passed into a gallery
about thirteen feet long and ten feet high, contracting in some
places to a few inches, which offered nothing of special interest.
About one hundred and fifty yards farther on we came to a lake,
where my progress had been stopped in a visit made to this
place the year before. Launching the Microbe, we proceeded on
our way to the unknown. We advanced between walls smooth
and polished by the water upon this new Styx, which had a
uniform depth of about ten feet (Fig. 1). After a few turns the
lake became narrower ; an arcade, and then a second, rose before
us— the Gate of Mycenae {Porte de Mycenes), as we called them,
standing at the entrance to the second gallery. This was the end
of the lake, and for the present of our sail. Making the boat fast
at the first arcade, we lifted ourselves upon the second, strad-
dling the terminal part of the lake where the slightest slip would
have thrown us into it, and entered the second gallery among
slender stalactite columns, finely notched on the edges (stalagmiie
des crenelures). A change of direction, and we were in the hall of
the Dome (Escaliers des Stalagmites and Salle de Bifurcation), the
vault of which is more than thirty feet high. The gallery forks
here, one part going due north, the other part opening opposite.

254

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

toward the south (Fig. 1). First a wall of stalagmite barred our
road ; then we had to scramble over a series of pot-holes, some of
which were full of water ; and we then entered the passage of the
bowlders, enormous blocks fallen from the roof or the walls and

NORO

Stalagmit«6 des crenelt
Larg 3 m

^ \y^ vHaut 10" Urg 6n20 .

/ '* Portfe de Mjcenes

£^^£01^0, ja.

Fig. 1. — Plan of the Subterranean Kiver Midroi. (Drawn by the author.)

carried along by the waters, worn and polished, which were
chaotically piled upon one another along the rapid descent ( Cou-
loir des Gours and Gros Ehoulis). Around these blocks we
walked upon a shingle of small worn fragments of stalactite, flat-
tened by the violence of the waters. There was still a pot-hole
more than six feet deep separated from another lake by a mass
of stalagmites on which we would have to balance ourselves in
order to hoist the boat. It was so narrow that we could not do
this, and we had to invent a novel system of ballistics to get the
Microbe, which was upward of two hundred yards away, through
the difficult passage. And it was very vexing to be stopped, for
in a moment the river turned to the west, toward the Roche-
male Spring, which we regarded as an issue of the Midroi. With
all requisite precautions we took up specimens of the water from
this pot-hole, which we planted in culture tubes for the microbio-
logical researches we were prosecuting on the water of caverns.
The thermometer, which marked 29° C. outside, had fallen to 14° C.

THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MIDROI.

255

The barometer indicated that we were one hundred and forty-
three feet above the mouth of the river — a considerable fall in a
course of eleven hundred and forty feet. After a few moments of
rest, we turned back, and, crossing the hall of the Dome, we en-
gaged ourselves with the southern gallery, which presented quite
a fairy spectacle. In this succession of little halls connected by
narrow passages, where we had to pass creeping, the stalactites
were crowded in front of us, innumerable, resplendent, lengthen-
ing out into slender spindles, graceful little columns, and marvel-
ous pendants, intact and immaculate. A few steps farther on,
in the Diamond passage {Couloir des Diamants), the spectacle
became grand. The roof, the walls, and even the ground were
tapestried with crystals cut in facets, which shone under our
lamps in dazzling brightness. While absorbed in the scene from
the Thousand and One Nights, I heard my boatman Suau cry out,
" Monsieur, there is a dog ! " and then (Salle du Chien), in the
half-light of the back of the hall, I saw it in my turn. It was sit-
ting down and looked at us, but did not rise as we neared it ;

Fig. 2.— The Subtekranean Kiveb Midroi (Ardeche, France).
(From a photograph.)

it was a block of stalagmite, which quite deceived us for a
few seconds. Having recovered from our surprise, we ex-
amined the hall, passing from enchantment to enchantment.
From the roof hung broad curtains of stalactite nearly ten
feet long, and separated from one another by only a few inches,
just enough to permit us to put our lamp between them. They

256

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were so thin as to be translucent, and we caught the minutest
details of their structure, the result of the long work of cen-
turies {Salle de Draperies). Accordingly as the calcareous wa-
ters were or were not charged with salts of iron, bands alter-
nately brown and white were deposited the whole length of
the veil, simulating, in their regularity, the stripes of the rich-
est tissues of the most complete factories. This hall, of all
the caves I have visited, left the strongest impression of the

marvels to be met
A^ith in the bosom of
the earth. Leaving
this Hall of Draperies
with regret, we con-
tinued our march, but
were soon stopped, for
the river went no far-
ther on this side. We
had traversed nearly
five hundred and fifty
yards in this resplen-
dent cavern, and were
now fifty yards above
the mouth of the riv-
er. Before returning
we took a second
specimen of water for
our studies. It came
from a drip which
would certainly in
less than a year have
caused the junction
of a stalactite and a
stalagmite, and never
had we better observed the phenomenon of the union of calca-
reous concretions. A third specimen was taken from the dripping
roof. As we have mentioned these microbic studies, we will also
speak of the results we obtained.

As a general thing, the culture tubes in which the water from
the dripping roof, stalactites in course of formation, and pot-holes
in which the water had not been stirred for a long time was put,
remained sterile — that is, did not contain microbes. But when we
examined a drop of water from the vents, or those fine springs
that escape from the fissures, or from the pot-holes or lakes of
these subterranean rivers, colonies of microbes were developed ;
the calcareous filter is no longer sufficient, and while it stops the
coarse impurities of the waters that fall on the plateau, it lets the

Fig

-A Passage in the Subtekkanean Eivek Midroi.
(From a photograph.)

THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MIDROI. ' 257

infinitely small ones like the microbes pass. Althougli the thick-
ness of the calcareous mass here exceeds eight hundred feet, the
filter is not homogeneous, but is fissured ; and through these
faults, these cracks, in which the circulation is yet slow enough
for the water, coming in muddy at the level of the plateau, to
issue at the spring with admirable purity, the microbes continue
to percolate. It is true that the microbes I have found are not
pathogenic, but the importance of the studies can nevertheless be
comprehended. If common microbes, brought in by the waters
that fall on the plateau, can be found eight hundred feet below it,
there is nothing to prevent noxious microbes — those, for example,
of typhoid fever, diphtheria, or cholera — which may live in the
water from being found there. There is in this a very interesting
problem of hygiene and public prophylaxis. We should, then, be
suspicious of these beautiful crystalline springs when there are
epidemics on the plateau from which they come. They may con-
tain micro-organisms — some indifferent, others dangerous. The
microbes which I found belong to the genus micrococcus. Two
of them (Micrococcus aurentiacus and M, citreus) developed in
fine colonies of orange and citron-yellow colors; a third [M.
aquatilis) gave no coloring matter. I obtained microbic colonies
after the twentieth hour.

What, in short, is this underground river Midro'i (Fig. 2) ? A
large fissure through which flow the waters drawn from the pla-
teau by the avens, orifices, and cavities of every kind which make
an enormous sponge of the mass of the Gausses. In past centu-
ries, when the mass of water that fell on the Gausses was consider-
able, Midroi acted regularly and gradually enlarged the fissure ;
but now it acts only intermittently. Its vent then affords it
sufficient outlet. Let me speak of this vent, the fine spring of
Rochemale, which issues from the rock a little more than one
hundred yards west of the orifice of Midroi. By this narrow
fault, the communication of which with Midroi is highly prob-
able, although it is not demonstrated, two hundred and twenty
thousand litres of water escape every hour. In case the supply is
doubled after great rains, the water, which can not escape by
Rochemale in so large a quantity and in the same lapse of time,
rises and fills all the meshes of the sponge. If the supply is in-
creased again, the water flows into the river Midroi, which then
comes into operation and the level of which may rise several
yards, as is shown by the traces of wash-marks left by recent in-
undations on the walls of the river and which are shown in our
photograph. There exists, in effect, in the very heart of the
Gausses, a considerable and eminently variable reservoir of water ;
it is a real lake, and through the thousand fissures, through all
the meshes of this interior region, flow the waters of the plateau,
VOL. xLix.— 22

258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

sometimes by the vent of Rochemale, and sometimes, and only
when rains are abundant and when the vent is not sufficient for
its task, by the river Midroi, constituting affluents to the Ard^che
of a special order, many examples of which are known in rivers
of the type of the Ard^che and the Tarn. — Translated for the Pop-
ular Science Monthly from La Nature.

OUR SOUTHERN MOCKER.

By I. W. BLAKE.

THE American mocking bird (Mimus polyglottos), although
native to a country which claims to be democratic in prin-
ciple, is by nature pure and simple a born aristocrat. It is true
that at first sight he may be a disappointment to any one antici-
pating a bird of brilliant color; but the more one studies the
mocker the more strengthened becomes the opinion that few
birds, if any, can aspire to his dainty, high-bred personality, or to
his slender grace and elegance of movement. Indeed, to this un-
conscious, inborn " Delsartean " ease, poise, and lightness, as well
as to his marvelous power of imitation, the mocker owes his at-
tractiveness ; for this sleek fellow in his sober coat of gray — tipped
with black, and lightened only by a glimpse of white when he
spreads his wings — can lay no claim to beauty of feather as an
additional charm to win him admiration. The plumage allotted
him by Nature serves merely as a background, so to speak, which
shall not distract the eye while his listeners pause in wonder as
he fills the clear air with his marvelous melody.

The bird lover at the North, who sees the mocker caged, gloomy
and despondent or restlessly beating himself against the merciless
bars of his prison, knows nothing of the real power of the bird
until he hears him singing at full liberty in the brilliant sunshine
of his native heath, for the variations in the song of the mocker
depend largely upon his surroundings. Thus, in a city he quickly
acquires loud, sharp, and unpleasant notes ; while in the country,
where incessant barn-yard music reigns supreme, he soon adapts
himself to his position. Take him, however, free, happy, saucy
fellow that he is in the South, in localities where he hears few
sounds but the voices of clear-throated birds, and his song is natu-
rally mellow and sweet, standing unsurpassed in its wonderful
modulations and gradations, compass, and brilliancy of execution.
The mocker seems instinctively to select the prettiest quirks and
quavers he can gather from his neighbors. Many of the sweetest
notes in his repertoire he acquires from the red or cardinal bird,
which has certain liquid, flutelike whistles, all of which our little

OUR SOUTHERN MOCKER. 259

imitator quickly appropriates, without even the grace of an ac-
knowledgment.

The mocking bird, like all aristocrats, has no humility in his
"make-up," and at times this disposition makes him most ex-
asperatingly overbearing — as, for instance, when choice fruit is
slowly ripening and the contest begins, to ascertain whether the
landowner or Monsieur Mockey shall collect the harvest ! Firmly
believing himself to be lord of all, the premises resound with the
queer, fierce scoldings which he bestows upon all usurpers, and
our little gray-coated songster shows a pugnaciousness that is
surprising. The sound of a mocker's scolding resembles the sud-
den splitting of long strips of heavy silk, and, as he has a habit of
leaving his voice all along the path behind him as he flies angrily
away, fretting and disputing at every step, the sound is so fierce,
so long drawn out, and so far extending, that one involuntarily
sniffs the air for the sulphurous odor which should, by right,
accompany so savage a train of ugliness.

The housekeeping and family cares of a pair of mockers are
wearing to themselves and to the entire neighborhood, and attract-
ive as the bird may be in his adult years, as enfant terrible, in all
the agonies of the preparatory and freshman year, he is a nuisance
of the most tiresome type. As soon as the little ones are coaxed
from the nest for their first outing the trouble begins, and the ex-
ertion necessary to find sufficient food to fill those never-satisfied,
gasping, shrieking throats reduces both parent birds to gaunt and
peevish little gray ghosts before the month is out. Indeed, the
very sight of this practical, unpoetical side of real life would
make many a student of the much-discussed question, " Is mar-
riage a failure ? " pause and cry out mentally, " Blessed be single
bliss!"

After some four or five weeks of tribulation, these baby mock-
ers— such as escape the sharp beak of the murderous shrike or
butcher bird — enter the sophomore class, instinctively assume tall
hats, and begin to feed themselves. In spite of the annoyance of
their tiresome shrill piping, almost incessant from dawn until
sunset, silent only from necessity when their tliroats are being
stuffed with the hard-earned food, they are a funny sight as they
sit perched in a row upon a fence-rail, with their tiny feathers
fluffed out until the little fellows resemble soft, gray puffballs.
There, occasionally flying to some neighboring low-growing shrub
for a change, with wings fluttering unceasingly and with heads
thrown back to give greater voice room, they will sit for hours,
their shrieks arising to squeals of indescribable ecstasy when the
old birds approach with the coveted worm. Should a cat chance
to stray into their neighborhood, it is very comical to see them all
shake, or rather shudder, their tiny wings violently, as they alter

26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

their food call to a harsli scrawing sound, thus calling the parent
birds back to the rescue. *

Putting aside the family question, the mocking bird is, of
course, the prettiest and most attractive when the instinct of mat-
ing is predominant. As each pair build usually three or four
nests, and rear from four to five young at each nesting, one may
have many opportunities to witness their courtship methods.
The prettiest sight of all is the courtship dance, which should be
seen to be appreciated, owing to the deep solemnity and apparent
earnestness of the birds. Imagine a large chessboard laid out in
chalk lines; make it, say, a yard square; then place the birds
thereon, diagonally opposite to each other, one at each extreme
corner. The plan of the dance seems to be that they shall hop,
or rather bound, slowly from one end to the other, always in a
straight line, and not for any one moment to stand directly facing
each other, except at the instant of passing.

With bodies stiff and straight as an arrow, head erect and
feathers flattened, wings drooping loosely forward, but tails ele-
vated at as acute an angle to the body as possible, the dance sol-
emnly begins. The eyes are steadily fixed, and as methodically
as any soldiers upon drill they sturdily go through the movement
of bounding, rising quite high and descending in very nearly the
same place each time, from one end of the playground to the
other, back and forth, always keeping the line about a foot apart.
As each one nears his or her corner, each slowly and dignifiedly
turns a complete circle, then again faces the other, always diag-
onally, and slowly bounds back, to repeat the movement at the
other end. Sometimes both will turn away to look off at some
distant object, just as a cat will apparently forget the mouse she
is tormenting. That, however, seems to be only a part of the cere-
mony, for soon both turn back and the dance is resumed.

One day I chanced to witness one of these pretty sights as it
took place beneath the wide-spreading branches of a large orange
tree, but the scene was interrupted quite unexpectedly. Just at
the most graceful part of an intricate double pirouette, a very
puffy and motherly old hen who, with an unlimited number of
offspring, had been serenely picking up a dinner close by, evi-
dently felt a sudden impatience at the sight of all this folly, for to
my surprise and amusement she made a quick rush and dashed
between these happy mockers, startling them almost out of their
senses. Instantly the atmosphere was permeated with two sepa-
rate and distinct streams of silk- splitting fire, each fully a rod
long, as the two angry birds departed for the protection of a
neighboring lemon tree.

The mocking bird instinctively selects a high perch from which
to .deliy.er h^ song, and the bare boughs of a dead pine tree, or

SKETCH OF JAMES BLYTBE ROGERS, 261

the topmost, ever-swaying branch, of an orange or lemon tree, he
finds well suited to his taste. He is a pretty sight when in some
similar position, steadfastly facing the strong ocean wind which
tosses his soft gray feathers in breezy fashion, he carols his sweet-
est to some half -indifferent inamorata not far distant. His little,
slender body quivers with excitement in his efforts to drown the
song of some stout-lunged rival, who sits gayly perched upon the
gilded vane that surmounts the house top ; now stopping short
in the very middle of a note to hear if that other fellow has dis-
covered his new combinations, and then, as he finds to his dismay
that the rascal has them already down to a very fine point (with
the addition of several new and surprising twists of his own),
starting off again at a tearing pace with a bewildering variety of
kinks, quirks, and quavers !

Soon darkness comes upon the scene — for twilight is short in
the sunny South — and our musical mocker has sought his snug
feather bed in the tree tops ; but, by midnight, should the moon
chance to be in her full glory of semitropical splendor, the hated
memory of that unconquered rival stirs his little brain, and he
awakens to pour out his pent-up jealousy in notes that make the
welkin ring. The longer he sings the more ecstatic he grows, and
after a few sleepy attempts to keep up with the torrent of music,
the rival ignominiously subsides, and our little hero has the field
to himself, undisputed, till the dawn of another day.

SKETCH OF JAMES BLYTHE ROGERS.

SCIENCE has need of all manner of men among its votaries.
He whose career will be traced in this memoir devoted to its
service a warm sympathy, an inspiring utterance, a high degree
of constructive faculty, and a conscientiousness which caused him
ever to give his best efforts to the duty before him.

James Blythe Rogers was born in Philadelphia, February 11,
1802, being the first child of Hannah (Blythe) and Patrick Kerr
Rogers. His grandfather, Robert Rogers, was one of the gentry
of County Tyrone, Ireland. At the age of twenty-one he married
Sarah Kerr, daughter of a gentleman living near, whose family,
like his own, were adherents of the Presbyterian Church. Mr.
Rogers was owner of the Edergole or Knockbrack estate, lying
between Omagh and Fintano, forty miles from Londonderry,
and held on lease a piece of land adjoining it. Dr. W. S. W.
Ruschenberger, whose excellent memoir on The Brothers Rogers *
is the chief available source of information concerning this family,

* Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. xxiii, pp. 104-146.

252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

mentions as additional evidence of his social standing that he in-
herited the large central pew in the neighboring Presbyterian
church, which he rebuilt and furnished anew when the church
was reconstructed. Robert Rogers was twice married; his first
wife bore him twelve children, and the second five. Patrick
Kerr Rogers was his eldest child. " The rudiments of Patrick's
education," says Dr. Ruschenberger, " were received in a school-
house built upon the estate. It is described as having clay walls,
a thatched roof, clay seats covered with bits of carpet, and being
warmed by a turf fire. The teacher was a lame rustic boy,
whom Patrick's aunt, Margaret Rogers, a lady of notable intelli-
gence, had trained for the office. It is conjectured that he ac-
quired his classical learning from a private tutor at the house
of a kinsman." The father of Sarah Kerr evidently did not believe
in the law of primogeniture, for he had exacted, as a condition
of his daughter's marriage to Robert Rogers, a settlement of all
the latter's lands upon the children of this union, share and share
alike. Accordingly, Patrick, although the eldest child, could ex-
pect only one twelfth of his father's landed estate, and must
prepare himself for some other occupation than that of a land-
lord. " Entertaining opinions not rigidly orthodox, he was un-
willing to enter the clerical profession, though he had the example
of two uncles who were clergymen." All things considered, a
commercial career seemed best, and he therefore entered a count-
ing house in Dublin. When the Irish rebellion broke out, in the
spring of 1798, he contributed to Dublin newspapers certain
articles inimical to the Government, on account of which he was
obliged to leave the country. At that period ships plied directly
between Ireland and Philadelphia, and on one of these he em-
barked, landing at his destination in August, after a passage of
eighty-four days.

In the following May Mr. Rogers obtained an appointment as
a tutor in the University of Pennsylvania, and soon afterward
began to study medicine under the famous Dr. Benjamin S. Barton.
Mr. Rogers was married January 2, 1801, his wife being the young-
est of the three orphan daughters of a Scotch father and an Eng-
lish mother. Their father, James Blythe, had been a stationer
and newspaper publisher in Londonderry, whither he had gone
from Glasgow. After the death of both parents the three sisters
had come to America, where they were received by a cousin, Mrs.
Thomas Moore. At the time of his marriage Mr. Rogers was
described as " a tall, erect man, of grave deportment, having dark
hair well sprinkled with gray, and soft, sleepy eyes. He played
the violin and sang well, but never in company or in the presence
of strangers, because such performance or display seemed to him
inconsistent with the dignity of a gentleman."

SKETCH OF JAMES BLYTHE ROGERS, 263

After receiving his medical degree from the University of
Pennsylvania, in June, 1802, Dr. Rogers began the practice of his
profession in Philadelphia. He also took private pupils and
lectured to classes in botany, chemistry, and other sciences. He
was called to Ireland in 1803 to settle the estate of his father, who
died in that year. This business disposed of, he returned to Phila-
delphia, bringing with him two brothers and a sister.

The next five years of effort did not bring him a satisfactory
income and he removed to Baltimore, where he was more prosper-
ous until he became involved in a controversy on methods of vac-
cination, which injured his practice. When Dr. Robert Hare
resigned the professorship of Natural Philosophy and Mathemat-
ics in the ancient College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg,
Va., Dr. Rogers was elected to succeed him. In this congenial
position he remained, a competent and forceful instructor, until
he died of malarial fever in 1828. His wife had succumbed to the
same disease eight years before.

James B. Rogers received his elementary education in Balti-
more during the residence of his parents in that city, and, after
attending the College of William and Mary, took up the study of
medicine in the office of Dr. Thomas E. Bond. In 1822 he received
the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Mary-
land. It is said that while a student he assisted his brothers
William and Henry in teaching their school at Baltimore. After
graduating he taught for a time a class of girls in conjunction
with a Dr. McClellan, of Baltimore. This enterprise, proving
unsatisfactory, was given up. Being now in need of employment,
he thought of seeking the post of surgeon to a colony of free
negroes which it was proposed to establish at Cape Mesurado.
He consulted his father on this matter, and must have written a
rather querulous letter, for he got this chunk of paternal hard
sense in reply : " What is the use of your complaining of man-
kind ? The world as yet owes you nothing. Up to this time
you have been simply a recipient of its benefits. Make yourself
worthy of a place here and you will find one.^' The project of
going to Africa was abandoned.

Dr. Rogers now joined an intimate friend and fellow-student.
Dr. Henry Webster, in a partnership to practice medicine at Lit-
tle Britain, Pa., about two miles north of the Maryland line. But
after a few years' experience he abandoned the profession, having
found it repugnant to his mental habits and sensitive nature.
He returned to Baltimore, and was soon appointed superintend-
ent of the extensive chemical manufactory of Messrs. Tyson and
Ellicott.

From this time on Dr. Rogers made pure and applied chem-
istry his chief concern. The professorship of Chemistry in the

264 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Washington Medical College being offered to him, he hesitated to
accept it, thinking he was not sufficiently ready of speech for a
lecturer. He finally undertook the work, and, although it was
not remunerative, it served to discover the fact that he shared the
gift of eloquence which distinguished his brothers. The ice being
thus broken, he found it easy to give chemical lectures before
the Mechanics' Institute, in Baltimore, and later he lectured also
on physics.

Dr. Joseph Carson states in his memoir of Dr. Rogers that it
was William B. Rogers who induced his brother to venture upon
the career of a college lecturer, and thus relates how it was ac-
complished : " To convince him that he had nothing to apprehend
on that score [lack of fluency], his brother William prevailed upon
him to accompany him to the lecture room, and there, placing the
future professor behind the desk, constituted himself the audi-
ence. The theme was named, which being instantly taken up and
amplified upon, the ease and fullness with which he spoke re-
lieved him of his diffidence and apprehension. This was his first
effort to lecture, and, like this, all his future performances were
without notes or facilities of recollection, except those incident to
the arrangement of the topic."

In September, 1830, being then twenty-eight years of age, he
married Rachel Smith, of Baltimore, a birthright member of the
Society of Friends.

Cincinnati was the residence of Dr. J. B. Rogers from 1835 to
1839, this period being the whole term of existence of the Medical
Department of Cincinnati College, in which he had accepted the
professorship of Chemistry. The summer vacations of these four
years he spent as an assistant to his brother William in fieldwork
and chemical investigations on the Geological Survey of Vir-
ginia. While in Cincinnati he declined the office of melter and
refiner in the branch mint at New Orleans, offered to him by the
President of the United States.

Dr. Rogers now, 1840, removed to Philadelphia and became an
assistant to his brother Henry, who was the State 'Geologist of
Pennsylvania. He also turned his knowledge of chemistry to
account in various other occupations. He was appointed in 1841
lecturer on chemistry in the Philadelphia Medical Institute, then
a flourishing summer school, which had been founded by Dr.
Nathaniel Chapman. From 1844 to 1847 he was Professor of Gen-
eral Chemistry in the Franklin Institute, of which institution he
had become a member when he went to live in Philadelphia. In
this period he and his brother Robert compiled a text-book on
Chemistry from the Inorganic Chemistry of Dr. Edward Turner
and the Organic Chemistry of Dr. William Gregory. It was pub-
lished in 1846. He also conducted quiz classes of medical stu-

SKETCH OF JAMES BLYTHE ROGERS, zG'^

dents. He was for a time Professor of Chemistry in the Franklin
Medical College, and represented this institution in the National
Medical Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1847, which organ-
ized the American Medical Association.

In 1847 he succeeded the celebrated Dr. Robert Hare as Pro-
fessor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania— a curious
coincidence in connection with his father's succeeding Dr. Hare
at Williamsburg. In this position he remained until his death,
five years later. He was also one of the representatives of the
university in the National Convention of 1850 for revising the
Pharmacopoeia of the United States.

In 1846 he was elected to membership in the American Philo-
sophical Society, and the following year joined the Academy of
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

Dr. Rogers was of slight frame and never enjoyed robust
health. In his latter years he suffered at times from nervous
exhaustion and defective nutrition, probably induced by un-
remitting labor. He died June 15, 1852, leaving a widow,
two sons, William B. and Henry A., also a daughter, Mary V.
Rogers.

Never favored by prosperity. Dr. Rogers was particularly
straitened in circumstances during the first part of his residence
in Philadelphia. It was not until he entered upon his last pro-
fessorship that he received a comfortable salary. The institutions
with which he had been connected before were small and weak or
came to grief in some way that could not be anticipated. While
lack of shrewdness and assertiveness on his own part may have
contributed to hinder his advancement, his worth as a teacher is
beyond question. He was everywhere esteemed by his colleagues
and popular among his students. Dr. Carson said of him, " Dis-
interested and generous in his relations with the world, mild and
conciliating in deportment, open and affable when approached,
urbane to every one, his virtues shone conspicuously within the
circle of his friends. With his pupils he was sympathizing; he
entered cheerfully into their discouragements and difiBculties ;
and those who confided to him received that encouragement and
counsel so grateful to the student's feelings. He was emphatic-
ally the student's friend."

At the School of Horticulture, Geneva, Switzerland, fourteen professors
are engaged in teaching the various branches of the science, which include
floriculture, arboriculture, kitchen gardening, landscape architecture, forest
culture, vine dressing, zoology, bee raising, botany, chemistry, and metal-
lurgy. A considerable part of the school day is devoted to practical work
under the direction of five superintendents.

266

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

%&iti^x's "g^Ut.

INTELLIGENCE IN THE PUBLIC
SERVICE.

AEECENT writer in one of the
magazines quotes John Stuart
Mill as speaking in one of his letters
to the historian Motley of "the fatal
belief of your public that anybody
is fit for anything." The trouble to
which Mill refers is one that dates a
long way back. It is not correct to
say that in this community or any-
where else the belief prevails that
anybody is fit for anything. No-
body thinks that anybody is fit to
repair his watch, or to fit him with
spectacles, or to cut him out a suit
of clothes. "We all believe in special
training and special qualifications
when it comes to matters like these;
but what democratic communities,
from Athens downward, have re-
fused to believe is that any special
qualifications are required for the
art of political government. It is to
be observed that it is political gov-
ernment only that is regarded as so
simple and trivial a thing. To man-
age a bank, a railroad, a hotel, is al-
lowed on all hands to require great
skill and experience combined with
no inconsiderable equipment of moral
character ; but to step into the Presi-
dency and fill the office satisfactorily
does not, it has been expressly stated,
call for anything more than common-
place endowments. A little more
seems, as a general thing, to be re-
quired of members of the Cabinet;
but, broadly speaking, Mr. Mill's
dictum, if we confine it — as doubt-
less he meant it to be confined — to
politics, is true, that in this country
" anybody is considered fit for any-
thing."

What is the source of this most
preposterous opinion ? It is difficult

to give any answer but one: the self-
interest and vanity of the populace :
self interest, because the unqualified
office-seeker does not like to think he
might be barred from office by lack
of competency; vanity, because the
voter who feels a sense of proprie-
torship in the Government does not
like to think that he himself or any
person he might recommend is not
" good enough " for any office in the
Government. Of course, it has to be
admitted — though somewhat grudg-
ingly— that offices requiring tech-
nical knowledge in connection with
this or that branch of science can
not be filled by persons destitute of
such knowledge; but it is always a
consolation to think that the most
ignorant citizen could acceptably fill
some higher office in which he would
have power to make the men of sci-
ence step round.

Fortunately, there are laws oper-
ating even in the political world
which to some extent antagonize
false theories. It may be sound
democratic doctrine that any citizen
is fit for any office ; but when it has
come to filling the offices, in some
mysterious way conspicuously unfit
individuals have not infrequently
been ruled out. No one, of course,
would venture to say that they were
ruled out for lack of intellectual
qualification; but they have been
ruled out all the same, and left to
wonder how it was that their candi-
dature was not successful. In a few
cases conspicuously fit candidates
have been selected, to the great ad-
vantage of the public interests con-
cerned.

The strongest proof, however, that
there is a certain tendency in things
to nullify wrong theories is the prog-

EDITOR'S TABLE,

267

ress which this country has made in
the matter of civil-service reform,
and this in the teeth of the strongest
opposition which could be made in
the interest of the old, unregenerate
idea that all offices were on a level
with the abilities of the first comer,
provided only he had the necessary
certificates of political service. A
powerful New York journal thought
at one time to sneer the reform out
of existence ; but, the more it sneered,
the more the idea seemed to gain in
strength, and the more firmly it
rooted itself in our system of gov-
ernment. This would seem to prove
that the citizens of this country, how-
ever they might outwardly counte-
nance the notion that anybody was
fit for anything, felt in their hearts
that the doctrine was a false and
fraudulent one. That is precisely
what it was and is; and the false-
hood and the fraud have in many
ways cost this country dear. It
needs perhaps a little experience of
administrative work in order to ap-
preciate fully the difi'erence in effi-
ciency between a man in whom ex-
perience is united to intelligence
and seriousness of purpose, and who
is thus enabled to put a stamp of
thoroughness on all he does, and
one of mediocre or inferior intelli-
gence who simply thinks he is big
enough for any office, and that one
way of doing a thing is about as
good as another. It is always at the
expense of the public that the latter
type of official practices his crude
and ignorant methods; but in gen-
eral, though the shoe is sure to
pinch, it is difficult, if not impossi-
ble, for the public to tell just where
they are pinched or where the respon-
sibility rests. We may set it down,
however, for an unmistakable fact
that, in so far as governmental meth-
ods are marked by inefficiency and
lack of intelligence, the origin of the
trouble lies in the idea to which we

referred at the outset, that " anybody
is fit for anything." The man who
employs a blacksmith as a dentist
when more skilled assistance is avail-
able has only himself to thank if he
suffers a few unnecessary pangs ; and
precisely so in the public service : if
we put into office men who lack the
essential qualifications for their posi-
tions, we must take what we can get
and, if not be thankful, at least
have the sense to place the responsi-
bility upon the right shoulders — that
is, upon our own.

DECIMAL COMPUTATION.

The article from the pen of Mr.
Herbert Spencer which we publish
in this number will, we believe, open
the eyes of many of our readers to
the fact that whatever the advan-
tages of the metric system of measure-
ment now so widely used in Europe
may be, there are very considerable
objections to its introduction in coun-
tries where it has not yet been estab-
lished. Mr. Spencer, as usual, states
his case in a very comprehensive
manner; and it would be difficult to
add anything to the arguments he
brings forward. He makes it very
clear that the only valid claim that
can be urged on behalf of the metric
system is that, on account of its
correspondence with the existing
system of notation, values expressed
therein admit of easier arithmetical
treatment than values expressed ac-
cording to other methods. He shows,
however, that this is quite a limited
advantage. Express your values in
the metric or decimal system, and
you can add or multiply them with
great facility; but the difficulty lies
in getting those particular fractional
values expressed which we have
most occasion to use in everyday
life, and which it is the instinctive
habit of our minds to deal with —
such as thirds, fourths, sixths,

268

POPULAR SCIENCE MOmmLY,

eighths. It is needless, however, to
repeat here what is so fully stated in
Mr. Spencer's article. He admits the
great convenience of the decimal
system for the expression of strictly
scientific values, as in giving the re-
sults of chemical analysis. In this
case no other system than one which
expresses results to the minutest frac-
tion would be of any avail. But he
objects, that this ready applicability
to scientific measurements, which
has led scientific men to advocate
its universal employment, is no ad-
vantage for purposes of trade,
where easy divisibility is of the fii'st
importance. The question is whether
it is or is not desirable to introduce
standards of measurement which can
only be subdivided decimally, and
banish our present standards, which
admit of more convenient subdivision
into well-known and definite aliquot
parts.

We quite agree with the writer
that such a change as this should not
be hastily made, and we think he
has done well in marshaling the
difiiculties and disadvantages with
which it would be attended. The
standards of measurement which
every nation possesses are part of
its history, and their long survival
is at least prima facie evidence of
their utility and convenience. If
we take the particular instance which
the word " metric " itself suggests, it
seems to us we are better off with
such familiar and convenient meas-
ures as the yard, the foot, the inch,
and the subdivisions of the latter
into halves, quarters, eighths, six-
teenths, etc., than we should be with
the metre divided into centimetres
and millimetres — that is, into hun-
dredths and thousandths. What
the subject wants, however, is dis-
cussion from every point of view.
The question is one in regard to
which no single interest should have
a decisive voice ; yet there is always

danger, when a change is mooted,
that it will be carried through the
vigorous insistence of those who
want it, and to whom, perhaps, it
would be advantageous, and the lack
of contrary effort on the part of a
much larger number to whom it
would not be beneficial but who are
not sufificiently alive to their inter-
est in the matter.

Mr. Spencer hints at a possible
change to be made in our system of
notation involving the use of two
additional digits and making twelve
instead of ten the basic multiple of
progression. He does not expect it
can be introduced for generations to
come. That if introduced it would
have the specific advantages he men-
tions can not be doubted; but we
agree with him that the practical
difficulties in the way of the change
are enormous, and that we must be
content to regard it rather as a
shadowy possibility for the future
than as a scheme offering any prom-
ise of early fruition.

TEE PROVINCE OF SCIENCE.

Dr. Eomanes's assertion * that " if
a little knowledge of physiology and
a little knowledge of psychology
dispose men to atheism, a deeper
knowledge of both and, still more, a
deeper thought upon their relations
to one another will lead men back
to some form of religion," is sure
of unquestioning welcome in certain
quarters ; but the earnest seeker after
truth will care little to hear that
George John Romanes or Francis
Bacon "thought thus," although he
may care a great deal to learn what
led these writers to their belief.

The question which thoughtful
men will wish to ask Romanes is
whether his '' religion " has any more

* Mind and Motion and Monism, By the Ir.te
George John Romanes. Longmans, Green & Co.
1895.

•t

EDITOR'S TABLE.

z6g

>

basis in science than his "atheism";
whether either of them finds any
warrant in our knowledge of Nature ;
whether both may not be equally
outside its limits. Most modern
thinkers and writers on the prin-
ciples of science agree in the decla-
ration that the mind of man has not
yet attained to knowledge of causes ;
that it has done no more than to
disco v^er a little of the order of
Nature.

While we may, if we choose, call
the series of events which make up
this order a series of effects, nothing
seems more certain than that we
have not yet succeeded in passing
over from them to any reality behind
them ; that the reason why they oc-
cur in one order rather than another
is a problem which is as yet abso-
lutely unsolved.

Eomanes quotes, with approval
which all must share, Tyndall's dec-
laration that " the passage from the
physics of the brain to the corre-
sponding facts of consciousness is
unthinkable. Granted that a defi-
nite thought and a definite molecu-
lar action in the brain occur simul-
taneously, we do not possess the in-
tellectual organ, nor apparently any
rudiments of the organ, which would
enable us to pass, by a process of rea-
soning, from the one phenomenon
to the other. They appear together,
but we do not know why." So far
as our present knowledge of the
powers of the human mind goes, we
must agree with Romanes that Tyn-
dall's assertion is most unquestiona-
bly true. Whether or not it is the
whole truth is a different question,
and we must ask whether we are any
more able to pass from one physical
event to another physical event, or
from one mental event to another
mental event, than we are able to
pass from a physical to a mental
event. Can we say of any of them
anything more than that " they ap-

pear together, but that we do not
know why " ?

Romanes tells us that our ques-
tions about the nature of the relation
between material changes and men-
tal changes admit of only seven pos-
sible answers, all of which he enu-
merates, and four of which we quote:

I. The mental changes may cause
the material changes (spiritualism).

II. The material changes may cause
the mental changes (materialism).

III. There may be no causation
either way, because the association
may be only a phenomenal associa-
tion— the two apparently diverse
classes of phenomena being really
one and the same (monism). VII.
Whether or not there be any causa-
tion either way, the association may
be one which is necessarily beyond
the power of the human mind to ex-
plain.

The aim of Romanes's book is
to show that six of these seven hy-
potheses are untenable, and that,
since only seven are possible, the
seventh, No. Ill, must be the truth ;
although it is clear that, if the human
mind has as yet discovered nothing
but the order of Nature, and has
not attained to knowledge of causes,
there must be still another point of
view. We may declare that we know
nothing whatever about the matter;
not even enough to warrant the as-
sertion that it is necessarily beyond
the power of the human mind to ex-
plain. Romanes holds that this way
of looking at the subject does not de-
serve to be regarded as an hypothesis
at all; but while it may not be an
hypothesis, it may nevertheless be
that still more stubborn thing, a fact.
Those who agree that it is a fact
will feel no more vital interest in
Romanes's monism than in material-
ism or idealism or spiritualism, for
they will perceive that all these at-
tempts to reach reality by means of
our present knowledge of Nature

270

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are equally vain and premature ; and
they will also perceive that science
gives no better warrant for the "re-
ligion" to which Romanes has been
led than it gives for the " atheism "
which he has outgrown. We hope
his fascinating book will find many
readers, for it will give them the
pleasure which is found in all strong
and vivid works of the imagination ;
although we refrain from detailed
discussion of its ingenious argu-
ments, for the reason that we are
sure no thoughtful student can mis-
take it for a contribution to knowl-
edge.

If certain enthusiastic students of
Nature have been carried away into
nMerialism by the triumphs which
modern science has achieved through
the use of the symbolism of matter
and motion, they can not complain
that there has been any lack of warn-
ing. The most profound and cau-
tious thinkers of our century have
never ceased to insist that our con-
ceptions of matter and motion are
nothing more than symbols ; and
that, so far as knowledge of any
reality behind them is concerned,
they might as well be called x and
y. General recognition of this truth
is now producing a reaction which
seems, to these zealous believers, to
drive them out of their materialism
into some other system of philosophy ;
but before they rush from one ex-
treme to another, they should ask
themselves whether this revolution
will bring them any nearer to the
solid rock of certainty than they
were before. No one who is famil-
iar with the work of our greatest in-
tellectual leaders can find anything
novel in Romanes's declaration that
" when we speak of matter in mo-
tion we do not at all know what it is
that moves, nor do we know at all
what it is that we mean by motion " ;
although we must ask the followers
of Romanes whether we know any-

thing more about the essence of
mind than we know about the es-
sence of matter, and whether we can
say anything more of our men-
tal changes than that " they ap-
pear together, but we do not know
why."

Prof. Ostwald tells us in his ad-
dress on '' The Failure of Scientific
Materialism " * that " every scientific
thinker, from the mathematician to
the practicing physician, would sum
up his view, in answer to the question
how he supposes the world is intrin-
sically constituted, by saying that
the universe is composed of atoms in
motion, and that the atoms and the
forces acting between them are the
ultimate realities of which individual
phenomena consist. " Whatever the
German frame of mind may be, we
are disposed to believe that many
Englishmen and Americans, if asked
"What are the ultimate realities of
which individual phenomena con-
sist ? " would answer that they do not
know. We believe there would be no
difl&culty in finding many eminent
men of science who have refused to
have anything more to do with ma-
terialism than to make use of its
symbols, so far as they have proved
useful. So long ago as 1868, Huxley
tells us t that he shares with some of
the most thoughtful men with whoin
he is acquainted the union of mate-
rialistic terminology with the repu-
diation of materialistic philosophy;
that he individually is no materialist,
but, on the contrary, believes mate-
rialism to involve grave philosophi-
cal error. Ostwald seems to have
come, somewhat late in the day, to
the point of view from which Hux-
ley's most thoughtful acquaintances
contemplated materialism in 1868 ;
but, unlike Huxley, he proposes a
substitute, and seeks to show that

* See translation in Popular Science Monthly
for March, 1896.

t Collected Essays, I, iii, 155.

EDITOR'S TABLE,

27]

"the predicate of reality can be
ascribed only to energy."

Since it is generally admitted that,
whatever the unknown reality may
be, our conception of energy is a
projection into the external world
of the feeling of resistance and effort
which accompanies our own volun-
tary actions, the question whether
"the predicate of reality can be as-
cribed to energy" leads us at once
to the preliminary question whether
volition is real or phenomenal. If
the interminable discussion on the
freedom of the will, which has ex-
ercised the most acute intellects of
our race for many centuries, teaches
anything, it teaches that science is
not yet able to answer the question
whether the " predicate of reality " is
or is not to be ascribed to volition ;
and that, in the present state of our
knowledge of Nature, Ostwald's sub-
stitute for materialism is no better
and no worse than the system which
he seeks to displace and supplant.

THOSE BLESSED X RAYS.

We were" quite prepared for it, as
we mentioned last month ; so it was no
surprise to us to read the following in
The Herald and Presbyter of a recent
date, the reference therein being to
Rontgen's discovery : "For one thing,
it corroborates, so far as any material
experiment can, Paul's doctrine of
the spiritual body as now existing in
man. It proves, as far as any experi-
ment can prove, that a truer body, a
body of which the phenomenal body
is but the clothing, may now reside
within us, and which (sic) awaits the
moment of its unclothing, which we
call death, to set it free." We are
further told in the same article that
the discovery in question "makes
clear to the unscientific mind what
Stuart (sic) and Tait announced, that
matter in one state has no power to
exclude matter in another and more

refined state," and that we must
therefore now be prepared to believe
" that two particles of matter can and
do occupy the same space at the same
time."

A very few remarks on this piece
of special pleading must suffice on
the present occasion.

1. " Paul's doctrine of the spiritual
body. " Why this doctrine should be
called Paul's it is hard to understand,
seeing that it is encountered in ev^ery
quarter of the globe among nations
and tribes of almost every grade of
civilization. In the Odyssey Ulysses
talks to the " spiritual body " of
Achilles in the nether world, a body
which was " set free " when the nat-
ural body of the hero was slain. It
is difficult, therefore, to see why Paul
rather than Homer should be men-
tioned as having his " doctrine " con-
firmed by the discovery of the^ rays.

2. Paul's doctrine, however, was
not that there may be a spiritual body
within— but, after all, why within
more than without f — the natural
body, but that there is such a body ;
whereas Rontgen, according even to
the writer we are quoting, only proves
that there may he one. A thousand
proofs, however, that a thing may be
does not advance us one whit toward
proving that it is. Moreover, Ront-
gen's discovery does not point any
more in the direction of a spiritual
body within our bodies than it does
in the direction of a spiritual body
within cats, or dogs, or sheep, or trees,
or stones.

3. Strictly speaking, Rontgen's
discovery proves nothing about
bodies in general that has not been
known for centuries. That light can
pass through solid bodies even of
great thickness and density has been
the common experience of mankind
ever since the first transparent sub-
stance was discovered. Rontgen has
merely discovered that substances
which are not penetrable by ordinary

272

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

light rays are penetrable by other
rays produced by electrical dis-
charges in a very attenuated gaseous
medium. How we are to derive any
confirmation of the existence of a
spiritual body from the action of
these rays which could not equally
have been drawn from the action
of ordinary light rays in traversing
such dense substances as glass and
various crystals, is a question which
it would probably puzzle the Herald
and Presbyter to answer.

4. As to the possibility of two
particles of matter occupying the
same space at the same time, any one
who chooses to indulge that pleasing
and profitable fancy can do so ; but
how it can help in the present emer-
gency we do not see. Any difficulty
which there may have been about
admitting the doctrine of a spiritual
body has not arisen in the least from
our ordinary conceptions of matter,
because we know perfectly well, and
have known for so long that the
memory of man runneth not to the
contrary, that one form of matter
may be permeated by another form
— the metals by gases, for example—
in varying volumes. The trouble
has not been to find room for the
spiritual body in the natural body,
but to find something more than a

mere assertion of its existence at all
or anywhere. This, unfortunately, is
a difficulty which some persons can
not be brought to understand : give
them leave to think that what they
want to believe is not impossible, and
presto, they consider it proved. We
have no objection in the world to the
theory, whether Paul's, or Homer's,
or Plato's, of a spiritual body ; but we
do think it a little hard that because
a laborious experimenter like Ront-
gen has brought to light a new prop-
erty of radiant energy — while, like a
well-trained man of science, he only
affirms what he has been able to dem-
onstrate— others should rush in and
insist that, without being aware of it,
he has bolstered up some doctrine of
theirs for which not one scintilla of
evidence can be given. As this kind
of thing, however, evidently can not
be helped, we can only hope, as we
said before, that in some mysteri-
ous way it may serve a useful pur-
pose. It is better, on the whole, that
each successive advance of science
should be acclaimed as a confirma-
tion of orthodoxy than denounced as
a new manifestation of impiety; and
certainly better far the treatment
given to Pontgen and his tubes and
screens than that meted out to Gali-
leo and his telescope.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The first volume of the Criminology Series was the result of a special
research ; the second has a broader and more philosophical scope.* Obvi-
ously the collection and choice of data lie at the base of any reasoning in
criminology. Considerable attention has been paid to such data as ana-
tomical, physiological, and psychological anomalies of criminals. These,
Prof. Ferri is convinced, are of value almost solely with respect to born
criminals. He makes five classes of criminals: criminal madmen, born

* Criminal Sociology. By Enrico Ferri. Pp. 284, 12mo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
S1.50.

Price

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 273

criminals, criminals by contracted habits, occasional criminals, and crim-
inals by passion. Those in the last three classes he deems largely the
victims of circumstances. He looks to criminal statistics for consid-
erable light on the sociological side of criminality, and finds as the
most conspicuous general phenomenon that they exhibit " the steadiness
of the gravest forms of crime side by side with the continuous increase
of slighter offenses." At the same time there are yearly fluctuations in
the several kinds of offenses corresponding to seasons of great or small
harvests, excessive heat or cold, political or commercial disturbance,
etc. On this correspondence of the amount of criminality to the environ-
ment Prof. Ferri bases his '' law of criminal saturation," which contradicts
Quetelet's dictum as to a regular budget of crime. From this law it follows
tbat the penalties hitherto regarded as the best remedies for crime can not
be effectual. Our author, therefore, recommends what may be called
"penal substitutes," the aim of which would be to reduce the factors of
crime. As ways in which society can be protected indirectly from aggres-
sion he instances such devices as the shifting of taxes which tempt to
fraud, the adaptation of governments to the people they control, scientific
means for the detection of crime, wise legislation in regard to marriage
and inheritance, scientific education, and the abolition of unwholesome
amusements. The latter half of the volume is of most popular interest, as
it is devoted to practical reforms. Among the changes that Prof. Ferri
advocates are the general use of the Scotch verdict of "Not proven" incases
where neither guilt nor innocence is established, indemnification for judicial
errors, the direction of criminal trials, not to appraising the culpability of
the prisoner for a particular act, but to ascertaining to what type of crimi-
nals he belongs, the abolition of the jury, except in the trial of crimes of the
political and social order, the employment of various grades of segregation
of the criminal with indeterminate sentences, the commitment of insane
criminals to asylums, add the abolition of the death penalty. Many other
allied topics are discussed incidentally. The above constitutes what Ferri
regards as a defensive system of criminal administration which society
should substitute for its present punitive system.

We have had a life of Agassiz as a man, we now have him placed be-
fore us both as a man and a scientist by one of his scientific associates and
fellow-countrymen.* In telling the story of Agassiz's life Prof. Marcou
has made use of materials collected from many sources, including much
obtained from Agassiz's European friends and associates. All of Agassiz's
letters that he inserts, some twenty-five or thirty, were written in French
and stand in the original language. So also do Agassiz's presidential ad-
dress on the ice age, delivered before the Helvetic Society, which fills nine-
teen pages of small type, and the six pages of extracts from De Charpentier's
first paper on erratic bowlders, the author believing that all these docu-
ments would suffer too much by translation. Our author is not one of
those who write eulogy and call it biogi'aphy. He lets both the well
rounded and the less rounded sides of his subject's character be seen.
While not depicting him as a demigod. Prof. Marcou has credited Agassiz
with talents sufficient to accomplish the labors on which his fame rests.

♦ Life, Letters, and Works of Lonis Agassiz. By Jules Marcou. Two Volumes, 12mo. New
York and London: Macmillan & Co. Price, $4.
VOL. XLIX. — 23

274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Agassiz was capricious in the extreme," he says, " very versatile, attracted
easily by any new object or subject, and he had the faculty of almost com-
pletely forgetting works half done or only sketched. He lacked persist-
ence and steadiness at work requiring long and difficult observations. . . .
That something sternly practical mingled with Agassiz's habitual idealism
was well proved by his museum. He did not carry it out entirely as he
proposed to do at the start, but had he lived twenty years longer his ideal
museum would have become a reality. . . . Notwithstanding these serious
defects, it is impossible not to admire his great scientific intelligence, and
not to recognize his immense scientific force. No one was such an able
instigator of scientific researches. He had a magnetic power, and he used
it constantly, whatever the subject to be investigated might be. His two
principal passions in natural history were teaching and collecting speci-
mens. As a teacher he was unrivaled and unique. ... As to his other
passion, that of collecting specimens and organizing museums, he was a
man of wonderful resource." Agassiz's moral traits are also given with
much fullness. Many of his characteristics were racial. As his biographer
well says, " Agassiz's remarkable personality can not be properly under-
stood without taking into account the strength of his French nature."
The Anglo-Saxon reader especially should bear this in mind. Prof. Marcou
does not hesitate to go into the various controversies to which Agassiz was
a party and to apportion praise and blame according to his judgment.
The function of a critic seems to be rather attractive to him, for he goes
out of his way to point out defects in Mrs. Agassiz's life of her husband.
The word " Works " in the title of this book refers to a list of Agassiz's
works, reaching 425 titles, which is appended to VoluYne II. A list of
biographical articles and volumes on Agassiz forms another appendix, and
a list of portraits, medals, tablets, etc., still another. A profile portrait and
several other illustrations are given.

Two series of books which promise to be very useful to the scientific
horticulturist and agriculturist are being issued by the Macmillans. In
the Gardencraft Series, we have already noticed The Horticulturist's Rule-
book, by Prof. L. H. Bailey, and the second of the series, also by Prof.
Bailey, is now before us.* Our author treats his subject both philosoph-
ically and practically. He first points out some of the causes of variation
in plants, and shows that man is only rarely the direct means of originat-
ing varieties, but that his work consists in selecting and fixing those that
he prefers. In treating of crossing, Prof. Bailey insists on a distinction
between the cross proper — i. e., the product from a union of two varieties of
the same species — and the hybrid, or product of a union between different
species. He tells what benefits may be expected from crossing, and endeav-
ors to prevent too great expectations from hybridizing. The practical por-
tions of the volume are the third and fifth chapters. In the former are
given fifteen rules which should govern the breeding of plant-crosses, with
the reasons for them. Among these we find such maxims as the following:
"Avoid striving after features which are antagonistic or foreign to the
species or genus with which you are working." " Breed for one thing at a
time." "Establish the ideal of the desired variety firmly in the mind

* Plant-breeding. By L. H. Bailey. Pp. 293, 12mo. London and New York : Macmillan & Co.
Price, $1.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 275

before any attempt is made at plant-breeding." "Even when the desired
variety is obtained, it must be kept up to the standard by constant attention
to selection." The last chapter consists of directions for the pollination of
.flowers to secure crossing, with illustrations. There are also extended ex-
tracts from Verlot on varieties of ornamental plants, Carriere on bud-vari-
eties, and Focke on characteristics of crosses. A glossary is appended.

The Rural Science Series, edited by Prof. Bailey, opens with a volume
on spraying.* From the author's chapter on the early history of liquid
applications, it appears that plants have been sprinkled with noxious or
irritating substances in order to destroy insects for a century, and very
likely much longer. The operation known as spraying, however, has not
been practiced for more than ten or fifteen years. The early gardeners
seemed to think that anything disagreeable to man would be destructive to
insects, and Mr. Lodeman gives a number of their recipes evidently based
on this idea. Continuing his history, he narrates the introduction of the
Bordeaux mixture, the kerosene emulsion, Paris green, London purple, and
the other principal insecticides and fungicides now used, and gives the
various methods of spraying employed in different countries and in differ-
ent parts of the United States. Another historical chapter records the
progress in appliances, from the liquid in a bucket and a whisk broom to
sprinkle it with, up to the small towers on carts on the top of which men
armed with hose pipes go gunning for codlin moths, curculios, canker-
worms, and such like game. In another chapter he gives formulas for a
large number of preparations used in spraying, and, in still another, specific
directions for treating the chief cultivated plants, from almond to willow.
He discusses also the action of insecticides and fungicides not only upon
the pests that they are directed against, but also upon the host-plant, the
crop yielded by it, and the soil in which it grows. There are eighty -six
cuts and a portrait of M. Millardet, who introduced the Bordeaux mixture.
Both volumes are adequately indexed.

We have here not the gossip and superficial impressions of a sight-seer,
nor yet a volume of laborious measurements and close reasoning. Green-
land Icefields is a description of natural features and inhabitants by one
who is not too much engrossed in his science when he visits a strange
region to notice and write down matters of interest to less scientific mor-
tals.! With this descriptive matter is joined a new discussion of the causes
of the ice age, embodied in several chapters contributed by Prof. Upham.
Prof. WHght tells us first about the ice of the Labrador Current, which
was brought forcibly to his attention by the steamer on which he went to
Greenland running squarely against an iceberg. This mishap necessitated
a stop on the coast of Labrador, and enabled him to gather may interesting
observations on the settlements and the Eskimos of this coast. He records
also some observations on the Spitzbergen ice that comes down through
Davis Strait. Greenland was finally reached at Sukkertoppen, on the
western coast, in latitude 65" 30'. Prof. Wright gives us not only the inci-
dents of his journeys in this far northern land, but also the chief features

♦ The Spraying of Plants. By B. Q. Lodeman. Pp. 399, 12mo. London and New York : Mac-
millan&Co. Price, $1.

t Greenland Icefields and Life in the North Atlantic. By G. Frederick Wright and Warren
Upham. Pp. 407, 12mo. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $2.

276

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of the twelve districts into wliicli the western coast strip is divided, some
account of the customs and character of the Eskimos, and a historical sketch
of the explorations and administration of Europeans in Greenland. His
descriptive matter is frequently enlivened by anecdotes, and the text is
illustrated by reproductions of many photographic views of persons and
places.

From materials furnished by Prof. Wright and other explorers. Prof.
XJpham has prepared descriptions of the plants and the animals of Green-
land and of the inland ice sheet. He also devotes a chapter to tracing the con-
tinental changes of level of the Pleistocene period. With this material as
a basis, he proceeds to discuss the causes of the ice age, giving the theories
that have been put forth to account for the great extension of the ice, and
explaining the difference of opinion among glacialists as to whether there
were one or more epochs of glaciation. The authors of this book hold to
the theory that the ice sheets were due to extensive uplifts of the land
forming plateaus which received snow throughout the year. In another
chapter the successive stages of the ice age are traced as revealed by their
marginal moraines and other deposits. In conclusion, Prof. Wright sum-
marizes the chief facts relating to Greenland's mantle of ice, and to the life
of its inhabitants, who seem to be admirably adapted to their surroundings
and happy in them.

GENERAL NOTICES.

Paleontology is presented from a point
of view somewhat different from the ordi-
nary in a book which Prof. Williams, of
Yale University, has just published.* The
author says that while there are no end of
books on evolution, and modem biologists
seem content to assume that some theory of
evolution is true, and although the sociolo-
gist, the moralist, and the theologian are
basing their theories about man on the
" working hypothesis " of the naturalist, as
if " law and gospel," it seems to have es-
caped eerious attention that we have open
for study a genuine record of the actual
evolution of organisms, extending from near
the beginning of life up to the present time.
The geologist does not ask what is the theory
of evolution, but what are the facts of evo-
lution. The book is intended simply as an
introduction to an already broad field, which
is rapidly widening. The history of organ-
isms is first taken up and treated quite fully.
The next two chapters consist of a history of
the making of the geological time scale, and
a general consideration of its divisions. The

* Geological Biology : An Introduction to the
Geological History of Organisms. By H. Slater
Williams. New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp.
892, 8vo. Price, $2.80.

naming and the fossils of stratified rocks, the
nature of fossils and their geographical dis-
tribution next occupy attention. What is a
species ? What is an organism ? and What
is the origui of species ? are the elementary
but important questions answered in the next
three chapters. The principles of natural
history, classification, and the types of con-
struction in the animal kingdom, occupy
Chapters XI and XII. Phylogenesis in
classification, the acquirement of characters
of generic or higher rank, what is evolved
in evolution, the modification of generic
characters, and the plasticity and perma-
nency of characters in the history of organ-
isms, bring us to the eighteenth chapter,
which takes up the cephalopods, to illustrate
the rate of morphological differentiation in
a genetic series. In Chapter XIX the am-
monids are studied in a similar manner to
illustrate the progressive modification of an
extrinsic character. The last two chapters
— one on the laws of evolution, as empha-
sized by a study of the geological history -
of organisms, and finally the philosophical
conclusions regarding the causes determin-
ing the course of evolution, are in the na-
ture of a general summary of the whole
subject.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

277

A valuable series of archteological in-
vestigations is chronicled in a tasteful 8vo
entitled The HUl Caves of Yucatan* The
author, who is Curator of the Museum of
American and Prehistoric Archaeology at the
University of Pennsylvania, had had his eye,
80 to speak, on the Central American hill
caves for several years. The expedition was
at last made possible by the munificence of
Mr. J. W. Cor with, of Chicago, its purpose
being to search for new evidence of man's
antiquity in the caves of Central America.
The party landed at Progreso, and rapidly
made their way into the interior. The coral-
line and porous Mesozoic limestone of that
part of Yucatan had not been upheaved or
faulted, and, save for the waves of the hill
ridges, lay as it was deposited. The caves
were found to open vertically down into the
ground like wells, the shaft having evidently
been formed by the natural weathering down
of a level rock surface until a hole in the
roof of the cave was produced. These caves,
of which a number were examined, were
found in some cases to contain rude inscrip-
tions on the walls, in all cases a large num-
ber of broken potsherds, and in the excava-
tions conducted in the layers of rubbish
which made up the floor of the caverns,
charcoal and ashes, mixed with potsherds of
many makes and some bones, but no arrow-
heads, spear points, or even flakes of horn-
stone. Some human bones scattered in the
rubbish indicated that the old inhabitants of
Yucatan practiced cannibalism. Taken as a
whole, the antiquities show us the ancient
cave visitor as an agriculturist rather than a
hunter, although he seems not to have pos-
sessed domestic animals. The author, in
closing, says: "An earlier people visiting
Yucatan under its present topographical
conditions must needs have left traces in
the caves; because the undisturbed earth
beneath the culture layer discovered always
failed to show trace of any deeper, older,
or more primitive human visitor, the con-
clusion was that no such earlier people had
seen the region while its stony hills, its
torrid plain, and its damp caves were as
they now are." The book, agide from its

* The Hill Caves of Yucatan. By Henry C.
Mercer. Philadelphia : J. B. Llppincott Co. Pp.
188. Price, $8.

archaeological value, is of interest as giving
a picture of the geography and people of
that portion of Yucatan. It is very well
illustrated.

One of the most beneficent services ren-
dered by modem science consists in supply-
ing a basis of exact knowledge for those
necessary arts that have been carried on by
empiric methods for centuries. Among the
most ancient of these arts is that of utilizing
the milk of our flocks and herds, for which
a scientific basis has only recently become
available. It is the purpose of the book
before us * to give the chemistry and bac-
teriology of the several processes of the
dairy. The author first describes briefly the
cow's udder and its process of secretion, and
then passes to the composition of milk, giv-
ing the percentage composition of the milk
of a number of animals, with a discussion of
the variations observed, and a table of the
legal standards in England and many of the
United States. After setting forth some of
the causes that influence the yield and qual-
ity of milk, he passes to the subject on
which science has been able to give the most
practical knowledge to the dairyman — bac-
teria. It is bacteria that cause milk to be-
come ropy or viscous to turn blue, red, or
yellow, to acquire a bitter taste, and to un-
dergo fermentative curdling. Bacteria also
are indispensable in the making of butter
and cheese. Pure cultures of these organ-
isms are used in dairies all over the north of
Europe for ripening cream, and our author
urges his fellow-countrymen not to be behind
the foreigner in this matter. After discuss-
ing the essential features of the formation
of butter and cheese, including the process
of churning and the action of rennet, he
gives the usual modes of testing milk, and
closes with a chapter on milk as a food.

Convinced that throughout Europe there
must have existed systems of picture writing
such as survive among primitive races, Mr.
Arthur J. Evans, the keeper of the Ashmo-
lean Museum, has made extended explora-
tions in Crete which have brought to light

♦ Milk : itB Nature and Composition. By C.
M. Aikman. Pp. 180, 12mo. London : Adam &
Charles Black. New York : Macmlllan & Co.
Price, $1.26.

278

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

not only a large number of carvings of ap-
parent pictographic character, but also many
simpler markings which seem to show the
existence of a system of linear writing, more
ancient than that of the Phoenicians. In a
volume entitled Cretan Pictographs and Prce-
Phoenician Script (London: Quaritch; New
York: Putnams) he has described a large
number of these carvings, together with
others from the sepulchral deposit near
Phaestos, in the Peloponnese. The work is
illustrated with one hundred and thirty-nine
figures and several plates, including a recon-
struction of a Mycenean ceiling decoration in
colors.

A very practical and without doubt a
unique book is the Laboratory Manual of
Inorganic Preparations, of H. T. Vnlt'e and
George M. S. Neustadt (Peck, $2). It tells
the student how to prepare a large number
of the inorganic reagents used in the labora-
tory, the processes ranging in difficulty from
the distilling of water and the preparing of
oxygen and hydrogen gases to the prepara-
tion of hydrazine, carbon oxysulphide, and
acid or alkaline normal solutions. The num-
ber of substances included is, apparently,
over two hundred. In the recovery of sub-
stances that have been used in experiments
and in the preparation of C. P. reagents
from chemicals of commercial grade the au-
thors are convinced that not only can much
needless waste be prevented, but that much
knowledge of value to the student can be
acquired.

Of two recent numbers of The Journal
of the College of Science of the Japanese Im-
perial University, one, being Volume VIII,
Part n, contains five papers relating to bio-
logical subjects, accompanied by nine plates ;
and the other, Volume IX, Part I, comprises
ten physical and chemical papers, with five
plates.

In his monograph on The Physical Geog-
raphy of Southei'n New England (American
Book Co., 20 cents). Prof. William M. Davis
presents evidence to show that the region in
question is an old peneplain which has had
a slanting uplift. In accordance with this
theory, he accounts for the mountains that
stand out from or rise above the New Eng-
land upland and for the valleys that inter-
rupt it. The paper contains many sugges-

tions for the genuine scientific teaching of m
geography. The physiographic development ■
of The Southern Appalachians is set forth in
a similar essay by C. W. Hay a. Both publi-
cations are numbers of the first volume of
National Geographic Monographs.

Under the title The Climatology and
Physical Features of Maryland, the Mary-
land State Weather Service has issued its
first biennial report, covering the years 1892
and 1893. The document includes sketches
of the topography and geology of the State
and general descriptions of its soils and cli-
mate. Monthly summaries of the weather
and a summary of the weekly weather crop
bulletins issued during these two years are
included, while in tabular form the reports
of observers are given. There are five maps,
showing the annual and seasonal tempera-
ture and precipitation in Maryland and Dela-
ware.

A quarto pamphlet of Observation Blanks
in Physics, prepared by Prof. William C. A.
Hammel, has been issued recently (American
Book Co., 30 cents). These blanks contain
directions for fifty-four simple experiments
relating to air, liquids, and heat, with blank
lines for observation, inference, name, date,
instructor's indorsement, etc. There are also
figures of the parts of the apparatus re-
quired, many of the articles being household
utensils.

We have already called attention to the
series of pamphlet guides to New England
natural history which is being issued by Ed-
ward Knohel. The one now before us is de-
voted to The Night Moths of New England
(Whidden, 50 cents), and gives the name,
size, and colors of five hundred species with
figures of nearly all of them. The species
are arranged in seven groups, each with a
brief key, and there are three pages of gen-
eral description.

There is substantial evidence that science
is not neglected on the Pacific coast in the
eight-hundred-page volume of Proceedings of
the California Academy of Sciences, which
constitutes Part I of Volume V of this pub-
lication. Among the more extended mono-
graphs which it contains are a Review of the
Reptiles of Lower California, by John Van
Denburgh ; California Water Birds, by Lev-
erett M. Loomis ; Neocene Stratigraphy of

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

279

I

the Santa Cruz Mountains, by George H.
Ashley; Fishes of Sinaloa, by David Starr
Jordan ; and Contributions to Western Bot-
any, by Marcus E. Jones. Entomology, con-
chology, zoology, and paleontology are also
represented. The volume is accompanied by
a frontispiece and seventy-four other plates.

The fourteenth volume of Transadiom
of the New York Academy of Sciences tes-
tifies to considerable activity during the
year 1894-95. This volume contains papers
on geological subjects by Arthur HoUick, J.
F. Kemp, G. F. Matthew, W. D. Matthew,
and Heinrich Ries ; on biological subjects
by Gary N. Calkins, Harrison G. Dyar, and
George S. Huntington; while chemistry is
represented by Bohuslav Brauner, botany by
N. L. Britton and T. H. Kearny, Jr., astrono-
my by Herman S, Davis and J. K. Rees, min-
eralogy by G. F, Kunz, and physics by R.
A. Millikan, Forty-nine plates accompany
these papers. A considerable number of
papers that were read during the season
either appear elsewhere or have not been
published.

Again Wurt^s Elements of Modern Chem-
istry comes to us m a revised (the fifth
American) edition (Lippincott, $1.80). Dr.
Greene, the translator, has associated Dr.
JI. F. Keller with himself in this revision
and enlargement, which is designed to bring
the book thoroughly up to date. The vol-
ume now consists of 808 duodecimo pages,
and contains 136 cuts.

Bulletin No. 119 of the U. S. Geological
Survey is A Geological Reconnoissance in
Northwest Wyoming, by George H. JEldridge
(Geological Survey, 10 cents). It gives a
sketch of the topography and general geol-
ogy of the region, and points out the chief
features of its economic geology. First
among its useful minerals is a fair quality
of coal; petroleum, building stone, brick
clays, and a small quantity of gold are also
found.

In a treatise entitled The Constitution
and Functions of Gases, the Nature of Ra-
diance, and the Ijaw of Radiation, the author,
Severinus J. Corrigan, gives a technical
presentation of his theory of gases, the basal
concept of which is that the atoms of which
each molecule of gas is composed revolve
about the center of the molecule. He holds

that his theory enables him to demonstrate
the existence of some heretofore unknown
properties and functions of gases, to deter-
mine the probable nature and the properties
of the luminiferous ether and the effective
temperature of the sun, and to indicate the
probable origin of all thermal, electric, and
magnetic forces. (Printed by the Pioneer
Press, St. Paul.)

A problem which is receiving increasing
attention of late years, namely, what to read,
is considered by W. M. Griswold in A De-
scriptive List of Books for the Young (the
author, Cambridge, Mass.). Biography, Ge-
ography, History, Exploration, Natural His-
tory, Poetry and Fiction, Amusements and
Occupations, and Literature are the chap-
ter headings. " Natural Science " is dis-
posed of in one page, seven works being
recommended. Considering the broad field
which this title is usually supposed to cover,
the treatment seems a trifle inadequate.
That branch of knowledge which has pro-
duced the steam engine, the electric light,
the telephone, the phonograph, the printing
press, modem astronomy, and chemistry,
which is supplying material every day tend-
ing toward solutions of some of the still nu-
•merous unsolved problems of existence — in
fact, which is the great motive force behind
modem civilization — ought certainly to be
represented by more than one page in a list
that gives thirty-three pages to fiction.

Among the many desirable winter re-
sorts which are readily accessible to the in-
habitant of the eastern United States, there
is perhaps none in which more natural beauty
and historic interest are combined with an
equable temperature than the Windward Isl-
ands. It was on one of them that Columbus
first set foot in the New World, and since
then they have had a most varied and unique
history. In a little book of descriptive travel.
Cruising among the Caribbees (Scribners,
$1.50), Charles A. Stoddard, of the New
York Observer, has given an attractive and
interesting account of a winter visit to this
curious little group. A general description
of each island, both as regards topography,
industries, and inhabitants, is given " in the
rough." Various queer customs and super-
stitions and bits of myth and folklore are
recounted, and the whole is woven in with

28o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

anecdote and history in such a skillful way
that a hero and heroine seem all that is
lacking to make of it a good bit of fiction.

The so-called science of phrenology is set
forth at considerable length in a book by
Ifelson Sizer, entitled How to Study Strangers

(Fowler & Wells, New York). It is a curi-
ous hodgepodge of very doubtful inferences
clothed in scientific language. The body of
the work is made up of portraits and short
biographical and descriptive sketches of not-
able persons, written from the phrenologist's
standpoint.

PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. D>^laware
College : The San Jose Scale Insect.— Illinois
University : Bulletin No. 41. Experiments with
Wheat and Oats. Bulletin No. 42. Com Experi-
ments.—Massachusetts College : Bulletin No. 35.
The Agricultural Value of Bone Meal. Bulletin
No. 36. Imported Elm-loaf Beetles ; Maple Pseu-
dococcus ; Abbot Sphinx ; San Jose Scale. —
Michigan State College : Fruits at South Haven
and at the Agricultural College.— Ohio Station
(Wooster): Oats.— Purdue University : Bacterio-
sia of Carnations ; The American Persimmon.—
United States Department : The Army Worm ;
The Carpet Beetle or " Buffalo Moth " ; Canker
Worms ; The Imported Elm-leaf Beetle ; Facts
and Figures regarding Our Forest Resources
Briefly Stated ; Forest' Fire Legislation in the
United States ; Work against Insects which De-
foliate Shade Trees in Cities and Towns ; The
Harlequin Cabbage Bug or Calico- back: The
Hessian Fly ; The Hop-plant Louse ; Condensed
Information concerning some of the more Impor-
tant Insecticides ; The American Cotton-boll
Weevil ; Mosquitoes and Fleas ; The Pear-tree
Psylla ; The Rose Chafer ; The San Josd Scale.

American Humane Association. Abstract of
Report on Vivisection. Pp. 16.

American Republics, Annual Report of Di-
rector of Bureau of, 1895. Pp. 28.

American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals. Thirteenth Annual Report. Pp. 118.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Reports, Reprints, etc.
Arthur, J. C. Delayed Germination of Cockle-
bur. Pp. 9.— Bell, A. G. Growth of the Oral
Method of Instructing the Deaf. Pp. 23.— College
Catalogues and Announcements. Colorado Col-
lege : Studies, Vol. VI. Cornell : Announcement
of Course of Instruction in the Summer School
for Teachers and Advanced Students, July 6 to
August 15, 1896. Lafayette : Catalogue, 1895-'96.
Lehigh : Courses in Civil Engineering and Gen-
eral Literature. Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology : Catalogue, 1895-'96, and Annual Report
of the President and Treasurer, December 11,
1895. Michigan Mining School : Annual Report
of the Director, August 16, 1895. University of
Pennsylvania : Circular of Information and An-
nouncements for 1896-'97.— Fowler, Hon. Charles
N. Speech on the Free Coinage of Silver.— Gil-
bert, G. K. Presidential Address before Geologi-
cal Society of Washington, 1895.— Hodge, F. W.
Pueblo Snake Ceremonials.— Home Study. A
Monthly Elementary Journal of Engineering. 15
cents ; ^1.50.— Howard, L. O. The Grass and
Grain Joint Worm Flies and their Allies. (Tech-
nical Series No 2, United States Department of
Agriculture.) Pp. 24— Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity : Circular, Vol. XV, No. 123. Pp. 10.— Labor,
Bulletin of Department of. No. 3. March, 1896.
Pp. 111.— MacDougal, D. T. A Contribution to
the Physiology of the Root Tubers of Isopyrum
Bitematum (Raf.), Torr. and Gray. From Min-
nesota Botanical Studies. —NaehvOle, Tenn.,
Board of Health. Twenty-first Annual Report of
Health Officer to, for Year ending December 31,
1895. — New Jersey Geological Survey. Report on
Forestry. Pp. 88.— Philadelphia Academy of Nat-
ural Sciences, Proceedings of. I*p. 105 to 200 —
St. Laurent, C. F. Germanization and American-

ization compared. I^. 20.— University of the
State of New York. Bulletin of the New York
State Museum, September, 1895.— Ward, Lester
F. Sociology and Physiology. (From American
Journal of Sociology, March, 1896.)— White, C. A.
Memoir of George Engelmann, M. D. (Prom vol.
iv. Biographical Memoirs National Academy of
Sciences.)— Woolraan, A.J. Report upon Ichthy-
ological Investigations in Western Minnesota and
Eastern North Dakota. From Report of United
States Commission of Fish and Fisheries for 1893.

Cams, Dr. Paul. The Religion of Science,
Chicago : The Open Court Publishing Co. Pp.
125. 50 cents.

Chester, Albert Huntington. A Dictionary of
the Names of Minerals, including their History
and Etymology. New York : John Wiley &
Sons. London : Chapman & Hall, Limited, Pp,
320.

Comey, Arthur Messinger. A Dictionary of
Chemical Solubilities (Inorganic). New York and
London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 515. $5.

Cope, E. D., Ph. D. The Primary Factors of
Organic Evolution. Chicago : The Open Court
Publishing Co, Pp, 547. $2.

Fisher, J. H. Hypnotism and its Relation to
Witchcraft, Ghostology, and Mind Cure. Grand
Rapids : Seymour & Muir Printing Co. Pp. 83.

Halleck, R. P. Psychology and Psychic Cul-
ture. New York : American Book Co. Pp. 868.
81.25.

Hart, Ernest. Hypnotism, Mesmerism, and
the New Witchcraft. New and Enlarged Edition.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 212. $1.50.

James, William. Is Life worth Living ? Phil-
adelphia : S. Burns Weston. Pp. 63.

Knaufl, Theodore C. A Dissatisfied Farmer.
Philadelphia : The Sound Money League. Pp. 45.

Le Plongeon, Augustus, M. D. Queen Mo6
and the Egyptian Sphinx. New York : Author.
Pp. 277.

Mosso, Angelo. Fear. Translated by E.
Lough and F. Kiesow. New York and London :
Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 278.

Nye, Bill. Bill Nye's Sparks. Pp. 181.— Nye
and Riley's Wit and Humor. Pp. 203. Chicago :
F. Tennyson Neely.

Ribot,Th. The Psychology of Attention. Chi-
cago : The Open Court Publishing Co. Pp. 120,
76 cents,

Romanes, Grcorge John. An Examination of
Weismanniem, Chicago : Open Court Publish-
ing Co. Pp. 209. 35 cents.

Schoenhof , J. A History of Money and Prices.
New York and London : G P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp.352. $1,50.

Tyndall, John. The Glaciers of the Alps.
New Edition, New York and London : Long-
mans, Green & Co, Pp, 445 $2.50.

White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare
of Science with Theology in Christendom. Two
vols. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 889,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

281

^raflmjewts xrt ji^jctjenrje.

Some New Observations on rndergronnd
Temperatures. — Some recent observations on
underground temperatures are described in
the December number of the American Jour-
nal of Science by Prof. A. Agassiz. He
says : " For several years past I have, with
the assistance of Mr. Preston C. F. West,
been making rock temperature observations
as we increased the depth at which the min-
ing operations of the Calumet and Hecla Min-
ing Company were carried on. We have
now attained at our deepest point a vertical
depth of 4,712 feet, and have taken tem-
peratures of the rock at 105 feet; at the
depth of the level of Lake Superior, 655
feet; at that of the level of the sea, 1,25'7
feet; at that of the deepest part of Lake
Superior, 1,663 feet ; and at four additional
stations, each respectively 650, 550, 561, and
1,256 feet below the preceding one, the
deepest point at which temperatures have
been taken being 4,580 feet. We propose
when we have reached our final depth, 4,900
feet, to take an additional rock temperature,
and to then publish in full the details of our
observations. In the meantime it may be
interesting to give the results as they stand.
The highest rock temperature obtained at the
depth of 4,580 feet was 79° F. ; the rock tem-
perature at the depth of 106 feet was 69° F.
Taking that as the depth unaffected by local
temperature variations, we have a column of
4,475 feet of rock with a difference of tem-
perature of 20° F., or an average increase of
1° F. for 223-7 feet. This is very different
from any recorded observations. Lord Kel-
vin^ if I am not mistaken, giving as the in-
crease for 1° F., fifty-one feet, while the ob-
servations based on the temperature obser-
vations of the St. Gothard Tunnel gave an
increase of 1° F. for sixty feet. The calcu-
lations based upon the latter observations
gave an approximate thickness of the crust
of the earth in one case of about twenty
miles, in the other twenty-six. Taking our
observations, the crust would be over eighty
miles, and the thickness of the crust at the
critical temperature of water would be over
thirty-one miles, instead of about seven and

8-6 miles as by the other and older ratios.
. . . The holes in which we placed slow
registering Negretti and Zambra thermom-
eters were drilled, slightly inclined upward,
to a depth of ten feet from the face of the
rock and plugged with wood and clay. In
these holes the thermometers were left from
one to three months. The average annual
temperature of the air is 48° F. ; the tem-
perature of the air at the bottom of the
shaft was 72° F." A possible source of er-
ror in these observations arises from the free
access which the surface air has to the
mine, and the probable effect which it
must exercise on the rock temperature for
many feet about it. This ia, of course, also
true of the previous observations, conducted
in mines or tunnels. Another feature which
would perhaps introduce a source of error
is the close proximity of the enormous mass
of water in Lake Superior. It seems prob-
able that the rock temperature in this whole
region is largely modified by the vast body
of water in the lake system.

The Northern Appalachians.— A con-
cise, satisfactory summary of the character-
istics of the northern Appalachian Mountain
ranges is given by Mr. Bailey Willis in a pa-
per published in the series of Monographs
of the National Geographic Society. In-
stead of being marked by a central crest, as
is usually the case, these ranges are charac-
terized by a central zone, the surface of
which is lower than the ranges on either
side. This zone is a very complex valley,
or series of valleys, and is known by dif-
ferent names in different sections of its
length of a thousand miles. Two principal
ranges bound it — one on the southeast, gen-
erally known as the Blue Ridge, and the
other on the northwest, known as the Alle-
ghany Front. They extend in two nearly
parallel lines about seventy-five miles apart,
and have each its special characteristics.
The rivers flow either to the Atlantic or to
the Ohio River. The divide between these
groups of streams is winding and often incon-
spicuous, and has no definite relation to the

282

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

principal heights. The Delaware, Susque-
hanna, and Potomac rise west of the Alle-
ghany Front, which they cross, and, continu-
ing eastward, traverse the Alleghany ridges
and the Blue Ridge to reach the Atlantic.
From among the Alleghany ridges of Vir-
ginia the James and Roanoke flow through
the Blue Ridge eastward. New River, on
the contrary, has its source east of the Blue
Ridge in North Carolina, and runs north-
west across the Blue Ridge, the Alleghany
ridges, and the Alleghany Front, to the Ohio.
It is thus a general fact that the streams of
the Appalachian ranges are not controlled
by the mountains. The ridges pursue their
courses, and the streams, passing across the
ridges, pursue independent courses. The
discordance is one of the most marked fea-
tures in the topography, and it gives rise to
many picturesque water gaps. It is due to
the fact that the transverse river channels
are older than the valley ridges. Within the
valley the brooks and creeks have arranged
themselves usually in systems of pairs.
Flowing southwest, a brook meets its fellow
running northeast, and together they turn
southeast or northwest to traverse a ridge.
In the valley beyond the ridge they are
joined by a pair similar to their own courses
before their union. Beyond a second ridge
or a third, the growing creek may for a time
flow northeast or southwest, but it will pres-
ently pass out by another water gap. Ulti-
mately it falls into one of the great trans-
verse rivers. This arrangement of parallel
brooks which swell the volume of a creek
generally flowing at right angles to their
courses, resembles a vine from whose cen-
tral system branches are trained on a trellis.
Although most conspicuously developed in the
Alleghanies, this trellis system of drainage
is common in regions where beds of hard
rock lie steeply inclined to the general sur-
face. The parallel branches of the system
are controlled by the parallel ridges between
each two pairs. Thus it appears that the
hard rocks have to this extent influenced the
arrangement of the streams.

Petrolenm-Lamp Aceidents. — The recent
report of Mr. Alfred Spencer, an officer of
the control department of the London County
Council, on petroleum lamp accidents, and
the measures necessary for preventing them,

is a very important and practical document.
His conclusions regarding their safe con-
struction and proper management are as
follows: (1) The oil reservoir should be of
strong metal, properly folded and soldered
at the joint, and should not be of china,
glass, or other fragile material. (2) There
should be no opening between the reservoir
and the burner, other than through the tube
which holds the wick, and this tube should
be extended to within a quarter of an inch of
the bottom of the reservoir, and should have
no opening into the reservoir except at its
base. (8) The burner should be securely
attached to the reservoir, preferably by
means of a strong and well-made screw at-
tachment. (4) There should be no openings
through which oil could flow from the reser-
voir should the lamp upset. (5) Every table
lamp should have a broad and heavy base, \
to which the reservoir should be strongly
attached. (6) "Wicks should be soft and not
tightly plaited, and should quite fill the wick-
tube without having to be squeezed into it.
(Y) Wicks should be frequently renewed, and
before being put into lamps should be dried
at a fire and then immediately soaked with
oil. (8) The reservoir should be filled with
oil before the lamp is lit. (9) The lamp
should be kept thoroughly clean, all oil
should be carefully wiped off, and all charred
wick and dirt removed, before lighting.

(10) When first lit, the wick should be par-
tially turned down, and then gradually raised.

(11) The wick should not be left turned
down, as there is then a greater liability to
explosion in lamps of unsafe construction.

(12) Lamps which have no extinguishing ap-
paratus should be put out as follows : The
wick should be turned down until there is
only a small, flickering flame, and a sharp
puff of breath should then be sent across the
top of the chimney, but not down it. (13)
Cans or bottles used for oil should be free
from water and dirt, and should be kept
thoroughly closed.

The Serum Treatment of Disease. — It is

stated in the British Medical Journal that
the serum treatment of disease probably
originated in the observation made by Von
Fodor, in ISSY, that blood when drawn from
the body had a distinct bactericidal action.
" Nuttall and others then pointed out that

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

283

although this bacteriological action might be
connected with the corpuscles of the blood,
it was not confined to them, as the serjim of
freshly coagulated blood was found to con-
tain some proteid substance which nndoubt-
edly exerted a powerful bactericidal effect.
In July, 1889, Babes and Lepp recorded a
number of experiments in which they had
found that the blood of dogs which had been
vaccinated against rabies exerted a distinctly
protective action when injected into suscep-
tible animals, either previous to or along
with the virus procured from a rabid animal.
Ferran appears to have been the next ob-
server to accentuate this point. He was
followed by Bouchard in France, while
Behring and Kitasato in Germany, and then
Roux in Paris, and others in rapid succession
pointed out that there was in the serum of
the blood of animals vaccinated against
diphtheria and tetanus a distinct prophylac-
tic and curative agent which, however, it was
difficult to separate from the serum. In
1891 patients were treated in Berlin with a
serum prepared by Behring, and since then
this serum has been prepared and used in
nearly all civilized countries."

Infected Drinking Water.—There is a
growing tendency among physicians to be-
little the purely chemical examination of
potable water, and to rely solely upon the
results of the bacteriological tests. A recent
episode, the result of which seems at first
sight to strengthen this view, occurred during
the trials undertaken by the London Local
Government Board, in which water samples,
purposely inoculated with typhoid germs,
were sent for analysis to one of England's
leading chemists, and were by him pro-
nounced pure. The obviously weak point in
drawing such a conclusion from the above
occurrence lies in the fact that such a sample
of water would not be found in practice.
The mere fact that it contained no sewage,
to detect which is the chief purpose of the
chemical analysis, would almost certainly in
practice preclude the typhoid bacillus, the
pure culture being only a laboratory product.
The same is practically true with all the
pathogenic micro-organisms which are liable
to occur in drinking water. The chemical
ingredients which the sewage supplies are
quite essential for the rapid growth and

multiplication of the bacteria. In fact, a
favorable breeding ground is perhaps not
second in importance to the presence of the
germ itself, as the number of individual
microbes, up to a certain point, which gain
access to the human body, is probably of
much more importance than the kind of
germ. "The chemist," says Prof. W. P.
Mason, in an article in the Journal of the
American Chemical Society, "is unable to
say whether or not a sewage-laden water is
disease-bearing on any particular date, for
to him all sewage is alike, but he condemns
the water for the reason that, although it
may be harmless to-day, it is impossible to
predict what may be its condition to-mor-
row. Within the week I have been re-
quested to make a bacteriological exami-
nation of the water of a certain well, in
order to determine if it be affected by neigh-
boring cesspools. The physician who made
the request was impressed with the belief in
the paramount value of such an examination
and the comparative uselessness of chemical
analysis. I am quite convinced that, had I
followed his suggestions, I should have
sought in vain for any specific microbe, but
inasmuch as, upon chemical analysis, I found
that the chlorine ran twenty- four parts per
million, which is about ten times the local
' normal,' and the ' nitric nitrogen ' read
nine parts per million in place of 01 16, I
condemned the water offhand without going
further. ... As Dr. Dupr6 has pointed out,
chemistry in such cases anticipates what
may happen m the future, and by timely
advice may prevent an outbreak of disease ;
while, on the other hand, the discovery of
disease germs in a water is only possible
after the water has become infected."

A New Low-Temperatnre Apparatus. —

A most interesting and important demon-
stration of the efficiency of the process of self-
intensification of cold produced by expansion
alone without the aid of any extraneous arti-
ficial refrigeration is described in a recent
issue of Nature. The apparatus consisted
of three coils of narrow copper tubing ar-
ranged concentrically in a metal case, and
connected successively together. The gas,
say oxygen, enters the outer coil at a pres-
sure of one hundred and twenty atmospheres,
passing from this into the second, and from

284

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

this into the central coil, which is sur-
rounded by a cylindrical glass vacuum-
jacketed vessel as devised by Prof. Dewar.
The two outer coils are separated from each
other by vertical divisions of the case, and
the spiral of the central coil is followed by a
flat spiral of sheet copper. When the gas
reaches the extremity of the central coil, it
escapes through a fine orifice of peculiar
construction, formed by bringing two knife
edges closely together. The size of the ori-
fice can be regulated by means of an ebonite
rod, which passes up the axis of the appa-
ratus, and terminates in a handle at the top.
After its escape the whole of the gas cooled
by expansion passes through the spaces
surrounding the pipe in which the com-
pressed gas is passing to the point of expan-
sion, and so makes this gas, still under pres-
sure, cooler than it was itself while under com-
pression. The compressed gas consequently
becomes, at the point of expansion, cooler
than that which preceded it, and in its turn
follows backward the course of the still com-
pressed gas, and so makes the latter cooler
than before expansion, and also cooler than
ever after expansion. This intensification
of cooling (always assuming sufficient pro-
tection against access of heat from the out-
side) is only limited by the liquefaction of
the gas, the temperature of liquefaction
being in the case of oxygen 180° C. The
apparatus exhibited measures twenty-eight
inches deep by seven inches in diameter, and
when once cooled down — that is, in about half
an hour — it yields liquid oxygen at the rate
of about seven cubic centimetres in four
minutes.

How Opium Is Prepared. — The English
consul at Ispahan gives the following de-
scription of the process: The people com-
mence to collect the drug early in May. The
poppy head is lanced in the afternoon, and
the opium which exudes and dries during
the night is collected into copper pots early
the following morning. It is kept in store
in these pots until required for exportation.
Then it is taken out of the pots and sorted.
For the succeeding manipulations, each work-
man has a smooth board, about twenty-three
inches long and eleven inches broad. He
takes from the bulk about one pound of the
crude opium, and rubs it on the board for

a short time, then puts it in the sun for
ten minutes, and afterward takes it into the
shade and rubs it continuously with an iron
implement something like a small solid
spade, until it dries up to a certain degree.
It is then collected into a mass and heated
in trays over a small charcoal fire until
plastic. Each man then takes about a
quarter of a pound, and kneads it again on
the board until it dries up to the standard
degree and assumes a golden yellow color.
It is next made up into cakes of one pound
each, which are wrapped up in paper and
placed in tin boxes, in layers alternating with
poppy chaff. These tin boxes are packed in
wooden ones covered with hide and gunny,
and the opium is then ready for exportation.

The Finger-print Metliod of Identifica-
tion.— In a recent letter to Nature, Kuma-
gusu Minakata gives some interesting data,
which seem to indicate that the ancient
Japanese use of finger marks on divorce
papers, as a means of identification, which
the author described several years ago in the
same periodical, was probably adopted from
the Chinese Laws of Yung-Hwui, some-
where about 650 a. d. He has found a pas-
sage in the Arabian Relation des Voyages
by one Sulaiman, who made several voyages
to China and India in the middle of the
ninth century a. d. (the time in which the
above-mentioned dynasty in China was going
to decline), describing the Chinese method of
drawing up a contract: "The Chinese re-
spect justice in their transactions and in
judicial acts. If a man lends a sum of
money to some one, he puts it down in writing.
The borrower, in his turn, makes a similar
writing, which he marks with two of his
fingers together, the index and the middle
finger. The two papers are put together
and folded. Some characters are written
across the portion where they join. They
are then unfolded, and the writing by which
the borrower acknowledges his debt is given
to the lender. If, at a later time, the bor-
rower denies his debt, he is told to bring
the writing of the lender. If he pretends
not to have it, and says he has never written
a paper accompanied by his signature and
his mark, and that his writing has been de-
stroyed, they say to the borrower who denies
his debt : ' Declare in writing that that debt

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

285

does not concern you. But if the creditor
proves that which you deny, you will receive
twenty blows on the back, and will pay an
amend of twenty thousand (/aA:oM((/) pieces
of copper.' " The antiquity of this custom is
of especial interest just at present, because
of the rise into prominence of the so-called
Bertillon system of identifying criminals,
which is based on the finger-print method.

Solid AlPt — In a recent address on The
Liquefaction of Air and Research at Low
Temperatures, before the Chemical Society,
Prof. J. Dewar gave some very interesting
descriptions of such unusual substances as
"solid air" and "liquid hydrogen." He
says : "If a litre of liquid air be exhausted
in a silvered vacuum vessel, half a litre of
solid air may be obtained and kept solid for
half an hour. The solid is at first a stiff,
transparent jelly, which, when placed in a
magnetic field, has the still liquid oxygen
drawn out to the poles, showing that solid
air is a nitrogen jelly containing liquid oxy-
gen ; Bolid air can only be examined in a
vacuum, or an atmosphere of hydrogen, be-
cause it instantly melts on exposure to the
air, causing an additional quantity of air to
liquefy. It is strange to see a mass of solid
air melting in contact with the atmosphere,
and all the time swelling up like a fountain.
... A small ignited jet of hydrogen burns
continuously below the surface of liquid oxy-
gen, all the water produced being carried
away as snow. ... By means of a jet of
liquid hydrogen, liquid air and oxygen
were transformed into hard white solids re-
sembling avalanche snow, quite different in
appearance from the jellylike mass of solid
air got by the use of the air pump." The
only widely distributed element which has
not yet been liquefied is fluorine.

Cnrlons Verbal Customs in Madagasetr.

— A curious custom — said to be common
throughout the country— of changing names
and words, is described in J. T. Last's Notes
on the Languages Spoken in Madagascar.
The mention of the name borne by the king
while living is tabooed after his decease, and
violation of this law may be punished even
with death. The name of a chief is tabooed
to all in any way connected with him, and
that of a notable person to all belonging to

his family; and should there be another
person in the family bearing the same name
as that of the person deceased, that name
must be laid aside and another one taken.
This change of name is often made as a
mark of respect for a friend. It is consid-
ered an honor to the dead man to change
one's name. The author while traveling once
heard some guns fired off in the distance-
denoting death. He found, on inquiry, that
the deceased was a grown-up daughter of a
certain person ; but the people were careful
not to mention her name, because it was to
be changed, and they did not yet know what
new name would be adopted for her. The
names given to deceased kings and chiefs
are invariably formed of three words, of
which the first is always Andriana — ^lord;
the second some word denoting respect or
honor, or pointing to some characteristic of
the deceased ; and the third and last, arivo
— a thousand. Even among the common
people it is considered highly indecorous to
mention the name of a deceased person.
Some special words are the exclusive prop,
erty of kings and queens. Besides these, a
number of words are common to kings and
chiefs, but can not be used in the same man-
ner by the other people. Again, the king
has power to make certain words "fady,"
that is, to prohibit their use either for a
time or entirely; and then other words
must be adopted to be used in their place.
Changes are often made in the use of
words by the prohibition of words contain-
ing part of the name of the king or queen.
These customs may be made to account for
some of the differences existing between
neighboring dialects; and their value as
factors may be estimated when we consider
the number of petty kings in Madagascar,
and remember that the rules as to the name
of each produce more or less permanent
changes in the language.

The Deepest Sounding yet made.— It ia

stated that Captain Balfour, of H. M. S.
Penguin, has obtained three soundings of
over five thousand fathoms. They were
taken in the Pacific Ocean at the following
points: Latitude south, 23° 39°; longitude
west, 175° 4', 5,022 fathoms, at which point
the wire broke ; latitude south, 28° 44' ;
longitude west, 176° 4', 5,147 fathoms ; and

286

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

latitude south, 30° 28' ; longitude west, 176°
89', 5,155 fathoms (30,930 feet). The usual
abysmal red clay was brought up by the
Bounding tube on the two latter occasions.
Mr. V. Thorpe, surgeon of the Penguin, re-
ports a microscopic examination of the speci-
men from 5,147 fathoms, which shows that
the remains of siliceous organisms are almost
if not entirely absent. The mineral particles
are in a minute state of disintegration, and
consist of exceedingly fine flocculent matter,
mixed with pumice and other glassy volcanic
products, green crystals of augite, and red-
dish crystals of pelagonite. The deepest
trustworthy sounding previously made was
4,655 fathoms, obtained by U. S, S. Tuscarora
near Japan in 1874.

Scientifie Aeqnisitlons from the Peary
Expedition. — While adverse circumstances
made it impossible for Lieutenant Peary to
carry out, in full, his plans with reference
to the northwest coast of Greenland, he,
nevertheless, as Mr. RoUin D. Salisbury has
shown in Science, accomplished much during
his arctic residence. He twice crossed the
ice cap from Inglefield Gulf to Independence
Bay, and gathered information of singular
value concerning the inland ice and the ice-
free territory beyond. He mapped a consid-
erable stretch of the coast from Cape Alex-
ander to Cape York, or from latitude 78° 10'
to 75° 55', covering eight degrees of longi-
tude, and with indentations, prominences,
and islands one thousand miles in length.
This map includes so many features not
given in the other maps that it is hard, at
first sight, to recognize the identity of the
regions. Eleven before unknown islands
were accurately located, and the position,
shape, and size of those heretofore repre-
sented were corrected. Possibly a hundred
glaciers were located with approximate ac-
curacy within a region where only ten were
represented — not always correctly — on the
published chart. Astrup's map of Melville
Bay was prepared while its author was a
member of Lieutenant Peary's company. A
series of accurate and elaborate meteorologi-
cal records was kept up, in which, besides
the formal entries, observations were noted
of the behavior of the winds about the ice
sheet, presenting facts which may be of use
in the study of the problems of glacierology.

Measurements were made of the rate of mo-
tion of one of the most active glaciers of the
region, and continued so long as to render
them of special value. Two large meteorites
were brought back for study. Lieutenant
Peary enjoyed rare opportunities of personal
contact and association, by living with them,
for studying the Eskimos of north Greenland,
and intends to publish the results of his
studies. Much has been gained, further,
through the expeditions which Lieutenant
Peary caused to be sent into northern waters.
Prof. L. L. Dyche, who joined the party in
Greenland, secured valuable zoological col-
lections of birds, walruses, reindeer, seals,
and narwhals. Mr. Salisbury made observa-
tions and studies of the geographical and
geological features of the west coast of
Greenland, between latitudes 69° and 78° 45',
at close range from the vessel, and at numer-
ous stopping places. Many glaciers were
studied in. detail, determinations respecting
glacier motion were made, evidence was
gathered touching the former extension of
the ice cap of Greenland, and determinations
were made concerning recent changes of
level in the land.

Mieronesia. — The following description is
taken from a paper on the Marshall Islands,
read before the Berlin Geographical Society
on June 8, 1895 : *' The Marshall group con-
sists of two nearly parallel series of islands,
running from north -northwest to south-south-
east, which are named by the natives Ratak
(Islands toward the Dawn) and Relik (Islands
toward the Sunset). The group covers about
one hundred and seventy-six square miles.
All are coral islands and most of them atolls.
Of the Relik group the most important are
Yaluit (the seat of government). Ebon, and
Namvik. Of the Ratak group, Mejem has a
population of about twelve hundred. The
climate is, for a tropical region, compara-
tively favorable to Europeans. There are no
swamps, but the continued high temperature
and the moisture of the air render them dan-
gerous for Europeans with heart or lung
disease. Besides affections of the heart and
kidneys, dysentery and rheumatism (both of
the muscles and joints) are not uncommon.
Observations extending over three years gave
the mean temperature as 80*6° F., the ex-
tremes being 93° and 71°. The rainfall is

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

287

pretty evenly distributed throughout the year,
and is quite excessive (one hundred and sev-
enty-seven inches). It is only in January and
February that a comparatively dry period
can be expected. The northeast trades blow
from December to April, becoming rather
easterly or southeasterly from March to No-
vember. Calms or violent southwesterly
storms occur chiefly between August and No-
vember. There being no springs, a supply of
water is collected in tanks or cisterns. The
useful plants include the cocoanut palm, bread-
fruit tree, and Pandanus odoratissimus, the sap
of which last is rich in sugar. The cultivation
of plantains has much increased of late, be-
sides which several kinds of arums, the South
Sea arrowroot (Tacca pinnati/ida), and a man-
grove which supplies a black dye are grown.
Guavas, figs, citrons, and anonas thrive well,
but tea, coffee, cacao, etc., can not be grown

at all. The Micronesian population amounts
to from twelve thousand to thirteen thou-
sand. The population belongs to four sharply
defined classes. The great mass consists of
the common people (^Kayur) ; the next higher
class is that of the LeatakTcetak^ compar-
able to village magistrates, who see that the
orders of the chiefs are carried out. Neither
of these classes own land, but they are
allowed to grow as much produce or catch
as much fish as is necessary for their sus-
tenance. The ordinary chiefs {Barak) rank
above both these classes, and they often pos-
sess larger holdings than the head chiefs
{Iroj). All the members of these four
classes acquire their rank through the
mother only. The race seems to be deterio-
rating physically, owing to the prevalence of
specific disease, with which about fifty per
cent of the inhabitants are aflaicted."

MINOE PARAGEAPHS.

Anianus Jedlik died on the 12th of last
December, at the cloister of the Benedictine
order, in Gyor. He belonged to the old or-
der of natural philosophers (he was bom in
1800) who lacked that important portion of
the latter-day physicists equipment, a knowl-
edge of higher mathematics. Some of his
more important treatises were under the fol-
lowing titles : The Deflection of Beams
(1845); The Application of the Electro-mag-
net in Electro-dynamic Rotations (1856) ; A
Modification of Grove and Bunsen's Battery
(1857); The Magneto-motor (1857); Concat-
enation of Leyden Jars (1863); Electro-
magnetic Undulation Machine (1868).

M. Abel Hovelacque, one of the most
industrious and successful of the younger
French students of anthropology, died in
Paris, on the 22d of February, aged fifty-two
years. His effective scientific career began
in 1867, when, at the age of twenty- three
years, he founded, with Chav6e, the Revue
Unguiaiique^ the first Journal in France spe-
cially devoted to linguistics ; joined the An-
thropological Society, and began the publica-
tion of articles in various periodicals. These
articles, largely relating to linguistic and
cranial investigations, were followed by books
on Our Ancestor ; The Beginnings of Man-
kind ; a Grammar of the Zend Language ; an

Elementary Linguistics ; Languages, Races,
and Nationalities ; Observations on Herodo-
tus and the Persians; The South Slavs;
Linguistics ; The Avesta, Zoroaster, and
Mazdeism ; and a lecture on the Evolution of
Languages. On the foundation, by Broca, of
the Ecole d' Anthropologic, in 1876, Hove-
lacque was made Professor of Linguistic
Ethnology. In 1890 he was made president
of the school and chief director of the Eevtie
menmelle de Vj^cole d'Anthropohgie. He
has also taken part with other anthropolo-
gists, whom M. Andr6 Lefevre speaks of col-
lectively as a group, in other important en-
terprises and publications in anthropology.

La Revue Scientifique of December 14th
contains an interesting anthropological note.
It had been noticed that the wounds made
by the arrows of the natives of New Heb-
rides were quite regularly followed by teta-
nus, and* that the surrounding inhabitants
were more afraid of these arrows than of
a rifle bullet. A commission at Melbourne
experimented on some animals, with these
arrow points, in order to discover their poi-
son, but obtained no results. So far as the
animals were concerned, the arrows were
not poisoned. A somewhat similar commis-
sion in 1883, authorized by the Governor of
New Caledonia, gave no better results. In

288

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preparing these arrows, the natives first cover
the points with a mucilaginous compound,
and then plunge them into the soil of crab
burrows in some neighboring swamp. Hence
it seems probable that years before our isola-
tion of this virulent germ these savages were
utilizing its fatal properties in their warfare.

NOTES.

Observations have been made by Prof.
Lloyd Morgan on instinct in young birds with
a view to determine how far the activities
involved in swimming, diving, running, fly-
ing, feeding, bathing, etc., are instinctive or
congenital, and how far the definiteness of
this and other activities is a matter of indi-
vidual acquisition. Other observations were
on congenital and acquired timidity. They
indicated that while the performance of the
activities in question has a congenital basis,
they are perfected by individual acquisition,
and that there is no instinctive avoidance of
insects with warning colors, this seeming to
be entirely the result of individual experi-
ence. No material support was afforded to
the view that the instinctive activities result
from the inheritance of what is individually
acquired.

Under the law of the State of New York
the duty of analyzing artificial fertilizers
and of prosecuting manufacturers of fraudu-
lent goods is committed to the Agricultural
Experiment Station at Geneva. Since May,
1894, prosecutions have been instituted in
the case of eleven brands which fell materi-
ally below the guaranteed analyses. More
than two thousand samples of commercial
fertilizers have been collected and analyzed
since July, 1890; and since October, 1890,
thirteen fertilizer bulletins have been pub-
lished, containing four hundred and twenty
pages, of each of which about fifteen thou-
sand copies have been distributed among the
farmers of the State. The station has the
addresses of one hundred and twenty firms
doing business in fertilizers in this State, the
goods of fifty-three of which are manufac-
tured in other States. Its publications are
sent free to all farmers in the State who ask
for them.

The knowledge of sugar has been traced
back away into the darkness of the past.
The Chinese have been acquainted with it,
according to the Fortschritte der Tndicstrie,
for more than three thousand years. From
Asia, where it was extracted from a cane, it
was brought into Greece by one of the gen-
erals of Alexander the Great, b. c. 825. In
A. D. 160 it was prescribed by the doctor
Galenus as a remedy for certain diseases.
The refining of sugar was practiced in Eng-
land about 1659. The story runs that the
secret of sugar making was brought to Sicily

by a Venetian merchant, who bought it from
the Arabs for a hundred thousand crowns.

The number of metals found to be capa-
ble of combining with argon at a red heat is
gradually increasing, and now includes mag-
nesium, lithium, barium, aluminum, zinc,
iron, and copper. Metallic barium has been
found to absorb nitrogen rapidly, and its use
as a cheap means of preparing argon from
air has been suggested. Lithium absorbs
nitrogen with incandescence at temperatures
below a red heat ; and it has been shown by
M. Deslandres and M. Guntz that this ab-
sorption takes place slowly in the cold.

Among the scientific works announced
for publication by Henry Holt & Co. are a
book on Electricity, by Prof. Charles A.
Perkins, of the University of Tennessee ; A
Problem Book in Elementary Chemistry, by
E. Dana Pierce, of the Hotchkiss School,
Lakeville, Conn,, and the amusing Preisge-
kront of Eckstein, edited by Prof. Charles
Bundy Wilson, of the University of Iowa,
will shortly be added to the series of Ger-
man texts published by this house.

In its issue for May 9th the Scientific
American gives the particulars concerning an
offer of a prize of two hundred and fifty dol-
lars, which it makes for the best essay on
The Progress of Invention during the Past
Fifty Years received by June 20th. The
prize essay will be published in the special
fiftieth anniversary number of that journal
on July 25th, and regular rates of compensa-
tion are offered for the five next best essays.

The institution of Arbor Day was started
in Nebraska, in 1872, by the Hon. J. Sterling
Morton, our present Secretary of Agriculture.
The first efforts, as its history is told by Mr.
B. 0. Northrop, were not assuring; but its
progress has been remarkable. The day is
now observed in forty States and Territories
of the United States, in Canada, and in cer-
tain districts of England, Australia, Japan,
and South Africa. The Western settler who
does not now plant trees is an exception ;
and the people of Nebraska, in particular,
are proud of what they have achieved in this
work.

The death-rate in the German army,
which was 6*9 per thousand in 1870, was in
1894 only 2-4 per thousand. This decrease
during the past twenty -five years in the death-
rate in standing armies has been very general,
and is accounted for by improved hygiene
and sanitation. During the Franco- Grer-
man War the French lost twenty-three thou-
sand four hundred men from smallpox. The
Germans, who had been strict vaccinators for
thirty years, lost only three hundred men from
this disease. The strictness of the vaccination
law in the latter army may be gathered from
the fact that since 1873 only two soldiers in
this immense collection of men have died of
smallpox.

I

JACOB MOLESCHOTT.

Public U^r^"^
APPLETONS' Mj:!^EfrcE,3^-
POPULAR SCIENCE
MON^THLY.

JULY, 1896.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

Br DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D. C.L.,

OOBKESPONDANT DK l'iNSTTTUT DE FKANCE, ETC.

IL— THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY.

PART VI.

THE Tax Experiences of India.— -In contrast with the rec-
ord of tax experiences in Egypt, that of India under like
(British) influences, though equally singular and instructive, is
not equally satisfactory. The elements of the problem of rais-
ing sufficient revenue to defray the expenses of the state since
India passed under British rule and influence are substantially as
follows :

A vast area of territory — 1,609,151 square miles — with a popula-
tion comprising more than one fifth of the human race — 288,159,-
692 in 1891— and increasing at the rate of at least 30,000,000 for
every decade, a number about equal to the present population of
England and Wales ; without homogeneity, but divided and sub-
divided, as is the case in no other country, by diversity of race,
religion, caste, and language.*. Of the population of India, 217,-
000,000, according to the census of 1881, were unable to read or
write ; while as respects property, the testimony of recognized au-
thorities in 1877 was, that the value of the total yield of the land
of India from all sources, including the produce of mines and the

* In the Statistical Abstract relating to British India, annually published by the home
Government, eighty-eight different languages, distinctiyely Asiatic or non-European, are
recognized as characteristic of the population. In 1884-'86 out of a then total population
of 263,891,536, only 202,920 were reported as using English in the sense of a mother-
tongue ; and only 1,862,626 that admitted of classification as " Christians."
YOL. XLIX. — 24

290 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

annual value of manufactures, would not average more than forty-
shillings (ten dollars) per head for the entire population.* As
compared with Egypt, the situation in India has this marked dif-
ference— namely, that whereas in the former country the extreme
poverty of its rural population — the fellahs — has not been due to
any lack of fertile land, or any incapacity on their part for obtain-
ing from it a comfortable subsistence with continued betterments
in condition, but owing to the fact that they have from time imme-
morial been deprived of the control of the fruits of their labors ;
while in India the population is increasing so rapidly — especially
under the conditions of peace which have been attendant on Brit-
ish rule — and so disproportionately to the amount of new and fer-
tile soil that can be appropriated, as to leave but little margin, un-
der existing methods of cultivation, for increasing the means of
subsistence for the people. In fact, the " Malthusian theory " is
completely exemplifying itself in India, which is densely popu-
lated, destitute in a great degree of roads and of the knowledge
and use of machinery.!

In a debate in the British House of Commons on the Indian
budget, in August, 1894, Mr. S. Keay, an ex-official of the Indian
Government, stated that in 1892 " he had a census taken of five
villages in the presidency of Bombay. The population was 236.
These five villages farmed 1,400 acres, the gross crop of which
was valued at £193. If a starvation support of 14 shillings a
year were allowed to each of the 236 persons and 11 shillings a
year for each pair of bullocks kept to till the farm, the net prod-
uce of the five villages amounted to £5 for the year. Yet in the
same year they paid to the inland revenue £73, and the village
books showed that it was done by borrowing from the usurers at
24 per cent."

Mr. Keay further stated that " about seven years ago the Di-
rector-General of Statistics for all India published a book in which
he stated that 40,000,000 of the people of India habitually went
through life on an insufficiency of food. The Government of
India wanted to be able to deny the statement, and they sent a con-

* Resources of Modern Commerce. A. J. Wilson. Longmans, London, 1878, vol. i, p.
57. Taxation in India. Shoshee Chunder Dutt, Justice of the Peace, Calcutta.

f Under the old-time system of native rulers, frequent wars, consequent on foreign in
vasions and internal race antagonisms, with accompanying famines and epidemic diseases,
materially restricted the growth of the population of India. But under the conditions of
peace that have been attendant during the last half century of British rule, the population
of India has increased so rapidly that the limits of the agricultural capacity of the country,
and the consequent means of subsistence for its people, seem to be approaching exhaustion ;
and one extraordinary drain upon the revenues of the Government in later years has been
due to the wise creation of a national famine fund, to be used in cases of periodical emergen-
cies due to failure of the crops, for the relief of multitudes who would otherwise perish by
starvation.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 291

fidential circular to the heads of departments and governors, in
which they asked whether it was wholly or partially true, not
that 40,000,000, but that the greater proportion of the population
of India suffered from an insufficiency of food ; and they directed
that men of ' experience and judgment' should be set to make the
inquiries. The replies were contained in five confidential Blue-
books. In the district of Rampoor twelve scattered villages were
taken, with a total population of 2,000. Of these, 1,600 were cul-
tivators, and the remaining 400 were laborers, artisans, etc. It
was found that, after deducting rent and the cost of cultiva-
tion, the cultivators had available for their support during the
year sixteen rupees each, while the laborers had seventeen shil-
lings a year each as the whole means of their subsistence. In an^
other case it was shown that in a district having a population of
over 1,000,000 souls, 173 persons had only thirteen shillings a year
each to live upon. In another district the official reports which
were contained in Blue-books marked ' confidential ' showed that
in a large district nearly all the inhabitants had to live upon from
three eighths to three quarters of the amount of grain which was
ascertained to be the minimum that would support a healthy con-
dition of life."

In the debate that ensued. Sir Richard Temple, another ex-offi-
cial of India, stated that " the calculations referred to by Mr. Keay
were not worth the paper they were written on or the breath with
which they were uttered. The data upon which they were founded
were supposititious, and the deductions drawn from them were
[impossible. If they were true, the people of India would not be
living at all, and the land would be of no market value. Yet, in
mother breath they were told that large sums of money were
)eing advanced by local banks on security of the land."

Mr. Keay said that the facts and figures were quoted from the
Hue-book.

Sir R. Temple retorted that "the facts were no facts at all.

'he tabular statements were merely tabular statements of partic-

ilar theories of particular calculators. They were, in fact, delu-

lions and snares. He preferred to take certain general facts which

50uld be tested. He could not know or test how a particular

family in India lived. He did, however, know the area of land

[tinder cultivation, the population of the country, the ratio of the

increase in the population, the expansion of trade, and, above all,

the exportation of foodstuffs. Honorable members told them that

[the people of India were starving, yet India exported food and

^rain stuffs to such an extent as to threaten disturbance to the

larkets of Europe, and particularly to disturb the markets of

^his country [England]. Honorable members told them that the

jople of India were sinking, yet the population had increased by

292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

30,000,000 in ten years — a greater increase than in almost any-
other country. No doubt the taxable capacity was low, but he
asserted that the people of India were, as to the poorer classes of
the population, the lightest-taxed people in the world. The actual
value of the produce of one man's land was difficult to test, but
the rate of wages was easily ascertained. The poorest laboring man
in India could, at the time when he was in India, earn Rs. 5 per
month, and he would not pay more than Rs. 2 per annum in taxes.*
A man here earning thirty-five pounds a year would not pay less
than two pounds in taxation. This meant that in England the poor
man paid one seventeenth, while in India the poor man paid only
one thirtieth in taxes. Therefore the taxation of India was rela-
tively much lower than in England. How could a people who
were exporting such quantities of foodstuffs and who were in-
creasing so greatly in population be said to be dying of star-
vation ? In face of those facts, which could be proved, what
weight was to be given by the House to amateur statisticians and
their calculations ? He had spent twenty-five years among the
poorest people in India, and he had also spent fifteen years
among the active life of the poorest people of this country.
With that experience he asserted that the people of India were
not so poor as the people of England.'* (London Times, August,
1894.)

It was evident, therefore, from the outset that the natural
conditions of India were as antagonistic to the adoption of
what may be termed the civilized forms of taxation, as they
were to the adoption of the Christian religion or English
habits and language ; and the problem to the new rulers for
obtaining revenue for the support of their Government, with-
out resort to the old forms of arbitrary exactions or plunder,
has accordingly always been one of great difficulty and delicacy ;
and the record of their experience in attempting to solve it con-
stitutes an exceedingly novel and important chapter in economic
history.

Practically the only guide to them for the determination and
collection of taxes has been that of expediency. The imperial
revenue of British India for 1893-'94, stated in tens of rupees,
was £60,193,000, making no allowance for the depreciation of sil-
ver. The value of ten rupees is very nearly equivalent to the
British pound sterling, or five dollars gold coin of the United
States. The ordinary revenue of India for the fiscal year 1893-'94
was, therefore, about $300,968,000. The expenditures exceeded

* The value of the silver rupee — Rs. — in India at the time mentioned by Sir Richard
Temple, expressed in terms of the United States gold dollar, was about $0,48 cents. Its
present (1896) corresponding gold value is about $0.23.4 cents.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 293

the receipts of revenue to the extent of about $30,000,000, and
represented an annual deficit to that extent.*

The sources of revenue in India are mainly seven, but all of
them, using the term in its ordinary signification, can not be
characterized as " taxation."

The first and most important of them is the taxation of land,
with which the Asiatic people have been familiar from a most
remote period, and the justice of which is least questioned by
them. In fact, reliance upon land revenue was a feature of the
Indian governments long before England had any control over
India. The native rulers maintained themselves for centuries by
exacting shares of crops and cash contributions from cultiva-
tors of the soil. Taxation of land in India has therefore been
retained, and not instituted by the present (British) Govern-
ment. The entire land of India was nationalized centuries ago,
and now as formerly (and as is the case in China) the primary
title to all land inheres in the state or Government, and the cul-
tivators of land pay a certain rent in respect to their tenancy.

There are two methods of land assessment in India, which in-
volve a somewhat curious history. A hundred years ago, under
the administration of Lord Cornwallis, an . arrangement or treaty
was made, which then and forever fixed the rate which the ten-
ants of land in the government of Bengal — representing about one
fourth of the present area of British India — should pay the state
for their occupancy, and which then was regarded as a fair rental ;
and although since that arrangement was made, the land in ques-
tion, owing to increased population, new industries, and state ex-
penditures on roads and railroads, has greatly increased in value,
and yields to the representatives of the primary lessees three-
fold or more rental, the British Government has to this day
strictly respected its treaty and fulfilled its agreement. The for-
tunate controllers of the land thus rented — the zemindars, or na-
tive capitalists — having, however, improved their opportunities
to oppress (rackrent) their subtenants, the Indian Government,
since 1885, has undertaken to remedy this evil, and with a consid-
erable degree of success. Land throughout India is divided into
provinces, and the provinces themselves are divided and subdi-
vided in such way that taxation in each locality is under the
direction of an officer familiar with all the matters that must be
taken into consideration in taxing justly. A multiplicity of

* " The gross revenue and the gross expenditure of India are very different things from
the real revenue and real expenditure. In the gross revenue is included the entire receipts,
and in the gross expenditure is included the entire expenditure of the whole railway system
of India, the whole of the canal system, and of the irrigation works." — Speech of Mr. H.
Fowler, Secretary of State for India, introducing into Parliament the Budget for India,
August 15, 1894.

294 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rights in the nature of land tenures are recognized in the as-
sessments, and heed is also paid to the character of the lands and
the purposes to which they are devoted. No increase of rent is
ever allowed upon improvements made by the tenant himself, or
upon improvements arising from the expenditure of public money ;
so that, in the opinion of those who have given personal attention
and study to this subject, the English officials have finally estab-
lished a land revenue system in India on a just basis.

The expense of collecting the land tax is heavy. In the so-
called " village assessments " the collection is made by the local
authorities. In other cases the large proprietors and notables pay
the Government levies and recoup themselves by including their
payments in the rents charged to their subtenants — the ryots, or
])easantry. While the revenues from this source are very reliable,
they are not regarded as capable of much further expansion. The
gross receipts — imperial, provincial, and local — from the annual
rental of tax on land in all India was officially returned for 1893-
'94 at 25,589,600 Rx. (or about $123,000,000), representing an aver-
age rent or tax of $1.53 per acre. About nine tenths of the entire
population of India belong to the agricultural class.

Second in order of importance of the sources of Indian revenue
is the tax on salt, which, since its discontinuance in France in
1789, has ceased to be an excise or internal tax in European
countries, with the exception of Italy, and which finds its war-
rant and justification at the present time in India in the fact,
that apart from the land tax there is no other method so practi-
cal and economic of compelling the masses of its people to
directly contribute anything for the support of the Government,
inasmuch as the consumption of salt is a necessity for every
individual. A very large proportion of the salt required for In-
dian consumption is imported — chiefly from England — and the
total amount on which taxes are collected is about 500,000 tons,
or 3,000,000 barrels. The rate of tax is two and a half silver
rupees (nominally $1.00) per muund of 82*28 pounds. Previous
to 1879-^80 the Government maintained, at great expense and
popular annoyance, a customs line twenty-five hundred miles
in length, to keep salt produced in the states under native rule
from entering into British territory without the payment of a
heavy duty. This barbarous system, necessitating the constant
employment of a large force of native constables, known as chu-
prassies, invested with inquisitorial powers, was abolished at
the time above named, by entering into treaties with the native
states possessing salt sources, in virtue of which British officials
are permitted to supervise their salt works and tax their product
before it left them. But this could be only accomplished by pay-
ing the states concerned a satisfactory compensation for this con-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 295

cession. The receipts of the imperial (Indian) revenue from the
salt tax for 1894 were 8,228,000 Rx. (tens of rupees), or nominally
about $41,000,000. The present average annual consumption of
tax-paid salt by the people of India has been officially estimated
at about ten and three fourths pounds per head, and the average
annual burden of the tax on each Indian family of five persons at
one rupee and a quarter, or 5d (ten cents) ; and in considering
this tax it is desirable to bear in mind that there is no direct
taxation in India either on tobacco or sugar, so that the salt tax
is the only direct tax that the Indian peasant need pay, unless he
indulges in alcohol or narcotics — the land assessment being re-
garded as in the nature of rent.

As the price of salt, by reason of the tax, is somewhat higher
in India than in most other countries, the question as to its
effect upon its population is one of high social and sanitary inter-
est, in respect to which authorities differ. By some * it is con-
tended that the consumption of this prime necessity is thereby
greatly restricted, and that much disease, both of men and ani-
mals, is thereby engendered; and the trade in salt fish, which
might supply a cheap and abundant article of food, is greatly
hampered. Others assert that " the poorer classes do not feel ag-
grieved or complain about it " ; that " as a rule the peasantry do
not stint themselves on account of it " ; and that " no one has ever
taken exception to the tax as it stands but the European griev-
ance-monger in the country.^' But, be this as it may, all are agreed
that it would be very difficult to raise a revenue equivalent to
that derived from the taxation of salt by any other method.

The third largest source of imperial revenue in India is from
the Government monopoly of the production and sale of opium ;
and the annual receipts from which, although at one time in
excess of $40,000,000, have of late years greatly diminished, and
were officially reported in 1894 as 6,627,571 Rx. ($33,137,855). As
the opium product of India is sold mainly to China and the
Straits Settlements, and as the export taxes embodied in its price
are collected from the people of these countries, they can not,
therefore, be regarded as a fiscal burden upon the people of India.

The method of collecting the revenue from opium is substan-
tially as follows : No person in British India may cultivate the
poppy, from which the drug is derived, without a license from
the Government ; and every cultivator is bound to sell the crude
product of his crop to the Government at certain factories, where
it is manufactured into the opium of commerce. A portion of
the manufactured opium is retained for consumption in India,
and distributed through venders licensed by the excise depart-

* Wilson's Resources of Modem Commerce. London, Longmans, 1878.

296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ment. The remainder is sold monthly by auction to merchants,
who export it; and on this exportation a duty is levied, from
which the imperial revenue from this source mainly accrues.
Opium produced in the native states of India pays the export
duties when it passes into British territory. The Government
prescribes rules for the cultivation of the poppy, and the manufac-
ture, possession, transport, import (from native states) or export,
and sale of opium ; and any contravention of such rules is sub-
ject to stringent penalties. The product of the poppy illegally
cultivated and opium made the subject of an offense against the
law are liable to confiscation, together with the vessels and pack-
ages in which it is found and the animals and conveyances used
in transporting it. Notwithstanding all these precautions, the
price of opium consumed in the country — about one eleventh
part of the whole — is more or less influenced by illicit supplies ;
so that the Government monopoly of this article is fully effective
only in respect to the export trade. But even under such condi-
tions, opium is the inost valuable of all the native exports of
India ; and the annual value of the poppy crop, including the
poppy seeds and the poppy oil produced from them (neither of
which yield opium), or the annual money return, apart from the
Government revenue, that the people of India get out of the crop,
is estimated at about $70,000,000.

The fourth source in order of importance of the Indian reve-
nue is from the so-called excise, which embraces licenses and dis-
tillery fees, licenses for the sale of liquors and drugs, and rent
of " Toddy " trees— 364,624 Rx. ($1,722,120) in 1894 ; duty on opium
consumed in India— 732,200 Rx. ($3,661,000) in 1894; fines, con-
fiscations, and miscellaneous; total excise revenue for 1894, 5,388,-
573 Rx. ($26,942,865). The incidence of this form of taxation falls
mainly upon Europeans and " Eurasians " (a modern name given
to persons of mixed European and Indian blood). In this con-
nection, the Imperial Secretary for India, in his budget speech
(1894), stated that, "whereas in England there was a licensed shop
to sell intoxicating liquors to every 106 of the population, in In-
dia there was only one for selling liquor and opium to every 2,148
of the population."

Fifth. The stamp system of taxation in India yielded a reve-
nue in 1894 of 4,509,355 Rx., or $22,546,665. Although somewhat
heavy in the aggregate, the system is not unpopular, for the rea-
son that it is practically unknown to the mass of the people; the
largest items of collection being returned, in 1894, under the
heads of " court fee stamps "" ($15,317,315) and " commercial and
other stamps'' ($5,841,995).

Sixth, "Provincial rates." Under this title are included a
variety of levies, differing in name, character, and rate in differ-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 297

ent places, and for tho furtherance of special objects — as for
paying the expenses of hospitals, schools, and police . service ; for
the maintenance and construction of roads and irrigating facili-
ties, the administration of wards' estates, and the like. The reve-
nue reported from this source in 1894 was 3,514,571 Rx. ($17,572,855).

Seventh, Until within a very recent period (1894) the customs
system of India — taxes on imports and exports — was one of the
simplest in the world. No other country than the United King-
dom imposed duties on so few descriptions of merchandise — main-
ly on alcoholic liquors, salt, mineral oils, arms, ammunition, and
a few special articles of food and drink. Export duties were also
levied on rice and some other forms of grain. The aggregate
receipts from customs fees, wharf rents, etc., in 1894* were 1,682,-
373 Rx. ($8,411,865). In March, 1894— the commencement of the
Indian fiscal year — the Council of India, acting under the con-
straint of financial exigencies, imposed duties on almost all kinds
of imports, cotton yarns and piece goods — constituting about one
third in value of the entire imports by sea — excepted. Subse-
quently a uniform duty, equivalent to three and a half per cent
ad valorem, was imposed on all imported cotton goods, and a cor-
responding excise tax on all the competing products of Indian
mills — yarns and other cotton fabrics, the product of Indian
hand labor, being exempted. " Except the weaving of fancy and
highly elaborated clothing, which is largely conducted in and
around Benares and in a few other districts, the handloom manu-
facture of cotton in India is mainly a spare-time industry, and is
not professional."

Other important sources of internal revenue in India are the
receipts from the sale of the products of the forests owned or man-
aged by the Government — in the form of timber, firewood and
charcoal, bamboos, sandalwood, grass, and other products — the
total of which for 1894 was 1,723,022 Rx. ($8,615,110).

An annual tribute or contribution from a large number of
native and mainly petty states of India toward the support of
the Imperial Government was reported for 1894 at 774,337 Rx.
($3,871,685). On the other hand, the Imperial Government grants
annual allowances, or pensions, to the native hereditary rulers of
such states or their families, the aggregate of which for the fiscal
year 1894 was 508,443 Rx. ($2,542,215).*

* The British Government has respected the possessions of the native chiefs of India,
and about one third of the country still nominally remains in the hands of its hereditary
rulers. These, in return for their maintenance and protection by the Imperial Government
of India, contribute annually from their resources a comparatively small sum for its support.
The independent gross annual revenue of these so-called " feudatory " states is reported to
amount to about £6,000,000 ($30,000,000), and their permanent military forces at " some-
thmg like 300,0C0."

298 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Income Tax. — The experience of the (British) Indian Govern-
ment in attempting to raise revenue from the taxation of incomes,
or by an income tax, is exceedingly interesting, and ought to be
most instructive to the people of other countries. As a rule, the
annual revenues of the Government of India do not and for a
lengthened period have not equaled its annual expenditures, and
the increase in the public debt of the country in recent years has
accordingly been very considerable.* The major part of this
debt, however, has been incurred for the construction of ordinary
roads and railways, which in turn have not been unremunerative,
and have made possible a large export sale of wheat and other
commodities, which before their construction was impossible.
The debt, or expenditures resulting in debt, has therefore con-
tributed greatly to the welfare of the people of India. At the
same time the demand and necessity for constantly increasing
expenditures, continually confronts the Government with the
most difficult problem of how to increase its revenue — a problem
that very recently has been threatened with increasing embarrass-
ment, owing to the position of not a few people in England, who,
with more of sentiment than discretion or knowledge, have
opposed the continuance of the present governmental monopoly
of the production and sale of opium. A large increase of taxa-
tion in any form is regarded as not feasible in India ; not so much
because of an unwillingness on the part of the people to pay, for
they are accustomed to pay all dues which they regard as fairly
claimable by the sovereign power, and more especially when the
demand is accompanied with control of force ; but by reason of
the extreme poverty and consequent actual inability of the masses
of the people to pay. Experience has, moreover, shown that the
natives of India are particularly opposed to all forms of direct tax-
ation, other than on land, and more especially to taxes on houses,
vehicles, and trades ; and so extreme are their prejudices in this
respect that any new levies of such character are only imposed
by the Government with the greatest caution.

Something in the way of an income tax, exempting all incomes
derived from agriculture, was probably imposed by some of the
old-time native rulers of India. But the first attempt on the part
of the British Legislative Council of India to revive such a form of
direct taxation was made in 18G0. What followed is thus forci-
bly set forth in a speech by Mr. Hope, before the Council, in
January, 1886 :

'* Instead of a native model for direct taxation, softened and
adapted to our circumstances, we unfortunately set up that of the

* For the year which closed on March 31, 1896, there was an estimated surplus of about
9,500,000 rupees.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 299

income tax as it was in force in England. To get direct taxation
into good working order, even after a suitable model, would have
been a work of time and care, in the absence of any record of the
names and resources of householders. But what, except failure,
could attend a sudden call on relatively ignorant and unlettered
millions, at short notice, to assess themselves, or prove right of
exemption, to send in elaborate returns and calculations, and to
understand and watch their own interests under the system of
notices, surcharges, claims, abatements, installments, penalties,
and what not, consequent thereon ? Necessarily there followed a
long train of evils. An army of tax assessors and collectors tem-
porarily engaged could not be pure. They were aided by an army
of informers, actuated by direct gain or private animosity.
Frauds in assessment and collection went hand in hand with ex-
tortion in return for real or supposed exemption. Inquisition
into private affairs, fabrication of false accounts where true ones
did not exist or were inconvenient, acceptance of false returns,
rejection of honest ones, unequal treatment of the similarly cir-
cumstanced— all these more or less prevailed. The tax reached
numbers not really liable, for zemindars illegally recovered it
from tenants and masters from servants, while underlings en-
riched themselves by the threat of a summons.

"Subsequent acts in 1862, while affording relief in some re-
spects, practically stereotyped many inequalities and heartburn-
ings. In later years, the system of assessment by broad classes
was an improvement on the earlier complications, but the ad-
vance of local officers toward equitable assessment was perpetu-
ally being canceled by the alterations in rate and liability, which
I next notice.

" Renewed direct taxation in British India thus made a false
start, from which it has never recovered. Possibly, with time
and care, a great improvement might have been effected, if the
law had remained unaltered. But, unluckily, with its too Eng-
lish form came the idea that the tax was to be, as in England, a
convenient means of rectifying budget inequalities, and a great
reserve in every financial or national emergency. In consequence
of this idea, incomes between Rs. 200 and Rs. 500, which had been
taxed at two per cent in 1860 were exempted in 1862, the four-per-
cent rate was- reduced to three per cent in 1863, and the whole tax
was dropped in I860. In 1867 it reappeared in the modified form
of a license tax, at the rate of only two per cent at most, but
reaching down again to incomes of Rs. 200. In 1868 it became a
certificate tax at rates a fifth lower, and again commencing with
a Rs. 500 limit. In 1869 it became once more a full-blown income
tax at one per cent on all incomes and profits of Rs. 500 and up-
ward. In the middle of the same year it was suddenly nearly

300 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

doubled. In 1870 a further rise to fully three and an eighth per
cent occurred ; but with better times the rate fell in 1871 to one
and one-twenty-fourth per cent, with a limit of Rs. 750, and in

1872 the limit was further relaxed to Rs. 1,000 and upward. In

1873 came a second period of total abolition, to be succeeded from
1877 to 1878 by the new series of acts. Along with the changes in
rate and incidence just described came changes in name, form,
classification, and procedure. With one object or another, twenty-
three acts on the subject have been passed since 18G0."

An income tax at a low rate, at present existing in India,
grants an exemption of 500 rupees on all incomes, and exempts
from taxation all income from the ownership of land or the sale
of the products of land, and from property solely employed for re-
ligious or charitable purposes. It is thus assessable mainly on sal-
aries, pensions, the income of companies, and of the ordinary trades
and professions. Its existence is the cause of considerable friction
with the officials who administer it, and constant appeals from
their decisions are made from all parts of the country. In fact,
this tax, at its present low rate, is universally detested, and the
receipts from it are comparatively so inconsiderable — only 1,717,-
627 Rx. ($8,588,135) in 1894— that it may be regarded as a fiscal
failure. Its whole experience in India furthermore reaffirms what
is worthy of being regarded as an economic principle, namely,
that when an income tax ceases to be regarded as generally op-
pressive it ceases also to be remunerative to the state.

One other point in this connection is especially worthy of
notice. For a long period of years India has been characterized
as a " sink-hole " of the precious metals, or, in other words, there
has been for many years a continuous flow of the precious metals
— gold and silver — into India, where they have to a large extent
disappeared, undoubtedly by burial under ground for the purpose
of hoarding and concealment. The motive for this under the
Mogul and native rulers was unquestionably to escape direct
plunder or confiscation; but under British rule these hoards,
amounting unquestionably to many hundreds of millions, are
not taxed, mainly by reason of their inaccessibility, and partly
by the recognized policy of the Government to avoid direct taxa-
tion of active capital, and encourage, by making safe its employ-
ment, the tendency of these buried treasures to come to light and
enter into the channels of trade. And that this policy has been a
wise one is shown by the fact that within recent years there has
been an increasing disposition on the part of the Indian owners
of concealed treasures — especially the Indian princes or rajahs —
to withdraw them from their hoarding places and invest them in
Government bonds, or other desirable, interest-bearing securities ;
and in this way a very great addition to the world's active stock,

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 301

the money metals, may be anticipated in the perhaps not-distant
future.

In the year 1893 the burden of taxation on the people of India,
inclusive of the revenue derived from the rent of land, was offi-
cially estimated at two rupees and four annas, or nominally less
than fifty cents per head ; or, exclusive of the revenue from land,
at about twenty-three cents per head — a rate relatively much lower
than the taxation of England ; so that, if the taxable ability of the
people of India is low, the poorer classes of that country, it is
claimed, are more lightly taxed than the poorer classes of Europe,
or even of the United States. Before England assumed dominion in
India the system of exaction of her native rulers was so perfected
that they were assured of the very last penny that could be taken
from the ryots, or peasantry, without stripping them of every-
thing ; leaving to the tenant class little more than the privilege of
living. To-day the existing system of taxation in India is con-
ceded to be at least eminently just. To-day it is generally admit-
ted that there is no government in the world whose administra-
tion is more honestly conducted, and which is now doing more for
the material good of the governed, than the present British Gov-
ernment of India. And herein is to be found the secret of Eng-
land's success in ruling the vast congeries of people of different
races, languages, and religions, known to us as India.

The consideration of another matter of recent occurrence and
of the highest economic and social interest and importance,
appropriately finds place in any discussion of the tax system of
British India ; more especially because it sets forth an attempt,
founded on an unwarranted sentiment, indirectly to impose a
large additional burden of taxation on the people of that country.
As already pointed out, a present annual receipt of some $33,000,-
000 of revenue from the monopoly of the production and sale of
opium, the incidence of which does not fall upon the Indian
people, constitutes an important factor in this system. Acting
on the assumption that the continued use of this drug, as a nar-
cotic and stimulant, is in the highest degree injurious to the
consumer — worse even than the continued use of alcohol — and
especially demoralizing and destructive to the people of China,
who are the purchasers and consumers of the major part of the
opium product of India, a body of public opinion has in recent
years grown up in Great Britain whose representatives hold that
it was disgraceful and positively wicked for a people professing
to be moral and enlightened to engage in or sanction the business
of producing and supplying opium; and that it is the duty of
their Government to at once interfere and put an end to it. And
in recognition of this public opinion, and in deference to a numer-
ously signed address to the Crown, the British Government, in

3C2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

September, 1893, created a commission, consisting of nine emi-
nently qualified persons, including two natives of India of high
position and unconnected with the Government, and an eminent
physician, to inquire into and fully report on this whole subject^
The first report of the commission, published in 1894 and present-
ing simply the evidence taken in England, was an exhibit of the
most interesting but utterly antagonistic and contradictory opin-
ions and evidence. For the petitioners, sixteen witnesses, mainly
missionaries, medical men connected with missions and residents
for considerable periods in India and China, were called; and
nearly all of these, as the result of personal experience and obser-
vation, testified in the most positive manner, and in consonance with
popular opinion, that the use of opium physically, morally, and
socially is highly deleterious, and ought to be discouraged, and if
possible absolutely prevented. Considered by itself this testimony
would seem to be conclusive and incapable of refutation. But, on
the other hand, an equal number of witnesses — English officials,
qualified by education, lengthened residence in India and China,
and exceptional opportunities for observation, civil servants,
medical men of the highest reputation connected with hospital
and sanitary work and with the army in every part of India-^
gave unqualifiedly contradictory evidence, which may be summed
up as follows : That opium has been used for centuries in India
and China, without any extensive deleterious influence on the
population ; that the " Sikhs " of India, who in point of physical
structure and health are claimed to be the finest people in the
world, and whose religion forbids the use of tobacco, are habitual
users of it ; that while the excessive use of opium is unquestion-
ably in a high degree deleterious, it is far less so than the excess-
ive use of alcohol ; that the use of opium in India and China is
comparatively much less than the use of ardent spirits in Great
Britain ; that the excessive use of it, as by the so-called " opium
sot," is the result very largely of the circumstance that the
miserably poor afflicted with disease in India, China, and other
Asiatic countries where there is no intelligent medical treatment,
and little or no hospital service, resort to it as the only means
of lessening their sufferings; that so far from the allegation
being true that the supply of opium by India to China is disas-
trous in the highest degree to the people of the latter country,
the fact is that the use of the Indian product, owing to its higher
quality and price, is almost wholly restricted to the wealthier
classes of China ; that the cultivation of the poppy for the pro-
duction of opium is very general in China, and to such an extent
that one single province of the empire annually produces more
opium than the entire export of India ; and, finally, that any at-
tempt on the part of either the Indian or Chinese Government

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 303

to interfere with the production and sale of opium, with a view of
restricting or preventing its consumption, would be utterly futile,
and in the case of the former country would undoubtedly lead to
revolution.

One witness, Surgeon-General Sir William Moore, stated as
the result of thirty-three years' service and observation in India,
that opium-smoking is practically harmless, and opium water not
only harmless, but beneficial in moderation, and a prophylactic
against malarial fever.

The following circumstance was also regarded as substantiat-
ing this position: During the years 1893-'94 the island of Hong-
Kong, on the Chinese coast, was ravaged by a pestilence, in the
nature of a filth disease, of great malignity. Since its abatement
it is claimed, with an accompanying array of evidence, that the
opium smokers and eaters were almost without exception ex-
empted from the pest.

Very naturally, also, the (British) Indian civil-service officials,
holding the view that the large revenue derived by the Govern-
ment from the monopoly of the production and sale of opium is
in no sense a tax burden upon the Indian people ; and recognizing
also the great difficulty (but absolute necessity) of making good
the deficiency consequent upon the abrogation of such revenue
through new and additional taxation upon the people, were unani-
mously of the opinion that any change in the existing system in
respect to opium would be in the highest degree inexpedient and
unwarranted. When the question was put to Sir John Strachey,
who in the course of thirty- eight years of Indian civil service has
filled almost every post, from the most subordinate to the govern-
orship of provinces and membership of the Government of India,
how he accounted for the great contrariety of belief in respect to
the opium question, he made answer as follows :

"The ignorance that prevails in this country [England] re-
garding everythitig Indian is enormous, and is not confined to
those whom we expect to be ignorant, but extends to the most
highly educated classes. It extends to all Indian subjects — his-
tory, geography, the conditions and habits of the people, the con-
stitution of the Government — in fact, everything. I will give an
illustration which always seems to me to have a useful bearing on
this opium question. Mr. Buckle, in his History of Civilization, de-
rives all the distinctive institutions of India and the peculiarities
of its people from the fact, that the exclusive food of the natives
of India is rice. It follows from this, he tells us, that caste pre-
vails, that oppression is rife, that rents are high, and that customs
and laws are stereotyped. I have no doubt that if Mr. Buckle had
been asked, he would have said that the same cause accounted for
the consumption of opium in India. I sometimes ask my English

304 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

friends, when they talk about opium, what they suppose to be the
ordinary food of the people of India. The almost universal an-
swer, perhaps with an air of displeasure that they should be asked
such a foolish question, is that of course it is rice. I believe that
nine tenths of the educated men and women of this country be-
lieve this to be true. When they have not learned such an ele-
mentary fact as this, that throughout the greater part of India rice
is no more the ordinary food of the people than it is in England,
how can we be surprised if they do not know the truth about
opium ? We who have spent our lives in India are not all fools
or impostors. When I hear the Government of India charged
with the abominable wickedness of poisoning its own subjects,
and millions of Chinese also, for the sake of filthy lucre, there is
only one reason that prevents me from being filled with indigna-
tion, and that is that I know that these charges are the offspring
of ignorance alone. Unfortunately, this does not make them less
serious, for, of all enemies to human progress, ignorance is the
most formidable, and is especially formidable when, as in this
present case, it is combined with honest enthusiasm and an anx-
ious desire for what is right."

The commission, having finished its investigations in Eng-
land, visited India, and there renewed them in nearly every
place of importance for obtaining information. It examined
seven hundred and twenty-three witnesses, of whom four hun-
dred and sixty-six were natives of India or China, including gov-
ernment officials, planters, landowners, traders, members of the
professional classes, especially physicians, missionaries of nearly
every denomination, military officers and private soldiers, and
the chiefs and officials of the native states.

As a result of this elaborate inquiry, the commission, by a ma-
jority of eight to one, pronounced clearly and unhesitatingly in
favor of the maintenance of the existing system of opium produc-
tion and sale of opium in India ; finding no evidence of extensive
moral or physical demoralization arising in India from the use of
the drug, or of any desire on the part of its people or of the Chi-
nese Government to prohibit it.

The commission also decided, in respect to the effect on the
finances of India of a prohibition of the sale and export of opium,
that, " taking into consideration the compensation payable, cost of
the necessary preventive measures, and the loss of revenue that
would result from a policy of prohibition, the finances of India
are not in a condition to bear the losses that such a policy would
entail."

The testimony of the missionaries in India before the commis-
sion was not unanimious. That of the members of the American
Methodist Episcopal and Canadian Presbyterian commissions.

PHOTOGRAPHING ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES. 305

and the representatives of the Presbyterian and Baptist mis-
sions, was in favor of prohibition. On the other hand, the views
of the Episcopal bishops and clergy of Calcutta and Lucknow,
and of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Calcutta, were adverse
to prohibition. Several of the former, however, frankly admitted
that the evils of the opium habit, deplorable as they undoubtedly
are, have been grossly exaggerated, and the good that it accom-
plishes has been but little recognized.

The use of opium in India and China is as much a natural
habit as the use of alcohol among Western nations. It has been
practiced in those countries for centuries, and it would seem im-
possible by legislation, and especially by the legislation of an
alien nation, to do anything more than control the more mani-
fest evils resulting from it. A policy of rigid restriction of the
use of opium would unquestionably be a substitution of the use
of opium by alcohol ; and all the evidence given before the com-
mission as to the evils arising from the opium habit showed, that
as a source of social disorder, organic disease, insanity, and sui-
cide, opium is not to be compared with alcohol.

Note. — For the full details of this most interesting inquiry, whether regarded from an
economic, social, or medical point of view, reference is made to the First Report of the
Royal Commission on Opium, with minutes of evidence and appendices, presented to Parlia-
ment in 1894, and to two final reports, Parts I and II, with historical appendices, etc., pre-
sented to Parliament in 1895, after the return of the commission from its visit to India.

PHOTOGRAPHING ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES.

By WALTER E. WOODBURY,

EDITOR OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES.

PHOTOGRAPHY plays many important parts in modern sci-
ence. It assists the astronomer by revealing the existence of
thousands and thousands of worlds veiled in the obscurity of im-
measurable distance and invisible to the eye even when aided by
the most powerful telescope in existence. The chemist has recog-

tnized the value of it in registering the belted zones of the spec-
trum. It aids the meteorologist by placing in his hands perma-
nent records of the dark nimbus and the bright rolling cumulus
clouds,, the lightning flash, and the automatic registration of the
rise and fall of the barometer and thermometer. The microsco-
pist is able to photograph the disease-bearing generations of bac-
teria, vibrio, and schizomycetes, and to magnify their images a
thousandfold for the benefit of the student. It determines the
depth of the sea, the direction of currents, and the velocity of
projectiles. It detects the spurious bank note or signature, the
vibration of suspected bridges, and no traveler's equipment is
VOL. XLIX. — 25

3o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

complete nowadays unless it contains a complete set of photo-
graphic apparatus.

These are but a few among the many things that photography
does for us. Each year reveals some fresh uses to which it can
be placed.

Quite recently the electrician has discovered its value to him
in many ways, principally in registering electrical discharges, so
that the same may be carefully studied at leisure. At a meeting
of the British Association in 1892, Mr. A. A. Campbell Swinton
showed some most interesting photographs of electrical discharges
which are here reproduced (Figs. 1 and 2). According to an ac-
count of them given in the Electrical Review, these figures were

Fig. 1. — A Positive Discharge.

all obtained without the employment of a camera or lens, but
produced by merely causing the electrical discharges to take place
across the sensitive surface of an ordinary photographic drj

PHOTOGRAPHING ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES. 307

plate. Such a plate consists of a sheet of glass coated over with
bromide of silver incorporated in a film of gelatin. When single
positive or negative discharges are desired, the photographic plate.

Fig. 2. — A Negative Discharge.

the back of which is covered with tin foil, is placed between the
two discharging points, and the strength of the discharge is regu-
lated so that, while it shall cover as much of the plate as pos-
sible, it shall not spread over the edge. The tin foil performs a
double function : it does away with the spark on the back of the
plate, which would otherwise occasion a confused figure ; and it
also assists in causing a uniform spreading out of the discharge.
It does not seem to modify the character of the figure produced in
any way. It, however, affects its form, since, if the foil be smaller
than the plate, the discharge seems to have a great disinclination
to extend itself beyond the edge of the foil, but would even curve

3o8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

round to avoid doing this. The arrangement adopted, when it is
desired to obtain both positive and negative discharges simul-
taneously on the same
plate, and when connect-
ing sparks from positive
to negative are desired,
is similar, only in these
cases the two discharg-
ing points are placed on
the film side of the plate.
Many very beautiful
photographs of light-
ning flashes have been
made. They are not at
all difficult to get. It is
only necessary to wait
for a suitable stormy
night, point the camera
containing the sensitive
plate in the direction of
the storm, remove the
cap, and await the flash.
The photographer of
lightning flashes is some-
times startled to obtain
in his finished picture
streaks of lightning,
some white and others
hlack, the latter being
produced by the flashes
which were so actinic as
to produce upon the sen-
sitive film the phenome-
non known as " reversal."
One of the most in-
teresting photographs of
lightning flashes that I
have seen is that repro-
duced above. It has been
kindly sent to me by
Prof. Ch. von Zenger, the
renowned meteorologist. It was made on May 20, 1894, when a
terrific storm, of short duration fortunately, broke over the town
of Prague. The lightning depicted in the photograph struck four
houses at once, doing considerable damage. It will be noticed
that descending from the clouds are six discharges; one flash can

PHOTOGRAPHING ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES, 309

be distinctly traced on its journey to the lightning conductor of
the cupola of the Academy of Sciences.

The most interesting part of this photograph is the shadow of
the cupola on the wet and foggy heavens. The intensity of the

^ ^ .ii4

r

•

i '

-7 1

mmiiiiiiii '

Fig. 4. — Traces of a Lightnino Stroke.

light produced by the lightning is the cause of this peculiar effect,
which I believe has never been obtained before or since. It is
analogous with the phenomenon commonly known as the Specter
of Brocken.

At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, held a short time
ago. Prof. Zenger read a most interesting paper upon the subject
of Electricity as a Vortex Motion, in which he endeavors to prove
that electrical discharges, no matter what their origin, produce a
vortex motion on matter lying in
the electric field. He makes the
following experiment: A spark
from a Ruhmkorff coil or a Wims-
hurst machine is discharged with-
in the receiver of an air pump,
under which has been placed a test
tube containing diluted ammonia
and another containing hydro-
chloric acid. At the instant of the
discharge there will be visible
eddies or little whirlwinds, ren-
dered visible by the tiny crystals of ammonium chlorid suspended
in the air. In circling about they are condensed into peculiar
shaped veins which fall upon the plate of the air pump, arrang-
ing themselves in somewhat the same manner, says Zenger, as
did the debris from the roofs and trees during the cyclone in
the valley of Roux in Switzerland — i. e., they form lines of elec-
tric force.

Prof. Zenger sends me some very interesting photographs in

Fig. 5. — Discharge of a Wimshubst
Machikb.

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

support of the vortex theory. Fig. 4 shows the marks left by a
stroke of lightning on the wall of a house at Mort, illustrating its

course from the iron
water pipe to the iron
hinges of the window,
and from thence to the
iron sewer grating.
For comparison he
sends two other photo-
graphs (Figs. 5 and 0).
These are obtained by
the discharge of an im-
mense Ruhmkorff in-
duction coil containing one hundred thousand metres of insulated
copper wire. Two small triangles of tin foil are glued opposite to
one another on a photographic plate, and when dry the whole is

FiQ. 6. — Discharge of a Kuhmkokff Induction Coil.

Fio. 7. — Artificial Solar Eclipse.

covered with a light brownish coating of lampblack. After the
discharge a white track is found, as shown in the photographs.
Both these pictures show evidence of the vortex motion of the

PHOTOGRAPHING ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES. 311

lampblack driven off by the discharge, and the same peculiar for-

lation is seen in the lightning flash as in Fig. 4. Between the
lark filament of intact lampblack and the borders of the electric
tracings there is a multitude of fine helicoidal curves filling the

^hite traces left on the smoked glass. These helicoidal spires
)roceed to the right and left, and on about the middle of the trace
the destruction of the two opposing motions produces the phe-
lomena of discharge, viz., light, heat, sound, and mechanical
effects. Zenger claims that these, his experiments, serve to show

lat the undulatory theory of Herz is very defective, there
)eing no motion in plane 'w aves, nor, as in the case of polarized
light, is there any in circular or elliptical waves on a cylindrical
surface.

I could show," writes Prof. Zenger, in a recent letter to the

Titer, " that the solar phenomena, such as the solar corona and

Fig. 8. — Imitation of the Solab Chromosphere and Corona.

protuberances, are also due to electric discharges continually
given off from the sun's surface. Fig. 7 shows the effect of posi-
tive discharges from a circular disk of tin foil into the smoked
surface of a glass plate. It will be noticed that we have facsimi-
les of all the forms of solar protuberances. In Fig. 8 we see the
effect of a positive discharge from a hollow hemisphere into the
smoked surface of a glass plate, on the middle of which was fixed
a lump of wax. The effects are analogous to the chromosphere and
to the inner and outer layers of the solar corona produced by the
superposition of the lines of electric force radiating from different
parts of the spherical surface.^'

Prof. Zenger's photographs are remarkably interesting and

312 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are valuable assistants in support of the vortex theory which
he advances. I hope at an early date to supplement this arti-
cle with some still more interesting examples of the photog-
raphy of electrical discharges.

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.

By J. MARK BALDWIN,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

PSYCHOLOGICAL science has reached a sort of understand-
ing in these recent years of the individual and of the social
setting in which he customarily disports himself ; and the duty
now devolves upon it of dealing with the exceptions to the rule.
No one will be disposed to deny certainly that the genius is in
some way exceptional ; and if any instance can, by showing what
society is not, cast light on what it is, the genius is the man to
question. So it is my purpose in this paper to endeavor to under-
stand him, as far as may be, without putting ourselves in his
shoes ; for apart from the inherent difficulty of assuming his
exceptional role, it may for another reason be more comfortable
not to do so, for under the exceptions to our social rule we are
forced to include also these other extremes found in the weak-
minded and the insane.

The facts about the genius seem to indicate that he is a being
sui generis. Common mortals stand about him with expressions
of awe. The literature of him is embodied in the alcoves of our
libraries most accessible to the public, and even the wayfaring
man, to whom life is a weary round, and his conquests over
Nature and his fellows only the division of honors on a field that
usually witnesses drawn battles or bloody defeats, loves to stimu-
late his courage by hearing of the lives of those who put Nature
and society so utterly to rout. He hears of men who swayed
the destinies of Europe, who taught Society by outraging her
conventions, whose morality even was reached by scorn of the
peccadilloes which condemn the ordinary man, to whom might
makes right, and homo mensura omnium. Every man has in
him to some degree the hero- worshiper, and gets inflamed some-
what by reading Carlyle's Frederick the Great.

Of course, this popular sense can not be wholly wrong. The
genius does accomplish the world movements. Napoleon did set
the destiny of Europe, and Frederick did reveal, in a sense, a new
phase of moral conduct. And the truth of these things is just
what makes the enthusiasm of the common man so healthy and
stimulating. It is not the least that the genius accomplishes that

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 313

le thus elevates the traditions of man, inspires the literature that
the people read. He sows the seeds of effort in the fertile soil of
the newborn of his own kind, while he leads those who do not
lave the same gifts to rear and tend the growing plant in their
)wn social gardens. This is true: and a philosophy of society
ihould not overlook either of the facts — the actual deeds and the
juliar influence of the great man upon their own time — or his
isting place in the more inspiring social tradition which is em-
)odied in literature and art.

But it is not my aim to add to the literature of hero-worship,
'he considerations on that side are so patent that he who runs
lay read. My aim is to present just the opposite aspect of these
apparent exceptions to the canons of our ordinary social life, and
10 to oppose the extreme claim made by the writers who attempt,
the name of social philosophy and science, to blur the lines of
me thought on these topics. For it only needs a moment's
sonsideration to see that if the genius has no reasonable place in
bhe movement of social progress in the world, then there can be
10 possible doctrine or philosophy of such progress. To the
lero- worshiper his hero comes in simply to " knock out," so to
speak, all the regular movement of the society which is so fortu-
nate, or so unfortunate, as to have given him birth : and by his
initiative the aspirations, beliefs, struggles of the community or
state get a push in a new direction — a tangent to the former
movement or a reversal of it. If this be true, and it be further
true that no genius who is likely to appear can be discounted by
any human device before his abrupt appearance upon the stage of
history, then the history of facts takes the place of the science or
philosophy of them, and the chronicler is the only historian with
a right to be.

Our genius, then, is a very critical factor in human thought.
Not only is he the man from whom we expect the thought ; he
is also the man who, if the hero-worshiper is right, traduces
thought. For of what value can we hold the contribution
which he makes to thought if this contribution runs so across
the acquisitions of the earlier time, and the contributions of
earlier genius, that no line of common truth can be discovered
between him and them ? Then each society would have its
own explanation of itself, and that only so long as it pro-
duced no new genius. It may be, of course, that society is so
constituted— or, rather, so lacking in constitution — that simple
variations in brain physiology are the sufficient reason for its
cataclysms; but a great many efforts will be made by the
geniuses themselves to prove the contrary before this highest of
all spheres of human activity is declared to have no meaning —
no thread which runs from age to age and links mankind, the

VOL. XLIX. — 26

314 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

genius and the man who plods, in a common and significant
development.

It is, therefore, on the side of just this endeavor that I write.
It seems that we have now at hand in our recent literature some
social truths of such generality that certain things may be said
of social progress which do not rob the genius of his credit, nor
of his influence, even though they do tend to explain him. They
go further, indeed, in that they explain him in the same terms
and to the same extent that they explain the common man and
society too. We may turn to these considerations.

The first and most general position which has come as a new
insight, in the confusion of present-day discussion, is indicated
by a phrase which I have used elsewhere — ** Social Heredity."
The theory of social heredity has been worked up through the
contributions, from different points of view, of several authors,
I shall first expound this point of view in my own way, bringing
out most prominently the aspects of social heredity which seem
to be of value for the true " appreciation " of the genius. What,
then, is social heredity ?

This is a very easy question to answer, since the group of facts
which the phrase describes are extremely familiar — so much so
that the reader may despair, from such a commonplace beginning,
of getting any novelty from it. The social heritage is, of course,
all that a man or woman gets from the accumulated wisdom of
society. All that the ages have handed down — the literature, the
art, the habits of social conformity, the experience of social ills
the treatment of crime, the relief of distress, the education of the
young, the provision for the old — all, in fact, however described,
that we men owe to the ancestors whom we reverence, and to the
parents whose presence with us perhaps we cherish still. Their
struggles, the Fourth of July orator has told us, have bought our
freedom ; we enter into the heritage of their thought and wisdom
and heroism. All true ; we do. We all breathe a social atmos-
phere; and our growth is by this breathing-in of the tradition
and example of the past.

Now, if this be the social heritage, we may go on to ask. Who
are to inherit it ? And to this we may again add the further
question. How does the one who is born to such a heritage as this
come into his inheritance ? And with this yet again. How may
he use his inheritance — to what end and urider what limitations ?
These questions come so readily into the mind that we naturally
wish the discussion to cover them, even apart from the require-
ment which is urged upon us, in these latter days, that we make
all social discussion as biological as possible. The term heredity

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, 315

does certainly bring up a biological line of thought, and the
analogy from evolution doctrine is materially helpful ; so we need
not be afraid of it.

Generally, then, who is eligible for the social inheritance ?
This heir to society we are, all of us. Society does not make a
will, it is true; nor does society die intestate. To say that it is
we who inherit the riches of the social past of the race, is to say
that we are the children of the past in a sense which comes upon
us with all the force that bears in upon the natural heir when he
finds his name in will or law. But there are exceptions. And
before we seek the marks of the legitimacy of our claim to be the
heirs of the hundred years of accumulated thought and action,
let us say, of this American continent, it may be well to advise
ourselves as to the poor creatures who do not enter into the in-
heritance with us. They are those who people our asylums, our
reformatories, our jails and penitentiaries ; those who i)rey upon
the body of our social life by demands for charitable support, or
for the more radical treatment by isolation in institutions : indeed,
some who are born to fail in this inheritance are with us no more,
even though they were of our generation; they have paid the
penalty which their effort to wrest the inheritance from us has
cost, and the grave of the murderer, the burglar, the suicide, the
red-handed rebel against the law of social inheritance, is now
their resting place. Society then is, when taken in the widest
sense, made up of two classes of people — the heirs by right and
the rebels by birth.

We may get a clear idea of the way a man attains his social
heritage by dropping figure for the present and speaking in the
terms of plain natural science. Ever since Darwin propounded
the law of "natural selection" the word "variation'' has been
current. The student in natural science has come to look for
variations as the necessary preliminary to any new step of prog-
ress and adaptation in the sphere of organic life. Nature, we
now know, is fruitful to an extraordinary degree. She pro-
uces many specimens of everything. It is a general fact of
production that the offspring of plant or animal is quite out
proportion in numbers to the parents that produce them, and
o to the means of living which await them. One flower pro-
ces seeds which are carried far and near — to the ocean and
the desert rocks, no less than to the soil in which they may
ke root and grow. Insects multiply at a rate which is simply
inconceivable to our limited capacity for thinking in figures.
Animals also produce more abundantly, and man has children in
numbers which allow him to bury half his offspring yearly and
yet increase the adult population from year to year. This means,
coarse, that whatever the inheritance is, all can not inherit it —

I

3i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some nmst go without a portion in natural goods if the resources
of Nature are in any degree limited. That the resources of Nature
are inadequate to provide for such numbers, with the extraordi-
nary increase, is a matter of course ; for if not so now, how soon
must it become so, as the increase goes on ? Nature solves the
problem in the simplest of ways: all the young born in the
same family are not exactly alike; "variations" occur. There
are those that are better nourished, those that have larger mus-
cles, those that breathe deeper and run faster. So the question
who of these shall inherit the earth, the fields, the air, the water
— this is left to itself. The best of all the variations will live,
and the others will die. Those that do, have thus, to all intents
and purposes, been " selected " for the inheritance, just as really
as if the parents of the species had left a will and had been able
to enforce it. This is the principle of " natural selection."

Now, this way of looking at problems which involve aggre-
gates of individuals and their distribution is becoming a habit of
the age. AVherever the application of the principles of proba-
bility do not explain a statistical result — that is, wherever there
seem to be influences which favor particular individuals at the
expense of others — men turn at once to the principle of variations
for the justification of this seeming partiality of Nature. And
what it means is that Nature is partial to individuals in making
them, in their natural heredity, rather than after they are born.

The principle of heredity with variations is a safe assumption
to make in regard to mankind ; and we see at once that in order
to come in for a part in the social heritage of our fathers we must
be born fit for it. We must be born so endowed for the race of
social life that we assimilate, from our birth up, the spirit of the
society into which we are reared. The unfittest, socially, are cut
off. In this there is a distinction between this sphere of selection
and that of the organic world. There the fittest survive, the
others are lost ; here the unfittest are lost, all the others survive.
Social selection weeds out the unfit, the murderer, the most unso-
cial, and says to him, " You must die " ; natural selection seeks out
the most fit and says, " You alone are to live." The difference is
important, for it marks a prime series of distinctions, when the
conceptions drawn from biology are applied to social phenomena ;
but for the understanding of variations we need not now pursue
it further.

Given social variations, therefore, differences among men,
what becomes of this man or that ? We see at once that if so-
ciety is to live there must be limits set somewhere to the degree
of variation which a given man may show from the standards of
society. And we may find out something of these limits by look-
ing at the evident, most marked differences which actually ap-

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 317

^^^ar about us. First, there is the idiot. He is not available, from
I a social point of view, because he varies too much on the side of
defect. He shows from infancy that he is unable to enter into
the social heritage because he is unable to learn to do social
things. His intelligence does not grow with his body. Society
pities him if he be without natural protection, and puts him away
in an institution. So of the insane, the pronounced lunatic ; he
varies too much to sustain in any way the wide system of social
relationships which society requires of each individual. Either
he is unable to take care of himself, or he attempts the life of
some one else, or he is the harmless, unsocial thing who wan-
ders among us like an animal or stands in his place like a plant.
He is not a factor in social life ; he has not come into the inher-
itance.

Then there is the extraordinary class of people whom we may
describe by a stronger term than those already employed. We
find not only the unsocial, the negatively unfit, thpse whom so-
ciety selects with pity in its heart ; but there are also the anti-
social, the class whom we usually designate as criminals. These
persons, like the others, are variations ; but they seem to be
variations in quite another way. They do not represent lack on
the intellectual side always or alone, but on the moral side, on
the social side, as such — for morality is in its origin and practical
bearings a social thing. The least we can say of the criminals is
that they tend, by heredity or by evil example, to violate the
rales which society has seen fit to lay down for the general secu-
rity of men taken together in the enjoyment of the social her-
itage. • So far, then, they are factors of disintegration, of de-
struction ; enemies of the social progress, which proceeds from
generation to generation by just this process of social inheritance.
So society says to the criminal also, "You must perish." We
kill off the worst, imprison the bad for life, attempt to reform
the rest. They too, then, are excluded from the heritage of the
past.

So our lines of eligibility get more and more narrowly drawn.
The instances of exclusion now cited serve to give us some in-
sight into the real qualities of the man who lives a social part,
and the way he comes to live it.

II.

Passing on to take up the second of the informal topics sug-
gested, we have to find the best description that we can of the
social man — the one who is fitted for the social life. This ques-
tion concerns the process by which any one of us comes into the
wealth of relationships which the social life represents. For to
say that a man does this is in itself to say that he is the man so-

3i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ciety is looking for. Indeed, this is the only way to describe the
man — to actually find him. Society is essentially a growing,
shifting thing. It changes from age to age, from country to
country. The Greeks had their social conditions, and the Romans
theirs. Even the criminal lines are drawn differently, somewhat,
here and there ; and in a low stage of civilization a man may pass
for normal who, in our time, would be described as weak in mind.
This makes it necessary that the standards of judgment of a
given society should be determined by an actual examination of
the society, and forbids us to say that the limits of variation
which society in general vv-ill tolerate must be this or that.

We may say, then, that the man who is fit for social life fmisi
be born to learn. The need of learning is his essential need. It
comes upon him from his birth. Speech is the first great social
function which he must learn, and with it all the varieties of ver-
bal accomplishment — reading and writing. This brings to the
front the great method of all his learning — imitation. In order
to be social he must be imitative, imitative, imitative. He must
realize for himself by action the forms, conventions, require-
ments, co-operations of his social group. All is learning; and
learning not by himself and at random, but under the leading of
the social conditions which surround him. Plasticity is his safety
and the means of his progress. So he grows into the social or-
ganization, takes his place as a socius in the work of the world,
and lays deep the sense of values, upon the basis of which his
own contributions — if he be destined to make contributions — to
the wealth of the world are to be wrought out. This great fact
that he is open to the play of the personal influences which are
about him we call, in psychology, his " suggestiveness," and the
influences themselves " suggestions " — social suggestions. These
influences differ in different communities, as we so often remark.
The Turk learns to live in a very different system of relations of
" give and take " from ours, and ours differ as much from those
of the Chinese. All that is characteristic of the race or tribe or
group or familj^ — all this sinks into the child and youth by his
simple presence there in it. He is suggestible, and here are the
suggestions ; he is miade to inherit, and he inherits. So it makes
no difference what his tribe or kindred be ; let him be a learner
by imitation, and he becomes in turn possessor and teacher.

An entire department of so-called genetic pyschology is being
written on this topic — the mode and method of the child's learn-
ing to be a man and a social man. I need not dwell upon it
further here. But the case becomes more interesting still when
we give the matter another turn, and say that in this learning all
the members of society agree ; all must be born to learn the same
things. They enter, if so be that they do, into the same social in-

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, 319

heritance. This again seems like a commonplace remark enough,
but certain things flow from it. Each member of society gives
md gets the same set of social suggestions, the differences being
the degree of progress each has made, and the degree of faithful-
less with which each reflects what he has before received. This
ist difference is, again, a phenomenon of variation and brings us
)ack to the genius ; but I wish to neglect him a little longer, in
)rder to point out another fact which is fundamental to what is
listinctive in this paper.

There grows up, in all this give and take, in all the inter-
change of suggestions among you, me, and the other, an obscure
jnse of a certain social understanding about ourselves generally
-a Zeitgeist, an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor matters, a style,
[t is a very peculiar thing, this social spirit. The best way to
mderstand that you have it, and something of what it is, is to
)t into a circle in which it is different. The common phrase
fish out of water" is often heard in reference to it. But that
loes not serve for science. And the next best thing that I can
lo in the way of rendering it is to appeal to another word which
las a popular sense, the word judgment. Let us say that there
jxists in every society a general system of values, found in social
isages, conventions, institutions, and formulas, and that our judg-
ments of social life are founded on our habitual recognition of
these values, and of the arrangement of them which has become
lore or less fixed in our society. For example, to say "I am
glad to see you" to a disagreeable neighbor shows good social
judgment in a small matter ; not to quarrel with the homoeo-
pathic enthusiast who meets you in the street and wishes to doc-
tor your rheumatism out of a symptom book, that is good judg-
ment. In short, the man gets to show more and more, as he
grows up from childhood, a certain good judgment; and his good
judgment is also the good judgment of his social set, community,
or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say that a man
"feels" this; perhaps it would be better for psychological read-
ers to say simply that he has a " sense " of it ; but the popular
use of the word "judgment" fits so accurately into the line of
distinctions I am making that I shall adhere to it. And so we
reach the general position that the eligible candidate for social
life must have good judgment as represented by the common
standards of judgment of his people.

It may be doubted, however, by some of my readers whether
this sense of social values called judgment is the outcome of sug-
gestion operating throughout the term of one's social education.
This is an essential point, and I must just assume it. Its con-
sideration falls under the method of the child's learning, which
I have referred to as too great a topic to treat in this article.

320 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Yet I may say that it will appear true, I trust, to any one who
may take the pains to observe the child^s tentative endeavors to
act up to social usages in the family and school. One may then
actually see the growth of the sort of judgment which I am de-
scribing. Psychologists are coming to see that even his sense of
his own personal self is a gradual attainment, achieved by the
child through his imitative responses to his personal environ-
ment. His thought of himself is an interpretation of his thought
of others, and his thought of another is due to further accommo-
dation of his active processes to changes in his thought of a pos-
sible self. And around this fundamental movement in his per-
sonal growth all the values of his life have their play. So I say
that his sense of truth in the social relationships of his environ-
ment is the outcome of his very gradual learning of his personal
place in these relationships.

We reach the conclusion, therefore, from this part of our
study, that the socially unfit person is the person of poor judg-
ment. He may have learned a great deal ; he may in the main
reproduce the activities required by his social tradition ; but with
it all he is to a degree out of joint with the general system of
estimated values by which society is held together. This may
be shown to be true even of the pronounced types of unsocial
individuals whom we had occasion to speak of at the outset.
The criminal is a man of poor judgment. He may be more than
this, it is true. He may have a bad strain of heredity, what the
theologians call "original sin"; he then is an " habitual crimi-
nal" in Lombroso's distinction of types, and his own sense of his
failure to accept the teachings of society may be quite absent,
since crime is so normal to him. But the fact remains that in
his judgment he is mistaken ; his normal is not society's normal.
He has failed to be educated in the judgments of his fellows,
however besides and however more deeply he may have failed.
Or, again, the criminal may commit crime simply because he is
carried away in an eddy of good companionship, which repre-
sents a temporary current of social life ; or his nervous energies
may be overtaxed temporarily or drained of their strength, so
that his education in social judgment is forgotten : he is then
the " occasional " criminal. It is true of him also that while he is
a criminal he has lost his balance, has yielded to temptation, has
gratified private impulse at the expense of social sanity ; all this
shows the lack of that sustaining force of social consciousness
which represents the level of righteousness in his time and place.
Then, as to the idiot, the imbecile, the insane, they, too, have no
good judgment, for the very adequate but pitiful reason that they
have no judgment at all.

[7'o he continued. 1

•HHI^

CONTINUOUS POLAR EXPLORATION. 321

PROPOSED SYSTEM OF CONTINUOUS POLAR
EXPLORATION.

By EOBEET stein,
united states geological sukvey.

THE objects of polar exploration are fourfold :
1. Commerce. — According to General Greely, whaling has
contributed over six hundred and eighty million dollars to the
wealth of Holland, England, and the United States. Explora-
tion will probably reveal new whaling grounds. If treated with
some forbearance, the whale will restock the Arctic Ocean. For-
bearance will restore the wealth in reindeer, which, with musk
oxen, foxes, bears, seals, walrus, and narwhal, will su23ply desir-
able commodities. The known deposits of guano and valuable
minerals may eventually be utilized, and others will be discov-
ered. Alaska may not be the only gold-bearing arctic land.

2. Scientific Research. — To ascertain with greater precision
the shape, size, and density of the earth, the astronomer's base of
measures, and thus render the science of surveying more accu-
rate, ten pendulum observations near the unknown extreme of
the arc are worth a hundred elsewhere. Observations on mag-
netism, especially near the magnetic pole, will benefit the thou-
sands of ocean vessels which largely depend for their safety on
the precision with which the compass can be interpreted. To the
meteorologist the arctic is of special importance, because it pre-
sents the extremes of a world-embracing system, each of whose
parts affects every other. Tides and currents are similarly inter-
dependent. The aurora can best be studied where it is most com-
mon and most fully developed. Observations on the ch^-racter
and behavior of plants and animals under the unique conditions
of the arctic will give to the student of organic life a more thor-
ough mastery of his problems. To that end the hydrography
must be known (depth of sea, temperature, water movement, sea
bottom, salinity, light). The arctic affords the best facilities for
studying one set of geologic forces (glaciers, icebergs, frost Assur-
ing) in their extreme manifestation. The condition of the earth
in past geologic epochs will not be fully known until the strata
of the arctic lands have been mapped. To the paleontologist the
arctic has already yielded most valuable information in the fossil
evidence of a mild climate. Lockwood and Brainard found the
slopes of western Grinnell Land studded with large petrified tree
stumps. These and similar fossils, precious to museums or geo-
logic cabiliets, can probably be reached by way of Hayes Sound.
To the ethnologist the Eskimos represent a phase of human life
without a parallel. Museums need collections to illustrate these

322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

lines of research. Thus the objects sought are well defined ; but,
apart from this, the very fact that there exists an unknown area
of over a million square miles creates the duty to explore it, for
two reasons: First, every new fact recorded, every misconcep-
tion corrected, expands the mental horizon, gives additional
power to the mind, and shuts off possible sources of error — an
ounce of fact being worth a ton of speculation; second, every
fact is part of a network, and as new facts are observed and cor-
related they constantly throw light on others, and presently
group themselves into fruitful combinations. The most impor-
tant discoveries have been made by men seeking simply to find
out new facts, without regard to their consequences, or, rather,
with the conviction, drawn from past experience, that no fact is
without its useful consequence, and that therefore it would be
a dereliction of duty to neglect any fact within reach. Think
of Volta, Galvani, Oersted, Faraday, Crookes, Hertz, Rontgen !
"Shall the northern limit of America remain unknown?" is a
question which appeals to every American, even though he can
not tell why. It may safely be said that there is nowhere a more
assured prospect of filling many awkward gaps in scientific sys-
tems than in the arctic. If it be objected that this research
should be postponed to a time when it can be done safely and
economically, the answer is that this time has arrived.

3. Outing. — For the tourist, the » arctic, with its marvelous
scenery, its inspiriting climate, free from colds and fevers,
quickly doubling appetite, vigor, and endurance (as testified
unanimously by whalers and explorers), is at least equal to Yel-
lowstone Park or the Alps. The Hamburg- American line already
sends an excursion steamer to Spitzbergen. " The northern limit
of phthisis " in Berghaus's Physical Atlas may be a message of
hope to many a stricken home.

4. Honor. — Only hypocrisy can say that it does not desire the
world's applause ; only ignorance can say that the world pro-
portions its applause to service rendered. Nothing arouses popu-
lar interest and wins popular homage more readily than success-
ful arctic exploration. Supposing that this indicates no great
discernment in the public, that does not alter the fact that a popu-
lar reputation is one of the most precious of human possessions —
a capital enabling its possessor to apply his labor in any direction
with vastly increased efficiency. If it is proper to strive for a
capital in money, it is at least equally proper to strive for a capi-
tal in fame. And if fame be won by rendering important re-
sources available, securing a vast array of scientific facts and
giving access to unparalleled wonders, will it not be* as fairly
earned as many kinds which pass unchallenged ?

He who understands the bearing of scientific facts knows

CONTINUOUS POLAR EXPLORATION, 323

them to be worth more to humanity than tons of whalebone or
'ingots of gold ; and as no reproach is cast on those who risk their
lives for money, one might justify even the risk of life for scien-
tific research in the arctic. But there is no need of this. Every
careful student knows that in most cases the work involved no
[risk nor even greater hardship than is welcomed by an active
man. Dr. Boas spent a year in BafBn Land in comfort and
safety, traveling hundreds of miles, with Eskimo guides or alone,
living mostly on the game of the country, and bringing back an
unprecedented harvest of scientific facts, at a cost of seven hun-
dred dollars. Considering the desultory character of most of the
past work, the wonder is that disasters have been so few. Each
explorer had to proceed independently to formulate his plan from
book knowledge ; inquire for means to obtain outfit and trans-
portation ; knock at a hundred doors before he met his patron ;
I gather a party of novices ; then start out with the haunting con-.
Bciousness that, if he failed to accomplish anything in the limited
time at his disposal, he would not have another chance. After
returning he was generally unable, owing to the expensive meth-
ods of the past, to take the field again ; his companions, with their
precious experience, scattered over the world. The next expedi-
tion had to go through the same process. Could any business,
say farming, be profitably conducted if the farm was worked one
year and then abandoned for ten years ?

"Arctic exploration," says Mr. Peary, "must, like anything
else, be made a business and carried on from year to year, profit-
ing by each added item of experience, taking advantage of every
occurring opportunity." By doing the easiest and safest work
first, the next will be made easier ; and when a corps of experts
has been developed, the list of difficult tasks will dwindle to very
little. Lockwood and Brainard, in 1883, accomplished in six days
a distance which it had taken them twenty-two days to accom-
plish the year before. "Hazardous expeditions into the open
ocean," says Dr. Boas, " without the shelter of land and without
any line of retreat, such as De Long's expedition, must be aban-
doned, as they will almost always end in disaster. Progress must
be made cautiously and founded on the discoveries and experi-
ences of past expeditions. It is only thus that scientific results
can be obtained."

The expedition to Jones Sound, planned for 1897, is intended
to initiate a system of continuous arctic exploration. Its object
is to be the scientific research above indicated, and to this all else
will be subordinated. Special attention will be paid to geology.
Disasters having been plainly due to lack of a secure and always
accessible base, the first object will be the establishment of a base
at the mouth of Jones Sound, which Julius von Payer calls " the

324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

one spot most suitable for such a base." * Being in assured an-
nual communication through the Scotch and Newfoundland
whalers, a well-housed and well-provisioned party, with some
Eskimo families, will be as safe there as anywhere on earth, and
will have before it a field unequaled in richness and extent. To
the north, the west coasts of Ellesmere Land and Grinnell Land
are to be explored ; to the northwest, the triangle between those
coasts and the Parry Islands is to be rescued from the unknown ;
to the west, the interior of North Devon is an interesting prob-
lem ; to the southwest. Prince Regent Inlet may present an avenue
to the magnetic pole ; to the south, Baffin Land — with its Eskimo
settlements, its herds of reindeer, its wealth in fishes and birds, its
fossils and minerals — offers a tempting field, larger than the Brit-
ish Isles. Even Greenland may not be beyond the sphere of that
strategic point.

Such a system, once initiated, will cost very little. Lecturing
tours and the sale of collections will defray a large part of the
cost. Considering the enormous sums spent on arctic explora-
tion in the past by governments and by individuals, it seems
probable that when the system is once in running order it will
not lack patrons. The cost of the initial expedition is estimated
at five thousand dollars. Much smaller sums will probably suf-
fice in subsequent years.

OPINIONS.

Mr. Stein's plan is to establish a permanent station at the entrance of
Jones Sound, to be occupied by from four to six white men and several
Eskimo families, and from there carry on systematic scientific explorations
northward, northwestward, westward, and southward as far as can be done
with safety.

This plan is justly called by Julius von Payer " the best imaginable,"
for the reason that —

1. It is one of the safest, because its base station is annually reached by
the whaling steamers.

2. It promises extensive scientific results, because that base gives access
to a \ndQ and rich field.

3. It is the cheapest, because of the possibility of utilizing the whalers as
means of transportation.

4. It avoids hurry, which is a great source of danger and of imperfect
work.

5. It permits the utilization of experience, allowing the same force to
remain in the field for several years and to train their successors.

The main object of the first season's work will be the installation of the
party. From my experience I am convinced that this initial work is prac-

* The advantages of the Jones Sound route were pointed out by Dr. Boas in 188*7, and
by Elisee Reclus in 1890. A gradual and systematic advance has been advocated by many
geographers.

CONTINUOUS POLAR EXPLORATION, 325

tically free from risk, especially since Eskimos are to be employed. (R. E.
Peary, civil engineer, U. S. Navy.)

It is Mr. Robert Stein's merit to have called attention to the remarkable
fact that the most northern portion of our continent has so far remained
unexplored, not on account of the inherent difficulties of access, but on ac-
count of historical facts which directed the attention of explorers to Lan-
caster Sound and its western continuation, and to Smith Sound and its
northern continuation. All the facts that are known — and these are
quite numerous — indicate that the northernmost portion of the arctic
American archipelago can be reached without danger and can be explored
with comparative ease.

Mr. Steia points out that the point of attack is Jones Sound, which
has so far been entirely neglected by explorers. Profiting by previous ex-
perience, Mr. Stein proposes to establish a station at the entrance of Jones
Sound, thus giving his operations the necessary security and practically
excluding all danger of serious accidents. The entrance of Jones Sound
is visited annually by whalers, who will keep the explorers in contact with
the civilized world, and who can furnish supplies and help if needed.
There is no doubt that a small number of scientists, supported by a few
Eskimo families, will be able to thoroughly explore the outlines of all the
unknown islands and bring home material results in all branches of natu-
ral science, and that they may add important observations on the physical
conditions of the arctic zone. The field of exploration hasthe immeasur
able advantage that it can be easily reached either by a special vessel or by
means of whalers; that exploration is, one might say, absolutely safe; and
that it is certain to yield results which will rank with the best achieve-
ments in arctic explorations.

It is Mr. Stein's intention to confine the first season's work to the estab-
lishment of a base station and the exploration of its immediate vicinity.
It is his plan to engage the help of a number of Eskimos, and to limit the
party to ivom four to six scientists. The experience of C. F. Hall, of
Schwatka, and my own proves that such work is practically free from
risks of any kind, and I do not hesitate to express my conviction that even
the first year's work will amply repay the exjjense incurred in fitting out
the expedition. (Dr. Franz Boas, explorer of Bafiin Land.)

Your committee believe that this expedition is thoroughly safe and
practicable ; that it is desirable for scientific purposes ; and that no part of
the arctic regions gives promise of greater opportunities for extensive dis-
coveries with a minimum of danger, hardship, and expense. (National Geo-
graphic Society, Washington, D. C.)

Whereas a systematic exploration of Ellesmere Land is projected, always
within easy reach of a base of supplies : resolved^ that the Anthropological
Society of Washington heartily indorse both the exploration and the plan
of operations proposed by Mr. Robert Stein.

The west coast of Ellesmere Land is, in my opinion, the one field of ex-
ploration in all the arctic that promises the largest results with the least
amount of labor and danger. (General A. W. Greely, U. S. Army.)

I am pleased to see you lay so much stress on the one point on which I
have always insisted — that no step should be taken in arctic exploration

3 26 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

until you know that your depot of provisions is actually established. (Com-
modore G. W. Melville, U. S. Nav^\)

An expedition ought to provide for a successful retreat. This you bavo
done by placing your supply depot in the line of the Scotch v^haling ves-
sels. There can be no question but that the region which you propose to
explore is rich in animal life. In 1872 and 1873, at Lifeboat Cove, Eski-
mos told me that west of the mountains there were large quantities of deer
and musk oxen. (R. W. D. Bi*yan, astronomer to Hall's Polaris expedition.)

I consider the exploration of the west cost of Ellesmere Land by the
mode suggested in your paper not only entirely practicable but certain to
obtain most valuable results with the minimum expenditure of money.
(Colonel H. W. Feilden, naturalist to the Nares expedition.)

Stein is evidently on the right track. (Admiral Sir George S. Nares,
commander of the British expedition of 187o-'76.)

I hail with delight your plan of systematic exploration of the arctic
lands. Since it looks forward to an indefinite future, you can wait quietly
till the work grows of itself, not only areally, but also in minuteness. (Dr.
A. Supan, editor Petermann's Mitteilungen.)

I congratulate you on your selection of Jones Sound as the route of ad-
vance, since that is a far less dangerous avenue than many others. (Elisee
Reclus, author of Nouvelle Geographic Universelle )

The most important idea in your plan, and one which will mark a new
epoch in arctic exploration, is the idea of a permanent camp at the en-
trance of Jones Sound, where it will be in constant communication with
the outer world through the whalers. The wonder is that so simjjle and
inexpensive a measure was not thought of long ago. Had it been adopted,
say fifty years ago, it is entirely probable that arctic history since then
would have remained unclouded by a single disaster. (Lieutenant D. L.
Brainard, U. S. Army, of the Greely party, who, with Lockv^ood, reached
the highest north ever attained, 83° 24*5'.)

Your project is in every way well conceived, and will no doubt yield
the best results. Attempts to reach the pole have not met with results com-
mensurate to the efforts made. Far more fruitful to science is the me-
thodical exploration of an arctic land. The American archipelago is as yet
unknown to the west of Ellesmere Land. To Amei'ican naturalists be-
longs the task of revealing to science this terra incognita, and your pro
ject seems to me to be the most rational method. (Charles Rabot, explorer
of Lapland, Spitzbergen, Iceland, and Greenland.)

You have hit upon one of the best routes for further discovery, and I
am pleased to see that you are impressed with the necessity for a safe de-
pot. (Clements R. Markham, C. B. , President Royal Geographical Society
of London.)

Mr. Koldewey, Councilor to the Admiralty, is of opinion that your
project, which is well worked out in all its details, deserves to be received
with interest by all friends of iDolar research. (Geographic Society of
Hamburg.) (Captain Koldewey commanded the two German arctic expe-
ditions of 1868 and 1869.)

ON OUR BANKING SYSTEM.

327

I must confess the most active sympathy with the objects in view in all

)lar research, and I am convinced that the observations of physical phe-

lomena there are to be ultimately of much practical benefit to us in these

lower zones in our commerce and in the safety of our lives upon the high

but, unless systematically organized and continued through a series

►f years, we may expect small results. (Commander "W. S. Schley, U. S.

Tavy, the rescuer of Greely.)

There is a line of possible discovery of the utmost importance lying be-
tween the Miocene deposits and the Pleistocene glaciation — viz., the find-
ing of Pliocene beds that indicate the climatic conditions of the region just
(preceding the glaciation. All deposits later than the fossiliferous Miocene
*posse.ss extreme interest. (Dr. T. C. Chamberlin, Professor of Geology,
{Chicago University, formerly President University of Wisconsin, and
Jhief of Division of Glacial Geology, United States Geological Survey.)

The Board of Managers of the Imperial Royal Geographic Society of
fVienna has carefully examined Robert Stein's project of continuous polar
[exploration, and welcomes it with the utmost satisfaction. In the domains
[of oceanography, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, the determination of
[gravity, plant and animal life, a new expedition would be of high scien-
[tific importance. For this purpose the plan designed and elaborated by
Er. Robert Stein seems especially suitable. At the request of the society,
le well-known explorer, Julius von Payer, has also expressed his opinion.

A " secure base of operations " can only be had on land, and even there
mly at a few points in the polar region. It is the merit of Mr. Stein to
lave discovered the one spot most suitable for such a base. Mr. Stein's plan
las my full approval, and, for geographic exploration in the far north, it is
thus far the best imaginable. (Lieutenant Julius von Payer, explorer of
^ranz Josef Land.)

ON OUR BANKING SYSTEM.

Bt LOGAN G. MoPHERSON.

IT is not to be supposed that many of the heads of the six mil-
lion families in the United States whose incomes are less than

dx hundred dollars a year ever have in their possession more
[than a fevsr dollars that are not required for immediate needs. A

jonsiderable number of those having larger incomes frequently
fare in possession of money which they are not obliged to spend at
once, and merchants and manufacturers and others who direct
on a large scale the efforts of many employees are frequently in
[possession of considerable sums which they do not immediately
{need to use.

Especially among English-speaking people has grown the cus-
jtom of depositing such money in banks. Primary and elemen-
ftary points of the banking problem are therefore the provision
I of receptacles for money that will withstand the forces of Nature
[and the assault of thieves; the securing of custodians who are

328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

honest and competent to receive and record deposits and to make
payments with accuracy. That the strong and well-guarded
vaults of modern banks meet the first of these points is evidenced
by the decreasing list of bank robberies that are accomplished by
physical force. The examination of bank employees' character,
that has become the more searching and rigid as the operations
of guarantee companies have extended, is causing defalcations
through the direct stealing of funds to become constantly fewer.

As banks have become more numerous, the use of checks has
increased. Between ofiice and store, factory and warehouse, bank
and bank, city and city, millions of these pieces of paper are con-
tinually in transit, furthering the exchange of human effort. The
interlinking of banks as correspondents and the growth of clear-
ing houses have formed a mechanism whereby their payment is
effected with celerity.

But the actual deposits of a bank are increased by the proceeds
of loans which it makes and which are frequently placed to the
credit of the borrower the same as though money had actually
been deposited by him. For example : A bank discounts a note
from A to B at sixty days for one thousand dollars. The pro-
ceeds, amounting to nine hundred and ninety dollars, may not be
instantly needed by B ; the amount is placed to his credit for him
to check against — that is, nine hundred and ninety dollars is placed
to his credit on the books of the bank. As his checks come in he
is charged with their amount on the books of the bank. In this
way he obtains from the bank the use of nine hundred and ninety
dollars ; or, to speak more accurately, the bank is the guarantor
of representatives of value issued by him to the extent of nine
hundred and ninety dollars. He has deposited no money. What
he has deposited has been a promissory note — that is, a promise
to produce the result of human effort of which he can dispose for
at least the value of the note. As a bank's profits are largely
made by discounting notes, a very considerable portion of the
checks issued against every bank, therefore, are not drawn against
money deposited in it, but against credits in its books, which are
based upon the assurance of the forthcoming of the result of hu-
man effort. And therefore a vast proportion of all the checks
that flit between store and oflSce, city and city, are based, not upon
cash directly, but upon the guarantee of a bank that it will accept
checks to the value of the result of human effort, the assurance of
the production of which has been discounted or purchased by it
and held as the basis for its guarantee.

In the case specified, the exhaustion of his credit by B might
be somewhat as follows : At the end of the week, to pay his em-
ployees, he may draw two hundred dollars from the bank. In
this instance the bank advances to him out of that portion of its

I

ON OUR BANKING SYSTEM. 329

deposits in actual money which, it retains to meet current de-
mands, coins, or circulating notes, to the amount of two hundred
dollars. B may have employed C, a contractor, to make some re-
pairs at his place of business, and he gives C a check on the bank
for ninety dollars. C also has an account at the bank and de-
posits the check to his credit. The bank on its books charges B
with ninety dollars and credits C with ninety dollars. B's debt to
C has been paid without the use of money at all, the bank, in this
instance, acting as a register of the exchange of human effort. B
may have purchased goods in New York from X Y & Co. to the
value of three hundred dollars. He delivers a check to his bank
for that amount, and the bank delivers to him a draft on its cor-
respondent bank in New York for three hundred dollars. B mails
the draft to X Y & Co., who have an account at the bank on
which it is drawn, and deposit it in that bank to their credit.
This bank charges the original bank on its books with three hun-
dred dollars, and credits X Y & Co. on its books with three hun-
dred dollars. No money has been used in the entire transaction.
Representatives of value based upon the note of A to B have
caused the transfer of credits in the books of the original bank
and in the books of the New York bank.

These instances indicate the manner in which, by the aid of
the banking system, the exchange of the results of human effort
is promoted to an extent far transcending the possibilities of ex-
change effected only by the use of coins or by the direct represent-
atives of coins. By means of checks and drafts based on book
credits in banks that are based on the assurance of the result of
human effort as given by promissory notes, a very considerable
portion of the commerce of civilization is forwarded, the propor-
tion of exchanges effected by coins or the direct representatives
of coins being in constantly decreasing ratio to the total value of
exchanges. But, as when there is a scarcity of coin among the
members of a race who have progressed to the use of coin, the
exchange of effort between them is hindered and reverts to bar-
ter ; as, when there becomes a scarcity of circulating notes among
a nation accustomed to their use, commerce and manufacturing
are restricted because, in the absence of other expedients, ex-
changes are necessarily conducted by coin, so in our banking de-
velopment, when promissory notes and other securities are re-
garded with distrust by the banks upon which is devolving the
most of the burden of directly or indirectly supplying the money
needed in a community, there is a restriction of the exchange of
human effort. Manufacture and conimerce are retarded, and are
forced to the exclusive use of coins or their direct representatives.

A most important point of the banking problem, therefore, is
the regulation of discounts in such a manner that the commerce
TOL. xLix.— 27

330 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of a nation may proceed with regularity, and its development be
continuous and orderly.

Suppose that the money actually deposited in a bank amounts
to one hundred thousand dollars. The bank knows from experi-
ence that it will not need to keep more than fifty thousand dollars
of this to meet current demands, and therefore discounts notes to
the extent of fifty thousand dollars. It has received money to the
extent of one hundred thousand dollars, promises to pay money
to the extent of fifty thousand dollars, and made itself liable to
the extent of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars — that is, it
is responsible for the payment of checks to an amount fifty per
cent in excess of the amount of money which it has received. A
definite amount of money is made the basis of liability for an
amount one and a half times as great. But a bank discounts not
only from its actual deposits, but also from its surplus of accu-
mulated profit, and such of its capital as is not invested in real
estate, bank building and fixtures. Suppose that the money
actually deposited in a bank amounts to a hundred thousand
dollars, that it has a surplus of two hundred thousand dollars,
and its capital in excess of the amount invested in bonds, real
estate, and banking house is two hundred thousand dollars ; its
funds available for discount thus amount to five hundred thou-
sand dollars. As the only legal restriction upon the extent of its
discounts is the requirement that it maintain a reserve in actual
money amounting to twenty-five per cent of its deposits, it is obvi-
ous that by keeping on hand a hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in actual money, its statement of deposits may show six hundred
thousand dollars. Of this a hundred thousand dollars is actual
money received as deposits and five hundred thousand dollars the
proceeds of discounted notes. And thus it is evident how it is
possible for by far the greater portion of the exchanges of the
country to be effected by representatives of value based upon the
assurance of the production of human effort contained in prom-
issory notes. It must be recognized that this furthering of the
exchange of the result of human effort may be of vast benefit to
the public as a whole. For example, a Southern planter, with
ripening acres of cotton, may not have the means wherewith to
pay for the picking, cleaning, packing, and freight to the place of
market. The proceeds of a note discounted at a bank will pro-
vide him with the necessary means, and he pays the note with
the money obtained from the sale of the cotton. Likewise with
an elevator owner in Chicago purchasing grain for export ; or a
coal operator of Pittsburg who desires to send fuel by river to the
Southern, or by lake to the Northwestern markets; or a mer-
chant with store, clerks, and knowledge of the wants of his sec-
;tion may give his notes for needed goods which he pays from the

ON OUR BANKING SYSTEM,

331

)roceeds of their sale ; or a man, far-sighted, energetic, and care-
ful, may perceive opportunity for profit if lie could obtain the
requisite material or the requisite tools or requisite help of other
:inds. By having a note discounted, he obtains the requisite
lelp and pays the note when the opportunity has been realized.
M these instances, the discount of notes has contributed to the
iroduction and distribution of needed commodities. The pro-
lucers have obtained profit, their employees have obtained wages ;
•ailways, vessels, and factories have been used with emolument
po their owners and employees, and thousands of people have
)een placed in possession of food, fuel, and clothing.

But where there is a chance for profit, there also is a chance
for loss. Flood may ruin the cotton crop, the markets may be-
some so glutted that neither grain nor coal can be sold except at
greatly depreciated price; the merchant may be stricken in
lealth ; even the energetic, careful, and far-sighted man may have
liscalculated his opportunity. In such cases, the result of human
effort to the value of the notes may not be forthcoming ; the as-
surance fail of performance; the notes can not be met. When
representatives of value are based upon the promised result of
luman effort which does not materialize, they are worthless un-
less there is an ultimate basis of realized result. This realized
•esult may be the property of signers or indorsers taken by the
)ank to make the value of the notes good ; it may be of the capi-
il or surplus of the bank or property of the stockholders who are
liable for double the amount of their holdings ; or, in the last re-
fsort, the loss falls upon individuals of the public in general.

Concerned, therefore, in the conduct of a bank are the stock-
lolders, who profit by its prosperity and share its losses ; the de-
)ositors, whose funds are in its custody, and the public in general ;
md an important phase of the banking problem is presented by
three points : First, the necessity for a bank to keep on hand suf-
icient actual money wherewith to meet checks and drafts upon it
that must be paid in actual money; second, the necessity for
furthering the exchange of human effort and thereby making as
large profits as possible by maintaining as large a line of discount
{at all times as may be prudent ; third, to make no loans except
[upon adequate security.

When a bank discounts a note, its first consideration, of course,
[is the probability of the note being paid — that is, it desires to be
jreasonably sure that the transaction which the note covers will
ryield enough to cancel it. To this end it is obliged to rely largely
jtipon the reputation for ability and honesty of the drawer and in-
idorser, for it can not enter into the details of every transaction ;
^"but a general knowledge of prices and markets is useful, that it
TD ly not be overflooded with paper in any particular line of in-

332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

dustry that may be offered by tbe oversanguine or the knavish.
And the attempts to obtain discounts by the oversanguine and
the knavish are not limited to the offer of paper in excess of the
amount abundantly necessary to cover the movement in any par-
ticular line, but they frequently exchange notes, or in other ways
obtain paper from a colleague which represents no legitimate
business transaction, but by the discount of which they obtain
needed funds.

As unpredicted circumstances may, at unforeseen times, cause
unusual demands to be made upon a bank^s deposits, it follows
that a bank^s loans should not be for long periods. In actual
practice the average duration of notes is sixty days, and banks do
not like to accept paper running longer than four months under
any circumstances. Different notes corning due at different times
bring into a bank day by day funds which it can use to discount
new notes, or which it can retain in case of contingency requiring
it to keep more money on hand than usual.

It is evident that a bank should not only be reasonably certain
that the prospective exchange of effort which is the immediate
cause of a loan should produce enough under ordinary conditions
to cancel it, but that in case of contingency that is disastrous to
the products immediately concerned the property of the signers
and indorsers of the note not covered by other obligations be suf-
ficient to liquidate it. But in these days, when a concern's prop-
erty is not always visible and its incumbrances frequently con-
cealed, a knowledge of its actual resources is difficult to obtain.
It has happened that financial tricksters, by operations in several
banks, knowledge of each of which has been kept from the others,
have gained possession of funds far beyond the extent to which
their resources entitle them, and in such a case, when any one
bank suspects that it is being victimized, there is the temptation
for it to conceal this knowledge from the other banks, that the
unworthy customer may not be prevented from obtaining loans
from them, wherewith he can repay the advances made by the
bank which has begun to suspect him.

Perhaps the possibilities of unwholesome financiering which
must finally result in loss to the banks and disturbance to all the
communities concerned can best be illustrated by a definite ex-
ample traced throughout its ramifications.

From a region rich in deposits of coal a railway extends to
docks where coal is loaded into vessels for shipment to remote
markets. A corporation controlled by a coal operator and the
president of the railroad leases the docks, and engages in the pur-
chase and shipment of coal. The railway is financially weak and
the corporation without working capital. But the corporation
buys large quantities of coal, giving four months' notes that ag-

OxV OUR BANKING SYSTEM.

333

[•egate thousands of dollars in payment therefor ; it gives four
lonths' notes to the railroad company, aggregating thousands of
lollars, in payment for the freight to the docks. The coal pro-
lucers, to obtain ready money wherewith to run their mines, dis-
count the notes obtained from the shipping company in their
inks. The railroad company, to obtain ready money wherewith
meet its expenses, discounts the notes obtained from the coal
jompany for freight in its different banks. It is the intention of
the coal-shipping company to pay the notes for coal and the notes
for freight when the coal which it has shipped is sold, but, finding
|it easy to issue notes, it buys and ships more coal than it can sell
bt remunerative prices, or for immediate returns, and when its
lotes are due it can not pay them all. To retain its credit with
the coal producers, it pays the notes given to them, but it then can
lot pay all the notes given the railroad company. To meet the
lituation, the railroad company and the coal company exchange
lotes — that is, for example, suppose there be notes amounting to
forty thousand dollars of the coal company to the railroad com-
)any coming due, and the coal company can pay but twenty
[thousand dollars. To meet the other twenty thousand dollars,
{which may be in two notes of ten thousand dollars each, which
[liave been discounted by the railroad company at the P National
md the Q National Banks, the railroad company gives the coal
jcompany two notes each for ten thousand dollars, and the coal com-
)any gives the railroad company two notes each for ten thousand
lollars. One note of the coal company to the railroad company is
fdiscounted at the R National and the other at the S National Bank,
and the treasurer of the railroad company, by that part of the
[transaction, is in possession of twenty thousand dollars, less the
I discount, which he badly needs to help pay interest on an over-
[burden of bonds and bills and long- overdue wages to employees.
lOne note of the railroad company to the coal company is dis-
counted at the T National and the other at the U National Bank,
land the proceeds, amounting to nearly twenty thousand dollars,
[in connection with the twenty thousand dollars already in its
[treasury, enable the coal company to meet the maturing notes to
'the railroad company for forty thousand dollars. The bank in
[which they are paid and the P National and Q National Banks at
[which they have been discounted have their belief in the ability
'of the coal company to meet its obligations strengthened, because
[it appears that the coal company is paying its notes. But this is
i not really so, for only one half of its original notes has been paid,
and the notes exchanged, representing a liability of forty thou-
sand dollars, leave the amount of discounts in various banks the
eame as when the original notes of forty thousand dollars of the
coal company to the railroad company were discounted.

334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Suppose a similar transaction to be undergone with, each of
three sets of notes given by the coal company to the railroad com-
pany, each set originally amounting to forty thousand dollars.
Instead of the original indebtedness of one hundred and twenty
thousand dollars of the coal company to the railroad company,
there is created by the exchange of notes for half that amount a
joint liability of the coal company and the railroad company for
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The coal has all been
sold, but how is it with the coal company ? How is it with the
railroad company ? And how is it with the banks that have dis-
counted their notes ?

The coal company continues business, giving new notes to coal
producers for coal purchased, and new notes to the railroad com-
pany for freight. It is responsible not only for these notes, but
for the previously issued notes. Because of- this burden, it is
obliged to increase its shipments of coal, and therefore to extend
its markets. To do this it is obliged to undersell other coal-ship-
ping companies, and therefore to dispose of coal at prices that do
not yield enough to pay the notes given coal producers and the
notes given the railroad company. The coal producers must be
paid ; but such remaining funds as it can obtain can not pay the
increasing mass of notes given the railroad company, which ma-
ture at shorter and shorter intervals. There is more juggling of
notes through banks, and the mutual liability of the coal com-
pany and the railroad company rolls up, like a big snowball
pushed by schoolboys. The coal company must stop business or
its shipments must increase. To stop is to acknowledge its bank-
ruptcy. To increase shipments necessitates still further expan-
sion of markets. It builds docks at the places of market, and
organizes another company to operate them.

Although the stock of this receiving company is controlled by
the same men that control the stock of the shipping company, the
shipping company sells coal to it, and takes notes of the receiving
company in payment therefor. These notes the shipping com-
pany discounts at banks. Notes have therefore been given by the
shipping company to the coal producers for coal, and notes for
the same coal have been given the shipping company by the re-
ceiving company. But the shipping company and the receiving
company are controlled by the same men, and neither have work-
ing capital. The notes can not be met. There is more juggling
through the banks, and the snowball grows. The shipping com-
pany must sell coal ; the receiving company must sell coal. They
cut prices ; their competitors cut prices to retain their trade. The
cutting continues until the wages of the miners who dig coal are
cut; they are cut and cut. Coal is piled up on the docks. A
great panic sweeps over the country. The shutting down of mills

ON OUR BANKING SYSTEM, 335

md factories diminislies tlie use of coal. The traffic of the rail-
roads falls off, and their locomotives do not burn so much fuel.
There is an oversupply of coal, and the miners, whose wages have
been reduced to a starvation basis, are without work even at
those wages. All of them are poor, and the most of them are
ignorant of the remote sources of the wrongs that are undoing
bhem. Their discontent grows, and they strike. Their children
are without shoes, and their stomachs are empty. Their discon-
tent gives rise to mutterings. Here a coal tipple is burned, there
m operator mobbed. The operators employ deputy sheriffs to
)rotect their property, and threaten to call on the Governor for
bhe aid of the militia in preserving peace. The miners are
^whipped and return to work.

The railroad company and the shipping company and the
receiving company push the growing snowball of their indebted-
less before them. By juggling, twisting, scheming, and the ma-
dpulations through the banks they are kept afloat.

What finally happens ? The railroad company, overburdened
dth debts, and robbed by its officers, goes into the hands of a
^receiver.

The great snowball of indebtedness rests upon the coal com-
jpany ; its notes are scattered far and wide in the banks that have
[discounted them. What can the banks do ? Get judgment on
'the notes and take the property of the coal company. But the
fCoal company owns next to nothing. Its docks are leased, its cars
tre leased, its coal land is leased ; the lessors have the first claim,
[the banks would get nothing. What can the banks do ? Allow
^the coal company to issue bonds, take bonds to the value of the
lotes which they hold, and allow the coal company to con-
ftinue ? If it has so lamentably failed in the past, what can be
texpected of the future ? The banks are between the devil and
^the deep sea.

How did they get there ? Because they discounted notes as-
^suring the forthcoming of the result of human effort to the
; extent that the signers and indorsers failed to produce. Had the
tbanks been fully alive to the conditions of the coal markets, they
[•certainly would not, in the first place, have discounted notes cov-
jring supplies of coal that far exceeded the demand, and the sale
;oi which affected the prosperity of other coal companies to such
["an extent that cutting of prices finally reacted upon the pros-
I'perity of every community concerned in the coal industry. But,
it be urged that it is asking too much of any bank to keep
I track of the intricacies of every business, that a bank is safe ia
[discounting the notes of concerns that always pay their notes,
bhere is the reply that these concerns did not pay their notes. By
'inanipulation they apparently paid them, and therefore the sys-

336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tern under which, such manipulation is possible is fundamentally-
wrong.

Under the Canadian banking system, with its large banks,
each having enormous capital and branches throughout the Do-
minion, it is practicable to enforce the rule of " one concern, one
bank " ; each customer must render a confidential statement to his
bank from time to time of the exact condition of his affairs, of
his assets and liabilities, and it is to the interest of his bank to
accord him the fullest accommodation that his business will jus-
tify. Its enormous resources enable it to thus accommodate
all its customers. It is evident that under such a system such
juggling as that instanced in the foregoing illustration could not
have been carried on. Many of the banks of the United State*
have blank forms which they submit to offerers of paper for dis-
count, the filling up of which completely discloses the condition
of their affairs, the extent of their assets and liabilities in every
shape and form. Had such statements been required of the coal
company and the railroad company by each of the banks before
discounting their notes, the possibility of ruin entailed by their
reckless procedure would certainly have been averted ; but men,
shrewd, plausible, and unscrupulous, have a way of quieting the
fears of banks and evading inquiries that are searching.

Under the Canadian system the few banks, each with large
capital and many branches, find it to their interest to employ as
managers men of character, foresight, and ability, and they are
not allowed to participate in any way in the borrowing of money
from their banks. In the United States each city has its numer-
ous banks, no one of them firmly connected in management with
any other bank. The officials often are men of minds not of the
broadest and judgment not of the most accurate, who have at-
tained their positions, perhaps, through influence of one kind
or another, and sometimes they are in direct partnership with
the men who have offered paper to the bank for discount,
the recommendation of action upon which comes within their
province.

Under the Canadian system there are restrictions upon the
amounts which directors of a bank can borrow, and their heavy
liability for losses incurred by their bank leads them to exercise
much caution in accepting paper. In the United States many
bank directors seek their positions almost exclusively because of
the facilities they thereby obtain for borrowing, and by their
accommodating each other the legitimate business of the bank
and the community is prone to suffer.

Under the Canadian system there is an examiner for each
large bank, who inspects its operations from time to time to ascer-
tain not only that its status is sound from a bookkeeping and

TBE BIRDS AT DINNER.

337

arithmetical standpoint, but that it grants discounts on sound
principles, and that the discounted paper held by it is good. In
the United States there are national bank examiners, but their
duties do not embrace a thorough and rigid scrutiny of the
soundness of notes discounted.

THE BIRDS AT DINNER.

By HARRIET E. RICHARDS.

WE think of the birds as dainty creatures, fit for poetry, song,
and airy flights ; but if we faithfully watch them a little,
we shall discover that nearly their whole time and energy are de-
voted to securing their " daily bread."

Our familiar song birds begin their day about three in the
morning; from that time until seven or eight in the evening
the hours are mainly occupied in searching for food. Certainly
"they spend some time in making love, in building nests, in sing-
ing songs, but intermingled with it all is the constant demand for
something to eat. Some fruit-eating birds are said to consume
three times their own weight every day. Prof. Treadwell proved
by experiment that a young robin will eat every day, and require

Head of Swallow. Natural size.

Crested Flycatcher. Natural

it too for perfect development, more than his own weight of ani-
mal food. Think of human beings eating at that rate ! Gorman-
dizers, indeed ! Think, too, of the labor of providing for, say, four
such hungry, greedy little ones !

Scientific investigation has proved that nearly all birds feed
their young on insects, worms, or some form of animal food, and
also depend mainly on such food for themselves at that busy
period of their lives, although at other seasons their favorite food
may be grains and berries. Dr. Brewer says a pair of jays feed
their young five hundred thousand caterpillars in a season, and
that they will destroy one million eggs each winter ; and that a
chickadee will largely exceed these figures.

VOL. XLIX. — 28

35^

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There are several reasons why birds require so much food.
They are active creatures, being almost constantly in motion
some individuals traveling many miles every day. Of all animals
their blood is the warmest; their temperature is about five de-

Hairy Woodpecker.
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckeb.

grees higher than man's. This heat of the body is nicely pro-
tected by their covering of down and feathers, but it requires
more food to make feathers than to make flesh or hair.

A tiny bird's body is a highly concentrated bit of nature,
which is controlled by an intelligent and active brain that keeps
his little system in such constant motion that it must be abun-

THE BIRDS AT DINNER.

339

lantly nourished. If we notice carefully the beaks of all the

>irds we see, it will help us, by indicating their habits of feeding,

to locate them in their families and thus lead us to their correct

names. All the sparrows have short, stout beaks, well suited to

rjracking open seeds and grain, which is their usual food. The
thrushes have a curved bill, convenient for holding worms and
digging in the soil ; they find most of their food on the gound,
)oking among the dead leaves and rubbish for grubs, beetles, and
larvae. Our robins, which are true thrushes, do valuable spring
rork in the garden and lawn pulling worms from the soil. Have
lyou ever watched a robin at work ? How he tugs and pulls
[when the worm is long and does not come easily ! There is an

Golden WINGED Wakbler.

Ruby-throated Hxtmming Bird

( TrocJiilus colvhris).

Eed-eyed Vireo. Natural size.

energy and a certain business air about him when at work which
is very interesting.

The food of the thrushes is chiefly animal, although they like
;a few strawberries and cherries for dessert, which we ought to be
very willing to allow them as a slight return for all the worms
and insects they destroy for us. The warblers are almost ex-
clusively insect-eating birds. A few of them hunt on the ground
for their food, but as a family their place is high in the tree tops,
searching among the foliage for the tiny insects, plant lice, and
spiders that make their homes there. They are small birds, hav-
ing slender beaks.

The tiny humming birds, with their long, needle-shaped bills,
are well equipped for securing honey from the very heart of the
trumpet flowers and honeysuckles. They find numerous small
insects within the flower as well as honey. From a paragraph in
a recent number of The Auk we might judge that spiders were a
favorite food with them, a writer there telling us that he found

340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

twelve spiders and many broken remnants of others in the gullet
of a female humming bird that he dissected August 19, 1894. He
remarks that " the gullet was also well filled with honey."

The swallows feed entirely on insects, securing them on the
wing. To accomplish this successfully they are provided with

Chipping Sparrow.
Ked-backed Sandpiper. Natural size. Natural size.

broad, short bills and a mouth which opens very wide, really
from eye to eye. The woodpeckers have large, chisel-like bills,
which they put to constant use in securing their food, most of
which they glean under dead bark on the trunks of trees. The
tongues of the woodpeckers, excepting the sapsuckers, have little
barbs on each side like the barbs of a fishhook ; this little instru-
ment, we may readily understand, proves very useful in captur-
ing their prey. The sapsucker has a sort of brushlike arrange-
ment at the end of the tongue which aids him in collecting his
food. The woodpeckers feed mainly on insects, beetles, and
grubs, and render us valuable service in destroying many pests ;
they also eat nuts and some fruit.

An interesting family of birds to observe when feeding are
the flycatchers. Our kingbird is a familiar illustration of the
family. They feed almost exclusively on insects in flight. They
are cool-headed, businesslike birds, deciding to sit quietly on a
perch until some pretty fly passes near ; then, presto ! a snap,
and poor little fly is already in the flycatcher's gullet. There
is no nervous uncertainty in a flycatcher's disposition, but quiet
waiting till the decisive moment, then his sharp little bill clinches
the winged creature in an instant.

Near my favorite window, on the branch of an apple tree, the
tent caterpillars have had a nest for a number of years. I have
never allowed the nest to be burned out or destroyed, choosing to
leave it for a feeding place for the birds. It has been extremely
interesting to notice the different birds around the nest, and their
manner of attacking it. The yellow-throated vireos are the most
frequent visitors; they find the worms a dainty feast. Often
they thrust their tiny beaks into the sticky web and tear off bits

THE BIRDS AT DINNER.

341

^^Bo take away for nest-building ; sometimes it pulls hard, or they
try to take too large a piece ; then they will brace their feet, set
their bodies, and tug with a vim ; something has to give way,
nd very soon it is the sticky web ; then away goes my yellow-
hroat, a happy conqueror.

The orioles are the next most frequent visitors. They peck
earlessly into the nest; so do the little flycatchers — the che-
ecs. The yellow warblers, robins, redstarts, and rose-breasted
rosbeaks, and, of course, numerous English sparrows peck
round the foliage near the nest and try a worm occasionally
hat has crawled from the nest, but they do not often trouble the
nest itself.

Nature plans very beautifully for her creatures. Every bird

as its food within reach of its own well-directed effort ; but it

emains for the bird to make the effort and secure the food. The

structure of the bird's body — his beak, feet, feathers, length of

neck — his manner of flight, his habits, and tastes, all are nicely

lanned for the little owner's daily quest for food.

A humming bird would not enjoy a sparrow's chubby beak,

neither would the grosbeak find it easy to open pea pods or pick

potato bugs with the humming bird's needlelike bill. The shore

birds — the sandpipers and herons — would find it difficult to scale

the trunk of a tree for their dinner, as do the nuthatches and

woodpeckers, but their long, slender beaks deftly pierce the mud

for snakes and worms, while the ducks find their large, flat beaks

onvenient for seizing and holding a frog.

The nocturnal birds, as the owls and whip-poor-wills, each pos-
ess interesting physical characteristics for securing their food

Tongue of Woodpecker.
Magnified.

Orchard Oriole. Tm. $ second year;
natural size.

Tongue of Sapsucker. Maimified.

[in the dark. When we have learned the tastes and habits of any
rbird, we shall see how perfectly he is equipped with an apparatus
[that would be an incumbrance to some neighbor bird, but to him
jis indispensable to life and comfort.

If we will study something of the birds — their structure, their

342 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

habits, and their dispositions — we shall constantly be impressed
with the practical wisdom of these little inhabitants of our gar-
dens and forests, and be daily encouraged by their untiring in-
dustry and bright, sprightly ways.

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS.

By Prof. WILLIAM KOMATNE NEWBOLD.

IP there be any truth in the doctrines I have already put forth
in these pages, it seems a priori probable that suggestion will
prove useful in combating some of the many ills that flesh is
heir to. The various devices for heightening suggestibility are
simply devices for increasing the effects proper to any given men-
tal state by removing from its path all obstacles. Among the
effects of mental states are the production and prevention of other
states and of movements, and there are many diseases which are
characterized by disturbances of sensation, thought, or movement.
Very often these disturbances are functional — that is, they can not
be traced to any visible injury of the nervous system, and fre-
quently appear and disappear in most unaccountable fashion. It
does not seem improbable that in such cases suggestion might
work effects worthy of serious consideration.

And in fact it does. Every physician knows that it does, even
though he has never heard the word " suggestion,^' or laughs at
the theories of Nancy. Instinctively every trained practitioner
supports his remedies by suggestion, cheering the patient by
word and look, pooh-poohing his fears, assuring him of a speedy
recovery, and often, if he be somewhat wiser than common, expa-
tiating upon the specific results expected from the dose now to be
administered.

The movement known as Psychotherapeutics or Suggestive
Therapeutics is an attempt to dissociate this element of medical
practice from its concomitants in order to determine its value
when taken by itself. What that value is I shall not venture to
say. In all probability the advocates of the method — or some of
them — exaggerate its efficacy, and doubtless the personality of the
physician has much to do with its success. In one man's hands
suggestion will work wonders ; in those of another it is almost
valueless. Yet the evidence is rapidly accumulating, and every
year sees a greater consensus among those who have made the
trial as to the limits within which it is of value.

I can not undertake in one short article to go into the details
of the results reported by von Krafft-Ebing, von Schrenck-Not-
zing, Forel, Ladame, Moll, Wetterstrand, van Renterghem and

I

I

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS. 343

van Eeden, Lidbeault, Bernheim, Janet, B^rillon, Pitres, de Jong,
Bramwell, Lloyd Tuckey, Hamilton Osgood, and others, but I
can say a few words as to the troubles in relieving which sugges-
tion has been found useful.

In the first place, it will sometimes overcome insomnia. In
the second, it has been used to restore to hysterical patients their
lost sensations, but the restoration is usually but temporary. In
the third, it may be used to destroy all sorts of disagreeable
symptoms, especially neuralgic pains and headaches. It is pos-
sible to produce complete anaesthesia for surgical purposes in
this way ; but, as ether, chloroform, and cocaine are much more
reliable, suggestion is seldom used. Dr. Wetterstrand, however,
usually hypnotizes slightly before administering an ansesthetic ;
he has found that he can in this way get along with a much
smaller amount of the drug, and also avoid the "violent"
stage.

In the fourth place, suggestion is sometimes efficacious in
ases of disordered ideation and morbid impulses. Mild melan-
cholia, horror of food and of open spaces, insane doubt, homicidal
and suicidal impulses, sexual perversion and inversion, dipso-
mania, morphinomania, fear of death, and others of the kind have
been successfully treated by suggestion. But upon the more seri-
ous forms of mental disease it seldom has any effect.

In the fifth place, it is often of aid in motor disorders not
dependent upon organic disease of the nervous system. Such
are hysterical contractures, paralyses and convulsions, nervous-
ness, chorea, sudden loss of voice, stammering, twitching of mus-
cles, etc.

These are the troubles in which suggestion has been found
most useful, but of course no one claims that it is a specific for
them all. It often does good and never does harm ; but some-
times it does no good, and at other times the improvement is but
temporary. There is nothing very surprising in the fact that
such troubles have sometimes been found amenable to suggestion.
Although the effect ascribed to the mental state may be greater
than we usually suppose such a state could produce, the differ-
ence is one of degree and not of kind. But I must now turn
to a group of phenomena which seem at first glance to differ
in kind as well as degree from anything with which we are
familiar.

We usually conceive that the processes grouped under the
word metabolism depend upon purely mechanical and chemical
conditions, modified in some way, to be sure, by the fact that the
body is alive and not dead, but still essentially physical and
chemical. The word metabolism comes from a Greek word (/wcra-
fio\-q) which means " exchange/' and it designates the fact that

344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we suppose all the processes of nutrition and decay, secretion, as-
similation, excretion, oxidation, etc., to be at bottom alike, and
in the last analysis to consist in an exchange or substitution of
atom for atom within the constituent molecules of the body.

Now, it is easily shown that this notion is erroneous, for the
physical and chemical processes taking place within the body are
not precisely like other such processes ; they stand to some extent
under the control of the nervous system. For example, the
amount of heat evolved within the body is probably regulated
by a center in the spinal cord. The nutrition of the voluntary
muscles probably depends upon the functioning of certain cells in
the anterior horns of the spinal cord, and if the latter are de-
stroyed the muscles waste away. Dr. Darkschwitsch has recent-
ly published in the ArcJiiv fiir Psychiatrie an elaborate study of
certain forms of muscular atrophy complicated with painful dis-
ease of the joints. These frequently follow paralyses due to in-
jury of the cortex, and he concludes that the metabolic changes
probably result directly from the cortical injury and not from
disuse of the affected limbs. I recollect seeing some time ago a pa-
tient of Dr. Charles K. Mills's who had had the left cortical center
for the hand removed to cure an epilepsy. He had lost in conse-
quence, as was to be expected, much of his power over the right
arm and hand, and he had also lost, as was not to be expected, all
the skin of his right hand. Dr. Mills told me he had several
times seen localized metabolic disturbances follow lesion of that
region of the cortex which controlled the muscles of the affected
part.

Besides this probable direct control, the nervous system can
affect metabolic processes indirectly through the blood supply.
The distribution of the blood is regulated by the complex vaso-
motor mechanism which controls the force and rate of the heart-
beat and the diameter of the arteries and arterioles ; the entire
system is controlled in turn by a center in the medulla. It acts
for the most part reflexly, sending the blood tide with the greatest
force to the organ that needs it most, but it can be affected in
other ways.

Such facts are interesting, and they put it beyond question
that the nervous system has to do with the processes of metabo-
lism, but they do not show how those processes can be affected by
the functioning of that part of the nervous system which under-
lies consciousness, or, to use my former phraseology, how mental
states can control metabolism.

That some metabolic processes can be affected by mental states
is well known. For example, the secretory and excretory pro-
cesses can not only often be started and stopped in this way, but
the chemical character of their products can be modified, as when

t

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS. 345

a sudden fit of anger makes a mother's milk poisonous to her
child.*

In general, an emotional storm or even an emotional mood, if
long continued, may have a profound effect upon the functioning
of the body. The cheerful emotions favor health; the depress-
ing emotions make the body fertile ground for the growth of
disease germs. Yet even this admission does not bring one much
nearer the point of interest; for, since the epoch-making dis-
coveries of Prof. James, of Harvard, and Prof. Lange, of Copen-
hagen, it has been known that what we call an- emotion is not
the cause but the feeling of those extensive bodily changes which
we regard as its expression, and to inquire into the effect of emo-
tions upon metabolism would lead me too far afield into the
eneral theory of emotion.

To account for the more remarkable. effects of suggestion upon
metabolism we are forced to a most extraordinary hypothesis,
which may be thus stated :

The thought of any given bodily change, whether motor, vaso-
motor, or metaholic, tends to the actual production in the body of
the change which that thought represents.

That this law is true of motor thoughts I think quite clearly
proved. Of the vasomotor it is not so clearly true, but there is a
considerable amount of evidence going to show that the blood tide
can be to some extent directed by act of will by most persons,
and by some persons to a much greater extent. The evidence for
any control over the metabolic processes is very scanty. If the
tendency exists, it must be latent in most persons, for we all know
that I can not by thinking add a cubit to my stature or change
the color of my beard. Yet, even though it be latent in most
persons, it may exist in others, and I think the evidence for its ex-
istence is strong. The chief difficulty in accepting it lies in this :
we know of no nervous mechanism by which such central pro-
cesses can affect the body unless it be through the sensory nerves,
and, according to our present physiology, .sensory nerves can
carry impulses in one direction only.

I can not explain these difficulties and shall not attempt to. I
shall simply relate the more important bits of evidence which
have been gathered since the 12th of May, 1885, when M. Focachon
performed his first successful experiment under satisfactory con-
ditions before the professors of the Medical School at Nancy.
Most of this evidence is experimental and it deals with modifica-
tions of the skin only. I do not suppose that this fact proves that
the control of thought over the skin is greater than that which
it exercises over the internal organs, but merely that experiments

* Carpenter, Mental Physiology, § 566.

TOL. XLIX.— 29

346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

upon the skin are more satisfactory than those on other parts of
the body, partly because their results are more manifest and part-
ly because they are attended with less discomfort to the patient.
They belong to two types : (1) those in which the modifications
induced are chiefly vasomotor — redness, swelling, exudation of
blood, etc. — but greater than one can usually produce by an act
of will; and (2) those in which there is visible change in the
tissue. It is quite possible that the latter are due in large part
to vasomotor modifications, but we can not at present prove that
such is the case. In connection with these experimental cases I
shall introduce a few parallels derived from other sources to show
their absolute identity of type.

The first case which I shall quote is reported by Dr. Biggs,
of Lima, and is recorded by Mr. F. W. H. Myers in the Proceed-
ings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii, page 339. In
three cases Dr. Biggs produced a red cross upon the skin by sug-
gestion. His own account of the first of these cases, slightly
abbreviated, is given as follows in a letter dated October 18, 1885 :

" I put her into a magnetic or mesmeric sleep by laying my
hand on her head for about a minute. I then said, ' Maria, do
you hear me ? ' * Yes.' * Are you thoroughly magnetized ? '
'Yes.' 'Now listen attentively: a cross is going to appear on
your right forearm and remain there until I tell it to go away.
Here is where it is to appear.' (I then described a cross with my
forefinger on the inner side of her right forearm.) 'Have you
understood what I have said to you ? ' ' Yes.' I then awakened
her by two or three up-passes; for the next two or three days
she seemed sulky and out of sorts, would now and then rub her
right arm, over the place where the cross was to appear ; when
asked why she did this, she said there was an itching and she
could not help scratching the place, although there was nothing
to be seen that could cause the irritation. I then magnetized her
as before, and asked, ' Do you recollect what I told you the other
day about the cross that is to appear upon your arm ? ' ' Yes.'
'Will it appear?' 'Yes.' 'When?' ' In a few days.' 'Well,
it must come out in three days ; do you understand ? ' ' Yes.'
By the time appointed a dusky red cross, four or five inches
long and about three inches wide, made its appearance. At first
we pretended not to notice this, although we could often see
the lower part of it when her sleeve was partly rolled up in
some of her duties in and about the house ; she was our house-
maid. It was only at intervals, when thrown into the mag-
netic sleep, that we could get a full view of the cross ; never a
word had been said to her about the cross in her waking mo-
ments, for some time, several weeks, until one day I pretended to
have caught sight of the strange mark on her arm, and said:

fc

4

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS, 347

hy, Maria, what is the matter with your arm ? Have you hurt

? What mark is this ? Let me see ; pull up your sleeve/ She
'did so with a slightly sulky, ashamed air. * Why, it looks like a
cross ; where did you get this V 'I don't know, sir/ ' How long
has this been on your arm ? ' ' More than a month, sir/ * Have
you felt anything ? ' ' No, sir ; only at one time I had a great
deal of itching and burning, and a few days afterward this mark
came out on my arm/ After this we frequently spoke to Maria
bout the cross, and when requested to she would roll up her
eeve and show it to visitors, although she always seemed re-
uctant to do so. Many months afterward she left our service,
and in about two weeks she made her appearance at my office in
wn, asking me to remove the cross from her arm, as it attracted
he notice of the family with whom she was now living, and she
was much annoyed by the many questions asked her. I magnet-
ized her, and then told her that the cross would disappear in a
few days, and she would be no more troubled with it. I saw her
a few days afterward at Salto ; the cross had disappeared."

In another case Dr. Biggs caused a cross to appear every Friday
on the chest for a period of nearly six months. These cases are
not sufficiently well authenticated to make them of much value
taken by themselves, but, in conjunction with the results got by
other experimenters, they are worthy of consideration.

For example, Prof. Pierre Janet suggested to his hysterical
patient Rose that he would put a mustard plaster upon her ab-
domen to relieve hysterical contractures of the stomach. " I
found, some hours later," he says,* " a swollen mark, dark red in
color, in the form of an elongated rectangle, but — odd detail — none
of its angles were clearly marked, for they seemed neatly cut off.
I remarked that the burn had an odd shape. ' Don't you know/
said she, ' that the corners of the Rigollot plasters are always cut
off so that they won't hurt ? ' " Following up this hint. Prof.
Janet suggested putting on a plaster shaped like a six-pointed
star, and he got the corresponding burn. On the chest of another
patient he produced an S in the same way. Prof, von Krafft-
Ebing has done the same with his famous patient lima Szandor.f

Prof. Charcot's case of suggested oedema is even more curious,
as it involved not merely vasomotor changes, but also a fall of
temperature, and probably modified nutrition as well. It is re-
ported by Dr. Levaillain.J: " M. Charcot had presented two cases

* L'Automatisme Psychologique, p. 166.

+ Eine experimentelle Studie auf dem Gebiet des Hypnotismus. Stuttgart, 1889. Eng-
lish translation by C. G. Chaddock, M. D., New York, 1889.

t Revue de I'Hypnotisme, vol. iv, p. 854, June, 1890. Cf. also Mr. Myers, op. cit.^
p. 837.

348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of hysterical blue oedema occupying the entire extremity of the
upper limb and making the hands appear swollen, bluish, cold,
contrasting in the highest degree in volume, temperg-ture, and
coloring with the hand of the opposite side. He then exhibited
in the auditorium a patient suffering from major hysteria who
was hypnotizable. The following suggestions had been given
her during the hypnotic sleep for four or five days : She was told
her right hand was puffing out, becoming larger than the other;
that it was getting blue, becoming red, then violet ; finally, that
it was hard and was getting colder and colder. Under the influ-
ence of these suggestions, repeated at five or six hypnotic sit-
tings, the right hand became enormous very rapidly, almost dou-
ble the volume of the other ; it was really much discolored and of
a true cyanic tint ; it was hard to the touch, and the finger would
not sink into it ; finally, its temperature was three degrees (centi-
grade) below the normal temperature of the rest of the body. In
a word, it resembled in every respect the hand of another hys-
teric who was suffering from a spontaneous blue oedema. It was,
then, possible to produce and localize in the hand by means of
simple suggestions lasting disorders of nutrition and circulation
of such a character that the hand became half again as large,
more colored, and much colder than the other hand."

Another curious vasomotor phenomenon is the "bloody
sweat." It is sometimes found occurring spontaneously without
visible reference to mental states. Such a case is reported by Dr.
Ernoul, of St. Malo.* A hysterical girl whom he observed had
bleeding spots on various parts of her body which appeared and
disappeared in most unaccountable fashion. A somewhat similar
case was observed by Drs. Artigalas and Rdmond,t in which the
bleeding could be produced by suggestion. The patient was a
young married woman, twenty-two years of age. She entered the
hospital October 31, 1891, for various troubles requiring surgical
treatment. Later she complained of pain in the ears, and had
several haemorrhages from them. On the 23d of November and
the seven subsequent days she at times wept bloody tears. She
called the doctors' attention to this on the 27th ; they could find
no injury in the eye, but learned that she had had in childhood
frequent hsemorrhages from the nose and one from the stomach.
A careful examination showed many hysterical symptoms. She
was hypnotized, but it was not possible to check the bloody tears
by direct suggestion ; they could, however, be occasioned by sug-
gestion at any time. " On December 1st, Prof. Artigalas put her
again to sleep, and suggested to her that the haemorrhages from
the eye would not recur, but that she would bleed from the hollow

* Revue de I'Hypnotisme, iv, 283; f Op. cit., vi, 250.

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS,^ 349

of the left hand. A few minutes after being awakened* she in
fact had a ha3morrhage, or rather a bloody sweat, on the palm of
the left hand. The phenomenon took place under our eyes with-
out M. Arti galas leaving the patient and without any possibility
of fraud. The skin was absolutely sound on the surface at the
point which bled ; the blood seemed to exude in the creases much
as a profuse sweat would have done ; one could not detect upon
trial any appreciable modification of the integument. The haemor-
rhage ceased upon washing the hand in cold water." The palmar
hsemorrhages were then checked by suggestion.

Drs. Bourru, Burot, and Mabille have got even more curious
phenomena in the case of their famous hysterical patient, Louis

'V . They produced bleeding by suggestion from the nose,

from designated points on the skin, and even fixed beforehand
the hours at which the bleeding was to take place. On one occa-
sion they heard him give himself, while in a secondary state, simi-
lar suggestions, and the blood appeared punctually on the spot
[indicated. Nothing could better demonstrate the subjective char-
acter of the agency that produces these inexplicable results.

These cases are precisely parallel to those of the so-called " stig-
matics" — "saints" who bore upon their persons the marks of cru-
cifixion. The hagiology of the Roman Catholic Church is full of
them, and not a few have been observed in recent years. I will
quote the case of one : Marie de Moerl, of Kaldern, in the Tyrol,
became subject to ecstasy in 1832, she being then about twenty
[years of age. Generally the subject of her meditation was the
passion of Jesus. " In the autumn of the same year her confessor
perceived that the palms of her hands, where subsequently the
marks of the crucifixion appeared, sank in, as if under the pres-
sure of a body in half relief. At the same time the part became
painful and frequently cramped. On the 2d of February, 1834,
at the Feast of the Purification, he observed her wipe the middle
of her hands with a towel and exhibit a childlike alarm at the
blood which she perceived there. These marks soon showed
themselves on her feet and her heart. They were nearly round,
spreading a little in length, three or four lines in diameter, and
seeming to pass through both hands and both feet. On Thursday
night and Friday all these wounds shed drops of blood, ordi-
narily clear. On other evenings they were covered with a crust
of dried blood." *

The well-known case of Louise Lateau was precisely similar.
At the present time, according to newspaper accounts, a certain
Mrs. Stuckenborg, of Louisville, Ky., presents the phenomena of

♦ Biierre de Boismont, Hallucinations, Case 100. English translation, Philadelphia,
1853.

350 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

stigmafization. Dr. Hodgson told me he went to Louisville and
endeavored to study the case, but found she was in the hands of
the Roman Catholic authorities, and he was not allowed to exam-
ine her.

The ease with which warts can be '' charmed away " by sug-
gestion has long been known. I will quote two cases. The pa-
tient in the first case was my wife, then a little girl, and the ac-
count was written for me by her mother. "I remember it all

perfectly. It w^s when E was about six years old, just before

we went to Boston to live. She had had warts on her hands for
over a year. They had spread until her hand was not only badly
disfigured, but very painful, as they were apt to crack and bleed.
Two physicians, both relatives of ours, had prescribed for them,
and we had followed directions without success. We were in

Lawrence, at M. P 's. A lady came to tea, noticed the warts,

and offered to remove them by a 'charm.' As I had once or
twice been relieved in childhood in the same way, I was de-
lighted at the offer. She went through some mummery, rubbing
them and muttering something, I think, and then annoi*nced that
they would be gone in a month. They were, every one. In a
few days they began to dry up and disappear. So far as I can
remember, she never had another. When I was a child theje was
a neighbor of ours who used to remove all the warts in the
neighborhood. I never heard of his failing, and I know of many
successful removals in our own family. He used a piece of
thread. He would tie it around the wart — if he could — with
great solemnity, rub it three times, and very carefully put the
piece of thread in a paper in his pocketbook. This made a very
great impression on us, I remember. It seemed next to a church
service, having your wart taken off."

Dr. Bonjean, of Lausanne, in a letter to the Eevue de VHyp-
notisme, dated March 3, 1896, tells an interesting story of the
same sort. An old lady, a relative of his, had long had the repu-
tation of being able to remove warts, and he had himself been
cured by her of a very bad one. Her method was to bandage the
eyes of the patient and instruct him not to touch the wart or dis-
turb the bandage while she was operating. Her daughter then
entered and touched the wart with an object (described by Dr.
Bonjean) which could not have had any curative power. The
warts disappeared in from one to three weeks. When the old
lady died. Dr. Bonjean learned her secret. He saw clearly that
her success must be due to suggestion, and he undertook to cure
warts without the use of the object upon which she relied, but
imitating her methods in other respects. He never hypnotizes
the patient, and says he thinks it is only important to impress
him deeply with the notion that the warts will go away.

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS, 351

Among the most extraordinary and best authenticated cases
)f suggested modification of the metabolic processes are those in
[which burns have been so produced. The first of these was, I be-
lieve, produced by M. Focachon, an apothecary of Charmes, in

France, on a patient named Elisa F He succeeded in doing

it several times, and the details can be found in Prof. Beaunis's Le
IjSomnamhuUsme provoque, pages 72-84. I will describe one or
two. On the 12th of May, 1885, at 11 A. M., she was hypnotized,
and eight postage stamps were placed on her left shoulder, with
[the suggestion that a blister was being applied. She was then
watched and kept asleep. At 8.15 A. M. next day, she was exam-
ined in the presence of MM. Bernheim, Lidgeois, Lidbeault, Beau-
mis, and others, and the bandages were removed. All were satis-
jfied that they had not been disturbed. " Within an area of about
(four by five centimetres the epidermis was found thickened and
'deadened, of a yellowish color, but it was not raised and had not
[formed blisters. It was thickened, a little wrinkled, and in a word
I presented the appearance of the period which immediately pre-
cedes true blistering, with the formation of fluid. This region
was surrounded by a zone of intense redness, with swelling about
half a'centimetre in extent." A year later M. Focachon succeeded
in neutralizing the effect of a Spanish fly blister on the same pa-
tient.* One piece was put on the left forearm and the other on
the corresponding region of the other arm. She was hypnotized
and told that the one on the left arm would not burn her. She
was then watched nine hours and a half and examined. The left
arm was almost absolutely unaffected ; on the right a blister was
forming. The bandages were replaced for forty-five minutes and
then examined again. On the right arm was a blister from which
a serous fluid was got ; the left was intact.

Another such case was reported by Dr. J. Rybalkin, of the
Hopital Marie in St. Petersburg, f The patient, a house painter,
sixteen years of age, was hypnotized at 8.30 A. m., and was told he
would burn himself on the arm by touching a stove — in which,
by the way, there was no fire. He uttered a cry of pain when he
touched it, and within a few minutes a red, painful mark ap-
peared on the arm. The physicians then watched this develop
into a complete burn. By 10 A. M. next day blisters had developed,
these formed a scab, and the wound healed as an ordinary burn
would have done.

With such extensive control of the metabolic processes of the
skin experimentally demonstrated, it is not surprising to meet
with remarkable cures of skin diseases. Thus Dr. Hamilton Os-

* Li^geois, De la Suggestion, § 278.

f Cf. Revue de rHypnotisme, iv, 861, and Myers, op. cit., 838,

352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

good, of Boston,* reports four cases of eczema and one of derma-
titis cured or improved by suggestion. One, for example, was
that of a boy of eleven, who had suffered from eczema since he
was eighteen months old; his body was nearly covered by the
eruption and consequent scabs, and the itching was intolerable.
He had been treated by many dermatologists without the least
success. Dr. Osgood hypnotized him and told him the itching
would cease and the skin would become sound. The itching was
immediately relieved, and the eruption was. nearly gone in a fort-
night and quite gone in a month.

The most extraordinary case of the kind, however, that I have
yet seen comes from Moscow, and is vouched for by Prof. Koz-
hevnikoff, the most eminent neurologist of Russia. The account
which I transcribe is from the British Medical Journal, Novem-
ber 16, 1895.t

" A ' miraculous ' cure has recently occurred in Moscow, where
it has caused considerable excitement. It is perhaps a more than
usually interesting instance, and therefore deserving of the per-
manent record given to it by Prof. Kozhevnikoff, who gave the
details of the case at the last meeting of the Society of Neuro-
pathologists in MoscoT^. The professor had not had the patient
under his treatment, but had seen him more than once both before

and after the ' cure.^ The patient, N D , was a lecturer in

the Moscow University. He had suffered from a severe form of
sycosis menti since June, 1894, for which he underwent treatment
at the hands of various specialists — among others, of Profs. Kaposi,
of Vienna ; Schwimmer, of Buda-Pesth ; Lassar, of Berlin ; Pos-
pi(^lof, of Moscow ; and Stukovenkof, of Kief. In April last he re-
turned to Moscow. His chin was then covered with a freely sup-
purating eruption. He now sought the advice of a ' wise woman,'
an attendant at the baths, who was in the habit of giving herbs
and 'simples' to her clients. In this case no such remedy was

ern ployed. N D was told to meet the woman next morning

at five o'clock in the Temple of the Saviour, the colossal church on
the Moskva River, which has been building all the century and
is yet incomplete, in memory of the famous events of 1812. He
came as told, and while he remained a passive onlooker, the
woman prayed for three or four minutes ; the same thing was re-
peated that evening and again the following morning. But in the
meantime the eruption of N D 's face had begun to im-
prove ; the discharge ceased, the swelling subsided, and in twenty-
four hours scarcely a sign of disease was left. Such are the facts
as given by the patient himself, and confirmed by Prof. Kozhevni-

* Revue de rHypnotisme, ix, 300.

f See a more complete account in the Revue de I'llypnotisme, January, 1896.

SUGGESTION IN THERAPEUTICS. 353

koff. The professor, however, adds some important points bear-
g upon the case : The patient is of neurotic temperament ; his
ister is highly hysterical ; he had frequently had boils on both
arms with a marked tendency to symmetry in position ; and the
sycosis itself showed some signs of being, if not of nervous origin,
at least under nervous influence. The impressive surroundings
under which the ' cure ' was wrought, and the mysterious caba-
listic prayer — which the woman refused to divulge, lest it should
begin to act with the person to whom she told it and cease to

|3t with herself — are also factors to be remembered in connec-
on with the neurotic and impressionable character of the pa-
ent."
I might extend this catalogue almost indefinitely, but my space
limited. What shall we say of these facts ? It is evident that
ley can not be explained by our present psycho-physiological the-
ories, and many other attempts at explanation have been offered.
The Roman Catholic ascribes them to the supernatural interven-
tion of the Virgin or saints ; the evangelical Christian sees in them
the power of God, and an attempt has been made in recent years
by the "faith healers" to make them an essential part of an
evangelical creed in which " faith " is the divinely ordained instru-
ment, not merely for the purification of the soul from sin, but for
the deliverance of the body from disease as well. The self-styled
" Christian scientists " and " metaphysical healers " approach the
question from a pseudo-idealistic point of view. Mind, say they,
is the only reality ; things are nothing but very stable thoughts ;
the body exists only because the soul thinks it ; disease is there-
fore merely a pernicious fixed idea : abolish the idea, and the dis-
ease is ipso facto abolished.

It is impossible for any one who has been trained in the study
of natural phenomena to revert to such crude theories as these.
The " scientific " man, to whom nothing is intelligible unless it is
capable of interpretation in the mechanical conceptions of our
latter-day atomism, usually finds it simpler to deny all facts which
he cannot at once bring under those conceptions. He forgets that
experience is the only test of truth, that our scientific conceptions
are merely the tools which the human mind has devised in order
to grapple with the infinite manifold of experience. They are good
tools. They are as much better than the animistic conceptions
of primitive man as our modern machinery is better than his
axes and chisels of stone ; yet our mental as well as our material
tools can be improved. There are, I believe, engineering feats
which our present appliances can not accomplish, and there are
also, I believe, phenomena of Nature which our present concep-
tions are insufiBcient to explain. Yet I would not pronounce the
former impossible or the latter essentially unintelligible.

TOL. XLIX. — 30

354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CAUSES, STAGES, AND TIME OF THE ICE AGE.

By warren UPHAM.

IF we could see the entire earth at once, by some grand exten-
sion of our range of vision, as we might walk around a geo-
graphic globe a hundred feet in diameter, and examine it fully,
with comparison of all portions of its area, probably no other fea-
tures of the great terrestrial panorama would be so impressive as
the wonderful diversity of climatic conditions. At the same time
with perpetual summer on the equator and throughout nearly all
of the intertropical zone, a wintry covering of snow and ice would
be seen on all lands in high latitudes about one or the other pole.
While every bounty of luxuriant plant and animal life is present
to attract the traveler and furnish him sustenance in the central
zone, the rigorous climate which is gradually encountered in
approaching the poles, and the general decrease and limitation of
both flora and funa, have opposed insuperable obstacles to the
most eager and courageous explorers. About four hundred and
fifty miles at the north, and about eight hundred and fifty miles
at the south, lie beyond the farthest limits of exploration ; and
more than double these distances must be crossed, respective-
ly, if one would pass, according to Nansen's hope and plan,
from one side to the other of the hitherto untraversed circum-
polar areas.

During the Ice age, or Glacial period of geology, very exten-
sive and thick sheets of land ice, like those now enveloping the
Antarctic continent and the interior of Greenland, overspread the
northern half of North America (excepting the greater part of
Alaska) and northern Europe, with nearly the whole of the Brit-
ish Isles. The southern boundary of the North American ice
sheet crossed Nantucket and Martha^s Vineyard, Block Island,
Long Island, and Staten Island. On the mainland it extended
through northern New Jersey and northeastern and northwestern
Pennsylvania, being indented by a great angle, whose apex was at
Salamanca in southwestern New York. Thence it reached south-
west and west across southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and
through central Missouri, into northeastern Kansas ; and beyond,
it curved far northward, crossing eastern Nebraska and South
and North Dakota. From near Bismarck it again trended west-
ward through Montana, Idaho, and Washington, to the Pacific
Ocean not far south of Puget Sound. North of this line an
area of about four million square miles, stretching to the Arctic
archipelago, was covered with ice hundreds and thousands of
feet deep.

The comparatively small present ice sheet of Greenland covers

CAUSES, STAGES, AND TIME OF THE ICE AGE. 355

i£ve hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles,* and rises
dth average slopes of on© hundred feet or more per mile to a
mtral height, along its axial portion, of eight to ten thousand
jet, or almost two miles measured vertically, above the sea level,
^he ancient ice sheets had a similar altitude and thickness,
'om the directions of outflow of the North American ice fields
shown by the transportation of the glacial drift, and from the
observed upper limits of glaciation on high mountains. Prof.
Fames D. Dana estimated the thickness of the ice formerly accu-
lulated above the Laurentide highlands, between the St. Law-
pence River and Hudson Bay, to be fully two miles. It probably
''aried in thickness from one to two miles across Labrador, the
jaurentide highlands, James Bay, Lake Winnipeg, Reindeer and
Lthabasca lakes, to the Rocky Mountains, in the region of the
*eace River, where their summits, lower than southward, were
>robably buried beneath the ice expanse. In British Columbia,
jcording to Dr. George M. Dawson's observations of glacial
Drise and drift on mountains, the ice sheet exceeded a mile in
lepth.

In all directions from its thick central areas the vast conti-
lental glacier flowed outward, carrying its drift from Hudson
Itrait, Labrador, and Newfoundland easterly beyond the present
joast line ; from the provinces of Quebec and Ontario south-
Lsterly across New England, and southerly and southwesterly
;ross the basins of the Laurentian lakes ; from Manitoba and
le Saskatchewan region southerly into Minnesota, Iowa, the
>akotas, and Montana; from British Columbia into Idaho and
'ashington on the south, into the edge of the Pacific Ocean on
le west, and down the Yukon Valley on the north ; and from
le great northern Barren Grounds northerly down the Macken-
;ie and across the islands of the Arctic Sea.

Northern Europe and the present basins of the Irish, North,
Baltic, and White Seas were covered by an ice sheet which at-
lined an extent of two million square miles, being half as large
that of North America ; and its maximum depth above Sweden
id the beds of the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia was one mile,
>r more probably two miles. The high, much eroded, and chan-
leled Scandinavian plateau even now has numerous local ice
lelds, varying in size up to five hundred square miles, which are
loubtless remnants of a continuous glaciation through all the
mturies since the vast European ice field of the Glacial period

* Measured on a map drafted by the author for Greenland Icefields, by Prof. G. Fred-
ick Wright and Warren Uphara (D. Appleton & Co., 1896). From my chapters in this
)k some later paragraphs of the present paper are derived, with condensation and re-
ftrrangement.

356 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

flowed outward on all sides from this great plateau. Bowlders
from its rock formations were then borne by the slow glacial cur-
rents eastward to the head waters of the Volga, southward to the
Dnieper and the Rhine, and south westward to the northeastern
shore of England, where the confluent current of the ice flowing
away from the Scottish Highlands warded off the Scandinavian
ice after its passage over the bed of the shallow North Sea. The
European ice sheet extended south only to the latitude of 50°,
while that of our continent reached to 38° in southern Illinois ;
but the difference was similar to the present contrast of the mean
annual temperature and isothermal lines of the two continents.

To-day the Greenland ice sheet, the Malaspina ice sheet be-
tween Mount St. Elias and the ocean, many glaciers southward
along the Cordilleran mountain belt, and the ice fields and glaciers
of Norway and the Alps, may be regarded as lingering repre-
sentatives of the conditions of the Glacial period, which not long
ago, geologically speaking, spread a white pall of snow and unin-
habitable desolation over large parts of the earth that are now
temperate, fruitful, and populous. The returning mild and habit-
able conditions, with luxuriant plant and animal life, are like the
average of long geologic eras which preceded the Ice age, and
were of far greater and indeed almost inconceivable duration.
The severely cold and snowy Glacial climate of extensive land
areas was wholly unlike their mild or even hot climates during
the very long Tertiary and Mesozoic eras, of which we find testi-
mony in their fossil floras and faunas. Palms allied to those of
the tropics, and sequoias closely related to the big redwood trees
of California, grew during Tertiary times in Greenland, Spitz -
bergen, and the New Siberia Islands. Baron Nordenskjold, after
examining thousands of miles of arctic shore lines, with frequent
clearly exposed geologic sections belonging to the periods extend-
ing back from the Ice age through the Tertiary or Cenozoic, the
Mesozoic, and the Palseozoic eras, affirmed that he nowhere dis-
covered any evidence of glaciation previous to the Pleistocene
period, which followed the Tertiary and introduced the Quater-
nary era.

Latest in the great series of periods made known by the geo-
logic record, the Pleistocene or Glacial period stands alone and
unique, unless we must also recognize a general prevalence of gla-
cial conditions at or near the end of the Palaeozoic era. Bowlder-
bearing deposits which can be explained only as glacial drift, and
striation of the underlying rock which testifies unmistakably of
the action of great glaciers or sheets of land ice, are found in the
Carboniferous or the Permian series, closing the Palaeozoic sys-
tem, in Britain, France, and Germany, Natal, India, and south-
eastern Australia. In Natal the striated glacier floor is in latitude

CAUSES, STAGES, AND TIME OF THE ICE AGE. 357

J0° south, and in India only 20° north, of the equator. Such evi-

lences of late Palaeozoic glaciation are also very clearly exhibited

[on the Varanger Fiord, in the extreme northern part of Norway,

"beyond the Arctic Circle. During all the earth's history before

[the Ice age of Pleistocene time, no other such distinct indications

)f general or interrupted and alternating glaciation have been

found. Geologic exploration reveals only these two glacial peri-

[ods, and they are separated in time by the vast Mesozoic and Ter-

[tiary eras, together estimated by Dana and others to comprise

Isome ten to fifteen or twenty million years.

It is especially suggestive, in our inquiry concerning the causes
of the Ice age, that both the Palaeozoic and the Quaternary glacial
'periods were characterized by very unusual and exceptional oscil-
lations in the height of continental areas and by the formation or
renewed uplifting of great mountain ranges. Epochs in which
> certain mountain belts came into existence, or, after being partly
[or chiefly worn away, were restored by great uplifts, have alter-
nated with far longer periods and eras of comparative repose.
^Between the epochs of mountain-building, the slow wearing and
gnawing of rain, frost, and chemical decay have striven to carry
away the mountains to the plains and the sea. At two times of
the birth or rejuvenation of the grandest mountain chains of the
\ world, with the most remarkable upward and downward move-
ments of continents, the accumulation of glaciers and ice sheets
has been closely associated.

Each of these periods of mountain formation, continental up-
lifts, and widespread glaciation was geologically short ; but they
were separated by a lapse of time so long that it can be adequate-
ly imagined only through the aid of a mathematical or geometric
illustration on an almost infinitely reduced scale. Let the dura-
tion of a lifetime of seventy years be represented by a span, or
nine inches. A century on this scale will be denoted by a foot, a
thousand years by ten feet, and a million years by about two
miles. The whole duration of the earth's existence since the be-
ginning of life upon its surface, if between fifty and a hundred
million years, as estimated by Dana, Walcott, and others, would
then be represented by a distance of about one hundred, one hun-
dred and fifty, or two hundred miles. In accordance with the
probable ratios of the several great eras of geology, which are de-
termined through comparisons of their thicknesses of sedimentary
rocks and their progress in evolutionary changes of faunas and
floras, we may place the Palaeozoic glacial period at a distance of
twenty to forty miles back from the present day, corresponding
to some ten to twenty million years. That glacial period may
have been no longer than the Ice age recently ended — that is,
twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand years, more or less. The

358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ice ages, therefore, would be marked by a length of some two
hundred and fifty to five hundred feet for each on the assumed
scale, and they would be separated by an interval approximately
two hundred or four hundred times as long, according to the
range in the estimates of the length of the intervening Mesozoic
and Tertiary eras.

The chief astronomic theories of the causes of glaciation, pro-
posed by Dr. James Croll and General A. W. Drayson, would re-
quire the frequent recurrence of glacial epochs during all the vast
interval dividing the two times of actual widely extended glacia-
tion of which geology bears record. It seems quite certain, there-
fore, that we must look rather to unusual conditions of the earth
itself than to its astronomic relations as the causes of the Ice age.

Another theory, which supposes changes in the earth's atti-
tude toward the sun, is the suggestion, first made in 1866 by Sir
John Evans, that, while the earth's axis probably remained un-
changed in its direction, a comparatively thin crust of the earth
may have gradually slipped as a whole upon the much larger nu-
cleal mass, so that the locations of the poles upon the crust have
been changed, and that the Glacial period may have been due to
such a slipping or transfer by which the regions that became ice-
covered were brought very near to the poles. The same or a very
similar view has been recently advocated by Dr. Fridtjof Nansen,
who writes : *

The easiest method of explaining a Glacial epoch, as well as the occur-
rence of warmer climates in one latitude or another, is to imagine a slight
change in the geographical position of the earth's axis. If, for instance,
we could move the north pole down to some point near the west coast of
Greenland, between 60° and 65° north latitude, we could, no doubt, produce
a Glacial period both in Europe and America.

Yery small changes of latitude which had been detected at
astronomical observatories in England, Germany, Russia, and the
United States, seemed to give some foundation for this theory,
which in 1891 was regarded by a few American glacialists as
worthy of attention and of special investigation by astronomers,
with temporary establishment of new observatories for this pur-
pose on a longitude about 180° from Greenwich or from Wash-
ington. During the year 1892, however, the brilliant discoveries
by Dr. S. C. Chandler of the periods and amounts of the observed
variations of latitude, showing them to be in two cycles respect-
ively of twelve and fourteen months, with no appreciable secular
change, forbade reliance on this condition as a cause or even as
an element among the causes of the Ice age. This theory is now
entirely out of the field. Sir Robert S. Ball, after reviewing Dr.

* The First Crossing of Greenland (1890), vol. ii, p. 454.

CAUSES, STAGES, AND TIME OF THE ICE AGE, 359

Chandler's investigations, estimates that the place of the pole
since the Glacial period, and from even earlier geologic times, has
been without greater changes of position than would lie inside
the area of a block or square inclosed by the intersecting streets
of a city.

We come now to the wholly terrestrial or geologic theory of
the causes of the Ice ag6, which in terms varying with increasing
knowledge has been successively advocated by Lyell, Dana, Le
Conte, Wright, and the present writer. According to this ex-
planation, the accumulation of the ice sheets was due to uplifts of
the land as extensive high plateaus receiving snowfall through-
out the year. Geology has received from Gilbert, in his mono-
graph on Lake Bonneville for the United States Geological Sur-
vey, the terms epeirogeny and epeirogenic (continent-producing),
i to designate the broad movements of uplift and subsidence which
'affect the whole or large portions of continental areas or of the
oceanic basins. This view, accounting for glaciation by high
[altitude, may therefore be very properly named the epeirogenic
theory. It is adversely criticised by Prof. James Geikie, who calls
' the earth-movement hypothesis."

So early as 1830 Lyell pointed out the intimate dependence of
; climate upon the distribution of areas of land and water and
iupon the altitude of the land. In 1855' Dana, reasoning from the
prevalence of fiords in all glaciated regions, and showing that
these arQ valleys eroded by streams during a formerly greater
[elevation of the land previous to glaciation, and from the marine
beds of the St. Lawrence Valley and basin of Lake Champlain
belonging to the time immediately following the glaciation, an-
nounced that the formation of the drift in North America was
'attended by three great continental movements : the first upward,
[during which the ice sheet was accumulated on the land ; the
rsecond downward, when the ice sheet was melted away ; and the
[third, within recent time, a re-elevation, bringing the land to its
present height. But with the moderate depth of the fiords and
submarine valleys then known, the amount of preglacial eleva-
tion which could be thus afifirmed was evidently too little to be
ian adequate cause for the cold and snowy climate producing the
[ice sheet. The belief that this uplift was three thousand feet or
Jmore, giving sufficiently cool climate, as Prof. T. G. Bonney has
'shown, to cause the ice accumulation, has been only reached
within the past ten years through the discovery, by soundings of
the United States Coast Survey, that on both the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts of the United States submarine valleys evidently
^ eroded in late Tertiary and Quaternary time reached to profound
, depths, two thousand to three thousand feet below the present
>sea level.

360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The continuation of the Hudson River Valley has been traced
by detailed hydrographic surveys to the edge of the steep conti-
nental slope at a distance of about one hundred and five miles
from Sandy Hook. Its outermost twenty-five miles are a sub-
marine fiord three miles wide and from 900 to 2,250 feet in verti-
cal depth measured from the crest of its banks, which with the
adjoining flat area decline from three hundred to six hundred feet
below the present sea level. The deepest sounding in this fiord is
2,844 feet. An unfinished survey by soundings off the mouth of
Delaware Bay finds a similar valley submerged nearly twelve
hundred feet, but not yet traced to the margin of the continental
plateau. Again, the United States Coast Survey and British
Admiralty charts, as Spencer states, record submerged fiord out-
lets from the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hud-
son Bay, respectively 2,664 feet, 3,666 feet, and 2,040 feet below
sea level. The bed of the old Laurentian River, as the preglacial
St. Lawrence is named by Spencer, from the outer boundary of
the Fishing Banks to the mouth of the Saguenay, a distance of
more than eight hundred miles, is reached by soundings 1,878 to
1,104 feet in depth. Advancing inland, the sublime Saguenay
fiord along an extent of about fifty miles ranges from three
hundred to eight hundred and forty feet in depth below the sea
level, while in some places its bordering cliffs, one to one and a
half miles apart, rise abruptly fifteen hundred feet above the
water.

On the Pacific coast of the United States Prof. Joseph Le
Conte has shown that the islands south of Santa Barbara and Los
Angeles, now separated from the mainland and from each other
by channels twenty to thirty miles wide and six hundred to one
thousand feet deep, were still a part of the mainland during the
late Pliocene and early Quaternary periods. In northern Cali-
fornia Prof. George Davidson, of the Coast Survey, reports three
submarine valleys about twenty-five, twelve, and six miles south
of Cape Mendocino, sinking respectively to 2,400, 3,120, and 2,700
feet below the sea level, where they cross the hundred-fathom
line of the marginal plateau. If the land there were to rise one
thousand feet, these valleys would be fiords, with sides towering
high above the water, but still descending beneath it to profound
depths. Le Conte has correlated the great epeirogenic uplifts of
North America, known by these deeply submerged valleys on
both the eastern and western coasts, with the latest time of oro-
genic disturbance by faulting and upheaval of the Sierra Nevada
and Coast Range in California during the closing stage of the Ter-
tiary and the early part of the Quaternary era, culminating in the
Glacial period. In the Mississippi basin, from the evidence of
river currents much stronger than now, transporting Archaean

CAUSES, STAGES, AJ^D TIME OF THE ICE AGE, 361

)ebbles from near the sources of the Mississippi to the shore of
bhe Gulf of Mexico, Prof. E. W. Hilgard thinks that the pregla-
5ial uplift, inaugurating the Ice age, was four thousand or five
ihousand feet more in the central part of the continent than at
fthis river's mouth.

Although the adequacy of the preglacial epeirogenic elevation
)f this continent to produce its Pleistocene ice sheet was tardily-
recognized, it was distinctly claimed by Dana in 1870 that the
[Champlain subsidence of the land beneath its ice load, supposing
^it to have been previously at a high altitude, must have brought
[climatic conditions under which the ice would very rapidly dis-
kappear. The depression would be like coming from Greenland to
[southern Canada and New England. In Prof. Dana's words:
" Such an extended change of climate over the glacier area was
[equivalent in effect to a transfer from a cold, icy region to that of
temperate climate and melting sun. The melting would there-
fore have gone forward over vast surfaces at once, wide in lati-
tude as well as longitude."

Such explanations as these, accounting for the gradual accu-
imulation and comparatively rapid dissolution of the North
[American ice sheet, are also found to be applicable to the ice
sheets of other regions. The fiords of the northern portions of
[the British Isles and of Scandinavia show that the drift-bearing
[northwestern part of Europe stood in preglacial time one thou-
[sand to four thousand feet higher than now ; while, on the other
^and, late glacial marine beds and strand lines of sea erosion
i testify that when the ice disappeared the land on which it had
^lain was depressed one hundred to six hundred feet below its
i present height, or nearly to the same amount as the Champlain
[.depression in North America. Mr. T. F. Jamieson appears to
[have been the first in Great Britain or Europe to attribute the
[ice accumulation to altitude of the land, and to hold the view
j(which I receive from him) that the submergence of glaciated
mds, when they were loaded with ice, was caused directly by
[this load pressing down the earth's crust upon its fused inte-
jrior, and that the subsequent re-elevation was a hydrostatic up-
lifting of the crust by underflow of the inner mass when the ice
■was melted away. Just the same evidences of abundant and deep
fiords and of marine beds overlying the glacial drift to heights
of several hundred feet above the sea are found in Patagonia, as
described by Darwin and Agassiz. On these three continental
» areas the widely separated chief drift-bearing regions of the earth
are found to have experienced in connection with their glaciation
in each case three great epeirogenic movements of similar char-
acter and sequence — first, a comparatively long-continued uplift,
which in its culmination appears to have given a high plateau

362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

climate with abundant snowfall, forming an ice sheet whose dura-
tion extended until the land sank somewhat lower than now, lead-
ing to amelioration of the climate and the departure of the ice,
followed by re-elevation to the present level. The coincidence of
these great earth movements with glaciation naturally leads to
the conviction that they were the direct and sufficient cause of
the ice sheets and of their disappearance ; and this conclusion is
confirmed by the insufficiency and failure of the other theories
which have been advanced to account for the Ice age.

The end of the Tertiary era and the subsequent Glacial period
were exceptionally characterized by many great oscillations of
continental and insular land areas. Where movements of land
elevation took place in high latitudes, either north or south,
which received abundant precipitation of moisture, ice sheets were
formed ; and the weight of these ice sheets seems to have been a
<5hief cause, and often probably the only cause, of the subsidence
of these lands and the disappearance of their ice.

The general contemporaneousness of the Glacial period on
the opposite sides of the North Atlantic Ocean had been long
accepted as probable, but its demonstration and the identification
of the corresponding parts of the Ice age, having the same se-
quence on the two continents, were first made known less than
two years ago by the studies of Geikie and Chamberlin in the
new third edition of The Great Ice Age, and by their later papers
in the Journal of Geology. According to the subdivision recog-
nized by these authors, the time of principal accumulation of
marginal moraines is regarded as an epoch distinct from the pre-
vious portions of the Ice age; and Chamberlin has named the
earlier divisions of this period, when the North American ice
sheet reached its culmination, the Kansan and lowan stages,
while the later moraine-forming time is called the Wisconsin
stage, from the magnificent development of the moraines in east-
ern Wisconsin. Between these glacial stages, which appear well
recognizable and synchronous in North America and Europe,
these authors suppose that there were prolonged interglacial
epochs, when the ice sheets were in large part or wholly melted
away. To the most important of the warm intervals, separating
the Kansan and lowan stages of ice accumulation and advance,
the name Aftonian is given by Chamberlin, from Afton in Iowa,
where a thick bed of peat, formed during that time, lies between
deposits of glacial drift.

Instead of this view of distinct epochs of glaciation, the Ice
age seems to me, while accepting the successive stages here noted,
to have been still essentially a single and continuous glacial pe-
riod, with moderate fluctuations of the ice borders during both
the growth and wane of the ice sheet. The marginal moraines I

364 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

consider to have been formed rapidly while the ice was retreating
from its lowan stage, with no important general readvance di-
viding the lowan from the Wisconsin or moraine-forming stage.

Not only are the Kansan and lowan stages of culmination of
the ice sheets closely alike for North America and Europe, but
also the land depression of the Champlain epoch in both these
widely separated great areas brought marine submergence of
coastal tracts, and caused rapid disappearance of the ice sheets,
with the formation of their drumlins and marginal moraines.
These two continents were included in the portion of the earth's
crust which twice experienced far-extended epeirogenic move-
ments, first of high uplift, bringing the cold climate and snow
and ice accumulation of the Glacial period, and afterward of de-
pression somewhat lower than now, whereby the vast ice fields
were melted away.

The accompanying maps * show the area of the North Amer-
ican and European ice sheets in their maximum extension, and at
definite times in their recession, as known by their areas of drift
and belts of marginal moraines, and by the beaches of glacial
lakes formed between the present watersheds and the northwardly
retreating ice border. These maps give the boundaries of the
Kansan, lowan, and Wisconsin formations, adopting these names,
according to the law of priority, for both continents, and add for
the northeastern United States and Canada the subsequent War-
ren, Toronto, Iroquois, and St. Lawrence stages in the glacial re-
treat.

The culmination of the great epeirogenic uplift, which had
been in progress through the preceding Lafayette period, raised
the glaciated areas, both in North America and Europe, to so high
altitudes that they received snow throughout the year, and be-
came deeply ice- enveloped. Submerged valleys and fiords show
that this elevation was one thousand to four thousand feet above
the present height. The accumulation of the ice sheets, due to
snowfall upon their entire areas, was attended by fluctuations of
their gradually extending boundaries, giving the Scanian and
Norfolkian stages in Europe, and an early glacial recession and
readvance in the region of the Moose and Albany Rivers, south-
west of James Bay.

During the Kansan stage the ice sheet attained its farthest ex-
tent in the Missouri and Mississippi River basins and in northern
New Jersey, this being probably at the same time with the Saxo-
nian stage, as later named by Geikie, of maximum glaciation in
Europe.

In the Aftonian stage the ice sheet receded from its Kansan

* From Greenland loefields, chapter xiv, but on an enlarged scale.

366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

boundary northward about five hundred miles to Barnesville,
Minn., in the Red River Valley, and two hundred and fifty miles
or more in Illinois, according to Leverett ; but probably little be-
tween the Scioto River, in Ohio, and the Atlantic coast, the maxi-
mum retreat of that portion being twenty-five miles or more in
New Jersey. A cool temperate climate and coniferous forests ex-
tended up to the retreating ice border in the upper Mississippi
region. This great glacial recession was attended with much ero-
sion of the early drift. A corresponding interruption of the
severity of the Ice age in Europe is named by Geikie the Helve-
tian stage or epoch. The greater part of the drift area in Russia
was then permanently relinquished by the much diminished ice
sheet, which also retreated considerably on all its sides. During
this stage the two continents probably retained mainly a large
part of their preglacial altitude. The decrease of the ice sheet
may have been caused by the astronomic cycle which brought our
winters of the northern hemisphere in perihelion between twenty-
five thousand and fifteen thousand years ago.

In the lowan stage renewed ice accumulation covered the
Aftonian forest beds, so that the continental glacier extended
again into Iowa, to a distance of three hundred and fifty miles or
more from its most northern indentation by the Aftonian retreat,
and in Illinois it readvanced about one hundred and fifty miles,
while its boundary eastward from Ohio probably remained with
little change. At the same time, apparently, was the Polandian
stage of renewed growth of the European ice sheet, probably
advancing its boundaries in some portions hundreds of miles
from the Helvetian retreat.

These foregoing stages belong to the early and longer part of
the Glacial period, which may be called pre-eminently the Glacial
epoch, including the times of mainly very cold and snowy climate
which tended to the formation and preservation of the ice sheet.
The lowan stage was terminated by a depression of the ice-bur-
dened area mostly somewhat below its present height, as shown
by fossiliferous marine beds overlying the glacial drift up to
three hundred feet above the sea in Maine, five hundred and
sixty feet at Montreal, three hundred to four hundred feet from
south to north in the basin of Lake Champlain, three hundred to
five hundred feet southwest of Hudson and James Bays, and
similar or less altitudes on the coasts of British Columbia, the
British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia, and Spitzbergen. Glacial
recession from the lowan boundaries was rapid under the tem-
perate (and in summers warm or hot) climate belonging to the
more southern parts of the drift-bearing areas when reduced from
their great preglacial elevation to their present height or lower.
The finer portion of the englacial drift, swept down from the

CAUSES, STAGES, AND TIME OF THE ICE AGE. 367

ice fields by the abundant waters of their melting and of rains,

was spread on the lower lands and along valleys in front of the

leparting ice as the loess of the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the

bhine. Marine beds reaching a maximum height of about three
Lundred and seventy-five feet at Neudeck, in western Prussia,.

ive the name of this Neudeckian stage.

A moderate re-elevation of the land, to approximately its
)resent height, advanced in the northern United States and

Janada as a permanent wave from south to north and northeast,.
:eeping nearly equal pace with the continued retreat of the ice

long most of its extent. Throughout all the distance from the

ilantic to the Rocky Mountains the mainly retreating but often
luctuating ice margin formed many belts of knolly and hilly
Irift, called marginal moraines. It is also to be noted that the
iver basins which slope northward or northeastward were ob-

tructed by the waning ice sheet, so that they were temporarily
lUed by great glacial lakes, as Lake Agassiz, in the basin of the^

Led River of the North and of L^ke Winnipeg, and a very remark-
able series of lakes in the basin of the St. Lawrence, the glacial
)recursors of the present five great lakes from Superior ta

)ntario. The very grand development of the marginal moraines
In Wisconsin (scarcely, however, surpassing Minnesota) led to the
application of the name Wisconsin to this stage of the Ice age
md to its drift. In Europe this is named by Geikie the Meck-
lenburgian stage. Conspicuous moraine accumulations were
formed in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Finland, on the

mthern and eastern margins of the great Baltic glacier.

During the maximum extent of the glacial Lake Warren, held
m its northeast side by the retreating ice border, one expanse of

rater, as mapped by Spencer, Lawson, Taylor, Gilbert, and others,,
appears to have reached from Lake Superior over Lakes Michigan,

'uron, and Erie, to the southwestern part of Lake Ontario. Its

itest southern beach, traced east by Gilbert to Crittenden, New

^ork, is correlated by Leverett with the Lockport moraine.

'his and later American stages, all of minor importance and

[duration in comparison with the preceding, can not probably be

shown to be equivalent with Geikie's European divisions belong-

ig to the same time.
In the next ensuing Toronto stage, slight glacial oscillations,
[with temperate climate nearly as now at Toronto and Scarborough,

Ontario, are indicated by interbedded deposits of till and f ossilif-

jrous stratified gravel, sand, and clay. Although the waning ice

sheet still occupied a vast area on the northeast, and twice read-

jvanced with deposition of much till during the formation of the

pcarborough fossiliferous drift series, the climate then, determined

by the Champlain low altitude of the land, by the proximity of

368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the large glacial Lake Algonquin, succeeding the larger Lake
Warren, and by the eastward and northeastward surface atmos-
pheric currents and courses of all storms, was not less mild than
now. The trees whose wood is found in the interglacial Toronto
beds now have their most northern limits in the same region.

Somewhat later came the full expansion of the glacial Lake
Iroquois, in the basin of the present Lake Ontario and northward,
outflowing at Rome, N. Y., to the Mohawk and HTidson rivers.
Gradual re-elevation of the Rome outlet from the Champlain
subsidence had lifted the surface of Lake Iroquois in its western
part from near the level of the present lake at Toronto to a height
there of about two hundred feet, finally holding this height during
many years, with the formation of the well-developed Iroquois
beach.

The final stage in the departure of the ice sheet which we are
able to determine from the history of the Laurentian lakes and
St. Lawrence Valley, was when the glacial lake St. Lawrence, out-
flowing through the Champlain basin to the Hudson, stretched
from a strait originally one hundred and fifty feet deep over the
Thousand Islands, at the mouth of Lake Ontario, and from the
vicinity of Pembroke, on the Ottawa River, easterly to Quebec
or beyond. As soon as the ice barrier was melted through, the
sea entered these depressed St. Lawrence, Champlain, and Ottawa
valleys ; and subsequent epeirogenic uplifting has raised them to
their present slight altitude above the sea level.

Further stages of the glacier recession are doubtless recogniz-
able by moraines and other evidences, the North American ice
sheet becoming at last, as it probably also had been in its begin-
nings, divided into three parts — one upon Labrador, another
northwest of Hudson Bay, as shown by Tyrrell's observations,
and a third upon the northern part of British Columbia. From
my studies of the glacial lake Agassiz, whose duration was prob-
ably only about one thousand years, the whole Champlain epoch
of land depression, the departure of the ice sheet because of the
warm climate so restored, and most of the re- elevation of the un-
burdened lands, appear to have required only a few (perhaps four
or five) thousand years, ending about five thousand years ago.
These late divisions of the Glacial period were far shorter than
its Kansan, Aftonian, and lowan stages; and the ratio of the
-Glacial and Champlain epochs may have been approximately as
ten to one. The term Champlain conveniently designates the
short, final part of the Ice age, when the land depression caused
rapid though wavering retreat of the ice border, with more vigor-
ous glacial currents on account of the marginal melting and
increased steepness of the ice front, favoring the accumulation of
many retreatal moraines of knolly and bowldery drift.

COUNTY PARKS.

369

COUNTY PARKS.*

Br Prof. THOMAS H. MACBRIDE,

OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.

IHE title of this article would seen to require little definition.
By county parks are meant simply open grounds available

for public use in rural districts as are city parks in towns. There
nothing new in the idea ; it is simply an effort to call back into

mblic favor the once familiar public " common.^' This does not,
[however, refer simply to public land, such as Government land, to

)e claimed and plundered by the first comer, nor indeed to land to

)e used by the public indiscriminately at all, but to land devoted
[to public enjoyment, purely to the public happiness, a holiday

ground for country and city folk alike.

The general features which should characterize such public

>layground as is here discussed will also quickly suggest them-
[selves to any one who chooses at all to consider the matter. In
[the first place, the county park should be wooded, that it may

ifford suitable shade and shelter for those who frequent it; it
[should be well watered, to meet other patent needs ; it should be
[romantic, in order by its attractiveness to be as far as possible
efficient. Above all, it must be under wise control, be at all times
^suitably warded and kept, that its utility be transmitted from
generation to generation. All this is plain enough and will be
disputed by nobody. It is the intention here to show that such
[parks are needed, that they are needed now ; that they should
[have the highest scientific value ; and that in the eastern United
'States, at least, they are everywhere practicable.

The necessity for such parks seems to me to be threefold :

1. As directly affecting public health and happiness.

2. For proper education.

3. To preserve to other times and men something of primeval
[Nature.

Let us consider these points briefly in the order named.
All of us in one way or another know something of the mo-
•notonous grind which makes up the lifelong experience of by far
^the larger number of our fellow-men — on the farm, in the shop,
■in the mine, day after day, one unceasing round of toil, into which
[the idea of pleasure or freshness never enters. How many
I thousands of our fellow-men, tens of thousands of our women, see
nothing but the revolving steps of labor's treadmill, day in, day
out, winter and summer, year after year, for the whole span of
mortal life ! This is especially so in the Western States, where the

* Read in part as a paper before the Iowa Academy of Science, January 2, 1896.
TOL. XI.IX.— 31

370 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

highest ideal is industry; the highest accomplishment, speed.
Oar rural population is wearing itself out in an effort to outwear
" labor-saving machinery/' If you do not believe it, take a
journey across the country anywhere through Iowa or Illinois
and see how the people are actually living. They know no law
but labor, their only recreation is their toil. Now it is needless
to say how abnormal all this is. We are as a people entrapped in
our machines and are by them ground to powder. The effect of
it is apparent already in the public health and will be the most
startling factor in the tables studied by the man of science in the
generations following. Not to paint too darkly the picture, at-
tention may be called to the fact that rural suicides are not un-
common, and that the wives of farmers are a conspicuous element
in the population of some of our public institutions. There must
be something done to remedy all this, to preserve for our people
their physical and mental health ; and to this end, as all experi-
ence shows, there is nothing so good as direct contact with
Nature, the contemplation of her processes, the enjoyment of her
peaceful splendor. If in every county, or even in every township,
there were public grounds to which our people might resort in
numbers during all the summer season a great step would be
taken, as it seems to me, for the perpetuation, not to say restora-
tion, of the public health. We are proud to call ourselves the
children of " hardy pioneers,'' but much of the hardiness of those
pioneers was due to the fact that they spent much of their time,
women, children, and all, out of doors. All the land was a vast
park in which that first generation roamed and reveled. They
breathed the air of the forest, they drank the water of springs,
they ate the fruit of the hillsides, plum thickets were their
orchards, and all accounts go to show that hardier, healthier, or
happier people never lived. Such conditions can never come
again, but we may yet by public grounds for common enjoyment
realize somewhat of the old advantage.

Again, such parks as are here discussed are an educational
necessity. Our people as a whole suffer almost as much on the
aesthetic side of life as on that which is more strictly sanitary.
How few of our landowners, for instance, have any idea of
groves or lawns as desirable features of their holdings ! If in any
community a farm occurs on which a few acres are given over to
beauty, the fact is a matter of comment for miles in either direc-
tion. A county park well kept and cared for would be a perpetual
object lesson to the whole community ; would show how the rocky
knoll or deep ravine on one's own eighty- acre farm might be
made attractive, until presently, instead of the angular maple
groves with which our aesthetic sense now vainly seeks ap-
peasement, we should have a country rich in groves conform-

COUNTY PARKS. 371

able to Nature's rules of landscape gardening if not to Nature's
planting.

I am aware that at first the right appreciation of a public
park might be meager. The first instinct might be to use the
park as a convenient source whence to draw one's winter fire-
wood, or as a free cow-pasture for the adjoining farmer, but such
abuse would soon be rectified when the better idea of public own-
ership came to be understood. This leads also to the remark that
such parks in the United States are to-day absolutely needed to
teach our people the first lessons in forestry ; to advise them how
and when to cut timber; the economic value of different kinds
of trees and the value of woodland as such; the kind of soil
which should be left to trees, and such as may be profitably given
over to tillage. We are soon as a people to be sent all to school
in matters of forestry and arboriculture ; sent to learn the value
of the forest in the dear school of experience where we are to be
taught the arithmetic of cost.

In the third place, county parks would tend to preserve to
those who come after us something of the primitive beauty of
this part of the world as such beauty stood revealed in its original
flora. I esteem this from the standpoint of science, and indeed
from the standpoint of intellectual progress, a matter of extreme
importance. Who can estimate the intellectual stimulus the
world receives by the effort made to appreciate and understand
the varied wealth of Nature's living forms ? In this direction who
can estimate how great has been our own advantage as occupants
of this New World ! But such is the aggressive energy of our
people, such their ambition to use profitably every foot of virgin
soil, that, unless somewhere public reserves be constituted, our
so-called civilization will soon have obliterated forever our nat-
ural wealth and left us to the investigation of introduced species
mly, and these but few in number. It is a fact lamented, griev-
ously lamented by all intelligent men, that in all the older por-

ions of the country, species of plants once common, to say nothing
\i animals, are now extinct. County parks, if organized soon,

rould enable us to preserve many of these in the localities where

•iginally found.

The objection to all this is that such parks as here broached
Ire impracticable. Such objection can lie in two directions only :
the lack of suitable sites, and (2) the lack of suitable control.

lS to the first, it may be said that in a great number of our coun-
ties, especially eastward, such sites exist and have in many cases
»een long used, and it must be confessed abused, by our people.
Everywhere, even in the prairie States, there are " caves " and

dens" and "fords" and " backbones " and "springs" long popu-

irly named and to some extent enjoyed, places of picnic, ex-

372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cursion resorts, all of wliicli are in evidence to show at once
popular need and popular appreciation. Hundreds of people
frequent some of these places every year as they are ; what would
be the case were it understood that such parklike regions were
indeed dedicated to the people for their use and kept and cared
for for their enjoyment ? Such localities are now generally pri-
vate property and the public enter by sufferance only. In some
places — alas for human nature ! — the beauty of the "den'' or " pali-
sade " is by its owner ruthlessly defaced as the simplest method
of checking an undesirable invasion by the populace. The popu-
lace can and should own its own means of entertainment ; here
and there private benevolence may meet the need, be tolerant of
trespass, but it must not be expected.

The second count in the way of objection is a real dijQBculty
whose gravity I do not for a moment attempt to minimize. How
to secure, own, and care for several hundred or, for that matter,
several thousand acres of land, to be used by all the people, is a
problem, especially under our form of government. Were we in
the Old World we should find no difficulty. Such localities are
owned by the king or his equivalent, and are cared for and
guarded with the same assiduity as any other private property.
Nevertheless, the people of Europe have free use of the most
splendid parks and beautiful woods in the world. The same thing
can be true of the United States, hopeless as the task may now
seem. In the Eastern States a movement to this end is even now
discernible. What Mr. Vanderbilt is doing in North Carolina at
Biltmore will doubtless be done presently in all our mountainous
and forested States. This is another opportunity for our million-
aires, and forest foundations properly established will prove for
future generations rich in benediction as any university endow-
ment left in the name of whatsoever State or sect. In Massachu-
setts five years since a movement was inaugurated for the accom-
plishment of similar purposes in New England. A board of trustees,
by Legislature authorized to act, becomes the legatee of suitable
property donated for public use, becomes the curators of such
grounds, and the custodians of funds bequeathed for the care of
such lands or for their purchase. The result in Massachusetts of
such a simple effort has in five years proved most gratifying to
the projectors as to every lover of his native land. Thousands of
acres have already been rescued from spoliation and subjected to
intelligent management such as will eventually result in the at-
tainment of all the beneficent ends for which public parks exist.
In most States nothing is done ; nothing will be done until some-
body or some association of our citizens make a beginning. That
the effort will one day be made there is no doubt. Whether it
shall be made in time to save that which Nature in this direction

SOCIOLOGY IN ETHICAL EDUCATION,

373

las already committed to our hands is a question. Is not the
>roblem worthy the consideration of all citizens and legislators,
md does it not open to us a field where by practical activity
rQ may again show before the world our practical sense and
dsdom ?

SOCIOLOGY IN ETHICAL EDUCATION.

By BYEON C. MATHEWS.

IHE fact that there is great social discontent throughout the

entire western world requires no demonstration. The forms

m which it manifests itself are numerous. In the various phases

)f socialism, and in nihilism, it permeates every department of

luropean life. In the rural portions of our country the same

fpirit of discontent, though in a much milder form, manifests

elf in the Farmers' Alliance and in the Populist movement.

our cities and towns it appears in labor organizations and in

jocialistic societies.

The adjustment of the parts of our social organism is certainly
lot harmonious. Collisions between classes whose interests are
)pposed have at times paralyzed domestic commerce, have in-
volved the comforts of the nation, and have reminded thoughtful
len and women of conditions preceding revolution. Not infre-
Iquently State militia, and even the United States troops, have
)een called out to protect life and property and to quell riots.
It is important that educators should inquire whether the
Ifschools are in any degree responsible for this unfortunate condi-
;ion of affairs. We are compelled to acknowledge that we think
(they are, though not in a blameworthy sense, for the forces of
[no other agency have been guided with purer motives; hence
[there is no place for condemnation. The relation of the schools
fto society, however, is so intimate, and their influences are so
)otent in their formative effects, that it would be folly to claim
'that they are entirely free from responsibility in this grave
;inatter; since, even if they have not contributed directly and
[purposely to it, they have not studied to prevent it. They
ihave cultivated, unintentionally of course, those characteristics
fOf the race which have produced it, and have failed to culti-
Ivate, except incidentally, those better characteristics which must
(correct it.

Throughout the whole course of the development of our public
schools, their relation to the child as an individual, with personal
ends in life to be attained, has always been a prominent feature
land a determining factor; while their relation to the child as a
rinember of society has never been sufficiently emphasized. The

374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effort, therefore, on the part of the schools has uniformly been to
enable the child, when grown to manhood, to successfully guard
his own interests and secure his personal ends. There has been
no general or continued effort to so train and so develop him that
he will contribute to the welfare of society. The result has been
to center and to fasten his attention upon his personal interests,
and to cultivate in him selfishness instead of an altruistic spirit,
which is the truly social spirit, and which alone will produce
harmony among the classes now in collision. Why has the child
been taught to read, to write, to cipher ? Primarily because a
knowledge of these has seemed to be absolutely essential in
securing his so-called rights among his fellows. Only recently
has his relation to society been seriously considered. His ethical
side is now demanding cultivation more loudly than ever. So far
as education is purely intellectual, it only trains him for a fiercer
part in the great human struggle for personal ends, and tends to
diminish the severity of that struggle in such degree only as
purely intellectual culture indirectly contributes to the ethical,
through attention to subjects related to the ethical.

Back of all social discontent, back of all forms in which it ap-
pears, we find the primary cause of social disorders in the pres-
ence of erroneous ideas among men, particularly the presence of
erroneous notions concerning the relations which exist- among
men. There are certain fundamental ideas upon which the social
edifice is built — pivotal ideas about which the social world turns.
In each of these ten thousand others germinate ; and the ten thou-
sand are wrong if the one is wrong. The following are examples
of these erroneous, fundamental, pivotal ideas, which have be-
come stock notions of the people : Caesars and Napoleons are civ-
ilizers ; royalty is related to the gods ; the Creator made some to
be served, others to serve; legality is justice; standard belief is
more important than standard character ; morality divorced from
religion is dangerous. Any social structure founded upon such
ideas alone is a monstrosity. To-day we stand face to face with
the fact that these very ideas, and others like unto them, form a
very large part — entirely too large a part — of the foundation of
modern society.

All existing governments and all other institutions have been
at some time simply abstract ideas in somebody's brain, and after-
ward have become concrete realities ; right ideas giving birth to
right institutions, wrong ones to wrong institutions. This same
relation of cause and effect which exists between ideas and insti-
tutions, exists also between ideas and the character of individuals,
and between ideas and the character of the relations which exist
among individuals. Just so far as individual character and ex-
isting relations among men are right, they are the product of

SOCIOLOGY IN ETHICAL EDUCATION, 375

right ideas ; so far as they are wrong, they are the product of
wrong ideas.

If, as we think, the presence among men of erroneous ideas is
the cause of social disorders, the cure will be their displacement,
through educational processes, with such as will produce right
I character in men and inspire right relations among men. We be-
Jlieve this is entirely possible, and we think that both the agencies
and the methods are in sight. Both must be educational. All
political and legislative schemes, the single-tax theory, the nation-
alization of land and industries, all socialistic projects, all co-
operative remedies, will prove of little avail, if they aim at curing
^social disorders by improving the environment only of the man.
''he man himself is wrong. He is the thing which needs correc-
iion and improvement ; not the world in which he lives, or the
form of government under which he lives. The only possible
way of correcting him, and through him of permanently curing
social disorders, is through the processes of education — educa-
: tion of the child with the potential man in him.

The Church, the press, and the schools are the agencies which,
supplemented by other forces, have determined the existing funda-
mental ideas of society. If these agencies ' have been able to for-
mulate and fix these, they certainly can modify them, or even
displace them by others. The functions of these agencies, how-
ever, and the methods employed in the execution of these func-
tions, must be modified, some even revolutionized. Although the
Church and the press, the discussion of whose functions and
methods the limits of our paper forbid, are powerful agencies
whose influence is beyond all computation, or even conjecture —
which must be employed in the improvement of social conditions
— yet they are not the agency upon which greatest reliance can
be placed. This is found in the schools — the great free public-
school system. There is greatest hope in this agency for many
reasons: particularly because its organization, and no other, is
fully adapted to the requirements of the situation ; because it
deals with the child, which is a moldable and not a crystallized
thing; and because the schools are the agency which in large
degree determines the character of all other agencies.

Our hope, then, is in the schools ; but their function and their
methods must be modified, because they are not giving to the
world the best they can give. They are not giving what the
world most needs — the best possible character, which results very
largely from a careful, rational study of our relations to others,
from a right understanding of all those relations which are inter-
woven everywhere among men in all phases and departments of
life. Nothing is more important for our children and youth to
understand than the nature and character of human relations ;

376 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but these are ignored, as if there were no such relations. Here,
in our judgment, is the most serious defect of our schools, and not
in the lack of proper " correlation " of studies.

Whether the study of human relations is the province of the
schools we can not stop to discuss, but pass it with the remark
that the schools belong to the people, and the people have the
right to do what they please with their own. They can make the
function of the schools whatsoever they choose to make it — what-
soever will serve themselves best.

How can this most serious defect be remedied ? By introduc-
ing instruction in pure human ethics, divorced from religion,
which then becomes a study of the relations which exist among
men in this real world. One great difficulty in the way of pro-
viding instruction in ethics heretofore has been the lack of a clear
distinction in the minds of the people between ethics and religion.
The Christian world has been in the habit of thinking and of
claiming that there can be no valid system of ethics, except that
which is based upon the existence of God, and upon the relations
which we suppose exist between him and us. This claim has
never been substantiated in a manner satisfactory to scientific
thought. Religion is a system of beliefs and worship, and points
to an after life, for which we all hope ; while ethics is a system of
principles of conduct for man as a social being in this life, which
we are all now living. Ethics deals with realities, with a real life
in a real world. Its realm is entirely a realm of actualities ; while
the realm of religion, defined in a scientific manner, is one of be-
liefs and hopes. So far as these beliefs and hopes are determin-
ing factors in the conduct of man to man, the realm of religion
afifects the realm of ethics. But apart from this, if by some magic
power the realm of beliefs and hopes were annihilated, the realm
of ethics would remain absolutely undisturbed. Does ethics,
then, find its basis in religion ? Does that which is real depend
for its existence upon that which we suppose to be real ? It may,
providing that which we suppose to be real is actually real ; but
when, as in this case, it is beyond human powers to determine
whether it is real or not, it is about as unphilosophical to declare
that something which is known to be real depends for its exist-
ence upon another something which we suppose to be real, as to
declare that the Himalayas hang upon the sky. The only possi-
bility of substantiating the claim that ethics and religion can not
be divorced is found in so formulating a definition of one of them
as to embrace in it the realm of the other. But such an attempt
would be futile in this scientific age of discrimination and defini-
tion. Ethics and religion are both right, and have their separate
and appropriate missions and fields, which, as we have indicated
above, overlap ; but their foundations are two distinct things in

SOCIOLOGY IN ETHICAL EDUCATION.

377

reality, and ought to be made so in definition. The sooner this

listinction is recognized, the more rapid will be the moral devel-
>pment of the race.

Upon what, then, can a system of ethics be based ? Upon the
fad of human relations. If there were only one human being in

le world, there would be no need of an ethical system, because
bhere would be no other man with whom he could have any rela-
tions. Neither would there be any need of it if the inhabitants

^ere few, and were so scattered over the earth that no one of

lem, in securing for himself the necessaries of life, would ever
5ome in contact with any of all the others. But, just so soon as
my one place on the earth becomes the common abode of two, so
30on relations are established between them, and there is need of
)rinciples of conduct governing each in his acts which in any

ray affect the other. An ethical system to control the actions of
khese two men alone would be very simple. But when, from in-
jrease of population, or for motives of common interest, indi-

iduals unite and form a tribe, there comes to be tribal ethics.

'hen two tribes come in contact, intertribal relations are
formed ; and when tribes grow into nations, national and inter-
lational ethics arise ; and as the life of the individual becomes

tore complex within itself, and more involved in its relations to
)ther members of the same tribe or nation, and as the nations in-
crease in size and number, the rules governing this increased
complexity must by necessity become more and still more com-
)lex, until we have the most possible complex system of ethics
governing the most highly developed society. It is here, in this
Pact of human relations, that we find a basis for human ethics. It
the instruction of our children and youth in these relations for

rhich we plead as a remedy for social disorders. Some recent

lodifications of school work point toward such instruction ; but,
our judgment, none of them are calculated to satisfy the demand
)f our day. The moral results of the work in the kindergarten,

^here the little ones are unconsciously instructed in their rela-
tions to each other, can not be overestimated. Similar results
mght to be produced all along the line of educational work, but

lese can not be secured through kindergarten methods with
children beyond kindergarten age. Other methods must be in-
rented appropriate for different ages.

If the study of human relations is so important, how can our
jhildren and youth be instructed in them ? We venture to reply
that this end can be attained by the introduction, in elementary
^and as yet undeveloped forms, of the new science of sociology,
["which, if not scientifically defined as the science of human rela-
tions, certainly treats of the whole realm of these relations, and
10 other science does. There is evidence that " the education of

378 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the future will be sociological ; that the supremacy which has
been accorded to the physical sciences will be transferred to
sociological studies/'* The tendency is certainly in this direc-
tion. It is seen in the methods employed and in the character of
the work done in the kindergarten, in the comparatively fruitless
efforts to extract moral lessons from subjects already taught, in
the use now being made of the story and myth in literature, in
the making of text-books with a view to moral impression, in the
provision made for manual training, and in the preference shown
by the Committee of Fifteen for " an objective and practical basis
of selection of topics for the course of study, rather than the sub-
jective basis so long favored by educational writers/' \ All this
is in response to a demand that our schools must do something
more than to cultivate brain power. They must also guide it.
All possible means must be utilized in meeting this demand ; but,
in our judgment, it can be more fully met through sociological
studies than through all the means and methods now employed.
This line of study can, without doubt, be made the vehicle for
effective moral impression.

Apart from the ethical character of this new science, which
renders it superior to all other subjects for ethical purposes, it pos-
sesses two very important advantages which disarm two classes of
objectors to ethical instruction. One class is composed of those
who say that we can not teach ethics, because that means religious
instruction. This objection falls to the ground through the sepa-
ration of ethics and religion, which this new science assists in
establishing. Since this is so, and since the ethical codes of all
parties interested in the schools are substantially the same, and
since there is no hope that the state will ever provide for religious
instruction, may we not hope that on this ethical ground which
sociological studies furnish, a compromise may be effected
through which something may be accomplished in the schools
of vastly greater importance to humanity than any degree of
manual training, or even of purely intellectual development ?
Those who are opposed to religious instruction would not be los-
ing their case, since ethics is not religion. All who desire reli-
gious instruction would, from their point of view, be gaining their
object in part, since they include ethics in religion. To no party
would this be a sacrifice of principle.

The second class of objectors declare that direct moral in-
struction would be abortive; that all moral impression must
be made indirectly. This is an assumption to which the facts
of experience are opposed. However, without stopping to argue

* Prof. Fulcomer, Lecturer in Chicago University,
f Report of Committee of Fifteen.

SOCIOLOGY IJSr ETHICAL EDUCATION. 379

this point, we present to this class of objectors this same sub-
ject, which can be so handled, if it is desired, as to slyly insin-
uate moral lessons into the boys and girls when they are off
guard — side-flank them. With this notion we have no sym-
pathy. Moral training must be known as moral training. An
importance of its own must be attached to it by placing it on
the same level with, or even above, every other branch. On the
other hand, sociological studies can be so employed as to openly,
frankly, teach matters of right and wrong, and stamp such an im-
portance upon the right as to make a profound impression.

The ways and means of teaching this new science must be dis-
covered by trial. Whatever is said here in reference to this point
is purely suggestive and tentative. The present undeveloped
condition of the science requires that first effort shall be made
with the most mature pupils, hence in the high schools. Later,
without doubt, what may be called elementary sociology will be
developed and adapted to the other grades. Child sociology is
already taught in a practical way in the kindergartens.

The primary aim ought not to be to acquaint high-school pu-
pils with the theory of sociology, desirable as that may be, but to
make them as familiar as possible with the multifarious rela-
tions of life, before they enter upon them as individuals inde-
pendent of parental protection and guidance. Perhaps I can in-
dicate most clearly the line of work, as it lies in my own mind at
present, by venturing a few thoughts upon the character of a
text-book suitable for this work. I would devote the introduc-
tory chapters to the establishment upon a philosophic basis of
some universally accepted ethical principles, with which human
actions are to be compared and adjudged as right or wrong. The
best, the simplest, the most easily understood, and the most gen-
erally accepted is, " Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you." In our judgment this is entirely sufficient. Nothing
better is known, and I would make a text-book sing the spirit
of this beautiful principle of social life on every page. It is the
condensed epitome of all the ethical teachings of the great Master
of ethics as they are recorded in the New Testament ; hence, ac-
ceptable to all Christian peoples and institutions. This can be
based upon a philosophic induction from social data. This, per-
haps, would clothe it with an authority which, because it has
been heard so often and so universally ignored, it unfortunately
does not now possess.

A similar induction might be made to result in some other
general principle, if that is desired, like that of Bentham, which,
without philosophic verbiage, is that that is right for this world
which aims at the greatest degree of happiness to the largest
number of persons. Tfiese and other like generally accepted

38o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

principles are sufficient guides for all in all ordinary situations
in life. After these have been established they must be so
stamped upon, so burned into the mental fiber of every pupil,
that he must by necessity carry them through life ; that he can
not by any possible line of conduct cause them to fade out, or by
logical process silence their voice. This result I would make the
aim of the remainder of the book, which should embrace civics in
all its branches, business and industrial relations in all their rami-
fications, natural rights and duties of the individual, the objects,
rights, and obligations of society and governments, and all kin-
dred subjects.

Civics embraces duties to country and whatever contributes to
best citizenship. Under this topic I would direct attention to
political abuses of all sorts, and impress the importance of living
by the same moral code in politics as in religion. I would discuss
whatsoever would bring plainly to view the individuars ethical
duties and obligations to country and government. In the treat-
ment of business relations I would go into the details of the vari-
ous branches. It seems entirely practicable for a man familiar
with business life and methods to conduct students equipped
with their code of universally accepted moral principles, accord-
ing to which human actions are to be classified as right or wrong,
into and through the ten thousand ramifications of all kinds of
business, behind the counter, into the bank, into the boards of
trade, into the business and professional office, into the exchanges,
into the council chambers of great corporations, into every corner
of the business world, and study the relations which exist among
all who are occupied there, as well as between these branches
and the great world outside. Here the like relations of the in-
dustrial world should be considered, the relations between those
who possess capital and those who labor, between those who em-
ploy and those who are employed, the rights of each and the
duties of each to the other.

In treating of the natural rights and duties of the individual
I would attempt to impress the ethical relations between indi-
viduals which arise from the fact of birth. All are in the world
through no merit or fault of their own, hence no credit or blame
attaches to the fact of being here in any case. No man brought
anything with him which every other man did not bring ; hence
all by Nature are endowed with equal rights and entitled to equal
opportunities. This opens up an immense field of thought in the
direction of modifying the existing conditions of unequal rights
and unequal opportunities, which all students of social questions
recognize with serious misgivings.

Closely allied with this subject are the objects of social organi-
zation, the relations which exist between society and the indi-

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS AND DISLOCATIONS. 381

vidual, the rights of each, and the duties of each to the other.
Society is a necessity. Being a necessity, it ought to be so
organized as to continue and perform its functions with the least
possible friction, and the greatest possible comfort and happiness
to all who compose it. Hence the immeasurable imjjortance of
investigating, and of establishing in the minds of the rising gen-
erations an ethical adjustment of the parts of the social organism.

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS, BRUISES, AND DISLOCATIONS.

By DOUGLAS GEAHAM, M. D.

"N the Life and Letters of Mr. George P. Marsh, Volume I,
page 219, is the following account of the brilliant success of
bhe treatment of two sprains by a wild Arab: "There seemed,
Lowever, small chance that the proposed journey to Sinai, Petra,
Ferusalem, etc., could be carried, out. The season was already far
Lvanced for desert travel ; Mr. Marsh had seriously sprained his
[ankle at Karnac while carrying his wife through the great temple,
id could not now walk without the assistance of two persons ;
md Miss Paine had been suffering from a somewhat similar
jprain even before leaving Constantinople, and had profited little
>y the surgical skill of the Franks at that place or in Egypt. The
Iragoman, though it was clearly for his interest that the jour-
ley should be made, admitted the impossibility of it under these
circumstances, and gravely proposed that the two sprains should
)e cured at once by an Arab doctor of his own acquaintance. He
mtreated so earnestly and with such apparent confidence in his
dracle-worker that a consultation was held with some of the
)ldest and most intelligent of the Frankish residents at Cairo, and,
bhough no one would exactly take the responsibility of advising
it, every one said that the evidence of these immediate cures was
mch that he should certainly try the experiment in his own case,
lome, indeed, had tried it with entire success, and no one thought
[any harm could come of it.

These considerations, added to an intense desire to see more of
Lthe mysterious East, decided the lame patients to call in the ' ra-
\douheur.' So, the second morning after their installment in their
jliotel, Achmet presented himself, bringing with him the most ex-
traordinary creature that can be well imagined. He was scarce
[five feet in height, and was clad in a single garment of blue cotton
'fastened about the waist with a leather belt. His old, withered
"face was lighted up by one eye only, and that seemed but half
i open, while nothing about his person would have led one to be-
lieve that the waters of the broad Nile were within reach. There

382 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

f
was an unmistakable look of mortification on the part of those
who had consented to summon this ^sculapius, but there was no
help for it now. At this moment a visitor was announced to Mr.
Marsh, and the lady therefore was the first to prove the wild
man's skill. He examined the injured foot, placed it in warm
water, dipped his own fingers in olive oil, and rubbed and pressed
the foot very gently for about twenty minutes. He then careful-
ly dried it and bade his patient walk. She hesitated, having suf-
fered so much and so long from every efiPort of that kind; but an
imperative ' Imsheh, imsheh! decided her. She placed her foot
firmly on the floor and took a step, another and another, and still
no pain. In a few minutes she was in the street, and, after stroll-
ing some hours among the bazaars of the city, returned with-
out the least feeling of discomfort. The cure was perfect and
permanent.

" In the meantime Mr. Marsh had passed through a more severe
ordeal at the hands of the magician. His foot and ankle, which
were both badly swollen and discolored, were very sensitive to the
manipulation, and especially to the energetic pulling which in
this case was a part of the treatment, and at the end of three quar-
ters of an hour he was well-nigh exhausted by the pain. But
then, on looking at his foot, he was surprised to find that the
swelling had disappeared, the color was almost entirely natural,
and the shoe and stocking, which had been laid aside for almost
two weeks, were put on with perfect ease. He was then directed
to walk, which to his amazement he found he could do without
the least pain ; and the only unpleasant sensation he experienced
afterward was a slight stiffness for the first day or two, which,
however, did not in the least interfere with walking. After this,
preparations for forty days' wandering in the desert were made
as rapidly as possible."

Making allowance for the enchantment that distance always
lends, there is little doubt that these two injuries were much bene-
fited by the manipulations of the wild Arab. But it is very evi-
dent that he hurt his second patient much more than there was
any need of. It would, indeed, be strange if the teachings of sci-
ence did not enable us to improve on the methods of blind instinct.
And though science often follows art with limping strides, yet
here we can say that science has caught up with art and together
they work for the rapid amelioration of disabled joints. No sane
person would think of having massage applied immediately to the
seat of a sprain, but many imagine that this is what the masseur
will do, and hence deprive themselves of the early benefit that
might be got from this method of treatment, which quickly re-
lieves the pain, the heat, and the swelling, removes the pressure
from terminal nerve filaments, and prevents the parts from stick-

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS AND DISLOCATIONS. 383

ing together. No two masseurs are alike by nature nor in skill,
tact, and education, and the one who knows his anatomy and physi-
ology well, when called to a recent acute sprain, will not begin at
once to masser the injured joint, but at a distance above it on the
healthy tissues by gentle stroking or effleurage toward the heart,
gradually proceeding nearer and nearer to the painful place.
This has a soothing effect and pushes the flow along in the veins
and lymphatics, making more space in them for the returning
currents coming from beyond and carrying away the fluids that
have leaked out of the vessels. The same should be done on the
part of the limb beyond the joint, for the circulation is hindered
both in going out and coming in by reason of the swelling.

Next, the masseur who knows his business will begin again at
a safe distance above the injured joint, and use deep rubbing,
kneading, or massage properly so called, one hand contracting
as the other relaxes, alternately making circular grasps, with the
greatest pressure upward, and this should be done on the parts
above and below the seat of sprain. By this procedure the effects
of the previous stroking or effleurage are much enhanced an anal-
gesic or agreeably benumbing effect is produced upon the nerves
which extend to the painful place, and the retarded circulation
is pushed along more vigorously, making room in the vessels for
the swelling, the effusion, the dammed embargo caused by the
landslide of blood and lymph that is inundating the surrounding
territory with exudates farther up the stream to float off, and pre-
paring the way for the next step in treatment. At the end of
fifteen or twenty minutes of this manner of working, gentle, firm
pressure can be made immediately over the swollen and but re-
cently very tender parts, which in a few seconds can have circu-
lar motion, with the greatest push upward added to it ; and this,
if sufficient tact be used, will in all probability not hurt but be
positively agreeable. By this the swelling is spread over greater
space, pressed out of the tissues as water is out of a sponge, and
brought into more points of contact with the veins and lymphat-
ics by which they are absorbed and carried off ; the same pres-
sure that causes the dislodgment of stagnating fluids also aiding
absorption by pressing them into the small vessels. Then a
snug, well-fitting bandage should be applied, which may exhibit
the bungling of a tyro or the skill acquired by twenty years' prac-
tice. Under this plan of treatment, used twice a day, the com-
fort produced and the speed of recovery would scarcely be be-
lieved unless experienced by one who had had a similar injury
treated in the regular orthodox way, with absolute rest and im-
mobility, by means of fixed dressings.

Some years ago I published the results of massage in more
than seven hundred cases of sprains, joint contusions, and distor-

384 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tions of all degrees of severity, treated by many different observ-
ers, most of whom were French, German, and Scandinavian army
surgeons, in order to confirm the experience obtained in some of
my own cases. The invariable result of each and all was that
such injuries thus treated got well in one third of the time that
similar cases did under the usual method of absolute rest and
fixation, and with less tendency to subsequent weakness, pain,
and stiffness. Experience teaches that the sooner after a sprain
massage is begun, the quicker is the recovery. In Germany the
military authorities now require a semiannual report from their
surgeons upon the results of massage in injuries of joints ; and
the statistics of Gasener, Starke, Korner, and others clearly show
the rapid results of this method, and the economy of time to the
soldier. I fear it will be a long time before many of the physi-
cians and surgeons in the United States will condescend to try
their hands at massage ; indeed, most physicians adopt, prescribe,
or tolerate massage in the same way that Constantine the Great
embraced Christianity — more from policy than conviction.

The orthodox treatment of absolute immobility alone in these
cases has little else to support it than the dogmatism of centu-
ries, from which it is almost impossible for a surgeon to free
himself, unless he has been the unfortunate victim of a sprain, and
had it treated with massage. Supposing a prize of ten thousand
dollars were offered for the quickest way to make a well joint
stiff, what more effectual means could be resorted to than first to
give it a wrench or sprain, and then do it up in a fixed dressing,
so that the resulting inflammation would have an opportunity of
producing adhesion of the parts ? And this is the prevailing
treatment of sprains. The same plan of treatment is employed
for the purpose of closing up holes in other parts of the body —
namely, that of exciting adhesive inflammation; and, unfortu-
nately, it sometimes closes the cavity of a joint also.

It would seem as if we had sufficient proof of the beneficial
effects of massage in injuries and affections of joints in human
beings, without intentionally inflicting similar injuries on ani-
mals in order to treat them by massage, and study the effects of
this upon them. However, much interesting and confirmatory
evidence has resulted from such experiments, and the effects pro-
duced are no longer left in the realm of theory, but brought
into the sunny light of science and ocular demonstration. The
mind of man may be prepossessed in favor of massage, and this
would help recovery ; of animals it can not be, unless they had
had massage before for a similar hurt. Animals that have been
treated by massage can be killed and the effects studied and com-
pared with similar injuries in other joints of the same animal
that have not had massage. Von Mosengeil, Professor of Surgery

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS AND DISLOCATIONS, 385

at Bonn, injected corresponding joints of rabbits with. Indian ink.
With each rabbit he masseed one of the joints at regular inter-
vals, and left the same joint in the other limb untouched. The
swelling and stiffness caused by the injection rapidly disappeared
under massage, and on examination of the masseed joint after
the animal was killed it was found empty of its colored con-
tents. Even when the examination was made shortly after the
injection and the use of massage, there was scarcely any ink
found in the joint; part of it was found upon the synovial
membrane, and upon microscopical examination it was seen that
the greatest part of it had been forced into and penetrated
through the synovial membrane. The darkened lymphatics could
even be seen with the unaided eye extending from the injected
joint to the lymphatic glands in the groin or axilla, and these
latter were also black from the absorption of the ink. Upon ex-
amination of the joint cavities that had not been masseed, the
ink was found in the joint, mixed with the synovia, forming a
smeary mass, and it had not even penetrated the tissue of the
synovial membrane. The same results were uniformly obtained
in all the experiments, showing that absorption takes place from
joint cavities by means of lymph spaces and small openings com-
municating with lymphatic vessels, and through these with lym-
phatic glands.

But by far the most interesting experiments yet performed
jto elucidate the effects of massage on joints, muscles, and nerves
ire those described at length in the Archives generates de Mede-
ine for 1891 and 1892. Having obtained excellent results from
lassage in bruises of joints and muscles, in sprains and disloca-
lons, and also in fractures, some of which were masseed from
le commencement of the injury when there was no displace-
lent, and others where there was displacement, after a fixed
Iressing had been applied as short a time as possible to keep the
brts in place, M. Castex sought further opportunities to study
lore exactly the results of these injuries by intentionally pro-
lucing them in corresponding places in two limbs of dogs, mas-
ieing the seat of one of these injuries and letting the other alone,
md after five or six months killing the animals and examining
le tissues that had been hurt under the microscope. He always
jhose the more injured limb for treatment and the other had no
lassage, but was left to the natural evolutions of the injuries,
'he effects, immediate, consecutive, and remote, were carefully
loted by experts in laboratory work, who were not told which
leg had been masseed. The experiments were done in the lab-
)ratory of Prof. Richet. The massage was done either imme-
liately or very soon after the injuries — even in the case of the
lislocations, as soon as they were set — and always with marked

VOL. XLIX. — 32

386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

relief to the pain, swelling, and stiffness ; so much, indeed, that
after a few massages of five or ten minutes each of frictions and
petrissage once a day, the dog had full use of the leg that had
been masseed, whereas the leg that had not been masseed remained
swollen, stiff, and painful for a long time, and in some did not
recover at all. It is but fair to state that, no matter how severely-
some of the dogs were injured, especially the shepherd dogs, they
did not seem to mind it at all after it was over, running about as
if nothing had happened as soon as they were set at liberty.
These were not chosen for massage. The details are amazingly
interesting, but space forbids mention of more than one of the
experiments, which may be taken as a fair sample.

The two shoulder joints of a large watchdog were dislocated
by inward flexion. The head of the humerus of each was plainly
visible under the skin, showing a luxation forward and inward —
intracoracoid. It was easily reduced, put back in place, by trac-
tion. Five minutes of massage was at once given to the right
shoulder, which seemed to afford relief, judging from the grateful
way in which the animal submitted ; and after this a figure-of-8
bandage was applied around both shoulders. He had massage
five minutes daily to the right shoulder alone, and for the first
three days he walked with difficulty. The right shoulder gradu-
ally became less painful to touch, and he stood firmer on this side.
On the fourth and subsequent days all sorts of pressure upon the
masseed shoulder were borne without discomfort ; but when the
other shoulder was pressed the dog growled and attempted to
bite. Six days after the dislocations he supported himself well in
the masseed limb, but held the other up, as the non-masseed
shoulder was still swollen and painful. Both shoulders then staid
in place, in spite of passive movements that might have dislocated
them. On the eighth day the dog walked well with the masseed
limb, but held the other up, as the latter was still swollen and
painful, and there was crepitation in the joint. Thirteen days
after the injury the dog took an occasional step with the limb
that had not been masseed, and two months later it was in about
the same condition, while he made free use of the limb that had
been masseed in walking and running. There was then atrophy
(wasting) of the muscles of the left shoulder, evident by the
prominence of the bones ; none, of the muscles of the right.

Testimony in favor of the early use of massage in dislocations
in human beings, being careful not to move nor disturb the joint,
is gradually accumulating. Not only M. Castex, but also MM.
F^ge, Archambaud, and others, have reported more favorable
results from its application from the very first day of the injury
than when it had not been used. Passive motion, I think, should
not be begun until the patients find that they can make a little

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS AND DISLOCATIONS. 387

voluntary motion. Fifteen or twenty days of this treatment
seems to be all that is necessary in mankind; and this is just
about the length of time required for the repair of the rent in the
capsule. In the meantime, the surrounding tissues are preserved
in health and activity by means of the massage.

Soon after the swelling from the injuries to the dogs had sub-
sided the muscles became more or less atrophied in the limb that
had not been masseed, but not at all in the limb that had been
masseed. At the end of five or six months the dogs were killed
and the tissues examined by the microscope. The muscular tissue
of the side that had not been masseed presented a diffuse scle-
rosis or hardening ; the connective tissue intervening between
the fibers and bundles of fibers was thickened ; there were inter-
stitial haemorrhages, especially in the cellular tissue around the

Fio. 1. — Bruised Muscle without Massage.
/, muscular fasciculus; <j, mtermuscular
connective tissue.

Fig. 2. — ^Bruised Muscle with Massage.
/", muscular fasciculus ; c\ intermuscular
connective tissue.

Mg. 2 shows that the natural size of the intermuscular connective tissue has been preserved,
rhile Fig. 1 shows the intermuscular tissue thickened, and the muscular bundles tMnner and
)mpressed. (From the Archives generalea de Medeeine, Fevrier, 1892, p. 197.)

mscles; the internal and external coverings of the bundles of
luscular fibers (perimysia) were infiltrated with blood, and also
[the fascia or covering outside of this. The transverse markings

►f the muscular fibers (striae) were effaced in many places, while
le longitudinal striation or marking, which is not seen normally,
'•as very distinct. The muscular tissue from the corresponding
jgion that had been masseed was found to be normal in every

)articular. M. Castex has left us to surmise the appearance of
le sarcolemma or covering of the individual fibers. In all

>robability this also was hardened, thickened, and infiltrated with

)lood as were the outer and larger coverings.

The blood-vessels appeared perfectly natural from the masseed

side, but from the side that had not been masseed they presented
hyperplasia or thickening of their external coat.
The nerve filaments were found to be natural in the masseed

388

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

side, while in the side that had not been masseed there were
abundant evidences of neuritis, and perineuritis exerting destruc-
tive compression upon the nerve fibers. The perineurium, or
sheath covering the bundles of nerve fibers, was at least three
times as thick in the non-masseed side, and the connective tissue
around the perineurium was also thickened with numerous new-
formed cells. The small vessels in the perineurium were also the
seat of a peripheral hyperplasia or thickening. The lesion of the
nerves was more marked than that of the vessels.

These experiments of M. Castex give more emphasis than ever
to the remarks of old Arrian in the year of our Lord 243, that
" great is the advantage of rubbing to the dog, not less than to

Fig. 3. — Injdeed Nebve without Massagb. Fig. 4. — Injiteed Nerve with Massage,
p, perineurium ; t, nerve tubes or fibers ; p\ perineurium ; t\ nerve tubes or fibera.

c c, new-formed connective tissue.

In Fig. 4 all the nerve elements are of normal appearance, while the nerve elements from
the non-masseed side — Fig. 8 — show that the perineurium is thickened, and underneath this
there are deposits of new-formed connective tissue which crowd and compress the nerve fibers,
(From the Archives generales de Medeciiie, Fevrier, 1892, p. 200.)

the horse, for it is good to knit and to strengthen the limbs, and
it makes the hair soft and its hue glossy, and it cleanses the skin
from its impurities. One should rub the back and the loins with
the right hand, placing the left under the belly in order that the
dog may not be hurt by being squeezed from above into a crouch-
ing position ; and the ribs should be rubbed with both hands, and
the buttocks as far as the feet, and the shoulder blades as well.
And when they seem to have had enough, lift her up by the tail,
and, having given her a stretching, let her go. And she will-
shake herself when let go, and show that she liked the treatment."
{Arrian Cynegeticus.)

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS AND DISLOCATIONS. 389

In human beings M. Castex found that when massage was
begun early or from the very first in contusions, sprains, and dis-
locations not only were the immediate symptoms soon relieved,
but also the subsequent serious consequences that are so apt to
follow these injuries — wasting, weakness, contraction, and stiff-
ness— were prevented. But when he tried massage in old cases
of muscular atrophy or wasting following injuries to joints he
got no increase of muscular tissue. The stiffness was got rid of ;
the muscles became suppler, but they still remained thin and
lacking in strength. If he had combined passive and active
movements with the massage he would probably have gained
growth of muscle. He found that the galvanic and faradic cur-
rents were of benefit in promoting increase of muscular tissue.
Muscular contraction produced by electricity is but another form
of motion.

Numerous theories as to the cause of muscular atrophy from
injuries to joints have been considered and abandoned. The
most probable and most generally accepted is that of reflex ac-
tion. The injury to the joint starts up more or less inflammation
(arthritis); the articular nerves are irritated; this irritation is
transferred to the spinal cord ; the nerve centers affected act in
turn upon the centrifugal nerves going to the muscles, and these
determine at their peripheral ends the muscular atrophy. With
a view to the elucidation of this, M. Deroche has repeated seven
times, and always with the same results, experiments which were
done for the first time at the College of France by MM. Ray-
mond and Onanoff. He divided the posterior roots of the three
last lumbar nerves on the left side in dogs and rabbits. After
cicatrization had taken place he assured himself that numbness
was complete from the thigh to the knee of the left lower limb,
so that irritation of this region was not felt. The cdrresponding
limb was left intact. An arthritis was then excited in both knees
by introducing a thermo-cautery into them. No pain was felt in
the left knee, but much in the right. Three months afterward
the animals were killed, and in both knees the lesions of arthritis
were found ; hut the muscles of the thigh of the left leg were of
natural size j of the right, atrophied.

Prof. Simon Duplay and M. Cazin have also made a careful
study of this subject in much the same way. Under the micro-
scope they found that the articular filaments always presented
signs of inflammation; but the large nerve trunks and spinal
cord showed no appreciable change, and the results of the exami-
nation of the muscles were negative except as to diminution in
size. They therefore concluded that muscular atrophies con-
secutive to joint injuries consist of simple atrophy, and that
this can only be explained by a dynamic action, a simple reflex

39© POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

due to irritation of the terminal nerve filaments of the articular
nerves.

M. Deroche thought he found that the muscular atrophy was
due to diminution of interfibrillary substance, and that there was
an ascending degeneration of the posterior columns on the same
side. However that may be, the inference is certainly justifiable
that massage acts to prevent muscular atrophy by maintaining
an influence, a movement, or something in the muscles which the
spinal cord is for a time unable to impart to them ; and in order
to do this, it should be applied immediately or soon after the
injury, for then it is more quickly aroused from the lethargy and
stupor into which it has been plunged by the shock of the acci-
dent.

PEARLS AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL.

By CHARLES STUAET PEATT.

A MONG the picturesque industrial possibilities of our south-
-^^ ern Pacific coast is the artificial production of pearls. By
this is meant, not the manufacture of artificial pearls, but the arti-
ficial growing of real pearls ; that is, instead of the haphazard
pearl-fishing of the present, the establishment, on the southern
California coast, of oyster ranches, where the pearl-producing
bivalves shall be scientifically directed and assisted in growing
both gem pearls and mother-of-pearl.

This is hardly more visionary than was the recent establish-
ment of ostrich ranches just inland from this same Pacific coast.
A glance at the natural process of pearl-making will throw some
interesting light on these oyster ranches-to-be. Mother-of-pearl
is the natural product of the wild oyster, if we may so designate
the bivalve of the unf enced sea bottoms. To secure a smooth sur-
face for the contact of its soft, sensitive body, the oyster lines its
coarser, rougher shell with a substance named nacre — which is
simply carbonate of lime, with a trace of organic matter. This
nacre is secreted and deposited in successive layers of filmy thin-
ness and of marvelous smoothness of surface ; the result is the
lustrous, iridescent motherof -pearl.

Unlike mother-of-pearl, the gem pearl, round or otherwise, is
an -unnatural product of the oyster. The gem pearl is an acci-
dent, almost a disaster, to its creator. In fact, a healthy, undis-
turbed oyster never produces a pearl. But if a sharp grain of
sand finds its way inside the shell, the disturbed oyster protects
its tender, sensitive flesh from the irritation of this offending sub-
stance by depositing about it smooth coatings of the nacre with
which it has already formed or deposited the mother-of-pearl

PEARLS AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL, 391

lining of its shell. Layer after layer is added, until finally we
have the round, lustrous gem for brides' fingers and the throats
of queens.

It is possible that in some cases a wound throws off bony par-
ticles which become the nucleus of the pearl ; or, in place of sand,
the foreign substance may be a minute parasite, or a morsel of
seaweed, or one of the tiny siliceous vegetables known as diatoms,
or even one of the eggs of the oyster itself. Some such encysted
particle, though perhaps of microscopic size, lies at the center,
and was the cause, of every pearl. So the pleasure-giving gem is
really the outgrowth of pain.

Now, it has been discovered that, instead of waiting the acci-
dental intrusion of the alien particle into the shell of the oyster,
grains of sand, or other objects, for the nucleus of the pearl, may
be deliberately inserted by the hand of man, and that the oyster
will at once set to work at pearl-making. It is known that the
Ohinese, from a remote period, have ingeniously taken advantage
; of this singular self-defense of the oyster. In the month of May
the river mussels are taken from the water, and small pellets of
clay, and even tiny images of the gods, are slipped inside the
shells. The mussels are then replanted and left half a year. In
November they are taken up again, and, while some of the shell-
fish die, most have coated the clay pellets and little metal gods
with nacre, producing real pearls and genuine mother-of-pearl
■deities.

These mother-of-pearl Buddhas are in great demand with the
curious and the devout, but there is no evidence that any of the
priceless pearls of the world have been so produced. And yet
surely the results obtained suggest great possibilities fcfr the en-
terprising man who shall establish the oyster ranches already
mentioned, and who shall add to the ingenuity of the Chinese all
the resources of modern science.

The thin layers of nacre are always deposited thicker in de-
pressions than over elevations; hence uneven surfaces become
level, and small particles of whatever form gradually become
spherical. The perfect round pearl, however, can only result
•when the nucleus penetrates the soft body of the oyster, or re-
mains unattached to the shell. Often it does become so attached,
and when removed has a defect on one side, and can only be used
in settings where that side is hidden ; such pearls are called hou-
tons or button pearls ; odd, irregular shapes are called baroques.

Large or heavy intruding objects are quite likely to become
attached to the lower half of the shell. Such objects often, in the
course of years, are buried from sight under successive layers of
nacre. Some Chinese Buddhas thus imbedded in the flat or lower
halves of the bivalves are to be seen in London museums, and they

392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

illustrate the curious fact that the oyster has the habit of forcing
intruders out, not manlike through the door, but through the
walls of its house. The way of it is this : while the successive
coverings of nacre are deposited on the inside of the shell, the
outside of the shell is gradually decaying and crumbling away,
so that as the wall inside the alien object becomes thicker, the
part outside becomes thinner, till finally the intruder reaches the
surface — is literally forced through the shell of the oyster.

The pearl is the one gem that comes to us perfect from the
hand of Nature, and to this its great antiquity as a gem is largely
due. Precious stones whose beauty and brilliance depend on pol-
ishing and cutting would naturally be discovered and utilized
later. The discovery of the diamond, for instance, probably dates
within historic times. Though known earlier, it was not gener-
ally included among the gem treasures of royalty even as late
as the seventh century. The modern cutting of diamonds in
regular facets was invented as recently as 1456. Indeed, it is
quite probable that the pearl was the first gem known and
treasured by prehistoric man — since the search for food must
have been the first occupation of the earliest of the race, and
the shining pearl would thus have been discovered in river mus-
sels if not in marine oysters. Certain it is that the Old Testa-
ment and the most ancient written histories allude to pearls,
and that remoter evidence is found in the tombs and excavated
cities of still earlier eras. The Egyptians, Babylonians and As-
syrians held the pearl in an esteem verging on reverence.

Not only were pearls known and prized as the most precious of
gems, but they were gathered and treasured in astonishing quan-
tities by the early Oriental potentates. Many relics and records
of those days remain. The crown of the Khan of the Tartars,
captured on the Oxus by the Persians in the fifth century, was
decorated with several thousand pearls. The famous crown of
Chosroes, made in the sixth century, and which was strangely
concealed for a thousand years in an obscure fortress among the
Lauristanian Mountains, till brought to light by Shah Abbas, is
incrusted with pearls in conjunction with rubies. In the seventh
century the Arabs captured from the Persian nobles fabrics of
amazing richness, among which was one marvelous carpet of
white brocade, four hundred and fifty feet by ninety feet, with a
border worked in precious stones to represent a garden of all
kinds of beautiful flowers — the leaves of emeralds and other
green gems, the buds and blossoms of pearls, along with rubies
and sapphires.

The treasures of the Turkish nobility during some of the more
brilliant reigns of the empire seem to belong to fable rather than
to veritable history. Sinan Pasha, dying at eighty, left fifteen

PEARLS AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL, 393

strings of enormous pearls, and of " fine pearls " no less than sixty
bushels! — accumulated during campaigns in Europe, Asia and
Africa.

Shah Jehan, greatest of Mogul sovereigns after Timour, col-
lected the wealth of India about him at Delhi, including the
world-famous diamond known ever since as the Great Mogul.
His was the famous peacock throne, the spread tails of the pea-
cocks formed of precious stones to emulate the colors of the liv-
ing bird, the whole valued at nearly thirty-five million dollars.
Its canopy was fringed with pearls. His, too, was the Taj Mahal,
the most marvelous tomb ever built, on which twenty thousand
men worked for more than twenty years. And this Shah Jehan
loved to wear round his neck priceless strings of immense pearls.
The Greeks and Romans rivaled the Orientals in their appre-
ciation of pearls. When Alexander and his eighty companions
wedded their beautiful Persian brides at the most famous mar-
riage feast of history, the pearls of the Persian Gulf were the
favorite jewels — as they are with brides in this closing decade of
the nineteenth century. The Romans sent caravans on year-
long journeys to Ceylon for pearls. And there is evidence that
Julius Caesar really invaded Britain for the sake of expected
plunder in pearls. That he was not disappointed is shown by
the record that on his return he dedicated to the Venus Genetrix
a breastplate of the British gems.

The ancients seem to have had no conception of the real origin
>f pearls. Even in the days of the Romans they had not ad-
'■anced beyond the early myths of creation by Vishnu, of angels'
tears dropped out of heaven into the gaping mouths of mussels,
)r the diverse theory that they were as mystically congealed from
lewdrops, which with equal mystery, after their ethereal descent,
Iropped through fathoms of water without commingling — unless,
ideed, the shellfish were supposed to come to the surface to re-
vive them. Pliny gravely asserts that " pearls are great or small,
)etter or worse, according to the quantity and quality of the dew
Ley have received. For, if the dew were pure and clear that
rent into them, then are the pearls fair and orient. Cloudy
'^eather spoils their color, lightning stops their growth, and thun-
ler makes the shellfish eject hollow husks or bubbles " in place of
)earls.

Ceylon and the Persian Gulf, which were the chief sources of
me pearls back before the dawn of the Christian era, have re-
bined their supremacy through twenty centuries, though profit-
ible pearling grounds are now worked in Eastern waters off New
Guinea and the northern Australian coasts, in the Sulu Archi-
)elago, off Japan, and among the Polynesian islands. In minor
luantity, and perhaps quality, pearls are gathered from Western

394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

waters off the coasts of equatorial South. America, the West In-
dies, Panama, and southern California. The Aztec kings pos-
sessed pearls of great beauty and price, obtained, it is supposed,
from Panama. The palace of Montezuma, when despoiled by the
Spaniards, is described as " studded with pearls," along with em-
eralds.

Some fine pearls are produced in inland waters by the fresh-
water mussel (Unio margaritifera). Most of the river pearls are
found in China, though at some periods the pearl industries in
England and Scotland have been important. The rivers of Ger-
many and parts of Russia are also pearl-producing. The prin-
cipal river-pearl fishery in the United States is in the Little
Miami in Ohio.

The marine mollusks yielding pearls are the Avicula {Melea-
grina) margaritifera, Avicula macroptera, and Avicula fucata.

In the Persian Gulf the Avicula fucata is specially fished for
gem pearls, as it produces more and of finer quality than the
other varieties, though it is smaller and of less value for the
mother-of-pearl lining of its shell. All three varieties mentioned,
however, are found on the famous Great Pearl Bank, which lies
along the west coast of the gulf. There the pearling industry
from remote times has so dominated the people that it has passed
into a proverb, "All are slaves to one master. Pearl."

The great Ceylon pearl fisheries are now a monopoly, under
the supervision of the British Government, as formerly under
that of the Portuguese and the Dutch. The fishing seasons occur
at irregular and infrequent periods, only half a dozen having
been sanctioned by the inspecting officer in the quarter century
between 1863 and 1887. The value of the pearls from these sev-
eral fishings varied from fifty thousand to three hundred thou-
sand dollars, with a total of about one million dollars. The Cey-
lon fishing season runs from four to six weeks. The latest of
which there is data was that of 1889, when in twenty-two days
fifty divers brought up eleven million oysters, which yielded the
Government fifty thousand dollars and the divers about fifteen
thousand dollars. In Ceylon it is the custom to land the cargoes
of oysters on the shore to die and decay. When sufficiently de-
composed they are opened and then washed and searched for the
more valuable loose pearls, after which the houtons are clipped
from the shells, and the larger of the shells themselves selected
for their mother-of-pearl.

Diving for pearls is perhaps the most perilous of occupations,
with the possible exception of its antithesis — that of aeronautics.
There are the terrible physical tortures of the first descents
from the pressure of water ; the bleeding from nostrils, ears and
mouth ; the bursting of small blood-vessels in the lungs ; and the

PEARLS AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL, 395

rending of a way from ear to nasal passage. Nearly all divers
become partly or totally deaf. Incipient heart and lung troubles
are quickly developed to a fatal end. Paralysis is often induced.
Sharks occasionally devour the naked natives; such tragedies
are not common, however, since the splashing and constant agi-
tation of the water serve to keep them at bay — though, no
doubt, the natives themselves would credit their immunity to
the shark-charmer who accompanies each boat.

The native crews off Ceylon usually include ten divers, five of
whom rest while the other five are diving. Each man has a div-
ing stone, weighing perhaps forty pounds, to which is attached a
rope long enough to reach the bottom, and having a loop for the
foot. The diver slips his foot into the loop at the sinking stone,
inhales a full breath, compresses his nostrils with his left hand,
raises his body as high as possible, and sinks swiftly to the bot-
tom, feet foremost. The average depth for native divers is fifty
feet, the greatest depth about seventy -five. The naked diver
must work with great rapidity, as he can remain at the bottom
only about fifty-five seconds. In spite of stories of divers re-
maining below for three or four minutes, the best divers rarely
reach eighty seconds, and few exceed sixty. In this brief period
such shells as can be secured are thrust into the shell-bag, net,
or basket, the tender in the boat is signaled by the line attached,
and the diver assists his own ascent by seizing the bag line as it
is drawn up.

In the Persian Gulf the ancient custom of stopping the ears
with cotton saturated with oil and closing the nQstrils with pin-
cers of tortoise shell is still in vogue. But the primitive method
of diving is now being superseded by scientific diving in the mod-
ern diving dress. This consists of a rubber-cloth suit in one piece
from foot to neck. The hands are bare, the elastic wristbands of
the dress hugging tight enough to exclude water. The neck is
large, of course, to admit the body after the feet and legs. The
_diver once in this dress, the neck is fastened between the double
ims of a brass corselet, and then a big copper helmet is set over
le head and screwed to the corselet. The helmet has glass win-
lows at each side and in front, an air-tube entering at the back

'ough which air is supplied by a pump worked by a couple

men in the boat, and a valve at the side for the outlet of
itiated air. The armored diver wears leaded canvas or leather

)ts weighing fifteen or sixteen pounds, and a couple of heart-
taped leaden plates over chest and back weighing twice as much
lore. He has a life-line fastened to his right foot and then by
slip-noose about his waist. This life-line is held by a " tender "

the boat who answers signals : one jerk, pull up ; two, more

; three, lower bag.

396 , POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The armored divers are mostly white sailors, Germans, Swedes,
a few English, and an occasional American ; and so great is the
advantage of the diving suit that one armored diver is considered
equal to a whole crew of natives. Instead of a swift, breathless
struggle of fifty or sixty seconds, at a depth of fifty feet or less,
with a limit of seventy-five, the armored diver can work for ten
minutes at a depth of a hundred feet, while at a depth of thirty
he can work for a couple of hours. The deep-sea dangers to
which the naked diver is exposed are mostly shared by the ar-
mored diver. The protection from the tremendous crushing pres-
sure of the water afforded by the suit and the cushion of inclosed
air is offset by the increased pressure at greater depths. The
armored diver likewise encounters the venomous stonefish. This
little fish punctures the hand reaching for a shell and injects a
poison which causesthe whole arm to swell, with great pain. The
remedy is to remain down, as the pressure of water induces free
bleeding at the wound, and the consequent outflow of the poison.
If the bitten diver comes to the surface, as the unarmored diver
must, the arm swells rapidly, turns black, and is painful for weeks.

Sharks do not attack the armored diver, but he has peculiar
perils which the naked native diver escapes. At some great depth
the air-pump may not work, or the air-pipe may burst. But there
are greater dangers yet. Pearl oysters are not found in beds, like
our edible bivalves, but scattered over the sea bottom ; hence it
is the custom to beat up against the tide or current, and then let
the lugger drift, with a drag-anchor perhaps. Yet sometimes the
drifting boat is seized by a strong current and whirled along,
and then, while the diver hurries on to keep up, his life-line or
air-pipe may become fatally entangled in branching coral ; or,
again, a slack line or pipe may fall into the jaws of the " giant
clam," which close over it, and hold the diver prisoner to his
death, alone in the dim ocean depths.

The most perfect pearls are found within what is called " the
mantle " of the mollusk, an elastic membrane which envelops the
oyster, and which is supposed to secrete the nacreous fluid. The
finest specimens lie near the lips of the shell, or are imbedded in
the softer part of the oyster near the hinge of the shell. The
ideal gem pearl is spherical, white, without blemish in texture
or " skin," with pure "water " or appearance of transparency —
though no pearl is really transparent — and of distinguished lustre
or orient. Lustre is the soul of the pearl, as brilliancy is of the
diamond. Finely formed drop shapes, and then oval or egg
shapes, are but little below the spherical pearls in value, if of
equal perfection. The fine gem pearls are the size of peas ; very
much larger specimens, of twenty-five grains and upward, of per-
fect quality, are rare, and command corresponding values.

PEARLS AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL. 397

At the breaking up of the French crown treasury in 1791, a
superb spherical pearl of large size sold for forty thousand dol-
lars, and two pear-shaped pearls, weighing two hundred and
fourteen grains, were valued at thirty thousand dollars each.
The Shah of Persia possesses one of the finest pearls in the world,
worth three hundred thousand dollars. The Imam of Muscat has
refused one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for one of his
famous gems. Perhaps the most extraordinary pearl now known
is in Mr. Beresf ord Hope's collection in South Kensington ; it is
two inches long, four in circumference, and weighs eighteen hun-
dred grains.

When Rome ruled the world, a wonderful pearl worth four
hundred thousand dollars was cut in halves for earrings for the
Venus in the Pantheon. The pearl of the Cleopatra legend is
said to have been of equal value — though if swallowed it must
have been as a pill without sugar coating, since gem experts
assert that no acid the human stomach could endure will dissolve
a pearl ; indeed, the most powerful acids known only discolor and
destroy the outer layers of nacre after long immersion. Authori-
ties do not agree upon this point, however.

While the white pearl is really the ideal pearl of all ages,
fashion, local in place and time, has favored other colors for the
hour. Rose-colored pearls have been the fad in Paris for several
seasons, to the enriching of the Scottish fishers. The Chinese
prize yellow pearls ; and just now black pearls, if of perfect
quality, command the highest price. The largest and finest black
pearls come from the La Paz pearling grounds off Lower Califor-
nia, which also yield pink pearls.

The color of pearls, as well as the quality and especially the
lustre, depends on the peculiar environment of the oyster, the
chemical composition of the water. The inky fluid ejected by
the great squid is believed to affect the color of pearls. Temper-
ature and the health of the mollusk may modify the nacreous
deposits. Be all this as it may, when the oyster ranches already
alluded to shall be established on our California coast, we may
well expect that, with the co-operation of chemical and biological
science, marvelous results will be obtained in both the quality
and color of pearls — any color being produced at pleasure. Women
of fashion and wealth will then order their pearls a season ahead,
to be grown of desired form, lustre, and color, to harmonize with
their gowns, as to-day they order in advance the gowns them-
selves.

Artificial pearls, which only the expert is likely to detect, are
made by coating the inside of thin glass spheres with a solu-
tion of liquid ammonia and the lustrous coating of the lower
scales of the bleak and dace, filling the bulb with melted wax.

39« POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and then subjecting the surface to the action of hydrofluoric
acid. This was the invention of Janin, Jacquin, or Jalquin, a
rosary-maker in Paris, in 1680. A thousand fish yield less than
an ounce of the " pearl essence/' which is correspondingly costly.
The cheaper so-called Roman pearls have a lustrous coating on
the outside, but bear little resemblance to real pearls, or even to
the artificial pearls just described.

Considering the vast values in gem pearls obtained from the
Eastern fisheries, it is surprising to find that the plain, unroman-
tic. mother-of-pearl secured is of even greater worth. Previous
to the discovery of the extensive Australian fishing grounds, in
1865, the supply of mother-of-pearl was diminishing, while tl^e
demand was increasing. The large-shelled species already men-
tioned are there found in fine quality. The shells are the size of
large soup-plates, weigh a pound each, and are worth about a
dollar a pair. An expert diver, in diving dress, will collect three
or four hundred pairs in a day. About a hundred gem pearls are
found in every ton of these shells.

Beautiful art work in carved and inlaid mother-of-pearl has
long been produced in China and Japan. Some idea of the ex-
tent of its European use in the arts and manufactures may be had
from the fact that eight thousand people are engaged in working
mother-of-pearl in Austria, and half that number in France,
while the value of the annual import into England is nearly one
and a half millions. In the Philippine Islands windows are made
of mother-of-pearl; and James Anthony Froude, in his volume
of voyaging in Oceana, describes frightful Maori idols with slips
of mother-of-pearl glittering in their eye-sockets; while in Cash-
mere it is the custom to inlay the inscriptions in tombstones with
the same exquisite substance. To cap the climax of curious uses
of the lustrous nacre, it is said that large quantities^of seed pearls
are imported into China to be calcined into medicines for the Ce-
lestials.

According to M. Brau de Saint-Pol Lias, the Society of Arts and Sci-
ences of Batavia has given special attention to the reconstitution of the
most ancient of the Oceanican languages, the Kawi, which is probably the
mother language of all the region. The Kawi inscriptions, in which Wil-
liam von Humboldt was much interested, are found everywhere in the
islands ; on the rough cliffs, on cut stones, buildings, statues, plaques of
gold and silver, coins and medals ; and many grand ruins of its people are
found in Borneo, Sumatra, Bali, and especially Java. The language is
still preserved in the legendary songs of the Javanese, as they are sung in
their theaters, although it is not understood. Through the studies of the
Batavian scholars the alphabet has recently been deciphered, and the
meaning of two hundred words out of five hundred determined, while one
hundred words are still in doubt, and two hundred are wholly undefined.

SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT. 399

SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT.

By Pbof. E. p. EVANS.

THE distinguished physiologist, Jacob Moleschott, was born
August 9, 1822, in Hertogenbush,* the capital city and chief
commercial and industrial center of North Brabant in Holland.
His father was a physician of some note, and his paternal grand-
father a reputable apothecary ; on his mother's side he was the
grandchild of the celebrated Dr. Van der Monde. His mother
was a woman of superior culture and refinement, and she and her
more sedate and scientific husband devoted themselves with con-
scientious care and excellent discretion to the early education of
their child.

The Moleschotts were originally Catholics. In 1797 the grand-
father's dwelling, together with his large apothecary shop and
storehouse, which contained a hundred thousand florins' worth
of Peruvian bark and other medicaments of great value, was
burned to the ground, thus reducing him at once from a state of
affluence to extreme poverty. Not one of the many priests, who
had constantly enjoyed his generous hospitality, lifted a finger to
help him in his distress. A few prominent Protestant citizens
came to his aid, and by their timely efforts enabled him to resume
his business, which he carried on with such success as partially to
retrieve his fortune, so that when he died in 1838 he was a com-
paratively wealthy man. The unsympathetic conduct of his co-
religionists made a deep impression upon him as well as upon his
son, who was then a child, and instead of pursuing his studies at
the Catholic seminary at Warmond, he entered the University of
Leyden, to which he was especially attracted by the eminent hu-
manist. Prof. Daniel Wyttenbach, a man as conspicuous for learn-
ing as for breadth and freedom of thought. The influence ex-
erted by this liberal thinker and scholar was wholesome and
permanent, and decisive in determining the future intellectual

laracter of the Moleschott family.
In his fifteenth year Jacob Moleschott was sent to the Prus-
m gymnasium at Cleves, not far from the Netherlands frontier,

rhere he remained five years. He was then matriculated as a

budent* of medicine and natural science in the University of

[eidelberg.

At the solicitation of Nagele, Moleschott prepared a disserta-
tion on a pathological problem which had been already discussed

^y the professor, but which could be definitely solved only by the

* fS HertogenboBch (the Duke's Bush) was originally a hunting seat of the Dukes of
ibant ; hence the name.]

400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

aid of the microscope. The difficult task was performed to the
entire satisfaction of Nagele, who took occasion to express it in a
peculiar manner. As Moleschott was returning for the first time
from clinical practice in the lying-in hospital, for which he had
paid the required fee to the secretary, Nagele accompanied him,
and, as they were going downstairs, stuck the amount of the fee
into Moleschott's vest pocket with the remark, " Clericus clericum
non decimat (Clergy does not take tithes of clergy)."

In .1844 the Teyler Society of Harlem offered a prize for the
best dissertation on Liebig's theory of the nutrition of plants,
which formed the basis of his application of chemistry to agricul-
ture, and which at that time excited as lively discussion in the
scientific world as did Darwin's theory of the origin and evolu-
tion of species fifteen years later. Moleschott took a deep interest
in the subject and was urged by Delffs to compete for the prize,
which was also awarded to him. His dissertation contained a thor-
ough examination and keen analysis of Liebig's views, and pointed
out some instances of hasty generalizations and unwarranted con-
clusions. Moleschott exposed these logical fallacies and showed
how largely they entered into the reasoning and vitiated the de-
ductions of the distinguished chemist. The copy of the prize
essay sent to Liebig was accompanied by a note in which Mole-
schott, while venturing to criticise his views, expressed the warm-
est admiration and enthusiasm for his personal character and
scientific achievement. Liebig replied, thanking him for the es-
say, and added : " So far from being offended by opposition, I de-
sire it, since it serves to separate the grain from the chaff' ; and I
have all the more reason to be satisfied when this is done, as in
your case, in a clever and gentlemanly manner.''

On January 22, 1845, Moleschott passed his examination, and
was promoted to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, receiving the
first rank. But in order to practice his profession in Holland it
was necessary to have a certificate of proficiency also from a
Dutch university. For this purpose he went to Leyden, where
he passed the so-called colloquium dodum, which consisted in a
pleasant conversation with professors of the medical faculty —
Broers, Pruys van der Hoeven, and Suringar — on the endemic
diseases of Holland. He then established himself in Utrecht.

In connection with Donders and a Jewish physician. Van Deen
(afterward professor in the University of Groningen), Moleschott
founded a scientific journal for the publication of the latest re-
searches made by Hollanders in anatomy and physiology, to which
Mulder, Harting, Jansen, Van den Broek, Kees Verloren, Eduard
von Baumhauer, and others sent valuable contributions. Notwith-
standing the congeniality of many of his associations and his inter-
est in these investigations, he was not contented with his life and

SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT. 401

prospects in Utrecht. One day a Protestant clergyman paid him
a visit and, after speaking in flattering terms of his professional
ability and success, expressed regret that Moleschott did not at-
tend church, and promised, on this condition, to recommend him
to the members of the congregation. Moleschott thanked him
for his good opinion and kind intention, but positively declined
to pretend to worship God in the service of Mammon.

MoleschotVs predilection for scientific research became more
and more a passion to him. He determined henceforth to make a
specialty of the study and teaching of biology in the broadest
sense of the term as the science of life, and for this purpose habili-
tated as Privatdocent in his alma mater, the University of Heidel-
berg. No sooner was his intention made known than he was
offered the position of Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence in the
University of Utrecht, which, however, had no attractions for him.
The subject chosen for his first course of lectures at Heidel-
berg in the summer of 1847 was physiological chemistry, and,
although his audience was small, it comprised a number of stu-
dents who afterward became scientists of distinction. As the fees
for lectures furnished only a scanty source of revenue, he was
compelled to keep up a limited medical practice and to devote
himself earnestly to literary work. One of his first tasks of this
kind was a thorough revision of the volume on foods in Prof.
Tiedemann's elaborately planned but unfortunately never com-
pleted Manual of Human Physiology, which he undertook at the
request of the venerable author.

On March 14, 1849, Moleschott married Sophie Strecker, the
eldest daughter of a prominent citizen of Mayence, who entered
heartily and intelligently into her husband's special studies and
proved to be an efficient helpmate in catching and preparing frogs
for experimental purposes, and aiding him in his microscopical
observations.

In a course of lectures on the blood and its constitution, espe-
cially as to the effects of different kinds of food upon the relation
>f the white to the red corpuscles, Moleschott was assisted by
)ven students, who volunteered to undergo the necessary experi-
lents. They came in the morning without having eaten any-
ling and then partook of the prescribed diet, whose nutritive
lualities were to be tested by an analysis of the blood. If eggs
md other albuminous fare, roast meats, and peas were served, all
'■as well ; but if the meal consisted merely of potatoes and apple
Luce, the youthful votaries of science, after their work was done,
)turned to their homes with ravenous appetites and pillaged cup-
)ards and kitchens, so that the cooks in their respective families
3gan to gossip about the queer sort of hospitality shown by that
•r. Moleschott, who invited the young men to dine with him and

TOL. XLIX. — 33

402 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

insisted that they should come with empty stomachs, and then
sent them home as hungry as wolves. About this time he also
succeeded in demonstrating that frogs exhale, more carbonic acid
in the light than in the dark, thus proving that light accelerates
the processes of assimilation in animal organisms, and that, too,
independently of the temperature of the environment or the
motion of the animal.

Meanwhile he had prepared and published his LeJire der
Nahrungsmittel (Erlangen : Enke, 1850). This work, of less than
two hundred and fifty pages, written "fur das Volk," and admira-
bly adapted to convey popular information concerning the diges-
tive qualities and nutritive properties of common articles of food,
was favorably received, and in a few years passed through three
editions. It presented in a clear and concise manner the results
of researches embodied in his Physiologie der Nahrungsmittel,
issued a few months earlier and intended for physicians and nat-
uralists, and was translated into Dutch, English, French, Italian,
Spanish, and Russian. It is divided into three principal parts,
the first of which treats of the general metamorphosis of matter
in living organisms, the origin and formation of the blood and of
the solids in the human body, the processes of assimilation, segre-
gation, and excretion as the conditions of growth, and the physio-
logical nature of hunger and thirst as sensations which inform
the brain through the medium of the nerves that the blood is
being impoverished. In the second part he shows how this impov-
erishment is checked and the waste repaired by nutriment, of
which the various kinds — meat, eggs, bread, cake, peas, beans, len-
tils, potatoes, beets, cabbage, and other vegetables, and different
sorts of fruit — are discussed as to their alimentary functions and
value. We then have a chapter on drinks — water, milk, tea, cof-
fee, chocolate, beer, wine, and brandy — and another on spices, or
rather on condiments, in which are included not only salt, pep-
per, mustard, ginger, and other spices, but also butter, olive oil,
vinegar, sugar, and cheese. In the third part there are rules of
diet in their application to man as a not strictly omnivorous, but
largely multivorous microcosm, with remarks on breakfast, din-
ner, and supper, nutriment for infancy, youth, middle life, and
old age, for women, workmen, artists, scholars, and other persons
of sedentary habits, and the different sorts of food suitable for
summer and winter. All these points are discussed in a series of
short sections with a perspicacity and perspicuity and power of
condensation rarely combined in scientific treatises. This feature
of the work was especially praised by Alexander von Humboldt.

Perhaps even a greater sensation than by the book itself was
made by a long review of it in a Leipsic weekly journal (Blatter
fur literarische Unterhaltung, November 9, 1850), by Ludwig

SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT. 403

Feuerbach, who s-umraed up its teachings in the pithy jjhrase,
"Der Menscli ist was er isst" ("Man is what he eats'')- A simi-
lar utterance is that with which Moleschott closes the chapter
on the nutritive properties of leguminous plants : " Oline Phos-
phor, kein Gedanke " (" Without phosphorus no thought ").

Moleschott's book had a socialistic as well as a scientific
character, although this feature was hardly recognized by his
contemporaries and critics. It indicated the direction which
European legislation is now taking to solve the social question,
namely, through the stomach, by making better and surer pro-
vision for the present and future wants of the working classes.

About eighteen months later Moleschott published his Physi-
ologie des Stoffivechsels in Pflanzen und Thieren (Erlangen:
Enke, 1851), of which Humboldt, in a letter dated November 30,
1851, expressed his warm appreciation and hearty indorsement.
This work, however, was only preliminary to another of wider
scope, entitled Der Kreislauf des Lehens : Physiologische Ant-
worten auf Liehig's chemische Brief e (Mainz : Zabern, 1852 ; fifth
edition, 1887), consisting of a series of twenty letters on revelation
and natural law, with strictures on Liebig's confusion of these con-
ceptions, the sources of human knowledge, the eternity of matter,
its gradual evolution, constant circulation, and endless transforma-
tions in the growth, decay, and renewal of animal and vegetable
life ; force as an essential and inseparable quality of matter, espe-
^cially as regards the functions of the brain in their relations to the
faculty of thought and the freedom of the will, and kindred topics.*
In the practical application of his theories Moleschott animad-
'•erted on the prevailing custom of burying the dead in permanent
cemeteries, where their bodies decay with no advantage, and often
^ith serious injury, to the living. " If every place of burial," he
lys, " after having been used a year, should be exchanged for a
lew one, it would become in the course of six or ten years a most
fertile field which would do more honor to the dead than mounds
md monuments." But, he adds, it would be still better if we
50uld return to the ancient custom of burning the dead, which he
leclares to be unquestionably more practical as well as more poet-
ical. By this process the air would be made richer in carbonic
;id and ammonia, and the ashes, which contain the elements of
lew crops of cereals for the nurture of man and beast, would
transform our barren heaths into luxuriant plains. At present,
le adds, we are acting like the stupid and slothful servant who
f "buried his one talent in the earth instead of wisely investing it so
as to gain another.

* The latest editions of Moleschott's works, his Kleine Schriften (Minor Essays), Vor-
trdge (Addresses), etc., are now published by Emil Roth in Giessen.

404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

These views, while commending themselves to naturalists like
Humboldt, Bonders, Van Deen, Emil Rossmassler, Otto Ule, and
Hermann Burmeister, and scholars like Strauss and Renan, gave
great offense not only to the orthodox clergy but also to conserva-
tives of every sort, to whom the cremation of the human body
seemed as sacrilegious as its dissection did to the contemporaries
of Vesalius three centuries before. As the result of a solemn con-
clave held by the senate of the Heidelberg University, the rector
of that institution warned Moleschott that, unless he ceased to
corrupt youth by his "immoral" and "frivolous" teachings, the
venia docendi, or right to lecture, would be revoked. The sole
fitting answer to such an ill-advised and impertinent admonition
was given at once by Moleschott, who wrote to the Baden minis-
try severing his connection with a university in which liberty of
instruction existed only in name. This decisive step was evidently
an unpleasant surprise to those who had provoked it, and thereby
raised a storm of indignation in scientific circles and in the press
which they were wholly unprepared to meet. The young men
who had just attended MoleschotVs courses of lectures on anthro-
pology and organology published with their several signatures an
address to the ministry, in which they vigorously repelled these
accusations and vindicated Moleschott's character as a man and
teacher. In their daily intercourse with him they declared that
they had never detected the slightest justification of the charges
brought against him. In the communication of the results of his
scientific researches there was not the faintest trace of the spirit
of proselytism, but every one was left free to form an independent
judgment in accordance with the facts.

Although no longer an academical teacher, Moleschott contin-
ued to reside in Heidelberg, working in his private laboratory, to
which he also freely admitted all who wished to make experiments
under his direction, and keeping his head financially above water
by literary labor. Thanks to his calumniators, public attention
was called to his books, and the sale of them greatly increased.
He also founded a scientific journal entitled Untersuchungen zur
Naturlehre des Mensclien und der Thiere, which began to appear in
1855 at irregular intervals, and numbered among its contributors
some of the most distinguished European men of science. Mole-
schott edited the first fifteen volumes of this periodical, or year-
book, as it might more properly be called ; since 1892 it has been
continued by G. Colasanti and S. Fesbini (Giessen : Emil Roth). He
also published an exceedingly interesting monograph, Georg For-
ster, der Naturforscher des Volhs, issued November 26, 1854, on the
hundredth anniversary of the birth of this most remarkable man.

In the spring of 1856 Moleschott was appointed to the chair of
Physiology in the University of Zurich as the successor of Karl

SKETCH OF JACOB MOLESCHOTT. 405

Liidwig, who had been called to Vienna. On June 21st of the same
year he delivered his introductory lecture, the subject of which
was Light and Life. It was printed as a pamphlet, which went
through three editions. On his way to the lecture room he met
the rector of the university, Hermann Kochly, who was not only
an acute philologist but also something of a wag, and who assured
him that the peasants, led by their pastors and armed with clubs,
were coming down the lake to put a stop to such godless proceed-
ings, just as a dozen years before they had overthrown the govern-
ment that ventured to offer a professorship to David Strauss.

At that time the society of Zurich was uncommonly attractive,
owing in a great measure to the presence of many political refu-
gees from France, Germany, and Italy, whom the reaction which
followed the Revolution of 1848 had driven into exile. Very pleas-
ant, too, and stimulating were his associations with G. H. Lewes
and George Eliot, who came to Zurich on purpose to visit him ;
with Varnhagen von Ense, Gottfried Keller, Princess Wittgen-
stein, Countess d'Agoult, and especially the geologist Eduard
Desor, at whose country seat in the Jura, Combe- Varin, a select
circle of congenial spirits met from time to time for the inter-
change of thought and the discussion of scientific questions.
Among those who were wont to assemble under Desor's hospi-
table roof besides Moleschott may be mentioned Carl Vogt, Charles
Martin, Jacob Venedey, Liebig, Schonbein (the discoverer of gun-
cotton). Dr. Hans Kiichler (a German Catholic parson), and Theo-
dore Parker, who spent the summer of 1859 in the Alps for the
benefit of his rapidly failing health. At these meetings papers
were read, and Moleschott speaks in the highest terms of one by
Parker, entitled A Bumblebee's Thoughts on the Plan and Pur-
pose of Creation, an exceedingly acute and amusing persiflage of
the anthropocentric theory of the universe. These essays form
the contents of Desor's Album of Combe- Varin, a unique memo-
rial volume of about three hundred pages. Moleschott and Parker
often differed in their ideas, but entertained the warmest regard
for each other as earnest and honest seekers after truth. Curi-
ously enough, a peculiarly strong attachment sprang up between
Parker and Kiichler, the radical Unitarian and the German Cath-
olic, who used to sit for hours in conversation under an evergreen
tree, a fit symbol of their lasting friendship and now known as
" Parker's Fir." *

* Moleschott's charming autobiography, Fur meine Freunde (Giessen: Emil Roth, 1894,
pp. 326), gives a pleasant account of the days spent with Desor and his illustrious guests at
Combe-Varin. Indeed, these personal reminiscences are most delightful reading, and it is
to be regretted that they have remained a fragment extending only to 1860, and thus com-
prising but a little more than one half of his life. The life at Combe-Varin is also de-
scribed in Alfred Altherr's Theodor Parker, in seinem Leben und Werken (St. Gallen :

4o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the autumn of 1861 Moleschott was called by Cavour to the
chair of Physiology in the University of Turin. In 1876 he was
made senator of the kingdom of Italy, and in 1879 appointed to a
professorship in the newly organized University of Rome, where
he united with his academical duties and senatorial functions an
extensive practice as a physician. There he died. May 20, 1893 ;
and, although more than threescore years and ten, he was con-
stitutionally so robust that his death may be said to have been
premature. Like his father, he fell a victim to overwork and
exposure in the conscientious exercise of his profession. During
the last twenty years of his life he devoted himself also with laud-
able zeal and marked success to the land of his adoption in the
promotion of education and the sanitary improvement of the
Italian capital and other cities of the realm.

Moleschott was not only an able and painstaking specialist
but also a man of broad culture, an excellent musician, a connois-
seur in art, and a keen observer and intelligent critic of all the
social, political, philosophical, and theological movements of the
age. Whatever concerned the progress of knowledge and the
perfection of humanity enlisted his sympathies and secured his
support. He was a good linguist, and wrote and spoke French,
Italian, and German with rare correctness and facility. The
greater part of his works were composed originally in German,
which he preferred even to Dutch, his mother tongue, as a me-
dium of literary and scientific communication ; but, unlike most
German authors, his style is wonderfully clear and succinct, and
wholly free from the awkward involutions into which the peculiar
genius of the language, its very vitality and plasticity, are apt to
tempt the unwary scribe. Moleschott was saved from this fatality
by his artistic sense of proportion. In his treatment of a subject
he had the rare gift of knowing what to put in, what to leave out,
and when to stop. He was a " full " man, in the Baconian use of
the term, but was mentally too well poised to slop over. He had
inherited a hasty temper, but had learned in early life to keep it
under control, and this natural sensitiveness under proper disci-
pline rendered him a most charming and sympathetic companion
in his intercourse with his family and his friends. Above all, he
was thoroughly honest and sincere, and never permitted personal
feeling to warp his judgment ; in his controversies and criticisms
he was generous and just, welcomed the truth from every source,
and did not show the slightest disposition to ignore or depreciate
the merits and achievements of an adversary.

Wirth, 1894, ix, pp. 404), The author is the pastor of St. Leonhard's Church in Bale.
We may add that photographs of Moleschott, of a cabinet size, may be procured from his
publisher, Emil Roth, in Giessen, for one mark, or twenty-five cents.

M.

CORRESP ONDENCE,

407

®0rrje5p0txxXienx:je,

CHARACTER-BUILDING AND THE
ENVIRONMENT.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : Your editorial eiftitled Necessity, in
the April number of the Popular Sci-
ence Monthly, attracted my attention, and as
a general statement this much of your con-
clusion commands my approval : " In every
well-balanced mind the thought of necessity
is habitually present, calling forth efforts of
self- restraint which tend to conserve and
consolidate the individual's happiness and
well-being. We contemplate, therefore, a
constant recognition of necessity, but a rec-
ognition which enables a man to meet it on
ground more or less of his own choosing."

Your more special conclusion, however,
does not appeal to my reason as having any
great value as a practical proposition. I
refer to the follovring : " The problem is to
make more sound individuals; and that
problem does not seem to be in its nature
insoluble — therein differing from some that
are set by social reformers." The value of
this proposition depends wholly upon the
meaning of the term "sound individuals."
If in defining this expression you include as
an essential characteristic of " sound indi-
viduals " a knowledge of the meaning and
application of the law of equal freedom, as
taught by Herbert Spencer, your proposition
is of unquestionable validity ; although it
would still be of no great practical value
without pointing out the specific manner of
making individuals sound relative to the
particular necessity they have to face ; the
necessity which you appear to have had in
mind in this case being their social environ-
ment.

You say : " Socialist writers do not appear
to be at all of this way of thinking. They
have a noble zeal for remedying evils, but
they do not seem to allow anything for the
conditions which Nature itself imposes."
This is a blunder for which defenders of our
present semi-socialistic society are equally
responsible. There is no more imperative
and unchangeable condition imposed by Na-
ture than the law of rent. Henry George
has shcnrn, in Progress and Poverty, that
private appropriation of rent is the world-
wide cause of involuntary poverty. His
book has been before mankind nearly twenty
years, and there is not to-day a review of it
extant worthy of being classed under the
head of scientific investigation and criticism.
All attempt at criticism of Progress and
Poverty as a whole is mere pettifogging.

Rent is a social product. The exclusive
possession of land is a special privilege

granted by society. Society should realize
one hundred cents on a dollar for its re-
sources. Instead of so doing, it squanders
them, gives them away. In throwing away
its resources Government pursues a course"
that would bankrupt any private business.
But, unlike private individuals, it has the
power to recoup its losses by force, by prey-
ing upon individuals — taking their property
without giving anything in return. In so
doing it violates all the laws of equity and
propriety fully recognized in private trans-
actions. Men in dealing with each other
give value received, or at least make a pre-
tense of so doing. Government, however,
does not even make the pretense, but takes
our personal property by force without even
claiming that the tax is in proportion to
benefits conferred.

But this is the will of the ignorant ma-
jority, also of pretentious scientists and
teachers of morals. My first prescription
for making " sound individuals " is to teach
them the good old maxim, " Equal rights to
all, special privileges to none," and then to
show them the application of this principle
to society's administration of the land.

Your criticism of socialism, and any
scheme whereby employers would be com-
pelled to hire the unemployed, is valid.
Single taiers, however, ask only that the
unemployed have equal access to natural op-
portunities. Granted that those having
more capital can make better use of natural
opportunities, but where does capital itself
come from ? With equal access to the land,
whence capital is derived, men would quick-
ly employ themselves, and would soon pro-
vide themselves with capital ; if they did
not, they could make no reasonable com-
plaint.

You say : " The more, for our own part,
we look into these questions, the more we
are driven back to the conviction that the
way out which is so much desired lies in the
improvement of individual character, with
consequent mcrease of individual power and
better adaptation to surrounding conditions.
As it is, we find that the well-developed in-
dividualities can take care of themselves
pretty well ; they have the power of adapt-
ing themselves to their surroimdings, and
taking so useful a part in the world's work
that, even under the much-abused capital-
istic system, they thrive very well."

When men arrive upon this earth, as
millions do, and find it owned and their right
to equal access to it denied, they are unde-
niably at about as great a disadvantage as it
is possible to conceive ; and it is worse than
mockery to tell them that "the way out

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which is BO much desired lies in the im-
provement of individual character, with con-
sequent increase of individual power and
better adaptation to surrounding conditions."
The thing to tell them is to change the sur-
rounding conditions so as to remove the disad-
vcmiage. It is true that a small percentage
of well- developed individualities, especially
if they manage to get possession of some of
the special privileges created by law, thrive
very well ; but this percentage is so small as
to be hardly worth considering when study-
ing the welfare of the human race.

You advocate the doctrine of contentment.
You would say that an engineer, for example,
obtaining for his services five thousand dol-
lars per annum, was thriving very well.
Perhaps another person, utterly regardless
of his natural individual power, is in posses-
sion of an income of one hundred thousand
dollars per annum, derived solely from spe-
cial legal privileges, without rendering any
service to society. The latter represents a
class who are parasites upon the former.
The question is, How much better would the
engineer thrive if the legal privileges support-
ing the parasite class were abolished? An-
other question suggests itself. Suppose a
large number of the individuals of low pro-
ductive power should follow your advice and
become, for example, competent engineers,
how well then would good engineers thrive ?
Would not competition immediately bring
down the incomes of engineers ? The privi-
leged classes would simply have better edu-
cated servantSj and would get them for less

pay.

You sny : " We are far from saying that
there is not a vast amount of hardship in the
world, and much of it of a kind which in no
way benefits those who have to endure it, as,
of course, some hardship undoubtedly does.
But we want to see a way out that will not
cut the nerves of industry and make self-
reliance a forgotten virtue. We want to see
a way out that will not lessen the sense of
individual responsibility or make a man less
a man. Show us such a way, and we shall

gladly lend every effort in our power toward
its realization."

The writer is very glad indeed to feel
that he can give you credit for being sincere,
and that your attitude toward the single-tax
movement results from a misconception of
it, notwithstanding the immense amount of
circumstantial evidence pointing to the so-
called " conspiracy of silence " of the press,
due to its subjection to the privileged classes.
Believing as I do that you greatly miscon-
ceive the single-tax proposition, I can not
blame you for not offering its accredited
representatives a full hearing in your con-
servative journal. In the interest of our
movement and accepting your invitation,
"Show us such a way," etc. I offer the
services of myself and others in the move-
ment to endeavor by private and confidential
correspondence, or interviews if you prefer,
to try to remove from your mind what we
very plainly see are gross misapprehensions
of our principles and aims. As a scientist
you can hardly do less than give the subject
this much consideration. As a journalist,
however, we can not expect you to admit
anything that you regard as visionary quack-
ery. It is only in the hope that we may so
far remove your misconceptions that you
will see the propriety of admitting fair pres-
entations of the single-tax proposition in
your journal that I am writing you.

I am aware that very many of our advo-
cates mix with their arguments a great deal
of religious dogma and superstition and crude
notions of " natural rights," etc. The writer,
however, claims to be wholly free from these
ideas and superstitions, and holds that they
are entirely superfluous in presenting the
single-tax proposition. I ask only for pure
scientific treatment. If the single-tax doc-
trine can not be logically deduced from the
accepted laws of political economy and ethics,
or if it can be shown that the conclusions of
those sciences invalidate the single-tax prop-
osition, the writer stands ready to abandon
it. Yours, etc., L. G. Bostedo.

Chicago, April 12, 1896.

gilitor'B ^aMje*

SUMMER HOLIDAYS.

THE time is at hand for the an-
nual migration from the city
to the country or the seaside of all
vrhose means enable them to allow
themselves that pleasure. There is
doubtless something more than fash-
ion in the movement, for fashion is

arbitrary and changeful, while the
habit we speak of has been steadily
growing in generality for the last
half century or more. If we seek for
the philosophy of it we may reason-
ably regard it as the expression of a
periodical craving of human beings
for closer contact with Nature than

EDITOR'S TABLE.

409

the conditions of city life permit.
The works of man, the monuments
of civilization, in the end oppress us,
and wo turn for refreshment and ex-
pansion to the wider landscapes, the
purer air, the freer life of regions as
yet comparatively untamed. This is
the most satisfactory view to take of
the matter, and happily it is one of
wide application . With many, how-
ever, there is no desire for an escape
from the conventionalities of life,
and no hunger for a reposeful con-
templation of the beauties and gran-
deurs of Nature. The excitements
of society may jade but do not sa-
tiate them, and, in their flight from
the city to the seaside or mountain
resort or to foreign lands, what they
seek is still the excitement of society
in new forms and under new condi-
tions. With such we have no con-
cern; no words of ours would be
likely to reach the circles in which
they move, nor, if they did, would
they be in the least likely to secure
a moment's attention.

Much benefit, in our opinion, is
to be had from summer holidays if
rightly used, and it can not but be a
matter of regret to every sympathetic
man and woman that so large a body
(Of social toilers should be condemned
[to year- long imprisonment in the
rcities, varied only by such brief ex-
(Cursions to outlying points as the
present improved conditions of local
transit may place within their reach.
The maximum of benefit from a holi-
day comes only to one wbo has earned
it by faithful work. If, with mind
and heart free, such a one can al-
low himself a few weeks' residence
:in some healthful spot where the
face of Nature is beautiful with field
and forest, with hillside and running
■water, he is a man to be envied. It
is not inactivity of mind or body that
a healthy man will desire on such
occasions— inactivity is only for the
exhausted — it is new occupation for

mind and body combined with a de-
lightful sense of not being in a hurry.
The wise man cast amid natural scen-
ery and conditions will seek in some
way to enlarge his knowledge of and
sympathy wdth Nature, not in the
spirit of scientific research, but rather
in that of loving contemplation. It
is a time for increasing on^'s famil-
iarity with natural objects, for learn-
ing a little more by direct observation
of leaf and tree, of bird and insect, of
cloud and mountain, for becoming
more sensitive to forms of beauty
and the changing harmonies of the
visible world, for the unsealing of the
eyes and the unstopping of the ears
and the enlargement of the heart.
From such, intercourse with Nature,
coupled with wholesome modes of
life, there can not fail to flow much
benefit, mental, moral, and physical.
The mind gains in elasticity and ap-
prehensiveness, the spirit in serenity,
the body in tone and vigor, and sum-
mer holidays so spent are likely to
prove the most fruitful part of the
whole year.

It is the custom with some when
they leave the city to lay in a stock
of summer reading consisting chiefly
of the "lightest" novels. This sim-
ply means that they still crave ex-
citement, and must find it in ever-
renewed pictures, however lazily
gazed at, of the life of society— the
life they have (in theory) left behind
them. It seems to us that the books
to take to the country, if we take any,
are not new ones but old ones — those
we have read before, but which still
have their message and their charm,
classics whose beauties we have not
exhausted, and perhaps are not like-
ly to exhaust, which recall old asso-
ciations and help us to calmer and
broader views of life. We lay down
no rule for others; we merely sug-
gest that there is more rest for the
mind and spirit in going over old
paths than in striking into new

4IO

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ones. The new writers give us the
last refinements and developments
of thought, the latest paradoxes, and
all that is up to date in style and ex-
pression ; the old ones are better in-
terpreters of primal Nature, and of
what is broad and fundamental in
humanity. In these pauses of life
we should try to take to heart the les-
son that Wordsworth teaches in his
celebrated s'onnet:

The world is too much with us ; late and soon.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ;

and which a later poet echoes when
he exclaims:

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give ;

Calm, calm me more, nor let me die
Before I have begun to live 1

The Eoman satirist Persius gives this
pithy advice: "Dwell with yourself,
and find out how little you really re-
quire." In our holidays it would be
well, instead of pampering ourselves,
to try to reduce life to its simplest,
or at least to comparatively simple,
elements. Thus can we best renew
and rejuvenate our spirits, and bring
ourselves to feel how little the joy of
life depends upon the luxuries and
artificialities of advanced civilization.
These are old ideas and have been
much better expressed by many writ-
ers of note ; but we are all apt to for-
get the good counsels we receive,
and a timely reminder can do no
harm. Particularly in a civilization
so restless as ours and so avid of
novelty, is a period of rest far from
the hurry and turmoil of the city
a matter of necessity. Otherwise
what do we tend to become ? — mere
creatures of the moment, rushing
from task to task or from amuse-
ment to amusement, hurriedly scan-
ning the headlines of our papers or
the illustrations of our magazines,
constantly absorbed in the actuali-
ties and trivialities of life, and con-
stantly tending toward a soulless

materialism in thought and senti-
ment. If our civilization, however,
is to count for anything serious in
the great chain of human history,
we must get more soul into it — we
must strive to rise above the routine
and mere mechanics of existence.
We must find out and take the truth
home to our hearts, that life is some-
thing more than meat, that the body
is of more dignity than its raiment,
and that the soul of man is destined
for other and higher uses than sim-
ply to reflect the shows of the pass-
ing moment. Let us in our holi-
days, if we are so fortunate as to
have any, try to baptize ourselves
anew in the fresh fountains of natu-
ral beauty which almost every coun-
tryside affords, let us attune our-
selves to the harmonies of Nature,
let us get sight of our own souls,
"our true deep-buried selves, being
one with which," as one whom we
all know has finely said, " we are
one with the whole world."

MB. SPENCER AND THE METRIC
SYSTEM A GAIN.

Mr. Herbert Spencer is not one
of those philosophers who think it a
duty to hold severely and loftily
aloof from practical and everyday
questions. He is keenly interested
in the daily life of the people in the
^videst sense of the word; and we
may attribute to that fact the zeal he
has recently displayed in connec-
tion with the proposition to make
a radical change in the system of
weights and measures now and for
many generations established in
England. Since we last referred to
this subject Mr. Spencer has ad-
dressed two further communications
to the London Times iu relation
thereto. The second of these we
quote entire, as being a brief yet
comprehensive statement, from the
writer's standpoint, of the whole
question.

EDITOR'S TABLE,

411

THE METRIC SYSTEM.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sir : Arguments and expressions of opin-
ion may be continued without end. Against
those of Lord Kelvey and Dr. Stoney 1 will
simply set some facts already stated, joined
with one other.

1. Always mankind had the decimal sys-
tem at their finger ends and used it for count-
ing. In the course of civilization they de-
parted from it in their systems of weights,
measures, and values ; gradually adopting
instead sets of easy aliquot divisions, and es-
pecially duodecimal divisions.

2. For half a century after the metric sys-
tem had been legally established the French
did not discover its convenience. The alleged
discovery of its convenience went along with
the discovery that they would be punished if
they did not use it.

3. In the United States, where the decimal
division of money is used, it has been de-
parted from in the center of most active busi-
ness, the Stock Exchange, and a system of
easy aliquot divisions employed in its place.

4. The additional fact not yet named is
sufficiently striking. The ancient wise men
of the East and the modem workingmen of
the West have agreed upon the importance of
great divisibility in numerical groups. The
Chaldean priests, to whom we owe so much,
doubtless swayed in part by their astronom-
ical arrangements, adopted the sexagesimal
system of numeration, which at the same
time facilitates in a special manner the divi-
sion into aliquot parts. For 60 may be di-
vided by ten different numbers— 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
10, 12, 15, 20, 30. From this significant fact
turn now to the fact presented in our ordinary
foot rule. Each of its 12 inches is halved and
rehalved, giving halves, quarters, and ei>rhths.
And then if we consider the subdivided foot
as a whole, it gives us ten sots of aliquot
parts. Beyond its 12ths the divisions yield
i, i, *, i, i (11 inch), ^ (I inch), ,V (i inch),
■h (I inch), and i^ (i inch). And this ordi-
nary mode of dividing the foot rule results
from the experience of centuries ; for build-
ers, carpenters, and mechanics, always buying
foot rules which best serve their needs,
have gradually established the most useful
set of divisions. Yet now, though the early
men of science and the modern men of prac-
tice are at one in recognizing the impoitance
of great divisibility, it is proposed to estab-
lish a form of measure characterized by rela-
tive indivisibility. 1 am, etc.,

YouB Correspondent.
Aprtt soth.

We must say that the ar^ments
adduced by Mr. Spencer appear to
us of much weight. On the whole,
it would ieem more probable that an
approximately perfect system of
weights and measures should be
evolved in the course of age-long
practice, than that it spring fully
developed from the brain of any
savant or body of savants. Weigh-
ing and measuring make up and
have always made up, in one form
or another, a considerable portion of
the business of every day; and men
naturally take to those modes of
measurement and calculation which
offer the greatest facilities for the
work to be done. Their minds have
naturally moved in the lines of least
resistance, and the methods sanc-
tioned by the history of the race ex-
press this mental tendency. It is
therefore greatly to be desired that
no change may be made either in
England or in this country looking
to a disuse of old established and pop-
ular methods without a very thor-
ough and earnest consideration of the
effects likely to be produced on the
life of the people. The savants can
follow what methods they find most
suitable for the very exact researches
and determinations which they are
called upon to make; but they should
be very careful how they call upon
the people to abandon methods and
instruments which for everyday pur-
poses answer all their needs, while
affording aids to their mental opera-
tions which it is extremely doubtful
whether the arbitrary system it is
sought to introduce can ever supply.

AN ALLEOET) COySPIBACT OF
SILENCE.

We publish elsewhere a letter by
Mr. L. G. Bostedo, Corresponding
Secretary of the Chicago Single-Tax
Club, commenting on a brief article
published in these columns last
month under the title of "Neces-

412

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sity." The writer evidently thinks
that to talk as we did of making-
" sound individuals " without pos-
tulating, as a necessary condition
thereto, the general adoption of cur-
rent theories in regard to the nation-
alization of the land, is useless. We
are not, however, quite of his opin-
ion on this point. We are not sure
that there would be a larger propor-
tion of sound individuals if the land
were nationalized than there is at
present. It is easy to say that an
era of general prosperity and well-
being would set in if these theories
prevailed; but the thesis has never
been proved, and the world is by no
means persuaded that it is true. Fif-
teen years ago the doctrine excited
much more interest than it does to-
day, and was fervently believed in
by many who now have either aban-
doned it altogether, or else have
come to attach only a secondary im-
portance to it. Mr. Bostedo believes
that there is a " conspiracy of si-
lence" on the subject in the press.
If there is, we are not aware of it;
we have certainly never joined the
conspiracy. What seems to us to be
the case is that the public has got
tired of a question which was very
widely discussed some years ago, but
without any very satisfactory result.
Our correspondent speaks of this
journal as " conservative. " We trust
we are conservative in a right sense,
and liberal in a right sense also. We
believe that the principles on which
human well-being mainly depends
are very old; but we desire at the
same time to see the latest results
of human thought applied to the
improvement of the general con-

dition of mankind. The question
whether land should be individually
appropriated is manifestly one into
which we can not enter to-day;
moreover, it is not one which is like-
ly to be settled to every one's satis-
faction at any early date. Mean-
time we think it right to point out,
as we did in the article under consid-
eration, that character and general
fitness for the work of the world
have much, if not everything, to do
with happiness and success in life.
We all know "sound individuals"
when we see them; and we know
that they spring from almost every
condition of life. A very sound in-
dividual, who had endured consider-
able hardships in his youth, became
President of this nation some thirty-
five years ago. We want more of
that kind, and we should not wait to
get the land laws fixed or unfixed
before doing what may presently be
in our power toward increasing their
number through such agencies as
education, free and temperate discus-
sion, and righteous govei*nment.

One thing pleases us in Mr. Bos-
tedo's letter, and that is his declara-
tion that he does not, like very many
of the advocates of the single tax,
mix up with his arguments '' a great
deal of religious dogma and super-
stition and crude notions of natural
rights, etc." Perhaps the large ex-
tent to which single-tax writers have
resorted to just such faulty modes of
reasoning in the past has something
to do with the alleged "conspiracy
of silence." That kind of thing has
a very silencing effect on people who
wish to keep their wits clear and
their tempers sweet.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 413

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Under tlie able editorship of Sir Henry E. Roscoe the Century Science
series continues to afford popular biographies of the leading European
scientists of the nineteenth centuiy, written by those who are to-day filling
the places of their departed masters.* The life of Lyell was a steady and
comfortable progress in knowledge and fame. He did not have congenital
poverty or other serious obstacle to contend with, and his talents were high
enough and his opportunities broad enough to insure his efforts a rich
reward. The English universities had little of science to give in the second
decade of the present century, so that Lyell's training in geology was
picked up from outside sources in vacations and during his few years of
not very arduous practice of the law. Prof. Bonney gives us a vivid sense
of the paralyzing influence which was still exerted upon geology and all
other branches of science in Lyell's early life by the supposed necessity for
making all discoveries in the realm of Nature conform to the language of
the Scriptures. Lyell was always in the van of the advanced thinkers in his
chosen field, and apparently maintained this position without open rupture
with the theologians. In describing his epoch-making work, the Principles
of Geology, Prof. Bonney says, "It proved the writer to be not only a
careful observer and a reasoner of exceptional inductive power, but also a
man of general culture and a master of his mother tongue." Doubtless his
literary ability joined with a happy endowment of tact enabled him to con-
tribute greatly to the scientific revolution which culminated in Darwin,
without being pilloried as Darwin was. Most of the events of Lyell's life
are given in chronological order, but the author departs from this plan to
give in one chapter a connected history of the eleven editions of the Prin-
ciples that appeared in Lyell's lifetime. That he was a scientist of a high
order is shown by the fact that he was able to change his opinion on an
important question late in life, namely, the origin of species, when such
evidence as Darwin presented was brought to bear upon it. This conduct
caused Darwin to write, "Considering his age, his former views, and posi-
tion in society, I think his action has been heroic"; and Prof. Bonney
estimates as perhaps a greater service than any of his contributions to
knowledge the constant readiness of Lyell to learn from others, and the
manifestation of a judicial mind raised far above all partisanship and pride
of opinion.

It needs but a glance at the finely cut features and long, high-vaulted
cranium represented in the portrait of James Clerk Maxwell to show that
his biographer has to record the life and labors of a genius. No one but a
genius could have united Maxwell's mathematical penetration with his
poetical ability, and the fact that his intellect was not well rounded on all
sides is also characteristic of genius. His chief defects were a weakness in
analysis and an inability to bring his teaching down to the level of the

♦ Charlea Lyell and Modern Geology. By Prof. T. G. Bonney. Pp. 224, 12mo.— James Clerk
Maxwell and Modern Physics. By R. T. Glazebrook, P. R. S. Pp. 224, 12mo. London : Cassell &
Co., Ltd. New York : Macmillan & Co. Price, $1.25 each.

41+ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ordiDary student. Mr. Glazehrogk tells the story of Maxwell's life in a
little less than the first half of the book before us, devoting the rest to an
account of his works. The first part is enlivened by a sprinkling of char-
acteristic incidents, while many extracts from his letters and addresses,
together with a few of his verses, help to show the real nature of the man.
His scientific work is grouped under three heads: Color perception, molec-
ular physics, and electrical theories. He made researches experimentally
as well as by mathematical processes, and a spinning top carrying various
colored disks of paper became in his hands a most effective piece of appa-
ratus. His later views on the molecular theory are to be found in the
articles Atom and Diffusion in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but more
important than his achievements in the two foregoing subjects were his
theories as to electricity and magnetism. What these were our author
tells with considerable fullness, giving some history of the subject before
Maxwell, and quoting frequently from Maxwell's papers. A concluding
chapter shows how discoveries made since his death, especially those of
Hertz, have firmly established his views. Throughout the volume the
effort has been constant to give readers with little knowledge of mathe-
matics a realizing sense of the truths of physical science discovered by
Maxwell, but it was impossible to avoid some details which only adepts
will appreciate.

In the two parts of his recent book * Prof. Zahm has performed two
services for Christians, especially Catholics, who are not quite clear as to
w4mt evolution is, and are concerned about the alleged conflict between
this doctrine and religion. He first explains evolution with much fullness
of detail and in an entirely nontechnical manner. He corrects at the out-
set the common error which restricts evolution to Darwinism, although he
states that in this book he will deal especially with evolution in the organic
kingdoms. He finds some rudiments of the theory in the speculations of
the G-reek philosophers, and traces its history down to the present time; he
tells of the fanciful notions concerning fossils and gigantic bones found in
the earth, which were held down to a recent period ; he gives a sketch of
the spontaneous generation controversy ; and in two chapters he presents
the evidences of evolution and the objections that have been urged against
it. Then taking up the alleged confiict, which he everywhere treats as
unreal, he ascribes many of the misunderstandings on this matter to mis-
use of terms, especially the terms " Creation '' and " Nature," which he
undertakes to define in accordance with Catholic theology. Classifying
evolutionists as monists, agnostics, and theists, he discusses in succession
their several standpoints as regards religion. In discussing monism he
deals only with the utterances of Ernst Haeckel, whom he handles without
gloves. He is more moderate with the exponents of agnosticism, although
rating this view as worse than atheism, because the atheist will discuss the
existence of God, while the agnostic denies that there are any data for
such a discussion. He falls into the common error as to the source from
which Huxley obtained the word agnostic, but gives in a footnote a quota-
tion from a writer who evidently knew its real origin. He sees nothing

* Evolution and Dogma. By Rev. J. A. Zahm, C. S. C. Pp. 401, 12mo. Chicago : D. H. McBride
& Co.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 415

hostile to religioQ in theistic evolution, finding its germs even in the writ-
ings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, while he shows that learned doctors
of the Church have defined creation in a way which readily admits the
operation of the evolutionary process. Taking up spontaneous generation
again, he declares that belief in the possibility of this action — provided that
force and matter be always regarded as under Divine guidance — is contrary
to neither faith nor philosophy. It is allowable also to believe that man's
body was derived from an ancestry of the lower animals, though his soul
must be held as ''in the case of each individual, directly and immediately
created by God himself.'' Prof. Zahm expresses himself everywhere clearly,
temperately, and in a readable manner. This is not his first publication on
the relations of science and religion, but it is likely to be his last, as he has
been called since it appeared to honorable duties at Rome, which probably
will not leave him opportunity for further work in this field.

Although giving quite a full and coherent account of his scientific
work, the Life of Romanes * derives its chief value from the insight it
gives into the private life and religious experiences of its subject. For a
book written by his wife and completed just a year after his death this is
entirely natural and commendable, and being thus largely a memorial
tribute of affection it does not challenge the ordinary criticism of the re-
viewer. The first twenty-five years of Mr. Romanes's life are disposed of
in eight pages. Then comes an account of his writing the essay which
won the Burney Prize of 1873. The record of his life-work in biological
investigations begins with researches on the nervous system of the Medusce ;
and continues with his work on pangenesis, animal intelligence, physio-
logical selection, inheritance of acquired characters, and various excursions
on minor matters. The information given on these subjects is contained
mainly in the correspondence which Romanes carried on with Charles
Darwin, Francis Darwin, Thiselton-Dyer, E. B. Poulton, E. Schaefer, and
others, for his wife has endeavored " to let him, especially in matters sci-
entific, speak for himself." In this respect she is somewhat hampered by
the fact that he " lived in almost daily intercourse for parts of many years
with more than one of his most intimate friends. Hence there are no
letters to several people with whom he was in the habit of discussing sci-
entific, philosophic, and theological questions." There are also many
letters relating to his personal affairs, his journeys for recreation or pleas-
ure, and his diversions, of which music, writing poetry, and shooting were
the chief. There is an evident solicitude on the part of Mrs. Romanes to
^show that her husband died in the Christian faith. Early in the volume
ihe describes his period of agnosticism as an " eclipse of faith," and toward
^i'~"the end she devotes much space to his correspondence and his expressions
of favorable views on religious matters. No attempt has been made to
weigh the value of his contributions to science. The volume is illustrated
with a frontispiece portrait and views of two houses in which Mr. Romanes
resided.

* The Life and Letters of George John Romanes. Written and edited by his Wife. Pp. 860, 8vo.
V>iidon, New York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green & Co. Price, $4.

4i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

GENERAL NOTICES.

The author's Fungi : their Nature, Influ-
ence, and Uses, which appeared in 1875 and
passed through several editions, has long
been the standard, and probably one of the
best and most comprehensive works in our
language on the subject. The rapid ad-
vance in knowledge of the life history and
development of these organisms during the
last ten years, and especially the large
scheme of classification carried out by Prof.
Saccardo, have, however, made it essential
that, in order to keep pace with the times, a
guide and introduction should be prepared
for the use of students, which, without super-
seding the volume of 1875 as a popular in-
structor, should treat the subject more after
the manner of a text-book, adapted to the
illustration of recent discoveries, and an ex-
planation of the methods of classification.
The present work * is the result of an effort
to supply this want. The first part of the
book — organography — relates to the general
character and features of the fungi. An at-
tempt is made in the introduction to differ-
entiate them from the other cryptogams,
and particularly from the other thallophytes,
the algfe and the lichens. Then the my-
celium is described, and in the succeeding
chapters the carpophore, or the supporter of
the fructification ; the receptacle, or envelope
of the fructification where there is an en-
velope; the fructification, fertilization, di-
chocarpism, or the existence of two distinct
forms of fructification; saprophytes and
parasites, or fungi that grow on dead and
those that grow on living organisms; and
the constituents of fungi. The second part
is devoted to classification, and begins with
a chapter on fungi in general, after which
the phycomycetes, the higher fungi, the me-
romycetes, and the mycomycetes, and their
subdivisions — naked, spored, puffball, dis-
coid, subterranean, capsular, gaping, conju-
gating, rust, mold, and slime fungi, and the
rest — are described. The third part includes
chapters on the Census of Fungi and their

* Introdaction to the Study of Fungi. By M.
C. Cooke. Pp. 330, 8vo. London : Adam and
Charles Black ; New York : Macmillan & Co.
Price, $3.50.

geographical distribution, and an appendix
on collecting, to all of which are added a
glossary and an index, together with bibli-
ographies of each department.

The sixth edition of M. Schutzcnhergcr^s
standard work on Fermentation * is substan-
tially a new book. It has been brought up
abreast of the present condition of the sci-
ence, which has made so great advances un-
der the impulse given it by the discoveries
of Pasteur. Nothing is required to be said
of the importance of the theory of fermen-
tations in science, and in its innumerable
applications in the industries, agriculture,
hygiene, and medicine. Many of the most
important economical processes are depend-
ent upon the action of ferments. In other
processes the equally important thing is to
prevent or stay it. In the first part of the
book the author treats of the fermentations
brought about by the intervention of an or-
ganized or figured ferment — alcoholic, vis-
cous, lactic, ammoniacal, or butyric — and by
oxidation ; the second part is devoted to fer-
mentations provoked by the soluble products
elaborated by living organisms.

A series of Chemical Experiments has
been prepared by R. P. Williams, author of
two other chemical books (Ginn, 60 cents).
The experiments are adapted for use with
any text-book of chemistry, or without a
text-book. They are especially designed to
show the properties of substances and classes
of substances, and more than half of the one
hundred and two experiments — or, more
properly, sets of experiments — deal with
the reactions used in qualitative analysis.
By means of a systematic and condensed
mode of statement, directions for a great
many operations are put into a moderate
compass. The qualities that the author has
especially aimed to give his manual are thus
stated : " In preparing the experiments the
author has endeavored, ^rsf, to select such
as are most instructive and best illustrate
the subject without being too elaborate;

* Les Fermentationfl (Fermentation). Par P.
Schfitzenberger, Membre de I'lnstitut. Sixth
edition. Pp. 815, Svo. Parle : F^lix Alcan.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

417

second^ to arrange them in an order calcu-
lated to lead up by the most natural and
easiest steps to a knowledge of the science ;
third, to make the subject fascinating by
giving just enough information and sugges-
tion to interest the experimenter, and to
make him work for the knowledge to be
gained. Finally, the author has aimed to
make the book simple enough for the dull
and slow pupil, and, by the introduction of
supplementary and original work, elaborate
enough for the most acute." In the analyt-
ical part the reactions are given first for
each metal of a group separately, thus show-
ing why each reagent is added, and the
whole gi'oup is then treated in the same
way. The value of this method will doubt-
less be generally admitted. All the right-
hand pages of the volume are left blank for
notes or memoranda ; there are lists of appa-
ratus and chemicals required, directions for
making solutions, suggestions for work and
note-taking, and a plan of the laboratory of
the Boston English High School, where the
author is instructor in chemistry. There are
thirty-nine cuts of apparatus.

The Practical Inorganic Chemistry, re-
cently prepared by Dr. G. S. Turpin, of
Swansea (Macmillan, 60 cents), is a small
experimental manual for beginners, which
opens with laboratory exercises that might
be classed as either physics or chemistry,
and after some drill on setting up apparatus
proceeds through a series of simple chemical
experiments, including three or four in which
quantitative results are required, up to sys-
tematic qualitative analysis. The exercises
run to one hundred and sixteen in number,
and there are sixty-one figures of apparatus

I

Sti

8t0

iuc

The Subliminal Self (a part of our mind
or faculty which apparently exists below the
dinary consciousness) is the chief subject
nsidered in Part XXIX of the Proceedings
the Incorporated Society for Psychical Re-
arch, (Secretaries' offices, 19 Buckingham
Street, Adelphi, W. C, London, and 5 Boyl-
8ton Place, Boston, Mass. ; 4s.) In preced-
ing parts of the Proceedings, issued in 1891,
892, and 1893, Mr. F. W. H. Myers has pub-
hed seven chapters on this subject, and
ow in Chapters VIII and IX he continues
e presentation and discussion of evidence
bearmg upon it. He states the general

VOL. XLIX.— 34

characteristic of the occurrences recorded as
" to show us fragments of knowledge com-
ing to us in obscure and often symbolical
ways, and extending over a wider tract of
time than any faculty known to us can be
stretched to cover. On the one side there
is retrocognition, or knowledge of the past,
extending back beyond the reach of our
ordinary memory; on the other side there
is precognition, or knowledge of the future,
extending onward beyond the scope of our
ordinary inference." Instances of retrocog-
nition differ from those usually classed as
telepathy mainly in occurring after instead
of at the time of the event. Those of pre-
cognition have been known before under the
name of premonitions or warnings. A brief
note in the same part states that a series of
experiments tried by a committee with an
Italian spiritualist medium had resulted in
revealing nothing but systematic trickery.
There is also a brief report of the Hypnotic
Committee, a list of members, etc.

A bulletin of much practical value, on
Timber, prepared by Filibert Roth, has been
issued by the United States Department of
Agriculture. It gives the structure and
appearance of hard and soft woods, and
describes their mechanical properties and
the methods employed for testing them.
Other characteristics dealt with in less space
are weight, moisture, shrinkage in seasoning,
chemical properties, durability, and decay.
Directions for distinguishing the different
kinds of wood are given, and there are an
analytical key to the more important woods
of North America and an alphabetical de-
scriptive list of the same. The pamphlet is
fully illustrated.

The Manual of Phonography prepared by
Norman P. Heffley (American Book Com-
pany, $1.25) is designed especially for class
use, but may be used for self-instruction.
It is based on the ninth edition of Isaac Pit-
man's Phonography, but embodies many im-
provements in teaching that have been made
in recent years. The book is thus described
by the author : *' The * corrresponding ' and
' reporting ' styles have been blended into a
natural and orderly method, each principle
when introduced being thoroughly explained
and its application illustrated by ample prac-
tice in reading and writing. . . . The num-

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ber of arbitrary word signs has been reduced
to a minimum consistent with requirements
for all purposes, and the entire system has
been rearranged into a series of easy and
progressive lessons. ... It contains a com-
plete exposition of all the principles, word
signs, and contractions that are requisite for
the most difficult reporting purposes."

In the bulletin on Farmers' Institutes in
1894-'95, issued by the Michigan State
Agricultural College, there are reported nine
institutes — abstracts of the papers read, and
brief summaries of the discussions held at
each, being given. These reports have a
liveliness and meatiness that mark the meet-
ings as occasions of much profit.

Whittaker, in London, and Macmillan, in
New York, publish TTie Chemisl^s Compen-
dium, compiled by C. J. S. Thompson (price,
$1). It is a handbook of information for
druggists, containing the formulas of the
British Pharmacopoeia given briefly and ar-
ranged alphabetically, a posological table,
the unofficial formulary of the British Phar-
maceutical Conference, some directions for
dispensing French and German prescriptions,
besides many lists and tables relating to
analysis, poisons, photographic chemicals,
freezing mixtures, doses for domestic ani-
mals, artificial fruit essences, solubilities,
etc., etc.

Volume XXXIY of the Annals of the
Harvard Observatory is devoted to a Cata-
logue of 7,922 Southern Stars, by Solon I.
Bailey. These observations were made from
the top of Mount Harvard, near Lima, Peru,
and are intended to furnish magnitudes for
the southern stars on the same scale as that
on which the magnitudes of the northern stars
are expressed in Volumes XIV and XXIV.
Two chapters describing respectively the
plan and the reduction of the observations
are prefixed, and another, giving a history
of the expedition, in which the obstacles
encountered are described and information
as to the suitability of a number of sites for
astronomical work is given. Part IV of
Volume XL and Part IH of Volume XLI of
the Annals are devoted to meteorology.
The former is a report on the Observations
made at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observa-
tory in 1894, under the direction of A^ Law-
rence Rotch. An appendix to the tables

gives the results of a series of comparisons
of anemometers begun in 1892. The latter
of these publications embodies the Observa-
tions of the New England Weather Service,
which has one hundred and ninety-two vol-
unteer observers, with /. Warren Smith as
director. Accompanying the tabulated ob-
servations and based upon them are a de-
scription of the weather month by month, a
list of severe storms, and a map showing the
mean annual isotherms in New England for
1894.

Terrestrial Magnetism is a quarterly
journal which has been added to the list of
periodical publications of the University of
Chicago. It is edited by Dr. L. A. Bauer
and a corps of associates representing most
of the countries of Europe, the United States,
China, Java, and Australia, the intention be-
ing to give it an international character. All
languages that can be printed with Roman
characters will be admitted to its pages.
The chief contributions to the first number
(January, 1896) are: On Electric Currents
induced by Rotating Magnets, and their Ap-
plication to Some Phenomena of Terrestrial
Magnetism, by Arthur Schuster, F. R. S. ;
and Die Vertheilung des erdmagnetischen
Potentials in Bezug auf beliebige Durch-
messer der Erde, by Dr. Ad. Schmidt. This
number contains also a photographic repro-
duction of Halley's earliest equal variation
chart, with a brief history by the editor.
(University of Chicago press, $2 a year.)

T7ie Bachelor and the Chafing Dish is
the title of a little book for the gourmet, by
Deshler Welch. The work consists of a num-
ber of " informal " receipts for preparations
which can be cooked in a chafing dish.
There is considerable somewhat amusing and
desultory talk interlarded, most of the re-
ceipts being given after the description of
an appropriate situation, such as a camp
in the woods or at a sick friend's bedside.
There is appended a glossary of the various
terms used in cooking. (F. Tennyson Neeley,
Chicago.)

On account of its covering part of the
year of the Columbian Exposition, the Be-
port of tJie Commissioner of Education for
1892-93 contains an unusually wide range
of interesting matter. The Exposition ma-
terial includes essays on the educational

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

419

exhibit, as a whole, by various American
writers ; many accounts of American educa-
tion by foreign visitors ; notes on the ex-
hibits of separate States and foreign coun-
tries; and a series of papers prepared for
the World's Library Congress, which to-
gether constitute a treatise on library econo-
my. Among the subjects presented in other
parts of the report are American Educa-
tional History ; the Report of the Committee
of Ten on Secondary School Studies, with
papers relating thereto ; Pecuniary Aid for
Students ; the Education of the Negro ; and
Medical^ducation. The usual statistics are
presented. Those of the common schools
show an increase of 1*92 per cent in enroll-
ment and 3 "45 per cent in average attend-
ance over the preceding year.

Number 1 of Volume III of The Transit,

a magazine published by the Engineering

Society of the State University of Iowa, is

entirely taken up by a monograph on Port-

land Cement^ from the pen of Charles D.

Jameson^ Professor of Engineering at the

university. A general consideration of the

properties of lime and cement is followed by

)me historical data regarding the early use

cement both here and abroad, a general

jview of the methods of manufacture and

jsting, and the chemical processes con-

smed in the hardening of hydraulic ce-

lents. A number of good pictures show

16 various pieces of apparatus employed in

manufacture, and several structures in

rhich the so-called monolithic, or artificial

"^Btone construction, has been used.

The last publication in the New Bnins-
wick school series to reach us is a little
.Teachers' Manual of Nature Lessons, by John
irittain. It aims only, the author says, to
useful index to some of the elementary
japters of the book of Nature, and to indi-
ite briefly the means by which children
lay be led to read them with pleasure and
)fit. The text consists of suggestions for
ilks and simple experiments illustrating
)me of the more elementary facts of geol-
5y, chemistry, physics, and natural history,
r. & A. McMillan, St. John, N. B.)
A historical and descriptive sketch of
Yelloicstone National Park, by H. M.
Ihittendon, has recently come to hand. It
lis first and prmcipally with the history of

the upper Yellowstone, from the days of the
early explorers to the present time. The
descriptive portion of the work contains a
fairly comprehensive treatment of the nat-
ural features of the park. Some good maps
and a number of well-chosen pictures, the
latter of which are somewhat marred by poor
paper and printing, add value to the book.
A few illustrated biographical sketches of
the early explorers and a bibliography of the
literature pertaining to the region are ap-
pended.

Much of the time expended in computa-
tions is wasted through the use of an excess-
ive number of places of figures, and through
failure to employ logarithm tables. The use
of logarithms for work of four or more
places, not only effects an important saving
of time over direct multiplication or division,
but also conduces to greater accuracy. Com-
putation Rules and Logarithms, by S. W.
Holman, consists of a number of simple
rules indicating the number of places to be
used in a given computation ; " an explana-
tion of the use of the notation by powers of
ten ; certain instructions, more or less novel
in form, as to the use of the logarithm and
other tables; and a collection of useful
tables." The book is well bound and
printed. (Macmillan, $1.)

T%e Molecular Theory of Matter, which
has seldom been given more space outside of
Germany than a chapter or two in a general
work on physics, now has a volume, hj A.D.
Risteen, devoted to it (Ginn, $2). After giv-
ing some general considerations, the author
divides his subject into the kinetic theory of'
gases, of liquids, and of solids, molecular
magnitudes, and the constitution of mole-
cules. He aims only to present the accepted
views on these topics in a form that can be
readily grasped by students, and where com-
petent physicists disagree he lets the fact be
known. There are frequent references to
original sources, and some fifty diagrams and
other figures are used.

The Eclectic School Readings is a series
of books to supplement the usual school
reading books. Two have come to us, Sto-
ries of Great Americans for Little Ameri-
cans, designed for the usual second-reader
grade, and Stories of American Life and Ad-
voiture, for the third- reader grade (American

420

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Book Company, 40 cents and 50 cents).
Both are by Echoard Eggleston, who has
aimed to lighten the labor of learning to
read by presenting stories containing enough
spirit and movement to interest the young.
He has also seized the opportunity to implant
a love of America in the American child by
drawing his subjects from what might be
called the heroic age of the United States.
We are glad to see such a master hand in
writing " true stories " enlisted in the service
of the young. The only improvement we
could suggest would be to combine a love of
Nature with a love of country. A combina-
tion of Eggleston and Burroughs, for exam-
ple, would yield a product well-nigh perfect.

The Eighth Biennial Report of the Bureau
of Labor Statistics of Illinois is devoted to
taxation, and it shows how large property
owners, especially in the chief city of the
State, throw an unfair portion of the bur-
den of taxation upon their poorer neighbors.
This is accomplished by undervaluations
often grotesquely small, and by assessing
vacant land lower than land of equal value
bearing improvements. While Chicago real
estate receives most attention, considerable
information concerning the property of rail-
road and other corporations in the State is
presented. The Bureau recommends that
State taxes be levied solely on site values of
land, and advocates several changes in ad-
ministration. An appendix contains infor-
mation concerning the coal-miners' strike in
1894, and the decision of the State Supreme
Court on the Sweat-shop Act. A compila.
tion of the Labor Laws of the State of Illi-
nois is included in the same volume.

In Statesman and Demagog, a pamphlet
by Jlphonse Allman, of San Francisco, a
dynamical theory of money is presented,
with many mechanical analogies and dia-
grams. Unfortunately, his analogies seem
to run away with him in places, and in
making his theory plain to those versed in
mechanical principles he has obscured it
from every one else.

In Bilder aus der deutschen lAtteratur
the student is given a bird's-eye view of the
field, with many favorite ballads, some ex-
tracts from longer pieces, and the outlines
of the chief prose works, but without too
many dates and statistics. The author, Prof.

/. Keller, of the Normal College, New York,
has aimed to use language which the stu-
dent can read at sight (American Book
Company, 75 cents).

The Secret of Mankind (Putnams, $2)
belongs to a class of books to which the
name Utopian might be given, as it presents
the (anonymous) author's ideal of human so-
ciety in the form of a description of an im-
aginary state. Another favorite form of
writing with a certain class of writers — con-
versations with the shades of the departed
great — is also used. Metaphysics, ethics,
government, and education are the chief
topics discussed.

Under the title Light on Current Topics
(Massachusetts New Church Union, Boston,
$1) a series of lectures setting forth the
teaching of the Swedenborgian Church on
certain topics of present interest has been
issued in book form. Among the subjects
treated by various lecturers are, Theosophy
and Religion, The Relation of the Church to
the State and to Secular Affairs, and Pauper-
ism and Crime.

The Interstate Commerce Commission has
issued its seventh annual volume of Statistics
of Railways in the United States, giving in-
formation about mileage, capital, earnings
and other income, expenditures, and charges
against income on account of capital cover-
ing the year ending with June, 1894. The
year was exceptional in several ways. It
included the last four months of the Colum-
bian Exposition, which had an important in-
fluence on the passenger traffic, and it covered
a part of the period of the recent business
depression. The latter fact is apparent in all
the tables, and especially in the unequaled
percentage of the mileage of the country in
the hands of receivers.

In its Report on Coal in Illinois for 1894,
the Board of Commissioners of Laboi^of that
State has presented statistics on the output of
mines, value of the coal, cost of raining, num-
ber of employees, days of active operation,
wages, the use of powder, casualties, and the
ventilation of mines. This information is
arranged both according to districts as re-
ported by the several State inspectors of
mines and in summary form. An appendix
contains statistics of the coal-miners' strike
of 1894 and of the world's production of

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

421

coal, the latter reprinted from a report by
Robert Giffen to the British House of Com-

The Report of the United States Commis-
sion to the Columbian Historical Exposition
at Madrid comprises a brief account of the
participation of the United States in the
Exposition, by Rear- Admiral Luce, who was
the commissioner-general for this country ; a
report by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton on the col-
lections exhibited ; catalogues of the anthro-
pological, numismatic, historical, and other
objects sent by various institutions and gov-

ernment departments of the United States ;
and descriptive essays on several classes of
these objects. Mr. William E. Curtis fur-
nishes a report on the historical part of tho
exhibit, which included seventy-seven por-
traits of Columbus, only one of which was
made during his life, and a considerable
number of pictures representing places iden-
tified with the life history of Columbus, or
the remains of Spanish occupation in the
United States, or subjects connected with the
origin of the name America. Many of the
portraits are reproduced, and other parts of
the volume are fully illustrated.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
Journal cf. Second series, Vol X. Morphology
of the Cerebral Convolutions, with Special Eefer-
ence to the Order of Primates. By A. J. Parker,
M.D.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Connecti-
cut : Nineteenth Annual Report. Part II. Fertil-
izer Experiments ; Availability of Organic Nitro-
gen ; Fungi ; Injurious Insects ; Seeds. — Iowa :
Bulletin No. 32. Entomological Work for 1895 :
Feeding Dairy Cows ; Feeding Cottonseed Meal
to Cows ; Maturing Skim-milk Calves ; Crop Notes
for 1895 ; Butter Flavor ; Some of our Advances
in Breeding Fruits and Shrubs ; Milk Preserva-
tives, Formalin ; Soil Moisture ; Washing But-
ter ; Our Window Gardens. —New Hampshire :
Seventh Annual Report. Bulletin 31.— New
York : Statement regarding Bulletins ; Bulletin
To. 98. Plum-leaf Spot ; Cherry -leaf Spot and
lit Rot ; No. 99. The Spinach-leaf Maggot or
[iner ; No. 100. Combating Carnation Rust ; No.
ICl. Potato Diseases on Long Island in the Sea-
)n of 1895.— Ohio : Bulletin 66 and Fourteenth
innual Report for 1895 ; Bulletin 68. Some De-
ructive Insects ; No. 09. The Chinch Bug ; No.
. Forage Crops.— Storrs Experiment St^ition :
bulletin No. 16. Experiments in Cream Ripen-
ig, Flavor, Aroma, Acid.— United States Depart-
lent : Climate and Crop Service for Month of
ipril, 1896.— Nebraska : Bulletin. Vol. VIII.
Sxperiments in the Culture of the Sugar-beet in
Nebraska.
Ayres, Alfred. The Verbalist. New and re-
( vised edition. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
[pp.337. $1.25.

Blau", T. S. Human Progress. New York :
^William R. Jenkins. Pp. 573. 50 cents.

Bonney, T.G. Ice-work, Present and Past (In-
■national Scientific.Series, No. 74.) New York :
Appleton & Co. Pp. 295. $1.50.
Brown, Montague. Artistic and Scientiflc Taxi-
lenny and Modeling. New York : Macmillan &
rCo. London : A. & C. Black. Pp. 462.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Reports, Reprints, etc.
JBoas, Franz : The Growth of Indian Mythologies
(from Journal of American Folkloie, January and
March, 1896) and Anthropometrical Observations
on the Mission Indians of Southern California
(from Pi'oceedings of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, vol. xliv, 1895). —
Bishop, L. F. : Medicine as a Profession (from
Rutgers College Targum).— Chiiuie Appliquee.
Deuxieme Congr^s International k V&rU (juillet-
aoflt), 1896. Announcement of.— Columbia Uni-
versity, Contributions from the Geological Depart-
ment of : A Newly Discovered Dike at De ^Vitt.
near Clinton, N. Y. ; The Geological Sections of
the East River at Seventieth Street, New York ;

Geological Notes. Long Island and Nantucket.—
Davis, W. T. : Stuteu Isl.nnd Names. Natural
Science Association, New Brighton, S. I.— Fergu-
son, L. A. : Electrical Engineering in Modem Cen-
tral Stations. (Bulletin of the University of Wis-
consin.)— Fewkes, J. W. : A Contribution to
Ethnobotany (from American Anthropologist,
January, 1896) ; The Oraibi Fiute-altar (from
Journal of American Folklore, vol. viii. No. 31) ;
The Prehistoric Culture of Tusayau (from Ameri-
can Anthropologist, May, 1896).— Hand, E. N. :
The Essential Nature of Matter and Energy.
Snow and Wilson Press, Spokane. Washington.—
Harvey, J. E., M. D. : Latest Science. 10 c.mts.
(78 Emerson Avenue, Chicago.)— Iowa State Board
of Health Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 11.— Iowa
University Bulletin : Laboratories of Natural His-
tory, Vol. Ill, No. 4.— .lames, J. F., M. D. : The
First Fauna of the Earth (from American Natu-
ralist, October, 189.')).— Keyes, T. B., M. D. : Dipso-
mania. Morphiamania, and Onanism (from Jour-
nal of Materia Mc-dica, April, 1896).— Massachusetts
In.stitut J of Technology : Announcement . f Sum-
mer Courses for 1896.— Philadelphia Academy of
Natural Sciences. Pp. 201-216.— Philarielphia
Zoological Society : Twenty-fourth Annual Re-
port of Board of Dir.-ctors.- Ro.«e Polytechnic In-
stitute : Fourteenth Annual Catalogue for 1896. —
Schimnel & Co. : Semiannual Repoit of, Leipsic
and New York.— Shufeldt, R. W. : Progress in
American Ornithology (fr.>m American Natural-
ist, May 1, 1890).— Smithsonian Institution Pub-
lications : Reprints from Proceedings. No. 1033.
Diagnosis of New Mollusks from the Survey of
the Mexican Boundary ; No. 1034. Diagnosis of
New Species of Mollusks from the West Coast of
America ; No. 1035. Diagnosis of New Tertiary
Fossils from the Southern United States: No.
1036. Two New Diplopod Myriapoda of the
Genus Oxydesmus from the Congo ; No. 1037.
Priodesmus, a New Genus of Diplopoda from
Surinam ; No. 1038. On Geophilus Attennatus,
Say, of the Class Chilopoda ; No. 1039. An Ar-
rangement of the Geophilid*, a Family of Chi-
lopoda ; No. 1040. Description of a New Species
of Golden Beetle from Costn Rica ; No. 1041. Two
New Species of Beetles of the Teuebrlonid Genus
Echocerus • No. 1042. East African Diplopoda of
the Suborder Polydesmoidea, c llected by Mr.
William Astor Chanler ; No. 1043. Desc iption
of a New Species of Pipe Fish {Siphosionia
Scovelli) from Corpus Christ), Texas ; No, lOlfl.
East African Odonata, collected by Dr. W. L.
Abbott ; No. 1C47. Notes on the Odonata from
East Africa, collected by the Chanlor Expedition ;
No. 1048 On the Proper Name of tlie Gunnels or
Butter Fish ; No. 1049. The Didiercntiol Charac-
ters of the Syngna hid and Hippocampid Fishes;
No. 1060 ; Notes on the Synonomy of the Tor-
pedlnidee or Narcobatidte ; No. lOJl. The Fami-

422

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lies of SynentoOTiathone and their Nomenclatare ;
No. 1052. On the Application of the Name Teu-
this to a Genus of Fishes ; No, 1053. Notes on
the Nomenclature of Scymnus or Scymnorhimis,
a Genus of Sharks ; No. 1054. Notes on the Genus
Cephalentherus or Raflnesc[ue, and other Rays
with Aberrant Pectoral Fins (Propterygia and
Hieroptera) ; No. 1055. Notes on the Characinoid
Fishes with Ctenoid Scales, with a Description of
a New Psectrogaster ; No. 1056. The Differential
Characters of Characinoid and Erythrinoid Fishes ;
No 1057. Notes on Orectolobus or Crossorhinus,
a Genus of Sharks ; No. 1058. Note on the Fishes
of the Genus Characinus; No. 1059. The Nomen-
clature of Rachicentron or Elacate, a Genus of
Acanthopterygian Fishes ; No. 1060. Note on the
Nomenclature of the Poecilioid Fishes ; No. 1061.
The Nomenclature of the Fishes of the Chara-
cinoid Genus Tetraeonopterus ; No. 1086. Notes
on Asbestos and Asbestiform Minerals ; No. 1067.
Preliminary Description of Some New Birds from
the Galapagos Archipelago ; No. 1068. The Classi-
fication and Geogniphical Distribution of the
Pearly Fresh-water Mussels ; No. 1072. Descrip-
tion of Four New Triassic Unios from the Staked
Plains of Texas ; No. 1074. Description of a
New Subspecies of the Genus Peucedramus Coues.
—Union College : Announcement of Courses in
the Summer School to be held at Saratoga Springs,
July 6 to August 14, 1896.— United States Bureau
of Education : Chapters from the Report of the
Commissioner of Education ; Agricultural and
Mechanical Colleges ; Forestry Education ; Geol-
ogy in the Colleges and Universities of the United
States ; Rules for the Spelling and Pronunciation
of Chemical Terms.- Van Sargen, Gilbert, and
White, T. G. : An Account of the Summer's Work
in Geology on Lake Champlain (from Transac-
tions of the New York Academy of Sciences,
October 28, 189.5).— Walker. S. T. : The Modicum
of Hearing of Deaf-Mutes (from the Medical
Fortnightly, St. Louis).— Ward, Lester F. : The
Data of Sociology (from American Journal of
Sociology, vol. i. No. 6).— White, T. G. : The
Faunas of the Upper Osdovician Strata at Trenton
Falls, Oneida County, N. Y. (from Transactions
of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. xv,
pp. 71 to 98).

Byars, William Vincent. The Glory of the
Garden and Other Odes, Sonnets, and Ballads.
Author. Pp. 190.

Chappie, J. M. The Minor Chord. Chicago :
F. Tennyson Neely. Pp. 223.

Conant, C. A. A History of Modern Banks of
Issue. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 595. $3.

Family Culture. Monthly. Devoted to the
Study of the Science of Human Life. Boston,
Mass. %1 per annum.

Flower, Sydney. A Study in Hypnotism.
Chicago: The Psychic Publishing Company. Pp.
2:^6.

Forbes, S. A. Nineteenth Report of the Illi-
nois State Entomologist. Noxious and Beneficial
Insects. Pp., text, 270 ; cuts, xiv.

Freeman-Mitford, A. B. The Bamboo Garden,
New York and London : Macmillan & Co. Pp.
224. $3.

Giddingp, Franklin Henry. The Principles of
Sociology. New York and London : Macmillan
& Co. Pp. 476. $3.

Hadley, Arthur Twining. Economics. New
York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
496. $2.50.

Instruccifin Piibli?a Mexicana, Revista de la
(Mexican Review of Public Instruction). Mexico:
Talleres (Academy) de la Escuela Nacional de
Artes y Oficios ex Convento de San Lorenzo.

Keyes, C. R. The Origin and Relations of
Central Maryland Granites, with an Introduction
by G. H. Williams. Extract from Sixteenth An-
nual Report of the United States Geological Sur-
vey. Pp. 654 to 740.

McMaster, J. B. With the Fathers. Studies
in the History of the United States. New York ;
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 334. $1.50.

Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. New
York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
208.

Psychologique, L'Annee (Deuxieme Ann^e,
1895). Par MM. H. Beaunis et A. Binet. Paris,
France. Pp. 1010.

Psychological Revival, The, and Edncational
Values of the Several Branches of Studies. (Chap-
ters from the Report of the United States Com-
missioner of Education for 1893-'94.)

Public Libraries. Monthly, Chicago : Library
Bureau. $1 per annum.

Putnam, George Haven. The Question of
Copyright. New York and London ; G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 486. $1.75.

Rubens, H. S. Cuban Belligerency, Petition
of Tomas Estrada Palma, Delegate of the Re-
public of Cuba.

Smith, Hugh M . M. D. A Review of the His-
tory and Results of the Attempts to Acclimatize
Fish and Other Water Animals in the Pacific
States. Extract from Bulletin of the United
States Fish Commission for 1895. Pp, 379 to 472.

Smith, Oberlin. Press-working of Metals.
New York : John Wiley & Sons. London :
Chapman & Hall, Ltd. Pp. 276.

Taussig. F. W, Wages and Capital. An Ex-
amination of the Wages-fund Doctrine. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 329. $1.50.

Wf'ismann, August. On Germinal Selection.
The Religion of Science Library. Chicago : Open-
Court Publishing Company. Pp. 61. 85 cents.

^ragmjetits ot ^txtntt.

Mysterious Fractures in Steel. — The so-
called niysterious fractures in steel, with
which every engineer is familiar, bid fair to
become things of the past. The following
facts, taken from a recently reported analy-
sis of specimens from a fractured steam-
ship " tail shaft,'* are especially interesting,
as showing the great value of investiga-

tions which at first sight may seem entirely
barren of anything but theoretical interest.
This accident, which a few years ago would
have been put down as one of those " mysteri-
ous breaks," probably due to " fatigue," the
shaft having been in practically continuous
use for twelve or fourteen years, was fully
explained by the subsequent examination. A

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

423

chemical analysis was first made which in-
dicated that the ingot from which the shaft
had been forged was cast too hot ; that
the carbon was very unevenly distributed,
the center of the shaft containing fifty per
cent more than the portion near the circum-
ference ; and, finally, that the content of sul-
phur and phosphorus was three times greater
in the core than at the circumference, and
excessive in all parts of the mass. But the
most important and instructive results were
obtained in the microscopic examination of
sections. Micrometallography is a compara-
tively new science, which, however, already
promises to be of great practical value to the
metal-worker. The microscopical examina-
tion showed a bad structural arrangement of
the iron and steel " cells," especially in the
core. The phosphorus, as phosphide, was
distributed pretty generally, and the cohesion
between crystals rich in phosphide is very
faulty. The center of the shaft was riddled
with sulphide of iron, and was little tougher
than good gray pig iron. " It is almost cer-
tain that a number of sulphide flaws of the
interior gradually worked outward, along the
crystalline junctions of the fairly tough metal
outside, until under a vibratory shock of un-
usual force the whole mass ruptured."

The Tsetse Fly.— The few travelers whose
lot has led them through the lowlands of equa-
torial Africa have most of them reported the
tsetse fly {Gloxsina sp.) as one of the most
formidable impediments in the way of colo-
nization or even exploration of these regions.
Wild animals and human beings suffer only
temporary irritation from its attacks, but
domestic animals entering the fly districts
are seized in the course of a few days with
fever and wasting, and almost invariably die.
The tsetse is a dipter, having a pale yellow
abdomen and gray, striped thorax. It is rather
larger than the house fly. The mouth parts
form a powerful piercing beak. From an
account of a report on the tsetse-fly disease,
by Surgeon-Major David Bruce, published in
Nature, we learn that there has at last been
an attempt made to study the fly and its dis-
ease in a thorough and scientific manner. As
far back as 1870 a Mr. St. Vincent Erskine
endeavored to show that the disease was due
solely to change of grass and climate. Since
then several other travelers have stated their

belief that the fly was not injurious, or, at
any rate, that the ill effects of its bite were
much exaggerated. At last the Natal Gov-
ernment has authorized Mr. Bruce to thor-
oughly investigate the tsetse-fly disease, and
his paper is the outcome of the first three
months' work. The results so far attained
seem to indicate not the action of a specific
virus, as was originally supposed, but the
transmission by the tsetse fly of a bacterium
or its products. The investigation is proceed-
ing along somewhat the same lines which Dr.
P. Manson is following in endeavoring to
trace the malaria plasmodium through the
mosquito. A similar relationship was traced
some years ago between Texas fever, a dis-
ease of cattle, in which certain parasitic
bodies were found in the red blood corpus-
cles, and the cattle ticks (Ixodidce). Among
the new facts brought to light by Dr. Bruce's
work, one of considerable importance is the
specific action which arsenic seems to have
on the disease; its administration causes a
reduction in temperature, a maintenance of
the normal number of red blood cells, and
a disappearance of the haematozoa from the
blood.

Seram Therapy and Blood Brotherhood.

— The very ancient practice of the transfu-
sion of blood from one person to another, as
a means of cementing friendship, seems, in
the light of the modem serum treatment of
disease, to have been something more than
a purely sentimental operation. In a recent
letter to Nature, T. L. Patterson discusses
the probable value of such inoculations. He
thinks it very probable that a European in-
oculated with the blood or serum of a native
would be better able to resist the climatic
changes to which he is subjected in tropical
countries. " In other words, would blood
inoculation not set up in his system those
changes necessary to adapt him to the cli-
mate, and render him immune to the dis-
eases which are the result of the climate ?
The suggestion is based on the assumption
that the native is more healthy in his own
climate than any foreigner can be, and that
blood inoculation would acclimatize the lat-
ter at once. The advantages to be derived
from such a system are obvious. At pres-
eat, in central Africa, many missionaries and
pioneers are annually sacrificed to the cli-

424

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mate." Blood brotherhood is still exten-
sively practiced among savages, and is com-
mon in central Africa ; the essential part of
the process consists of making an incision
just sufficient to draw blood in the right
■wrist of each of the participants. A little
of the blood is scraped off of each cut and
smeared on the other's cut. It seems quite
probable that a further study of this practice
may reveal a prophylactic measure of great
practical value.

A IVew Old Sknll.— Prof. A. Nehring has
recently described a new human skull of low
type found near Santos, in Brazil, of which
an account is given by A. C. Haddon in Na-
ture. It was found in a breccia, the exact
age of which is uncertain, associated with
fish vertebra;, a few fragments of other
human remains, and a portion of the lojver
jaw of a toothed whale. The forehead is
low and retreating, the glabella and orbital
ridges well developed. The frontal ridge is
greatly constricted behind the orbital region,
as in Pithecanthropus. The principal meas-
urements given are: Maximum length, 183
mm. ; maximum breadth, 135 mm. ; mini-
mum frontal, 88 mm. ; maximum frontal, 92
mm.; frontal sagittal arc, 118 mm.; and
the parietal arc, 134 mm. The face of this
cranium was strongly prognathous, the whole
dentition is strong, and all the teeth are per-
fectly sound. The dimensions of the pre-
molars and the molars come very close to
those of Spy No. 1 skull, any difference there
may be being in the direction of the dentition
of Spy No. 2. While the length and breadth
of the new skull agree fairly closely with
those of Pithecanthropus^ the cranial height
is considerably greater, and consequently also
the cranial capacity.

Animal Intelligence. — Evidence of the al-
most human abilities of some of the higher
apes is no new thing, but a new series of ob-
servations are called attention to in a recent
Spectator. The account is taken from A. E.
Brehm's book. From North Pole to Equator.
" The baboons were on flat ground, crossing
a valley, when the traveler's dogs, Arab
greyhounds, accustomed to fight success-
fully with hyenas and other beasts of prey,
rushed toward the baboons. Only the fe-
males took to flight ; the males, on the con-

trary, turned to face the dogs, growled, beat
the ground with their hands, opened their
mouths wide and showed their glittering
teeth, and looked at their adversaries so
furiously and maliciously that the hounds,
usually bold and battle-hardened, shrank
back. By the time the dogs had been en-
couraged to renew their attack the whole
herd had escaped to the rocks except a six-
months-old monkey. The httle monkey sat
on a rock surrounded by the dogs, but was
rescued by an old baboon, who stepped
down from the cliff near, advanced toward
the dogs, kept them in check by gestures
and menacing sounds, picked up the baby
monkey, and carried it to the cliff, where the
dense crowd of monkeys shouting their bat-
tle cry were watching his heroism. The
march of the baboons is not a mere expe.
dition of the predatory members of the com-
munity. The whole nation trek together and
make war on the cultivated ground in com-
mon. No wild animals have developed their
powers of combined attack and defense in so
creditable a manner as the baboons. Their
motives — defense, not defiance — are irre-
proachable, and their methods deliberate,
self-reliant, and effective, and Brehm justly
remarks that there is probably no other male
animal which runs into danger voluntarily to
rescue a young one of its own species."

IndiTidnal Commnnion Cnps. — A grati-
fying indication of the broadening influence
which science is so slowly, but none the
less surely, perhaps, exerting among the peo-
ple at large is contained in the following
paragraph clipped from a morning paper,
Jersey City, N. J., April 5th : " Individual
communion cups were used for the first time
in the First Presbyterian Church on Emory
Street, this morning. There were sia hun-
dred communicants present, each having a
new cup. The cup used is glass, with a light
gold rim, and is not costly. They were
passed around on trays that held thirty-six
glasses each. After using, the glasses were
placed in the hymn-book racks and were col-
lected by the sexton after the service. The
Rev. Dr. Charles Herr, the pastor, said he
thought the individual cups had come to
stay." As we learn more and more of the
means by which disease is propagated, it
should be the endeavor of all to aid in the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

425

use of this knowledge in devising new meth-
ods or modifying old ones for the prevention
of communicable disease, and the extension
of it from person to person. In many mala-
dies the secretions of tho mouth become high-
ly infected, and are a source of the most im-
mediate danger to any one coming in contact
with them. Dr. E. A. Wallace, in writing on
this subject, says : " At a recent meeting of
the Monroe County Medical Society, in New
York, an epidemic of diphtheria was reported
by one of the health officers. This epidemic
was confined to a single school district, twen
ty-four families being afflicted. The con-
tagion was traced back to the drinking cup
used- in school by the diphtheritic children.
Microscopic examination revealed the diph-
theritic microbes adhering in great quanti-
ties to its rim." Dr. Alfred Ashmead says :
" The last time I knelt at the communion
altar there knelt at one side of me a patient
whom I knew (as I was treating him at the
time) to be suffering from an odious disease ;
his mouth contained patches which made it
especially contagious. This person took the
cup before it came to me ; of course I let it
pass." (But what of the communicants be-
yond the doctor who did not know !) In
fact, there can be no reasonable doubt that
many cases of infectious disease have been
and are still caused by the communion cup,
|,and when one considers what some of them
[are, how horrible the contraction of such a
^disease is by any one, and how especially
[pitiful in the case of a young girl, it is hard
fto be patient with the stupid superstition
► which upholds the continuance of such a
'custom. There are so many paths by which
infection may reach us, and over which we
have, as yet, no control, that the few cases
I in which we have some power should be made
^ihe most of.

Short method for Prodaeing Antitoxinc.

[—An interesting paper, by Dr. G. E. Cart-
-wright, was recently read before the Royal
[Society on A Method for Rapidly Producing
rDiphtheria Antitoxines. Two species of
[diphtheria toxine were made use of — the
I ordinary toxine produced by the organism in
I peptone broth, and secondly the substances
1 present in serum-broth cultivations which
had been filtered and heated up to 65° C.
I As a rule, the broth was inoculated with a

virulent diphtheria culture some three or
four days previous to the addition of the se-
rum, and then incubated at a temperature of
37° C. for at least three or four weeks. Be-
fore being used for injection it was subjected
to a temperature of 65° C. for about an hour,
and then filtered through a sterilized Cham-
berland candle to remove the bodies of the
bacilli. This fluid the author calls " serum "
toxine, in contradistinction to the ordinary
poison, "broth" toxine. The serum toxine
gives rise to little local irritation, but to
marked febrile reaction. In addition it was
found that animals which had been subjected
to its action were rendered more or less re-
fractory to subsequent infection, and this
suggested the possibility of its application as
a means of shortening the preliminary treat-
ment which a horse must undergo before it
can receive the large doses of broth toxine
which are usually necessary for the produc-
tion of antitoxine of any strength. A horse
was treated as follows : He received during
the first twelve days three hundred and
eighty cubic centimetres of serum toxine
spread over three injections on different
dates. On the nineteenth day fifty cubic
centimetres of unfiltered serum toxine (steril-
ized at 65° C.) and one hundred and fifty
cubic centimetres of broth toxine (of which
half a cubic centimetre killed a five-hundred-
gramme guinea-pig in forty- eight hours)
were injected. The experiment was some-
what impeded at this point by the formation
of a small abscess, which was subsequently
avoided by filtering out the bodies of the ba-
cilli. On the twenty-eighth day fifty cubic
centimetres of the same broth toxine were
injected, and on the thirtieth day another in-
jection of one hundred and fifteen cubic cen-
timetres was given. The horse was bled on
the thirty-second day of treatment, and the
serum was found to possess the strength of
ten normal units (one one-hundredth cubic
centimetre protected a two-hundred-and-fif ty-
gramme guinea-pig against ten lethal doses
of broth toxine). " As this strength is only
attained by Roux's method after at least ten
weeks' treatment, it was evident that the se-
rum treatment had considerably shortened the
process." The horse was then subjected to
the ordinary method for producing antitoxine,
when it reacted in every respect like an ani-
mal which had been under the usual treat-

426

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ment for several months. In the next horse
much larger quantities of the serum toxine
were used, with the addition of a certain
amount of antitoxine, to avoid the risk of
constitutionally injuring the animal. The
horse was bled on the thirtieth day, and the
antitoxic value of its serum tested. It was
found that one one-thousandth cubic centime-
tre protected completely against ten lethal
doses of the toxine ; and finally, after nine
weeks' treatment, one twenty-five hundredth
cubic centimetre protected against ten lethal
doses.

Japanese Rice. — Eice is the most impor-
tant of all Japanese crops; the cultivation
takes up more than half of the total surface
of arable land. The report of the Chevalier
de Warpenarst, Belgian vice-consul at Yoko-
hama, is authority for the following details,
which we find in the Journal of the Society
of Arts. Japan produces two kinds of rice,
viz., rice of the lowlands, which is watered
by an ingenious system of irrigation, and the
rice of the mountains. The latter requires
very little water and sun, while it is impossi-
ble to have too much for the former. Low-
land rice is subdivided into two kinds —
ordinary rice and glutinous rice, the latter
forming about eight per cent of the annual
crop. The ordinary rice is of three vari-
eties— early, medium, and late. The total
rice crop of 1892 was 41,379,000 koku,
which is equivalent to 205,360,000 bushels.
About the end of May the winter crop is
gathered in, and some time between the end
of September and the end of October the
summer crop is ready for harvesting. About
34,000,000 koku of the annual production
are for home consumption. It is the upper
and middle classes who eat rice, the poor
being seldom able to obtain it, their food
consisting of the leavings of the rich — stale
fish and fish entrails, which are cooked all to-
gether and sold about the streets on stalls.
The farmer himself eats barley, corn, millet,
and the sweet potato, but rice only on fete
days. Besides the 34,000,000 koku used for
food, there are about 500,000 koku used for
brewing purposes, and 3,000,000 more in the
manufacture of the drink known as sake.

Science as a Help to Agriculture. — Much
was made of the work of the United States

Department of Agriculture in the discussion
in the British Association of the question,
" How shall agriculture best obtain the help
of science ? " In the course of the discus-
sion Prof. Marshall Ward said that it was
of extreme importance that the results of
any investigations should be made known at
once and accurately to the practical man, and
this was work that might very well be under-
taken by the Government; but he depre-
cated any direction or control from a Govern-
ment department in any matters of original
research. There was at present in existence
a large mass of information as to agriculture
and forestry which had never yet been made
available for the practical man. Criticising
some of the methods of agricultural teach-
ing as at present carried out. Prof. J. R.
Green said that the farmer was apt to regard
chemistry as comprising only the chemistry
of soils, whereas it was of even greater im-
portance to pay attention to the chemistry of
plants, and generally to give the plant organ-
ism the same attention from various points
of view that was now given as a matter of
course to the animal organism. Prof. Per-
ceval, of Wye College, also emphasized the
importance of paying attention to the chem-
istry of the plant and not of the soil only.
Lectures on scientific agriculture were suc-
cessful if the elements only of the science
were explained in non-technical language,
and the farmers were then taught to make ex-
periments for themselves. Mr. M. J. B. Dun-
stan thought much of the prejudice against
science arose from the mistaken idea that it
was meant to replace experience instead of
supplementing it.

Marriage Customs of tbe Shans. — Mar-
riage celebrations among the Shans are
rather unpretentious affairs. The ceremony
varies from the simple arrangement of tak-
ing each other's word for it to feasts last-
ing several days among wealthy people;
but even in these cases the actual ceremony
is a minor feature in the proceedings. The
usual form among western Shans is for the
couple to eat rice together out of the same
dish in the presence of their relatives and
the village elders. The bridegroom then
declares that he marries the lady and will
support her. More ceremony is observed
among the Lii. The hands of bride and

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

427

bridegroom are tied together with a piece of
string after they have eaten together, and
an old man pronounces them duly married.
The Hkons throw rice balls at each other
and the couple during the ceremony. The
newly married couple then go to their house,
and split betelnuts are distributed among
the relatives of the bride, who give money
as a return present. Divorce is readily ob-
tainable, but, except among young people of
low rank, is comparatively rare. A man
can have more than one wife if he can af-
ford it. In case of divorce the property is
divided according to the laws of Menu ; and
the applicant for the divorce, when the de-
sire is not mutual, or the person through
whose fault the divorce is applied for, al-
ways loses considerably in the division.

Psycbology of Puppies. — A publication
on the Psychic Development of Young Ani-
mals and its Physical Correlation, by Wes-
ley Mills, embodies the results of the study
of a litter of thirteen St. Bernard puppies —
ultimately reduced to six — from birth to sixty
days of age. The facts most striking in the
first few days of life were the frequent de-
sire to suck, the perfect ability to reach the
teats of the dam just after birth, the misery
evident under cold and hunger, and the fact
that the greater part of existence is passed
in sleep. Nothing is more striking than the
efforts the animal makes almost as soon as
it is born to place itself in a surrounding of
comfort. Sucking is improved by practice,
and is subject to modification with the in-
creasing experience of the animal. The ef-
fects of stroking, smoothing movements of
the hand are very striking. The tempera-
ture sense appears to be well marked from
the first, and the muscular sense early pres-
ent and finally well developed. Even on the
day of birth the puppies would not creep off
from a surface on which they were at rest
if it was elevated a short distance from the
ground. Taste and smell are very feeble
at first, and are gradually developed. The
** opening of the eyes " is a very slow pro-
cess. It began in the St. Bernards on the
eleventh day ; but it is doubtful if the ani-
mal sees at all, in the proper sense of the word,
till the lids are completely separated, if even
then. The indications concerning hearing
are m definite and obscure ; but the puppies

were very early stimulated by concussions.
No attempts were made to play while the
eyes continued closed ; but when play began,
the observation of its development was very
interesting. On the twenty-sixth and thir-
ty-third days the sense of fun or humor
seemed to be shown. The puppies were very
readily susceptible to fatigue, in view of
which the sleep they indulge in so greatly is
seen to be very necessary to them. The first
evidence of will, as marked in motions other
than those described as reflex, was observed
on the seventeenth day. The tail was not
wagged while the eyes were unopened. Pup-
pies usually cry like a kitten. Gradually this
voice is changed to that characteristic of a
dog. Before barking in any form, growling
in sleep, and then in play, is observed. Prof.
Mills finds two great periods of develop-
ment in the puppy — one before the eyes are
opened, and the other afterward. Develop-
ment is slow in the first period and existence
almost vegetative ; an intermediate period is
marked by considerable advance, though slow
as compared with the progress made in the
next few days. The period between the sev-
enteenth and forty-fifth days is the one of the
greatest importance ; and after that a con-
stant improvement from experience goes on
till the sixtieth day. These periods, how-
ever, are not distinct, but glide into one an-
other.

The DiscoTerer of Rohinson Crusoe. — In

a recent address before the Historical Club
of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Dr. Wil-
liam Osier related the curious history of
Thomas Dover, of Dover's powder fame,
whose contribution to therapeutics seems to
have constituted the least of his claims
upon posterity. Of the facts of Dover's
life little was known. Munk states that
he was bom in Warwickshire about 1660.
He was a Bachelor of Medicine of Cambridge.
After taking his degree he settled in Bristol,
and having made money joined with some
merchants in a privateering expedition. Lit-
tle is known of his life up to this time.
He was associated in this undertaking with
a group of Bristol merchants. The expe-
dition went in two ships, and Dover was
third in command. The days of the buc-
caneers were almost numbered, but there
was in Bristol at this time one of the last

428

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and one of the most famous of the old
South Sea captains, William Dampier, a man
who knew more of the Spanish Main and of
the Pacific than any one living. He was en-
gaged to accompany the expedition as pilot.
They started in 1*708, and the voyage lasted
three years. In February, 1709, while lying
off the island of Juan Fernandez, they ob-
served a light on the shore, and several days
later, after the abatement of a storm, which
prevented their earlier landing, they went on
shore, where they found the original of De-
foe's Robinson Crusoe. He was clothed in
goat skins, and "seemed wilder than the
original owners of his apparel." His name
was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had
lived alone on the island for four years and
four months. Captain Thomas Dover re-
turned from the South Seas in 17 11, a wealthy
man ; his subsequent career is only imper-
fectly known. In 1721, however, he was ad-
mitted licentiate of the Royal College of
Physicians, a qualification which enabled a
man at that time to practice in and six miles
around Westminster. In 1732 he published
a work entitled The Ancient Physician's
Legacy to his Country, in which, he says
on the title-page " the extraordinary effects
of mercury ai-e more particularly considered."
On page 18 is given the formula of his fa-
mous powder : " Take opium one ounce, salt-
petre and tartar vitriolated each four ounces,
ipecacuanha one ounce. Put the saltpetre and
tartar in a red-hot mortar, stirring them with
a spoon until they have done flaming. Then
powder them very fine ; after that slice in
your opium, grind them to a powder, and then
mix the other powders with these. Dose,
from forty to sixty or seventy grains in a
glass of white wine posset, going to bed, cov-
ering up warm, and drinking a quart or three
pints of the posset. Drink while sweating."
He says that some apothecaries have desired
their patients to make their wills and settle
their affairs before they venture upon so
large a dose as sixty or seventy grains. " As
monstrous as they may represent this, I can
produce undeniable proofs where a patient
of mine has taken no less a quantity than a
hundred gi-ains and yet has appeared abroad
the next day." Dover continued to practice
in London, and in the seventh edition of The
Ancient Physician's Legacy there is a letter
to him from Catherine Hood, in which she

speaks of having consulted him in 1737.
He is stated by Munk to have died in 1741
or 1742.

Sisal in the Bahamas.— Sisal fiber which
is next in importance to hemp in rope-mak-
ing, derived its commercial name from the
port of Sisal, from which it was originally
shipped in the Bahamas. In Yucatan the
plant is called heneqtien. Agave sisalana,
which is its botanical name, had its original
home in Mexico; it belongs to the same
family as the well-known century plant. On
account of its value as a fiber-producer it
has now been widely distributed in tropical
and subtropical countries. It does not re-
quire a rich soil, and can get along with sur-
prisingly little water. The plant is best
propagated by means of suckers, which it
produces abundantly ; they are allowed to
reach sixteen or twenty inches in height
and are then " lifted " and the roots trimmed
and some of the lower leaves removed be-
fore resetting. Leaves fit for cutting are
produced in three or four years. During the
first season of yielding, however, only a few
of the larger leaves are removed ; subse-
quently ten or fifteen leaves are cut from
each plant. The cutting is done from one
to three times a year. The leaves are
cleaned by a machine which tunis out from
one half to one ton of fiber a day ; the clean-
ing should be done within a few hours after
the leaves are harvested, as the fermentation
which soon starts up in the saccharine mat-
ters surrounding the fiber very soon dis-
colors and seriously weakens it. When
cleaned before fermentation has set in, the
fiber is perfectly white ; after passing through
the machine it is hung out in the sun to dry,
and when dry tied up into bales of three
hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds
each. An acre of land with six hundred
and fifty plants will yield from twelve hun-
dred to fifteen hundred pounds of fiber per
annum, the price of which has varied from
£50 per ton in 1889 to £13 in 1895. In
March, 1896, it was quoted at £17. A plan-
tation lasts about fifteen years, if carefully
cared for. It is necessary, however, to be
continually replacing individuals that have
" poled." This is the supreme effort in
the life of many plants of the agave tribe,
and with it they complete their life history.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

429

The flowering panicle or pole is a huge in-
florescence sent up from the heart of the
plant. It is fifteen to twenty feet high, and
sometimes higher. From the base, which
is about four inches in diameter, it gradually
tapers upward into a fine, slender rod. The
branches carry numerous greenish-yellow
flowers, giving the whole a candelabral char-
acter. In Agave sisalana the flowers are sel-
dom followed by seed pods; exceptionally,
one or two may be produced. When the
flowers have fallen off, at the ends of the
branches in the axils near the flower scar
there are produced numerous small bulbels,
which eventually develop into plantlets of
considerable size. These are locally called
*' pole plants," and the sisal plant is capable
of being abundantly propagated, either by
means of the " pole plants " or " root suck-
ers," the latter of which, however, are pre-
ferred by the planters.

The Toba Lake. — The most striking fea-
ture of the Batak tableland of Sumatra is
the great sheet of water known as the Toba
Lake, of which, though only as a name,
geographers have been cognizant for more
than a century. It lies, according to Baron
Anatole von Hugel, about twenty-five hun-
dred feet above the sea ; and, trending from
the southwest to the northeast, has a length
of about fifty miles, with an average breadth
of sixteen miles. It is oblong in shape, and
has a considerably indented coast line. The
natives call it by two distinct names ; for
the central third of its length is so blocked
by a large and populous island a^ to divide
it into two basins. The island consists of a
compact mountain range of gentle contour,
attaining its greatest height at fifty-two hun-
dred feet. Of the narrow channels which
separate this island from the mainland, one
is navigable at all times, while the other is
so shallow as to be fordable on foot when
the water is low. The lake has a consider-
able outflow, which, after a short course,
forms a respectable waterfall, and eventu-
ally joins the sea. No river, however, flows
into the lake ; and the insignificant rivulets
and brooks that run down its steep shores
are the only visible streams that feed its
wide waters — a large expanse, indeed, con-
sidering that its water-surface area is three
times that of the Lake of Constance. The

frequent and regular changes in the hue of
the lake are a peculiarity worth mention-
ing. " Of a morning, the surface being then
mostly unruffled, it appears of a fine dark
blue, which changes to a greenish tint along
the shores ; by noon it is of a leaden gray ;
and of an afternoon it is whitened with
foam by a fierce wind, which here blows
with strange regularity."

The Professional Criminal.— In a recent
article in Blackwood's Magazine Mr. Ander-
son discusses the appropriate treatment by
the state of the professional criminal, and
the ineffectiveness of the present system.
In speaking of the sentencing of a criminal
of this class, who had previously spent sev-
eral terms in the penitentiary, to five years'
penal servitude, he says : " But have the in-
terests of the community been adequately
safeguarded in this case ? It may perhaps
be urged that such a sentence will be inade-
quate in deterring others from committing
burglaries. But what others ? People talk
as though the masses of the population were
kept from crime only by its penalties. As' a
matter of fact, crimes of this kind ('bur-
glaries') are the work of professionals.
Here, then, is a class of men who have de-
liberately outlawed themselves. They have
had warning after warning, but on each oc-
casion have returned to their evil courses,
and now, having been once again brought to
justice, the state shuts them up for a few
years, and at the end of that time they are
to be let loose on society once more to per-
petrate a new series of crimes." To illus-
trate the absurdity of such a proceeding, Mr.
Anderson suggests a comparison: If game
preserves were being destroyed by a fox,
and carefully arranged traps were set at con-
siderable expense to catch him, it would be
considered a trifle short-sighted if, after cap-
turing and caging the fox for a time, he
were again set free, and the same process
gone through with at varying intervals for
the rest of the fox's life; and yet this is
substantially the process which is pursued
by the state with the professional criminal.
Most of his class are as hopeless, so far as
individual reform is concerned, as is the fox.
The whole trend of modern criminology
points toward the conclusion that he is a
criminal through nature, and is as much of

430

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an abnormity as a maniac or an idiot. In
other words, he has a dangerous disease, and
should be treated as a diseased member, and
not as a mischievous boy. His side of the
question, however, is of the least impor-
tance ; society's first duty is to itself. Indi-
viduals who can not live in accordance with
the laws which govern civilized societies
should be placed where they can do the
community no harm. On the other hand,
the nonprofessional criminal — who, through
some untoward combination of circum-
stances, in a given instance becomes an
offender against the laws — is in quite a dif-
ferent relation to the social body from the
hereditary criminal. The former deserves
punishment; the latter, treatment. Here,
then, besides possible wide individual differ-
ences, we have a well-marked class differ-
ence among criminals, and it is quite evident
that society must consider this class differ-
ence in devising successful corrective or
protective legislation.

The Cbamacoeos. — Since the discovery
by Dr. Bohls in lagoons in the Lengua terri-
tory, near the Paraguay River, of that rare
and curious fish, Zepidosiren paradoza, in
large numbers, scientists have taken a spe-
cial interest in this region. Cavaliere Guido
Boggiani, an Italian artist, recently spent
three years near these lakes, living with two
of the native tribes, the Chamococos and the
Caduveas, where he seems to have collected
much material of scientific value. Henry H.
Giglioli, in a recent Nature, gives an account

of the ethnological data gathered during the
expedition. The Chamacocos, who are espe-
cially known to ethnologists through their
singular long-handled stone axes, are nomad.s ;
they are tall, well shaped, the skin of a red-
dish tinge. The men have long, black hair,
which is worn tied in a knot behind, in a thick
queue, or flowing loose. The women are less
handsome, and wear their hair short. No
clothing is worn by either sex, except rough
sandals of peccary skin when on the tramp.
On festive occasions they decorate them-
selves with a profusion of feather orna-
ments, necklaces of seeds, and the rattle of
the crotalus, the latter of which are worn
in diadems, armlets, leglets, and united in
bunches as ear pendants. They make rude
pottery, but do not use the potter's wheel.
From Boggiani's description the Chmnacocos
seem to be an inoffensive and happy people,
who relieve their exuberant spirits in fre-
quent festivities ; they have numerous games,
one of which might be described as primi-
tive lawn tennis. Their weapons are clubs,
wooden spears, large bows for shooting ai"-
rows, and small bows with a double string
used for shooting clay bullets. The women
make neat bags and reticules of different
kinds of netting and also hammocks, for
which they use the fiber of the ybira. They
have some curious superstitions regarding
food ; thus, deer flesh is only eaten by men,
while women can feed on birds and small game.
Among the many interesting facts collected
by Boggiani is a small vocabulary of the
hitherto unknown language of these people.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The Bulgarians, according to the report
of the United States consul at Annaberg,
love music. They sing a great deal, at
home, in entertainments, and in their occu-
pations. The shepherds or the harvest-
reapers on opposite heights often sing in
alternation, stanza in answer to stanza. The
attendants and armed escorts of traveling
parties raise their voices in chorus, and
soldiers sing on the march. Musical in-
struments are much in use — the primitive
native ones, and the modem inventions
which are taking the place of these. The
predominant national instrument is the ffoj-

da, or bagpipe, the melancholy and monot-
onous tones of which are precious to them.
Other instruments are the kaval, a very
simple wooden shepherd's pipe, producing a
shrill note ; the gadulka^ or cignlka, an in-
strument of two strings, emitting melancholy
tones ; the gypsy fiddle, or kemene, a superior
instrument ; the bulgarina, a sweet guitar with
four strings, which is played upon by means
of a goosequill ; and the drukja, or bajalma,
a similar guitar, played with two fingers.
All the instruments are manufactured by the
gajdari, who formerly constituted in the town
a special guild.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

431

It seems that Prof. Fraser, of Edinburgh,
who was recently announced as the perfecter
of an antitoxine of snake poison, was antici-
pated in this discovery by Dr. Calmette, of
the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Prof. E. Ray
Lankester, in a letter to Nature, says : " In the
Annales de VInstitut Pasteur^ May, 1894, Dr.
Calmette described in full detail his re-
searches on snake poison, and demonstrated
that not only can animals be rendered resist-
ant to cobra (and other snake) poison by the
injection into them of graduated doses of the
poison (so that rabbits were rendered tolerant
of sixty times the lethal dose), but that the
serum of such immunized rabbits is found to
contain a powerful antitoxine, which can be
used successfully as an antidote to snake
poison.

An address, delivered at a presentation to
Sir Henry Ackland of a bust and some fifteen
thousand dollars which will be employed in car-
rying on the work of the Sarah Ackland Home
for Nurses, stated that the testimonial had been
subscribed for in commemoration of the long
and faithful service that Sir Henry Ackland
had rendered to the university, city, and
county of Oxford, and the part which he had
borne in the advance of medical science in
England, more particularly in the direction
of sanitary reform and preventive medicine,
during the forty years of his occupation of
the chair in the university of Regius Profess-
or of Medicine.

The west coast of Stromo, Faroe Islands,
is described by Dr. Karl Grossmann as giv-
ing excellent opportunities for studying
" how the erosion by sea and weather takes
|;hold of the gigantic rock walls, which look
|(as if built for eternity. The caves, which
are produced at sea level by the washing out
,of dikes and cracks, have often most fan-
tastic forms. Sometimes they are arched
^like a Gothic vault, resembling Fingal's
■ Cave or Nuremberg architecture ; in other
parts we see a flat, horizontal roof, covering
mysterious inlets, reminding us of the en-
j trance to the lethal chambers of the Pha-
,raohs. In many of these caves seals used to
■breed, but the irrational way in which the
natives slaughtered them has finally driven
^them away altogether. As we row farther
, north, we encounter many a fine example of
rocks that have been broken off and slid

down as stacks, which are now separated
from the main rock barely wide enough to
admit our small boat."

NOTES.

The acquisition by States of tracts of
forest is urged by the friends of forestry as
a measure for the conservation of water
powers, the amelioration of climate, the pres-
ervation of scenery, and the instruction of
the people. Aside from the benefit thus de-
rived, it is urged that these forests may be
made to yield a fair return upon their cost
and maintenance. To illustrate the force of
this view, Mr. J. B. Walker, of Concord,
N. H., refers to a proposition to form such a
park out of the Pi-esidential Range of the
White Mountains. The region is already a
pleasure ground accessible in twelve hours
or less to ten million people. It could be
greatly improved and its attractions vastly
added to by proper forest development, or,
more properly, restoration.

Darwin's suggestion that the composition
of subsoils might be ascertained from the ex-
amination of the piles of earth brought up
by earthworms from their holes is said to
have been utilized in Australia by a miner
who was led to digging for a coal vein which
he found from seeing traces of coal in the
accumulations of land crabs ; and by another,
who, acting upon a hint given him by the
wombats, found tin ore in the mountains.

The hot caves of Monsummano, Italy,
long neglected, are beginning to receive at-
tention again as health resorts. They were
discovered in 1849 by quarrymen, and were
found to be helpful to those of the men who
had suffered from rheumatism. They were
visited by Garibaldi and Kossuth for relief
from troubles under which they were suffer-
ing. They are hollowed in a porous rock,
and an air saturated with moisture circulates
freely in them at a temperature of about 88°
F. The patient who enters them clad in
light robes, soon perspires very freely, and
may continue to do so during his whole
sojourn of from half an hour to several
hours.

The third International Congress of Psy-
chology will be held at Munich, August 4 to
7, 1896. It will be opened on the morning
of August 4th in the great " aula " of the
Royal University. All who desire to further
the progress of psychology and to foster per-
sonal relations among the students of psy-
chology in different nations are invited to
take part in the meetings.

In a recent letter to Science, Prof. Ira
Remsen describes a curious natural gas reser-
voir. A party of skaters in the neighbor-
hood of Baltimore were upon a large artificial
lake which was covered with remarkably

432

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

clear ice. In various places white spots were
noticed in the ice. Some one bored a hole
through one of these and applied a flame to
the opening, when a gas jet appeared and
burned for some time. The gas, of course,
was marsh gas, which had collected under
the ice and formed the apparent air bubbles.

The observer who travels about much in
the various larger cities of the country, says
the Kansas City Architect and Builder, can
not fail to notice the marked change that
has of late taken place in the construction
of large buildings. Everywhere one goes he
sees the work going on of putting iron and
steel where stone and wood formerly held
very much of a monopoly. It is believed by
architects and engineers generally to be the
beginning of the iron and steel era in build-
ing, and that it will go on, becoming more
and more general in all classes of building
work.

The bad moral effect of a national policy
of militarism and an enormous standing army
was recently illustrated in the German Reichs-
tag. The question of dueling was brought up
by the death of Herr von Schrader, and vari-
ous methods for stamping out the practice
were proposed. It is well known, however,
that the emperor approves dueling, and the
result of the debate was nil. The imperial
chancellor delivered a speech which practi-
cally said that public sentiment in favor of
dueling was so strong that prohibitive legis-
lation could not be enforced.

The centenary of the introduction of
porcelain into France is to be celebrated by
an exposition at Limoges this year. The
history of porcelain manufacture will be
traced by specimens of work and processes.
The exposition is being organized by the
Soci6te Gay-Lussac, working in conjunction
with representatives of the town of Limoges.

The name of the New York Microscopical
Society should have been included in the list
of the co-operating bodies represented in the
Scientific Alliance of New York which was
published in the April number of the Monthly.

The deepest hole in the earth has been
bored at Parushowitz, near Rybnik, Silesia,
to the depth of 2004-84 metres, or 6,514
feet. At that point the drill rod broke off,
and the cost of withdrawing the broken end
has prevented a resumption of operations.
Eighty-three beds of coal were penetrated
during the borings, and 384 therraometrical
measurements were taken. The latter indi-
cated a very irregular increase of tempera-
ture with the depth.

The third International Congress for Psy-
chology, Prof. Dr. Stumpe, of Berlin, presi-
dent, will be held in Munich, August 4, 189*7.
The names of Profs. Stanley Hall, of Wor-
cester ; Henrik G. Petersen, of Boston ; Wil-
liam S. Wadsworth (2) ; C. Staniland Wake,

of Chicago ; Mark Baldwin, of Princeton ; and
Edward B. Tichener, of Cornell, are entered
upon the provisional list of contributors of
papers published April 15th. The American
members of the International Committee of
Organization are Profs. Baldwin, H. Donald-
son, G. S. Fullerton, Stanley Hall, William
James, Lightner Witmer, and Newbold.

Macmillan & Co. announce as in prepa-
ration a Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy-
chology, under the editorial supervision of
Prof. Baldwin, of Princeton University. It
will contain concise definitions, historical
matter, and bibliographies on subjects in
the whole range of philosophical study (phi-
losophy, metaphysics, psychology, ethics,
logic, etc.). Distinguished American and
British specialists will contribute original arti-
cles to the several departments of the work.

The first session of the Bahama Biologi-
cal Station was held during the summer of
1893 at Bimini Islands, Bahamas. For the
coming season it has been decided to locate
the laboratory at Biscayne Bay, Florida, in
the latitude of the Bimini Islands, and just
across the Gulf Stream. Here are found the
same equable climate, clear water, and sub-
tropical fauna and flora for which the Baha-
mas are famous. The station will be under
the direction of Prof. Charles L. Edwards,
of the University of Cincinnati, and, begin-
ning June 22d, will continue six weeks. The
course of instruction consists of lectures, dis-
section and microscopic work in the labora-
tory, with observation of the organisms in
natural environment. The fee of twenty-five
dollars includes tuition, use of microscope,
reagents, and material for dissection. Pro-
visions are made for collecting and preserv-
ing representative forms as laboratory ma-
terial.

Dr. John Russell Hind, superintendent
of the Nautical Almanac, who died near the
close of 1895, became generally known about
the middle of the century by his discoveries
of minor planets, which were then few and
rare, and by his computations of the orbits
of comets and studies in the history of those
bodies. He had been a superintendent of
the Nautical Almanac since 1853. He re-
ceived medals for his discoveries, and was
elected to many learned societies.

Prof. Adalbert Krueger, of the Ob-
servatory of Kiel, and editor of the Astro-
nomische Nachrichten^ died April 21st, at the
age of sixty-four years. He was for many
years assistant to Argelander, whose daugh-
ter he married at Boim, then director of the
Observatory of Helsingfors, then at Gotha,
and lastly at Kiel. As editor of the Astro-
nomische Nachrichten and chief of the cen-
tral office for the telegraphic transmission of
astronomical discoveries. Prof. Krueger was
brought into relations with the astronomers
of the whole world.

WILTJAM WILLIAMS MATHER.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1896.

THE PROPOSED DUAL ORGAOTZATION OF MANKIND.

By Prof. WILLIAM G. SUMNEE.

RODBERTUS turned aside from his studies of taxation in the
Roman Empire, which had shown him the Roman city ex-
hausting and consuming the rest of the Roman world, to express
pthe opinion that the history of the last three hundred years is a
bory of the exploitation of the outlying continents by the old
mters of civilization. This was an attempt to describe sum-
larily the significance for the human race of the opening up of
lew regions by exploration and colonization. The period during
rhich the influences of the new extension of civilized settlements
las been at work is so short that it is impossible to define with
mfidence its ultimate effects on the relation of the parts of the
ice to each other, and on the fortunes of the race as a whole.
3cent events, however, have forced this subject upon our atten-
tion, for the " Monroe doctrine," as it has been recently affirmed
and construed, would be nothing less than a doctrine and policy
rhich some people are disposed to force upon the new organiza-
tion of the inhabitants of the globe produced by the discovery
and settlement of the outlying continents. If anybody claims to
be able now to take control of this most portentous evolution in
the life of the human race, and to dictate the course which it is to
take, it behooves us all to verify the doctrine and to test the pro-
'amme of policy proposed.
The era of geographical discovery and adventure passes for an
)ra of glorious achievement by men, yet to what end did they
iTQ to know and reach the outlying parts of the earth ? One
lotive which led them was the gain of commerce. The products
)f the Indies could be obtained in no other way, and the trade for

TOL. XI.IX.— 36

434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

them was as old as civilization. The other great motive was to
obtain new supplies of gold and silver, under an exaggerated
and fallacious notion of the desirableness of those forms of
wealth. Starting from these motives the movement has run its
own course of commerce, colonization, war, missionary enterprise,
economic expansion, and social evolution, for three centuries.
The discovery, colonization, and exploitation of the outlying con-
tinents have been the most important elements in modern history.
We Americans live in one of the great commonwealths which
have been created by it. We are hard at work occupying and
subduing one of these outlying continents, from a local and later
but comparatively old center of civilization. In our own history
we have been, first, one of the outlying communities which were
being exploited, and then ourselves an old civilization exploiting
outlying regions.

The process of extension from Europe has gone on with the
majesty and necessity of a process of Nature. Nothing in human
history can compare with it as an unfolding of the drama of
human life on earth under the aspects of growth, reaction, destruc-
tion, new development, and higher integration. The record shows
that the judgments of statesmen and philosophers about this
process from its beginning have been a series of errors, and that
the policies by which they have sought to control and direct it
have only crippled it and interrupted it by war, revolt, and dissen-
sion. At the present time the process is going on under a wrangle
of discordant ethical judgments about its nature and the rights of
the parties in it. We are rebuked for the wrongs of the aborigi-
nes, the vices of civilization, the greed of traders, the mistakes of
missionaries, land-grabbing, etc., yet we Americans and others
are living to-day in the enjoyment of the fruits of these wrongs
perpetrated a few years ago. The fact is, as the history clearly
shows, that the extension of the higher civilization over the globe
is a natural process in which we are all swept along in spite of
our ethical judgments. Those men, civilized or uncivilized, who
can not or will not come into the process will be crushed under
it. It is as impossible that the present and future exploitation
of Africa should not go on as it is that the present inhabitants
of Manhattan Island should return to Europe and let the red man
come back to his rights again. The scope for reason and con-
science in the matter lies in taking warning from the statesmen
and philosophers who have been overhasty in the past with their
doctrines and policies of how the process must go on.

Looking at the movement of men from Europe to the outlying
continents as a phenomenon in the development of private inter-
ests and welfare, it appears at once that the man who went out as
a fortune-hunter and he who went out as a colonist are on a very

PROPOSED DUAL ORGANIZATION OF MANKIND. 435

different footing. The former might be said to aim at selfishly
exploiting the outlying country because he hoped, after a few
years, to return to Europe and there enjoy his gains. The same
could not be said of the colonist, for he cast in his lot with the
new country, hoping there to establish a new home for his de-
scendants and to build up a new commonwealth.

If the same movement is regarded from the standpoint of the
duties and interests of European states, it is evident that both the
fortune-hunter and the colonist needed, at first, the support and
protection of the state from which they went forth. The whole
movement of discovery and settlement appears, in this point of
view, as a manifestation of growing social power in western
Europe, and the nations there are seen to have made, in the first
instance, a great expenditure of energy and capital for which they
never received any return. The relation was one of parenthood,
and therefore one of sacrifice on the part of the mother countries.
This relation was, however, obscured by traditions and accepted
notions of national aggrandizement and glory, and by notions
about commerce which were accepted as axiomatic. These no-
tions drove the great states into policies of conquest, exclusion,
monopoly, and war with each other. As a consequence, the whole
grand movement came to be regarded by European statesmen
from the standpoint of gain to European nations, and they adopted
sordid measures for snatching this gain from each other. Those
statesmen assumed that Europe was the head of the world, and
they allotted the outlying regions among themselves with no re-
gard for the aborigines, and very little regard for the colonists.
The body of relations which was established between the Old
World and* the New, under this theory, constituted the colonial
system.

It can not be denied that the colonial system stands in history
an attempt to exploit the outlying continents for the benefit of

lurope. Thousands of lives and millions of capital were ex-

mded in the effort to perfect the system, and in that struggle to
jteal each other's colonies which the system caused. The logical
mtcome was the ambition of each competitor to win universal
lominion for itself, and to impose a balance-of -power policy on

ich of the others. The system had its doctrines too ; some old,

)me new : " He who holds the sea will hold the land " — " Trade
follows the flag." The English colonial system was far less op-
>ressive and more enlightened than that of any other nation. It

lone was founded on real colonization and aimed to create new
5ommonwealths. It was therefore the one under which the system

'st broke down, for it contained a fatal inconsistency in itself.
[t educated the colonists to independence, and it was certain that

Ley would go alone as soon as they were strong enough to do so.

436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

if they thought that they were being exploited in the colonial re-
lation. To such extent as this destiny was aimed at or uncon-
sciously brought about, the construction of modern history put
forward by Rodbertus fails to be correct.

It has become a common place of history that the revolt of the
American colonies was a good thing for the colonies and for Eng-
land. The question no longer has any other than speculative in-
terest, and perhaps no speculation is more idle than that which
deals with the possible consequences of some other course of his-
tory than that which actually took place ; but, if such speculation
ever could be profitable, it would be upon this question : What
would have been the consequences to human welfare if the Eng-
lish statesmen of 1775 could have risen to the nineteenth- century
doctrine of colonies, and if the whole English-speaking world
could have remained united in sympathy and harmony ? This
question has so much practical value that it may help us to see
the advantage there may be in a colonial relation where it still ex-
ists, and to see that there is no universal and dogmatic ground
for independence which can be urged by a third party.

Independence was brought about on the Western continent ;
not to any important extent anywhere else. The Spanish- Amer-
ican colonies had grievances against their mother country which
fully justified their revolt ; still, it appears that they revolted
chiefly from contagion and imitation. They have never been
able to obtain good standing in the family of nations as inde-
pendent commonwealths. The Panama Congress of 1824, in its
original plan, promised to be a very important incident in the de-
velopment of the relations of the JSTew World to the Old. It ap-
peared for a time that the Western continent might be organized
as a unit in independence of, and possible hostility to, the Eastern
continent. The project came to nothing. It was crushed in one
of the hardest political collisions in our history, that between the
Adams administration and the Jackson opposition. The theory
of it, however, remains behind and, under the name of the Monroe
doctrine, has remained as a vague and elastic notion. The prac-
tical outcome of any attempt to realize that doctrine must be to
organize the world into a dual system. Instead of the old notion
of a world-unit ruled from Europe as its head, we should have a
dual world-system, one half under the hegemony of Europe, the
other half under that of the United States. Is this a rational or
practicable plan of future development ? Is it not fantastic and
arbitrary ? If the United States pretends to hold aloof from a
share in the affairs of the Eastern continent, and to demand that
all European states shall abstain from any share in the affairs of
the Western continent, is that anything more than a pose and an
affectation ? Have we not within a year or two been forced to

PROPOSED DUAL ORGANIZATION OF MANKIND. 437

take action in protection of our citizens in China and Armenia ?
If Africa is opened up to commerce, do we mean to hold aloof
from a share in it ? Are we not already deeply interested in it so
far as it has advanced ? We have interests in Madagascar which
have already drawn us into the proceedings there, and which
promise to involve us still further. We accepted a role in the war
between China and Japan which was by no means that of an unin-
terested stranger. Will any one maintain that we could carry cub
the policy of abstention in respect to that part of the world ?

On the other hand, so long as European nations own colonies
in America, how can we rule the Western continent without
coming in collision with them ? Even if we should dispossess
them of those colonies, how would it be possible to rule the
Western continent, and to deny them any right to meddle in its
affairs, so long as their citizens may visit the same for business
or pleasure ? The notion that the world can be so divided that
we can rule one part and Europe the other, and thus never be
brought in collision with each other, is evidently a silly whim.
We may talk about " Western civilization " or "American ideas,"
but these are only grandiloquent phrases. Everybody knows
that there is no civilization common to all America and different
from that of Europe ; there are no ideas common to all America
and different from European ideas. There has never been any
sympathy between North and South America, and there are only
few and comparatively feeble bonds of interest based on com-
merce or investments. Either North or South America has far
stronger bonds to Europe than they both have to each other. As
far as the external resemblance of " republics " is concerned, the
South American states have hitherto only made republican gov-
ernment ridiculous. The geographical neighborhood, on which
stress is often laid, can be seen by a glance at the map to be non-
existent. If it existed it would be of little importance compared
with economic distance, which is reckoned by cost, time, and
facility of transportation. The Western continents are divided
from each other by race, religion, language, real political institu-
tions, manners and customs, and, above all, by tastes and habits.
They entertain a strong dislike of each other. The United States
.could never establish a hegemony over the Western world until
[after long years of conquest. In their quarrels with European

itates, it suits the South American states very well that the
jUnited States should act the cat's paw for them, but it can not
[be that their statesmen will be so short-sighted as to accept a pro-
;tection which would turn into domination without a moment's
I warning; neither can it be possible that our statesmen will ever

seriously commit us to a responsibility for the proceedings of

Jouth American states.

438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

We may probe tlie ideas and projects which are grouped under
this attempt at a dual organization of the world as we will, in no
direction do we come upon anything but crude notions and in-
flated rhetoric. Such notions have hitherto proved very costly
to the human race. President Cleveland, in his Venezuela mes-
sage, sought a parallel for the Monroe doctrine in the balance-of-
power doctrine. The parallel was unfortunate, if it had been
true. The balance-of -power doctrine cost frightful expenditures
of life and capital, and what was won by them ? Where is the
balance of power as it was understood in the eighteenth century,
or in Napoleon's time ? A real parallel to the Monroe doctrine is
furnished by the colonial system. The latter, as above shown,
was the doctrine of the unity of the world under the headship of
Europe. The former is the doctrine of the dualism of the world,
with Europe at the head of one part and the United States at the
head of the other. One of these conceptions of the new organiza-
tion of the human race, which is to grow out of the colonization
and settlement of the outlying countries, is as arbitrary as the
other, and the new one can never be realized without far greater
expenditure of life and property than the other. If history and
science have any power over the convictions and actions of men,
here is a good opportunity for proof of it, for if anything is
proved by ecclesiastical and civil history it would seem to be the
frightful cost of phrases and doctrines, and of the whole cohort
of phantasms which take the place of facts and relations in deter-
mining the actions of men. It is to these that men have always
brought the heaviest sacrifices of their happiness, blood, and
property. We have had in our own history the doctrines of no
entangling alliances. State rights, nullification, manifest destiny,
the self-expanding power of the Constitution, the higher law,
secession, and as many more as rhetorical politicians have found
necessary to save them the trouble of coming. down to facts and
law. How frightful has been the penalty for the people who have
been deluded by some of these ! Who knows on what day an-
other of them may, by a turn of events, become politically impor-
tant and call for its share of sacrifice ? It is a wise rule of life
for a man of education and sense not to allow his judgment to be
taken captive by stereotyped catch- words, mottoes, and doctrines.

We have already a commercial system in which we have un-
dertaken to surround ourselves by a wall of taxes so as to raise
the prices of all manufactured products twenty -five to fifty per
cent above the same prices in western Europe. That system has
been adopted as a policy of prosperity to be produced by specific
devices of legislation. We have applied it to the best part of the
continent of North America. It is now proposed to restrict im-
migration so as to close the labor market of the same part of

PROPOSED DUAL ORGANIZATION OF MANKIND. 439

North America, in tlie belief that wages will thus be raised, and
that, if they are, a great advantage will be produced for the wages
class. We have also a project before us to inclose all America
in a barrier within which an arbitrary circulation of silver
money may be secured, all relations with the money of the rest
of the world being cut off. That these doctrines and projects all
hang together, and are all coherent with the political notion of
the dual division of the world, is obvious. The common element
is in the narrow and distorted view of what is true and possible
and desirable in social and economic affairs.

We have had before us, since the revolt of the English North
American colonies, another conception of the organization of
human society which is to come out of the extension of civiliza-
tion to the outlying continents. It is, in fact, now imbedded in
international law and in the diplomacy of civilized states. That
is why the advocates of the Monroe doctrine have been forced to
meet the argument that their doctrine was not in international
law by new spinnings of political metaphysics. They have to try
to cover the fact that the Monroe doctrine is an attempt by the
United States to define the rights of other nations. The mod-
ern conception, however, is that the states of the world are all
united in a family of nations whose rights and duties toward each
other are embodied in a code of international law. All states
may be admitted into this family of nations whenever they accept
this code, whether they have previously been considered " civil-
ized " or not. The code itself is a product of the reasoning and
moral convictions of civilized states, and it grows by precedents
and usages, as cases arise for the application of the general prin-
ciples which have been accepted as sound, because they conduce
to peace, harmony, and smooth progress of affairs. The code has
undergone its best developments in connection with the spread of
enlightenment and the extension of industrialism. This is the
only conception of the relation of parts of the human race to each
other which is consistent with civilization, and which is worthy
of the enlightenment of our age. Any " doctrine" which is not
consistent with it will sooner or later be set aside through the
mffering of those who adhere to it.

The citizens of Philadelphia have been reminded by Mr. B. E. Fernow,
>f the Bureau of Forestry, that that city possesses a forestry reserve of
lirteen thousand acres in Centre County, Pa. It was given to the city by
>r. EUas Boudinot, President of the First Continental Congress, as a trust
fund for the supply of fuel to poor persons at cost prices. It has been neg-
lected, and much of the timber has been stolen or destroyed ; but the work
|of reforestation was begun in 1888, and has been continued as means have
jrmitted.

440 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

By LEWIS R. HARLEY, Ph. D.

IN resigning the provostship of tlie University of Pennsylvania
in 1894, Dr. William Pepper defined the broad policy of the
institution in the following appropriate language : " The univer-
sity is truly the voluntary association of all persons and of all
agencies who wish to unite in work for the elevation of society
by the pursuit and diffusion of truth.''

The function of a university is not simply instruction but also
research. In this latter field of work American universities are
showing great activity, and remarkable results have been pro-
duced. The University of Pennsylvania has been particularly
susceptible to the changing conditions of American life, as is
illustrated in the modifications in its curriculum from time to
time. When the institution was chartered as a college in 1755,
no other school in this country offered so liberal a course of
study. In 1810 the curriculum was modified and rearranged so
as to conform to the new conditions which had arisen with the
opening of the century ; but old methods and old ideas prevailed
until 1868, when Dr. Charles J. Stills was elected provost. The
elective system of studies was introduced, and every department
of the institution felt the pulses of new life. During the four-
teen years of Dr. Stilld's administration the larger career of the
university began, and a worthy successor was found in Dr. Wil-
liam Pepper, who was inaugurated provost on February 22, 1881.
A new creative period in the history of the university now began,
rendered memorable by the founding and equipment of fourteen
new departments and the erection of thirteen new buildings. In
order to extend its influence as a center of learning and research,
the university has aimed to establish the principle that it is
organically a part of the municipality of Philadelphia. Fully
appreciating the importance of this fact to the city, the Councils
in 1872 and in 1883 voted the transfer to the university of splen-
did tracts of ground in consideration of the establishment of fifty
free beds in the hospital for the poor of Philadelphia, and of fifty
prize scholarships in the college, to be awarded to graduates of
the public schools of Philadelphia. Subsequent accessions of ter-
ritory from the city authorities have brought the domain of the
university up to fifty-two acres in a compact body.

The university is in right, and should be in fact, the crown of
the educational system of the entire Commonwealth. The expense
of modern research practically necessitates resources which, as a
rule, only the State can adequately furnish. But the university
received no great contribution from the State until 1779, when

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,

441

a grant of escheated lands, valued at $66,666.66, was made. No
other large appropriation was received until 1871, when the
Legislature granted the sum of two hundred thousand dollars
for the building of the university hospital. In 1895 another ap-
propriation of two hundred thousand dollars was received from
the State for the purpose of improving the college department.
By this act the Legislature of Pennsylvania gave complete recog-
nition to the university as a State institution, and at the same

William Pepper, LL. D.,

Provost of the University from January 12, 1881, to June 7, 1894.

ime widened its sphere of usefulness. Mr. Charles C. Harrison
succeeded to the provostship in 1894,xand he at once outlined a
liberal policy in an appeal for an endowment fund of five million
dollars.

The demand for a special kind of education has been promptly

I met by the university by the multiplication of new courses of
study, three hundred and thirty courses having been offered dur-
ing the past year. The courses are arranged in elective groups.

VOL. XLIX. — 36

442 POPULAR SCIEJSICE MONTHLY

have taken Latin and Greek during the freshman and sophomore
years. The new impulses of the century are shown in the fact
that the degree of Bachelor of Science is granted in eight dif-
ferent departments or schools. Besides these, courses are also
offered in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of
Law, the Department of Medicine, the University Hospital, the
Auxiliary Department of Medicine, the Wistar Institute of Anat-

Chakles C. Harrison, A.M.,
Provost of the University.

omy and Biology, the Laboratory of Hygiene, the Department of
Dentistry, the Department of Veterinary Medicine, the Museum
of Archaeology and Paleontology, the Flower Astronomical Ob-
servatory, and the Department of Physical Education. These
various departments at present constitute the University of
Pennsylvania.

The highest intellectual life of the university is found in the
Department of Philosophy, devoted to the work of research and
investigation. The courses are open to college graduates, and

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 443

lead to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This department,
established in 1884, is modeled after the philosophical faculty of
the German universities. The growth of the department has been
rapid. In 1884-'85 there was one matriculate ; during the present
year the enrollment has reached one hundred and seventy- one.
The possibilities for original work and scientific research in the
Department of Philosophy have been greatly increased through
the generosity of Provost Harrison, who has presented to the
university a permanent fund of five hundred thousand dollars,
known as the George Leib Harrison Foundation for the Encour-
agement of Liberal Studies and the Advancement of Knowledge.
Upon this foundation have been established twenty-seven new
scholarships and fellowships of the aggregate value of thirteen
thousand two hundred dollars annually. The purpose of the
adoption of the new system is to build up a group of cultured
men residing among the students of the university. The twenty-
seven scholarships and fellowships are divided under three classi-
fications. Eight are of the value of one hundred dollars a year,
and are open only to graduates of the university, intending to
provide for those students who desire to take an extra year of
study. Fourteen are fellowships, of the value of six hundred
dollars a year, less one hundred dollars devoted to publication,
and are open to the graduates of any institution to be held for
two years in candidacy for the degree of Ph. D. The Hector
Tyndale fellowship in physics, already established, makes fifteen
of this grade. Five are senior fellowships of the value of eight
hundred dollars a year, open only to those who have taken the
degree of Ph. D. at the university. These fellowships may be
held for three years, and the holders are required to devote them-
selves to some work of original research, and to do teaching in
the line of their work to a maximum of four hours a week. The
intention is evident that the plan aims to retain men of excep-
tional ability in residence as long as possible. A graduate of
the university may hold a scholarship or fellowship for six years,
[while a graduate of another institution who displays great ability
may be retained in residence for five years. Besides the above
mentioned, there are also six fellowships in the graduate depart-
ment for women. It is believed that the university has now the
most complete system of fellowships in the country. With a
; material equipment of grounds, buildings, etc., valued at three
million nine hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, vested
.funds to the amount of one million nine hundred and ninety-
(two thousand dollars, the most liberal system of fellowships in
the country, a teaching force of two hundred and fifty-one pro-
fessors and instructors, and a student body numbering twenty-
^six hundred and thirty-two, the university has peculiar facilities

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 4^5

not only for the work of instruction, but also for research, and
investigation.

It will be impossible within the scope of this paper to ade-
quately describe all the various activities of the university, so
I shall confine myself to those departments in which the chief
contributions to science have been made. The Department of
Archaeology and Paleontology, which illustrates the prehistoric
antiquities of America, as well as the remains of highly devel-
oped Oriental civilizations, has enlisted the services and energies
of the ablest scholars. As a result of their labors, the University
of Pennsylvania has put the scientific world under lasting obli-
gations by placing the slumbering witnesses of nations that have
perished at the service of science. The Museum of Archaeology
and Paleontology may trace back its humble origin to the spring
of 1888, when a few casts and squeezes of Babylonian inscrip-
tions, some Etruscan and Roman pottery, a number of Palmyrene
tombstones, and other miscellaneous antiquities were gathered
together and placed under the care of the Professor of Assyri-
ology. Dr. Hermann Y. Hilprecht. On October 23, 1889, a little
company met at a dinner given by Mr. Francis C. Macauley, at
the Philadelphia Club. There were present Dr. William Pepper,
then provost of the university ; Dr. Joseph Leidy, President of
the Academy of Natural Sciences ; Maxwell Sommerville, the col-
lector and student of engraved gems ; Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, the
Americanist ; Dr. Horace Jayne, dean of the university faculty ;
Dr. Charles C. Abbott, the well-known archaeologist ; Henry C.
Mercer, Prof. E. D. Cope, and the host, Mr. Macauley, whose en-
ithusiastic interest in archaeological research had led him to bring
together these distinguished men of science for the purpose of
[stimulating and extending the interest in archaeological studies,
;and to establish a museum of archaeology in the city of Philadel-
phia. The project from the first received the cordial support of
Provost Pepper, and early in the month following it was an-
[nounced that the university had established the Museum of
'Archaeology and Paleontology, for which a staff of officers was
appointed and Dr. Charles C. Abbott installed as curator.

The formation of a museum, however, had only been part of a
scheme in which a most important place had been given to the
prosecution of original investigation and the arousing of a more
general interest in the subject of archaeology. To obtain funds
I for prosecuting explorations and to enlist the support of people of
cultivated taste in the work, a society was formed under the title
'of the University Archaeological Association. This organization,
; which now numbers over two hundred members, has largely con-
tributed to the results achieved. In 1891, in consequence of the
great interest manifested in the museum and the successful ex-

446 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tension of its work, it was constituted a department of the uni-
versity. Its collections are now contained in halls devoted to
them in the library. They comprise eight sections, each in charge
of a curator, as follows : American and Prehistoric Archaeology,
Asian and General Ethnology, Babylonian Casts, Egyptian and
Mediterranean Glyptics, Musical Instruments, and Paleontology.
The American Museum occupies a spacious hall. Long rows
of flat cases fill the center of the room. In these are contained a
carefully arranged collection of the objects of stone, bronze, bone,
and pottery which comprise the few material evidences of the
presence of man on the eastern part of this continent before the
arrival of European settlers. There are displayed the rude stone
implements from the Trenton gravels, the discovery of which
carried back the antiquities of man in America to a period hith-
erto undreamed of, constituting an era in the science of American
archaeology. There are also finished stone implements of the
recent Indians, and the fragments which alone remain of the rude
Indian pottery. These specimens are arranged State by State
through almost the entire Union. The exhibition space is at pres-
ent chiefly occupied with the Hazzard collection from the cliff
dwellings of Mancos Canon in southwestern Colorado. Here, un-
der the wide dome of the Library building at the university, is a
little colony of people and things estimated to be two thousand
years old. The village was discovered by two brothers named
Wetherile, in 1888, in the heart of the caiion of the Mancos River
in Colorado. They bought up the village at a very low figure,
and sold it to Mr. C. D. Hazzard, of Minneapolis. Mr. Hazzard
showed a part of his wonderful collection at the World's Fair,
and Mr. Stewart Culin, of the university, secured it for exhibition
in the museum. The collection represents in an almost un-
broken series the entire life of these strange people, telling in
plain words more about them than we know now about the war-
ring Indian tribes which inhabited the eastern coast of North
America. This exhibition shows that in the wilds of the Rocky
Mountains, where this curious colony of people were driven for
refuge by the wilder tribes inhabiting the plains, there existed
two thousand years ago a civilization and a culture that will
bear comparison with its contemporary countries throughout the
world. The Mexican antiquities consist chiefly of objects from
graves, among which are a number of cinerary urns, with their
original contents of calcined human bones. From Peru there is
a highly important collection of pottery from the ancient sepul-
chres, with mummies and a number of the simple objects, such as
food, weapons, and household implements, which the Peruvians
were accustomed to bury with their dead. From the islands of
the Pacific may be seen the weapons and pottery, the carvings of

448 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wood and bone, the ornaments, headdresses, and costumes — all,
in fact, that made the savagery of those strange lands of the
South Sea so remarkable and distinctive. In it is reflected the
spirit of that island civilization that spreads from the far South
to the Alaskan shores of the Pacific.

The results of the explorations conducted by the department
in Florida, the caves of the Ohio Valley, and in Yucatan have
been of the greatest scientific importance. The explorations of
Mr. Charles B. Moore in the shell mounds of Florida produced a
case of selected objects which filled a most important gap in the
collection of the American department. During the past few
years Mr. Henry C. Mercer, Curator of American and Prehistoric
Archaeology, has visited the most important prehistoric sites of
Europe. The university museum has thus been enriched by
European collections, such as are to be found in no other museum
in America. He made sketches of French caves, where the oldest
objects of human skill have been discovered, and where pictorial
art of a striking character has been found in drawings upon the
bones of the mammoth and the cave bear. Mr. Mercer has also
explored the floors of the mountain caves of Yucatan for traces
of pre- Indian occupation, continuing the systematic search for
evidences of the existence of palaeolithic and glacial man, which
he had carried on with negative results in the Ohio and Missis-
sippi Valleys. The caves yielded nothing older than the pottery
of the Maya Indians of the time of the conquest, verifying Maya
traditions that they found the country uninhabited when they
entered it, ages ago, from the North. Mr. Mercer's observations
have practically demonstrated that the antiquity of man in
America is more recent than in Europe, as shown by the human
remains found in European caves.

No piece of work done in America in a decade has so elevated
the European estimate of American scholarship as the recent ex-
plorations in Babylonia under the auspices of the university. In
the summer of 1888 the University of Pennsylvania equipped and
sent out the first American expedition to the northern half of the
plains of Babylonia to effect a thorough exploration of the ruins
of Nippur. A short time before this a few citizens of Philadel-
phia had met in the house of Dr. William Pepper and formed
the Babylonian Exploration Fund, with the purpose of effecting a
systematic exploration of ancient Babylonia. Two professors. Dr.
J. P. Peters and Dr. Hermann V. Hilprecht, were intrusted with the
management of the expedition. The explorations were conducted
amid the greatest difficulties, the chief ones being the deadly
climate and the hostility of the natives. But the excavations
were pressed on with energy and confidence, under the gracious
protection of the Sultan of Turkey and Hamdy Bey, the Director-

I

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 449

General of the Imperial Museum in Constantinople. The ex-
plorers penetrated deeper and deeper into the secrets and riddles
of the huge mound of ruins at Nippur. Hundreds of graves, clay-
coffins, and urns were opened, and the ruins of demolished habita-
tions and storehouses, along with the contents of their chambers,
were explored. In this way thousands of documents, inscribed
bricks, vases, and votive tablets were collected. Evidences of
the activity which once pulsated in the streets of the city were
unfolded before the eyes of the restless explorers. The terraces
of the Temple of Ekur were disclosed. Numerous bricks bearing
the name of the great Sargon came forth to the light of day
under pickaxe and shovel. Under the building of Sargon one of
the most important finds rewarded the labor that had been ex-
pended. An arch of brick was laid bare, and by this the question
long discussed by the historians of architecture as to the an-
tiquity of the arch entered upon a new stage, and its existence
in Babylonia at the beginning of the fourth millennium before
Christ was proved. The excavations have not yet reached the
deepest foundations of this venerable sanctuary, whose influence
for over four thousand years had been felt by all classes of the
Babylonian people. But in the presence of this fact we begin to
have some notion why Nippur is spoken of as the oldest city of
the earth in the old Sumerian legends of the creation. Nearly
seventy thousand dollars have already been spent on the excava-
tions in Nippur, and great sacrifices of time, money, and personal
devotion will be needed to carry the exploration to its end.
Among the most important objects secured for the university
museum may be mentioned about thirty-five thousand cuneiform
documents in clay. The Babylonian Museum is the most impor-
tant in America, and ranks immediately after the British Mu-
seum and the Louvre.

The classification and editing of the numerous and important
results of the expedition has been intrusted to Prof. Hilprecht,
who has planned their publication in four series of from ten to
fifteen volumes each. Two volumes have appeared already, three
are in the press, while seven others are in preparation. During
the summer of 1893 Prof. Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople
by the Babylonian Publication Committee to examine the inscrip-
tions of the cuneiform tablets which had been deposited there
according to the laws governing the disposal of such objects in
the Turkish Empire. Hamdy Bey, Director- General of the Impe-
rial Ottoman Museum, requested Prof. Hilprecht to reorganize
the Semitic section of the Imperial Museum and furnish the basis
of a catalogue of that section. Dr. Hilprecht complied with the
request, and since that time he has acted as curator of the section.
In March, 1896, Dr. Hilprecht again sailed for Constantinople to

450

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

classify and read the cuneiform documents excavated during the
last two years in Nippur. During the summer he will also com-
plete the reorganization of the Semitic section of the Ottoman
Museum.

The lectures of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in the fall of 1889,
aroused considerable interest in the subject of Egyptology. Sev-
eral thousand dollars were contributed by the Archaeological
Association, and the work of excavation was begun by Flinders
Petrie. Valuable collections of Egyptian antiquities were re-
ceived in return at the end of the seasons, and Mrs. Cornelius Ste-
venson was elected curator of the newly formed Egyptian section.

Egyptian Hall — Museum of Archeology.

The museum contains a historical and industrial series of Egyp-
tian objects from the fourth dynasty down to the Ptolemaic
times. A collection placed on exhibition March 20, 1896, is of
the greatest interest to science. Things sunk to earth between
the years 2800 and 3500 b. c, illustrating the life of the Libyan
invaders of Egypt, were brought to light a year ago by Flinders
Petrie, the explorer. About thirty miles from Thebes, in the
oldest Egyptian tombs, a most unexpected and startling discovery
was made. There were found burials of strange un-Egyptian in-
terlopers, whose large numbers and peculiar mode of disposing of
their remains, as well as the implements, pottery, stone work, etc.,
composing their funeral deposits, show them to be not only in-
truders, but intruders who had once swept over the region, bor-

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 451

rowing little or nothing from the people whose land they occu-
pied. The recent exhibition is of the utmost interest to scientists,
as it throws light upon the darkest age of Egyptian history,
bringing us into contact with the neolithic culture of Europe,
which we find transplanted at that remote period upon the
banks of the Nile, and it gives us the means of tracing connec-
tions with the products of the Mediterranean peoples back to at
least 3000 b. c.

The work of the museum has grown so rapidly that, in spite
of the liberal accommodations allowed the department in the
new Library building, only a portion of the material can be ex-
hibited, and even the facilities for storage are becoming wholly
inadequate. As early as 1893 the project of erecting a museum
building for the suitable display of the collections was taken up
by Mrs. Stevenson. Through the influence of Dr. Pepper, the city
authorities conveyed to the university a tract of land for the pur-
pose of establishing thereon a free museum of art and science. In
1895 the trustees of the university applied to the Legislature for
an appropriation, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of which
is to be devoted to the erection of this building. Plans have been
adopted, and ground will be broken soon. The entire scheme
as proposed represents an outlay of about two million dollars.
Here will arise one of the most important adjuncts to general
culture, not only for the students enrolled upon the college regis-
ter, but for people of intelligence throughout the city, the State,
and the entire country. This department receives no return from
students in fees or emoluments. It is a gift to them and to the
public, supported entirely by private benevolence.

Literature and philosophy form subjects of investigation just
as interesting as any other evidences of civilization. The impor-
tant place of modern languages in the college curriculum has
attracted a great measure of attention in recent years. Although
at first introduced from the standpoint of utility, they have come
to be treated as languages to be investigated philologically, and
as possessing literatures to be studied historically and critically.

RThe University of Pennsylvania has been foremost in taking this
view of the modern languages. By the Professor of German and
the recently added Professor of Romance Languages both French
and German philology are taught, courses in Gothic and old
French being offered to such as desire them ; and in both lan-
guages, as well as in Italian, the literature receives full attention.
English, by the addition of courses in Anglo-Saxon and English
philology, has followed in the same direction. Students may now
not only obtain large practical drill in the use of their mother
tongue, but may also learn something of its origin, its history, its
growth, and of the linguistic laws that govern it. Sanskrit sup-

452 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plies tlie necessary stepping stone for the study of comparative
philology, while Hebrew paves the road for any who desire to
enter upon the field of Semitic studies. The youngest daughter
of Philology — Assyriology — has attained full development with
surprising swiftness, and the ruins of a highly developed civiliza-
tion have been unearthed, accompanied by a unique literature
graven in stone and clay. The ancient history of Western Asia
has for the first time been placed on a sure footing, thus enabling

Ekv. George S. Fullerton, Ph. D.,
Vice-Provost of the University.

US to write one of the earliest and most important chapters in the
history of our race.

The university is at present doing much valuable scientific
work in the history of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy.
Dr. George S. Fullerton, Professor of Philosophy, conducts a
graduate course in ancient, mediaeval, and modern philosophy,
attended by more than sixty students, many of them being
connected with the public-school system of the State either as

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 453

superintendents or principals of schools. Dr. William R. New-
bold, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, is carrying on investiga-
tions in a field of natural science in which results are hard to
attain. An inquiry into the character and condition of states of
belief, undertaken some seven years ago, led him to the study of
the active side of mind in general, with special reference to the
origin and function of its more complex elements, such as states
of belief, practical intuitions, ethical conceptions, choice, and rea-
soning. Dr. Newbold is working upon these problems from such
points of vantage as may be offered by the study of the less highly
evolved forms of consciousness, as in the lower animals and in
children, and in those disintegrations of the more complex forms
found in hysteria, epilepsy, trance, and hypnotic states. The
greater part of Dr. Newbold^'s work, however, is not yet in shape
for public use, and is not likely to be for several years to come.

In no department of the university has there been a greater
advance in improved methods than in psychology. With the
growing equipment of the university in laboratories, museums,
and library, it has become possible to put new methods into effi-
cient practice. By experimentation in laboratories the students
are brought into close personal contact with the subject-matter
of their studies. A student of psychology has open to him the
courses delivered in the medical school on anatomy and physiol-
ogy, and he has opportunities for dissection. He may attend
clinics at which nervous patients are treated, and he has courses
to choose from on mental pathology. There are opportunities to
become familiar with the types of mental diseases by actual inspec-
tion of cases, and within easy reach are asylums for the insane
and institutions for deaf-mutes and for the blind. The depart-
ment of Experimental Psychology at the university was organized
for the prosecution of original research, and for the teaching of
psychology to undergraduates and to graduate students. The
laboratory is the oldest in continuous existence of all American
laboratories of psychology in which regular courses for students
are offered. It was founded in 1887 by Profs. Cattell and Fuller-
ton. The former was a student of Wundt's in Leipsic, where he
was the first assistant in the Psychological Institute. He was the
first Professor of Experimental Psychology at the university, and
introduced the research and demonstration methods of the Ger-
man laboratory. Dr. Lightner Witmer, the successor of Dr. Cat-
tell, was a student of his, and also of Wundt. Thus the laboratory
of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania was one of the
earliest outgrowths of the great foundation of Prof. Wundt at
Leipsic. The German laboratory is more of an institution for
conducting and encouraging original research than for giving
instruction. The American laboratories tend to subordinate

454

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

original research to teaching, or at least equal prominence is
given to both. The psychological laboratories at the university-
are situated in the biological building. Psychology, as one of the
sciences of human life, thus takes its place among the other bio-
logical sciences. Its connection with philosophy has been a close
one, and will probably always remain so. Physiological and
experimental psychology are required courses in the philosophy
group of undergraduate studies, as well as forming parts of the
natural history and biological courses. The work of this depart-
ment consists of undergraduate courses in physiological and

Laboratory of Experimental Psychology.

experimental psychology and graduate courses of comparative
studies of systems, child psychology, and laboratory work. The
laboratories have a complete equipment of all necessary appa-
ratus, including instruments for measuring the time it requires
to react to a sound, light, touch, or electric spark. The essential
instruments of the series are two time-recording devices, the
chronoscope and the chronograph. By means of many experi-
ments with the chronoscope, it has been found that multiplication
and division are longer processes than addition and subtraction.
Thus, it takes every subject a little longer to think that two times
five is ten than that two plus five is seven. Experiments with the
chronoscope are being made on the simple reaction time of all
classes of persons, and on the time that it requires them to per-
form simple movements. The movements tested are of the right

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 455

and left hand, both from the body and toward the body. It is
found that Indians are the shortest reactors, but they can not
make the movements of the arms much more rapidly than whites
or blacks. Experiments are also being made for the purpose of
studying the effect of mental states upon muscle contractions. If
the tendon just below the knee-cap be struck, it is known that the
foot kicks out. This is called the knee-jerk. It varies greatly
from time to time in amount. Mental conditions affect it ; a sound
or an intense light will increase it. Many experiments show that
a mental state instantaneously alters the conditions of muscle
contractions, even though such muscle contractions be not directly
associated with that mental state.

Pedagogy is a subject closely related to philosophy and psy-
chology, but its introduction into American universities is com-
paratively recent. Probably the University of Michigan first
demonstrated what could be done in a strictly professional way
to fit young men and women for the best positions in the school
system, when, in 1879, the department of the Science and Art of
Teaching was organized. The subject was brought into promi-
nence at the University of Pennsylvania in 1891, when the Public
Education Association of Philadelphia appropriated two hundred
and fifty dollars toward the establishment of a chair of Pedagogy
in the university. This was followed by a sufficient appropria-
tion by the university to establish such a professorship, begin-
^ning in the autumn of 1894. Dr. Martin G. Brumbough was
died to the chair, and in one year the wisdom of establishing
^•he new department has been demonstrated. Graduate courses in
le institutes and the history of education are offered, besides
'^hich there is a Saturday class open to the teachers of Phila-
lelphia and vicinity. The enlargement of university Pedagogy
las been one of the great needs of the State and the nation, and
the present movement will result in calling to the university the
jst men to examine these questions in their universal relations
md study education as philosophy.

While the departments of History and Politics are not within

le scope of this paper, the sociological field work, recently begun

>y Dr. Samuel M. Lindsay, of the Wharton School of Finance and

jconomy, promises results of the greatest interest to science, and

leserves a brief discussion here. Dr. Lindsay studied sociological

lethods in Paris and other European cities. In 1894, Prof. M,

Jheysson, of the Ecole lihre des sciences politiques at Paris, made

splendid beginning in the way of sociological field work. With

lis students, regular excursions were made to the shops, schools,

"restaurants, stores, and factories of the city. In every case the

students came away with valuable impressions and new light on

Jihe many problems of the management of labor. At present Dr»

456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lindsay is carrying out a similar plan of sociological excursions
at the university. Regular trips are made to the large business
establishments, and to the various charitable and reformatory in-
stitutions, slum districts, etc. A thorough investigation of the
condition of the colored population of Philadelphia is contemplated
in the near future. An assistant in sociology is to be appointed
for next year, whose special work will be an investigation of the
negro, Italian, and other foreign population. The College Settle-
ment Association of Philadelphia will co-operate with the uni-
versity in this work, by furnishing an assistant in carrying on
the proposed investigation.

An important contribution to science has recently been made
by Dr. George E. Fisher and Dr. Isaac J. Schwatt, of the mathe-
matical department of the university, in their translation into
English of Dur^ge's Elements of the Theory of Functions. Dr.
Schwatt has also written A Geometrical Treatment of Curves
which are Isogonal Conjugate to a Straight Line. This work
called forth the following commendation from the eminent French
mathematician Vigarie : " The work has been admirably conceived,
and in my belief it is the first essay of the kind that has ever been
published.^^

As early as 1775 David Rittenhouse, sometime vice-provost,
published an oration on astronomy, but wrought more than he
wrote. The erection of an astronomical observatory as a depart-
ment of the university has been an unfulfilled desire until the
present. In 1876, Reese Wall Flower, of Delaware County, Penn-
sylvania, bequeathed to the university a large sum of money for
the erection of an astronomical observatory. Among the assets
turned in to the university as a part of this sum was the farm in
Delaware County known as the Flower farm. It happily offered
the most available site for the observatory, the erection of which
is now under way. The observatory buildings, three in number,
consist of the equatorial building, the meridian building, and the
residence of the director, Prof. Charles L. Doolittle, late of the
Lehigh University. The principal instruments comprising the
equipment are an equatorial of eighteen-inch aperture, with spec-
troscope ; a meridian circle and a zenith telescope ; and a three-
inch universal transit. Graduate students in astronomy will be
instructed in the details of observatory practice, and will be ex-
pected to participate in the regular work. The outlined plan
contemplates systematic observation of comets and small planets,
investigation of various latitudes, and spectroscopy. A small ob-
servatory for the convenience of undergraduate students will also
be erected in the Botanical Garden on the university grounds,
thus making the large observatory free for advanced work.

The John Harrison Laboratory of Chemistry, recently added

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

457

to the group of imposing university buildings, affords superior
facilities for scientific research and investigation. This large
building contains on the first floor a laboratory for beginners
that will accommodate over three hundred persons. There are
also assaying rooms provided with twelve large furnaces, a bal-
ance room, a gas- analysis room, and a technical laboratory where
preparations can be made upon a large scale. The second and
third floors contain museums, lecture rooms, and private labora-
tories for advanced students. Electrolytic work is a leading
feature in the laboratory. Since 1888 sixty-three investigations
have been made relating to the use of the electric current in the

Biological Hall, Univlksitv w Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

1 determination and separation of metals. These include studies
in the above, and also in derivatives of what may be called the
rare metals. At present, important investigations are being made
in the following subjects: Electrolytic determination of the
atomic weight of mercury ; atomic weight of arsenic ; and two
investigations involving a study of the very rare minerals colum-
bium and tantalum. Within the past few years, nine important
theses, the work of graduate students, have been published, and
at present there are fifteen persons pursuing chemistry as a major
subject for the Ph. D. degree. Dr. Edgar F. Smith, the Professor
of Chemistry, is much interested in special electrolytic work.

458

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

His book on Electro-Chemical Analysis has recently been trans-
lated into German by Dr. Max Ebeling, of the Technical School
of Berlin.

• For more than a century and a half Philadelphia has evinced
a profound tendency toward studies in the natural sciences.
Bartram's Botanical Garden was started in 1728, and Marshall's
in 1773. During the past century the university made repeated
attempts to establish studies in the natural sciences, and these
efforts were finally ended, in 1884, in the organization and opening
of the Biological School. Just before this. Dr. Horace Jayne, of
the university, had gone abroad to examine the most celebrated

WisTAB Institute of Anatomy and Biology.

laboratories of the Old World. He became fully convinced of
the need in Philadelphia of a well- equipped biological school,
separate and distinct from any other. He gave himself to the
task of developing the school, and Provost William Pepper joined
heartily in the movement. Although the services of the Phila-
delphia Academy of Natural Sciences have been vast, its legiti-
mate work has been only original investigation. The general
scientific instruction in classes and by laboratory work remained
for the Biological School to do. A further advance in higher
education was made by opening the school to both sexes alike.
In this school has been developed a complete system of education,
different from but equal in value to the ordinary college course.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 459

It fills a long-felt want in higher education, by allowing youth of
different predilections a choice between two equally valuable
lines of mental training. The laboratories of the school are
thoroughly equipped with material for research and investiga-
tion. The museums are rich in complete articulated skeletons
for the study of comparative osteology. The conservatory is filled
with a representative collection of plants, and botany is studied
from the living organisms. The Botanical Garden, which of late
years has not been improved, owing to the lack of funds, is now
being beautified by laying out paths, erecting mounds, and the
construction of an artificial lake. Dr. Macfarlane, the Professor
of Botany, anticipates making it one of the best botanical gardens
in the country. For the purpose of procuring rare seeds to place
in the garden. Dr. Macfarlane has prepared a list of eight hundred
different kinds of seeds to be exchanged with botanical gardens
throughout the world. Within the past two years one thousand
different kinds have been received from twenty-one gardens
located in America, Europe, and Asia. A number of original in-
vestigations have been conducted in the school which have pro-
duced important economic and scientific results. These studies,
published in the contributions from the Botanical and Zoological
Laboratory, consist of Maize : A Botanical and Economic Study,
by Dr. John W. Harshberger ; The Correlations of the Volumes
and Surfaces of Organisms, by Dr. John A. Ryder ; The Embryos
of Bats, by Dr. Harrison Allen ; and a number of other important
works.

Medical science at the university assumes great importance,
on account of its early historical foundation. A great stride has
recently been made in the progress of the science at the univer-
sity by the establishment of a four years' course of study and by
the opening of new laboratories and museums for research and
investigation. The instruction of the medical department of the
university is conducted in the Medical Hall, Laboratory Building,
the University Hospital, the Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medi-
cine, the Laboratory of Hygiene, and the Wistar Institute of
Biology and Anatomy. It will be impossible even to enumerate
all the researches and investigations made in the various medical
laboratories. The subject of medical chemistry has for many
years been given great prominence. Since 1818 this chair has
been held in succession by Dr. Coxe, Dr. Robert Hare, Dr. James
B. Rogers, Dr. Robert E. Rogers, and Dr. Theodore G. Wormley,
the present incumbent, who was elected in 1877. Dr. Wormley
has attained a world-wide reputation by his work on The Micro-
chemistry of Poisons. The course in chemistry amounts to three
hours' work per week for two years. There are two chemical
laboratories in the medical department, in which practical exami-

460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

nations are made of urine and animal fluids, and of the recogni-
tion and recovery of poisons from the animal body. This work is
supplemented by a lecture course for two years. Realizing the
importance of the subject of medical chemistry, the university
authorities are contemplating the erection of a new laboratory
equipped with every modern appliance and facility for original
work. Perhaps the most important contribution from the Labo-
ratory of Physiology since 1879 is the memoir on the Venom of

Theodore G. Wormley, LL. D.,
Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology, Medical Department.

the Rattlesnake, by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and Dr. Edward T.
Reichert, in which it was shown for the first time that the toxic
principles of venom are albuminous substances, and this laid the
foundation of the enormous amount of work in the development
of our knowledge of toxalbumins, etc. The Wistar and Harner
Museum, founded nearly a century ago, is the largest and richest
of the kind in the United States, containing not only a great va-
riety of specimens illustrating the normal and morbid anatomy of

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 461

every part of the human body, but also a large number of prep-
arations in comparative anatomy. In 1892 the Wistar Institute
was established, being the first in America open to the public.
General Isaac J. Wistar has given to the Institute a large and
costly fireproof building, together with a sufficient endowment to
provide means for the original work for which it is intended.
While the museum is free for the inspection of all teachers and
students, the object of its laboratories is to afford facilities to ad-
vanced students only, and the institute is not to supersede the ele-
mentary instruction of undergraduate students of the university.

The university aims not only to equip physicians with the
skill to combat disease, but also to send forth missionaries of
health to provide for the hygienic needs of the people. For this
purpose, in 1892, the Institute of Hygiene was established. The
discoveries of Pasteur led up to Koch^s convincing proof of the
part played by minute organisms in the causation of tubercle.
One disease after another has been traced to its cause in some tiny
agent of mischief. Realizing the value of the many ways thus
open to beneficent knowledge, Mr. Henry C. Lea offered to pro-
vide the means for the construction of a building for the Institute
of Hygiene. The building was completed in 1892, and Dr. John
S. Billings became the director. The laboratory is the first struc-
ture of its kind erected in the United States, and it opens a com-
paratively new field of work in this country. Regular courses are
given in practical hygiene, bacteriology, and physiological chem-
istry. The following important investigations have already been
made: Sewer gas — a chemical, physical and bacteriological in-
vestigation, by Dr. A. C. Abbott, First Assistant ; a chemical and
bacteriological study of the Schuykill and Delaware water sup-
ply of Philadelphia, by Dr. J. H. Wright, Scott Fellow, 1 892-93;
investigation into the nature and cause of membranous rhinitis,
by Dr. M. P. Ravenel, Assistant in Bacteriology ; investigation
on the influence of light on bacteria, by Dr. J. S. Billings and Dr.
A. W. Peckham. The most important contribution to science
from the new Laboratory of Hygiene is the one recently made by
John S. Billings, M. D., S. Weir Mitchell, M. D., and D. H. Ber-
gey, B. S., M. D., Assistant in Chemistry in the Laboratory, on
the Composition of Expired Air and its Effects upon Animal
Life. This valuable study has been published under a grant
from the Hodgkins Fund of the Smithsonian Institution. The
results obtained in this research indicate that in the air expired
by lower animals or by man there is no peculiar organic matter
which is poisonous to the animals mentioned, excluding man, and
that the injurious effects of such air appeared to be due entirely
to the diminution of oxygen or the increase of carbonic acid.

The establishment of the Laboratory of Hygiene was the be-

462

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ginning of the realization of a fond dream that Dr. William Pep-
per had entertained for many years, that a happy time would
come when well-equipped laboratories with adequate endowment
would offer the chance for original investigation in medical sci-
ence. The establishment of this laboratory was followed by Dr.
Pepper's gift of the Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, in 1895,
founded in memory of his father, the late Dr. William Pepper.
The laboratory is a large building of four floors, admirably adapt-
ed to the purposes of original work. The gift is unique, in that

Labobatoky of Hygiene.

it is made for the specific purpose of promoting and stimulating
original research and improvements in methods of diagnosing
and treating the diseases of human beings, and of giving ad-
vanced and special instruction to men who have already obtained
the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The University Hospital will
thus serve new uses in the promotion of knowledge, and the in-
vestigating laboratory in close connection gives the strongest
possible expression to the influence of scientific work upon prac-
tical medicine. Dr. William H. Welch said, " To the small num-
ber of existing clinical laboratories, the William Pepper Labora-
tory of Clinical Medicine is a most notable addition, being the
first laboratory of the kind in this country, and it is not sur-
passed by any in foreign countries."

The twelve years' existence of the veterinary department of the
university has measured the most eventful and prosperous period

II

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 463

in the history of veterinary science in this country. Among the
most valuable results of veterinary work at the university have
been the introduction in this country of some of the successful
practices of foreign veterinarians in regard to the suppression of
diseases among animals and their transmission to men. In this
connection the most noted achievement has been the introduction
of tuberculin as a diagnostic for detecting tuberculosis in cattle.
The valuable and well-known experiments of Dr. E. O. Shake-
speare on infectious diseases of swine, and on tetanus, were also
conducted at the veterinary department of the university.

The university has taken a new departure in order to make its
treasures of art and science accessible to the people. Systematic
Saturday courses were opened in the college two years ago for
teachers unable to take the regular graduate work of the uni-
versity. These courses have become so popular that one hundred
and eighty-one teachers are now doing special work in the vari-
ous departments. Estimating that each teacher represents forty
pupils, the university, by means of these special courses, exerts a
direct influence on more than seven thousand individuals. Dr.
Edward Brooks, Superintendent of the Schools of Philadelphia,
stated recently that the city school principals in Dr. Fullerton's
graduate class alone represented twenty- five thousand pupils.
This is but one step toward giving to the general public a share
in university instruction, too often restricted to a few. With free
museums, new laboratories and new methods, and more liberal
encouragement from the State, the university is rapidly approach-
ing the ideal expressed by Prof. Calvin Thomas :

A university in the German sense is an institution crowning- the educa-
tional system of a state, treating its students as free adults engaged in a
hona-fide pursuit of knowledge, offering its advantages at the lowest pos-
sible price, sending down its roots into the life of the people, to take thence
the sap of its own vitality, and paying back the debt by raising the level
of intelligence and adding to the value and dignity of life throughout the
entire Commonwealth.

Provost Harrison's great influence with the people of Phila-
delphia, with his own generosity, has resulted in gifts to the uni-
versity during the past two years of one and a half million dol-
lars. University instruction, from its very nature, can not be
self-supporting, for universities are, after all, charities on a large
scale. The recognition which the university is now obtaining
from the city gives us every reason to believe that the efforts of
the provost will make it possible for us, within the next few
years, to do for the educational life of the community, in an
adequate degree, what a university as a center of higher culture
should do, and at the same time to make large contributions to
the sum of human knowledge.

464 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D. C. L.,

COBRESPOKDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC.

II.— THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY.

PART VII.

THE Tax Experiences of Switzerland. — Any review of the
notable experiences of the Governments of different coun-
tries in raising revenue for their maintenance and support would
be incomplete if it failed to notice those of Switzerland, where the
conditions involved are, to say the least, exceptional, or different
in many respects from those of any other government or country.
These conditions, stated briefly, are as follows :

A country of comparatively small area — 15,964 square miles
— and in no small part uninhabitable and practically inacces-
sible, with a population in 1894 of about 3,000,000 (2,986,848).
These conditions may be best appreciated by the following
comparisons : Of the four countries that are immediately con-
tiguous to and bound Switzerland, France has an area of 204,092
square miles and a population of 38,343,192 ; Germany, 208,738
square miles and a population of 49,428,470 ; Austria- Hungary,
264,264 square miles and 40,810,916 population ; and Italy, 114,-
410 square miles and 29,699,785 population. A comparison with
some of the States that in the aggregate constitute the United
States also affords the following results : The whole of Switzer-
land has about one third of the area of the State of New York
and one half of its population ; one sixteenth of the area of the
State of Texas ; less than one third of the area of the State of
Georgia, etc.

Of the total area of Switzerland, only seventy-two per cent,
or an area about as large as the States of Massachusetts, Con-
necticut, and Rhode Island combined, is classed as habitable and
productive ; and the soil of this portion does not yield sufficient
for the support of more than two thirds of the population, a large
percentage of the remaining third finding employment and sup-
port mainly in very small industries, occupying only a family.
The position taken by Switzerland in the trade and commerce of
the world is most remarkable, especially when the various natural
obstacles are considered — such as the absence of raw material for
her industries, asphalt being the only raw mineral product of
which the export exceeds the import — the costly and difficult
means of transport, and the restrictive customs established by
neighboring and bounding countries. Thus, a comparison of the
exports of different countries, in proportion to their population,
of manufactured products to the world's markets, shows that

;

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 465

witzerland takes the lead in respect to values ; namely, $37 per
pita per annum.

Of other countries, the Netherlands comes next to Switzerland,
ith a present annual export valuation of manufactured products
of $35.60 per capita ; then England, $24.60 ; Belgium, $23.40 ; Ger-
many, $11.50 ; France, $11 ; Sweden, $7 ; Norway, $4.60 ; and,
finally, the United States, with $3.40.

In respect to comparative aggregate valuations. Great Britain
rnished nearly thirty per cent of such exportations ; Germany
early eighteen per cent ; and France thirteen per cent, making
,hout sixty per cent for these three countries. The proportionate
aluation of the United States for 1894 was 12'16 per cent.*

The principal articles of Swiss exportation are cotton fabrics
printed and embroidered), silks (especially ribbons), food stuffs,
heese and condensed milk, clocks and watches, machinery and
rriages, works of art, mineral waters, straw goods, etc.
The leading characteristics of the people of Switzerland are
eir habits of persistent industry, the practice of rigid economy
(in great part by reason of necessity) in their expenditures, a de-
gree of patriotism that is everywhere exhibited and acknowledged,
and a remarkable diversity of language. " Three tongues have
existed side by side in Switzerland for centuries, and their indi-
viduality is recognized in the Federal Constitution, by providing
that laws shall be printed in all of them, and that in the distri-
bution of certain offices regard shall be paid to the language of the
people for whose benefit the official serves, f Education is com-
pulsory ; primary education is free, and the percentage of illiteracy
is small — almost nothing.

Their standard of morality may be indicated by the circum-
stance that about five per cent of the births are reported as
illegitimate.

The present political organization of Switzerland closely re-
sembles that of the United States, but is far better entitled to the
claim of being free and democratic, and in this respect is probably
typically superior to any other Government that exists or ever
has existed.! Under the present Constitution, adopted in 1874,

* Address of Theodore Search, President of the National Association of Americaa
Manufacturers.

f State and Federal Government in Switzerland. By John Martin Vincent. Johns Hop-
kins Press, Baltimore, 1891.

X " The county, State, and Federal Governments (of the United States) are not democra-
cies. In form they are qua si-oligarchies composed of representatives and executives, but
in fact they are frequently complete oligarchies, composed in part of unending rings of
politicians that directly control the law and the offices, and in part of the permanent plutoc-
racy who purchase legislation through the politicians." The Initiative and Referendum in
Switzerland. By J. W. Sullivan. Nationalist Publishing Co., New York, 1893,

TOL. ILIX. — 38

466 POPXjLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and which practically reaffirmed previously existing conditions,
Switzerland became a federated republic, whose proper and offi-
cial designation is the "Helvetic Confederation," consisting of
twenty-two Cantons or States; although the division of three
cantons into two demi-cantons makes the total number of federa-
tive units twenty-five. The several Cantons elect a Federal As-
sembly (Nationalrath) and a States Council (Stdnderath) in which
are vested the parliamentary government of the country. The
first consists of a hundred and forty-five members chosen every
three years in the ratio of one for every twenty thousand of the
population, the election being direct, with the right of participa-
tion by all citizens who have attained the age of twenty years.
The second is composed of forty-four members, two from each
Canton irrespective of its size, the mode of their election and
the term of their membership being left exclusively to the
respective Cantons. Clergymen are disqualified as candidates,
though they are eligible for election to the Federal Assembly.
The chief executive authority is deputed to a Federal Council
(Bundesrath) of seven members, elected for three years by the
Federal Assembly, and who during their term of service can not
hold any other office in the Confederation or cantons, or engage in
any calling or business. The President and the Vice-President of
the Federal Council are the first magistrates of the Confederation.
Both are elected by the Federal Assembly for the term of one
year and are not eligible for the same office until after the ex-
piration of another year. The salary of the President is three
thousand dollars per annum. His prerogatives are very limited.
He has no rank in the army, no power of veto, or independently
to name any officials. He can not enforce a policy, declare war,
make peace, or conclude a treaty, and the name of their President
for any one year is even said not to be familiar to the mass of
the Swiss people.

The Constitution of 1874 declares, that the Confederation has
for its object to insure the independence of the country against
foreign control, to preserve the tranquillity and the rights of the
cantons, and to increase their common well-being. The Confed-
eration has alone the right to declare war and conclude peace, as
well as make alliances and treaties with foreign states, especially
commercial treaties. But the cantons reserve the right of nego-
tiating with foreign states any treaty affecting general adminis-
tration, local intercourse, and police, so long as such treaties con-
tain nothing injurious to the Confederation or to the rights of
other cantons. The Confederation may not support a standing
army, but every male citizen between twenty-four and forty-four
years of age is bound to military service and drill. Those between
the ages of twenty-four and thirty-two are designated as the regu-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 46;^

lar army, and number — officers and men — about a hundred and
twenty-five thousand ; those between the ages of thirty-two and
forty-four constitute the Landwehr (militia), and number about
eighty-four thousand. Thus, while no great army seems to exist
in Switzerland, the whole able-bodied male population of the
country can readily be made into an army. The natural de-
fenses of the country have been utilized to the best advantage,
tnd great care has been expended upon numerous defensive works
m the frontiers. No Canton may have more than three hundred

len under arms. If disputes arise between Cantons they shall
bbstain from all recourse to violence or arms, and shall submit
themselves to the decision taken upon these disputes in conformity

^ith federal regulations. That is to say, in case of necessity the
[Federal Council summons the Assembly to act ; or it may demand
bhe aid of other Cantons, which are bound to give it, or it is au-
thorized to raise troops and employ them on condition of imme-
liately summoning the Cantonal Councils if the number of troops
raised should exceed two thousand, or if they remain under arms
'more than three weeks.

Other articles of the Constitution regulate the military train-
ing and employment of citizens ; the power of the Federal author-
ities in regard to public works; the maintenance of free, com-
pulsory, and non- sectarian education; the principles of taxation
and cantonal tariffs, consistently with general free trade; the
right of domicile ; municipal and communal rights, and the gen-
eral toleration of religious belief and worship. Nevertheless, the
Order of Jesuits and the societies affiliated therewith may not be
admitted into any part of Switzerland ; and all intervention by
their members in the church or in the schools is forbidden. " The
exercises of the Salvation Army fell under the laws of the mu-
nicipalities against nuisances ; the final judicial decision in this
case being in effect that while persons of every religious belief
are free to worship in Switzerland, none in so doing are free
seriously to annoy their neighbors.'^ * Freedom of the press,
of local trial, and trial by jury are also guaranteed. Pre-
vious to 1848 the different Cantons conducted their postal serv-
ice by different methods ; but since that time its control and
management, together with that of the railway system of the
country, have become exclusive functions of the Federal Gov-
ernment.

Attention is next asked to the Cantonal political organization
and government. Every Canton and demi-Canton is sovereign
and independent in local affairs and in all other matters that are
not limited by the Federal Constitution. In respect to their forms

* J. B. Sullivan. The Commonwealth of Switzerland.

468 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of government, they agree in little else than the claim and pos-
session of absolute popular sovereignty ; and differ much in re-
spect to governmental organizations and methods of administra-
tion. Twenty-two of the twenty-five Cantons (States) are divided
into 2,706 communes (townships) ; and each commune governs
itself in respect to all local affairs, so far as is consistent with
cantonal and Federal rights. "The citizens of each commune
regard it as their smaller state, and are jealous of any interfer-
ence by the greater state; and unless the interests of the Can-
ton or the Confederation are manifestly superior to those of
the locality, the commune is unwilling to part with its admin-
istrative power and jurisdiction over its lands, forests, police,
roads, schools, churches, or taxes. In the Cantons in which
German is the official language (sixteen in number) it is cus-
tomary for the adult male population to meet annually in an
open-air assembly in a town market-place or on a mountain side,
and there propose, debate, and enact their laws, and elect their
officers by universal vote; thus deferring to and establishing
popular will without resort to any intermediate representative
machinery."

The question here naturally arises, How did such a nation or
confederation, made up of twenty-two small states differing from
each other in many essential features — religious, political, social,
industrial, physical, and linguistic — originate ? A general answer,
based on a large amount of historical research and publications,
is that it was due originally to a drawing to a common center of
a number of small districts, from the contiguous monarchies of
Germany, France, and Italy, for common defense against a com-
mon foe ; and hence also it is not surprising that the political
boundaries of Switzerland do not follow the natural configuration
of the country.

The revenues of the Confederation or Federal Government of
Switzerland in 1894 were estimated at 84,047,312 francs ($17,000,-
000), and its expenditures at 83,675,000 francs. The various Can-
tons of Switzerland have their own budgets of revenue and expend-
iture. For 1895 their combined budgets indicated a revenue of
about 78,880,000 francs ($15,600,000) and an expenditure somewhat
greater, making a nominal aggregate of about $33,000,000 to be
annually raised by some form of popular contribution or taxation.
As a considerable part of the cantonal revenues is derived from
the proceeds of taxes imposed and collected by the Federal Gov-
ernment, and as contributions are made in turn to the latter by
the Cantons, it is not easy to estimate the present annual average
per-capiia burden of taxation on the people of Switzerland ; but,
making all allowances, it is certainly not inconsiderable. Some
years since the average tax burden on every inhabitant of the

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 469

Canton of Zurich, the most populous and richest of the Swiss Can-
tons, was reported at 4015 francs ($8).*

A further question of interest and importance that now arises
(and which constitutes the main subject for consideration in the
present chapter of this series) is. Under what system and by what
methods is this certainly large average per- capita obligation for
the maintenance of the several governments of Switzerland appor-
tioned and collected ? And as a help to a proper understanding
of this problem the foregoing somewhat detailed description of
the nature and functions of these governmenta has been thought
necessary.

For the Confederation or Federal Government of Switzerland,
which is not allowed to levy direct taxes, the main source of reve-
nue is the customs (duties) on imports, which are levied and col-
leeted on the frontiers of the republic. Originally the idea on
which it was sought to base the Swiss customs, was to tax all ar-
ticles of commerce entering from foreign countries on a single
uniform plan, having regard solely to financial and not to pro-
hibitive or protective results ; and this same idea prevails at the
present time^ " Changes in the customs have been made in recent
years to correspond to new conditions or new commercial rela-
tions, but the Government has always kept as near free trade as
good financiering would allow. The system of assessment of du-
ties on imports differs from that of England, in that instead of a
few articles being selected to stand as much duty as they will
bear, a large number — almost every commodity in fact — is taxed
a little. The schedule of rates contains over eight hundred ar-
ticles which are subject to import duty.'' \

As a rule, raw materials necessary for manufactures are admit-
ted free of duty, and while the principle of imposing the highest
duties on luxuries is fully recognized, the duties on articles of
general consumption are very light; tobacco paying from two
to four cents per pound, tea about four cents, coffee one cent.
Export duties are levied upon a very few articles, chiefly on tim-
ber, live stock, and certain raw materials. As recently as 1848
each Canton imposed cantonal tariff duties on imported goods, but
these have now been abolished with one curious exception, name-
ly, that of salt. The sale of this article being a monopoly of
the state, whether its production be domestic or foreign, but its
iretail price being regulated by each Canton for itself, the super-
[ vision of the imports of salt into each Canton becomes necessary.

* The present aggregate of all forms of taxation imposed for defraying all the expend-
itures of the Federal Government of the United States is eqxiivalent to an average of
about $6-538 per head of all its population.

f Vincent on the Government of Switzerland.

470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

By a statute passed in 1887 the manufacture of alcoholic
liquors was made a state monopoly'. The net proceeds of the
business as thus conducted are considerable, but the entire net
receipts are distributed among the several Cantons in proportion
to their population. Smuggling and other evasions of the law
under the new system are acknowledged to be extensive and irre-
pressible, so that the measure in question is yet generally re-
garded in the light of an experiment.

As this subject is one of special interest in other countries, it
is thought expedient in this connection to submit a presentation
and review of it as recently made by Prof. John Martin Vincent,
Professor of History in Johns Hopkins University, and published
in a book entitled State and Federal Government in Switzer-
land, 1894 :

" The right to manufacture the higher grades of distilled spirits
belongs exclusively to the Federal Government of Switzerland.
This is effected by contract either with home or foreign distillers,
but at least one fourth of the quantity required must be manu-
factured by domestic companies to whom the Government makes
allotments from time to time. In order to encourage agriculture,
the distillation of certain native fruits and roots is exempted from
the monopoly and made free to any one. The Government is also
the distributer of liquors in quantities not less than one hundred
and fifty litres (a litre = 1*05 quart), and fixes the prices. Spirits
used for technical and household purposes must be sold at cost of
manufacture, and before delivery must be reduced by the addition
of wood spirits or other mixtures which render them unfit for
drinking. The peddling of liquor from house to house is entirely
forbidden except for the kind last mentioned. Retail dealers re-
quire a license from the cantonal authorities, and pay a gradu-
ated tax according to the amount of their sales. The traffic in
quantities above forty litres is considered wholesale and under no
restriction. The administration of the liquor business is there-
fore entirely in the hands of the Federal authorities until the
spirits reach the retail dealers ; there the Cantons step in to regu-
late the number and the character of the dramshops, to make the
necessary sumptuary and police laws, and exact such license fees
as may seem best. The net profits of the government manage-
ment are collected by the Federal authorities, but divided entirely
among the Cantons in proportion to population. The Cantons on
their part are obliged to expend at least ten per cent of this
dividend in suppressing the evils of intemperance, and to report
annually to the Federal Government. Distilleries, in order to
continue operations, must be large enough to supply one hundred
and fifty hectolitres (a hectolitre = 26.4 gallons) a year. The
monopoly is protected from competition by foreign countries by

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 471

a duty of eighty francs per hectolitre upon all high-grade liquors
imported, and by a graduated scale of duties upon all containing
less than seventy-two per cent of alcohol. No one except the
Federal Government is permitted to import alcohol for industrial
purposes, because the reducing process must undergo inspection
in order to prevent fraud. In getting its supply for the home
market the Government may purchase three fourths of the de-
mand for all kinds of spirits anywhere it chooses. The other
fourth, as mentioned above, must be of home manufacture, and
the Government has not exceeded that limit, because spirits can
be bought cheaper abroad than at home."

The financial operations of this branch of administration in
1891 amounted to about 13,660,000 francs, from which the net
revenue was 5,830,000 francs ($1,165,000). " This net gain was
chiefly due to the mercantile profit on liquors for drinking pur-
poses, since industrial spirits must be sold at cost. Hence, as a
business enterprise, the monopoly is certainly a success. When
we inquire into the moral and social results, there is at present
less that is tangible to be observed. The expectation of the pro-
moters of the scheme was that the evils of drunkenness would be
reduced, both by decreasing consumption and providing a purer
quality of drink. This latter end is obtained by Government in-
spection, not only of the monopoly distilleries, but also of the
smaller establishments manufacturing free products.'^

" In the matter of consumption there would seem to have been
a decrease. In 1885, before the introduction of the monopoly, the
total demand of distilled liquors for drinking purposes was about
150,000 hectolitres, while in 1889 the amount sold by the Federal
Government for such use was 67,242 hectolitres. But it would
not be safe to say that the country had become temperate to this
extent, for there is strong reason to believe that much of the re-
duced alcohol intended for the arts is either purified again and
used for drinking, or consumed outright in its mixed state. The
use of liquor will by no means be brought under control so long
as the distillation of low grades of fruit spirits and the manufac-
ture of malt drinks are under no restriction. No one can tell
whether the apparent decrease in consumption is not merely a
diversion of appetite to applejack and absinthe, or perhaps to an
increased use of wine and beer."

Small amounts to the credit of the Federal revenue also accrue
from the postal and telegraph service, from the lease of public
domains, the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of gun-
powder, from military exemptions, and the like ; but the aggre-
gate income from these sources is comparatively unimportant.
The powder monopoly at one time yielded considerable revenue,
but when new and more powerful explosives came into favor the

472

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

profits were greatly impaired. The income from the Federal
domains amounts to about five tenths per cent of the total reve-
nue. The largest item of expense to the Confederation is the
army, which requires nearly forty per cent of its entire revenue.
"Although carrying on no wars of its own nor joining in the
conquests of other countries, Switzerland is compelled to undergo
this great expense in order to preserve her neutrality and the in-
tegrity of her borders."

The comparatively recent tax experience of the twenty-two
Cantons of Switzerland has been very peculiar, and different in
many respects from that of any other country— a result that
might naturally have been expected from their respective gov-
ernmental independence, jealousy of other cantons, internal an-
tagonisms consequent on the division of each canton into sub-
governing communes, and in the radical differences in respect
both to language and religion.

The taxation of property in general (or the so-called general
property tax) has been thoroughly tried in Switzerland and, al-
though substantially abandoned in all other European countries,
is still adhered to, and constitutes an important feature in the
fiscal system of all the Swiss Cantons. In the case of realty the
tax is levied on the capital, and not upon the annual value of the
estate. In the case of personal property everything is taxed,
whether it yields an income or not — furniture, pictures, jewelry,
carriages, etc. ; but furniture and trade appliances up to the value
of $1,000 are exempted.

With a view to the successful enforcement of this kind of
taxation almost every conceivable method has been devised and
adopted, such as self-assessment in the form of compulsory re-
turns on the part of the individual; assessments by ofi&cials on
assumed data, oaths and no oaths, publicity and secrecy ; and all
of these, as has been the experience of the United States in the
same line of policy, have been confessedly ineffective. One insti-
tution, however, has been developed in recent years that is pecul-
iar to Switzerland, and that is the so-called inventory method
(inventarization). " As soon as a taxpayer dies his entire prop-
erty is at once seized by the Government and held until an exact
inventory is made of it. If this discloses fraud in the previous
self- assessments, punitive taxes must be paid, ranging in some
cantons over a period of ten years." That such a method of tax
administration has and will prove effective in increasing tax re-
ceipts can not be doubted, but its objectionable features are no
less evident. Thus it intrudes upon the privacy of families, for
the purpose of fixing seals upon their property, at a most inop-
portune moment, and seeks evidence of the violation of law, "as
it were, in the very chamber of death." It also offers a bounty

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 473

for the effective transfer of property by its owner in anticipation
of death.*

Considering that a greater equality of fortune prevails in
Switzerland than in almost any other country, it is somewhat
remarkable that it has taken lead of all countries in instituting a
system of progressive or graduated taxation, and has made it ap-
plicable not only to property but also to income and inheritance
taxes.

Graduated taxation now exists in a majority of the Swiss can-
tons, and in only a few is there any prescribed limit to the pro-
gressive rate of assessment. The graduation is applied in dif-
ferent ways. In some Cantons, estates (real and personal) are
classified according to their amounts. The rate of the tax is the
same, but a varying proportion of the value of the estate is ex-
empted. Thus, in the Canton of Zurich the tax is levied on five
tenths of a property valued at four thousand dollars, six tenths
on six thousand dollars, seven tenths on ten thousand dollars,
eight tenths on twenty thousand dollars, nine tenths on forty
thousand dollars, and on the entire estate when exceeding forty
thousand dollars in value. In other Cantons, as Aargau and
Schaffhausen, an addition of varying percentage is made to the
property tax according as the tax at the normal or ordinary rate
exceeds a certain specified amount. Thus, in the former Canton,
every one who is assessed for a tax of from forty to seventy
francs in amount must pay five per cent additional ; from seventy
to one hundred francs, ten per cent additional, and so on, until
those who are assessed at over five hundred francs pay thirty-
three per cent additional. In the latter Canton every one assessed
at over five hundred francs pays fifty per cent additional. In
other words, the tax is graded and made progressive by adding a
certain percentage, not to the taxable property, but to the amount
of the tax according to a proportional ratio.

In some of the Cantons, as Vaud, Basel, and Zug, real prop-
erty is divided into three classes : (a) under five thousand dollars,
(6) five thousand to twenty thousand dollars, (c) twenty thou-
sand dollars and upward, and a land tax which is enacted each
year falls on these three classes in the proportions of 1, 1^, and 2.

In some of the Cantons personal estate is divided into seven
classes and taxed in the proportions of 1, IJ, 2, 2J, 3, 3^, 4 ; the tax
being levied on the capital and not on the annual value of the
estate. In most of the Swiss Cantons the progressive or grad-
uated system of taxation in respect to property is also made ap-
plicable to incomes, inheritances, and bequests ; and as a rule the
progressive scale in these respects is more sharply graduated

* Essays on Taxation, Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, p. 387.
VOL. XLIX. — 39

474

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

than in the case of property taxation. " Another peculiar feature
of the Swiss taxes is that the progressive rate is applied separately
to the income tax and the property tax. A taxpayer with twenty-
five hundred francs income from property and twenty-five hun-
dred francs from labor will be assessed separately for each, and
will pay less than if he had five thousand francs income either
from property alone or labor alone." (Seligman.)

There is, furthermore, no pretense of uniformity in the differ-
ent Cantons in the practical application of the progressive system.
In fact, it is stated that in no two Cantons are the rates of tax and
the classification of the subjects of taxation identical. In the tax-
ation of incomes the average rate does not generally exceed four
or five per cent ; but in some Cantons the rates rule as high as
seven and even ten per cent. Where income exists without a cor-
responding capital, as from wages, earnings, and life annuities, an
exemption is generally made of eighty dollars a head for each
person dependent on the head of the family for support. Thus a
bachelor earning one thousand dollars a year would pay about
fifteen dollars, while a married man with the same income and
twelve children would pay nothing.

Taxes on inheritances and successions in Switzerland — which
are levied in most or all of the Cantons — are characterized by ex-
treme variations on rates, ranging from a very small percentage
in some cantons to twenty and even thirty per cent in others, in
the cases of the remote, or non-relatives.

Apart from the federal and cantonal systems of taxation in
Switzerland, there is a third system which is regarded as distinct-
ive, and under the name of local embraces special and separate
assessments for the purpose of defraying local or communal ex-
penditures— i. e., police, preservation of forests, roads, schools, and
the like. A leading characteristic of such taxes is, that they do
not embrace the idea of progressive or graduated assessments
and in their chief incidence on local tangible property do not per-
mit any material reduction of appraisements, or valuations on
account of any incumbent indebtedness — mortgages and the like
— as is the practice in the appraisements of like property for can-
tonal taxation. A household tax and a poll tax are also, to some
extent, features of Swiss local taxation.

Of the varied subjects of taxation from which the Swiss Can-
tons mainly derive their revenue, the following classification and]
exhibit of those of the Canton of Yaud in 1887, the third largest]
canton in respect to population, though not in area, will serve as
an illustration:

1. Public lands, forests, and salt monopoly.

2. Licenses to retail tobacco, wine, and spirits.

3. Taxes on dogs, saddle horses, carriages, and billiard saloons.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 475

4. A tax on all transfers of real property (droit de mutation).

5. An annual tax on the capital value of real property (impot
fancier).

6. An annual tax on the capital of all personal property and
on incomes {impot mohilier).

The last three taxes are the most important and productive,
their united product being equal to about nine tenths of the entire
revenue.

Concerning the results of this novel and complicated system
of taxation in Switzerland there is great diversity of opinion.
That it is not uniform throughout the comparatively small terri-
torial divisions of the country to which it has been made applica-
ble, only a very few Cantons being reported as in agreement ; that
no fixed rules governing progression or gradation in assessments
have been generally agreed upon and established ; that the prac-
tical administration of the system is in the highest degree arbi-
trary ; and that the ascertainment of the tax that an individual
or estate shall pay often involves a series of complex and difficult
computations and additions, are all points in respect to which
there is no question.

The anomaly and gross inequity of double taxation on one and
the same property, contingent on the circumstance that the situs
of the property and the domicile of its owner are not within the
same territorial and governmental jurisdictions, and which is at
present a subject of much discussion and deprecation in the
United States, is also a vexing problem in the system of taxation
in Switzerland ; two different communes, as a rule, making de-
mands of a taxpayer by reason of his holding a landed estate in
one and residing and exercising the rights of a citizen in the
other, and the probability of any just and satisfactory solution of
this perplexing problem is as remote in one country as in the
other.

Notwithstanding the above and other objectionable features,
the people of Switzerland appear to be generally satisfied with
their fiscal experiment, and thus far have exhibited but little
disposition to change it ; and all the most important Cantons that
have tested it report a steady increase in their aggregate valua-
tion of both property and income. Even the extreme high rates
of taxation assessed on large properties and incomes — amounting
in some Cantons almost to confiscation — have not been generally
regarded with disfavor, but probably for the reason that the num-
ber of persons in Switzerland who are liable to such assessments
is comparatively limited.

On the other hand, it is contended that any fiscal gain that is
reported under the new system has been more than counterbal-
anced by depreciation in land values and injury to local trade. In

476

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Canton of Vaud, for example, where the new ideas are spe-
cially exemplified, wealthy families are reported as having left
the Canton, and that many of its citizens regularly close theii
houses for nine months in the year in order to evade the lawj
Foreigners, too, are said to be less and less anxious to reside in
the canton. In consequence of this, it is claimed that many prop-
erties in Vaud have depreciated fifty per cent, and that trade suf-
fers greatly. Whether all these allegations are true or not, it is
significant that a proposal to introduce the Vaud system into the
Canton of Berne was rejected by its people by an overwhelming
majority.

Addendum. — Readers of the chapter on the Tax Experiences
of India, in the preceding number of the Popular Science Month-
ly, have written to ask if there is any explanation of the remark-
able difference in opinion respecting the material condition of the
people of India, recently expressed in the British House of Com-
mons (and quoted) by two of its members, Mr. J. S. Keay and Sir
Richard Temple, both ex-oJ3icials of long service in the Govern-
ment of India, and having had large opportunities for becoming
acquainted with the country.

The explanation is probably to be found in the old story of the
two knights who differed and quarreled about the mottoes on
suspended shield, by reason of exclusively viewing it from op]
site sides. India is a vast country, about half as large in land an
(square miles) as the United States, exclusive of Alaska, and wit!
a population of 287,000,000, so widely separated by caste, lan-
guage, and religions, that districts and villages that have been ii
close contiguity for long periods practically do not know or hav(
intercourse with each other. In those portions of the countr]
where the inhabitants are fairly intelligent, have learned to avail
themselves of modern methods of agriculture, and have irrigj
tion and transportation facilities, the production of foods and othei
commodities is so far in excess of any domestic demand, as tc
admit of such a large and constant export of grain stuffs as
threaten disturbance to the markets of Europe and the Unitec
States, besides textiles, fibers, dyestuffs, opium, oils and oil seedSjj
hardware, sugar, etc. In other districts of large population where
the people still plow with crooked sticks, do not even recognize
the value of manures or other fertilizers, are almost entirely lack-
ing in facilities for transportation, and are so bound down by casi
that it is difficult to induce them to emigrate to districts — like
the Assam tea producing sections — where labor is in good demanc
at comparatively high wages — in such districts the increase ol
population so presses on its ordinary food supplies that, in cas
of any deficiency in the average crops, famine always ensues, an<

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. i^-j-j

lis only mitigated by the aid that comes through the extraordinary

I pension fund extablished and distributed by the British Colonial

government. The Duke of Argyll, who has been Secretary of

>tate for India, tells us that " those only who have had any share

in the government of India can know what the anxiety is arising

>ut of such conditions of population " ; and extensive emigration

now advocated as the best remedial action that can be taken.

[aking allowance for different standpoints of observation, Mr.

'Keay and Sir Richard Temple were, therefore, both right in

their conclusions. D. A. W.

To THE Reader : With the publication of the chapter in this
number of the Popular Science Monthly on " The Tax Experiences
of Switzerland," the first part of the plan laid out by the writer
for discussing the Principles of Taxation comes to a conclusion.
This plan, apart from an introductory survey of the subject, and
a review of the interesting and most instructive tax experiences
of the United States consequent on the civil war, and with which
the writer (as chairman of the United States Revenue Commis-
sion in 1865, and as United States Special Commissioner of Rev-
enue from 1866 to 1870), was officially and closely associated
(Chapters I and II), was to set forth the position of taxation in
literature and history ; and more especially to narrate the most
notable experiences of different countries and nations in compel-
ling contributions or exactions for the support of the state from
the people governed, and the far-reaching and important results
that have been contingent upon and have followed the different
policies that have been adopted for such a purpose. The under-
lying idea that suggested this plan was as follows :

Every person of ordinary intelligence, if questioned, will prob-
ably admit that the subject of taxation is one of the most impor-
tant that can concern the masses of the people ; and that their well-
being and the continuance of good government, and even of civi-
lization itself, are more dependent on the involved power of its
administration and discretionary incidence than upon any other
agency — a power so great that its right exercise in even the small-
est degree, according to the late Chief- Justice Marshall, " involves
the right to destroy." And yet the same citizen will probably say
that the subject, as ordinarily presented and discussed, is so dry
and uninteresting as to be exceedingly unattractive, and even repel-
lent ; that the conflict of opinion on the part of those who through
study claim to understand it is so diverse that any general concur-
rence of opinion in regard to fundamental principles is impossible ;
and, finally, that all experience shows that by reason of this state
of things mercenary, and political considerations necessarily pre-
dominate in the construction of any general system of taxation.

478 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

It is obvious that under such, circumstances it must be difficult
or impossible to induce the masses of the people to intelligently
interest themselves in the subject of taxation, and that in coun-
tries like the United States, where under free and universal suf-
frage the same people elect the legislators who shall determine
the policy of their Government, laws will be enacted for the col-
lection of revenue for the support of the state that will be neither
productive or effective, and do not promote, but rather impair
the industrial and commercial interests of the country.

The question, then, next suggests itself, How can a different
state of things be brought about ? How can the people in gen-
eral be induced, in the sense of persuasion and not of compulsion,
to interest themselves in this subject ? The idea of the writer is
that such a change can best be effected by showing that the sub-
ject is not necessarily dry and uninteresting ; that it really con-
stitutes more than almost any other element the essence of his-
tory ; and that the record of the results that have followed the
attempts to establish almost every form of taxation that human
ingenuity can devise, has even in a very high degree the attrac-
tion of romance. Its study from such a point of view constitutes
a better basis for casting a horoscope of the future of nations and
governments than aught else within the ken of the historical stu-
dent.

In the foregoing chapters the writer has attempted to carry
out this idea. That it has been in at least a degree successful is
demonstrated by the great number of commendatory letters that
have come to him from different countries — even China — and
from people of most varied interests, situations, and occupations.

In the chapters that are to follow, where a search for the
underlying principles of taxation is to be prosecuted, a resort to
more or less abstract reasoning is a necessity. But even here
the presentation of abstract principles, to which assent will be
asked or expected, will be avoided as far as possible, with the ex-
pectation that the reader will, from a consideration of the facts
and deductions presented, be able himself to frame and determine
the principles that should govern a correct system of taxation by
a process of self-evident induction.

An interesting- illustration of the interdependence of organisms, and of
the existence of close relations where no relations are suspected, is pointed
out by Miss Ormerod. Water-cress farmers are greatly annoyed and often
have to suffer considerable destruction of their crops by the depredations
of the larvae of caddis flies. These larvae are delicious morsels for trout,
and where trout abound they are scarce and the cresses flourish. But if
heron abound, they destroy the trout, the caddis flies are not eaten up, and
the cresses are.

THE STONE FOREST OF FLORISSANT,

479

THE STONE FOREST "OF FLORISSANT.

By Pkof. ANGELO HKILPEIN.

TO the many who annually wander forth in quest of a " change
of scene," and have not yet fully exhausted the wonders of
Nature in their search after the purely beautiful, any locality
that offers material for special wonderment comes with pleasing
interest. One such, which is less generally known than other
localities of a somewhat similar character in the United States —
indeed, is hardly known beyond the pale of a limited coterie of
geologists — is the region of ranch and meadow land which lies
within a mile and a half of the line of the Colorado Midland
Railroad near to the station of Florissant. In reaching it we have
crossed the front or outer range of the Rocky Mountains, traversed

The Giant Stone Forester of Florissant, Colorado.

the charming flower gardens of Summit Park at an elevation of
nearly nine thousand feet, and have again descended to eight thou-
sand one hundred feet. A gently undulating plain of meadow-land
is in the main occupied by Costello's and Halthusen's ranches, and
around and about sweep up the chain of heights which help to
make up the great backbone of the North American continent.
There is little to suggest in this landscape that we are in the heart
of the Rockies ; the rugged crags to which the mind has affection-
ately attached itself from childhood's study are hidden beneath a
dense covering of piny woodland, or else wander off much in the
manner of the Eastern Appalachians. Here and there in the not

48o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

very distant horizon a peak looms up with special prominence,
and occasional patches of snow indicate that the mountain crests
lie well above the thirteen thousand and fourteen thousand foot
line, for below that line, and generally even above it, the linger-
ing winter snows rapidly depart before the summer's heat. The
two thousand feet advantage that we possess in the elevation of
this region over that of Mount Washington is in no way indicated
by the thermometer ; an almost subtropical sunshine warms up
the open expanse of the Rocky Mountain parks, and with it there
are but few reminders of the chilly blasts that habitually sweep
over the crests of the White Hills.

Florissant has long been famous with geologists for the wealth
of insect remains which its rocks harbor. No other locality of
the earth's surface, not even the famous Oeningen beds of Switz-
erland, has disclosed an insect fauna of equal variety and abun-
dance, or with characters so well preserved as they are here. From
butterfly to beetle, wasp, dragon-fly, and ant, almost every type of
this great group of animals belonging to the period of the mak-
ing of the Florissant rock is represented in the soft and thinly
bedded shales which here and there force themselves through the
not over-luxuriant covering of sward. If, perhaps, the better spe-
cimens have by this time been culled by the ever-grasping geo-
logical collector, many yet remain, and with rapture the eye
follows the marks of hair and exquisite venation which have
withstood a time action of perhaps one hundred thousand to two
hundred thousand years.

My own purpose in visiting the Florissant Basin during the
past summer was less for the study of its extinct animal remains
than for inspecting the debris of the wonderful forest which ages
ago had undergone its transmutation into stone, and now reads its
own history from monuments which are destined to live for equal
ages in the future. With me were a number of students, of both
sexes, who had determined to share the pleasures and discomforts
of camp travel, from canon to mountain peak, and to whom the
quasi-luxuriance of the big Rocky Mountain coach was in no way
an obstacle. A few hours' easy journey across the Hay den Divide
brought us from our quarters at Green Mountain Falls, on the
northern shoulder of Pike's Peak, to the land of ancient lake and
dead volcano, where, under the kindly guidance of the ranchero
and his amiable daughter, we were almost immediately put in
sympathetic touch with the relics of departed life.

To the geological mind the Florissant Basin is an ancient silted
lake, the waters of which succumbed to that sure infiltration of
sediment which marks the beginning and end of nearly all stand-
ing bodies of continental waters. In this case, however, it was not
the deposition of sediment within the lake by inflowing streams

THE STONE FOREST OF FLORISSANT. 481

that produced the lake's annihilation, but in the main the aerial
discharges of volcanoes. Even to-day the practiced eye will soon
pick out from among the many mountain forms that surround
this ranchland the conical contours of the volcano. A few such
stand by themselves, neither of great height nor of imposing
mass ; others are disposed in linear series, much like the cones
which so abundantly scatter themselves over the southwestern
and Mexican plateaus. We ascended one of these, a conelet of
perhaps one hundred and fifty feet elevation, whose partially
wooded sides were yet the ancient slag and cinders, and from
whose top projected the plug of lava which marked the position
of the former vent. In a pit near by could be seen the hard

The Giant Stone Forester (Sequoia) of Florissant. Forty-five feet in circumference.

basalt-trachyte which forms the existing core of the mountain —
the material which in early Miocene times, or perhaps still earlier,
was active in the distribution of the loose rock fragments which
everywhere lie scattered about. In the days of its activity the
foot of the volcano bordered a still more ancient lake, or was even
immersed in it, as the lacustrine deposits which largely encircle
it plainly show. In these are found in scattered spots a number
of fresh- water types of mollusks — Planorbis, Physa, Limnea, Vol-
vata, Cyclas — their shells as beautifully preserved as the much
more delicate parts of the insects which were shortly added to
them.

The eruption came, and with it clouds of ash sailed upward,
only to fall back into the lake waters, and with them form a
sticky and lasting paste, ultimately to harden into a compact

482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rock. This is to-day the floor of the basin, and in it are wrapped
the thousands of insects which at the time disported in the sub-
tropical sunshine, and whose lives were involved in the catas-

A EocKY Mount UN "Park," across the Florissant Basin, Colorado.

trophe. Fish remains are still occasionally met with, but they
do not appear to be in any way abundant. The heated waters
flooded portions of the adjacent dry land, and destroyed the
stately forest that grew down to the banks — the forest of giant
redwoods {Sequoia) which already then clothed this portion of
the North American continent, and whose extension is to be
found in the forest heaps of Patoot and Atanekerdlook on the
western coast of Greenland, almost under the seventieth parallel
of north latitude. It was a different climate then. The Sequoias
do not, perhaps, teach us much, since they, or a closely allied
species, are still a part of the vegetative product of California,
and are to-day a wonder in their own land; but when they
reared their majestic trunks above the plains of Florissant, they
did so in association with palms and with other representatives
of the southern climes. They fell together, and together have
their remains been preserved.

The silicified trees of the Florissant Basin are a marked curi-
osity of the United States. They are less known than the " stone
forest^' of Arizona, or than the similar mausoleum of the Yellow-
stone region, but it is only because they have not yet been
brought to the attention of the tourist. The trees are at the
present time represented only by their stumps. In wandering
over the green meadow the eye here and there rests upon a seem-

THE STONE FOREST OF FLORISSANT,

ingly "bald" spot. Over it are scattered white and yellow chips,
and, for anything that the eye can itself distinguish, these could
leasily be the chips left in the path of work of a recently passing
[woodsman. The deception is absolute, and it belongs to the
(stump as well. The knots and gnarls and annular rings are
fperf ectly preserved ; the bark stands in prominent relief both by
ruggedness and color, and all this not in wood, but in the monu-
mental substance of stone. The precise manner in which the sub-
stitution of silica for wood was effected can not now be learned,
I but, in a general way, we know it to have been brought about as
fthe result of a slow infiltration into the tree trunks of heated
waters containing silica in solution.

The remains are fairly numerous, but what strikes one with
special astonishment is the giant size which some of them attain.
Diameters of six, seven, and eight feet are by no means uncom-
mon, and we meas-
ured three speci-
mens which spanned
ten feet or more. In
most instances the
stumps hardly rise
above the surface,
coming up flush
with it ; therefore,
without excavation,
it is impossible to
say at what height
above the roots the
measurements were
taken. In what
might be termed the
" king of the forest "
— the tree represent-
ed in the accompany-
ing illustrations — a
definite basis for
measurement is pre-
sented, inasmuch as
the tree has been
laid bare to its roots.
The stump stands
about fifteen feet

high, and at that distance above the roots it measures forty- five
feet in girth — a colossus that would hardly be shamed by its more
gigantic brethren of the existing redwood forests of California.
This, so far as I have been able to ascertain, is the /aciZe princeps

TiiK Giant Stump. About fifteen feet elevation.

484 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of stone foresters — a curiosity in Nature of which the world offers
but few duplicates. Imbedded hard within the trunk, and held
by it fast as in a vise, are the blades of two gang saws, the wreck
of a barbaric effort to section the tree and remove it in parts to
the World's Columbian Exposition. It is stated that this effort at
desecration was only abandoned after it had involved the expendi-
ture of some three thousand to four thousand dollars.

Near by is a stump whose surface measures eleven feet in
diameter, and it may well be. that excavation nearer to the roots
would disclose a size fully equal to that of its more "costly"
neighbor. All in all, the trees in this region are much larger
than those of the " petrified forest " of Arizona, and their com-
parative antiquity gives them a special claim upon the attention
of the geologist. In the more southerly tract they rarely attain a
diameter of four or at most five feet, and more generally two
and three feet give the full measure. Most of the fragments lie
prostrate — an indication that there was a subversion of the forest
before petrifaction set in, and it is difficult to find pieces of more
than four feet continuous length. The trees, so far as botanical
study has determined them, were pines, and not the more stately
Sequoias of the north. And yet, even with such forms, a giant
stature was not exactly absent, for only a short time back a pros-
trate shattered trunk was measured over a length of about a
hundred and fifty feet. It is, by way of contrast, a little remark-
able that at Florissant so many (perhaps most) of the trees still
retain an upright position, a condition that suggests peaceful de-
cay, or at least one that was not associated with any cataclysm of
the land surface. In whatever way overwhelmed to death — and
the falling ash would itself be quite competent to effect this — it
seems not unlikely that silicification proceeded to a level pre-
scribed by the surface of the heated waters of the lake, above
which the trees fell. It would be a satisfaction, certainly, to
have excavations conducted here ; but whether carried out or not,
the region is one that stands with its own interest, and to which
the tourist can safely be recommended to carry his explorations
in search of Nature's wonderland.

Some remarkable sculptures \n ivory — described as being executed with
marvelous art and great vigor and accuracy — have been discovered in a
cave at Brassempouy, near Pau, France. They are assigned to the begin-
ning of what the French archaeologists call the Magdalenian period or the
end of the Mousterian. One of them exhibits the features of prominent
haunches and pendant breasts which are often seen among the Hottentots
and other African tribes ; another, a head, presents a Basque physiognomy,
and bears a coiffure carefully arranged in parallel braids so as to resemble
an ancient Egyptian headdress.

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 485

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION.

Bt Dr. C. HANFORD HENDERSON.

IN venturing to speak or write about a topic so much spoken
about and so much written about as education, one may be
pardoned a little hesitation. In the midst of our present wealth
of educational theories, the need seems not so much for any addi-
tion to them or any restatement of them as for a little genuine,
wholesome action in carrying them into effect. And yet this
problem, the education of our children, though so very old and so
much discussed, is always new and never exhausted. The last
word has not been spoken.

This perennial interest in education springs, I think, from two
sources — from a feeling that much of the current action that goes
under the name of education is obviously ill-advised, and from an
appreciation of the tremendous importance of the whole matter.
For, mark you, what we propose to discuss is no more nor less
than this — the unfolding of the human spirit. It is a process for
whose preparation the mighty drama of evolution has not been
counted too great; and, now that that drama has become in our
hands a conscious process, we can scarcely overestimate the
unique significance of this, its concluding scene. It is an august
problem, one that I stand before in reverence and humility.

In a day of more childlike faith one can readily conceive the
attitude of mind of those who, in the presence of such an issue as
this, devoutly waited for the working of the Spirit, and listened to
its utterance as to the oracle of God. But though the old faiths
are dead, or at least certain aspects of them, there is a new faith
no less inspiring and no less revered. Modern faith believes in
the essential sanity of the human spirit. It believes that it is
possible by pure and holy living to so strengthen and clarify the
spiritual vision that one may catch some glimpse of the divinely
human truth. And this glimpse comes not to one man alone but
to you and to me, when together, in the disinterestedness of a
common purpose, we attempt to let the light play about the prob-
lems of the inner life.

And first let me say, in considering the aim of modern educa-
tion, that I do not do so as the advocate of any special system or
of any limited cult. I am in no sense a special pleader. It may
be known to some of my readers that I have had for several years
the charge of a manual training school in Philadelphia, and the
thought would be quite natural that I may have come to regard
the salvation of childhood as dependent in some occult way upon
the training of its extremities. But, believe me, this is far from
the truth. We hold, rather, the deep conviction that the province

486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of secondary education is to lay broad, general, catholic founda-
tions for the successful conduct of life. We should defeat our-
selves by indulging in any specialty, however commendable in
itself. What we are after is culture, and the power and perfection
that come through culture. It is no new motive. On the con-
trary, it is a very old motive, as old as the birth of the human
spirit itself. But it is still the motive underlying all that new
movement in education of which manual training, sloyd, and the
kindergarten form so prominent a part. I believe that not all the
men and women taking part in the movement would agree to
such a statement of motive. Some at least among them would
assign more special and technical ends. I make the statement,
however, quite unreservedly. What does distinguish the new
movement is that in the choice of methods it differs somewhat
radically from the older efforts. Be kind enough, then, at the
outset to distinguish between motive and method, between ends
and means.

In speaking about the present demands upon the school I do
not think we hit the mark when we confine ourselves to the in-
dustrial demands, or the economic demands, or the social demands,
or to any other one aspect of a very complex problem. Nor do I
think we get any place when we propose to offer in satisfaction of
these demands any one panacea. I would stand rather upon a
broader platform, and ask your sympathy and consent to a much
more catholic solution.

The problem of education is forever presenting this double in-
terrogation point : What do you want ? How are you going to
get it ? They are very definite questions, and it is easy enough
to give equally definite answers so long as one confines one^s self to
general terms. We want culture, and the power and perfection
that come through culture. We shall get it by surrounding the
child with those influences that make for culture. But when we
come to translate these general terms into something more spe-
cific, and, still more, when we come to translate our words into
action, it is then that the difficulty comes; it is then that the
educational sun goes under a cloud. Yet, as we love education,
we must go on forever asking these questions, and we must go
on forever trying to answer them. What we should pray for is
clearness.

One of the most difficult branches in the modern school cur-
riculum is apparently mathematics. We are prone to grade the
children by their progress in this one branch. Yet it is not essen-
tially difficult. If you will analyze it for a moment, mathematical
study is but a study of the quantitative relations of life. It is
consequently axiomatic. It needs for its mastery only clear state-
ment. Higher and lower mathematics are equally easy of com-

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 487

prehension if they are only clearly stated. It is, I think, this
effort after clearness of statement that gives to mathematics its
high disciplinary value. The apparent difficulty that surrounds
mathematics and has made it a dreaded name to so many genera-
tions of schoolboys comes, I believe, from the way we approach
the science, and is chargeable to the cloudiness of our own mental
atmosphere.

Now it seems to me that we stand toward education in very
much the same attitude. It is apparently the most difficult prob-
lem that presents itself in modern life. It is certainly the gravest.
But here, too, the difficulty lies not so much in the problem itself
as in our statement of it. If we could clearly state what we are
after in education and stick very close to that, I have large faith
that we should be able to get it.

We do not begin de novo. Others have been pegging away at
the same problem. We find an educational process already in
operation, and bearing unmistakable signs of its evolution. It is
a process which has grown up in answer to the demands of a
varied, and for the most part of a past, life. What we do in the
name of education, we do because at some time the circumstances
of life made it seem wise. I do not for a moment venture upon
the statement that it was wise. Much that we do was never wise
under any circumstances. But we may readily believe that each
element brought into education came in response to some out-
ward condition. Yesterday, as well as to-day, had its demands
upon the school. A progressive education would be one in which
the educational process was being constantly readjusted to meet
these changing conditions. In a rough and somewhat rebellious
way this is what does happen. But the readjustment is not easy,
continuous, voluntary. It comes by irregular jumps. The old
customs have considerable inertia. The mechanical workers, the
men and women in whose hands the process of education mainly
rests, follow the line of least resistance. And the line of least re-
sistance is to go on in the way one has been accustomed to going
on. So it comes about, quite easily and naturally, that the schools
get much behind the informed spirit of the time. The process

I they follow is no longer in harmony with the demands of the life
which it is meant to serve, is indeed very much out of harmony
with those demands. The children become restless. The teachers
find their work difficult. The outside world grows impatient.
And now at this juncture some reform is inaugurated. It is
hailed, and very sincerely, as an entirely new departure. The re-
former is believed to be a radical in either motive or method.
But, in point of fact, the reformer and the departure which he
proposes are much less radical than they are believed to be. It is
.......................

488 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at work in modern society tend to produce average men. What
the reform does attempt is simply this — to bring the educational
process once more into harmony with the Zeit- Geist Its office is
to sweep away customs and practices that were never wise, and to
transform those which, were founded in right reason into more
modern and available form. This is all that can be done — is per-
haps all that it is desirable to do. No single reform can be very
sweeping, for observe, it is to operate upon a set of conditions of
which it is itself a product. Hence it is that the reforms which
are the most far-reaching in their results come from outside, are
forced upon our institutions and enterprises by those who stand
themselves outside of the movement. In our education we have
precisely the same spectacle, a curious one surely, if it were not
for this explanation. The movements which are to-day innova-
tions, and which are looked upon by many of us as reforms, have
such an outside origin. The kindergarten, sloyd, manual train-
ing, science lessons, and nearly all the features that distinguish the
newer education, have not sprung up within the curriculum of the
school. They have forced themselves into the school from without,
and often after a very long struggle. These readjustments are
made only at the cost of considerable opposition and heartburn.
They are the efforts to bring the spirit from the past into the pres-
ent. It is the attitude of mind which says, I am, not I was.

Looking at the schools in this way, you will perhaps agree
with me that nothing we do in them is in itself commendable, but
is only commendable as it serves some desirable end. Good and
bad are relative terms. Schools are good or bad in no absolute
sense, but solely in relation to the ends which they serve. Schools
which were very good a quarter of a century ago might be rela-
tively bad at the present time. Bear in mind that the school is a
tool, a process, a means, is in no sense an end.

As a tool, we can judge the modern school only by the manner
in which it does its work. And this makes necessary a clear un-
derstanding of the work it is to do. It is here that we need that
clearness of expression of which I have been speaking. There is
no end to-day of discussion on educational topics. We are all
reading papers or giving little talks. We come pretty near to
realizing Joubert's famous saying, " It is better to discuss a ques-
tion without settling it than to settle it without discussing it."
But meanwhile the schools must go on, even though the discus-
sion come to no conclusion. This multiplicity of discussion
serves at least one good purpose. It directs public attention to
the gravity of the problem of education. And yet it seems to me
that much of the discussion is idle, and must from its very nature
continue to be so. The weakness lies in this, that it is for the
most part a discussion of methods and of minor riddles. It is not

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION, 489

basal enough. It does not sufficiently address itself to tlie ques-
tion of the sort of men and women we wish to produce. How to
get culture will depend upon what you mean by culture. And
this can not be stated once for alh It is a shifting ideal, growing
as the spirit of man grows.

Perhaps we shall the sooner see our mark by first clearing the
ground a little, and disclaiming some of the ends proposed for
education. My own list of unadmitted ends is somewhat long. I
do not, for example, set as the object for education a good citizen,
a successful breadwinner, a wise father, an expert mechanic, an
adroit versifier, a keen lawyer, an eloquent preacher, a skillful
physician, a learned professor, a prosperous tradesman. Some of
these ends may be good enough in themselves. I do not discuss
the question. But they are not the proper end of education. And
they are not, because they are secondary, minor, special ends.
They are not the major ends in life, though they are often mis-
taken for such. We are pretty far from the mark when we mis-
take for education any training which has a partial and special
end in view. To erect any one of these ends into the end, and
declare it to be the goal of education, is to fall by the wayside,
and deliberately to turn one's face away from the New Jerusalem
of the Intellect.

The end in education should be the major end. It should be
the very biggest thing in life, the most general and far-reaching
good the mind can formulate. We cheat ourselves, we cheat the
children, if we express the end in terms any less catholic than
this. It may include good citizenship, wise parenthood, successful
bread winning, literary or technical skill, but it is not any one of
these things. The greatest thing in life is life — life in its fullness
j^nd totality. It is this that education should set its face toward.
[ts end should be wholeness, integrity, and nothing less than this.
[It is false to its mission if it turn aside into any of the bypaths
)f convenience, of industry, or even of accomplishment and eru-
lition. These are broad terms that I have been using and some-
what ambitious. But I can say no less than this and say what I
[mean. Education has to do with the whole of life, with man, and
lot with any one or any group of his petty activities. He must
^take an acceptable part in the life of effort, and to do this he
must be prepared. There is a time when special technical train-
ing is advisable, when it is the proper usurper of the time ; but
this is quite secondary, a mere supplement to the main business
of education. It is a deplorable intrusion if it ever take the place
of education. There is a marked tendency in us all to get things
out of perspective, to specialize, to confound magnitudes, and, of
equal elements in a problem, to see one big and the other small.
We are prone to mistake the means for the end.

VOL. XLIX. — 40

490 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Now turn to a more cosmic conception. For one moment let us
isolate a man. Place him naked and alone in the midst of Nature,
in the open sunshine. Clothe him with health and beauty. En-
dow him with a clear mind, a warm heart, a keen love of perfec-
tion. Make him self-poised, resolute, independent. Then bring
him into relation with his fellows. Have him share in all the
wholesome activities of life. Let him taste of labor and joy. Let
him be a son, a brother, a friend, a lover, a husband, a father, a
citizen, a worker, an idler, a thinker, an artist. Let him feel. Let
him philosophize. This is to taste life in its entirety. Great
God, how few of us do it ! How slight we are ! How partial \
And what a tragedy that, in the name of education, we should go
on working for fragments instead of for the completed whole!
And this figure of the complete man is the figure that modern
education has in mind. An impossible figure, you may say. Yet
less impossible the more you and I believe in it. Such a figure is
not the ideal of the economists, with their extreme division of
labor and their strong belief in the economic trinity of production,
distribution, and consumption, but it is a figure which appeals to
those men who, like myself, believe in what I may call the sci-
entific humanism. As I see the matter, we want to turn boys
toward this ideal of full living, to make them en rapport with the
universe and with man, to bring them out of their smaller into
their larger self, to change them from a less evolved into a more
evolved existence. We want to create in them a discontent with
partial, secondary, minor ends. We want to turn their faces
toward the major end. To do this is to magnify the human spirit
— that spirit in whose essential sanity I so profoundly believe.
And so I define education as the unfolding and perfecting of the
human spirit.

I do not know whether my readers agree to this answer of
mine as to what we want to do. I hope that they do agree to it,
for to believe less would seem to me to make out life meaner and
cheaper than it is. This ideal is but a restatement of the old
ideal of the earnest pagan world. To see things as they are is the
mission of culture. To adjust one's life to this clear perception of
things is to gain the power and perfection that come through cul-
ture. But our modern complex world has not taken this motive
in its simplicity. It has modified it so that now it reads : To see
some things as they are, and notably those things which have to
do with material convenience and progress. This is not life in its
entirety. It is life weak on the human, emotional, artistic side,
life weak on the side that can least afford to be weak. We are
waking up to this fact. We are waking up to a feeling that mod-
ern school life is rather juiceless. On many sides I see a hopeful
discontent — a discontent which is fco be the prologue to that intel-

J :

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 491

lectual and spiritual renaissance which I doubt not will grace the
opening years of the coming century. This is what we want —
this fullness of life. Shall we ever get it ? My friends, that de-
pends upon us — upon you and me, upon the earnestness and
single-heartedness with which we want it. Assuredly we shall
never get it if we continue to fix our gaze upon the partial, upon
the fragment, and forget that there is such a thing as the greater
whole. If you persist in saying. This is good, and That is good,
and proceed to build up educational institutions for the pursuit of
this and that, what you get will be simply what you pursue — this
and that, and naught else. And the result of this pursuit, of this
process of emphasizing one or two sides of life and ignoring many
other sides of equal or even greater importance — the result is not
beautiful, is not encouraging. In many cases the discipline of
life at large would be more valuable. It is this feeling that makes
me count myself fortunate to have gone to school but two years
in all my life.

It would perhaps interest you just here to learn a bit of curi-
ous testimony in regard to the practical effect of this pursuit of
the partial. It came in my own experience. Before I went to
Europe to study I had charge of the science department in our
older manual training school, and I noticed, or thought I noticed,
that many of my brighter and more promising boys had, for some
reason or other, been to school very little, less indeed than the
average. The suspicion grew so strong that at last I decided to
test it. I had each boy in a certain class write out his age, the
number of years he had been in school, how old he was when he
started, and whether the school had been public or private. There
were some surprises. There were some boys who had been to
school for eleven years, who had been through all the dismal
grind of the primary, secondary, and grammar schools, and who
were still bright and attractive. But the result of the whole scru-
tiny warranted the remarkable generalization that the brightness
and desirability of the boys as pupils was inversely proportional
to the number of years they had been at school. In a word, I
could do more with the boys who had been least in school. Do
you comprehend the full significance of this statement ? I have

t never been able to forget it. It has made me critical of school
processes and methods. It stands before me a silent specter. I
cry aloud. Woe unto us if we are sending our children to school
to their hurt !
Let us turn now to that second question. How shall we get
what we want ?
When I was quite a young man I went over to New York on
a literary mission. My purpose was somewhat ill defined, but I

492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

on the staff of one of the leading periodicals, and, in view of the
chaste and elegant English then at my command, I fear that I
expected a pretty high post. Among others, I carried a letter of
introduction to Mr. Roswell Smith, the editor of The Century.
He received me very kindly and talked with me for some mo-
ments. Finally he said to me : " You want to write ? " I said
that I did. " Well,'' he answered, " if you want to write, write,"
and he held out his hand. The interview was over. As I re-
turned to Philadelphia I could not help the reflection that I had
gone a considerable distance for so obvious advice. But do you
know, the more I thought over the matter the more I came to the
conclusion that Mr. Smith had touched off the position with great
nicety. If I wanted to write, there was just this one thing open
to me to do, and that was to write. This bit of obvious advice
has never quite got out of my head. But it is not a principle
which often leads along the line of least resistance. On the con-
trary, like the Czar's railroad from Moscow to St. Petersburg, it
goes in a straight line, quite regardless of mountain and morass.
It asks us frequently to oppose what is of all the most difficult to
oppose — the wishes and counsel of friends. If you want to do a
thing, do it. This is simple advice, but it sometimes takes a hero
to follow it. In this matter of education I see no other way open
to us. If we want for our children life in its fullness and totality
and beauty, we must address ourselves to the task of realizing
this, and be contented with no partial solution. It is not an easy
task.

Life in its totality — this means twenty-four hours, seven days,
four weeks, twelve months, threescore years and ten; it means
feeling, thinking, acting ; it means the life of the organism —
birth, nutrition, growth, reproduction, death ; it means the life of
the emotions ; it means the life of the intellect — acquisition, re-
flection, creation. It means nothing less than this ; and the moral
measure of our work as teachers will be the measure of the full-
ness of life that we open to our children. Were we tried by this
standard to-day, I dread to reflect how many of us would be found
wanting !

And yet I have said that this gigantic problem, like mathe-
matics, is only difficult in appearance ; is in reality quite simple.
I believe this to be true, provided, observe, that we can attain a
clear statement of the problem, and maintain this clearness in all
our dealing with it. And we gain clearness and rationality, the
stronger our hold upon the principle of causation. If we really
believe in cause and effect and in the necessary relation between
them, we will realize that we can never gain complete effects by
setting in operation partial causes. This is, indeed, the great les-
son in method that we all have to learn. With a clear idea of the

\iJiL

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 493

end, we must set going adequate means. The machinery must be
competent to do the work. Here it is that the older methods
have been found wanting. They do not provide for life in its
totality. The answer may well be made that they were never
meant to. They attempted to deal only with one side of life — the
intellectual. The other side, the emotional, bodily life, was left
to the home. This division would not be amiss, if it were pos-
sible to so divide the child, and if both school and home were
equipped to do their share of the work and received each its due
share of the child's time. But this is not the case, and, from the
very nature of our being, can not be the case. The child is not
divisible. It is a unit, a monistic child. The intellectual life
depends for its material upon the bodily sensations, and for its
motive and coloring upon the emotions. Separate these, and the
result is a crippling of the whole process of education. Separate
them very far, and the result is fatal. The emotions are the
inner springs of action, and upon the healthy life of the emotions
depend the joy and fullness of action. The poets have long
known this. It has been the burden of their singing. When we
love, then are we strong. It has been with them a divine intui-
tion. It might have been a direct induction, for it is not only the
teaching of the poets, but it is the teaching of life. The history
of all action is the history of expressed emotion. Every conflict
on the world's arena has been the drama of conflicting feeling.
Stint emotion, stifle feeling, and there comes the most dreadful of
all the soul's maladies — that fatal apathy which makes action im-
possible and life a stupid slumbering. And when action is gone,
when experience is curtailed, when sensations are limited, intel-
lection becomes feeble, for it has no stuff to work upon. Believe
me, the most terrible paralysis that can befall the human spirit
is the paralysis of feeling, the slow drying up of the emotions.
It is this that makes old age a tragedy and life a bitter, juiceless
thing. I would that we, who presume to teach children — for it is
a presumption — I would that we might early learn this lesson.
It would transform us into teachers of men. It is a truth beauti-
ful in its operation when we realize it and act upon it, terrible in
its operation when we lose sight of it and deny it. And this
same great truth, hit upon by poets and thinkers as they wan-
dered over the open fields or in the deep forests, under the hush
of the night or in the broad sunshine, is precisely the truth hit
upon by colder methods in the laboratory of the psychologist.
We have been discrediting " mere feeling," and asking for some-
thing more solid and enduring. It is much as if we scorned the
springs and brooks and still asked for broad rivers to float our
argosies upon. The emotions are the elements out of which is
built the whole life drama. They are the first terms in the syn-

494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thesis of life, the stuff out of which each earnest, loving soul
builds his world. Likewise, they are the last terms in the analy-
sis of life, the ulti mates reached by the painstaking, fact-loving
man of science.

Pardon my too persistent iteration. But I am saying this
over and over again, hoping to so say it at last that it will seize
upon your imagination and carry us both into a new and more
rational comprehension of the problem of education. The child
is a unit, and neither he nor you can separate his intellectual
from his emotional, bodily life. It might be desirable, it would
certainly be convenient, if we could present great slices of truth,
like a generous help of layer cake, to the minds of our children,
and have it thoroughly assimilated by methods prescribed by
ourselves in normal schools assembled. But however desirable
or convenient, it is not possible. Yet we go on trying — yester-
day, to-day — I hope not forever. To do this is to deny causation
and invoke the power of magic and the black arts. There is but
one avenue of approach to the mind of a child. It is the avenue
pointed out in earlier days by loving intuition — that unconscious
induction of the untaught spirit — and in later days by the colder
scrutiny of science — that conscious induction of the informed
spirit. It is the approach to action through feeling, and to
thought through sensation. The causal chain is very distinct.
It should be well noted : feeling, action, sensation, thought. You
see, then, how psychologically impossible it is to reach the last
link in this chain without passing through the intermediate
links. Yet this is precisely what we attempt to do when we di-
vorce the thought life from the bodily life, and assign the one to
the school and the other to the home.

If it were equally agreeable to sit still as to walk, and we hap-
pened to be sitting still, we should go on sitting still all the rest of
our lives. The balance of pleasure and pain being equal, there
would be no motive to action. The absence of desire would be the
absence of power. We should be as hopelessly bound to our chair
as Prometheus to his rock. In this condition we might be picked
up, might even through the application of some external force be
made to go through the motion of walking, but it would be an
awkward, ungracious act. A better way to get us to walk would
be to offer some inducement — in a word, to enlist desire on the
side of walking. The internal force is infinitely more efficient
than the external. No one can make us walk so well as we can
walk ourselves, for walking, after all, is a mental act. No action,
however simple or complex, can be brought about without an ap-
peal to the spring of action, and the spring of all action is a feel-
ing, a desire, an emotion. It is perfectly hopeless to ask your
apathetic subject, sitting there in the chair, to get up and walk.

iti'-4iLkiL.

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 495

unless yon offer at the same time some sufficient reason for walk-
ing ; and observe, please, the reason must be one that appeals to
Ifiim and not alone to you. It is Inis desire, not yours, that is go-
ing to make him stir himself. Is it not the same with a child and
his lessons ? It is quite as hopeless to ask a child to learn unless
you first see to it that he wants to learn. You may force him to
go through the motion of learning, just as it was possible to force
the apathetic man to go through the motion of walking, may even
force the child to memorize the lesson and recite it with verbal
accuracy, but it will be an awkward, ungracious act, and will do
the child injury rather than good. And the injury is of a very
positive kind. It drives another nail into the coffin of desire. By
so much is the emotional life of the child dead and are his intel-
lectual possibilities stunted. I am not speaking with picturesque
exaggeration when I tell you that in many a schoolroom where
this process of drilling children is being carried out, I experience
a distinct sensation of spiritual horror, a sense of intense darkness,
for I say to myself : Here is accomplished the death of the spirit ;
here are children growing each day more listless and apathetic,
not learning what we want them to learn, and losing in the vain
effort what no one can afford to lose — the joyous life of child-
hood, rich in strong feeling and high spirit, in itself an end of
beauty, and a source of perfect manhood and womanhood. In all
sincerity, it seems to me an evil greater by far than the evil com-
mitted by acknowledged thieves. It is a spiritual robbery, the
least endurable of all robberies. I have been often robbed. I
have been "held up" in Montana, and robbed by less direct
methods in other parts of the world. You have doubtless had
similar experiences. But these losses sink into absolute insignifi-
cance in comparison with the more dreadful losses inflicted by
poor teachers and guides. You have doubtless had similar expe-
riences. The reflection may be made without bitterness, but it
ought not to be made without bearing fruit of the most whole-
some sort in our own handling of that delicate bit of organism —
the mind of a child.

What we must do, then, in educating children is first and fore-
most to give full and free play to the emotional life. We want
consciously and deliberately to encourage feeling and sentiment,
and to create the greatest possible number of wholesome desires.
This may sound to you like strange doctrine. It will, however,
bear your examination. It is easy to cultivate the emotional life
in children. All we have to do is not to suppress it. And yet
even this negative function, this clearing of the ground, requires
finesse on our part. What we want in children is totally uncon-
scious sentiment. Children who are well, children in whom the
pulse of life beats high and quick, are reservoirs of feeling, bits

496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of concrete sentiment, bundles of desire. In the majority of our
schools we try to crush this all out. What we should do is to en-
courage it. If we are sympathetic, if we are responsive, if we are
wise, we will hesitate to check this flood of feeling. It is to be
disciplined, but not destroyed. It is the same with the multiform
desires of childhood. Many of them can not be gratified, but the
child-life will be fuller and more wholesome if they are allowed
as far as may be. And I so value this emotional life, this prodi-
gality of sentiment and desire, because it all leads to action, and
to the very sort of action that is educationally the most valuable
— to that which is self-prompted. Froebel hit upon this in the
kindergarten, and made self -activity the corner stone of his whole
system. He could not have built truer. It is a quality found in
all children. Those who are full-blooded and have not been con-
stantly thwarted by the cry of " Don't !" have an inexhaustible
supply of it, and this is precisely what we want. It is the source of
power, and jealously to be guarded. The particular merit of the
new education, represented by the kindergarten, sloyd and man-
ual training, lies in this, that they proceed psychologically. They
recognize the child's desire as the source of action and effort, and
build upon that. What we want to do is to turn these desires
into the most wholesome channels, and to have the activity spend
itself along the most helpful lines. So long as the desire is gen-
uine, is the child's very own, and the activity which follows, a
legitimate result of the desire, we may feel quite sure of the
resulting sensations and their assembly into thought. What I
dread most as a teacher is the child devoid of feeling and desire,
the quiet little mouse who under the old regime would be called
good and held up as a pattern. To keep quiet and vegetate is not
to be good. The troublesome child, full of action and desire, is
the far more promising bit of humanity. In the first there is
nothing to work upon, poor little anaemic creatures with no past,
no present, and no probable future. But the second is a store-
house of power. Education has something to work upon. It has
a more lively problem, it is true, and one of some difficulty, but
withal a problem of keen interest and large promise. Believing
this as strongly as I do, the systems of education which begin by
repression, by a process of subduing, quieting, deadening the ac-
tivities and desires of childhood, seem to me absolutely vicious —
more vicious by far than the conduct of nurses who feed trouble-
some babies with soothing sirups and other detestable drugs to
put them to sleep.

The children themselves suggest the right method in educa-
tion. What they most want is to be employed, and with some-
thing that interests them, not something that interests mamma
or papa or the teacher. Consult any child of your acquaintance

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 497

— any unsophisticated child, I mean — and get at his preference
for one place over another. I think you will find, for example,
that he prefers the shabbiest old farmhouse to the trimmest vil-
lage mansion ; and the reason is simple — there is more to do there.
This is the great fact that the newer education has seized upon.
It attempts to make knowledge real to children by making it a
part of their experience, and to do this it enlists the life forces on
its side instead of arraying them against it. As educators, we are
to use our skill in directing the wonderful self-activity that in
children is already a reality. We are to provide the theater for
its exercise, and decide, in large measure, what shape it is to take.
But always we are to do this with the sympathy and co-operation
of the child, and never against his protest. It is bad practice in
medicine to deal with symptoms and treat only them. It is good
practice to go back of symptoms to causes. It is bad practice in
education to attempt to control the occupations and activities of
children, and neglect the motive power back of it all. It is good
practice to accept the desires of children and allow them whole-
some expression. A large part of the childish instinct is the de-
sire to make things, to construct something — anything, indeed,
from a mud pie to a canoe or playhouse. It is a wholesome in-
stinct. It is only by such experience that the child comes to
know the great outer world and to find himself in it. Think for
a moment how much he has to learn ; how much that to you and
me are mere commonplaces, but to him are brand-new wonders !

[e is a born investigator, an inquisitive experimenter in a very
Rarge laboratory. And not only this, but it is very desirable that
ihe should be. To prohibit these activities, to thwart these in-
stincts, and to deliberately propose as a substitute that he shall
sit still indoors with the abstractions of formal education is sim-
Iply grotesque. If the proposition and the carrying out of it did
not involve so much mischief of a very grave sort, they would be
[highly humorous. No educational ideas are defensible which

lave not their foundation in ethics, and one's ethics, I need not
fadd, must rest upon one's philosophy of life. In proposing to re-
spect the desires of children, or, in a word, to let them have their
own way, I am proposing something quite at variance with the
[ethical ideas of the majority of people and notably at variance
with the Puritan ethics, yet I do it on ethical as well as psycho-
logical grounds. It is a moral universe, this, in which we find
, ourselves — a universe so constituted that health-giving activities
are followed by happiness, and evil activities by pain. It is this,
indeed, that constitutes the rightness or the wrongness of the ac-
tion— the good or bad results. If we wish to make the moral life
a reality, we must from the cradle up let children feel this essen-
tial relation between cause and effect, and discriminate between

VOL. XLIX. 41

49^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

good-producing and bad-producing action. You must not mis-
understand me. I would, of course, try very earnestly to influ-
ence the desires of children, to make them want the things that
the experience of the race has shown to be good and wholesome,
but it seems to me of greater moment to have the desire and the
action harmonize than to have the action which would seem to
us always commendable. We would not, I think, run any very
great risk. Healthy children, living under wholesome conditions,
have, in the main, wholesome desires. And desires that are not
wholesome can not be more thoroughly killed than by allowing
them, if possible, to flower into action which the child himself
will recognize as painful. No greater wrong can be done a child
than by associating in his mind what is right with what is pain-
ful, and what is wrong with what is pleasant. It is an utterly
false association. He will attain the highest morality when he
does simply and naturally the thing that is good-producing with-
out any inner conflict, but solely as the result of cultivated in-
stincts.

I read once the gospel credited to John, making careful note
of all reference to miracles. I was struck with the fact that all
of the reported events had to do with some physical want — the
curing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the raising of the
dead. You will notice in studying the inclinations of childhood
a similar uniformity. They are all physical wants, and may be
summed up for the most part in two words — muscular exercise.
The children are right. It is this exercise that is going to-
strengthen all the organs and make them capable of more per-
fect function. Every physical act has its corresponding mental
act, and it is a succession of these acts that develops the gray and
white of the brain and gives us at last a highly evolved and sensi-
tive organism. The work of education consists in directing these
activities into those channels which will yield the most helpful
reactions. By concentrating the wandering attention, by increas-
ing the delicacy of touch, by cultivating a finer and finer dis-
crimination, by training the observation — in a word, by develop-
ing, as far as may be, each and all of the faculties — we make
possible that unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit, that
evolution of human nature, which is the end in education.

The goal of modern education is not reached through manual
training alone, any more than it is through language or science
or mathematics. It is for this reason that I no longer desire to
see the establishment of manual training schools as such. They
were necessary in starting the movement. This side of things
had to be emphasized, and the early manual training schools did
yeoman service. But now it seems to me far more wholesome
and desirable that manual instruction should be introduced into

THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 499

the lower and secondary schools already in existence, and that
the work should take its place alongside of the other recognized
means of culture. It has a substantial contribution to make
toward that fullness of life which is the modern aim. It en-
larges the experience of children by bringing them into closer
contact with the outer world of force and matter ; it develops
that many-sided interest which gives alertness to youth and re-
deems old age from ennui ; it increases the sensitiveness of the
bodily organism ; it makes possible activities which would other-
wise be impossible; in a hundred ways it makes for righteous-
ness— that righteousness which consists of fullness of life.

And the method of the new education is admittedly psycho-
logical. It is in harmony with the desires of childhood. It offers
occupations which are welcome to the children, and at the same
time rich in thought reaction. It is a proposition to educate chil-
dren through their own self -activity, with their co-operation in-
stead of against their protest.

In estimating the several forms of manual training, I have
come to believe that the Swedish form, sloyd, has some advan-
tages over the more formal Russian manual training, in giving
better gymnastics in its movements and a more human interest to
its occupations. A finished article makes a stronger appeal to the
childish sympathy than the abstract exercises of manual training
proper. It is psychologically truer and, I believe, morally more
effective. Children wholesomely occupied, children busy in try-
ing to realize some form of usefulness and beauty, must, I think,
daily grow into that unconscious goodness which I hold to be the
highest morality; must illustrate Emerson^s favorite doctrine,
that evil, like cold, is a negation, is but the absence of good.

I have, indicated the ideal in modern education. I have tried
to indicate somewhat of the method. The practical question re-
mains : Who shall carry it out ? It would be unfortunate to
intrust this most important interest of society to any but the best
men and women, and by best I do not mean those who know the
most, but those who are the strongest, the most beautiful, the
most lovable, the most cultured, as well as the most skillful and
the best informed. And in the newer education the need for wise
and beautiful teachers is particularly great. Now that education
has taken this truer and more psychological turn and is building
its work upon the basis supplied by Nature, upon the feelings and
desires of childhood, upon its wonderful self- activity and con-
structive instinct, you can readily see how utter will be the de-
feat if the realization of the method be left in the hands of men
and women devoid of the requisite insight. Profoundly as I be-
lieve in this aspect of education, in the underlying principles of
the kindergarten, sloyd, and manual training, I greatly prefer the

500 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

old academic training, with all its defects, in the hands of earnest,
cultured men and women, to the most elaborate carrying out of
the newer methods in the hands of those who do not see the end
and purpose.

Mistakes bear a certain family likeness. The most tangible
element in the older education was knowledge. Teachers were
selected for their knowledge alone, and education was defeated.
The most tangible element in the newer education is dexterity and
its product, the finished exercise. But this is likewise the product
of our industrial operations. Externally the school and the fac-
tory resemble each other. Both make things. But the difference
is this, and it is a great one : The school concentrates its effort
upon the making, and has regard only to the little workman ; the
factory values only the thing made, and is indifferent to its effect
upon the worker. What a sad travesty when the modern school
loses sight of this immense difference ! The effort to turn children
into artisans, and to do it in the name of education, is quite as
unfortunate as the more ancient effort to turn them into encyclo-
paedias. From the very circumstances of the time, it is far easier
to establish one of these factory schools than it is to establish a
true school. For, observe the teaching material that is available.
It is difficult to find men and women of broad culture who can
also use their hands. It is very easy to find artisans who are
willing to exchange the smaller pay and longer hours of the shop
for the pleasanter work of the schoolroom. They believe very
sincerely that the only qualification is the ability to turn out good
work. I admire their dexterity, I respect their earnestness, but I
say to them and I say to you that this is not enough. The artisan
habit of thought does not make for the unfolding and perfecting
of the human spirit. By the very conditions of his life, the arti-
san is a man of limited experience, and consequently of narrow
views. He is not the sort of man qualified to educate our chil-
dren. His thought is directed solely toward the product. His
skill is in the handling of dead material. What we want is some-
thing different from this ; it is a man whose thought is on the
process, whose cunning is in the handling of the living material,
the tissue of childhood.

I have had a distinct purpose in mind in writing this article.
I shall have satisfied it if I have gained the reader's assent to
three propositions :

1. That the object of modern education is fullness and integ-
rity of living ; is the most complete unfolding and perfecting of
the human spirit ; is the development of the more evolved out of
the less involved self.

2. That the method by which this object is to be attained
must be psychological. Its foundations must be laid deep in the

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 501

emotional life of childhood, in the desires and feelings. It must
allow these to express themselves in sincere action. It must
preserve inviolate the causal chain of desire, action, sensation,
thought. Its philosophy must be monistic. It must hold fast to
the organic unity of the child.

3. That the proper agents for carrying out this method and
gaining this end are the best men and women that society has
produced, the very flower of the race, men and women of large
experience and broad culture in whom the pulse of life beats
quick and high ; not bookworms, not artisans, not fragments of
any sort whatever, but men and women to whom Nature and cir-
cumstances have been kind, who have caught sight of the vision
of the complete life, and who would make this vision prevail.

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.

By WILLIAM HENKY HALE, Ph. D.,

FELLOW OF THE ASSOCIATION.

IN this age of increasing specialization and multiplying socie-
ties and organizations of specialists it is well that there still
remains an association broad enough to include the entire range
of scientific thought and activity, and comprehensive enough to
welcome all who have the disposition to explore any field in the
vast domain of science.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science
has now for nearly half a century been a powerful factor in stimu-
lating the progress of scientific research in America. Similar
associations are found in other countries. The pioneer of all is
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which
was founded at York, England, in 1832. The period following
this epoch was marked by a great outburst of the spirit of re-
search and investigation among the English-speaking people.
In America the science which gained the greatest number of
adherents and was prosecuted most vigorously was geology.
During the decade following the organization of the British As-
sociation, James Hall was laying the foundations of that science
in America by his explorations of the strata of the State of New
York ; Bela Hubbard was exploring the new State of Michigan ;
Benjamin Silliman was teaching at Yale ; James D. Dana com-
pleted his college course as a pupil of Silliman, and already made
a name for himself in scientific circles ; and Edward Hitchcock
was finding the puzzling fossil footprints of primeval reptiles, so
long erroneously called "bird tracks," along the valley of the
Connecticut.

502

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The city of Philadelphia was then an important scientific
center. A number of geologists resided there, and were wont to
hold occasional meetings. At last it seemed desirable to convene

a larger and more general
assemblage; and on the 2d
day of April, 1840, about
twenty geologists, including
nearly all the most promi-
nent ones in America, met
there and organized "The
Association of American Ge-
ologists.'^ Edward Hitch-
cock presided, and Lewis C.
Beck was secretary. Of the
founders of this association
who attended this first meet-
ing, three venerable men still
survive — James Hall, of Al-
bany ; Bela Hubbard,* of De-
troit ; and Martin H. Boyd, of
Coopersburg, Lehigh Coun-
ty, Pennsylvania. Several of
the older States were repre-
sented, including Massachu-
setts, New York, Pennsyl-
vania, Delaware, and Virginia. Of the Western States, Michigan
alone had then instituted a geological survey ; and Bela Hubbard
and Douglas Houghton traveled that long journey together from
Michigan to Philadelphia. It took them an entire week, travel-
ing day and night by the most direct route; and the roads in
Ohio were so muddy that the passengers often had to alight and
assist in pulling the stage out of the mud.

The next year (1841) the geologists met again in Philadelphia,
and many new members were added. In 1842 the meeting was
held in Boston, where several naturalists came into the associa-
tion, and the name was changed, mainly through the influence of
Amos Binney and Augustus A. Gould, to " The American Associ-
ation of Geologists and Naturalists.'^ Subsequent annual meet-
ings were held in Albany, Washington, New Haven, New York,
and Boston.

Several years after the association was founded the chemists
and physicists proposed to join, and in 1848 another meeting was

James Hall, surviving founder of the Associa-
tion of American Geologists and of the
A. A. A. S., and oldest surviving past presi-
dent, Albany, 1856.

* When this article went to the printer Bela Hubbard was dangerously ill, and his death
occurred on June 13th. Recent letters from him have furnished some of the most inter-
esting of these reminiscences.

mm.

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 503

held in Philadelphia, and on September 20, 1848, the original or-
ganization was changed to the " American Association for the
Advancement of Science."

William B. Rogers presided at the dissolution of the Associ-
ation of Geologists and Naturalists, and yielded the chair to
William C. Redfield, the first President of the American Associ-
ation for the Advancement of Science.

Prof. Redfield was a resident of New York city and a pioneer
in the study of meteorology. He published a theory of storms
which became well known and was strenuously controverted by
Espy, so that the storm controversy was a conspicuous feature of
scientific annals. Prof. Redfield's influence had much to do with
the establishment of the Weather Bureau of the Uni4:ed States.

The association began with a membership of four hundred and
sixty-one, which increased to a thousand and four in 1854 at the
Washington meeting under the presidency of James D. Dana.
This was high- water mark for the first thirty years of its exist-
ence. In 1850 and 1851 two meetings were held in each year, but
none in 1852. Thereafter an-
nual meetings were held till
1860. The presidents during
this period, besides those al-
ready mentioned, were Jo-
seph Henry, Alexander D.
Bache, Louis Agassiz, Ben-
jamin Peirce, John Torrey,
James Hall, Stephen Alex-
ander, and Isaac Lea.

Of this illustrious roll,
James Hall alone survives.
He presided at the second
Albany meeting in 1856, when
the old Dudley Observatory
was dedicated, the largest,
most important,andmost rep-
resentative scientific meeting
ever held in America before
the war. The glowing elo-
quence of Edward Everett in
his dedicatory oration, deliv-
ered in a tent erected for the
occasion in the historic park
of the Albany Academy, still haunts the memory of the writer,
who was then a pupil in that academy. Meetings of the associa-
tion during the ante-helium period were held as far east as Cam-
bridge and as far west as Cincinnati, while Montreal and Charles-

Db. AIaktin II. BoYE, surviviug founder of the
Association of American Geologists and of the
A. A. A. S.

5c^4

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ton, S. C, were the extremes north and south. New Haven,
Cleveland, Washington, Providence, Baltimore, Springfield, and
Newport were also visited.

The association adjourned at Newport in 1860, intending
to meet at Nashville in 1861, hut the war intervened, and the
meeting could not be held ; and there were no other meetings

till ]866, when seventy-
nine members met at Buf-
falo and reorganized the
association. Since that time
Buffalo has been a sort of
Mecca, and every tenth year
we reassemble there. The
president at the first Buf-
falo meeting was Frederick
A. P. Barnard, President of
Columbia College. At the
second Buffalo meeting
William B. Rogers, already
mentioned as the last Presi-
dent of the American Asso-
ciation of Geologists and
Naturalists, presided. Ed-
ward S. Morse was presi-
dent at the meeting in 1886.
Edward D. Cope, of Phila-
delphia, has been elected
president for the meeting
of this year.

Since the reorganization
at Buffalo the association has expanded and developed in many
ways. At the Hartford meeting in 1874 it was incorporated under
the laws of the State of Massachusetts, and it has its headquar-
ters and museum at Salem. At the Hartford meeting also pro-
vision was made to apply the designation of " fellows " to such of
the members as were devoted to science or had advanced the
cause of science, and one hundred and fifty-seven members were
thus constituted fellows, of whom about one half still survive.
Since that time the number of fellows increased year by year,
till in 1893 there were seven hundred and ninety-six, while the
membership of the association reached its maximum of two
thousand and fifty-four in 1891. The largest attendance of mem-
bers was at Boston in 1880, when nine hundred and ninety-
seven were registered. At Philadelphia in 1884 the registration
reached twelve hundred and sixty-one, but nearly three hundred
of this number were visitors from the British Association, which

William C. Kedfield, first President A. A. A. S.
Philadelphia, 1848.

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 505

had just held a meeting at Montreal, and from other foreign
bodies.

The division of the association into sections began at the De-
troit meeting in 1875, when two sections were formed : Section A,
Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry ; and Section B, Natural
History. At the second Montreal meeting in 1882 a much more
extended subdivision was made, the following having been estab-
lished: Section A, Mathematics and Astronomy; B, Physics; C,
Chemistry; D, Mechanical Science and Engineering; E, Geology
and Geography ; F, Biology ; G, Microscopy ; H, Anthropology ;
I, Economic Science and Statistics. In 1886 Section G was united
with Section F, and in 1893 Section F was divided into Section F,
Zoology, and Section G, Botany. The name of Section I was
changed in 1895 to Social and Economic Science.

A notable feature of recent meetings of the association has
been the large number of affiliated societies which, meet at about
the same time. The first of these was the Society for the Promo-
tion of Agricultural Science, which was organized at Boston in
1880. Others were added from time to time, till at Brooklyn, in
1894, there were nine, viz.,
the Society for the Promotion
of Agricultural Science, So-
ciety for the Promotion of En-
gineering Education, Ameri-
can Mathematical Society,
American Chemical Society,
American Microscopical So-
ciety, American Forestry As-
sociation, Association of Eco-
nomic Entomologists, Asso-
ciation of State Weather
Services, and American Geo-
logical Society, besides the
Botanical and Entomological
Clubs of the association. At
Brooklyn also was organized
the American Botanical As-
sociation. It has been doubt-
ed whether these numerous
societies do not detract from
the interest in the main asso-
ciation, and action was taken
at the second Springfield meeting in 1895 in the direction of mak-
ing them business meetings rather than meetings for the reading
of papers.

Meetings have been held since the war in Maine, Vermont,

Fredkki

first BufiUlo mcetlii'

,. Mt A. A.
1SG6.

A. S.

5o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

William B. Rogers, President A. A. A. S.,
second Buffalo meeting, 1876.

Massachusetts (three), Connecticut, New York (eight), Pennsyl-
vania, District of Columbia, Ohio (two), Indiana (two), Illinois,
Michigan (two), Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Ten-
nessee, and Canada (two). The
list of past presidents includes,
besides those previously men-
tioned, John S. Newberry, Ben-
jamin A. Gould, John W. Fos-
ter, T. Sterry Hunt, Asa Gray,
J. Lawrence Smith, Joseph
Lovering, John L. Le Conte,
Julius E. Hilgard, Simon New-
comb, Othniel C. Marsh, George

F. Barker, Lewis H. Morgan,
George J. Brush, J. William
Dawson, Charles A. Young,
John P. Leslie, Huber A. New-
ton, Samuel P. Langley, John
W. Powell, Thomas C. Men-
denhall, George L. Goodale,

Albert B. Prescott, Joseph Le Conte, William Harkness, Daniel

G. Brinton, and Edward W. Morley.

The president elect, Ed-
ward Drinker Cope, was born
of Quaker ancestry at Phila-
delphia, July 28, 1840. He
was educated at the West-
town Academy and the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, and
afterward studied compara-
tive anatomy in the Academy
of Sciences, Philadelphia, and
the Smithsonian Institution
at Washington, and later in
Europe. He was Professor of
Natural Sciences at Haver-
ford College from 1864 till
1867, resigning in the latter
year because of ill health.
Later he was paleontologist
of the United States Geologi-
cal Survey, serving first in
the Territories west of the one

Edward S. Morse, President A. A. A. S., third hundredth meridian. His

Buffalo meeting, 1886. discoveries Were numerous

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. ^07

and important, including a thousand or more extinct and nearly
or quite as many living vertebrates.

Prof. Cope was for many years secretary and curator of
the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and chief of
the department of organic material of the permanent exhibition
of that city. He was elected a member of the National Academy
of Sciences in 1872. He has published numerous works of a scien-
tific nature, including sev-
eral hundred papers, and
dozens of larger works. He
has for many years edited
the American Naturalist.

The fourth Buffalo meet-
ing is to be held in the
week beginning August 24th.
' Mayor Jewett is president
of the local committee, and
Eben P. Dorr is local secre-
tary. Prof. Frederick W.
Putnam remains permanent
secretary, having filled that
office during the greater part
of the existence of the asso-
ciation.

The association assem-
bles this year at Buffalo at
an epoch marked by wonder-
ful advances in applied sci-
ence. The harnessing of Ni-
agara, and the utilization of
that immense power for electrical and manufacturing purposes,
will furnish the most impressive object lesson which has ever
been presented to the association in the whole forty- eight years
of its existence. The study of Niagara has been an absorbing
feature of all the Buffalo meetings. Heretofore it was the geol-
ogy of that stupendous gorge which appealed most strongly to
kthe attention of visitors. Now the new and diversified uses of the
[energy set free by the cataract will invest the visit to Niagara
[with new importance and significance.

Edward D. Cope, President elect A. A. A. S.
fourth Buffalo meeting, 1896.

Prof. G. Stanley Hall expressed the opinion, at the recent meeting of
[the American Antiquarian Society, that the difficulties of the American peo-
[ple with the Indians had arisen from trying to educate them along a line
jwith which they have no sympathy, and with which they can not as-

iimilate, instead of encouraging them in improving their own scheme of

life.

5o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"SPIRIT" WRITING AND "SPEAKING WITH
TONGUES."

By Prof. WILLIAM EOMAINE NEWBOLD.

THE word " automatism" not only designates a group of phe-
nomena but also connotes a theory as to their origin, and
this theory rests upon the popular conception of the relation of
"soul" and body. The soul, according to it, is an entity of a
peculiar kind, entirely distinct from and independent of the body.
The body is a material machine, and does not essentially differ
from the machines made by man. The relation between soul and
body is one of reciprocal action and interaction. The body is the
medium through which material realities external to it are com-
municated to the soul under the guise of the sensations and con-
ceptions of consciousness ; it possesses also the capacity of execut-
ing certain movements — as, for example, reflexes — without the
concurrence of the soul. But the more complex movements of the
body, especially those which adjust it to a constantly shifting
environment and those which serve as the exponents of mental
life, can not be executed without the co-operation of the soul.
Occasionally these normal relations appear to be disturbed. Move-
ments take place of the kind usually ascribed to the activity of the
soul, and that soul disavows them. Sensations and perceptions
enter into the range of consciousness for which no external reality
can be found, and thoughts strangely unlike those proper to the
thinker troop through his mind and force themselves upon his
unwilling attention. These phenomena are ascribed to the agency
of the body as distinguished from that of the soul on the one hand,
and that of the material world on the other. The body is a ma-
chine out of gear ; it is no longer controlled by the indwelling
soul, and is constantly executing movements on its own account
and forcing upon the soul sensations, perceptions, and ideas which
stand for no realities save that of the disordered mechanism which
produces them. Thus the three chief forms of automatism are :
the automatism of movement, of sensation, and of thought or idea-
tion. While I shall use the word automatism and its derivatives,
I do not, of course, wish to be understood as subscribing to the
theory which it connotes.

Automatic movements may be of any and all kinds. The sim-
plest are those of which the actor is thinking at the time although
himself unaware that his thought is passing over into movement.
To this type belong the marvels of the pendulum which swings
above a reflecting surface only, of the divining rod, of most forms
of table-tnrning, of " thought transference " as practiced by Bishop
and Cumberland, et id genus omne. Space forbids my entering

^'SPIRIT'' WRITING, 509

into the discussion of these relatively familiar cases, and I shall
turn at once to the more complex types.

Automatic writing is an exceedingly common phenomenon.
It took its rise from table-turning. Ordinary tables being found
in many cases too heavy for the " spirits " to lift, tiny three-legged
tables were made for the purpose and termed " planchettes." Later
the device was hit upon of attaching a pencil to one leg and plac-
ing a sheet of paper beneath to record the movements of the leg.
This is our modern planchette. Two or three persons then put
their hands on the instrument and wait to see " what planchette
will say." Many automatists need no planchette. It is enough
for them to take a pencil in hand and sit quietly with the hand
on a sheet of paper. After the lapse of a variable period of time
the hand will stiffen, twist, and fall to writing quite of its own
accord. Of these methods planchette is the more likely to be suc-
cessful. In the first place, the chances of finding an automatist
among two or three people is obviously greater than in the case
of one ; furthermore, since all expect planchette to move, the
slightest tendency to automatism on the part of any one is likely
to be magnified by the unconscious co-operation of the others,
and is less likely to be checked by the writer himself, since each
ascribes the movement to any one but himself.

The writing produced by either of these methods may be re-
garded as belonging to one of two main types : 1. That which,
although involuntary, is dependent upon the co-operation of the
subject's consciousness. 2. That which is produced without the
co-operation of the subject's consciousness. The latter, again, may
be either intelligible or in " unknown tongues."

Intelligible automatic writing may be produced without the
co-operation of the subject's consciousness, either when that con-
sciousness is apparently unimpaired, or when the patient is in a
trance state. The latter I need not now discuss, as it belongs to
the same category as dreams, but the former calls for some com-
ment.

There are two methods of proving that the automatic messages
did not emanate from the subject's upper consciousness. In the
first place, it is sometimes found that they become the more clear
and copious the more effectually the upper consciousness of the

subject is distracted from the writing. Miss G , for example,

whom I studied with some care, always did her best automatic
writing when busily engaged in conversation or in reading aloud.
I concealed her hand from her eyes, and it was but now and then
that she would decipher a word by the sense of touch and move-
ment as it was written. But the messages she wrote were always
trivial, silly, and often self- contradictory.

In the second place, the content of the writing may be of such

510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a character that we can scarcely ascribe it to the subject's con-
sciousness. In hysterical patients, for example, the upper con-
sciousness, or at least the consciousness which talks, is often
anaesthetic to one or more sensory stimuli, yet the automatic
writing betrays consciousness of the lost sensations. Prof. James,
of Harvard, has noted the same phenomenon in an apparently
normal patient.* " The planchette began by illegible scrawling.
After ten minutes I pricked the back of the right hand several
times with a pin ; no indications of feeling. Two pricks on the
left hand were followed by withdrawal, and the question, ' What
did you do that for ? ' to which I replied, * To find out whether
you are going to sleep.' The first legible words which were writ-
ten after this were, * You hurt me,' A pencil in the right hand was
then tried instead of the planchette. Here again the first legible
words were, 'No use ( ?) in trying to spel when you hurt me so/
'^ext/It's no use trying to stop me writing by pri chin g/ These

writings were deciphered aloud in the hearing of S , who

seemed slow to connect them with the two pin- pricks on his left
hand, which alone he had felt. ... I pricked the right wrist and
fingers several times again quite severely, with no sign of reaction,

on S 's part. After an interval, however, the pencil wrote;

'Don't you prick me any more.' . . . S laughed, having beea^

conscious only of the pricks on his left hand, and said, ' It's work-
ing those two pin-pricks for all they are worth.' " Yet the ham
was not ansesthetic when directly tested.

Sometimes the automatic message is potentially known indeed]
to the upper consciousness, but not at the time present to it.]
Take, for example, one of Mr. Gnrney's experiences : f

" In 1870 I watched and took part in a good deal of planchette
writing, but not with results or under conditions that afforded ^
proof of any separate intelligence. However, I was sufficiently
struck with what occurred to broach the subject to a hard-headed
mathematical friend, who expressed complete incredulity as taj
the possibility of obtaining rational writing except through thej
conscious operation of some person in contact with the instru-
ment. After a long argument he at last agreed to make a trial.
I had not really the faintest hope of success, and he was committed]
to the position that success was impossible. We sat for some
minutes with a hand of each upon the planchette, and asked that
it should write some line of Shakespeare. It began by seesawing
and producing a great deal of formless scribble ; but then there]
seemed to be more method in the movements, and a line of hiero-
glyphics appeared. It took us some time to make it out, the^j

* Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, vol. i, p. 549.
f Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, p. 301, note.

^' SPIRIT'' WRITING. 511

writing being illegible just to that degree which at first baffles
the reader, but which afterward leaves no more doubt as to its
having been correctly deciphered than if it were print. And
there the line indubitably stood : ^A little more than kin and less
than hind.' Now, as neither of us had been thinking of this line,
or of any line (for we had been wholly occupied with the strag-
gling movements of the instrument), the result, though not de-
monstrative, is at any rate strongly suggestive of a true under-
ground psychosis."

At other times the information conveyed is at once true and
quite unknown to the subject. Some of these cases are undoubt-
edly due to the automatic reproduction of memories which can
not at the time be recalled — a common phenomenon in all forms

of automatism. Thus, in the case of B , to which I shall refer

at greater length hereafter, it was stated that a man named
Parker Howard had lived at a certain number on South Sixteenth
Street, Philadelphia. Upon going to the house, I found that a man
named Howard — not Parker Howard, however — had lived there
some time, but had moved away about two months before. More-
over, the whole Howard incident proved to be mythical ; no such

person as Parker Howard ever existed. But B told me that

after his hand had mentioned the name, and before the address
was given, he stepped into a shop and looked through a directory
for the name. Probably, as he glanced over the list of Howards,
his eye had fallen upon the address which his hand afterward
wrote, but he had no recollection of it.

Many other cases are certainly due to accidental coincidence.

B , for example, wrote long accounts of events happening at a

distance from him, which were afterward found to be in the main
correct ; but that this was a mere matter of chance was abundantly

proved to B 's own satisfaction. The chances of coincidence

are much increased by the extremely illegible character of much
of the script, which leaves wide room for " interpretation." I can
not but suspect that the " anagrams " sometimes written auto-
matically often owe their existence to this kind of " interpreta-
tion." Yet, after making all allowances for coincidence and for-
gotten memories, nearly all investigators admit that there remains
a residuum which can not plausibly be explained by any accepted
theory. I can not discuss this residuum here; it is enough to
point to its existence, with the caution that no theory can be
regarded as final unless it can explain all the facts.

The importance of this material from a psychological point of
view can not be overestimated. If the man's hand can write
messages without the co-operation of the man's consciousness, we
are forced upon the one horn or the other of a very perplexing
dilemma. Either these utterances stand for no consciousness at

5)2

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all, merely recording certain physiological processes, or else they
indicate the existence of mentation which does not belong to any
recognized human being. The first would seem to deny the doc-
trine of parallelism, according to which physiological processes
of the degree of complexity requisite to the production of writing
necessarily generate mental states, and this would lead us toward
the old theory of the soul, or something like it. The second would
compel the assumption either of personalities distinct from that
of the subject, which is the theory of possession, or of segregated
mental states. The latter is the theory which I am. developing in
these pages, and although I am far from satisfied with it, it is
more in line with our present scientific conceptions than others,
and accounts for some of the facts fairly well.

But this dilemma presents itself only when it can be shown
that the subject's upper consciousness has nothing to do with the

Fig. 1.

production of the writing. I am convinced that experimenters
do not pay sufficient attention to this point, and consequently
much of the recorded material is to my mind of little significance.
As my space is limited, I wish to lay especial stress upon this aspect
of the problem.

A few years ago I had the opportunity of studying at leisure
a remarkably good case of automatism. The subject, whom I

shall call B , was a man of intelligence and education, with

whom I had long been on terms of intimacy, and of whose good
faith I can therefore speak with some confidence. The writing
was at first a mere scrawl, accompanied by quite violent twist-
ing of the arm ; little by little it became intelligible, wrote " Yes "

^H anc

''SPIRIT'' WRITING, 513

and " No/' took to printing in large capitals, and finally fell into an
easy script almost identical with B 's normal hand. The com-
munications always professed to emanate from spirits, and, on the

Fia. 2.

whole, fulfilled in phraseology, style of script, etc., B 's notions

as to what the alleged spirit ought to say and write. One " spirit,"

for example, was R , to whom writing had been ascribed by

another automatist whom B had seen, and his writing, as ex-
ecuted by B 's hand (Fig. 1), was clearly a rough imitation of

the original (Fig. 2). Fig. 3 represents the script of another
mythical spirit. Yet another alleged communicator was the late

Stainton Moses; Fig. 4 is his signature as written by B 's

hand ; Fig. 5 is a facsimile of his actual signature, which B-

had seen. I think there is here also an attempt at imitation, al-
though a very bad one. Another " communicator '^ began as
shown in Fig. 6 ; he then announced that he was born in 1629,
and died in 1685. Now, B knows a little about seventeenth-
century script, and he instantly saw that this did not resemble it.
Scarcely had he noticed the discrepancy when his hand began writ-

Fio. 8.

ing the script figured as No. 7, which is not unlike that then in

use. B thought at the time that he could not write this

hand voluntarily without taking pains, but upon attempting it he

VOL. XLIX.— 42

5H

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Figs. 4 and 5.

found that he could do it voluntarily as well as automatically
(Fig. 8).

It was easy enough to prove that these communications had

nothing to do with spirits. B satisfied himself upon that

point in a very short time. But we kept on experimenting, to

determine whether,
they were of sab^J
conscious origin or]
not. To B-
himself they felt
strangely external.
To quote his own!
words :

" When I wish to write automatically I take a pencil and place]
my hand upon a sheet of paper. After the lapse of a few min-
utes I feel a tingling sensation in my arm and fingers ; this is fol-
lowed by a stiffening of the arm and by convulsive movements,!
After scrawling for a while, it will make a mark which suggests |
to me the beginning of a letter, and usually the letter will bej
clearly written almost before the thought enters my mind. It is|
then followed by some word beginning with that letter, and that]
by other words, constituting a 'communication^ from some!
'spirit.' The writing then proceeds quite rapidly. It seems toi
me that I read it as it is written ; sometimes I apparently antici-
pate the writing, but quite often it does not proceed in accordance!
with my anticipation. Sometimes the writer seems to be at a loss
how to complete his sentence, and begins again. At other times
an illegible combination of signs will be repeatedly written, until]

Y ^-^ w^

tvJi^

^•Wxyvwu U

Figs. 6, 7, and 8.

finally a word is evolved, and this appears to be what the writer-
had in mind at the outset. I am now satisfied, however, that there '
is never any foresight; my hand simply develops the illegible
scrawl into the word which I think it most resembles, thus f ul- :

''SPIRIT'' WRITING, 515

filling my expectations. This is curiously shown in the emo-
tion it displays. It will twist violently about, pound on the table,
bruise my fingers, break my pencils, and show every sign of the
greatest excitement, while I, the spectator, survey it with the
coolest and most skeptical curiosity. But it will do this only
when such emotion seems to me appropriate, just as the persons I
see in my dreams may manifest an emotion which I do not share.
My hand sometimes abuses me, especially for my skepticism, and
sometimes reproves my faults in a very embarrassing manner. ■ It
has frequently urged me, upon very plausible grounds, to do
things which I would not dream of doing. In every case save one
the reasons given were untrue, and in that one I am satisfied the
coincidence was due to chance. On two occasions my hand wrote
a short stanza with little hesitation. I have never done such a
thing myself, but the verses were so incoherent and so atrocious

^ ^{'^ f^ ^"^ ^^' Xj' ^ y^^ ^^ t/Jr j^ tiJ^ :»^

Figs. 9 and 10.

that I have no doubt they were developed successively, each being
based upon the suggestions of the preceding in the manner above
described."

I can see no reason for ascribing B *s writing to subcon-
scious states. It was never intelligible unless B allowed him-
self to " read " it. If he persistently distracted his attention or
refused to wonder what his hand was trying to write, it would
make marks resembling writing, but never "wrote sense." It
was highly suggestible. If he wondered why it did not print, it
would instantly try to print; and if, while trying to print, he
refused to wonder what it said, it produced strange characters

I resembling some unknown language. Fig. 9 is a facsimile of a
few of these ; they were written as rapidly as the hand could fly.
Fig. 10 is a facsimile of some writing executed by a Dr. Mayhew,
October 5, 1853 (Neueste spiritualistische Mittheilungen, Berlin,
1862), and purports to be an account written by a spirit from the
planet Saturn of the Saturnian mythology. In this case the spirit
kindly wrote a "translation" giving the general sense, and in
B 's case, had he for a moment believed that the writing was

5i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

would have been as promptly forthcoming. This automatic pro-
duction of mysterious characters is not uncommon. Prof. James,
of Harvard, has examined many cases, but neither he nor any
one else has ever, so far as I know, found any that could be
deciphered.

Thus, the intelligibility of B 's script is fully accounted

for ; but its automatic character remains more or less of a puzzle.
I am inclined to regard it as due to the spontaneous " running "
of some parts of the nervous mechanism which have nothing to
do with consciousness. Precisely what parts we can not say, but
if we suppose that consciousness accompanies cortical processes
only, we may also suppose that they are to be found in the re-
enforcing and co-ordinating mechanism of the great basal ganglia.
If so, this case might be regarded as strictly automatic — i. e., as
due to mechanical causes only.*

I do not believe that all cases of automatic writing can be ex-
plained in this way ; but I am convinced that experimenters do
not take sufficient pains to eliminate the action of the subject^s
consciousness. They seem to think that where the sense of vol-
untary effort is lacking the subject's consciousness can not inter-
fere.

For the first carefully observed and reported case of automatic
speech we are indebted to Prof. James, of Harvard. His paper,
together with an account written by the subject, will shortly ap-
pear in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.
I have not yet seen it, but he has kindly allowed me to make an
independent study of the case for myself and to make use of it in
this connection. The subject, whom I shall call Mr. Le Baron,
is an Englishman thirty-eight years of age, is a man of educa-
tion, has written a novel, a volume of poems, and a treatise on
metaphysics, and is a reporter for a daily paper. In the summer
of 1894 he fell in with a group of persons interested in occultism,
and his association with them appears to have brought to the
surface tendencies to automatism which had already manifested
themselves sporadically. Of this association he thus speaks:
" Before and almost immediately preceding this ' speaking with
tongues ' my nature had undergone a most remarkable emotional
upheaval, which terminated in a mild form of ecstasy. Credulity
and expectation are twin brothers, and my credulity was first
aroused by the earnest narration of divers ' spiritualistic ' experi-
ences by a cultured lady of beautiful character, fine presence, and
the noblest of philanthropic intuitions. A number of persons
associated with this lady in her work secretly believed themselves

* Some further details about this case can be found in my paper, The Experimental
Induction of Automatic Processes, in the Psychological Review, July, 1895.

''8PIBIT'' WRITING. 517

the elected ' spiritual ' vanguard of humanity. Not to understand
these facts is not to understand the potent factors giving rise to
the phenomenon/'

In some way or other this group of occultists, whose leader I

shall call Miss J , got the notion that Mr. Le Baron was the

reincarnated spirit of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Miss X 's

mother, they thought, had loved that king in a previous incar-
nation, and was still watching over his transmigrations. The
time was now ripe for him to be forgiven his sins and to be
brought to the light, and she was to make of him an instrument
for a fuller revelation of God to humanity. They impressed this
delusion upon Mr. Le Baron with all the energy of conviction.
'^ Unless it be borne in mind,*' he says, " that the air was full of a
greedy expectancy concerning the appearance of a reincarnated
prophet, no solution of this problem is possible.^' His common
sense protested, and he would not, perhaps, have been much
affected had not a traitor within the camp presented itself in the
form of his own highly suggestible and excitable nervous system,
which caught the ideas with which he was surrounded and re-
flected them to the confusion of his understanding. This automa-
tism first appeared in the form of writing. " My credulity was as
profoundly sincere as it was pitifully pathetic. It was aroused
by the narration of the purported history of a finger ring sup-
posed to have been worn ages ago by a vestal virgin in one of the

ancient temples of Egypt. Miss J believed she wore the ring

in those days, and was herself the vestal virgin. On one occasion,
in August, 1894, she asked me to place the ring on my finger and
attempt automatic writing. I did so. Violent jerks followed,
leading to scribbling upon the sheets of paper which were laid
before me. This she attributed to spirits, and the placing on of
the ring was in some way a sign to call them into activity.
The 'invisible brotherhood' were subsequently declared to be
en rapport with me, and in the exact ratio of my credulity con-
cerning this assertion did this singular, insentient, emotional
mechanism co-operate with the sensations of my common con-
sciousness, and at times assume intelligible proportions."

The circumstances under which automatic speech appeared he
was not able to fix with precision. He recollected two occasions,
but was not able to say which came first. On one, he was at a

seance at Miss J 's house. He was asked to lie upon a couch

upon which Mrs. J had lain during her last illness, and to

look at a brilliantly illuminated portrait of her. In a short time
he was seized with a convulsive paroxysm of the head and shoul-
ders ; this was followed by a flow of automatic speech purporting

to emanate from the spirit of Mrs. J , and fully confirming his

friends' notions. Upon another occasion he was in a pine wood

5i8 ' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at night witli them. Certain of the ladies professed to see signs
and portents in the skies, and he had a similar convulsive attack
followed by speech. This began with the words, " O my people !
O my people!^' and was of a semiprophetic character. As an
illustration of the sort of confirmation thus given, I may quote a
passage, spoken automatically September 6, 1894, and purporting

to come from Mrs. J : "I am the mother of the Evangel.

There are several things which must be done. S — ;- (Miss J )

must go to the house of the man she got the things from on the
day of the coming of the man from the other side of the water.
Also tell her that she must tell the man that the work is to be of
the kind he said he would help on. And tell her that I say that
she must go to him and say that I am the one that sent her to him ;
and also say that the whole world is now ready for the coming of
the day when the coming of the truth shall enlarge the whole
possibilities of the race. You may also say that I said that he
was the man that the whole of the thing on the day of the fate
had to be turned to. Say that I am now with the man whom I
shall go with in the spirit to direct him,*' etc.

Mr. Le Baron had heard of " speaking with tongues," and, be-
lieving as he did in transmigration, naturally inferred that he
" must have some dead languages lurking away somewhere in the
nooks and crannies of his much-experienced soul." Hence, not
long after the invasion, his utterances assumed this character.
They were poured forth very rapidly in deep, harsh, loud tones,
coming apparently from the abdomen; often, he told me, "it
seemed as if the malignity of a city were concentrated into a
word," and many persons found the sound most startling. In an
affidavit made February 2, 1895, he swore that " since the first day
of September, 1894, he has experienced an automatic flow of for-
eign speech the meaning of which he does not understand when
he utters it ; that he is not a professed medium, and makes no
claim to any supernatural or supernormal claims for the same ;
that he can utter by the command of his will this automatic flow
of foreign consonantal and vowel combinations at any place and
time to any length ; and that the aforesaid automatic flow often
assumes other linguistic forms than the following."

One or two illustrations of the " unknown tongues," in prose
and verse, must suffice : " Shurumo te mote Cimbale. Ilunu teme
tele telunu. Onstomo te ongorolo. Sinkete ontomo. Isa bulu,
bulu, bulu. Ecemete compo tete. Olu mete compo. Lete me lu.
Sine mete compote. Este mute, pute. Ompe rete keta. Onseling
eme ombo lu mu. Outeme mo, mo, mo. Ebedebede tinketo. Imbe,
Imbe, Imbe."

" Ede pelute kondo nadode
Igla tepete compto pele

'< SPIRIT'' WRITING. 5^9

Impe odode inguru lalele
Omdo resene okoro pododo
Igme odkondo nef ulu kelala
Nene pokonto ce folodelu
Impete la la feme olele
Igdepe kindo raog japate
Relepo oddo og cene lumano."

After the utterance in a " tongue '' a " translation '' was usually
given in the same way, and the " translation " of the above poem,
although somewhat incoherent, is of a distinctly higher order
than most of the prose utterances. Witness one stanza :

" The coming of man from the roar of the ages
Has been like the seas in the breath of the storm ;
His heart has been torn and his soul has been riven,
His joy has been short and his curse has been long.
But the bow of my promise still spreads in the heavens ;
I have not destroyed the great sign of my love.
I stand at the door of the ark of creation,
And take in thy world like a storm-beaten dove,
And press to my bosom the world that I love."

Mr. Le Baron has shown traces of sensory automatism, but very
seldom. Once, in a sleeper returning from Chicago, he was awak-
ened by a voice in his ears saying, "Enthusiasm shall fill the
hearts of the multitude in the place of the hours of the day." He
has also seen flashes of light.

As an illustration of automatic " prophecy " I may quote the
following : " I have heard the wail of the dying and I have heard
the wail of the man whose heart was broken. I have heard the
voice of mirth and I have heard the voice of woe. I have heard
the voice of him who is darkness and I have heard the voice of
him who is light. I have heard the roar of the ocean and I have
heard the song of the bird. I have heard the triumph of peace
and I have heard the triumph of woe. I have heard the tears of
the nations as they fell and I have heard the songs of the nations
as they rose. I have heard the roar of cities and I have heard
the music of the woodlands. I have heard the roar of the death
of the man who was slain in battle and I have heard the shout of
the victor. I have heard the new word and I have heard the old
word," etc.

Mr. Le Baron never publicly admitted any belief in the verid-
ical character of these utterances. As he says himself : " All this
involved such an unscientific view of things, and was, moreover,
so horribly egotistic and full of ' gall,' impudence, and assump-
tion, that I said nothing about it save to the few who had been
throwing fuel upon the fire of my reincarnation conceptions and
who were ready to believe anything in support of the hypothesis."

520 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Yet he was much impressed, as he frankly owns : " I, for the time
being and for months afterward, assented to the statement of my
subliminal that my soul had pre-existed; I also believed that it
knew when and where it had pre-existed. When it therefore
stated that I had been sent through the fires of three thousand
years of awful transmigration because, as Rameses or Sesostris,
my way had not been 'the way of the Lord,' I either had to
assent to the inference that my subliminal was a liar, or that it
told the truth, or that it was mistaken. As it insisted upon pour-
ing into my upper consciousness the loftiest of spiritual advice, I
concluded that, if it was such a pure teacher of love and justice,
it would make no mistake knowingly about a matter of history."
Yet he never lost sight of the fundamental point — that, without
verification, his automatic utterances were worthless, and he de-
liberately set himself the task of verifying or disproving them.
He sought the advice of linguists and toiled through many a
grammar and lexicon of little known languages with a purely
negative result. The languages proved to be nothing more than
meaningless combinations of sounds, and the supposed lofty com-
munications from the Almighty were found to be the scarcely
more intelligent reflection of the ideas with which the air was
surcharged. As he himself jokingly phrased it in conversation,
" I was like a cat chasing her own tail." I can not do better, in
concluding my account of this case, than quote Mr. Myers's com-
ment upon it : * " He had the good fortune to meet with a wise
and gentle adviser,t and the phenomenon which, if differently
treated, might have led on to the delusion of many, and perhaps to
the insanity of one, became to the one a harmless experience, and
to the world an acquisition of interesting psychological truth."

The only other outbreak of automatic speech of which any
considerable details have been preserved was that which took
place among the followers of the Rev. Edward Irving at the close
of the first third of the present century. I have not been able to
get access to all the extant information about this outbreak, but
there can be little doubt that it was precisely analogous to Mr.
Le Baron's experience. The "unknown tongues" were usually
followed by a " translation," and all witnesses describe them as
uttered in strange and unnatural tones. One witness speaks of
them as " bursting forth, and that from the lips of a woman, with
an astonishing and terrible crash." Says another, "The utter-
ance was so loud that I put my handkerchief to my mouth to
stop the sound, that I might not alarm the house." Another:
" There was indeed in the strange, unearthly sound an extraor-

* Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii, p. 250.
f Mr. Myers has Prof. James in mind.

''SPIRIT'' WRITING, 521

dinary power of voice, enough to appall the heart of the most
stout-hearted." Of its subjective side we have a vivid descrip-
tion from the pen of Robert Baxter, who was for a while one of
Irving's leading prophets, but afterward, finding that the prophe-
cies which his mouth uttered did not come true, he ascribed them
to "lying spirits." He thus describes his own original expe-
rience :

" After one or two brethren had read and prayed, Mr. T

was made to speak two or three words very distinctly and with
an energy and depth of tone which seemed to me extraordinary,
and fell upon me as a supernatural utterance which I ascribed to
the power of God. The words were in a tongue I did not under-
stand. In a few minutes Miss E. C broke out in an utterance

in English which, as to matter and manner and the influence it
had upon me, I at once bowed to as the utterance of the Spirit
of God. Those who have heard the powerful and commanding
utterance need no description ; but they who have not, may con-
ceive what an unnatural and unaccustomed tone of voice, an in-
tense and riveting power of expression, with the declaration of a
cutting rebuke to all who were present, and applicable to my own
state of mind in particular, would effect upon me and upon
others who were come together expecting to hear the voice of
the Spirit of God. In the midst of the feeling of awe and rever-
ence which this produced I was myself seized upon by the power,
and in much struggling against it was made to cry out and my-
self to give forth a confession of my own sin in the matter for
which we were rebuked. ... I was overwhelmed by this occur-
rence. . . . There was in me at the time of the utterance very great
excitement, and yet I was distinctly conscious of a power acting
upon me beyond the mere power of excitement. So distinct was
the power from the excitement that in all my trouble and doubt
about it I never could attribute the whole to excitement. ... In
the utterances of the power which subsequently occurred many
were accompanied by the flashing in of conviction upon my mind,
like lightning rooting itself in the earth ; while other utterances,
not being so accompanied, only acted in the way of an authorita-
tive communication." At another time he was reading the Bible.
" As I read, the power came upon me and I was made to read in
the power, my voice raised far beyond its natural pitch, and with
constrained repetition of parts and with the same inward uplift-
ing which at the presence of the power I had always before
experienced."

So far as I know, there exists no written record of the
"tongues" spoken by the Irvingites, but the few specimens of
their "prophecies" which I have seen present identically the
same characteristics as those found in Mr. Le Baron's utterances

522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

— the same paucity of ideas, the same tendency to hover about
one word or phrase with senseless repetitions. One illustration
will serve, ex uno discite omnia :

" Ah, will ye despise, will ye despise the blood of Jesus ? Will
ye pass by the cross, the cross of Jesus ? Oh ! oh ! oh ! will ye
crucify the Lord of glory ? Will ye put him to an open shame ?
He died, he died, he died for you. He died for you. Believe ye,
believe ye the Lamb of God. Oh, he was slain, he was slain, and
he hath redeemed you ; he hath redeemed you ; he hath redeemed
you with his blood! Oh, the blood, the blood, the blood that
speaketh better things than the blood of Abel — which crieth
mercy for you now, mercy for you now ! Despise not his love,
despise not his love, despise not his love !

" Oh, grieve him not ! Oh, grieve not your Father ! Rest in
his love. Oh, rejoice in your Father's love ! Oh, rejoice in the
love of Jesus, in the love of Jesus, in the love of Jesus, for it
passeth knowledge ! Oh, the length ! oh, the breadth ! oh, the
height ! oh, the depth, of the love of Jesus ! Oh, it passeth knowl-
edge ! Oh, rejoice in the love of Jesus ! O sinner, for what, for
what — what, O sinner, what can separate, can separate, can sepa-
rate from the love of Jesus ? " etc.

Mr. Le Baron's " tongues " are constructed upon the same gen-
eral principle, one phonetic element appearing to serve as the
basis or core for a long series of syllables. I believe all these
cases to be analogous to that of my friend B , and I see no rea-
son for ascribing them to subconscious activities of any kind.

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.

Br J. MARK BALDWIN,

PR0FE8S0B OF PSYCHOLOGY IN" PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

m.

W

ITH this outcome, we may return to the genius. And the
first requirement is that we state the social man in the fewest
terms, in order that we may then judge the genius with refer-
ence to the sane social man, the normal socius. What he is we
have seen. He is a person luho learns to judge hy the judgments
of society. What, then, shall we say of the genius from this point
of view ? Can the hero-worshiper be right in saying that the
genius teaches society to judge; or shall we say that the genius,
like other men, must learn to judge by the judgments of society ?
The most fruitful point of view is, no doubt, that which con-
siders the genius a variation. And unless we do this it is evi-
dently impossible to get any theory which will bring him into

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.' 523

our general scheme. But how great a variation ? and in what
directions ? — these are the questions. The great variations found
in the criminal by heredity, the insane, the idiotic, etc., we have
found excluded from society ; so we may well ask why the genius
is not excluded also. If our determination of the limits within
which society decides who is to be excluded is correct, then the
genius must come within these limits. He can not escape them
and live socially.

The directions in which the genius actually varies from the
average man are evident as a matter of fact. He is, first of all,
a man of great power of thought, of great constructive imagina-
tion, as the psychologists would say. So let us believe, first, that
a genius is a man who has, occasionally, greater thoughts than
other men have. Is this a reason for excluding him from so-
ciety ? Certainly not ; for by great thoughts we mean true
thoughts, thoughts which will work, thoughts which bring in
a new era of discovery of principles, or of their application. This
is just what all development depends upon, this attainment of
novelty, which is consistent with older knowledge and supple-
mentary to it. But suppose a man have thoughts which are not
true, which do not fit the topic of their application, which con-
tradict established knowledges, or which result in bizarre and
fanciful combinations of them ; to that man we deny the name
genius : he is a crank, an agitator, an anarchist, or what not.
The test, then, which we bring to bear upon the intellectual
variations which men show is that of truth, practical work-
ability— in short, to sum it up, " fitness." Any thought, to live
and germinate, must be a fit thought. And the community's
sense of the fitness of the thought is their rule of judgment.

Now, the way the community got this sense — that is the great
result we have reached above. Their sense of fitness is just what
I called above their judgment. As far, at least, as it relates to
matters of social import, it is of social origin. It reflects the out-
come of all social heredity, tradition, education. The sense of
social truth is their criterion of social thoughts, and unless the
social reformer's thought be in some way fit to go into the set-
ting thus made by earlier social development, he is not a genius
but a crank.

I may best show the meaning of the claim that society makes
upon the genius by asking in how far in actual life he manages
to escape this account of himself to society. The facts are very
plain, and this is the class of facts which writers like Mr. Spencer
urge, as supplying an adequate rule for the application of the
principles of their social philosophy. The simple fact is, say they,
that without the consent of society the thoughts of your hero,
whether he be genius or fool, are practically valueless. The full-

524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ness of time must come ; and the genius before his time can not
be, if judged by his works, a genius at all. His thought may be
great, so great that, centuries after, society may attain to it as its
richest outcome and its profoundest intuition, but before that
time it is as bizarre as the madman's fancies and as useless.
What would be thought, we might be asked, of a rat which devel-
oped upon its side the hand of a man, with all its exquisite
mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensibility, and power of
delicate manipulation, if the remainder of the creature were true
to the pattern of a rat ? Would not the rest of the rat tribe be
justified in leaving this anomaly behind to starve in the hole
where his singular appendage held him fast ? Is such a rat any
the less a monster because man finds use for his hands ?

To a certain extent this argument is true and forcible. If
social utility be our rule of definition, then certainly the prema-
ture genius is no genius. And this rule of definition may be put
in another way which renders it still more plausible. The varia-
tions which occur in intellectual endowment in a community
vary about a mean ; there is theoretically an average man. And
the differences among men which can be accounted for by any
philosophy of life must be in some way referable to this mean.
Variations which do not meet their counterpart at all in the social
environment, but which strike all the social fellows with dis-
approval, finding no sympathy whatever, are thereby exposed to
the charge of being " sports " of Nature and the fruit of chance.
The lack of hearing which such a man gets sets him in a form of
isolation which stamps him not only as the social crank but also
as the cosmic tramp.

Put in its positive and usual -form this view simply claims that
man is always the outcome of the social movement. The recep-
tion he gets is the measure of the degree in which he adequately
represents this movement. Certain variations are possible — men
who are forward in the legitimate progress of society — and these
men are the true and only geniuses. Other variations, which
attempt to discount the future, are sports; for the only perma-
nent discounting of the future is that which is projected from the
elevation of the past.

The great defect of this view is found in its definitions. We
exclaim at once : Who made the past the measure of the future ?
And who made social approval the measure of truth ? What is
there to eclipse the vision of the poet, the inventor, the seer, that
he should not see over the heads of his generation, and raise his
voice for that which to all men else lies behind the veil ? The
social philosophy of the school of Spencer can not answer these
questions, I think; nor can it meet the appeal we all make to
history when we cite the names of Aristotle, Pascal, and Newton,

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, 525

or of any of the men who have single handed and alone set guide-
posts to history, and given the world large portions of its heritage
of truth. What can set limit to the possible variations of fruit-
ful intellectual power ? Rare such variations — that is their law :
the greater the variation, the more rare ! But so is genius : the
greater, the more rare. And as to the rat with the human hand,
he would not be left to starve and decay in his hole ; he would
be put in alcohol when he died, and kept in a museum ! And the
lesson which he would teach to the wise biologist would be that
here, in this rat. Nature had shown her genius by discounting in
advance the slow processes of evolution.

It is indeed the force of such considerations as these which has
led to many justifications of the position that the genius is quite
out of connection witK the social movement of his time. Prof.
William James, for instance, in a most vivid and interesting
article in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1888, brings out the
implications of the doctrine of variations very clearly, and bases
upon it the further position that the causes which enter into the
production of variations in the heredity of the individual are
altogether physiological, and so represent a complete "cycle,"
apart from the other " cycle " of causes found in the physical and
social environment of the individual. So that the individual
brings his variations to his society whether society will or not ;
and as to whether there be any harmony between him and his
social fellows — that is a matter of outcome rather than of expec-
tation or theory.

But this is not tenable, as we have reason to think, from the in-
teraction which actually takes place between the two so-called
" cycles " of causation. To be sure, the heredity of the individual
is a physiological matter, in the sense that the son must inherit
from his parents and their ancestors alone. But granted that
two certain parents are his parents, we may ask how these two
certain parents came to be his parents. How did his father come
to marry his mother, and the reverse ? This is distinctly a social
question ; and to its solution all the currents of social influence
and suggestion contribute. Who is free from social considera-
tions in selecting his wife ? Does the coachman have an equal
chance to gert the heiress, or the blacksmith the clergyman's
daughter ? Do we find inroads made in Newport society by the
ranchman and the dry-goods clerk ? And are not the inroads
which we do find, the inroads made by the dukes and the mar-
quises, due to influences which are quite social and psychological ?
And, on the other hand, what leads the duke and the marquis to
lay their titles at Newport doors, while the ranchman and the
<iry-goods clerk keep away, but the ability of both these types of
suitors to estimate their chances just on social and psychological

526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

grounds ? Novelists have rung the changes on this intrusion of
the social into the physiological cycle. What is Bourget's Cos-
mopolis but a picture of the influence of social race characteristics
on natural heredity, with the reaction of natural heredity again
upon new social conditions ?

A speech of a character of Balzac's is to the point, as illustrat-
ing a certain appreciation of these social considerations which we
all to a degree entertain. The Duchesse de Carigliano says to
Madame de Sommervieux : " I know the world too well, my dear,
to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior man. You
should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry
them — that is a mistake ! Never — no, no. It is like wanting to
find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of the opera instead of
sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illusions.'' To be sure, we
do not generally deliberate in this wise when we fall in love : but
that is not necessary, since our social milieu sets the style by the
kind of intangible deliberation which I have called judgment and
fitness. Suppose a large number of Northern advocates of social
equality should migrate to the Southern States, and, true to their
theory, intermarry with the blacks. Would it not then be true
that a social consideration had run athwart the physiological
" cycle," in the production of a legitimate mulatto society ? A
whole race might spring from a purely psychological or social
initiation. "Sexual selection" is certainly a principle of broad
biological application in human affairs.

I agree, however, with the hero-worshiper so far as to say that
we can not set the limitations of the genius on the side of vari-
ations in intellectual endowment. So, if the general position be
true that he is a variation of some kind, we must seek somewhere
else for the direction of those peculiar traits whose excess would
be his condemnation. This we can only find in connection with
the other demand that we make of the ordinary man — i. e., the
demand that he be a man of good judgment. And to this we
may finally turn.

In approaching this topic it is well to bear in mind a further
result which follows from the reciprocal character of social rela-
tionships. If the man in question have thoughts which are so-
cially true, he will, i'pso facto, know that they are true. He is a
social outcome as well as are the fellows who sit in judgment on
him. He must judge his own thoughts, too, as they do. So his
own proper estimate of things and thoughts, his relative sense of
fitness, gets application by a direct law of his own mental processes
to himself and to his own creations. The limitations which, in
the judgment of society, his variations must not overstep, are
set by his own judgment also. So we reach the conclusion re-
garding the intellectual variations which the genius may have :

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, 527

lie and society nmst agree in regard to the fitness of them, al-
though this agreement is not the emphatic thing. The essential
thing in this matter of intellectual variation is that the thoughts
thought must always be critically judged by the thinker himself.
This may be illustrated in some detail.

Suppose we take the man of striking thoughts and with them
no sense of fitness — none of the judgment about them which so-
ciety has. He will go through a mighty host of discoveries every
hour. The very eccentricity of his imaginations will only appeal
to him for the greater admiration. He will bring his most chi-
merical schemes out and air them with the same assurance that
the real inventor exhibits his ; but such a man is not pronounced
a genius. If his ravings about this and that are harmless, we
smile and let him talk; but if his lack of judgment extend to
things of grave import, or be accompanied by equal illusions re-
specting himself and society in other relations, then we classify
his case and put him into the proper ward for the insane. Two
of the commonest forms of such impairment of judgment are seen
in the victims of persecution on the one hand, the exaltes on the
other. The images which throng into the consciousness of the
former of these are those which represent his own powerlessness
before an ever-present enemy. Neither the assurances of friends
nor the evidence of his own senses are sufficient to rectify the
judgment he makes that these imaginings are real. He has no true
sense of values, no way of selecting the fit combinations of his
fancy from the unfit ; and even though some transcendently true
and original thoughts were to flit through his diseased imagina-
tion, they would go as they came, and the world would still wait
for a genius to arise and rediscover them. The other class — the
exaltes — are somewhat the reverse. The illusion of personal great-
ness is so strong that their thoughts are infallible and their per-
sons divine.

Men of such perversions of judgment are common among us.
We all know the man who seems to be full of rich and varied
thoughts, who holds us sometimes by the extraordinary power of
his conceptions or the beauty of his creations. And yet we find
in it all some incongruity, some eminently unfit element, some
grotesque application, some elevation or depression from the level
of commonplace truth, some ugly strain in the aesthetic impres-
sion. The man himself does not know it, and that is the reason
that he includes it. His sense of fitness is dwarfed or paralyzed.
We in the community learn to regret that he is so " visionary,"
with all his talent, and so we accommodate ourselves to his unf ruit-
f ulness, and at the best only expect an occasional hour^s entertain-
ment under the spell of his thinking. This certainly is not the
man to produce world movements.

528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Most of the men we call " cranks " are of this type. They are
essentially lacking in judgment, and the popular estimate of them
is exactly right.

It is evident, therefore, from this last explanation, that there
is a second direction of variation among men — a variation in their
sense of the truth and value of their own thoughts, and with them
of the thoughts of others. This is the second limitation which
the man of genius shares with men generally — the limitation in
the amount of variation which he may show in his social judg-
ments, especially as these variations affect the claim which he
Thakes upon society for recognition. It is evident that this must
be an interesting and important factor in our estimate of the
claims of the hero to our worship, especially since it is the more
obscure side of his temperament, and the side generally over-
looked altogether. I shall therefore devote the rest of my space
to the attempt to illustrate this matter of what I shall call the
" social sanity " of the man of genius.

IV.

The first indication of the kind of social variation which over-
steps even the degree of indulgence society is willing to accord to
the great thinker, is to be found in the effect which education has
upon character. The discipline of social development is, as we have
seen, mainly conducive to the reduction of eccentricities, the lev-
eling off of personal peculiarities. All who come into the social
heritage learn the same great series of lessons derived from the
past, and all get the sort of judgment required in social life from
the common exercises of the home and school in the formative
years of their education. So we should expect that the greater
singularities of disposition which represent insuperable difficulty
in the process of social assimilation would show themselves early.
Here it is that the actual conflict comes — the struggle between
impulse and social restraint. Many a genius owes the redemp-
tion of his intellectual gifts to legitimate social uses to the victory
gained by a teacher and the discipline learned through obedience.
And thus it is, also, that so many who give promise of great dis-
tinction in early life fail to achieve it. They run off after a phan-
tom, and society pronounces them mad. In their case the per-
sonal factor has overcome the social factor ; they have failed in
the lessons they should have learned, their own self-criticism is
undisciplined, and they miss the mark.

These two extremes of variation, however, do not exhaust the
case. One of them tends in a measure to the blurring of the light
of genius, and the other to the rejection of social restraint to a
degree which makes the potential genius over into a crank. The
average man is the mean. But the greatest reach of human at-

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 529

tainment, and with it the greatest influence ever attained by man,
is yet more than any one of these. It is not enough, the hero-
worshiper may still say, that the genius should have sane and
healthy judgment, as society reckons sanity. The fact still re-
mains that even in his social judgments he may instruct society.
He may stand alone and, by sheer might, lift his fellow-men up
to his point of vantage, to their eternal gain and to his eternal
praise. Even let it be that he must have self-criticism, the sense
of fitness you speak of, that very sense may transcend the vulgar
judgment of his fellows. His judgment may be saner than theirs ;
and as his intellectual creations are great and unique, so may his
sense of their truth be full and unique. Wagner led the musical
world by his single-voiced praise of the work of Wagner ; and
Darwin had to be true to his sense of truth, to the formulations
of his thought, though no man accorded him the right to instruct
his generation either in the one or in the other. To be sure, this
divine assurance of the man of genius may be counterfeited ; the
vulgar dreamer often has it. But, nevertheless, when a genius
has it, he is not a vulgar dreamer.

This is true, I think, and the explanation of it leads us to the
last fruitful application of the doctrine of variations. Just as the
intellectual endowment of men may vary within very wide limits,
so may the social qualifications of men. There are men who find
it their meat to do society service. There are men so naturally
born to take the lead in social reform, in executive matters, in or-
ganization, in planning our social campaigns for us, that we turn
to them as by instinct. They have a kind of insight to which we
can only bow. They gain the confidence of men, win the support
of women, and excite the acclamations of children. These people
are the social geniuses. They seem to anticipate the discipline of
social education. They do not need to learn the lessons of the
social environment. Their " tact," we say, is great.

Now, such persons undoubtedly represent a variation toward
suggestibility of the most delicate and singular kind. They sur-
pass the teachers from whom they learn; It is hard to say that
they are " learning to judge by the judgments of society." And
yet they differ from the man whose eccentricities forbid him to
learn through the discipline of society. The two are opposite
extremes of variation ; that is the only possible construction of
them. It is the difference between the ice-boat which travels
faster than the wind, and the skater who braves the wind and
battles up-current in it. The latter is soon beaten by the opposi-
tion ; the former outruns its ally. The crank, the eccentric, the
enthusiast — all these run counter to fc'.ane social judgment; but
the genius leads society to his own point of view, and interprets
the social movement, of which he and his fellows are part, so ac-

VOL. XLIX, 43

530 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

curately, sympathetically, and with such profound insight that
his very singularity is its inspiration.

Now, let a man combine with this insight — this extraordinary
sanity of social judgment — the power of great inventive and con-
structive thought, and then, at last, we have our hero, and one
that we well may worship. To great thought he adds balance ; to
originality, judgment. This is the man to start the world move-
ments, if we want a single man to start them. For, as he thinks
profoundly, so he discriminates his thoughts and assigns them
values. His fellows judge with him or learn to judge after him,
and lend to him the motive force of success — enthusiasm, reward.
He may wait for recognition, he may suffer imprisonment, he
may be muzzled for thinking his thoughts, he may die, and with
him the truth to which he gave but silent birth. But the world
comes, by its slower progress, to traverse the path in which he
wished to lead it ; and if so be that his thought was recorded, the
world revives it in regretful sentences on his tomb.

The thing to be emphasized, therefore, on the rational side of
the phenomenally great man — I mean on the side of our means of
accounting for him in reasonable terms — is the sanity of his judg-
ment ; the fact that he has great thoughts being the acknowl-
edged and familiar fact. And the variations from this social
sanity give all the ground that various writers have for the one-
sided views which are now current in popular literature. We are
told, on one hand, that the genius is a " degenerate " ; on the other
hand, that he is to be classed with those of " insane " temper ; and
yet again, that his main characteristic is his readiness to outrage
society. All these so-called theories rely upon facts — as far as
they have any facts to rely upon — which we may readily estimate
from our present point of view. As far as a really great man
busies himself mainly with things which are objective, unsocial,
and morally neutral — such as electricity, natural history, and me-
chanical theory with its applications — of course, the mental ca-
pacity which he possesses is the main thing, and his absorption in
this may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and refined rela-
tionships which are had in view by the writer in quest for degen-
eracy. It will still be admitted, however, by those who are con-
versant with the history of science, that the greatest scientific
geniuses have been men of profound quietness of life and normal
social development. It is to the literary and artistic genius that
the seeker after abnormities has to turn ; and in this field, again,
the facts serve to show their own meaning. As a general rule,
these artistic phenomena do not represent the union of variations
which we find in the greatest genius. Such men are often dis-
tinctly lacking in power of sustained constructive thought. Their
insight is largely what is called intuitive. They have flashes of

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT, 531

emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art.
They depend upon "inspiration" — a word which is responsible
for half the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their
illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats in the several
spheres in which their several " inspirations " come ; but with it
all they do present the sort of unbalance and fragmentary intel-
lectual endowment which allies them, in particular instances, to
the classes of persons whom the theories I am discussing have in
view. It is only to be expected that the kind of sharp jutting
variation in the emotional and aesthetic realm which the great
artist often shows should carry with it irregularities in heredity
in other respects.

Besides, the very habit of this kind of genius, the habit of
living by inspiration, puts a premium upon any half-hidden
peculiarities which he may have, both in the remark of his asso-
ciates and in the conduct of his own social duties. He gets to
be considered the social exception, the anomaly, the man to be
indulged; and his own sense of the greatness and peculiarity of
his gifts leads him to claim the indulgence. I honestly think that
a due imposition of certain social penalties upon men like Byron
in the crises of their existence would at once have purified their
lives and dignified their art ; while at the same time it would
have removed some of the best examples of Nordau and the rest,
and suppressed the stimulus to the same kind of social deformity
in later men of talent. Mark you, I do not discredit the superb
art of these examples of the literary and artistic " degenerate " ;
that would be to make some of the highest ministrations of
genius, to us men, random and illegitimate, and to deny to
humanity some of its most exalting and intoxicating sources of
inspiration. But I do still say that wherein such men move and
instruct us they are in these spheres above all things sane with
our own sanity, and wherein they are insane they do discredit to
the inheritance to which their better gifts make legitimate claim.

One of Balzac's characters again hits the nail on the head.
" My dear mother," says Augustine, in the Sign of the Cat and
Racket, " you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas
were the same as other folks they would not be men of genius."

" Very well," replies Madame Guillaume, " then let men of
genius stop at home and not get married. What! A man of
genius is to make his wife miserable ? And because he is a
genius it is all right ! Genius ! genius ! It is not so very clever
to say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to inter-
rupt other people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you
know which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to
be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull when
he is dull."

532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations ! "

" What are such ' imaginations ' ? " Madame Guillaume went
on, interrupting her daughter again. " Fine ones are his, my
word! What possesses a man, that all on a sudden, without
consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to eat nothing but
vegetables ? There, get along ! if he were not so grossly immoral,
he would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum."

" O mother, can you believe ? "

"Yes, I do believe. I met him in the Champs-Elysdes. He
was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard
as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to myself
at that moment, ' There is a man devoid of judgment ! ' "

The main consideration which this paper aims to present, that
of the responsibility of all men, be they great or be they small,
to the same standards of social judgment, and to the same philo-
sophical treatment, is illustrated in the very man to whose genius
we owe the principle upon which my remarks are based — Charles
Darwin ; and it is singularly appropriate that we should also find
the history of this very principle, that of variations with the cor-
relative principle of selection, furnishing a capital illustration of
my inferences. Darwin was, with the single possible exception
of Aristotle, the man with the sanest judgment that the human
mind has ever brought to the investigation of Nature. He repre-
sented, in an exceedingly adequate way, the progress of scientific
method up to his day. He was disciplined in all the natural sci-
ence of his predecessors. His judgment was an epitome of the
scientific insight of the ages which culminated then. The time
was ripe for just such a great constructive thought as his — ripe,
that is, as far as the accumulation of scientific data was con-
cerned. His judgment differed then from the judgment of his
scientific contemporaries mainly in that it was sounder and
safer than theirs. And with it Darwin was a great constructive
thinker. He had the intellectual strength which put the judg-
ment of his time to the strain — everybody's but his own. This
is seen in the fact that Darwin was not the first to speculate in
the line of his great discovery, nor to reach formulas; but with
the others guessing took the place of induction. The formula
was an uncriticised thought. The unwillingness of society to
embrace the hypothesis was justified by the same lack of evi-
dence which prevented the thinkers themselves from giving it
proof. And if no Darwin had appeared, the problem of biologi-
cal development would have been left about where it had been
left by the speculation of the Greek mind. Darwin reached his
conclusion by what that other great scientific genius in Eng-
land, Newton, described as the essential of discovery, " patient

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 533

thought '' ; and having reached it, he had no alternative but to
judge it true and pronounce it to the world.

But the fate of the principle of variations with natural selec-
tion had the reception which shows that good judgment may rise
higher than the level of its own social origin. Even yet the prin-
ciple of Darwin is but a spreading ferment in many spheres of
human thought in which it is destined to bring the same revolu-
tion that it has worked in the sciences of organic life. And it
was not until other men, who had both authority with the pub-
lic and information enough to follow Darwin's thought, seconded
his judgment, that his great formula began to have currency in
scientific circles.

Now I ask. Does not any theory of man which loses sight of
the supreme sanity of Darwin, and with him of Aristotle, and
Angelo, and Leonardo, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Shake-
speare, seem weak and paltry ? Do not delicacy of sentiment,
brilliancy of wit, fineness of rhythmical and aesthetic sense, the
beautiful contributions of the talented special performer, sink
into something like apologies — something even like profanation
of that name to conjure by, the name of genius ? And all the
more if the profanation is made real by the moral irregularities
or the social shortcomings which give some color of justification
to the appellation " degenerate." But, on the other hand, why run
to the other extreme and make this most supremely human of all
men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the blue, an element of
extreme disorder, born to further or to distract the progress of
humanity by a chance which no man can estimate ? The re-
sources of psychological theory are adequate, as I have endeav-
ored to show, to the construction of a doctrine of society which
is based upon the individual, in all the possibilities of variation
which his heredity may bring forth, and which yet does not hide
or veil those heights of human greatness on which the halo of
genius is wont to rest. Let us add knowledge to our surprise in
the presence of such a man, and respect to our knowledge, and
worship, if you please, to our respect, and with it all we then
begin to see that because of him the world is the better place for
us to live and work in.

We find that, after all, we may be social philosophers and hero-
worshipers as well. And by being philosophers we have made
our worship more an act of tribute to human nature. The

t heathen who bows in apprehension or awe before the image of
an unknown god may be rendering all the worship he knows;
but the soul that finds its divinity by knowledge and love has
communion of another kind. So the worship which many render
to the unexplained, the fantastic, the cataclysmal, this is the awe

534 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great into touch with the commonplace, that delineates the forces
which arise to their greatest grandeur only in a man here and
there, that enables us to contrast the best in us with the poverty
of him, and then we may do intelligent homage. To know that
the greatest men of earth are men who think as I do, but deeper,
and see the real as I do, but clearer, who work to the goal that I
do, but faster, and serve humanity as I do, but better — that may
be an incitement to my humility, but it is also an inspiration to
my life.

THE SCALLOP (Pecten irradians).

By feed MATHER.

WHETHER we follow the old spelling of '-'escalop," the mod-
ern form of " scallop," now used by naturalists, or write it
" scollop," after the manner of the fishermen, we find all three
modes sanctioned by the dictionaries. Near the seacoast this
mollusk is a great favorite, rivaling the clam and the oyster, and
by many persons preferred to either. The home demand is so
great that the " scollop " is not sent far inland, and it is a mat-
ter of surprise how little is popularly known of the animal of
which a portion is seen in our seaboard markets during the fall
and winter months by those who sell and those who eat them.

For many centuries the beautiful form of the scallop shell has
been a favorite with artists, who have used it as an ornament in
sculpture, pottery, and in designs of many kinds, and it is found
on the armorial bearings of families whose ancestors had made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land or to Spain :

For the scallop shows in a coat of arms

That, of the bearer's line,
Some one in former days hath been

To Santiago's shrine.

The shell is not found on the Atlantic coast of Europe, but is
common on the shores of Judea and other parts of the Mediter-
ranean ; hence its possession was evidence of the pilgrimage, and
the Crusaders always wore the shell on their hats aft'er returning.
Fuller says : " The scallop shell (I mean the nethermost of them,
because most concave and most capacious) was often the cup and
dish to the pilgrims in Palestine ; their arms they always charged
therewith." The delicate shell has commended itself to makers of
toilet and other articles for ladies' use, such as pincushions, made
either in one valve or between both shells ; needlebooks and many
other things are made from them, but they are too frail for some
uses that shells have been put to, such as scrapers, scoops, and
dishes, yet from their employment by cooks to serve a peculiar

THE SCALLOP.

535

patty of oysters in, they have given the name of " scolloped oys-
ters " to the dish, whether served in the shells or otherwise.

The only portion of this handsome bivalve that is edible is the
adductor muscle, which closes the shells and corresponds to the
" hard part " in the oyster, often miscalled the " eye " ; the rest of
the animal, being very soft, is called the rim by the fishermen.
The little village of New Suffolk, on Great Peconic Bay, which
divides the eastern end of Long Island into two long peninsu-
las, lives mainly from the scallop fisheries, which begin in Sep-
tember and end about the first of May, and are only interfered
with by the freezing of the bay or by floating ice, for the hardy
fishermen seldom mind the weather unless a gale should interfere

Going it aloke.

with the management of the boats, which are small sloops of five
to fifteen tons burden and are managed by two men — one at the
tiller and the other at the dredges. They use from one to six
dredges, according to the size of the boat. The scallop fleet of
New Suffolk comprises twenty-six boats, and some few others of
a smaller class occasionally join in the work. About seventy men
do the catching and carting, while twenty men, thirty women, and
eighty children open and prepare the catch for market ; and as the
population of the place is only two hundred and seventy-five, it
may be truly said that all — grocer, postmaster, and stage driver —
live from the catching of scallops. Children stop on the way
home from school and open a few quarts, and mothers often rock
the cradle with one foot while standing on the other at work in
the shops.

Greenport, Sag Harbor, and other places on Long Island do
much in this line of work, and tons of scallops come to New York
from Rhode Island and other waters east of New York : but the

536

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

little hamlet of New Suffolk was selected to get information and
pictures from, because the place has very little else to live upon,
and the very air is impregnated with scallops, as you will find if
you get to leeward of the great heaps of shells in rear of the shops,

Light Wind, only Foub Dredges out.

and no stretch of imagination could suggest that the odors came
from the spice islands or were wafted from " Araby the blest."
Fortunately, the shops are situated where the smell does not
offend the noses of the people in the town, and is gone by the
time that the few summer visitors arrive. There is a good hotel
here — the Grant House — kept by a man well known in Brooklyn
as a caterer, and a few families come to this quiet spot for the
summer, while sportsmen fond of duck-shooting gather there in
the fall. The fame of the fried scallops at the Grant House ex-
tends farther than the flavor of the shells. I was fortunate in
securing the services of Captain George W. King, who has
dragged the scallop from its lair for the past twenty years, and
most of my information comes from him that is not taken from
my investigations for the United States Fish Commission in 1880.
Opposite New Suffolk is Robbins Island, where the famous club
of that name turns out thousands of quail and other game yearly,
for their fall shooting.

The dredge is similar to that used for oysters, consisting of an
iron frame about three feet long by half as high, to which the

THE SCALLOP,

537

bag is fastened ; the latter, holding a bushel and a half, is made of
chain where it drags the bottom, and of twine on the top portion.
The dredges are used in from three to thirty feet of water from
the windward side of the boat, with a length of line varying with
the depth and also with the speed, the line being shortened when
the wind is light, to prevent anchoring the boat, and if the wind
is very light the number of the dredges must be lessened. After
sailing a certain distance the dredges are brought in one by one
and dumped on the culling board, where the contents are as-
sorted ; the small crabs are thrown overboard, the winkles and

Bbingino a Dredge on Boai

starfish thrown one side for fertilizers, and the scallops shoveled
into the hold. Thirty bushels a day is a fair catch for a boat,
while fifty bushels is considered to be a good day's work.

Two other species are found on our Atlantic coast, both rare
south of Cape Cod, one of which is common on the coast of Maine,
is extensively fished for, and is very large. The species now under

538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

consideration is rare north of Cape Cod and extends as far south
as the Gulf of Mexico. In summer it is found among the eel-
grass, where it breeds, and in the autumn comes into the shallow
waters to feed. It moves by swimming in a dancing manner by
suddenly closing its shells and ejecting the water and then tak-
ing in more. This is a beautiful sight in an aquarium, where
they dance about like castanets played by an invisible hand.
They are often seen in great schools, moving along, and when the
tide is with them they sometimes go half a mile before dropping
to the bottom. The scallop can see quite well, being furnished
with a row of thirty or more beautiful blue eyes in the outer edge
of the mantle of each side, the eyes increasing in number with
the growth of the animal. This mantle is the " rim " of the fisher-
man, and, with the gills and a very flabby stomach, is about all
of the scallop, except the great adductor muscle before mentioned.
This muscle leaves no mark in the shells, such as is seen in the
shells of the oyster and quahaug or hard clam. The shells of the
scallop are unequal, the lower one being more convex and lighter
in color than the other, *and in opening them the dark side is held
uppermost by a right-handed man, because it brings the " meat,'^
which is not in the center, in the proper place for speedy work ;
a left-handed person, of course, requires the deep white side up.
The openers, or " shuckers " as they would be called in Baltimore
and the South, stand in a row in front of the benches, and drop the
shells through a hole into a barrel, toss the meats in a square box
holding two quarts, and the rims into another place, and they be-
come very expert at this in time. Men and women open from fif-
teen to eighteen gallons a day, and children often open three or
four gallons after school. Formerly the price paid for this work
was twenty-five cents per gallon for all, but of late years the price
has dropped with the market price of the meats to sixteen cents
for large and twenty -five for small ones. In November, 1894, the
shippers only got sixty-five cents a gallon from the market men
and many stopped fishing, and the season of 1895 was no better,
the fishermen attributing the failure to dredging late in the
spring when the seed of the year was marketed in order to get
high prices. They open two quarts to the bushel of shells and
vary in size from eighty to three hundred and twenty to the
quart; a gallon will weigh about eight pounds. Fifteen years
ago fifty thousand bushels of shells were sold to oyster planters
for catching spat, at two and a half cents per bushel ; now the
shells sell at six cents per bushel, and in some shops the rims are
left with the shells. The shell of the scallop is excellent for
catching oyster spat, because it is so fragile that it goes to pieces
before the oysters begin to crowd and deform each other, as is
the case where many set on a hard shell like that of the oyster.

THE SCALLOP.

539

In New York markets Rhode Island scallops have a reputa-
tion for excellence that may or may not be deserved, for in that
city " Oyster Bay asparagus " is a label put on almost all bunches
of that vegetable as soon as the product of New Jersey arrives ;
all small hard clams are " Little Necks," although that part of
Long Island does not market over fifty thousand bushels in a
year, and the quality of tenderness and flavor varies as it does

The Culling Board.

with " Blue Point " oysters, a term now used for most small oys-
ters, as " Saddle Rock " is for large ones, although no oysters have
been taken from that rock in twenty years. So much for a repu-
tation ; but the expert housewife looks the different lots of scal-
lops over, passes by the white ones, and buys those of a yellow
tint. The fact is that the meat of the scallop is naturally a faint
yellow, but soaking whitens and injures it. This soaking in
fresh water is done to make them swell and measure more, and
it increases their bulk by about a third until the frying-pan has

540

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

done its work, when they will be found to have shrunken to less
than the original size ; hence it is best to avoid the white meats
if possible. It is probable that the price for the unwatered scal-
lops would be better if all shippers would agree to stop the prac-
tice, and then all scallops would be " Rhode Islands,^' although
market men say that some from that State are watered. The
practice is a bad one, because it injures the sale of the meats, as
may be seen by comparing the prices in the markets. The scal-
lop is never shipped alive in the shell, because it breaks easily

Loading a Wagon.

and does not live more than a day or two out of the water ; be-
sides, being so bulky, the freight would be higher.

Fried with bacon is the most popular way this mollusk is
served, although it is occasionally broiled or stewed, and in New
York restaurants the order, " Fry, half and half," is often given,
which means oysters and scallops, or it is sometimes " A fry,
half scallops," for "a fry" is supposed to mean oysters alone.
It is only some forty years since the scallop has been known in
the markets and became an object of pursuit by the fishermen.
Dr. De Kay, although living at Oyster Bay, on Long Island, knew
little of it as food, for in his Mollusca, Part V, Zoology of New
York, 1843, he says : " It abounds on shallow sandy bottoms and
is taken in great quantities for food, the broad and stout mus-
cular portion being the only part of the animal used. This is
boiled and put in vinegar, and considered by many as a great

THE SCALLOP. 541

delicacy." The "great quantities" in those days meant a few-
hundred bushels, eaten by the dwellers on Long Island bays, for
at that time there was no market for them. The rich, sweet taste
of the scallop is disagreeable to a few persons and has been
known to produce nausea at times, but to many its tenderness
and pronounced flavor are more agreeable than those of any other
bivalve.

An old legend claims that the scallop shell rightfully be-
longed, as a badge, not to the Crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy
Land, but only to such as had made the pilgrimage to the cele-
brated shrine of St. James at Campostella, in Spain, as may be
learned from the following account of a miracle:

" The ship in which the body of St. James was conveyed to its
last resting place happening to draw near the coast during the
performance of certain nuptial festivities, the bridegroom's horse,
becoming ungovernable, plunged into the sea and together with
its rider sank ; but, at the moment the ship was passing by, rose
again, close alongside of it. There were several miracles in this
case. The first was, that the sea bore upon its waves the horse
and horseman as if it had been firm land, after not having
drowned them when they were so long under water. The second
was, that the wind, which was driving the ship at full speed into
port, suddenly fell and left it motionless ; while the third and
most remarkable was that both the garments of the knight and
the trappings of his horse came out of the sea covered with
scallop shells, which were afterward enjoined to be worn in com-
memoration of the event." If such a miracle should happen at
New Suffolk to-day the judgment of the inhabitants would be
like that in the historical eel case — the scallops would be sent to
the shops, and the horse and its rider would be " set again."

Like all marine shells, our scallop is not as clean on the outside
when it comes from the water as it appears after preparation for
ornamental use. Many forms of animal and vegetable life have
attached to it and made their homes upon it, especially on the
upper or flatter valve. Here we find the red boring sponge
which eats pinholes in all shells, inhabited or not, cutting through
to the lining of nacre and occasionally through that to the in-
terior. This injury is promptly repaired from the inside, but
small elevations remain to show where the breach was healed.
Tube worms build their twisted houses in such masses as to im-
pede the movements of the scallop, and they have been known to
bind several individuals together in a mass by their calcareous
tubes while the mollusks were lying quiescent, a fact which seems
to show that at some seasons the scallop must remain in one place
for some time, long enough for the tube worms (Serpula contor-
tuplicata) to grow and build their dwellings as increase of size

542

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

demands. Probably fair-sized colonies on two contiguous shells
may not require many days in the growing season to unite in
those shelly knots that may be broken but can never be untied.

The Shops and Shells.

Oysters, " jingles/' and " deckers" * set on the shell and grow and
impede its progress until it wearies of life and dies.

While on the subject of the shells of this animal it may be
worthy to note that in addition to their acrobatic efforts to regain
the water when left on shore by the tide, some of the old writers
credited them with the sailing powers of the nautilus or " Por-
tuguese man-of-war,^' and have asserted that, " by flapping their
valves with a very quick motion, they can rise from their beds
in the deep and navigate the surface, having one shell raised
and so disposed as to catch the breeze in its concavity, while the
other serves as a boat." We know that they can move below the
surface, but must draw the line there.

In the month of May, 1895, 1 found eggs of the scallop well
developed in the ovaries of the animal and apparently ripe, as
they were extruded with slight pressure, but found no ripe males
at the time, and therefore failed to impregnate the eggs. They
were transparent and measured eighty to the centimetre, or over

* Jingles and deckers are fishermen's u^mesfov Anomia glabra and Crepidala fomicata^
Tvhich, like the oyster, attach to shells, stones, etc.

THE SCALLOP.

543

two hundred to the inch. The absorption of water during the
time in which they could have been fertilized would have en-
larged the eggs, but to what extent is unknown. On June 10th
I found microscopic scallops attached to blades of grass and
weeds by a byssus, apparently like that of the mussel; they
measured about eighteen to the centimetre, something over forty-
five to the inch. Lack of circulation killed them in three days,
and another lot was collected on June 18th, which were appar-
ently of the same size.* No more were found until August 18th,
when the growth was noticeable, the shells measuring about two
centimetres, or three quarters of an inch. These last were taken
from the bottom, and had lost the threads which had attached
them to the grass.

Scallops are generally believed to live but a few years, many
of the fishermen limiting them to only two, but this is a difficult
matter to determine. They spawn in May in the bays of Long
Island, perhaps in June also ; the young attach to the eel-grass,
and in August will measure three quarters of an inch across the
shell. The next year they are about the size of an American sil-
ver dollar, and are too small for the use of most persons and for
market. They are thrown on the beach at Cold Spring Harbor
and along the north shore of
Long Island by the winter
winds and freeze in great
numbers, and a frozen scal-
lop never recovers life, as
some mollusks are said to
do. In this harbor there is
often a good set of scal-
lops on the grass, but their
weight usually breaks the
grass, and they are drifted
out into Long Island Sound
to stock other grounds, and
it is only once in several
years that there is anything
like a scallop crop in the harbor, and when the season is called
good the local demand takes them all, and none reach the market.
The fact that this harbor, and Oyster Bay also, are extensively
planted with oysters, would prevent dredging for scallops to any
great extent if they were- plenty, and the few that are taken are
caught by the oystermen in their rowboats. From our present

* After these investigations, and since this article was written, Dr. James L. Kellogg has
published similar observations on the scallop in the Report of the U. S. Fish Commissioner
for 1893.

544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

observations it seems as if the scallop might be fit for market in
the winter after it is two years old, but not before. How long it
may live after that it is impossible to say, further than to judge
by the age of oysters and other animals that may attach to the
shell of the living scallop, and it is more than likely that their
attachment may cause its early death. Blackfish (tautog) eat
them, the sheepshead crunches them, and they are often taken
from the stomach of the cod and other fishes. The starfish, that
devourer of all the shell-bearing mollusks and great enemy of the
oyster, destroys them from the time the shell begins to form until
the limit of growth is attained, and never desists while life is
left in this interesting and useful bivalve.

EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA.*

By Dr. WILLIAM HIESCH.

IT is a pretty widespread opinion that nervous diseases, and
especially hysteria, have alarmingly increased during the last
decades, and that they are about to increase much more. In all
civilized countries, we are told, and in every stratum of the popu-
lation, a weakness of the nervous system manifests itself of which
our forefathers had no knowledge. Neurasthenia and hysteria
spread wider and wider, like a devastating epidemic, attacking
not merely the lower classes but just the "upper ten thousand.^'
It is educated society which is threatened with total overthrow
by utter derangement of the nerves. " Whither is this to lead,
and how is it to end?'' lament some solicitous prophets who
already see yawning before them the gulf by which the enervated
human race is about to be swallowed up.

Let us weigh the reasons which occasion this apprehension.
What real proof is there of this enormous increase of nervous
diseases and of the continually progressive degeneration of civil-
ized man ? First of all, there are the statistics. " Numbers," we
have been told, " can not lie." Perhaps not ; but those who col-
lect them may fasten upon them very seriously mistaken labels.

The assiduous statistician ascertains that the insane asylums
contain more women than men. So far, so good. But if he tells
us that more women are insane than men, he labels those num-
bers erroneously, for the inequality is really due to the fact that
insane males die off, while insane females survive, relatively
speaking. Suppose the statistics of different countries do show
that the number of inmates of insane asylums is increasing out

* From Genius and Degeneration. In press of D. Appleton & Co.

EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA, 545

of all proportion to the growth of the general population, would
it not be superficial in the extreme to conclude, without further
data, that insanity was on the increase ? At present these statis-
tics mean nothing more than that the number of patients in such
institutions has considerably increased. But when we consider
what great advances have been made in the diagnosis of mental
diseases, and consider also that a great number of such cases,
which were formerly treated unsuccessfully at home, are now
treated in such institutions with good results, because there they
are removed from the detrimental influences of familiar sur-
roundings, while the proper means and methods for rational
treatment are at hand, we shall find that the seemingly enormous
increase of mental disturbances need not cause us uneasiness.

Other extensive statistical material for nervous diseases is
afforded by the numerous dispensaries of the great cities; but
no extended experience is required to teach that a large propor-
tion of such cases would not appear if the patients had to pay
fixed fees, and round ones, as they had to do in the good old times
when physicians saw comparatively little of nervous diseases.
Our grandmothers had their "headaches" and their "twitchiugs
in the limbs " like the women of to-day ; but they never dreamed
of calling a doctor or going to the dispensary for such things, so
that they were not " statistical material."

In the dispensaries for nervous diseases there are numerous
chronical patients who, becoming discouraged in one place, think
they would like to try another doctor ; and some of them make a
round of sojourns in different hospitals. Each of them is counted
as many times over in the statistics as there are places where he
is treated. This perceptibly increases the numbers.

These considerations give some idea, though but a slight one,
of the extreme difficulty of making even rough approximate in-
ferences from sanitary statistics. But certain observers tell us
that exact enumeration is not required. Hysteria and degenera-
tion of the race stare us, as they aver, daily in the face. In every
department of human activity disorders of the nervous system
are seen. The very style and methods of the art and literature of
the day proclaim a general nervous prostration.

Max Nordau is the protagonist of this widespread opinion.
In his eyes, mental degeneration has seized upon the majority of
civilized men to such a degree that " the upper strata of urban
population " form but a " suffering hospital." The art, the poetry,
the fiction, the philosophy of the day present the most manifold
embodiments of degeneration and of secular hysteria.

Nordau admits, of course, that degeneration and hysteria have
always existed. "But," says he, "they were formerly sporadic
and were of no importance for the whole life of society."

TOL. XLIX. — 44

546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

In declaring that in former times hysteria was but of sporadic
occurrence and attained no importance for the life of society as a
whole, Nordau falls into a grave error. Mental diseases, and
especially hysteria, have, from the earliest times to the present,
exercised a tremendous influence upon the current metaphysical
conception of the universe and upon the whole mental develop-
ment, and that precisely because they not only occurred sporadic-
ally, but, as we shall soon see, attacked the masses in the form of
epidemics, and so became of the highest significance and impor-
tance for the life of society as a whole.

Religious enthusiasm and proneness to the mystic and the
occult formed, even in the highest antiquity, an important factor
of those degenerate and hysterical individuals who entertained
the delusion that they were in communication with good or with
bad spirits, and who by that channel influenced the masses not a
little. A great number of the priestesses who delivered oracular
responses to the Greeks "with strong quaking of their body"
were psychopathic subjects undergoing the hysterical convulsions
well known to us to-day. Hence epilepsy, which in those days
was not discriminated from hysterical cramps, came to be called
the morbus sacer, or sacred disease. Plutarch, in his description
of the Pythian priestess, delineates the typical image of a hyster-
ical subject who, in ecstatic convulsion, stammered unintelligible
words, into which the priests injected some sense. But hysteria,
with its inclination to religious enthusiasm, was not limited to
separate persons. On the contrary, we meet with it among all
peoples and in all periods of history ; and among all peoples we
meet with it in the form of epidemics of various kinds. But never
did this disease find a better or more fertile soil in which to thrive
than in the middle ages of northern Europe, marked as they were
by ignorance and superstition ; and, accordingly, we find that epi-
demics of hysteria then assumed dimensions surpassing those of
any similar outbursts in other centuries. A great many fine books
have been written about the individual and epidemic crazes of
those ages. The French have made particularly careful researches
into the matter.

Calmeil describes a great number of hysterical epidemics of
different forms. One of the principal eruptions in Germany was
demonomania, or Teufelswahn. "In the year 1549," says Calmeil,
" a delusion called Vaudoisie prevailed in Artois, that the devils
carried many secretly in the night to the assemblies, where
compacts were made with Satan and where carnal intercourse
took place. Without knowing how, the participants of the noc-
turnal meetings found themselves next morning back in their
dwellings."

A manifestation equally widespread in Germany was anthro-

I

EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA. 547

pophagy — tliat is, the delusion tliat tlie devil and his worshipers
lived on human flesh. Men were believed to live in the neighbor-
hood of Berne and of Lausanne who had given themselves to the
devil, and who ate their own children. Hundreds of men were
for this stretched on the rack or burned at the stake. Indeed,
there were a number of insane persons who thought that they
themselves were in league with the devil, and that they slew
children.

The bull of Innocent YIII, which appeared in 1484, showed
how deep-rooted the devil-delusion was in Germany. Every-
where people talked of how there was a great league with devils
whose votaries committed deeds of shame in their assemblies ; of
how they were under obligation to destroy and consume newborn
babes before they were baptized. In one year after the publica-
tion of the bull, forty-one women were executed in Burbia be-
cause in their nocturnal assemblies they always strangled, boiled,
and ate a child. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century
there broke out in many places in Germany, especially in con-
vents, epidemic convulsions which exhibited the typical image of
la grande hysterie and were connected with symptoms of religious
delusions and of sexual excitement. Of one convent we read:
" It was singular that as soon as one nun had her fit, the others,
even in distant parts of the building, would immediately go off
into fits as soon as they heard the noise of a person falling. The
nuns had no power of will at all ; they bit themselves, struck and
bit their mates, knocked against one another, and endeavored
vehemently to wound strangers. Upon any attempt to control
the indecency of their conduct, their tumult and exaltation would
become more angry. If they were left to themselves, they would
soon come to biting and wounding without seeming to feel the
least pain." Such subjects were considered to be bewitched or
possessed of the devil. They were treated by exorcisms and con-
jurations which often increased their sufferings.

Not women alone were attacked by the disease; men were
visited in the same way. Gilles de la Tourette gives an account
of such an epidemic, according to a description by Hecker. We
read: "In Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1574, troops of men and women
from Germany were seen laboring under a common madness and
displaying in the streets and churches this singular spectacle.
With clasped hands, and carried away by an inward compulsion
which they could not master, they danced for hours and kept up
the spectacle without being abashed by those who were about,
until they would fall exhausted to the ground. Then they would
complain of their great agony, and would groan as though they
were going to die, until people wrapped their abdomen with linen
loths, whereupon they would come to themselves and be free for

548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

a time from their sufferings. The object of this was to dispel the
wind which set in after the attack. People often resorted to the
simpler method of planting blows of the fist or kicks upon their
abdomens. During their dance the subjects had visions. They
did not see or hear ; but in their imagination they beheld spirits
whose names they pronounced, or rather shrieked out, . . . fell
snorting to the ground without consciousness, and foamed at the
mouth. Then, all at once, they got up and began their dance
with frightful wrenchings. In a few months this plague ex-
tended from Aix-la-Chapelle as far as the Netherlands." Like
the men and women, children were likewise attacked.

A phenomenon often seen to-day in insane asylums is that
patients think themselves to be beasts, such as dogs, cats, mon-
keys, wolves, etc., and behave accordingly. In the middle ages
this gave rise to the superstition of the Werewolf. The word
is formed from wolf and the obsolete word wer, in Gothic vair^
in Latin vir, man. Such persons, who during epidemics were
sometimes found in great numbers, ran about the woods on all
fours, lived and behaved exactly like beasts, fell upon men who
might pass by, attacked even riders and vehicles, and stole chil-
dren and devoured their flesh. Such things were known to the
ancients too.

The influence which hysterical subjects exercised upon the
whole metaphysics, or view of the universe of those times, was
tremendous. While superstition and fanaticism may truly be
called the best fertilizers to yield a crop of hysteria — and they
have vastly contributed to its extension and large growth — at the
same time, hysteria, in its turn, with its astonishing symptoms,
far beyond the classificatory powers of those ages, has had the
effect of enormously feeding and propagating superstition. In
short, the two phenomena, hysteria and superstition, played into
one another's hands ; each was alternately cause and effect ; and
between them they called forth that dismal period in which the
human mind was loaded with fetters, and postponed for centuries
its free possession of its heritage. The author who is capable of
saying that before this our time " hysteria only occurred sporad-
ically, and was of no importance for the life of society in gen-
eral," is not acquainted with the history of insanity and the biog-
raphy of the human race. In order to pass judgment upon the
present times from a psychological point of view, the very first
requisite is an acquaintance with times gone by, and a tracing
out of the path which has brought our culture to its present
height.

Before passing on to the study of the present, let us first ask
why and how it was that diseases of the mind took on an epidemic
character. Most of those authors who have made hysteria the

EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA. 549

snbject of deep investigations agree in this: that svggestibilitij
(using this word approximately in its psychological sense) is a
particular mark of the state of soul of the hysterical

No doubt hysterical epidemics based upon religion continue
even to this day. The last century was by no means poor in such
phenomena.

The principal causes of the spread of epidemics of insanity
and of the so-called secular hysteria are, then, suggesttbUiiy, emo-
tionalism, the impulse to mimicry, and the tendency to mysticism.

Secular hysteria has by this time gradually assumed a differ*
ent character. Belief in the devil and witches has faded quite
away. Nowadays phenomena that seem unaccountable are pro-
duced in great variety by the hysteria which still subsists, and
lead to crazy doctrines and errors, but they are new ones. Spirit-
ualism, which flourished most in the middle pari; of the century,
had such an origin. All those surprising phenomena that in
eariier times had been referred to the agency of the devil and of
witches were now treated as evidences of spiritual presence, te-
lepathy, etc. Hysteria and religious superstition had formeriy
communicated each vitality to the other; now hysteria and
pseudo-science intensified and propagated one another. The lit-
erature to which spiritualism has given rise is perfectly enormous,
and forms a pendant to the old books on witchcraft. Scientific
men of standing write in our times thick books to discuss the
evidences of the most incredible theories about spirits, about
veracious dreams, about prophecies, about telepathy, about clair-
voyance, about premonitions, etc.

With our present knowledge of hysteria, its causes and symp-
toms, men of science and all who are enlightened by its teachings
are under a xx)sitive obligation, which can not be shaken off and
must not be shirked, to combat everything which tends to furiiher
superstition or to nourish the inclination of the people toward
mysticism. Our duty it equally is to set our faces against those
pernicious practices which are calculated to favor and augment
that fatal symptom of hysteria, a heightened stiggesfibilUy.

It is suggested in the Revue Scientifique that the distinctions made in
the laws for the protection of birds between inisectiTorous and graminiv-
orous birds, and birds of passa^ and those of the country, are somewhat
illogical. All birds eat insects during a part of the year, and the httle fruit
and grain some of them take is a cheap equivalent for the good they do in
the destruction of insects. It is often hard to decide whether a bird belongs
to the r^on or not All birds are more or less migratory, and their stay
in any place is largely governed by conditions of food and weather. Natu-
ralists are often surprised by finding species wintering in the north that
they had supixned were far in the south.

550 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

SKETCH OF WILLIAM WILLIAMS MATHER.

AMERICA will never cease to benefit from the influence of its
- Puritan stock. Although the former preponderance in na-
tional affairs of New England as a section has disappeared with the
widening of our territory, the vigor, the intellect, and the con-
science of the settlers at Plymouth and at Boston have been diffused
by their restless descendants through every State in the Union.

William Williams Mather came from one of the most cele-
brated of the Puritan families in America. He was descended
from Rev. Richard Mather, who fled to Massachusetts in 1635 to
escape persecution for nonconformity. Richard Mather brought
four sons to America, from the second of whom, Timothy, was
descended the subject of this article. Two other sons, Eleazer and
Increase, were born to Richard in this country, and the latter of
these was the President of Harvard College from 1688-1701. Cot-
ton Mather, the eminent divine and author, whose misguided zeal
was such a strong support to the " witchcraft delusion," was a
son of Increase. The paternal grandfather of William, Eleazer
Mather, and his grand-uncle, Elisha, were officers of the Connecti-
cut troops in the Revolutionary War. The eldest son of this
Eleazer, who bore the same name, was the father of William. He
learned the hatter's trade in Norwich and set up a business for
himself at Brooklyn, in Windham County, Conn., which he car-
ried on successfully for a number of years. He then traveled for
a time in Canada, and returning to Brooklyn married Miss Fanny
Williams, whose father, Nathan Williams, was also a soldier
of the Revolution. After his marriage he ceased to follow his
trade, and kept a temperance hotel, also giving considerable at-
tention to the improvement of worn-out lands. His son William
Williams was born in Brooklyn on May 24, 1804.

The Hon. Ivers J. Austin, who wrote the memorial sketch
of him for the New England Historic Genealogical Society,*
was unable to find any information concerning William's child-
hood, and very little in regard to his early youth. While still
in his teens William formed the purpose of becoming a physi-
cian, and went to Providence, R. I., to take up medical studies.
There he became much interested in chemistry, and on the occa-
sion of a visit home he brought with him an elaborate piece of
chemical apparatus, the cost of which rather astonished and dis-
pleased his father. But he so amused and instructed his family
by his chemical experiments and explanations that his father be-
came entirely reconciled to this outlay. In 1822 the young man

* It is from this memorial that most of the facts in the present article are derived.

SKETCH OF WILLIAM WILLIAMS MATHER. 551

applied for a warrant as a cadet at West Point, which he obtained
in the following year. Recommending him for this appointment,
the chief judge of Windham County wrote : " He is about eighteen
years of age, possessed of much more than common talents and
literature. He understands the Latin language, and some of the
higher branches of mathematical science, which he acquires with
much facility."

He entered the academy in the summer of 1823, and, in com-
mon with eight or nine other members of his class, spent one year
more than the usual period there, being graduated in 1828. Young
Mather was proficient in chemical analysis, especially of ores and
minerals, before going to West Point, and in 1826, when Web-
ster's Chemistry was passing through the press, the proof-sheets
of a part if not the whole of the work were sent to him by
the author for suggestions and corrections. These were furnished
by him and were adopted, but Mather's name was not mentioned
in the preface of the book among those who had contributed to it,
and he expressed to his classmate and memoirist, Austin, his dis-
appointment at the omission. In the fall of that year he entered
the second class, thus coming to the studies of chemistry and
mineralogy in the curriculum of the academy, Webster's book
being used. Cadet Mather at once took the head of the class in
these subjects, and easily kept his place to the end of the course.
When off duty he explored the hills of the vicinity to collect
minerals for his private cabinet and that of the lyceum. The
chemical laboratory of the institution was also a place of resort
for his leisure hours. During the last year of the course he was
an assistant in the laboratory. He seemed to have a special apti-
tude for science and took great delight in experimenting. Mr.
Austin illustrates this tendency by the following account :

" The winter of 1826-'27 was very cold. The ice, floating down
to the narrow gorge between the precipitous shores of West Point
and the opposite bank, became wedged there and was exceedingly
thick. It occurred to Mather that a favorable opportunity was thus
offered to ascertain the temperature of the water at the bottom of
the river while the surface was covered with ice. After several
attempts he succeeded in making a self -registering thermometer,
and an apparatus for bringing up a specimen of the water of the
lowest depth. A hole was cut through the ice about the middle
of the river, and the apparatus, attached to a strong cord, was let
down into the water, but the current was so strong that it failed
to reach the bottom. With a heavier weight it sank far enough,
but the pressure forced the cork into the bottle. The next attempt
was successful ; water was drawn from below, and its temperature
ascertained from the self-registering, compared with that indi-
cated by a detached, thermometer. The result of this experiment.

552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in which the writer assisted him, is not remembered, but Mather
declared that he was satisfied with it. Such was his occupation
on one of the coldest days in winter, during the whole of the
Saturday afternoon allowed to the corps for recreation."

On graduating he was assigned to the Seventh Infantry with
the customary rank of second lieutenant. He remained at West
Point as acting assistant instructor of artillery during the sum-
mer encampment of 1828, and was then ordered to the School of
Practice at Jefferson Barracks, where he remained until April,
1829. From April to the end of June he was on frontier duty at
Fort Jessup, La. He was then detailed to serve as acting assist-
ant Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in the
Military Academy, which duty he performed until the summer
of 1835. The assistant professors at the academy at that time
were usually detailed from recent graduates, and their terms of
service rarely exceeded two years. The fact that Lieutenant
Mather was retained in that capacity for six years indicates that
he was an unusually successful instructor. During the recess of
his course of instruction in 1833 he acted as Professor of Geology,
with the permission of the War Department, at Wesleyan Uni-
versity, Middletown, Conn., and the following year received the
honorary degree of A. M. from this university. In the summer
of 1834 he made a geological survey of Windham County, Conn.

Within the first year after his graduation Lieutenant Mather
published in the American Journal of Science a paper entitled
On the Nonconducting Power of Water with Regard to Heat.
While serving as assistant professor at the academy he con-
tributed other papers to the same journal, and wrote a small text-
book. Elements of Geology, which was afterward enlarged and
passed through several editions. He wrote also an account of the
diluvium for the use of the cadets in their study of geology.

On being relieved from duty at the academy he was assigned
to topographical service as an assistant to G. W. Featherston-
haugh in a geological examination of the country from Green
Bay to Coteau des Prairies. This work occupied him during the
latter half of 1835. He made a topographical map of the St. Peter's
(Minnesota) River Valley and a report, which his later associate
Whittlesey says he refused to present to the " pretentious English
geologist in charge of the expedition," but transmitted direct to
the United States Government. When this survey was completed
he was promoted to a first lieutenancy and sent to join his regi-
ment on frontier duty at Fort Gibson, in Idaho Territory. The
following summer he marched into the Choctaw country in com-
mand of his company. Feeling that he could now safely adopt
the pursuit of science as a profession, he resigned his commission
in the army at the end of August, 1836.

SKETCH OF WILLIAM WILLIAMS MATHER. 553

When he had been one year at West Point as assistant pro-
fessor. Lieutenant Mather married his cousin, Miss Emily Maria
Baker. By this marriage he had three sons and three daughters.

After leaving the army Mr. Mather was for a short time Pro-
fessor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in the University
of Louisiana, but before the close of 1836 Governor Marcy, of New-
York, appointed him, together with Ebenezer Emmons, T. A.
Conrad, and Lardner Yanuxem, to make a geological survey of
that State. Each of these principal geologists was assigned to
one of four districts, into which the State was divided for the
purpose. Mather had the first district, which comprised Wash-
ington, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Delaware Counties,
and all that part of the State to the southeast of them. What
this survey accomplished has been told by Dr. James Hall, in the
Popular Science Monthly for April, 1883. The work of the survey
lasted about seven years. During this time Prof. Mather made
five periodical reports and a final report. This last forms a quarto
volume of six hundred and fifty-three pages, with forty-six col-
ored plates, being one of the set of volumes embodying the results
of the survey and published by the State.

In 1837 a State Geological Survey of Ohio was projected and
Prof. Mather was made chief geologist. This ill-fated project
was killed after an existence of little more than two years by a
spasm of economy which attacked the Ohio Legislature of 1839.
Two annual reports had been presented, and were printed as State
documents, and a report on the collections was made afterward,
but there was no final report, and no provision was made for pre-
serving papers, field-notes, and maps. A geological reconnais-
sance of Kentucky, authorized by the Legislature of that State,
was made by Prof. Mather in 1838-'39, his report being issued as
a State document. Both his appointment in Ohio and that in
Kentucky had been accepted with the condition that they should
not prevent the completion of his work in New York.

Colonel Charles Whittlesey has stated, in an article on the Per-
sonnel of the First Geological Survey of Ohio, that after the
suspension of the Ohio survey, Mather bought a tract of several
hundred acres, including the Pigeon Roost, north of the court-
house in Jackson County, and became a citizen of Ohio. He
cleared a part of this land for a farm and built him a comfortable
house on it. Afterward he and Prof. James Hall entered a large
tract of Government land in the southern part of the same county,
on which they erected an iron furnace.

When Mr. Mather settled in Jackson County, in 1841, it was
impossible to obtain sperm oil there for domestic lighting. The
only recourse of the family was to mold tallow candles, which
was very unsatisfactory. In the following winter Mr. Mather

554 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

began experimenting on the preparation of oil from lard. He
placed the lard in a canvas bag and suspended it in a warm room,
thus obtaining by the slow process of dripping an oil that the
family used in lamps. An account of these experiments was pub-
lished, and is believed to have been the starting point of the pro-
duction of lard oil, which has since become so extensive.

About the time the field work of the New York survey was
finished. Prof. Mather became Professor of Natural Science in
the Ohio University at Athens. He held this position from 1842
to 1845 and from 1847 to 1850, being vice-president and acting
president in 1845. The period from 1845 to 1847 was occupied in
examining mineral lands for mining companies, mainly about
Lake Superior, but also in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachu-
setts. During the first quarter of 1846 he was acting Professor of
Chemistry and Geology in Marietta College, his other engage-
ments making him unwilling to accept the professorship. In the
winter of 1845 he began a series of experiments on the extraction
of bromine from the bitter waters of the salt works near Athens,
Ohio. At that time bromine, which can now be had for sixty
cents a pound, was selling at sixteen dollars an ounce. The results
of his investigations were published in the American Journal of
Science. They showed that bromine could be obtained from these
waters for much less than it was then costing, and resulted in the
establishment of a plant at Pomeroy, Ohio, which produces the
greater part of the world's present supply of this substance.

In similar public and private employments the rest of his life
was passed. He was Agricultural Chemist for the State of Ohio,
and Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture from 1850 to 1854.
During part of this time he edited the Western Agriculturist,
and during the last year was member for Ohio of the United
States Board of Agriculture. He also continued to make exami-
nations of mineral lands. His first wife having died, he married
in 1851 Mrs. Mary (Harries) Curtis, who survived him. By this
marriage he had one son. The person of Prof. Mather was large
and robust, and he had a great capacity for physical and mental
labor. He died February 26, 1859, in Columbus, Ohio, at the age
of fifty-four. His death was sudden, and was ascribed to a com-
plication of dropsy and paralysis.

In addition to his writings already mentioned. Prof. Mather
contributed frequent papers to the American Journal of Science
and other scientific periodicals, and he wrote many reports on the
explorations made in the course of his professional work. He
received the degree of LL. D. from Brown University in 1855, was
a member of twenty-five scientific and literary organizations, a
life-member of many religious associations, and for fifteen years
a trustee of Granville College.

SKETCH OF WILLIAM WILLIAMS MATHER.

555

In his various expeditions lie collected large numbers of min-
erals and geological specimens. His collection was much increased
by exchanges with American and foreign geologists, and at his
death contained about twenty-six thousand specimens. At pres-
ent it is owned by his son Richard, of Ironton, Ohio.

Mr. Austin thus describes his character : " Equable in his dis-
position and gentle in his manners, considerate of others and just
in his judgment of them, modest, but manly and self-reliant, thor-
oughly versed in the branches of science to which he devoted him-
self, he had neither dogmatism nor ostentation. As he observed
in a letter to a personal friend, who differed from him in regard
to a geological question, * I am not wedded to any theory, but seek
the truth — and when found adopt it.' " He was not inclined to
court popularity, neither was his manner forbidding. Letters
preserved by his family and friends give abundant evidence of
his gentle disposition, firm principles, and high sense of honor.

The supremacy of his will-power over physical pain is illus-
trated in the following anecdote : " While making an examina-
tion of coal lands near Pomeroy, in Ohio, he was wounded in the
second finger of his right hand. This wound induced a partial
paralysis, and required an amputation of the finger. The cause
of it was supposed to be a snake bite. As soon as he was con-
vinced by the examination that amputation was inevitable, he
directed the surgeon to procure a block, a chisel, and a mallet,
and, placing his finger on the block, told him to sever the finger at
one blow. This was attempted, but proved a sad failure. The
chisel was too thin and highly tempered, and the edge crumbled.
Nevertheless, he directed the surgeon to go on, and several blows
were required before a complete severance could be made ; although
in this painful operation the bone was crushed instead of being
cut, he bore it without flinching."

The substantial national reputation as a geologist won by
William W. Mather was the result of the steady and conscientious
application of a natural aptitude. "Not possessing the genius
which dazzles," says his friend Austin, "he had the intellect
which, continually improved by exercise, achieved valuable re-
sults by patient and conscientious industry. What duty de-
manded, that he performed regardless of consequences, either to
himself or others. Not indifferent to fame, he never sought it by
doubtful or devious courses. His object was not to enhance his
reputation, but faithfully to do the work before him. Through
the whole of his active and laborious life of thirty years in the
cause of science, in all the various and important public positions
which he occupied, no breath of censure assailed his integrity,
which was a law of Nature with him, rather than a choice or a
principle."

556

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

%Siilox^s ^aMje*

WOMEN AND POLITICS.

THE Monthly has lately given
place to two articles on the sub-
ject of the demand which is now being
made by some women on behalf of
their sex to be allowed to participate
in political life on a footing of per-
fect equality with men. One of our
contributors has tried to show cause
why the demand should not be
granted, taking the ground that the
change would be injurious to society
as a whole and particularly injuri-
ous to the female sex. The other
treats the arguments of the first with
scorn, and, if we are not mistaken,
betrays not a little of that "antago-
nism of the sexes " which neverthe-
less she declares to be " unnatural and
vicious." The question is one which
ought to be discussed with complete
dispassionateness; and we think that
on this score there was no fault to
find with the earlier of the two con-
tributions, that by Mr. George F.
Talbot, in our May number.

Our second contributor. Miss Alice
B. Tweedy, disclaims the idea that
"woman suffrage is proposed as a
panacea for social evils, or that it
will usher in a millennial condition.
Man," she adds, " would be dis-
franchised if such requirement was
made of his vote." The retort is
sharp, but is it logical ? Miss
Tweedy's main contention is that a
suffrage restricted to men is funda-
mentally insufficient for the best
social results ; and yet she does not
want that complete system of voting
which she advocates judged by any
higher standard than the present in-
complete system. If, however, wom-
an suffrage is not "proposed as a
panacea for social evils," what is ex-
pected of it? Our contributor says

that "stringent laws are needed to
prevent various evils, and to make
certain offenses punishable" ; add-
ing that " women are quick to rec-
ognize vicious tendencies that men
with a greed for money-getting often
overlook." "Men with a greed for
money-getting" is a phrase which
suggests reflections. What is the
chief cause of the greed which men
display for money ? We do not think
we are far wrong in saying that it is
the social ambition of the women of
their families. It is women far more
than men who establish social ideals;
and, so far as there is a scramble for
money, it is their scramble, to say
the least, quite as much as the
men's.

This, however, is a side issue : the
contention that concerns us is that
laws are wanted to make certain
offenses punishable that are not
punishable now; and that women,
being quicker than men to recognize
vicious tendencies, would get such
laws passed if they only had the
suffrage. This is a case in which a
few examples would be very service-
able. The proposed laws are either
such as would recommend themselves
to the approval and support of men,
or they are such as would not so
recommend themselves. If they are
of the former kind, they can get
passed now ; if they are of the latter
kind, it is presuming upon an easy
compliance worthy of the immortal
Captain Reece, R. N., to ask men to
make a constitutional change for the
express purpose of defeating their
own views and principles. Our con-
tributor acknowledges that in this
country " most of the laws (that were
unjust to women) have been re-
pealed, that many others are a dead

EDITOR'S TABLE.

557

letter, and that still others have been
enacted that favor women." We
must not, however, thank "man's
own sense of equity and right " for
these beneficial changes. Why ?
because they have all been subse-
quent to certain " writings and
arguments" of "women agitators."
So that man does not exhibit any
"sense of equity and right" when
he is influenced by the pleadings of
"women agitators." Poor man! He
is judged very severely these days.
We should like to remark, however,
that post hoc propter hoc is not a
very sound form of argument. Grant
that the " writings and arguments are
a matter of record," it does not fol-
low that these writings and argu-
ments really determined the changes
in legislation referred to. What we
know is that the changes were made,
and that they were made by men un-
der no actual compulsion.

At the outset of her article Miss
Tweedy states that, " if every man
considered it a matter of conscience
to give voice in his vote to the femi-
nine element in his household, it
would put another aspect upon the
demand for woman suffrage." How
is it now, we feel like inquiring, in
this matter ? We imagine that the
great majority of men who put any
conscience into their voting at all do
consider, as far as it is possible to do
so, the interests of the feminine ele-
ment in their households. When a
man votes, he votes for a certain in-
dividual who is seeking a certain
office. The cases in which there can
be any division of interest in the
family as to which candidate should
be supported must be exceptional.
When, however, a man gives a vote
for one side or the other, there is
good reason to believe— corrupt mo-
tives apart— that he thinks, not solely
of his own interest as a male indi-
vidual, but of all the interests, do-
mestic ajid social, which he repre-

sents. In that sense the average
elector's vote is meant to be, and is,
representative. Our contributor's
idea is that. "after a family con-
clave " the husband, father, or broth-
er should "quietly pocket his own
conflicting opinion and support the
measures favored by the home ma-
jority." The plan is beautifully
simple in appearance, but we fear
would present difficulties in practice.
The man who was earning a living
for his family could scarcely be ex-
pected to pocket his opinion upon a
question, such as protection or free
trade, which he believed had an im-
portant bearing on his business
prospects ; but at the same time we
are sure that most men would be
very glad to have any assistance
which the female members of their
households could give them in ar-
riving at right conclusions on ques-
tions of the day.

If women are to be called upon to
vote, it should be for very broad and
sufficient reasons. The mere fact
that some are demanding it is not a
sufficient reason, inasmuch as others,
and probably the great majority, not
only do not join in the demand
but are prepared to oppose it. Let
us endeavor to indicate briefly how
the matter presents itself to our
mind.

In the exercise of the suffrage the
individual asserts himself, claiming
his share of political power. The
vote is given to him for the protec-
tion of his political rights against
the encroachments of other men. On
voting day society is momentarily
resolved into its constituent units.
As long as men alone do the voting,
they are supposed to represent the
non-voting sex. Every man has or
has had a mother, most have one or
more sisters, and a very large propor-
tion have wives. Every man's vote,
therefore, we do not hesitate to say,
ought to express his consciousness of

558

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

and respect for the family tie. To
summon women to the polls would
signify an antagonism between their
interests and those of men. It would
signify that a man and the women
of his household are separate social
units in the same sense in which two
men are, and that they require pro-
tection against one another — that
each must be armed with the ballot
lest the others encroach. This as-
sumption, in our opinion, is not war-
ranted. Making all deductions for
unfortunate instances, the family
is in general a unit, and the wife,
daughter, or sister has no desire to
antagonize the vote of the husband,
father, or brother. How about those
women, it will be asked, who have
no husband, father, or brother to rep-
resent them in a satisfactory manner?
Our answer is that their case does
not appear to us to be one of hard-
ship unless it can be shown that, con-
sidering them as a class apart from
those who have male relatives, they
are suffering through lack of polit-
ical influence. Simply as women
they receive whatever benefit accrues
to the sex in general through such
improvements in the law as are daily
taking place, and through the sym-
pathy with woman which character-
izes the normal man. To a consider-
able extent also the same means of
influence are open to them as are
open to other women. They are
not cut off from society : they can
speak and write ; and how potent
"women agitators" can be in pro-
curing changes of the law Miss
Tweedy has told us. What is main-
ly needed, in our opinion, is the
deepening of the sense of trustee-
ship in men, and that fortunately is
a process which is realizing itself
more and more before our eyes. Far
better so than that all trusteeship
should be snatched from man with
the snappish declaration that hence-
forth his wife, daughter, and sister

will take care of their own interests.
A singular time indeed for such a
change to be made, when things have
so shaped themselves that so earnest
a female suffragist as our contribu-
tor is hard put to it to say what
the disadvantages are under which
women labor through man's control
of the suffrage, or what laws they
want passed which if duly explained
and urged they could not now get
passed !

There are other views of the
question which we have only space
to glance at. We can not lose sight
of the fact that all law means com-
pulsion—physical compulsion in the
last resort ; and this to our mind
points to the conclusion that the re-
sponsibility for making laws should
rest with those who could if neces-
sary fight for their enforcement. It
has before been pointed out that the
situation which would be created if
a large majority of women, in com-
bination with a minority of men,
passed laws repugnant to a large and
effective majority of men, would be
a very critical one for social order.
Yet if nothing of this kind is going
to happen, it is difficult to see where
the special influence of woman's vote
will come in.

Another point deserving of con-
sideration is that the male sex, when
all is said and done, is the progress-
ive sex. Mr. Havelock Ellis's in-
teresting and certainly far from
prejudiced book on Man and Woman
makes this clear. Broadly speaking,
woman shows the statical, man the
dynamical, aspect of humanity, and,
as the work of legislation is in its
nature continuous and progressive,
it seems natural that it should be
intrusted to that sex which best
represents the onward movement of
the race. Here, however, we must
adjourn the discussion, which is one
difiicult to confine within narrow
limits. Much probably remains to

I

EDITOR'S TABLE.

559

be said on botli sides, and we have
no doubt the soundest arguments
will prevail in the end.

THE DEVIL IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

A FEW weeks ago a most extraor-
dinary story appeared in the daily
papers of this city — a story of a panic
that had occurred in one of our pub-
lic schools in consequence of a state-
ment made by a little girl that she
had seen the devil coming into the
building. It was at the hour of the
noon recess, and the boys and girls
were in their respective playrooms.
No sooner had the words been ut-
tered than all the girls in the room
were seized with abject terror and
began to scream in a frenzied man-
ner, begging and praying to be saved
from the fiend. The boys, whose
room adjoined that of the girls, heard
the shrieks and became almost equal-
ly terror-stricken. When the teach-
ers appeared on the scene they could
not for some time learn what the
cause of the excitement was, so hys-
terical had the whole mass of the
children become. Shortly a crowd
gathered round the building, largely
composed of women who had chil-
dren in the school, and who, when
they heard that the devil had ap-
peared on the premises, became per-
fectly frantic themselves. The police
having been sent for took possession
of the building, and with consider-
able difficulty peace was finally re-
stored.

It would appear from this that
the devil superstition is not quite so
extinct in the community as most of
us perhaps have been in the habit of
believing. It seems the children had
been frightening one another for
some time previously with stories of
the devil, ghosts, etc., so that there
had been a certain preparation for
the panic that finally broke out.

This is a matter, we think, in which
teachers might very properly inter-
est themselves a little. It does no
small child good to believe in a
devil capable of donning the con-
ventional horns and tail and start-
ing out on errands of destruction;
and it is not probable that any im-
portant theological doctrine could be
upset if children were told that such
a devil was really a negligible quan-
tity. There ought to be some way
of talking even to very young chil-
dren which would tend to take their
thoughts off ghostly mysteries of all
kinds, and concentrate them on
what is beautiful and interesting and
healthful in the world around them.
The true corrective to devil worship
— and all fear of the devil is a kind of
worship — is the study of Nature and
of the powers inherent in Nature.
It should not be difficult to make
children feel that there is really no
scope left for the devil in the world
as we know it to-day. Of course, if
their parents or Sunday-school teach-
ers, on the other hand, tell them that
the devil goes about like a roaring
lion seeking whom he may devour,
the more wholesome teaching which
we are advocating may be so far an-
tagonized. No effort should, how-
ever, be spared in the public schools
to put all the thoughts of the chil-
dren on a natural and rational basis,
and thus as far as possible to secure
for them immunity against hurtful
and degrading superstitions. This
incident should be taken to heart
by teachers generally, as showing
the importance of knowing what
thoughts are really engaging the
minds of their pupils. The devil has
had his day — he had a good thou-
sand years of human history pretty
much to himself — and there is really
no impropriety in trying to keep him
out of the schools of modern New
York.

56o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

In his recently published History of the Warfare of Science,* Dr. An-
drew D. White has given the world a work of great practical value— a
work to which we can confidently refer any one who desires to know
not only what is thought to-day in the principal departments of scien-
tific inquiry, but by what stages the crude and illogical fancies of an
earlier period gave way to conclusions founded on observation and in-
duction. The title of Dr. White's book, we have no doubt, will give
offense in certain quarters, but it would be difficult to say how the actual
content of the book could be otherwise expressed. It is a narrative of con-
flict in which we invariably find that conclusions derived from the study
of facts have had to make their way against opinions resting on the sup-
posed authoritative utterances of a sacred book. In whatever direction we
turn we find that theology has been beforehand with science in telling men
what to believe, even in matters that turn on the evidence of the senses, and
that science has to climb over mountains of obstruction and wage many a
desperate battle before it can secure the right to deliver its message to man-
kind. How can this conflict be described otherwise than as Dr. White has
described it ? It is not a conflict merely between true science and false
science, between sound views and unsound views, but a conflict between the
observation of Nature and of facts generally and an utterly unreasoning
adherence to things said. It is a struggle of data against dicta, science
taking its stand on the former and theology on the latter. It is true that
theology has, in these later days, reconsidered its position, and consented
to hand over to the jurisdiction of science vast regions of thought which it
once assumed to rule with absolute authority ; but none the less was it the-
ology which fought science step by step in the past, and that not by argu-
ment in any true sense, but by the weapons of physical force, and often in
a spirit of intolerable arrogance and cruelty.

Although the role in which theology is necessarily made to appear in
the volumes before us is a decidedly unamiable one, it would be unjust to
Dr. White not to recognize the kindly and charitable spirit in which his
work is written. He deplores the crimes against intellectual liberty that
were perpetrated by ecclesiastical powers, but he rarely excites our enmity
against the individuals concerned. He shows that they acted according to
their lights, that their judgments were overpowered by the authority which
it was common in their day to ascribe to sacred texts, and that, in resisting
the most convincing demonstrations of scientific truth, they honestly be-
lieved they were following a surer and higher guidance. To them science,
or the observation of Nature, represented at best the unaided operations of
the human intellect, whereas Holy Writ contained the direct and authentic
teaching of the Divine Spirit. How, then, could they hesitate between the
two ? How could they fail to consider as guilty of dangerous impiety those
who ventured to set up the former against the latter ? As we read Dr.

* History of the Warfare of Science with Theolopjy in Christendom. By Andrew D. White, LL. B.,
L. H.D. 2vols., 8vo, New York: D. Appleton & Co. Price, $5.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 561

White's interesting pages we are made to feel the strength of the theological
ease as it presented itself to the minds of churchmen and devout helievers.
The Scriptures were divinely inspired : that was the first postulate. The
Scriptures stated so and so in express terms, and had been understood and
accepted in their plain sense by the greatest doctors and saints of the past,
men whose dicta had an authority only less than that of Scripture itself.
That was the second half of the argument. Was the authority of Scripture
to be impugned and discredited because a few men of no authority, as au-
thority was reckoned in those days, professed to have made this or that dis-
covery in one region or another of physical observation ? To let Scripture
go was to let everything go, to destroy the whole basis of church authority,
the whole foundation of social and moral order; and how to twist Scripture
into seeming agreement with the alleged discoveries they had not yet
learned. How the intellectual life of Europe was crushed for centuries
under the weight of scriptural authority, how the scientific impulse, though
a thousand times slain, a thousand times revived, how little by little true
views of Nature forced themselves upon a priest-led world, and how in
the end Science too gathered to herself authority and made for herself the
dominant position which she enjoys to-day — all this, most graphically and
sympathetically related, is the burden of the two handsome volumes be-
fore us.

There is one point upon which Dr. White has especially labored to be fair.
He has not laid, as some writers have been more than half disposed to do,
the whole reproach of obstructing and persecuting science upon the Roman
Catholic Church. He makes it plain that science, so to speak, had to be
persecuted by any body of men who were in the toils of such a theology as
that which the early Christian Church formed for itself and bequeathed to
later ages ; and he shows how the several Protestant churches just in so
far as, and so long as, they held to that theology were no less hostile to
rising science than the old Church had been. It would indeed almost seem
as if, within the last generation, the Catholic Church had more frankly
made its peace with the methods and conclusions of science than the sev-
eral Protestant churches have done ; certainly the most recent examples of
opposition to science which are quoted in these volumes are drawn from the
proceedings and utterances of Protestant authorities, not of Catholic ones.

It is only right, however, that we should give a more adequate indica-
tion than we have yet done of the scope of the present work. The first
chapter, which is entitled From Creation to Evolution, deals with the his-
tory of opinion on the subject of the origin and development of the phys-
ical universe. The crude ideas of ancient times are well represented, the
author tells us, by a design which appears in one of the stained-glass win-
dows of the cathedral at Ulm in Wiirtemberg, where the Almighty appears
as busily engaged in the creation of animals, and has just turned off his
hands an elephant fully accoutered with armor, harness, and housings,
ready for war. In like manner we may still see in the Egyptian temples
at Philae and Denderah representations of the Nile gods modeling
lumps of clay into men. " So literal," says our author, " was the whole
conception of the work of creation that in these days it can scarcely
be imagined. The Almighty was represented in theological literature, in
the pictured Bibles, and in works of art generally, as a sort of enlarged and
venerable Nuremberg toy maker." The slightest statement of Scripture in

VOL. XLIX. — 45

562 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

regard to the constitution of the natural world was a sufficient foundation
for the most highly elaborated beliefs; and the "yarns," if we may so
designate them, which were told about the dragon, the unicorn, the levia-
than, and one or two other unique animals mentioned in the Bible showed
plainly that the imagination of our ancestors was in a state of high activity,
whatever may have been the case with their logical faculties. The gap
between such a condition of mind and that which prevails among the edu-
cated classes of our own day is vast; but Dr. White enables us to see by
what successive accretions of knowledge a pathway was made from one to
the other. To-day the idea of development is supreme, and that of crea-
tion, which was the only one our ancestors could entertain, has become
almost an intellectual impossibility. In other words, we do not know how to
go about thinking of creation, while familiarity with the fact of develop-
ment, as it takes place in many ways before our eyes, has caused us to
regard it as the typical and characteristic process by which all the con-
structive work of Nature is wrought.

The second chapter deals with the progress of thought on the subject of
geography, including the form and size of the earth and the once much-
vexed question of the antipodes. The third chapter takes up the subject of
astronomy and gives a deeply interesting account of the struggle for the
establishment of the Copemican system. Dr. White makes it clear that
the opposition to the true view of the universe was almost if not quite as
keen on the part of Protestant as of Catholic churchmen. Luther is quoted
as saying : " People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show
that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and
the moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy ;
but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still,
and not the earth." Melanchthon argued in the same strain, and Calvin
asked who would dare " to place the authority of Copernicus above that of
the Holy Spirit ? " In many universities, we are told, as late as the end of
the seventeenth century, "professors were forced to take an oath not to
hold the Pythagorean — that is, the Copernican — idea as to the movement of
the heavenly bodies." University authorities used to make it their boast
in those days that such pernicious doctrines had no place in their system of
teaching, just as university authorities in our own day — it is our author
who draws the parallel — sometimes boast that they discourage the reading
of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin.

Further chapters are entitled From Genesis to Geology, Antiquity of
Man, Fall of Man and Anthropology, Magic to Chemistry, Miracles to Medi-
cine, Babel to Philology, etc., and all are replete with important informa-
tion interestingly presented. Considered alone as a popular presentation
of modern views upon the great scientific questions of the day, the work de-
serves to be widely read ; but its value is greatly increased by the light which
it sheds upon the development of opinion and the clearness with which it
establishes the contrast between the fruitful methods of science and the un-
fruitful ones of theology in the domain of nature. Finally, it is, as we
have already hinted, written in a large, tolerant, and sympathetic spirit,
suggesting a mind raised altogether above petty prejudices and narrow
enmities. It is a pleasure to us to think that the greater part of the mat-
ter contained in the work was first given to the public in the pages of the
Popular Science Monthly.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

563

The readers of this magazme have already had a chance to enjoy more
than half of Prof. James Sulh/s volume of Studies of Childhood* in the
series of articles which the author has contributed to our pages within the
past two years. The additional matter consists of an introduction, part of
the chapter on the Young Draughtsman, about ninety pages of Extracts
from a Father's Diary, and a chapter on George Sand's Childhood based on
that talented woman's Story of my Life. Prof. Sully by no means regards
these studies as a complete treatise on child-psychology. They "merely
deal,"' he says, " with certain aspects of children's minds which happen to
have come under my notice, and to have had a special interest for me,"

The first topic discussed is imagination — the happy faculty that gives
playmates to the child isolated from others by distance, dangers of the out-
door world, illness, or other circumstances, and that turns familiar sur-
roundings into scenery and accessories appropriate for imitating any de-
sired activity of adults. From an examination of the examples that he has
collected Prof. Sully concludes that imaginativeness varies greatly in dif-
ferent children, and that " there must be a much wider and fijier investiga-
tion of children's action and talk before we can feel quite sure that we have
got at their mental whereabouts." He maintains further that imagination
and practicalness are not mutually exclusive in the minds of children, and
gives evidence to show that flirst one tendency, then the other, may be dom-
inant for days, and also that the one may succeed the other with astonish-
ing rapidity in the same child. Probably the most entertaining chapter is
that on The Little Linguist, in which the various phases of the child's
struggle with the mother tongue are described and copiously exemplified.
It is peculiarly difficult for the adult to put himself in the child's place
with respect to fear of darkness, unusual objects, etc., so that the data that
Prof. Sully is able to furnish on this subject are especially welcome. The
part of the volume that will probably most interest the non-scientific
parent or teacher is the two chapters bearing on the question why children
seem to be imbued with so much concentrated naughtiness. Prof. Sully
shows that it is not necessary to assume innate viciousness to account for
acts of the child that inflict pain on other persons and on animals, for per-
sistent lying, or for disobedience. Further, he shows that the child has a
natural tendency to orderly procedure which needs only to be encouraged
by consistency on the part of the parent to make the departures from right
conduct very few. Prof. Sully draws conclusions freely from his facts,
but probably no one would affirm more readily than he that these con-
clusions should be held subject to modification in the light of further
evidence. It might have been better if this caution had been explicitly
stated, or if some of the conclusions had been less confidently expressed.

GENERAL NOTICES.

It is doubtful if any more generally in-
teresting subject will be found for the Li-
brary of Useful Stories than the one treated

♦ Studies of Childhood. By James Sully.
Pp. 527, 8vo. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Price, $2.50.

in the second volume that Mr. Chambers ♦
has contributed. It is evident also that this
author has the faculty of making a truly

♦ The Story of the Solar System. By George
F. Chambers. Pp. 188, Kimo. London : George
Newnee, Ltd. 1*. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. 40 cents.

564

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

popular scientific book. His text is every-
where readable, and his pages never bristle
with repellent figures. Mr. Chambers gives
a chapter to each of the planets, and one
each to the sun, moon, minor planets, and
those impressive wanderers, the comets.
His mode of treatment gives the reader a
personal acquaintance, as it were, with each
member of the system by making prominent
those characteristics of each which are of
chief interest. His chapter on the sun
gives especial attention to sun spots ; that on
the earth to refraction, twilight, and the
twinkling of stars which are phenomena of
its atmosphere ; that on Mars to its canals
that on Jupiter to its satellites ; that on Sat-
urn to its rings ; that on Uranus, as also that
on Neptune, to the story of its discovery.
On account of the lively popular interest in
comets the chapter on these bodies is made
second only to that on the sun in fullness.
There are twenty-eight illustrations.

We are disappointed in this book — and
glad to be,* From its title we inferred that
it was a tissue of dogmatic assertion and
ecstatic speculation ; but examination shows
it to contain a clearly arranged and vigor-
ously presented chain of evidence concerning
the physical and mental development of man.
This is followed by a firm statement of be-
lief in the teachings of the Bible. It con-
sists of a series of lectures delivered on the
foundation given by S. F. B. Morse to Union
Theological Seminary with one additional
chapter. The students who heard the lec-
tures received a valuable addition to their
equipment for their life work, and if the
persons who are attracted by its title will
read the book they will derive probably
imexpected benefit from it. After an ex-
amination of the manner in which the prob-
lem of man's past has been largely solved.
Prof. Tyler starts with the amoeba, and in
three chapters traces the course of animal
evolution up through the invertebrates
and lower vertebrates to man. In the
next chapter mental development is simi-
larly traced. The general nature of the
process by which man has been produced is
then discussed. "The animal is at first

* The Whence and the Whither of Man. By
John M. Tyler. Pp. 812, 12mo. New York :
Charles Scrihner's Sons. Price, gl.75.

guided," says Prof. Tyler, "by natural se-
lection through the survival of the most
suitable reflex actions, then by inherited
tendencies, finally by his own conscious in-
telligence and will. The first motives are
the appetites, but these are succeeded by
ever higher motives as the perceptions be-
come clearer and more subtile relations in
environment are taken into account." Con-
formity to environment, as our author de-
scribes the process, enables an animal to sur-
vive his less fortunate fellows ; but if the
animal is to progress it must keep such con-
formity secondary to obedience of the laws of
its own structure and being. Man as he is
to-day is the outcome of such a line of con-
duct, and his future upward progress de-
pends on his measuring himself by ever
higher and higher standards. It may be
questioned whether this adaptation of men
and animals to their surroundings ever be-
comes so largely voluntary as Prof. Tyler
seems to represent. In the course of this
discussion the author passes out of the field
of science into that of religion, and in a
chapter specifically devoted to the teach-
ings of the Bible he insists on the reality of
revelation and the efficacy of prayer, and
gives some practical advice to young preach-
ers. A chapter not forming one of the
lectures concludes the volume. This deals
with some of the present aspects of evo-
lution, including Nageli's theory of inher-
ent initial tendency and giving especial at-
tention to Weismann's views.

The widespread use of electricity and
the numerous casualties resulting from ig-
norant or careless wiring make Mr. Robb's
book* on electrical wiring a very timely
one. It has evidently been intended mainly
for the use of architects and insurance
companies, but the text is so simply and
clearly written that the ordinary house-
holder will have no trouble in following it.
Insulation, which is one of the most impor-
tant portions of electric installation, is first
considered ; then the proportioning of wires
to current, and the various systems of
distribution and methods of wiring. The

* Electric Wiring, for the Use of Architects,
Underwriters, and the Owners of Buildings. By
Russell Robb. Pp. 183-800. New York : Mac-
millan & Co. $2.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

56;

remainder of the book is taken up by a con-
sideration of the national code of rules for
electric wiring. This code, which has gradu-
ally been molded into its present shape by
the underwriters, is now generally accepted
by the best electrical companies. It is the
result of a careful study of past accidents
due to faulty wiring, and much experi-
mental work with the various insulators and
electric appliances. As the rules are neces-
sarily short and contain many technical
terms, Mr. Robb has, where necessary, de-
fined the terms, and after each rule has
stated the reasons for it. The book is well
conceived, and should find a large field of
usefulness especially among architects, who,
as the author says, are not nearly so well
up in electrical matters as they should be.

The essay for which a prize of five hun-
dred dollars from the Henry M. Phillips
fund was awarded by the American Philo-
sophical Society in 1896 has been printed in
the Proceedings of the Society. Its subject
is The Theory of the State., and the writer
is George H. Smithy of Los Angeles. Mr.
Smith makes four chief divisions of his dis-
cussion, namely, (1) the nature of the state,
(2) its functions, (3) its rights or rightful
powers, and (4) the principles that should
govern its political organization. In an in-
troductory chapter he criticises the doctrine
of absolute sovereignty as generally received
in modem times, which he regards as stand-
ing in the way of an intelligent investigation
of his subject. After discussing other defini-
tions of the state he defines it as " an autono-
mous society of men," and proceeds to treat
of the functions of such an organization.
The rights or just powers of the state he
treats as a subdivision of jurisprudence,
using this word to mean the whole science
of right. In his final chapter he deals with
the principles of political organization, de-
scribing the several kinds of government,
and discussing the principles that should gov-
ern the distribution of the sovereign powers.

The Elementary Treatise on Electricity
and Magnetism, by O. C. Foster and E. At-
kinson (Longmans, $2.25), affords a sub-
stantial college course in its subject The
work is a translation, considerably modified
with the consent of the author, of Joubert's
Traite Elementaire cf^ledricite. A notable

departure from the original consists in the
introduction of that view of the nature of
electrical phenomena which was originated
by Faraday and developed by Maxwell. This
has involved keeping in view throughout the
volume the dual character of electrification
and emphasizing the essential part played in
familiar electrical phenomena by the dielectric
medium in which they occur. On the same
account the idea of lines and tubes of force
has been early introduced, and charge, capac-
ity, and energy are spoken of as belonging to
the electric field as a whole, rather than to
the conductors which bound it. The work is
almost exclusively devoted to the laws and
principles of the science, giving but little at-
tention to applications and none to history,
and nearly all of its three hundred and
eighty-one illustrations are cuts of laboratory
apparatus or diagrams. The authors have
made more use of mathematical reasoning
than M. Joubert did, so that processes of
calculation by the aid of formulas appear in
every chapter.

It would seem possible to select a labora-
tory manual of chemistry suitable for almost
any class from among those now published.
One recently prepared by Prof. Edward H.
KeiseTj of Bryn Mawr (American Book Com-
pany, 50 cents), furnishes a list of two hun-
dred and sixty-eight elementary experiments
illustrating the properties of the common ele-
ments and the chief laws of chemical action.
Certain of these experiments, designated Lab-
oratory Demonstrations, are intended to be
performed only by one or two of the more
skillful students in the presence of the whole
class. Questions are interspersed with the
directions, some of which can be answered
from the observations made on the experi-
ments, and the rest from the text-book or
lectures that will accompany the manual.

Mr. Arthur H. Hioms, who is the author
of several books on related subjects, has now
written Frinciples of Metallurgy, a some-
what more advanced work than his Ele-
mentary Metallurgy, and containing new
methods that have been introduced in recent
years (Macmillan, $1.60). The arrangement
of the matter is thus outlined in the pref-
ace : " The physical properties of the metals
are considered first ; then the chemical prin-
ciples involved in the various processes are

566

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

explained; the information concerning the
metallic alloys is placed together; this is
succeeded by a description of fluxes, slags,
and refractory materials; the nature and
mode of preparation of different kinds of
fuel are next referred to; then follows a
more detailed description of the metallurgy
of iron and steel, silver, gold, platinum, lead,
copper, zinc, tin, nickel, cobalt, aluminium,
antimony, arsenic, and bismuth." The prop-
erties of each metal are given and something
is told of its uses. There are one hundred
and forty- four illustrations, including cuts of
furnaces and other apparatus, diagrams show-
ing the course of operations, etc.

In a series of chapters which might well
have been sermons, under the title Old
Faiths and New Facts, an effort is made by
William W. Kinsley to show that the beliefs
in miracles, in the efficacy of prayer, in the
divinity of Christ, and in a future life need
not be disturbed by the discoveries of mod-
ern science (Appletons, $1.50). Two chap-
ters of the book have appeared in the Bibli-
otheca Sacra, and those on prayer, at the in-
stance of Bishop J. H. Vincent, were used as
part of the prescribed Chautauqua reading
for 1894. The volume will doubtless help
many who have been dazzled by the new
light of science to retain their religious be-
liefs.

An examination of various abuses in
American public affairs comes to us in a
volume by Frederick W. Schultz, entitled
Politics and Patriotism (Arena Publishing
Company). The author traces the growth
of the American political ideal through colo-
nial times, the Revolutionary period, and,
after some discussion of the later amend-
ments to the Constitution of the United
States, carries his subject through the civil
war and reconstruction periods. He next
criticises the protection and greenback doc-
trines, and shows how selfishness is produc-
tive of many evils in the industrial relations.
Inequalities of taxation are discussed at con-
siderable length, and a series of striking ex-
amples possible imder the laws of Maryland
is given. In the concluding portion of the
volume a brief history of exposures of cor-
ruption in New York, Baltimore, and other
large cities is presented, and a scheme is
offered for securing pure primary elections.

which the author holds is the first step to-
ward municipal reform. Mr. Schultz, who
introduces himself as a man busy with mer-
cantile affairs, writes with much feeling but
temperately, and expresses himself clearly
and concisely. His book is one to stimulate
thought in the average citizen.

Evidently the true reason for the publi-
cation of the collection of Fables and Essays
recently issued by John Bryan is that given
in the preface, namely, " the same reason a
hen lays eggs" — for relief to the author.
Liberty and justice are the two avowed
motives of the book. In the fables, brief
essays, and bits of verse which it contains,
satire and sentiment are mingled. The
ideas that oftenest find expression in its
pages are hatred of industrial and social op-
pression, and of priestcraft, honor and ten-
derness for the natural woman, impatience
with the unnatural, sympathy with the vic-
tims of selfish greed, contempt for arro-
gance and pretense, and intolerance of arti-
ficiality in manners, education, and conduct.
The personality of the author is everywhere
apparent in the volume, and if the reader
does not like that personality, Mr. Bryan
makes it very evident that he need not read
the book (The Arts and Lettres Company,
New York).

A neat little handbook on Physical Meas-
urements, by L. W. Aitsiin and C. B. Thwing^
has just come to hand. It is intended as a
guide for the elementary student in the phys-
ical laboratory, and "simply presupposes
such a knowledge of the principles of physics
as can be gained from a course of general
lectures supplemented by a good text-book."
Each physical law, with the special pieces of
apparatus for applying it to physical meas-
urements, is taken up, and after a thorough
description examples for testing the student's
grasp of the principle are given. The last
fifty pages of the book consist of the tables
necessary for making computations and veri-
fying the results (AUyn & Bacon, $1.50).

The portion of the college curriculum in
which the most valuable and practical knowl-
edge is obtained is the laboratory at any
rate, in the physical sciences, and in some of
the more abstract and difficult subjects, such
as psychology, there is an increasing use of
laboratory methods. In Mechanics, the last

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

S^7

of the Cambridge Natural Science Manuals
to reach us, Prof. R. T. Olazehrook has em-
bodied the results of his experience as a
teacher both in the laboratory and its ad-
junct, the lecture room. The first portion of
the book deals with dynamics, the second
with statics, and the third and last with hy-
drostatics— two hundred and eight pages in
all. Each physical law is illustrated by means

of simple apparatus and experiments, and ex-
amples are scattered through the text for
testing the student's grasp of each principle.
The book is well printed and bound ; illustra-
tions are used where necessary ; and although
the work is by no means a complete treatise,
it seems thoroughly good as far as it goes,
and well suited to the needs of elementary
students (Macmillan, $2.25).

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricnltnral Experiment Stations. Connecti-
cnt Station : 'Nineteenth Annual Report, ]895.—
Illinois Station : Bulletin No. 43. Composition
and Digestibility of Com Ensilage, etc.— Massa-
chupette Station : Bulletins Nos. 38 and 3!», and
Fungous Diseases of Ornamental Plants, by B. D.
Halstead.— Michigan Station : No. 131. Potatoes
and Vegetable Teste, and Some Injurious Insects.
—New Hampshire Station : Surface and Sub-irri-
gation Out of Doors.— Ohio Station : The College
of Agriculture and Domestic Sciences.— United
States Department : Climate and Crop Service for
May, 1896 ; Mexican and Japanese Injurious In-
sects liable to be introduced into the United
States ; Vivisection Report ; Yearbook of De-
partment for 1895.

America and Europe. A Study of Interna-
tional Relations. Essays, by D. A. Wells, E. J.
Phtlps, and Carl Schurz. New York and Lon-
don : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 128. 75 c^'.nts.

Bergen, Fanny D. Current Superstitions, with
an Introduction by W. W. Newell. New York
and London : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 161.

Bulletins and Transactions. Asiatic Society
of Japan, Transactions of, Vol. XXIII.— Boston
Society of Natural History : The Anatomy and
Histology of Candina arenata Gould.— California
State Mining Bureau: Bulletin No. 8, 1895.—
Chicago Academy of Sciences : The Lichen Flora
of Chicago and Vicinity.— Field Columbian Mu-
seum, Contribution to the Ornithology of San
Domingo, and On Sundry Collections of Mam-
mals.--Labor, Department of. Bulletin No. 4.
May, 1896.— Philadelphia Academy of Natiu-al
Sciences. Pp. 233 to 264.— Smithsonian Institu-
tion : Revision of the North American Empidae ;
List of the Lepidoptera collected in Eastern
Africa by Dr. W. L. Abbott ; List of the Lepi-
doptera collected in Somaliland, East Africa, by
Mr. William Astor Chanler and Lieutenant Von
Hoehnel ; List of the Lepidoptera from Aldabra,
Seychelles, and other East African Islands, col-
lected by Dr. W. L. Abbott : List of the Lepidop-
tera collected in Kashmir by Dr. W. L. Abbott.
Preliminary Diagnosis of New Mammals from the
Mexican Border of the United States.— St. Louis
Academy of Science -i : At what Age do Pupils
withdraw from the Public Schools ?— Wagner
Free Institute of Science (Philadelphia) : Trans-
actions, Vol. IV, January, 1896.— Wisconsin, Bul-
letin of University of ; The Problem of Econom-
ical Heat, Light, and Power Supply.

Cams, Paul. Primer of Philosophy. Chicago :
Open Court Publishing Co. Pp. 242.

Catalogues and Announcements. P*reliminary
Announcement of the Forty-llfth Annual Meet-
ing of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science.— Cornell University : Prelimi-
nary Announcement of Courses in Physics ; Hay
Fever Association of the United States, Manual
of .—Annual Report of the State Geologist of New
Jorsey for 1895.- New York University : Cata-
logue for 1895-'9fi.— Minnesota Fire Warden, Fhst
Annual Report of, 1895.— Missouri, University of :
Constitution of Scientific Association of.— Purdue
University: Commercial Fertilizer Bulletin.— Rose

Polytechnic Institute : Announcements of Depart-
ments of Engineering, Electrical, Mechanical, and
Civil, and Department of Chemistry, and Cata-
logue for 1896.

Coogler, J. Gordon. Poems. Columbia, S.C:
Printed by the Author. Pp. 69. 50 cents.

Cuba, Spanish Rule in. From the Official
Records of Madrid. Pp. 67.

Drawing, Uniform Questions in. Syracuse :

C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 178. 50 cents.

Du Bois, H. The Magnetic Circuit in Theory
and Practice. Translated by Dr. Atkinson. New
York and London : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp.
862. $4.

Ethnology, Thirteenth Annual Report of the
Bureau of, l891-''92. Pp. 462.

Fairchild, H. L. Glacial Genesee Lakes. Bul-
letin of Geological Society of America.

Fish Commission, Bulletin of United States,
Vol. XV, 1895. Pp.475.

Hertz, Heinrich, Miscellaneous Papers of,
with an Introduction by P. Lenard. Translated
by D. E. Jones and G. A. Schott. New York and
London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 340. S3.25.

Hewitt, Abram S. Liberty, Learning, and
Property. Pp. 33 (paper).

Hinsdale, B. A. Teaching the Language-Arts
(International Education Series). New York:

D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 205. $1.

Ulinois Wesleyan Magazine, The, Devoted to
the Interests of Graduates and Non-resident Stu-
dents. March, 1896, Vol. I, No. 1. Pp. 58.

Indiana Department of Geology. Twentieth
Annual Report, 1895. Pp. 520.

Iowa Geological Survey, Vol, V. Annual Re-
port for 1895. Pp. 452.

Jordan, David Starr. Care and Culture of
Men. San Francisco : The Whitaker & Ray
Company. Pp. 267. $1.50.

Keene, Prof. Hypnotism. Chicago : Published
by the Author. Pp. 41.

Lecky, W. E. H. Democracy and Liberty.
Two vols. New York and London : Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 1200. $5-

Le Dantec, F61ix. Th6orie Nouvelle de la Vie.
Paris : F61ix Alcan. Pp. 323. 6 fr.

Marlatt, C. L. Revision of the Nematinae of
North America (United States Department of Ag-
riculture).

Martin, Edward A. The Story of a Piece of
Coal (The Library of Useful Stories). New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 164 40 cents.

May, Major E. S. Guns and Cavalry. Boa-
ton : Rcberte Bros. Pp. 220. %\ 25.

Missouri Botam'cal Garden. Seventh Annual
Report. St. Louis, Mo. : Published by Board of
Trustees. Pp. 209.

Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.
Proceedings for January, February, and March,
1896. Pp.209.

568

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Reprints : Allen, H., M. D., and Moore, H. F. :
A Biographical Sketch of John Adam Ryder
(Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of
Natural Sciences, April, 1896).— Atkinson, Archer :
Longevity (Virginia Medical Journal, February,
1894).— Bolton, H. C. : Review of Berthelot's
Cf ntributions to the History of Chemistry (Jour-
nal of the American Chemical Society, 3Iay,
1896).— Brewer, W. H. ; Earth Tremors at Niag-
ara Falls (Yale Scientific Monthly, May, 1896).—
Brinton, D. G. : An Ethnologist's View of His-
tory (New Jersey Historical Society, January 28,
1896).— Clarke, Henry L. : The Life History of
Star Systems (Popular Astronomy, No. 30).—
Dorsey, George A. : History of the Study of
Anthropology at Harvard University (Denison
Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 2, Granville, Ohio). Fair-
child, H. L. : Kame Areas in Western New York
South of Irondequoit and Sodus Bays (Journal of
Geology, February and March, 189G), and the
Kame Moraine at Rochester, N. Y. (American
Geologist, July, 1895).— Hague, Arnold : The
Age of the Igneous Rocks of the Yellowstone
National Park (American Journal of Science,
June, 1896).— Hale, E. M., M. D. : The Heart at
the Beginning and Ending of the Menstrual Life
(Hahnemannfan Monthly, June, 1896).— Halibur-
ton, R. G. : Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to
Pygmy Races (Proceedings of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, Vol.
XLIV, 1895).— Hopkins, T. C. : The Carboniferous
Sandstones of Western Indiana (Twenty-sixth

Annual Report, Department of Geology and Natu-
ral Resources of Indiana).— Johnson, H. L. E. : A
Contribution to the Study of Atresia of the Uter-
ine Canal after the Menopause, with a Report of
Three Cases (Journal of the American Medical
Association, December 7, 1895).— Keyes. Charles
Rollin : An Epoch in the History of American
Science (Annals of the Iowa Historical Quarterly,
Third Series, Vol. II), and Missouri Building and
Ornamental Stones (Stone, Vols. XII and XIH,
1896).— Mason, O. T. : Introduction of the Iron
Age into America (American Anthropologist,
June, 1896).— Sturtevant Prelinna;an Library of
the Jfissouri Botanical Garden (Seventh Annual
Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, St.
Louis, 189G).

Ross, Hon. George W. : The School System
of Ontario (Canada) (International Education
Series). New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 203.

Shcrborn, C. D. An Index to the Genera and
Species of the Foraminifera. Part II. Nou to
Z (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 1031).

Spratt, Leonidas. Nature of an Universe of
Life. Jacksonville, Florida : Vance Printing
Company. Pp. 210.

Tuttle, Herbert B. Chemistry at a Glance.
New York. Pp. 59. 60 cents.

Witchell, Charles A. The Evolution of Bird
Song. New York : MacmiUan & Co. London :
Adam and Charles Black. Pp. 248. $1.75.

^ragmjetxts xrf ^titntt.

Jfutiitive Value of Meats. — In a recent
article on the value of meats as food, in the
Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, Prof. R. H.
Chittenden corrects several very widespread
misconceptions regarding meat values. He
says : " The cheapest food is that which sup-
plies the most nutriment for the least money.
The well-known maxim that ' the best is the
cheapest ' is not true of foods, for the term
best in this coimection is ordinarily applied to
that which has the finest appearance, the finest
flavor, the most tender structure, etc. Thus,
there is no more nutriment in a pound of pro-
teid from tenderloin steak than in the same
weight of proteid from the neck or shoulder,
and yet note the great difference in cost. The
tenderloin will not supply the body's needs one
particle better than the coarse-grained meat
from some other quarter. A great deal of
money is spent by people who can ill afford
it, because of this notion that the more ex-
pensive cuts are the more nutritious ; much
of it is perhaps attributable to lack of knowl-
edge of the art of cookery. The housewife,
not knowing how to properly prepare the
cheaper grades of meat so as to make them
palatable and attractive, concludes that they
are not as nutritious as the more tender and

juicy cuts that can be bought only at a
higher price, and which require little judg-
ment or skill to prepare for the table. Here
is a field for missionary labor that will well
repay the cultivation. Knowledge of this
kind may be advantageously acquired by
those whose means render it perhaps less
vital ; for a waste of food material is a crime
against both pocket and morals." In speak-
ing of the value of meat as a food in relation
to the other food stuffs. Prof. Chittenden
says : " Various extractives, active principles,
etc., all endowed with more or less physi-
ological properties, are likewise ingested as a
part of the meat, and add their effects, per-
haps to aid in keeping up the tone and vital-
ity of the organism. Meats have certain
stimulating properties, which distinguish
them from the grosser vegetable foods. In
this respect they might perhaps almost be
classed with such articles as tea, coffee, etc.,
in their power of ministering to the wants of
the brain and nerves. As Sir William Roberts
well says : ' The struggle for existence, or -
rather for a higher and better existence,
among civilized men is almost exclusively a
brain struggle, and these brain foods must
be regarded as a very important part of the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

569

equipment for that struggle. If we compare
as best we may with our limited information
the general characteristics of the high-fed
and low-fed classes and races, there is, I
think, to be perceived a broad distinction
between them. In regard to bodily strength
and longevity the difference is inconsider-
able, but in regard to mental qualities the
distinction is marked. The high-fed classes
and races display, on the whole, a richer
vitality, more momentum and individuality
of character, and a greater brain power than
their low-fed brethren ; and they constitute
the soil or breeding ground out of which
eminent men chiefly arise,' It is well under-
stood that differences in mental capacity may
be explained, in part at least, by differences
in the type of nutrition of the brain cells,
and nutrition is unquestionably modified and
influenced by the quality of the food con-
sumed. To again quote Sir William Roberts :
' Trainers will tell you that the hunter and
the draught horse require to be fed differ-
ently. In the hunter is wanted rapid libera-
tion of energy within a comparatively short
space of time ; in the draught horse is wanted
a more gradual liberation of energy and for
a longer period. The hunter is fed on a con-
centrated and stimulating food, the heaviest
and most expensive oats, which, if I may so
express it, is the beef of the vegetable feeders,
while the draught horse is fed on a lower and
less stimulating diet — on Indian com and
chopped hay, food which tends to increase
bulk and weight.' So with mankind, the
nature and quality of the nutrient — aside
from its containing the due proportion of the
several requisite elements — exert a specific
influence upon the character of mind and
body; and meats may be fairly placed in
the front rank of foods as giving important
aid toward that higher physical and mental
development which belongs to the civiliza-
tion of the nineteenth century."

Uraninm. — Until the introduction of the
electric furnace by M. H. Moissan, the oxides
of many of the metals had been looked upon
as irreducible by carbon. M. Moissan, three
years ago, isolated the metal uranium in this
way. The metal, when pure, is perfectly
white, and is not magnetic. It has the re-
markable property of emitting invisible phos-
phorescent rays capable of producmg photo-

graphic effects through a medium opaque to
ordinary light vibrations. The effects are
precisely similar to those previously obtained
from uranium salts, except that they are
nearly four times as intense. The chemical
behavior of uranium depends to a certain ex-
tent upon its state of division. The metal
obtained by electrolysis, which is finely di-
vided, takes fire in fluorine, is attacked by
chlorine at 180°, by bromine at 210°, and by
iodine at 260°, the reaction in all cases being
complete. The powdered metal is completely
burned in pure oxygen at I7u°, and decom-
poses water slowly at the ordinary temper-
ature, but more quickly at 100°. Uranium
is one of the rapidly increasing group of
metals which combine directly with nitrogen
at high temperatures, and hence in its prepa-
ration it is necessary to work in such a
manner as to completely exclude the air.

Working in Compressed Air. — E. W.

Moir, in a paper read before a recent meet-
ing of the Society of Arts, gave some inter-
esting data regarding the effects upon the
human system of working in compressed air
and the various practical means of lessening
the danger and overcoming any sudden col-
lapses. Mr. Moir had charge of the work on
the Hudson River Tunnel for a time, and
has had some connection with most of the
underground tunneling ventures of the past
two decades. He says : " When I first came
to New York the men had been dying at the
rate of one man per month out of forty-five
or fifty men employed, a death-rate of about
twenty-five per cent per annum. With a
view to improving this state of things, an air
compartment like a boiler was made, in which
the men could be treated homceopathically,
or reimmersed in compressed air. It was
erected near the top of the shaft, and when
a man was overcome or paralyzed, as I have
seen them often, completely unconscious and
unable to use their limbs, they were carried
into the compartment, and the air pressiure
raised to about one half or two thirds of that
in which they had been working, with imme-
diate improvement The pressure was then
lowered at the very slow rate of one pound
per minute, or even less, the time allowed for
equalization being from twenty-five to thirty
minutes, and, even in severe cases, the men
went away quite cured. No man ever suffers

570

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

by going into compressed air, unless his
Eustachian tubes are blocked, in which case
intense pain is produced, owing to the great
difference in pressure between the two sides
of the ear drum. The above-described lock
should be used immediately on prostrations
occurring, as it seems to be of little value
after some time has elapsed. A very slight
increase of carbonic oxide (if it much exceeds
one part in a thousand) in the compressed air
chamber leads to increased sickness. The
impurity never affects a man while below,
but only after he comes out, and we had
mules working under pressure in New York
for over twelve months at a stretch, which
sold at good figures after coming out. Every
man should be medically examined, and hot
coffee should be given to each man before
he comes out of compressed air. A warm
room to dress in and extra clothing for pas-
sage through the lock should be supplied.
At the Blackwall Tunnel, with the experience
gained and attention to the above points, we
have not had a single death, notwithstanding
the fact that we had men working under a
pressure of thirty-seven pounds per square
inch for some time. Generally sparely built
men, not too full-blooded, are those who
stand air pressure best. A man with weak
lungs may work and improve, but one with a
weak heart or any apoplectic tendency should
not go in at all. Drink of all classes is bad,
but such drinks as tend to thicken the blood
are worse than spirits."

The Eleetro-metallnrgy of Alnmininm. —

Dr. Joseph W. Richards recently delivered
before the Franklin Institute a very interest-
ing and instructive lecture on the electro-
metallurgy of aluminium. Several years ago
the daily press gave considerable space to
descriptions of the new aluminium industry
and discussions of the modifications which
its cheap production would bring about in
the arts. While it subsequently proved un-
suited to many purposes for which it was at
first thought well fitted, it has become quite
an important staple, and its applications are
gradually increasing. Dr. Richards thus
describes the process of manufacture : Pure
alumina made from ore by a chemical pro-
cess is stirred into a fused solvent bath
composed of the double fluorides of alu-
minium and sodium. This bath may be

simply cryolite, but preferably cryolite to
which has been added a further propor-
tion of aluminium fluoride and a little cal-
cium fluoride (fluorspar). The alumina is
dissolved by the bath to the extent of one
fifth of its weight. The electric current is
then sent through this mixture, using for
anodes carbon rods dipping into the bath
from above. The cathode is formed by the
carbon lining of the vessel, on the bottom of
which the melted aluminium collects. When
the dissolved aluminium has nearly all been
removed, the resistance of the bath rises,
and fluorine fumes, from the decomposition
of the solvent, begin to appear ; fresh alumina
is then stirred in and the operation thus pro-
ceeds continuously. The cavity containing
the fused salt has a sump in which the
molten aluminium collects and from which
it is removed by ladles. The action of the
current, when not of too high a voltage, is
to decompose only the alumina as long as it
is present in the bath in sufficient amount.
The oxygen simply combines with the carbon
anodes and passes away as carbonic oxide.
The above process was discovered independ-
ently in 1886 by Heroult in Europe and
Hall in America. In 1888 Hall put alumin-
ium thus made on the market. The plants
now engaged in making aluminium on this
principle are as follows : The Pittsburg
Reduction Company, at New Kensington,
Pa., and at Niagara Falls, having a daily
capacity of 4,400 pounds ; the works at the
Rhine Falls in Switzerland, capacity 5,000
pounds ; and works at La Praz and Saint-
Michel in France, with a combined capacity
of 6,500 pounds. Besides these, there are in
contemplation or course of erection five other
plants, which will raise the total possible daily
output to 42,900 pounds.

A Conyention of Dragon Flies. — Some
curious movements of dragon flies were ob-
served one September afternoon by Prof.
Charles Barrels, of Lille, along a road near
Morbihan, France. The insects were seen,
thousands in number, seated along the tele-
graph wire, all in the same position, their
bodies in the axis of the wire, their heads
turned west toward the setting sun, and
their abdomens making an angle of twenty-
five degrees with the wire. New insects
were coming from every side, plunging first

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

571

toward one of those which were fixed, and
hovering a few inches away from them,
but only for a few minutes. The fixed
insect turned its abdomen a few degrees,
when the second immediately settled on the
wire in the same attitude as the others,
into an absolutely motionless position. The
distance between the insects varied from
about four to twelve inches, the average
being about eight inches, while no two were
closer together than four inches. They
never came with full force upon the wire,
but were seen pouncing from all points upon
the settled individuals, when the proceed-
ings described above followed ; the insect
always fixing itself so as to have a little
clear space toward the west. Once settled,
the dragon flies remained motionless, as if
hypnotized by the reflection of the sun from
the wire in front of them. Occasionally one
would leave the wire, but always to settle
itself at once a few yards farther on ; none
went away upon a long flight. M. Barrois
found the wires thus occupied by dragon
flies — he estimates that there were sixty
thousand of them — for eight or nine miles,
to where the line turned abruptly toward
the south. The position of the insects, with
their heads turned west, indicates that they
were attracted by the sunlight ; and the space
which they all kept to the west of them was
that required to afford a clear opening in
which the reflection could take place.

Charaeteristies of Alpine Plants.— As

described in Garden and Forest by M. H.
Correvon, of the Alpine Garden, Geneva, the
vegetation which thrives on great altitudes,
like those of the Alps, Andes, Himalayas,
and the mountains of Oceania, shows a dis-
tinct individual character readily noticeable.
The plants are usually stunted, short-
stemmed, or stemless, with flowers relative-
ly exaggerated in size. The large flowers
are almost sessile, with hardly apparent and
only slightly developed foliage, which at a
very high level is often clothed with a fine,
close down, so as better to withstand the
effects of cold nights. In many cases the
foliage is glabrous, when it is also usually
coriaceous (with tissues especially adapted
to resist the frosts of Alpine climates) ; and
the leaf, of a firm, close, thick texture, is pro-
vided with a solid epidermis and covered

with a waxy coating, which enables it to
withstand the effects of the sun as well as
those of an excess of humidity. Species
that grow in the shade and in well-protected
spots are, however, not thus armed. Their
foliage is soft and delicate, whereas woolly
plants — take the Edelweiss and species hav-
ing smooth, generally thick and glossy
leaves — are usually encountered on arid, un-
sheltered slopes. Flora of altitudes exposed
to the heat of the sun generally produces
large, brilliantly colored flowers ; while that
of shaded situations exhibits very small,
pale blossoms, entirely out of proportion to
the size of the plant. The influence of the
sun and its effect on vegetation are more
striking here than elsewhere. Annual spe-
cies, so abundant on lower levels, are rarely
met with in Alpine zones. The short smn-
mer there does not permit them to accom-
plish the complete cycle of their existence
in a single season. Alpine plants are always
branched from the base with perennial root-
stock and stems spreading on the ground,
whereby the plant secures protection against
inclement nights and severe days. All the
activity and energy of the plant is brought
to bear on the development of the flower
and the reproductive organs. Owing to the
conditions under which they thrive, Alpine
plants require sometimes several years to
accomplish the cycle of their existence, and
need more than a single season to produce
flowers and seeds. The flora of polar coun-
tries has a very different aspect from that
of the mountains, though many species are
common to both. The polar sunlight, though
more constant, is less intense and more dif-
fuse than that of the temperate regions in
which most of the mountain flora hsis its
home. The effects of the difference are
seen in the plants and flowers.

Holy Wells. — Curious superstitions con-
nected with holy wells are illustrated in M.
and L. Quiller-Couch's book about those of
Cornwall. Many if not all of these wells
date as holy from pre-Christian times, and as
it was not practicable or even possible to nul-
lify the people's faith in them, the mission-
aries had to Christianize them by renaming
them and dedicating them to some Christian
saints, and there are now few English wells
that have heathen names. Heathen rites

572

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

seem, however, to have lingered round the
wells, for it was occasionally necessary in
the middle ages to forbid devotions of cer-
tain kinds about them. Afterward the rever-
ence for the wells and such practices as bath-
ing crippled children in them and using the
water to cure sore eyes, were regarded as pa-
pistical. They were supposed to cure illness
and madness ; if properly interrogated, to re-
veal the future ; and, upon the simple condi-
tion of dropping a pin or a piece of money
into the water, to secure good fortune to the
worshiper. There are still, it is said, wells
at the bottom of which pins may be seen.
In Portugal, according to Mr. Oswald Craw-
furd, the wells are supposed to be haunted
by Moorish maidens.

Light-bearing Cephalopods. — An animal
of the cuttlefish family, described by Henri
Coupin and M. Joubin as Histioteuihis Bon-
netlianay of bright rose color, has bright red
membranes connecting the tentacles, and on
the surface of its body yellow and blue spots
of various sizes, with a blight point in the
middle. These spots, according to Verany,
shine while the animal is alive, but lose their
glow after it is dead. They consist of a
black cup, wide open at the top, with a large
convex lens within the opening forming a
kind of cover to it. Another round opening
serves as a sort of frame to a second lens.
A section lengthwise of the organ discloses
a parabolic mirror and the two lenses ar-
ranged perpendicularly to each other, the
whole forming a sort of black cylindrical
lantern closed above by a large lens, which
casts a light upward, and in front by an-
other lens throwing it out hoiizontally. An-
other cephalopod, colored pale blue or vio-
let, so like the sea as to be hardly visible,
found in fine weather on the surface of the
Mediterranean — the Chiroteuthis, a poor
swimmer — is provided with special organs
in the form of nets that are always spread
to attract and capture its food of smaller
animals. A series of intensely black vesi-
cles may be perceived on its ventral arms,
separated by little transparent suckers armed
with a circle of sharp teeth. These vesicles
are formed externally of concentric lamellae
and internally of a transparent vesicle, the
contents of which have strong refracting
powers. While the animal is living, light is

decomposed by the concentric lamella?, and
the organs are thereby made iridescent with
a silvery metallic luster. Smaller animals
are attracted by the glitter of these organs,
and are then seized by the suckers, which
are kept on guard by the side of them. The
suckers of the larger tentacles are incapable
by their structure of seizing prey, but are
helped, as in the case of these vesicles, by a
combination of lure and snare, the lure con-
sisting of highly colored vesicles or chroma-
tosperes, and the snare of a network of wav-
ing, anastomosed lamellse which issues from
the cup and spreads itself around as a net.
The animal swims slowly along, shaking its
tentacles around itself, stretching them out
and bending them back so as to keep out in
the water around it innumerable lines to
catch the little animals as they pass and
hold them as if in the jaws of a pincers. A
third type of hunting organs in this animal
is that of special suckers at the ends of the
tentacular arms, each containing a black or-
gan forming a lure, with a well-developed
sucker at the end.

A Theory of Sheet Lightning. — In his

paper on thunderstorms in India, Prof. Mi-
chie Smith says that sheet lightning is seen at
Madras every evening for six months, always
near the horizon and directed toward the
southwest. The time of occurrence varies
from day to day, but is always toward even-
ing, and generally not later than nine o'clock.
The phenomenon is not a reflection of dis-
tant lightning flashes, but consists of an
actual discharge of electricity from cloud to
cloud or between two portions of the same
cloud, and it takes place in the upper por-
tions of low-lying clouds. When morning
lightning occurs, its direction is northeast,
hence the lightning is always to be looked
for in the regions of still air where the land
and sea breezes meet. The time of occur-
rence depends on the hour when the sea
breeze sets in, the display being about three
hours later than this. Cumulus clouds rise
together in pairs and the discharge takes
place between them, sometimes possibly
within them. The author thinks the elec-
trical conditions of the clouds may be ac-
counted for by the fact that the sea breeze
is moist and dusty, while the land breeze is
dry and dusty. The presence of dust in the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

573

clouds is shown when they sink rapidly ; the
dust is then seen at their edges and gives
the iridescent or nacreous appearance fre-
quently observed.

Horticnltare an Object Lesson in Evoln-
tlon, — The study of horticulture and agricul-
ture is held up in Garden and Forest as hav-
ing a distinct value as a factor in furnishing
exercise for certain powers of the mind, and
as providing in the systematic examination
of the principles of those branches training
than which no science affords better. Prof.
Bailey, in Science, mentions some of the uses
and applications of horticulture in discussing
the theory of evolution. It shows the de-
velopment of life in actual operation. More
than six thousand species of plants are culti-
vated, and most of these have been broken
up into varied forms by the hand of man.
Some species have produced thousands of
distinct forms, and the methods of produc-
tion of many of them are on record. In
place of arguments as to the probable in-
fluence of climate upon plants, the horticul-
turist cites definite cases, so that there is no
conjecture about the matter. Instead of
speculating upon the transmission of ac-
quired characters, the horticulturist furnishes
proof of such transmission. Paleontology
brings disjointed evidence in regard to the
influence of selection and probable changes
from environment, while the horticulturist
brings examples before our eyes to prove
that he can modify and mold vegetation at
his will. The horticulturist creates new spe-
cies, and shows you numbers of cultivated
plants of which no one knows the original
form, because the ones with which we are
acquainted are so unlike the type that the
two can never be connected. This is only a
single line of inquiry, and other illustrations
quite as striking can be given to show that
there is an abundant field for scientific re-
search and profound thought in horticultural
science as such.

Physical Characteristics of Caba.— " In

Cuba," says Mr. J. W. Spencer, in his paper
on the Geographical Evolution of Cuba, ** are
mountains higher than any on the eastern
Bide of North America ; extensive plains as
level as those of the Atlantic coast ; valleys
formed at the base-level of erosion, and deep

cafions carved out by the youngest streams ;
the remains of enormous beds of limestones
mostly swept ofE the country, and coral reefs
and mangrove islands extending the .coastal
plains into the sea ; sea cliffs, caves, and ter-
races of great and little elevation ; drowned
valleys deeper than the fiords of Norway
indenting the margin of the insular mass ;
caverns innumerable and rivers flowing under-
ground; rifts through mountain ridges and
rock basins; tilted, bent, and overturned
strata, dislocated and faulted in modem
times, so as to make youthful mountain
ranges ; metamorphic rocks and rocks igne-
ous, and these again altered to secondary
products; old base-level plains or those
modified and reaching across the island,
having insular ridges of older formations
rising out of them, and with the surfaces
scarcely incised by the streams; residual
soils from the decomposition of the rocks
and sea-made loams and gravels; in short,
so rapidly are the geologic forces working
that one can see a greater variety of struc-
ture and learn more of dynamic geology in
Cuba than on more than half of the tem-
perate continent." The island is seven hun-
dred and fifty miles long and from twenty-five
to one hundred and twenty miles wide. In the
western part the ridges of mountains culmi-
nate in a point with an altitude of twenty-five
hundred feet, but the principal topographic
relief is along the southern coast of the
eastern extension of the island where Pico
Tarquino rises from the Sierra Maestra to
an elevation of eighty- four hundred feet
The central portion of the island is gener-
ally a plain of from two hundred to four
hundred feet above tide, which bears many
scattered and interrupted ridges like islands
in a sea. Mr. Spencer's study is chiefly con-
fined to this part of the island.

A Word in Fayor of Woodpeclters.— The

food of woodpeckers has been studied, with
a view to determining whether they are in-
jurious or beneficial in the economy of api-
culture and forestiy, by F. E. L. Beal, who
concludes that they do far more good In the
destruction of insects than harm with the
little fruit and grain they eat and the sap
they suck. Of seven species considered, the
author regards the downy woodpecker as the
most beneficial, it being a great eater of in.

574

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

jurious insects, while the vegetable food it
consumes is of little value to man. The
greatest sin we can lay at its door is the dis-
semination of poison ivy. The hairy wood-
pecker probably ranks next in point of use-
fulness. It eats many beetles and caterpil-
lars, few ants, a trifling amount of grain, and
for fruits it seeks the forests and swamps,
where it finds wild cherries, grapes, and the
berries of dogwood and Virginia creeper. It
scatters fewer seeds of the poison ivy and
poison sumac than the downy woodpecker.
The flicker eats more of ants than of any
other kind of insects, and very little corn,
while fruit constitutes about one fourth its
fare, " but the bird depends on Nature and
not on man to furnish the supply." Not one
of these three birds shows a questionable
trait, and they should be protected and en-
couraged in every possible way. The red-
head woodpecker has a pronounced taste for
beetles of very large size. Unfortunately,

however, its fondness for predaceous beetles
must be reckoned against it. It leads in the
consumption of grasshoppers, has a taste,
but not a very damaging one, for grain, eats
largely of wild fruit, and also partakes rather
freely of cultivated varieties, especially of
the apple ; and in some places feeds exten-
sively on beechnuts. The red-bellied wood-
pecker is more of a vegetarian than any of
the others, but, on the other hand, eats many
ants and beetles. The yellow-bellied wood-
pecker seems to show only one questionable
trait, in a fondness for the sap and inner
bark of trees. This, comparatively harmless
in the forest, may be a serious matter in or-
chards. The pileated woodpecker is more
exclusively a forest bird than any of the
others, and its food consists of such elements
as the woods afford, particularly the larvae of
wood-boring beetles and wild fruits. This
species is emphatically a conservator of the
forests.

MINOE PARAGRAPHS.

War is defined by M. Ch. Letoumeau,
in his book on the subject, as having rob-
bery for its object and murder as its means.
The author's other numerous books are about
the evolution of some social factor or an-
other, but he does not treat of the evolution
of war — because, he avers, there is, funda-
mentally, no evolution of war. It is simply
a return to the condition of savagery, an
unchaining of all the bloodthirsty mclina-
tions, an awakening of all ferocious appetites
— such, he says, war has been in the past,
and such it is destined to be in the future.
The handling of the transportable material,
the conditions accompanying preparation,
strategic ingenuity, skill in the conduct of
the campaign, diplomacy in fixing the lot of
the vanquished — these accompaniments of
war have been subjects of evolution; but
all war is, and remains, in itself the apolo-
getic manifestation of force — the most fla-
grant of all crimes — that of lese humanity.

Wooden fishhooks are still in use in
the waters of the regions around Bordeaux,
France. Two kinds of different types are
described. The hain is a small piece of
broom-wood, spindle-shaped, sharp at both
ends and swelled in the middle, about an

inch long, and borne by a fishing line tied to
the middle. The claheon is a little shorter
piece, of hawthorn, pointed at the lower end,
with a thorn attached and projecting later-
ally from the upper end. The fishing line is
double, and is fastened to the lower end of
the stick and then looped around the base
of the thorn. These hooks are in the forms
of the most primitive times. Precisely sim-
ilar ones to the hain, but of bone, have been
found at the Robenhausen lake station of
Wangen, and others of ivory at the cave of
Pair-non-Pair, in the Gironde. The other
one, the claheon, is like the thomed fish-
hooks made by the Sakaya negritoes of the
Malay Peninsula.

It is observed, in Knowledge, by Mr.
Vaughan Cornish that while every one is
familiar with the work of the breakers in
tearing down cliffs and grinding the frag-
ments into shingle and sand, it may easily
escape notice that the formation of cliffs is
also the work of the sea. The space through
which the breakers act is chiefly that be-
tween high and low water mark, between
which a sloping shore is cut away so as to
form a nearly flat beach, terminated by a
cliff. In point of fact, the destruction and

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

575

the formation of cliffs are the same process.
Sometimes the waves pile up a bank of sand
or 8hin?;le which protects the cliffs from the
direct action of the breakers. The cliff,
however, gives way under the actions of
wind, rain, and frost ; and the material car-
ried down to the base of the cliff by these
agencies is removed by the sea, so that the
cliff is maintained at an angle steeper than
the angle of repose, and is constantly falling.
When the jointing lines of a rocky cliff
slope downward from the shore line, the
waves undermine the cliff, and great masses
of superincumbent rock fall by their own
weight, as the masses of coal fall in the
mine through the skillful undercutting of the
collier.

Mr. a. H. Thayer has an article in a re-
cent issue of The Auk entitled The Law
which underlies Protective Coloration. In
it he sets forth " a beautiful law of Nature
which, so far as I can discover, has never
been pointed out in print. It is the law of
gradation in the coloring of animals, and is
responsible for most of the phenomena of
protective coloration except those properly
called mimicry. Mimiciy makes an animal
appear to be some other thing, whereas this
newly discovered law makes him cease to ap-
pear to exist at all. The newly discovered
law may be stated thus : Animals are painted
by Nature darkest on those parts which tend
to be most lighted by the sky's light, and
vice versa.'''' The author's theory seems to
be that Nature, by a careful coloration,
effaces the ordinary lights and shadows by
means of which a solid body is recognized,
and that the various markings which at first
sight seem unnecessary are really for the
purpose of forming a background such as
one might see if the animal were trans-
parent.

A CURIOUS instance of protective mimicry
combined with intelligence is found in the
nest of the dabchick, which, as described by
Mr. Harry F. Witherby, is simply a mass of
green floating weed common in streams and
ponds, like other masses of the same weed,
except that it may be a little higher and
more compact, but not sufficiently so to
enable one to distinguish it. When the
white eggs have been laid in it, means of
concealment are called for, which the bird

provides by covering up the eggs with leaves
when it goes away, thus transforming the
nest again into apparently nothing more than
a floating mass of weed. In a few days the
eggs become so covered with dirt that they
are exactly of the color of the nest, and do
not need even this protection any longer.

The results reached in the report to the
London Metropolitan Asylums Board on the
use of antitoxine in diphtheria agree sub-
stantially with those recorded by observers
in various other countries and confirm the
favorable opinions. The general reduction
in mortality obtained in the metropolitan
fever hospitals is less than that claimed in
some foreign institutions, but then, the Lon-
don Times suggests, "there was less room
for improvement in the former." In the
more dangerous class of cases, and especially
in those which came under treatment at an
early stage of the disease, the drug fully
maintained its reputation. These conclusions
were unanimously concurred in by the six
medical superintendents constituting the com-
mission of inquiry.

The Third International Congress of Psy-
chology will be held at Munich, August 4 to
7, 1896. All psychologists and all educated
persons desiring to further the progress of
psychology and to foster personal relations
among students of the subject in different
nations are invited to take part in the meet-
ings— in which women will enjoy equal con-
sideration with men. German, French, Eng-
lish, and Italian will be the languages used.
The programme of the work in the congress
is arranged under the general headings of
psychophysiology, psychology of the normal
individual, psychopathology, and comparative
psychology ; while the subheadings suggest
an extensive range and variety of topics.
The subscription price for membership in the
congress is fifteen shillings, twenty francs, or
about four dollars. Persons intending to
present papers — twenty minutes in length —
should give due notice of the same, before
the beginning of the congress, to the secre-
tary, Dr. Freiherr von Schrenk-Notzing, Mu-
nich, Max Josephstrasse, 2.

The growing of flowers to be put into the
market as cut flowers has become an impor-
tant business, and many large gardens are
devoted to it in the vicinity of New York.

s:

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Growers, Garden and Forest says, who aim
to get their flowers to market in the best
condition, place the stems in water as soon
as the flowers are cut. The flowers are kept
in a cool, dark, underground room. The
method of cooling by water is considered
better than that by the use of ice, as the
change of temperature on being taken to the
express car is not so violent. The flowers
are usually cut when the temperature of the
houses is not extremely high, rather in the
morning than in the evening. In summer as
little time as possible is lost in getting the
flowers to market, but in cooler weather some
are improved if kept from twelve to twenty-
four hours before being packed for shipment.
In packing, long, shallow wooden boxes are
smoothly lined with newspaper, above which
sheets of thin oil paper are laid. The heads
are usually placed at each end of the box.
On arrival at New York they are taken to
the rooms of the Cut Flower Company and
there examined and graded according to es-
tablished rules — roses, for instance, being
classified as fancy, extra, first, second, and
third.

NOTES.

Since the photographic method of ob-
servation was adopted, Prof. Max Wolf, of
Heidelberg, has discovered thirty-six aster-
oids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter,
not one of which has he seen through the
telescope.

The total output of gold in the United
States in 1895 was approximately $46,740,-
000, South Africa comes next, and Austra-
lasia third, with $45,835,000. Russia shows
an increase in output over 1894 of $7,350,-
000, the 1895 production being $35,405,000.
The estimated production in Mexico was
$5,835,000.

In recognition of his labors in connection
with so eminent an American Institution de-
voted to the Encouragement of the Arts and
Manufactures, and of services rendered to
that Government, the French Government
has named Dr. William H. Wahl, for many
years Secretary of the Franklin Institute,
" Officier d' Academic," and has conferred
upon him the decoration of the " Palmes
Academiques."

Closing a description of Lake Louise, in
the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Mr. Walter
D. Wilcox observes that the characteristic
features of the region of Mount Temple (11,-
658 feet high) and of the Canadian Rockies
in general, as differentiated from other moun-
tain regions, as the Alps, Andes, and Hima-
layas, " are found not so much in the geo-

logical age and nature of the strata as in the
extent and character of those erosive forces
which have resulted in forming narrow, deep
valleys, often with precipitous rock walls of
great height and grandeur, thus making the
mountains relatively very high. Added to
this, climatic conditions sufficiently moderate
in summer to tolerate, and humid enough to
encourage, a rich vegetation, there results a
fortunate combination of beauty and grand-
eur which has already begun to attract the
attention of travelers. The by no means ex-
cessive precipitation of snow is ofllset by a
long period of nearly ten months for accu-
mulation, resulting in extensive glaciation on
the higher peaks. As these points are fa-
vored by the addition of a clear, cool, and
invigorating atmosphere, there is but little
doubt that the Canadian Rockies will enjoy
an ever-increasing popularity and favor
among travelers and mountaineers."

In the numerous scientific balloon ascen-
sions he has executed, Dr. A. Bersen has met
all the types of meteorological situations, and
has found in all seasons that the temperature
at great altitudes diminishes more rapidly
than, or at least as rapidly as, at lesser alti-
tudes, and that at heights exceeding seven-
teen thousand five hundred feet lower tem-
peratures exist than those deduced from
Glaisher's ascensions. So the increase in
the velocity of currents with the elevation
is also larger than has been supposed. A
marked preponderance of winds with a west-
erly component is established for great alti-
tudes— a fact that agrees with the results of
cloud observations made from below.

The movement for the introduction of
horseless carriages is represented by two pe-
riodicals, the Horseless Age and the Moto-
cycle, in the United States ; the Autocar, in
London; and La Locomotion Automobile
and La France Automobile, in France. The
Automobile Club of France, organized a few
months ago, already counts nearly five hun-
dred members, and has recently opened a
hall in one of the most frequented quarters
of Paris. It is arranging for races, compe-
titions, exhibitions, conferences, and con-
gresses, and will form a library for the use
of its members. The French have bestowed
a nickname on the automobilists, and call
them Chauffeurs^ or Warmers.

La Revista lAteraria (the Literary Re-
view) is a new bimonthly literary periodical
of twenty pages, published at Buenos Ayres,
under the editorial direction of Manuel B.
Agaste. Office of publication, Peru, 69.

The death of M. Daubr^e, the eminent
geologist, is announced. He was bom in
Metz, educated at the Polytechnic School
of Paris, and from 1839 to 1855 was a pro-
fessor at Strasburg University. He was then
promoted to a chair at the School of Mines
and the Natural History Museum, Paris.

SAMUEL LUTHER DANA.

-? ^ry

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MOITTHLY.

SEPTEMBER, 1896.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

By DAVID A. WELLS, LL,D., D.C.L.,

CORRESPOKDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC,

III. — THE DEFINITION, OBJECT, AND SPHERE OF TAXATION.

IT would seem to be in the nature of an economic or common-
sense axiom, that a large and varied experience in respect to
the management of any one of the great departments of the
world's business, would result in the gradual evolutioii and final
definite establishment of certain rules or principles, which would
be almost universally recognized and accepted as a basis for
practical application and procedure. But in respect to the mat-
ter of taxation — which is a fundamental necessity for the main-
tenance not only of all government, but of civilization — no such
result has been achieved. In no department of economic science
is there, moreover, so much obscurity and conflicting opinion.
Most economists teach that there is " no science of taxation as
there is a science of exchanges " ; and " that there are no great
natural laws running through and controlling taxation and its
effects." And while the student will find examples in the his-
tory of states or governments of the practical application of al-
most every form of appropriation of private property under the
name of taxation which human ingenuity, prompted by neces-
sity, selfishness, or greed, could devise,* and a sufficient record

* " In Austria everything, it is Baid, is taxed except the air, and even that has to be paid
for in places famous for their salubrity. Dogs, cycles, newspapers, advertisements, and
innumerable other articles — pleasures and necessaries — are included in the money-produc-
ing list ; nothing, indeed, seemed excluded until a very short time ago, when a provincial
financier forwarded an exhaustive report to the finance mimstry on a neglected source of
VOL. XLIX. — 46

578 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of effects to -warrant the drawing of general and correct infer-
ences, it is nevertheless probably true that there is not, at the
present time, a single existing tax, decreed by despotism, or au-
thorized by the representatives of the taxpayers, which has been
primarily adopted, or enacted solely with reference to any eco-
nomic principles, or which has sought to establish the largest
practical conformity under concurrent circumstances to what are
acknowledged to be the fundamental principles of equity, justice,
and rational liberty. But, on the contrary, the influence of tem-
porary circumstances, as viewed, in most instances, from the
standpoint of a governmental administration — despotic or re-
publican alike — desirous of retaining power, has ever been the
controlling motive in determining the character of taxation ; or,
as Colbert, the celebrated finance minister of Louis XIV, is re-
ported to have expressed it, in saying that " the art of taxation
consists in so plucking the goose [i. e., the people] as to procure
the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of
squawking/^ Hence, apart from its methods of distributing power
and patronage, the popular idea of evil, as connected with gov-
ernment, may almost always be referred back to unequal or ex-
cessive exactions ; and to the reality of which, as evils, more than
to any other one agency, may be referred most of the world's
political revolutions, and the ferocity with which, as was notably
the case in France, they have been often conducted. Hence,

revenue — cats. The horse, the ass, the goat, the hog, the chicken, the dog, the goose — all
contribute their mites to the support of the state, said this financial reformer. The cat
alone is a parasite, paying nothing to any one and preying upon every one. But is the pro-
ject really practicable ? Certainly it is, replies its author, and he forthwith sets himself to
prove it. Every cat for which the tax — a rather heavy sum — is paid, would receive an offi-
cial colored ribbon for its neck, with a number and a government stamp. Every feline de-
faulter found without this ribbon would be seized and temporarily confined in the Cats'
Home. If not redeemed before the lapse of a fixed term — say eight days — it would be
sold or poisoned by the state."

" A tax on beards was in operation for a long time and under various forms in Russia.
Peter the Great, knowing the attachment that his subjects had for the hirsute adornment
of the face, introduced a tax upon the beard in his empire. The beard is a superfluous
and useless ornament, said he, and, starting from this principle, he imposed a tax upon it
as an article of luxury. This tax was proportional and progressive, not in proportion to
the length of the beard, but to the social position of those who wore it. Each person upon
paying his tax received a token, which he had to carry upon his person, for the guards were
nexorable, and, always provided with scissors, ruthlessly cut off the beard of those who
could not show their badge."

" Catharine I confirmed this tax. In 1728 Peter II allowed the peasants to wear a beard,
but kept up the tax for the other classes under the penalty of work on the galleys in the
case of non-payment. Czarina Anne rendered life still harder to bearded men, for not only
were they obliged to pay the special contribution imposed upon them, but also had to pay a
double tax upon everything else for which they were assessed. This tax was not abolished
until the reign of Catharine II (1762-1 798)."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 579

also, the preference almost always shown, on the part alike of
those who enact and those who pay taxes, for indirect taxation,
which very successfully blinds the taxpayer as to the amount
which he pays and as to the time and place of its collection ; and
hence, finally, the idea, which has come to be all but universally
entertained, that taxation per se is in itself an evil— something to
be avoided, if possible, and an escape from which is always " good
fortune. '^

A QUESTION OF PRIME IMPORTANCE, therefore, which confronts
us at the outset in entering upon any discussion of this subject is.
Are these assumptions of economists that there is no science of
taxation and no general laws regulating its exercise and effects
— assumptions generally concurred in by jurists and popular sen-
timent— correct ? If they are, then there are no principles of
taxation to discuss, and a consideration of the subject must be
limited mainly to a recital of the world's experiments and expe-
riences and an exposition of legislative enactments and court
decisions. To admit their correctness, furthermore, is equivalent
to confessing that humai). knowledge, in at least one department,
has reached its extreme limit ; and that a class of transactions
which, more than almost any other, are determinative of the dis-
tribution of wealth, the forms in which industry shall be exerted,
and the sphere of personal liberty, are best directed by accident
or caprice. To ascertain the true state of the case ought, accord-
ingly, to constitute the main object of inquiry, and, with a view
of helping to the formation of an intelligent opinion, attention
will be first asked to the meaning or definition of the two funda-
mental terms, tax and taxation. And in so doing we obtain im-
mediately an illustration of the indefiniteness of idea and lack of
exactitude in expression that characterize this whole subject, and
also a very definite clew to their origin.

Analysis of the Word Tax. — Thus, the word tax in the Eng-
lish language, and its equivalent in all other languages, is used in
a very loose and indefinite sense. Many writers, and the diction-
ary-makers generally, use the word in an extremely generic
sense, to cover and designate all contributions obtained by pro-
cess of assessment and levy (act of collection) by a state or
government from the persons and property of its citizens ; or
from persons and property within its power and jurisdiction;
in whatever form, or however arbitrary the assessments or levies
may be, and by whatever name they may be known or desig-
nated— whether tribute, toll, talliage, duty, gabel, customs, im-
post, poll, subsidy, aid, excise, income, or benevolence.* Such a

* " A tax is a rate or sum of money assessed on the person or property of a citizen by
Government for the use of the nation or State." — Webster's Dictionary.

S8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

definition, however, which makes no distinction between contri-
butions levied at his unrestrained will or caprice, and for any
purpose, by a bandit whom circumstances have raised to the head
and government of a petty tribe or community ; or by an abso-
lute and ignorant Oriental potentate, like Ismail Pasha, Khedive
of Egypt (1863-79) ; * or by a European monarch, like Louis XIV,
who said, " I am the state," and those contributions which repre-
sent that part of the wealth of a state which is taken from its
citizens with their free consent for exclusive public purposes, in
accordance with a well-defined and intelligent public policy ; a
definition that recognizes no distinction between these two meth-
ods and objects of taking, obviously can not be scientifically
correct ; for there can be no more analogy between the two meth-
ods than between a payment for value received and an act of
highway robbery, f Obviously, also, there can be no science of
taxation predicated or formulated on such a definition, for there
can be no science of irregularity and arbitrary action.

Again : " So long as people use words which have no precise
signification, which may be interpreted in a variety of ways, and
which present at once to the mind different ideas more or less
obscure, more or less mixed up with one another, there will be
uncertainty in the theory, or rather there will be a vague, incom-
plete, and ill-co-ordinated theory ; and then, as all practice is
the application of a theory, the practice resulting from it will be
faulty."— ilf. Menier.

The celebrated French economist above quoted also makes the
following well- warranted criticism on the current definitions of
taxation : " They have," he says, " one general fault : they try to
point out the employment of taxes, but they do not show the
origin of taxes."

What, then, will be a correct definition of a tax ?

" The definition of both Webster (Daniel) and Story (Justice) is, that a tax is a contri-
bution imposed by Government on individuals for the service of the State." — Miller^ on the
Constitution of the United States^ p. 235,

" Taxes are defined as the enforced proportional contribution of persons and property
levied by the authority of the State for the support of the Government and for all public
needs." — Cooley on Taxation, p. 1.

" A tax is a portion, or the value of a portion, of the property or labor of individuals
taken from them by Government and placed at its disposal." — /. R. McCulloch.

* The revenue annually exacted, under the name of taxation, by Ismail Pasha, espe-
cially during the latter years of his reign, from an exceedingly poor population a little in
excess of five million in number, was reported to have been about $75,000,000.

f Despotic rulers in all ages of the type of Louis XIV, the Khedives of Egypt, the Sul-
tans of Turkey, and the Czars of Russia have undoubtedly regarded their expenditures of
money exacted under the name of taxation from their subjects for the maintenance of
great armies, harems, mistresses, pensions to favorites, and the like, as for legitimate pub-
lic purposes.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 581

It is not easy to frame such an one, in clear and succinct lan-
guage, covering all the essential conditions. It probably never
has been done, and therefore the best thing to do is not to spend
time and effort in attempting it, but rather to endeavor to illus-
trate and point out its meaning indirectly. And, with this pur-
pose in view, it is important to recognize at the outset an exact
and homely truth, and one which heretofore has been gener-
ally overlooked by writers on taxation and political economy,
namely :

That a government never has any money — by which alone the
expenses of the state can be defrayed — except what the 'people —
citizens or subjects — give, or concede to it by voluntary or invol-
untary action ; and that the people, as a whole and in turn, never
have any to give except what comes to them as the result of their
work, or from an exchange of the products of their work. And
such being the case, it follows, as has been happily pointed out by
Mr. Atkinson, that what the Government really wants of its peo-
ple, when it calls upon them for taxes, is work, and that the meth-
ods of taxation are only methods for collecting and using the
■products of work.* Hence the following definition of a ^aic, de-
duced from the above statement of fact by Mr. Atkinson — that
" it is that certain portion of the product of a country which must
he devoted to the support of the Government " — embodies a meaning
and a truth not incorporated and set forth in the ordinary or pop-
ular definitions. At the same time it is deficient in not recogniz-
ing any distinction between a just and uniform taking and an ex-
action or confiscation.

Taxation in the United States, its Aggregate and Dis-
tribution.— During the year 1890 the aggregate revenue receipts
of the several governments of the United States, derived mainly
from taxation, as reported by the census of that year,t were
$1,039,482,013, apportioned as follows : Federal taxation, $461,184,-
680 ; State taxation, $578,328,333. The last aggregate was again
subdivided into $116,157,640 for State purposes, including the Ter-
ritories and District of Columbia, $133,525,493 for county pur-

* " Taxation means work, of the head, of the hand, or of the machine, or all combined.
And the method of taxation is only a method of distributing the products of work. It is
measured, when in the process of distribution, in terms of money, but the money itself stands
for work, or is derived from work. And the work of the Government is as much a part of
the work of the community as any other. All who work, from the head of the nation down
to the lowest municipal official, must be supplied with shelter, food, and clothing ; and those
who pay the taxes do the work that is necessary to furnish this supply," — The Industrial
Progress of the Nation, Edward Atkinson; Putnam, New York, 1890. Taxation and
Work, same author.

f The census of 1890 presented for the first time even an approximation of the annual
incomes of the several governments of the United States, and the amount and objects for
which they were expended.

582 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

poses, and $329,635,200 for municipalities and schools. If a tem-
porary and extraordinary charge for pensions — $140,959,361 in
1895 — which now rests npon the Federal Government, were elimi-
nated, and Federal expenditures were reduced correspondingly,
the taxation and expenditures of the national or Federal Govern-
ment would be small in comparison with the total cost of all gov-
ernment. Federal and State ; a result that constitutes a complete
refutation of the common assumption that the national Govern-
ment is rapidly absorbing the functions of the State and local gov-
ernments and reducing them substantially to police precincts. Of
the Federal revenues, nearly one half under the existing fiscal sys-
tem are derived from taxes on distilled spirits, fermented liquors,
and tobacco, all of which may be fairly regarded as self-imposed.
If we assume, as we are probably warranted in doing, the aver-
age value of the product of each person in the country ivTio is
occupied for gain, at six hundred dollars per year,* or two dollars
per day for three hundred working days, then that part of the
annual product of the country which went to the support of its
Government or the State in 1890 was the equivalent of the work
of 1,734,121 such persons for one year, or 520,236,300 days' work ;
or, in other words, for every dollar that the Government expends,
somebody must work for at least half a day, or furnish a value
equivalent for such an amount of work. Again, for the year 1890,
the aggregate of taxation in the United States — national. State,
and local — required or represented about seven per cent of the
value of the entire annual product of the country, which proba-
bly approximated $1,200,000,000. In former days it was often cus-
tomary to allow persons to pay their taxes by actual days' work,
and this is still the practice in some parts of the United States
and in Canada and some countries of Europe. Before the French
Revolution, the tax imposed on the French peasantry, and known
under the name of corvee, as has been already shown, was an ob-
ligation to render a specified number of days' work to the state,
or to some seignior or noble. During the early colonial days of
Massachusetts, the people of the settlements far removed from
Massachusetts Bay paid their proportion of the expense of main-
taining a colonial government at Boston in wheat, which was
shipped down the Connecticut River in canoes, and then trans-
ferred to sailing craft and transported by sea to Boston. One could
hardly imagine the disturbance and excitement that would be oc-
casioned if all the taxes of the country were to be collected in this

* The most recent investigations of Mr. Atkinson, the best authority on this subject,
have led him to the conclusion that the average value of the product of each person in the
United States, working for gain three hundred days in the year, was in 1890 nearer $700
than $600 per annum.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 583

way, and if the head of every family. was compelled to perform
annually some twenty days' labor to discharge the obligation in-
cumbent on himself and family to pay taxes, which would be
about the amount which the head of every family in the United
States would have to perform to meet its present annual expen-
ditures. Everybody would then be talking economy; and the
politician who wanted votes, instead of promising public build-
ings, or more salaried offices to his constituents, would say, " Gen-
tlemen, give me your votes and elect me, and I will have your com-
pulsory labor cut down next year from twenty-five days to twenty,
or even fifteen." And yet the difference between that state of
things and the present is merely a difference of appearance.

What is Taxation ? — The popular or dictionary definition of
taxation — namely, " the act of levying a tax or imposing taxes " —
is as indefinite and imperfect as the ordinary definition of a
" tax " has been shown to be. Scientifically considered, taxation
is the taking or appropriating such portion of the product or
property of a country or community as is necessary for the sup-
port of its government, by methods that are not in the nature of
extortions, punishments, or confiscations ; and a systematic and
orderly arrangement and presentation of the knowledge gained
by experience and discussion, with a view to effect such a result
with certainty, uniformity, and the minimum of cost and trouble
to society and its individual taxpayers or contributors, consti-
tutes the Science of Taxation*

In what will be hereafter said, the word taxation will be used
as far as possible in the sense in which it has been defined ; but
at the same time the employment of the unscientific term has
become so general that its use in default of any satisfactory syno-
nym is almost unavoidable, especially in the historical treatment
of the subject.

Such a limitation of the meaning and nature of the word tax
as has thus been given is clearly of the first importance, and a lack
of its recognition is undoubtedly responsible in a high degree for
the present unsatisfactory position of the subject of taxation as
a department of economic knowledge ; and also for a very general
belief that in determining the forms of taxes the only rule to be
followed is that of expediency. It may be too much to claim that
a general recognition and practical acceptance of the proposed
definitions and limitations are absolute essentials for the concep-

* Essentially the same definition of taxation has been given by Mr. J. R. McCuUoch.
" It is," he says, " the name given to the branch of the science of political economy which
explains the mode in which different taxes affect the public interest, and in which the
revenue required for the public service may be most advantageously raised." — Treatise on
the Principles of Taxation, J. R. McCuUoch, 1876.

584 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion and construction of any just and intelligent system of tax-
ation, and also for any such collocation of general truths relative
to taxation as will raise the subject to the dignity of a science.
But, be this as it may, it seems certain that such recognition and
acceptance would at once sweep away many obstacles that would
otherwise stand in the way of such a consummation, and bring a
high degree of order into what is now a comparative chaos.

And, as one illustration of this, consider how entirelj^, and yet
how naturally, the proposed definitions and limitations change
the generally accepted idea of the relation of a tax to the indi-
vidual taxpayer.

As has been already pointed out, the popular idea of a tax is
that it is always an evil. Most writers also on political economy,
in discussing the subject, start with the idea that the act or exer-
cise of taxation necessarily implies perpetual antagonism between
the state, the sovereign, or the executive, and the private citizen.
The parties concerned are the citizen on the one side and the state
on the other, and the former being comparatively weak and the
latter exceedingly strong, the state is always assumed to get the
upper hand. M. Proudhon, in his work Theorie de VImpot
maintains that "all taxes are iniquitous,'^ and that "if a sole tax
was established it would be the sum of fiscal iniquities.'^ " There
are no taxes," says Ricardo, "which have not a tendency to lessen
the power to accumulate.'' J. B. Say, the eminent French econo-
mist, declared that, by whatever name known, taxes are always a
burden upon the private citizen. M. Garnier, another French
economist, defines taxes " as the reduction made on the private
fortunes of the citizens by the Government to meet public ex-
penditures." According to John Stuart Mill, " it is impossible in
a poor country to impose any tax which will not impede the in-
crease in the national wealth." .

"None of us feel, when the tax-gatherer comes, that to be
taxed is a favor ; or that, as to the money exacted, we as indi-
viduals are the better off for its having been taken from us. We
know the tax is a burden ; as such it is recognized by every per-
son upon whom it is imposed." — Hon. Thomas M. Cooley.

All such conceptions of the position of the state in respect to
the taxpayer are, however, monarchical, implying the relation of
master and subject, lord and serf ; * and from such a point of view

* When the Jewish people, weary of the tax despotism of a sacerdotal class — i. e., the
tribe of Levi, to whom the land was held to have been given by Jehovah — manifested an
intention of setting up a king, the prophet Samuel foretold that under royalty taxation
would be still more oppressive, and " this," he said, " will be the manner of the king that
shall reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, and set them
to ear his ground and reap his harvest ; and he will take your daughters to be cooks," etc. ;
" and your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive-yards, even the best of them ; and the

I

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 585

this general idea of antagonism between the taxpayer and the
government is correct and has been in accord with the great mass
of the world's experiences. In fact, these conceptions undoubt-
edly originated with the first or old economists, who, living under
arbitrary, despotic governments, and unable to comprehend the
modern ideas respecting personal liberty and a free government,
came to the only conclusion respecting the nature of taxation that
their limited sphere of observation and experience would permit.*
And so to-day, under an absolute government, the interests of the
sovereign — czar, sultan, emperor, king, whatever name he bears —
are always in a greater or less degree in antagonism to those of
the nation, and these same conceptions have also to a large extent
been generally accepted in states whose form of government is
not monarchical, but free or popular, as in the United States,
where, through lack of intelligence or interest on the part of the
general public and of the law-makers, systems for raising revenues
have been built up and tolerated which almost without exception
are unjust in their administration and incidence. When an emi-
nent lawyer and member of the Constitutional Convention of the

■ State of New York in 1867-'68 stood up before that assemblage
when the subject of taxation was under consideration and said,
" I insist that a people can not prosper whose ofi3.cers either work
or tell lies — there is not an assessment roll now made out in this
State that does not both tell and work lies," f i^o man gainsaid
him, for no man who had ever given any attention to the subject

. could.

But such conceptions are not true of taxes levied under a
popular form of government, and in accordance with conditions
essential to justify their right to be called taxes ; for there is no
one act which can be performed by a community which brings
in so large return to the credit of civilization and general happi-
ness as the judicious expenditure, for public purposes, of a fair
percentage of the general wealth raised by an equitable system

tenth of your seed, of your sheep, and your goodliest young men and put them to his
work," etc. And the prediction then made was verified, as under like circumstances it
has always since been.

* With the old economists the state always preponderates. It is the master of the
citizen instead of being merely the steward of the nation. " It addresses the citizens impe-
riously. They are its contributahles, and must pay. According to such doctrine, life is a
toUgate. They must give so much a head for the right of living in the country. Man is
the debtor of the state. Man pays, not the commodity, and the citizen remains the serf
of the state."

" Under monarchical right, taxation is speculation by the king upon the people. In a
word, there is an antagonism between those who pay and those who levy taxes. Taxation
is the expression of that antagonism." — M. Mcnicr.

t Speech of Hon. M. I. Townsend, Delegate at Large, Constitutional Convention of New
York, 1867-68. Proceedings and Debates, vol. iii, p. 1945.

586 POPllLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of taxation. The fruits of sucli expenditure are general educa-
tion and general health ; improved roads, diminished expenses of
transportation, and security for life and property. And it will
be found to be a general rule that no high degree of civilization
can be maintained in a community, and indeed that no highly
civilized community can exist, without comparatively large taxa-
tion;* the converse of this proposition, however, at the same
time not being admitted, that the existence of high taxes is
necessarily a sign of high civilization.

It is interesting to note, however, that as civilization in-
creases, and taxation becomes absolutely greater, it also becomes
relatively less. Thus, in most of our great cities the cost of the
water supply to its inhabitants constitutes at present one of the
largest items of municipal expenditure— an item that forty or
fifty years ago hardly found a place in municipal accounts. And
yet the cost of a supply of even the minimum quantity of water
now regarded as essential to meet the ordinary requirements for
personal cleanliness and health would be very much greater to
every citizen, were he to undertake to supply himself, even if it
were possible, by the old methods ; to say nothing of the comfort
and luxury, as well as protection against loss by fire, which an
increased supply, made possible only through a greatly increased
aggregate of taxation, has afforded.

In short, taxation assessed and levied under conditions clearly
conformable to reason and justice, is no more of an evil than any
other necessary and desirable form of expenditure. Its proper
exercise does not diminish, but protects and augments, national
wealth, and is no more a burden upon the people of a state than
the payments made for the care and profitable management of
private or corporate investments of capital are a burden upon
the owners of such capital. Indeed, M. Menier, whose study of
taxation entitles him to be regarded as an authority, contends
that the analogy between the expenditures of a state which have
to be remunerated by taxes and the expenditures of a manufac-
turer is most complete. The state, he says, possesses a certain
extent of territory. That territory has such and such natural
utilities. These natural utilities have been developed by labor

* " I have not seen an instance of rent being very low, and husbandry at the same time
being good." — Lowe, quoted by McCulloch.

" It is universally found that the low rents absorb the largest proportion of the prod-
uct."—^. C. Carey, On Wealth, p. 341.

"An ingenious philosopher has calculated the universal measure of the public imposi-
tions by the degrees of freedom or servitude that accompany them, and ventures to assert
that, according to an invariable law of Nature, it must always increase with the former
and diminish in a just proportion to the latter." — Statement by Gibbon, on the authority of
Montesquieu.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 587

or appropriated by man, and the capital of the nation is the
ensemble (the whole) of the utilities it possesses. In the case of
a private person the conditions are the same. His capital is the
ensemble of the utilities he possesses. The result which he,
equally with the state, seeks to attain, is the same — namely, to
make the capital which they control fructify to the greatest pos-
sible extent for the benefit of the citizens of the state on the
one hand and the individual on the other ; and between the ex-
penditures which it is necessary to incur for the attainment of
these ends on the part of the state and the individual there is
no essential difference. And from this analogy, thus urged to
identity, M. Menier deduces the following definition of taxes :

TJiey represent, he says, the investment of the capital of the
nation, or state, and the general expenses of its care and develop-
ment*

It is obvious, however, that M. Menier's analogy would not
hold good under a system which failed to recognize any differ-
ence between a tax and an arbitrary exaction.

" So far as it is necessary for the security of person and prop-
erty, money spent for the support of government is as usefully
expended as is the purchase of clothing or provisions ; but when
the sum taken exceeds what is required for that purpose, it is only
a question of amount between the sovereign of India, who exacts
one half of the produce, and the legislator of Great Britain or
the United States, who exacts a million of pounds or of dollars for
which an equivalent is not given." — H. C, Carey, On Wealth, p,
SJfS; Philadelphia, 1888,

An almost self-evident corollary from these sound deductions
would be, that any tax or system of taxation that did not protect
but diminished private property would tend to imperil or dry up
the sources of public revenue.

A recognition of the true relation which a just and equitable
system of taxation sustains to the state and to the capital or prop-
erty of its citizens, and also of the fact that under such a system
a tax worTcs to a diminution of the income of the property taxed,
and not to a diminution of the value of the property itself, ought

* M. Menier, in proposing the above definition, himself recognized the necessity of ac-
companying it with the following explanation : " When I say that taxes * represent the in-
vestment of national capital,' it is of course understood that I speak only of that of the
investment assigned to the state, and that I am very far from the communistic theory, ac-
cording to which the state, being the owner of the national capital, should turn it to ac-
coimt for its own profit. In the useful employment of the capitals of the nation there are
an individual part and a collective part. In my definition of taxes only that collective part,
the syndicate contribution, is taken into account." — A Treatise on the Taxation of Fixed
Capital^ by M. Menier^ of the French Chamber of Deputies. English translation, by I. 0.
Gallegan, Fellow of the University of France ; London, 1880.

588 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

to effectually expose the fallacy of the somewhat popular idea,
that taxation is really a gradual (and in the course of time a com-
plete) confiscation by the public of all private or individual prop-
erty ; and that in a certain sense no man by reason of taxation
can be regarded as having a perpetual ownership of any property ;
an annual tax on the value of any property of one and a half per
cent, with five per cent interest, exhausting such value in about
thirty years. If taxation brought no returns, either direct or in-
direct, to the persons or property assessed, there would be some
warrant for regarding it as an act of confiscation ; but if it pro-
vides, as every correct system of taxation does, for a certain class
of expenditures, in default of which in the present state of society
there would be no adequate protection to property and no encour-
agement for its accumulation and development, then there is no
more reason for regarding taxation as confiscation than for at-
tributing the same effect to payments for wages, rents, repairs,
interest,* insurance, etc.

A practical illustration of the truth of this conclusion is to be
found in the circumstance, that as a rule the class of property
paying the highest proportional taxes in any community is the
most profitable or desirable to its owners. It is also a pertinent
question, why property which has paid taxes for a given period —
say thirty years — and has so been absorbed by the public, should
continue to be assessed ; or why, if the person popularly regarded
as the owner of such property should refuse to fjay taxes, the
property should be sold for taxes when it has already been taken
to itself by the public.

Another point of interest in connection with this subject
which has been little noticed by economists is, that if a high de-
gree of civilization can not exist without a high degree of taxa-
tion,! the methods of economizing labor, or, what is the same thing,
of producing a greater amount of product with a given amount
of labor — conditions which make high civilization possible —
enable a government progressive in this respect continually to
take a larger share of the results of the work of its citizens,
expressed in terms of money, without really increasing their
burdens of taxation. " Every invention and discovery by which
the production of commodities is facilitated and their value

* This same fallacy was indeed applied to interest in the United States, when an eminent
official maintained that in paying interest for many years on the public debt the people of
the country had more than paid off the principal, and were therefore morally justified in
repudiating the debt.

f Year by year the public demands more efficient schools, better postal facilities, better
harbors, improved paving, drainage, and lighting of streets, a stricter abatement of nuisances
and supervision of infectious disease. All this means a higher standard of public well-
being, entailing, however, constantly increased public outlay.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 589

reduced, enables individuals to spare a larger quantity for the
use of the state. The sacrifice made in paying taxes, consists
in the labor, or in the cost of the money or produce required to
pay them and not in the amount of such money or produce." A
given, amount of food and clothing, iron, steel, copper, leather
goods, paper, and transportation can now, for example, be fur-
nished to the Government of the United States for at least one
third, and probably not more than one fifth, of the labor required
to produce like quantities of these same commodities or services
in 1840 ; while the wages paid for the work which such quantities
represent or necessitate have been increased from fifty to seventy-
five per cent and upward. In 1840 an operative in the cotton
mills of Rhode Island, working thirteen to fourteen hours a day,
turned off 9,600 yards of standard sheeting in a year ; in 1886 the
operative in the same mill made about 30,000 yards, working ten
hours a day. In 1840 the wages were $176 a year ; in 1886 the
wages were $285 a year.

Daring the ten years from 1870 to 1880 the increase in the
number of hands employed in anthracite coal mining was 32*2
per cent, as compared with an increase of product of 82*8 per
cent ; while in the case of copper during the same period the
ratios were 15*8 and 70'8 per cent respectively. The whole
tendency, therefore, of the modern conditions of production is
not to entail any greater sacrifice on the part of the taxpayers for
the support of the Government, but rather to diminish it. " Gov-
ernments have precisely the same interest as their subjects in
facilitating production, inasmuch as its increased facility affords
the means of adding to the quantity of produce at their disposal
without really adding to the weight of taxation; whereas, on the
contrary, a diminished facility of production must either diminish
in an equal degree the produce appropriated by government or
compel it to lay heavier burdens on its subjects. Public wealth,
in short, is merely a portion of private wealth transferred to
government, and the greater the amount of the latter the greater,
of course, will be the magnitude of the portion that may be con-
veniently spared for public purposes."— ^7. R. McCulloch.

When Taxation becomes an Evil.— It is not pretended
that taxation, even under a correct system of assessment and col-
lection, may not under some circumstances be an evil. It is an
evil when through extraordinary or injudicious expenditures
of the state it is excessive and demands too large a proportion of
the annual or concurrent income of the people (in the form of
rents, interest, profits, salaries, and wages), out of which, or out of
the annually augmented wealth of a country, and not out of ac-
cumulated capital, all taxes ought to be paid, and as a rule are
paid. The economic rule governing taxation of first importance

590 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

laid down by Prof. Cossa (Scienza delle Finance) is "that it
should, when possible, tax income only, whether national or indi-
vidual, but spare the estate itself."

If the burden of taxation, or the amount taken, is not fully
compensated by increased production or increased saving, it be-
comes one of the greatest evils to which a people can be subjected ;
for under such circumstances the means of future production will
be impaired, encroached upon, and the country will necessarily
begin to retrograde.

When the share of the annual product falling to the workmen
of any country is barely sufficient to support life free of taxation,
then the burden of taxes begins to promote pauperism. It takes
that which is necessary to existence and the maintenance of
energy. This is now occurring in Italy. The taxation of Italy
probably absorbs more than one third part of the product of the
country. The army is served first, the workmen second, while
the women become diseased and the children die by lack of ade-
quate nourishment.

Taxation is also an evil, though in a lesser degree, when the
rate assessed is not the same upon all persons, property, and busi-
ness within the same sphere of (business) competition ; when it
is made an instrumentality for effecting some other purpose than
that of raising revenue, no matter how desirable that purpose may
be ; and when, as in the United States, it is largely indirect, and
its incidence and amount are thereby concealed from the ultimate
taxpayers.*

The general result of experience is also to the effect that when
excessive and exceptional taxation has been resorted to by a state
for the purpose of regulating or destroying industries or traffic,
it has rarely been successful. The economic and moral lesson

* A most interesting and instructive example of the decay in modem times of a con-
siderable state due to radically vicious methods of collecting revenue is afforded by the
present condition of the Asiatic kingdom of Persia. Its typical despotic government, repre-
sented by the Shah, annually demands and exacts a large amount of money from its subjects
to defray the expenses of the state, but not more, perhaps, than the resources of the country
and its people Avould fairly warrant and sustain, if it was collected by intelligent methods.
In default, however, of any knowledge of how to get revenue without destroying the springs
of wealth, the method of taxing is so irregular both as to time and rate, and so thoroughly
unjust and unequal, as to impair the value and security of property, prevent accumulation
and free use of capital, and discourage commerce. A British expert has recently reported
to his home government that if a qualified European or American could be placed at the
head of the exchequer at Teheran, who was allowed such control that no penny ex-
acted from the people of the state should be absorbed on its way to the treasury, or be
taken save in due course of law, he might yet save Perjsia and drain into it a new and vig-
orous Asiatic population, who would fill its now deserted but fertile plains, and organize a
commerce in which all the world stood ready to participate and furnish the instrumentali-
ties necessary for its development.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 591

deducible from such experience may be briefly summarized as
follows :

Whenever a government imposes a tax on any product of in-
dustry so high as to sufficiently indemnify and reward an illicit or
illegal production of the same, then such product will be illicitly
or illegally manufactured ; and when that point is reached, the
losses and penalties consequent upon detection and conviction —
no matter how great may be the one or how severe the other —
will be counted in by the offenders as a part of the necessary ex-
penses of their business ; and the business, if forcibly suppressed
in one locality, will inevitably be renewed and continued in some
other. It is therefore a matter of the first importance for every
government, in framing laws for the assessment and collection of
taxes, to endeavor to determine, not only for fiscal but also for
moral purposes, when the maximum revenue point in the case of
each tax is reached, and to recognize that in going beyond that
point the government " overreaches " or cheats itself.

Increase the duties (taxes) on imports beyond a certain point,
and smuggling springs up as by magic, and the most cruel and
unusual punishments utterly fail to prevent it. American inge-
nuity was never more fertile or manifested in a more remark-
able manner than in the evasion during the years 1864-'68 of a
tax, approximating fifteen hundred per centum, imposed by the
Federal Government on the manufacture and sale of distilled
spirits, resulting in a complete failure on the part of the Gov-
ernment, with almost unlimited military resources at command,
to enforce the law, and a final abandonment and repeal of the
tax.* The comparatively recent tax imposed by the United
States on oleomargarine, with a view of destroying its manu-
facture and preventing its use as an article of food, has been
so far ineffectual that its production and consumption have been
greater than they were before the law authorizing the tax was
enacted.

More than a century ago Adam Smith pointed out that such
taxes " tempt persons to violate the laws of their country, who
are frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and
who would have been in every respect excellent citizens had not
those laws made that a crime which Nature never meant to
be so."

Some other fallacies concerning the sphere and influence of

* Out of a consumption of at least fifty million proof gallons of distilled spirits of do-
mestic production in the United States during the fiscal year 1867-68, the Federal Gov-
ernment collected a tax upon less than seven million gallons, the sale of the difference at
the current market rates of the year, less the average cost of production, returning to the
credit of corruption a sum approximating sixty million dollars.

592 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

taxation which have obtained popular credence may be here ap-
propriately noticed.

Thus, it is not infrequently assumed that any injurious influ-
ences of excessive or unnecessary taxation are largely or wholly
imaginary, inasmuch as they are really returned to the contribu-
tors (taxpayers) through the expenditures of Government ; which,
by increasing demand for commodities and services, create or
extend markets, maintain prices, and enlarge the sphere or op-
portunity for industrial employment, and favor an increase in
the supply and circulation of money. This assumption is obvi-
ously but a reproduction in another form of the fallacy (before
noticed) that industry can be stimulated by taxation; and which
in turn finds its antetype in a favorite idea of the middle ages
that the destruction or waste of commodities "made good for
trade ^'; and which maxim, it is said, a guild of glaziers in Paris
practically carried out by encouraging their apprentices to break
windows, who may have attempted to justify their conduct by
asking themselves the question, "What would become of the
glazing business if nobody ever broke windows ? "

A general answer to this fallacy is, that to break, spoil, or
v)aste by fire, pestilence, war, famine, shipwreck, or injudicious
and unnecessary taxation and public expenditure, always entails
a loss to society ; and if these results give to certain class interests
an opportunity to perform unnecessary work, or sell products
at an advance over their current prices in the world's market,
and thereby inflict unnecessary and additional taxes on other in-
dividuals, it can not be regarded as other than an evil, and preju-
dicial to public interests.

To those who live on the produce of unnecessary taxation and
correlative governmental expenditure, any consequent encourage-
ment of industry by increasing demand and extension of mar-
kets, will very naturally seem to be in the highest degree bene-
ficial. But, in order that industry may be truly benefited, the
market must be real and not artificial, or one created by unneces-
sary taxation and expenditure. "It is absurd to suppose that
either individuals or states should receive the smallest benefit
from the demand of those whom they have been previously and
unnecessarily obliged to furnish with the means of buying. To
keep up useless regiments and overgrown establishments on the
pretense of encouraging industry is quite as irrational as if a
shopkeeper were to attempt to increase his business and get rich
by furnishing his customers with money to buy his goods." —
McCulloch.

Hamilton (a Scotch economist) puts the case even more forcibly.
" To argue," he says, " that the money raised in taxes, being spent
among those who pay it, is therefore no loss to them, is no less

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 593

absurd than the defense of a housebreaker, who, being convicted
of carrying off a merchant's money, should plead that he did him
no injury, for the money would be returned to him in the pur-
chase of the commodities in which he dealt."

" It is obvious that the services rendered by the various pub-
lic functionaries who receive the proceeds of taxation form the
only return made to the taxpayers. And it is undoubtedly true
that these services are of the highest value, and that, when
neither the number nor the salaries of those by whom they are
rendered are unnecessarily large, they constitute a full and ample
equivalent for the sums expended upon them. But all beyond
this — all that is drawn from the people by means of taxes, to be
expended in maintaining unnecessary functionaries, or in over-
paying them — is wholly lost to the taxpayers, or is not in any
way compensated to them." — McCulloch.

" We might as well say that it would be a good thing to put
snags in the rivers, to fell trees across the roads, to dull all our
tools, as to say that unnecessary taxation could work a blessing."
— Prof. W. G. Sumner.

Some writers of repute have advocated the special imposition
of taxes on the ground that they act as stimulants to industry.
M. Garnier entertained this opinion. The late J. R. McCulloch,
who wrote learnedly on the Principles of Taxation, favored such
practice on the part of government, provided the taxation was
"moderate." But of taxation employed for such object which
was not moderate he wrote as follows :

" The effect of exorbitant taxes is not to stimulate industry,
but to destroy it. The stimulus given by excessive taxation to
industry has been not inaptly compared to the stimulus given by
the lash to the slave — a stimulus which the experience of all ages
and nations has proved to be as ineffectual as it is inhuman, when
compared to that which the expectation of improving his condi-
tion gives to the productive energies of the citizen of the free
state."

The direct beneficial agency, not merely of moderate but of
most excessive taxation, as a stimulant to industry, is also obvi-
ously a fundamental principle in every so-called " protective tariff
system."

Very curiously, the best refutation of these ideas was made by
the late H. C. Carey, in a Treatise on Wealth, published in 1838.
After indorsing the statement of Mr. McCulloch as to the influ-
ence of exorbitant taxation on industry, and the correctness of his
analogy between the stimulus afforded thereby and that imparted
by the lash, he antagonizes the proposition that the effect of even
moderate taxation imposed as a stimulus to industry can be in any
degree beneficial, by asserting that what is true of the influence

TOL. XLIX.— 47

594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of exorbitant taxation in this respect "is equally true of all un-
necessary burdens (of taxation), whether great or small."

" If taxation be a stimulus," he says, " the advantage must in-
crease with its extent, and taking 2s. per week must do more good
than taking Is. Moderation depends upon habit. We think Mr.
McCulloch has fallen into the same error with the man who
attributes increased vigor to two glasses of brandy, while he
deprecates the drinking of a quart as likely to produce intoxica-
tion. The man in sound health who drinks two glasses will not
work as well as he who drinks none, but he will do so much
better than his neighbors who drink by the quart that it may be
supposed that his superiority results from the glasses taken, when
it really arises out of the six that he has forborne to take. If
taxation be good, so is the lash : both will make people work, but
neither will make them work well. The moment we admit that
taxation in any case tends to promote industry, it is impossible to
say where we shall stop."

Another fallacy which has obtained credence, especially in
recent years in the United States and even among its legislators,
is that the burden of taxation is increased by a fall in the prices
of commodities which represent the work that furnishes the
money with which taxes are paid. It owes its existence and tol-
erance to the non-recognition of a principle of taxation which has
also been thus set forth by Mr. J. R. McCulloch :

" The amount of a tax is not to be estimated by the hulk or
species of the produce which it transfers from individuals to gov-
ernment or to creditors in general, hut exclusively by its value.
A heavy tax consists in the abstraction of a large value, and a
light taxation in the abstraction of a small value. When a fall
takes place in the cost of producing any article, its price necessa-
rily declines in an equal degree, and its producers are obliged to
dispose of a proportionally larger quantity to obtain the means
of obtaining the same amount of taxes. But it is an obvious
error to suppose, as is very commonly done, that the burden of
taxation is consequently increased. The value paid by contribu-
tors remains the same, and it is by values and not by quantities
that the weight of taxation is to be measured. If through im-
provements in agriculture, machinery, or any other cause, two
quarters of wheat or two yards of cloth were produced with the
same expenditure of capital and labor that is now required to
produce one quarter or one yard, it would be no hardship to give
double the quantity of wheat or cloth in payment of taxes."

A failure to recognize and understand this principle has led
to much erroneous reasoning on the subject of taxation, and finds
a curious practical illustration in the following record of recent
experience. Thus in the so-called bimetallic discussion in the

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 595

United States it has been unqualifiedly asserted that, owing to
the remarkable decline in the average prices of general commodi-
ties (estimated at about eighteen per cent from 1867 to 1877, and
thirty-one per cent from 1867-77 to 1886-88), and which in turn
has been assumed to have been occasioned by the demonetization
of silver and consequent appreciation in the value or purchasing
power of gold, the burden of the national debt of the United
States and also all private debts, especially such as are in the
nature of mortgages on land or on other productive fixed capital,
has been greatly increased, inasmuch as a greater effort of labor
or an increased amount of the products of labor — typically cotton
and iron — had become necessary to liquidate such debts and the
interest thereon.* The error in such reasoning or assumption is
found in the circumstance that no consideration is given or allow-
ance made for the different results of labor at the periods of price
comparisons, and that th.e real cost of producing the staple com-
modities of the United States, or the effort needed to produce a
given amount of general merchandise, or the number of days'
work put into each, piece of such merchandise, has on an average
decreased during these periods more than their market prices
have decreased, so that instead of the decline in the prices of
commodities under consideration having increased the burden
upon labor of national and other debts created before such de-
cline, the burden has been lessened to just the extent that the
average cost of producing commodities has declined to a greater
degree than their average market prices. Thus all authorities
are substantially agreed that there are few departments of indus-
trial effort in which the saving of time and work in the twenty to
thirty years next anterior to 1890 was at least forty per cent, and
in not a few instances has been much greater (in the manufac-
ture of boots and shoes, for example, eighty per cent). In North.
Carolina the relative increase in cotton product and population
from 1870 to 1880 was as 4'o to 1. With slight changes in the
relation of labor to product, the cotton crop of the United States
increased seventy-six per cent between the years 1866 and 1872, and

I forty-nine per cent between 1872 and 1886. Recent investigations
have shown, in the case of certain leading articles in hard-

♦ In 1885 a memorial signed by ninety-five members of the United States House of
Representatives of the Forty-eighth Congress and presented to the President of the United
States contained the following statement : '* Eighteen million bales of cotton were the
equivalent in value of the entire interest-bearing national debt in 1866 ($2,221,000,000) ;
but it will take thirty-five million bales at the price of cotton now (1886) to pay the re-
mainder of such debt ($1,196,000,000). Twenty-five million tons of bar iron would have
paid the whole debt ($2,674,000,000) in 1866 ; it will now take thirty-five million tons to
pay what remains ($1,376,000,000) after all that has been paid."

596 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

1870 of a million dollars could be afforded in 1894 for a like cost
of $444,444. Another striking illustration of the present cheapness
of manufactured articles per unit and as measured in terms of
labor payments per hour or day, compared with former recent
periods, and as the result of present industrial conditions, is found
in the statement that wire nails are now so cheap that, if a car-
penter drops a nail, it is cheaper to let it lie than take time to
pick it up ; and the correctness of which has been demonstrated
as follows : "Assuming that it takes a carpenter ten seconds to
pick up a nail which he has dropped, and that his time is worth
thirty cents per hour, the recovery of the dropped nail would cost
0*083 cent. There are two hundred sixpenny nails in a pound,
and they are worth on an average 1*55 cent per pound, making the
value of one nail 0*0077 cent. In other words, it would not pay to
pick up ten nails at the assumed loss of time and rate of pay of
the carpenter."

On the other hand, wages have increased in the United States
since 1870 in an approximative ratio with the increase in the effect-
iveness of labor in producing commodities, and touched the high-
est point ever known about the year 1890. During the same
period debtors have gained greatly by the decrease in the cost of
living, and a consequently increased opportunity for laying up
a surplus for meeting tax demands and other purposes. The
assumption that the comparatively recent fall in the price of
commodities in the United States has increased the burden of
taxation upon its people, therefore merits the characterization
of being one of the most irrational and fictitious of popular
economic fallacies.

Some interesting facts concerning the Hausas and their country in
Africa were communicated to a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical
Society by Mr. J. A. Robinson and Mr, William Wallace. Mr. Robinson
has paid much attention to the language and literature of the people.
Nearly all of them have learned to write in the Mohammedan schools, and
business is largely done by correspondence. An association has been
formed to promote the study of the language ; and a college is talked of to
be established at Tripoli. Mr. Robinson has brought back specimens of
native literature, of which a volume is to be published. Crops of many
kinds are raised, of which Mr. Wallace names fourteen specifically, with
others ; and large stocks of horses are kept. At Farra, the chief seat of the
iron trade, Mr. Wallace visited the smelting furnaces, but was not allowed
to see the mines from which the iron ore is dug. At Jaga he found an im-
portant commercial town, with large pottery works and dye works, and in-
dustries in iron and leather, A part of the country, which was once very
prosperous, is, however, now a retreat for robbers, who keep the neighbor-
ing region in terror. Mr. Wallace affirmed that ijeace and freedom only
are needed to convert Hausaland into another India.

I

THE SYMPSYCHOQRAPH, 597

THE SYMPSYCHOGRAPH: A STUDY IN IMPRESSIONIST

PHYSICS.

By DAVID STAKK JOEDAN.

THE Astral Camera Club of Alcalde was organized in Novem-
ber, 1895, for purposes of scientific research through the
medium of photography. The function of the club was the co-
operative study of man's latent psychical powers, that these might
be made helpful in the conduct of life. No powers granted to
man should be neglected or allowed to waste in idleness. Just as
the great physical force of electricity remained for centuries hid-
den, and known only by casual and unimportant manifestations,
so the great odic forces within man still are scantily revealed.
The method of the club in Alcalde was to be that of the most
rigid scientific research. It was to take up, one after another,
the discoveries of our eager century as they were made known to
the world through the medium of the daily newspaper. To these
were to be added those suggestions which alert intuition and
psychic practicality would naturally suggest. No hypothesis in
science was to be rejected beforehand, and no prejudice was to
stand in the way of the reception of any new theory that might
contain a living truth.

As soon as the news of the marvelous experiments of Prof.
Rontgen had reached Alcalde, the Camera Club began work on
the X rays, and on the larger problem of the significance of pho-
tography without visible light. They had no difficulty in repeat-
ing the usual experiments. They got an outline of the skeleton
of a canary, the shadow of an empty pocketbook, the bones of a
finger surrounded by a gold ring, and the location of an imbedded
shot. Thus those strange rays of light, or odic force, invisible to
our eyes, because none of our ancestors ever had a chance to gaze
upon them, disclosed the presence of objects which had else lain
forever in darkness. In addition to this, the green light of the
vacuum tubes provoked that uncanny feeling which always pre-
cedes and presages a great discovery in occult science. From this
feeling the club was safe in predicting that far greater discoveries
were to follow, and that the X rays would not end in mere repe-
titions of Rontgen's triumphs in " skiography.''

In this they were not disappointed. Prof. Inglis Rogers, of
London, found that not only could pictures be produced in dark-
ness by means of invisible force, but that the invisible waves sent
out through the ether by the mind could also affect a sensitive
plate. Just as one sensitive mind at a distance receives an image
sent out from the psychic retina of another, so could the same
image be concentrated and fixed upon a photographic plate. Prof.

598 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Rogers in a matter-of-fact way looked for a few rainutes at a
postage stamp, tlien retired to a dark room, and gazed through the
lens of the camera at the sensitive plate. The figure of the post-
age stamp was on his mind, and from his mind it passed out
through the sensitive ether to the plate made ready to receive it.
The result was a photograph of the stamp— small and a little
blurred, but showing the undoubted features of the gracious Queen
and the words "one penny. ^' Thus was the bridge between
psychic power and photographic sensitiveness made once for all.
This connection established, there is naturally no limit to the
application of the principle.

It thus becomes plain that the invisible rays of Rontgen are
not light in the common sense, but akin rather to the brain ema-
nations, or odic forces, which pass from mind to mind without
the intervention of forms of gross matter as a medium, and to
which gross matter in all its forms is subject.

Nor is this principle new in the philosophy of man. The wise
of all ages have held that mind is sovereign over matter. Besides
this general law, it has been known to our fathers that in the eye
of the dying man is impressed the last scene on which he looked
in life. With instruments of precision we may examine that
scene, and by skillful photography we should be able to secure
and fix it for all time. Whittier foreshadows the broad law on
which this rests when he asks :

Do pictures of all the ages live

On Nature's infinite negative,

Whence half in sport, in malice half,

She throws at times, with shudder or laugh,

Phantom and shadow in photograph ?

It may be that by means of such negatives History is able to
repeat herself. It is not unlikely that among the latent powers
which are conferred upon man by the possession of the astral
body, are those which will enable him to read the pictures on the
infinite negatives of Nature, and by that means to rescue the rec-
ords of the vanished past.

Following the experiments of Prof. Rogers, other physicists
have tried to photograph the psychical images as they are im-
pressed on the retina by the force of imagination. It is evident
that such images are distinct from those arising from immediate
contact with reality ; but their real nature is the same in essence.
When Inglis Rogers was gazing at the stamp he saw only an
image on the retina, and in reality it was not on the material cells
of the retina itself that the image rested, but it was on the tabula
rasa of the mind. It was outward from the mind itself, not from
the retina, that this was projected through the sensitive and re-
sponsive ether to the sensitive plate of photography, an arrange-

THE SYMPSYCHOGRAPH.

599

ment of unstable cells which is the triumph of the art of the
chemist.

It is therefore not necessary for this experiment that one
should gaze at an individual stamp. To think of a stamp will
serve as well. Recognizing this fact, Mr. Cameron Lee, another
English experimenter, attempted to secure the image of a thought.
Placing his own eye in the focus of a lens in absolute darkness, he
thought intensely of the face of a certain cat. After a long ex-
posure, necessary on account of the comparative grossness of the
photographic materials, a picture was formed. The negative shows
a rounded outline evidently that of the enlarged pupil of the eye,
and in its center was formed a faint image, which could be mis-
taken for nothing other than a cat. An account of this experi-
ment was given in the daily press, but its true bearing was first
seen at Alcalde.

At the meeting of the Astral Camera Club held in Alcalde on
April 1st of this current year, its president, Mr. Asa Marvin, read
a paper on these discoveries, calling attention to their astral sig-
nificance. The supremacy of mind over matter, already indicated
in a hundred ways, was thus splendidly illustrated. As a thou-
sand miles of ether may be made to vibrate at the command of
the will of the psychical adept, so may the grosser forms of mat-
ter be shaken or removed when this subtle and resistless force
acts upon it.

The famous legend of Odin and the Golden Mead, as Mr. Mar-
vin went on to show, is not a myth, but was probably an actual
occurrence. It may be a reality again when Odin^s descendants
rival their ancestor in that wisdom for which the famous hero so
freely gave his right eye. It is not unlikely that the actual Niffel-
heim, or mist-home, where he exchanged his right eye for wisdom,
is to be sought in the Himalayas rather than in Scandinavia.
Odin, it will be remembered, after he had gained this wisdom,
wished a draught of the golden mead which the giant Suttung
kept locked up in his strong house of stone near his castle of
Spukheim. Odin had arranged with the giant Bauge, whose hay
he had harvested, that he should help him to secure this life-giv-
ing drink. And thus, the saga tells us, when they had found the
stone castle in which the mead was hidden, Odin and Bauge sat
down all day before the stone wall and gazed steadily upon it.
By this means, so the story goes, they bored a small hole through
the stone large enough for Odin in the astral form of an angle-
worm to pass through, and by this means the mead was gained
and the strength of the giants passed over to mortals.

The essence of this story lies in its illustration of the power of
mind over matter when its forces are concentrated. By psychic
intensity the cohesion of molecules of gross matter may be over-

6oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

come. It is well known to physicists that these molecules nowhere
actually touch each other, nor do they come near doing so. The
spaces between them are filled up by ether. Into the interstices
of the ether it is easy for the odic force to introduce itself. It is,
in fact, unlikely that the gross particles of stone exist at all ; for,
as some physicists have shown, these are but eddies or vortex-
rings in the ether itself, which is the only material reality.

Mr. Marvin showed very clearly that this supposed legend was
not lightly to be set aside as mythology; or, rather, that it is
likely that mythology is the only true history. The same psychic
strength and wisdom which have caused Odin to be remembered
and revered as a god by our ancestors, was the same psychic force
by which he overcame the cohesion of matter. For us all to do
this is doubtless only a question of time. Many adepts are already
able to do more wonderful things than these. In time the evolu-
tion of man will bring these latent powers to light, superseding
our common reason with astral intuition as reason has supplanted
mere animal instinct.

Having thus shown the broad principles on which studies in
the new psycho-physics must rest, Mr. Marvin described a special
contrivance or application of these principles to the work of the
Camera Club.

He had devised a camera with a lens having curved facets ar-
ranged on the plan of the eye of the fly. To each one of the seven
facets led an insulated tube provided within by an electric con-
nection, so that electric or odic impulses could be transferred from
the brain or retina through the eye of each different observer to
the many-faced lens. From the lens these impulses would be con-
verged on a sensitive plate, as the rays of light are gathered to-
gether in ordinary photography.

From the members of the Camera Club, seven of those having
greatest animal magnetism and greatest power of mental concen-
tration were chosen for the experiment. Connection was made
from the eye of these observers to the corresponding parts of the
lens; then all were to remain in utter darkness and perfect
silence, each person fixing his mind on a cat. They were not to
think of any particular cat, but of a cat as represented by the in-
nate idea of the mind or ego itself. This was highly important,
for the purpose of Mr. Marvin was not simply to fix by photog-
raphy an ephemeral recollection, as Mr. Rogers and Mr. Lee had
done ; it was to bring out the impression of ultimate feline real-
ity. The innate image in the mind was the object desired. One
man's thought of a cat would be individual, ephemeral, a recollec-
tion of some cat which he had some time seen, and which by the
mind's eye would be seen again. From seven ideals, sympathet-
ically combined, the true cat would be developed. This combina-

THE SYMPSYCHOGRAPH.

601

tion is the essence of sym^psychography, a term suggested by
Prof. Amos Gridley, of Alcalde, as distinct from the ordinary
ideography of Rogers and Lee. The personal equation would be
measurably eliminated in sympsychography, while the cat of the
human innate idea, the astral cat, the cat which " never was on
sea or land," but in accordance with which all cats have been
brought into incarnation, would be more or less perfectly dis-
closed.

In accordance with this plan the experiment was tried under
the direction of Mr. Asa Martin. By the courtesy of the secre-
tary of the club. Miss Corintha Jones, of Alcalde, we are enabled

k

to present a copy of the resultant sympsychograph in advance of
the publication of the regular bulletin of the society in which the
apparatus used is figured in detail (see Plate 10).

It will be noticed that this picture is unmistakably one of a
cat. But it is a cat in its real essence, the type cat as distin-
guished from human impressions of individual cats. This
achievement, like the earlier ones of Odin, Rontgen, Rogers, and
Lee, opens great vistas for future scientific research. The next
experiment will be by similar means to photograph the cat's idea
of man.

As might be expected in a first attempt, there is a lack of co-
ordination of the parts. Mr. Gridley, the schoolmaster, had

VOL. XLIX. 48

6o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

planned his cat on a large scale, a huge cat face with gray radiant
whiskers looking directly at the beholder. Most of the others
thought of the cat in lateral view or profile. These variant and
vagrant individual impressions naturally appeared on the camera
before the ether waves were co-ordinated and the reflex influences
came back from all to one, regulating and co-ordinating the
thought of the cat. Thus these preliminary impressions are re-
corded as ghost pictures in various places about the plate before
the ultimate composite view was achieved. Thfe delay in this
regard has darkened the center picture, interfering a little with its
perfection of definition. This darkening would probably appear
in other experiments on account of the long exposure (sixteen
minutes) thought necessary for a picture of this kind, in which
odic magnetism is made to take the place of light.

On the cat's cheek is a curious black spot or stigma which has
not been fully accounted for. From its sharpness of definition it
must stand in some relation to each of the seven persons whose
thoughts were centered upon it. One suggestion was that this
was the blind spot on the retina in each of the sympsychogra-
phers. But the blind spot marks the point of entrance of the nerve
which goes back to the brain. While it may not have visual
power, it is not unlikely that it is a point of special activity in
ideography. This suggests that the black stigma may be the
yellow spot, or the macula lutea, the point of acute vision, a
region on the retina where odic forces would naturally be absent.
Mr. Marvin himself inclines to the opinion that a microscopic
examination of the negative will show that this stigma has like-
wise the form of a cat, and that it will be found to be an ideomor-
phic germ or centrum where the co-ordinate thought of the cat
has first impinged on the plate and from which the image of the
cat has concentrically arisen.

Meanwhile the cat of Mr. Thompson, the janitor, who alone
could answer this question, lay in the darkness under the warm
stove and purred softly.

Enumerating the uses made of the fan in Japan, Mrs. C. M. Salney says
that the seven gifts of a Japanese bride to her spouse invariably include a
fan — in fact, fans are the most frequent gifts in Japan, and are used to pre-
sent gifts upon. They are much employed for juggling; singers modulate
their voices with fans; they have served as news sheets — sometimes as sedi-
tious news sheets — and as vehicles of satire. Maps for ti'avelers are printed
on fans. Ceremonial fans are employed when houses and other buildings
are finished. The fans made for the Japanese themselves are usually not
the same as those intended for the Western market. The Japanese prefer
smaller fans, quieter in tone and color, and more refined than those that
Europeans like.

I

I

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL. 603

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL.

By JAMES ELLIS HUMPHREY.

HARDLY more than a generation ago naturalists were form-
ing, under the lead of the great Englishman, those concep-
tions of organic development and of the blood relationship of
living beings resulting from common descent which have formed
the starting point of almost all subsequent research. During the
same years in which Mr. Darwin was accumulating the facts
which were to form the imperishable foundations of his super-
structure, various German investigators were gradually recording
the observations that have afforded equally secure grounds for
that view of the essential substance of living organisms which
found expression at about the same time with the development
theory, and which has exercised a hardly less profound influence
upon biological investigation — the protoplasm theory.

But the beginnings of our knowledge of the intimate structure
of plants and animals reach back two centuries further to the
work of an English physicist and optician, Robert Hooke. This
man, desiring to demonstrate his improvements in the manu-
facture of magnifying glasses, published in a volume entitled
Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute
Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses, in 1667, accounts of the ap-
pearance of various objects when viewed with his lenses. Among
the objects upon which he had chanced was a piece of cork, and
this he found to consist of a series of empty cavities separated by
thin partitions, to which cavities he gave the name of cells, from
their suggestion of the cells of a honeycomb. But although we
now know that cork is a dead issue which no longer contains any
essential component of the living cells, and although our concep-
tion of a cell is to-day quite opposed to that of a tightly closed
chamber, such as the name implies, yet Hooke's name, given so
long ago to the dead shell, is still retained for the living reality.
And here we have one more example of the operation of that
interesting conservatism of the human mind which perpetuates
established terms or customs or beliefs long after their original
fitness and raison d'etre have been outgrown.

Hookers work was only one phase of the extraordinary scien-
tific activity that characterized his time. The first fruit of the
splendid awakening of the human mind from the paralysis of
scholasticism which we owe to the Baconian philosophy was a
zeal for the study of Nature ; and from this period date some of
the most brilliant discoveries in natural science. It is a notable
coincidence that in the year 1671 there were presented to the
lately established, but already famous. Royal Society of London

6o4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

two elaborate treatises on the minute structure of plants, which
had been quite independently worked out, the one by Grew, an
Englishman, the other by Malpighi, an Italian. But their admi-
rable work remained for more than a hundred years the standard
of knowledge in plant anatomy, while the overwhelming author-
ity and example of the Linnsean school reduced botany to the
superficial examination of dried fragments, and comprised all
needed knowledge of a plant in the determination of its Latin
name.

For the beginnings of our real knowledge of the cell we must,
then, leap the chasm of a century and a half to come again upon
a period of improvement of the microscope as affording the means
for further advance. In this case the important discoveries of
Amici, resulting in lens systems in which both chromatic and
spherical aberration were largely corrected, offered to histologists
far better tools than had hitherto been at their command. Grew
and Malpighi had distinguished in plants two kinds of elements,
approximately isodiametric cells and much elongated vessels ; but
Treviranus had shown, early in the present century, that vessels
are derived from rows of cells by the obliteration of intervening
walls. And about the same time he had rediscovered the now
familiar circulation in the gigantic cells of the brittleworts, or
CharacecB, which, first described in 1772 by Corti, had been for-
gotten in the zeal for taxonomy which possessed his contempo-
raries. But gradually the idea grew that the contents within the
walls of the cell are of importance ; that the real cell is a living
thing which nourishes itself and grows. One of the earliest clear
expressions of this idea was written by Meyen in 1830, who spoke
of cells of higher plants as " little plantlets in the greater." But
the general spread of such views and general interest in cell prob-
lems date from the time when Schleiden's clear mind was turned
upon them. Going directly to the heart of the whole matter as it
then stood, he asked, " How do cells arise ? " and set himself to
answer the question. As a probable clew to its solution he
seized, by a happy inspiration, upon the discovery made a few
years before by Robert Brown that the cells of certain plants
studied by him contained each a rounded, rather highly refractive
body, which he had called, and which is still called, the nucleus.
Demonstrating, with the aid of others, the very general occur-
rence of this structure in plant cells, Schleiden made it the center
of his theories of cell life and cell formation. It is true that his
belief that new nuclei are formed by a sort of crystallization out
of a mother-liquor and then form centers for the formation of
new cells, has been proved to be incorrect. And it is equally true
that his idea of the cell as a closed chamber filled with fluid,
whose wall is its most essential part, is no longer entertained.

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL. 605

Yet the fact that his theories turned attention to the cell contents
also, and the fact that the most conspicuous object in almost any
animal cell is its nucleus, made these most fruitful in their re-
sults, as other mistaken theories have often been. The analogy
between plant and animal cells, suggested by the presence of
nuclei in both, led Schwann to thorough and profound investiga-
tions of animal tissues, in which he happily recognized the funda-
mental importance of the study of the development of a tissue for
the elucidation of its nature. In this way he showed that animal
tissues are made up of elementary units comparable with the cells
of plants. The final recognition by Schleiden and Schwann, at
the end of the fourth decade of the century, that all organisms
consist wholly of cells and the products of their activity laid the
solid foundations of the cell theory and brought animals and
plants into new and most suggestive relations.

Studies of the nucleus had necessarily drawn attention to the
granular substance which surrounds it and more or less com-
pletely fills the cavity of the cell, and it had already been called
" plant mucus '' by Schleiden. In 1844 Naegeli determined it to
be a nitrogenous substance, and, together with von Mohl, recog-
nized its presence in all living plant cells, while the latter bot-
anist, two years later, first called it protoplasm, or primitive
iSubstance. Up to this time the leading naturalists believed in
[impassable barriers and inherent differences between plants and
[animals. One of these supposed distinctions was the rigid and
immotile character of plants as compared with the motile and
contractile power of animals. The special contractile substance
of animals, which was recognized as homogeneous or finely
granular and albuminous, had already been called " sarcode " by
Dujardin. But when, in 1850, Cohn showed that some plant cells
possess no membrane and that their protoplasm shows the con-
tractility and other supposedly characteristic properties of sar-
code, he felt justified in saying with much certainty that "the
protoplasm of the botanists and the contractile substance of the
zoologists, if not identical, must yet be structures in a high degree
analogous." But this conclusion, expressed incidentally in a
paper on another subject, did not receive the attention it de-
served. It was not until thirteen years later, when the way had
been prepared by the work of De Bary on the Slime Molds and of
Haeckel on the Radiolarians, that biologists were convinced by
Max Schulze's masterly discussion of the subject of the identity
of the substances in question. With the new view of the identity
of all living substance went a radical change in the conception of
the cell. The cell membrane, which is rarely present in animals,
was relegated to the list of unessential constituents, and the vital
center was transferred in mind to the cell contents, where it has

6o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been, in fact, since the beginning. The kernel of the new proto-
plasm theory, which, as before stated, has since dominated research,
is contained in Schulze's definition of a cell as " a lump of proto-
plasm endowed with the properties of life." Yet for a few years
some botanists found it difficult to give up the old idea of the
active participation of the cell wall in the life of the cell, until
Sachs's classic studies removed the last basis for such belief.

We have seen that Schleiden and Schwann recognized that it
is only cells and their products which make up the substance of
all organisms, but that their ideas of how cells arise were quite
erroneous. It was soon observed by von Mohl and Naegeli that
cells multiply by the division of those already present, and bota-
nists soon came to the conclusion that plant cells can only come
from previously existing ones. This conclusion was reached
much more slowly for animals, since it presented many difficul-
ties in the field of pathology, especially in connection with such
processes as the formation of pus. But gradually the objections
were shown to be of no weight, and the great pathologist Vir-
chow, in 1858, gave expression to the result in the aphorism, " Om-
nis cellula e cellula."

It will be noticed that the view of the cell current thirty years
ago laid less stress upon the nucleus than that of twenty-five
years earlier ; and we shall see that more importance is attached
to it to-day than ever before. Yet, so far as it went, Schulze's
view of the nucleus was better than Schleiden's, for it recognized
it as a specially differentiated organ of the protoplasm, though
knowledge of its particular relations to the activity of the cell
was very meager. Up to about 1875 it was generally thought by
zoologists that, before the cell divides, the nucleus is constricted
into two portions, one of which forms the nucleus of each of the
new cells. The botanists, on the contrary, generally believed that
the nucleus disappears before cell division, after which a new
one appears in each new cell. These conclusions had been reached
by studies of living dividing cells. Practically nothing had been
done with preserved material, since no one trusted results so ob-
tained or believed it possible to guard against artificial appear-
ances due to the action of the preservative medium. The intro-
duction of alcohol by Strasburger for killing and preserving
tissues, and the proof by comparison with fresh material that no
destructive or misleading changes are produced by it, mark the
beginning of the epoch of cell studies, which has been charac-
terized by a most astounding development of technical methods
for killing, preserving, staining, and sectioning tissues of every
sort with the least possible alteration in their living structure.
The results of the first profound studies of the nucleus are con-
tained in two volumes which laid the foundations for all future

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL. 607

cell work — that of Strasburger on plant cells, which appeared in
three editions from 1875 to 1880, and that of Flemming on animal
cells, published in 1882. These authors showed that in both
plants and animals cell division is ordinarily preceded by nuclear
division. This latter process is not usually a mere constriction,
but is, as we shall see, a highly remarkable and significant one,
with a wonderful agreement in detail throughout both animal
and vegetable kingdoms, so far as studied. The literature of the
past fifteen years concerning this subject is of almost incredible
volume, but it has all served to confirm the prime importance of
the nucleus as an organ of the cell, and to show the correctness of
Flemming's extension to the nucleus of the principle long before
established for the cell, in writing " Omnis nucleus e nudeo."

While we attribute to the main mass of the protoplasm out-
side of the nucleus less specialization than to the latter, there ap-
pears to be a certain portion of it which has a special role. As
early as 1883 the Belgian zoologist. Van Beneden observed that
certain tiny protoplasmic masses bear a definite relation to nuclear
division, and he expressed his belief that these should be regarded
as definite organs of the cell. This view has steadily gained
ground, and, although they were not recognized in plant cells
until 1891, when Guignard discovered them, on account of their
minute size and of the technical difficulties connected with mak-
ing them visible, their general occurrence and importance maj^
now be said to be well established. These tiniest of the known
organs of the cell are called centrospheres. Each consists of a
central point surrounded by a mass of apparently homogeneous
hyaline protoplasm.

Having now traced the development of our ideas, we are pre-
pared to express our present conception of a typical cell as a
mass of living protoplasm within which are differentiated a
nucleus and one or two centrospheres. Many plants and ani-
mals consist of single cells, while others are built up of mil-
lions of these units of structure ; but any organism is either an
independent cell or an aggregation of cells more or less mutually
interdependent. Some of the simplest unicellular organisms,
like the Bacteria, of whose work in the world we now hear so
much, are so minute that no differentiation within the cell has
been observed. But rapid improvement in methods of study and
means for observation are steadily reducing the number of these.
Let us try, then, to get an idea of the best-established facts and
views concerning the activities of the cell, and as to the part
played by each of its organs in these activities.

Most plant cells are inclosed, as we have seen, in a firm wall,
usually composed of a substance known as cellulose. Animal
cells are, as a rule, without a definite membrane, and it is not cer-

6o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tain that, in any case where a wall does exist, it consists of true
cellulose.

The protoplasm of a cell is usually bounded at its outside by
a denser hyaline layer which is very impermeable for fluids while
living, and thus serves as a protection against the penetration of
foreign or harmful substances into the cell. But this outer layer
appears also to be the receptive portion of the protoplasm which
is sensitive to and transmits external stimuli. Within it is the
rather fluid, undifferentiated, granular protoplasm which consti-
tutes the basis of the cell, and in which lie the special organs of
which we have spoken. This wonderful mixture of albuminoid
or protei^ substances, which has well been called " the physical
basis of life,^' must therefore possess those fundamental properties
of living things, the power to assimilate, to grow, and to respond
to external stimuli ; and it is easy to show that living protoplasm
possesses all these properties. But the one which most interests
us just here is that of assimilation. This power of converting
food into its own substance, which may result in the increase of
that substance, or growth, seems specially to belong to the granu-
lar protoplasm, which may be regarded as the nutritive organ of
the cell. Just here we note that the food which may thus be
assimilated must be organic substance. It may be proteid, like
albumin, casein, or fibrin ; it may be a carbohydrate, like sugar
or starch ; it may be a hydrocarbon, such as fat or oil ; but or-
ganic it must be. Whence comes now the supply of food ? Plain-
ly, in most cases, by absorption from without. In animals the
solids and fluids taken in are reduced by digestion to the fluid
form, and are then transported to the various cells of the organ-
ism, to be absorbed and assimilated by them. In those plants
known as fungi, which can develop only on living or dead organ-
isms, the food materials are absorbed in fluid form, being some-
times first reduced to that form by the action of a ferment secreted
by the fungus. But certain cells of most plants have the power
of manufacturing their own food from inorganic materials, and
thus of living independently of other living things. Thus the
green plants bridge over the chasm between the inorganic and
the organic, and the life of all organized beings is practically con-
tingent on their life. In the granular protoplasm of some cells
of these plants may be found differentiated protoplasmic masses
which contain the green pigment chlorophyll, that gives them
their color. First recognized early in the present century, these
masses were observed by Naegeli, in 1846, to increase by division,
and therefore to constitute living organs of the cells in which
they occur. These chlorophyll bodies possess the synthetic power
of recombining the elements of simple compounds obtained from
the air and the soil, in the presence of light, into complex organic

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL. 609

compounds which can serve the organism as food. Thus plant
cells which contain chlorophyll bodies differ from all other cells
in manufacturing their own food and in not being obliged to ob-
tain it from without. Since in all or nearly all plants the lack of
chlorophyll, when it is lacking, is due to degeneration in conse-
quence of the acquirement of a saprophytic or parasitic mode of
life, the possession of chlorophyll bodies and the consequent food-
forming power constitute the most real distinction which sepa-
rates plants from animals. Treated understandingly, this affords
the most satisfying response to the ever-recurring demand for a
statement of the differences between the two organic kingdoms,
although the distinction is no more an absolute one, as shown by
the case of the fungi, than any of the other less important ones
often suggested.

We have seen that most plant cells possess firm walls, and it is
little more than a decade since plants were generally believed to
consist of blocks of protoplasm quite shut off from each other, in
most cases, by the surrounding walls. The many difficulties en-
tailed by such belief, and the impossibility of explaining the
transfer of substance or the transmission of stimuli in certain
tissues, was the chief incentive to Gardiner^s researches. This
author and others after him have shown that, in most tissues, and
especially just where they are needed to explain observed phe-
nomena, tiny threads of protoplasm penetrate the cell walls, con-
necting the protoplasmic masses of neighboring cells and forming
the means of communication between them. So that we no longer
think of the cells of a multicellular plant as isolated masses of
protoplasm, but as connected masses, while the intervening walls
give the necessary rigidity and resistance to the tissue.

Passing now to the nucleus of the cell, we find a complicated
structure. Surrounded by undifferentiated protoplasm, it is
bounded against it by a very delicate " nuclear membrane." With-
in this is a loose network of somewhat solid substance, whose
meshes are believed to be filled by a clear, structureless fluid. In
this lie one or more small globular masses of a very strongly
refractive substance, known as nucleoli. That the nucleus is the
controlling organ in the more active cell processes is indicated by
many facts. It has been found that a cell from which the nucleus
has been removed is unable to grow or to form new cell wall. In
cells in which growth or any active process is taking place at
some definite point, the nucleus takes a position near to that point,
although thus lying far from the center of the cell. Any shifting
of the point of greatest activity is accompanied by a correspond-
ing change in the position of the nucleus. The centrospheres lie
ordinarily close beside the nucleus and play their chief role in
connection with its division, which we may proceed to discuss.

6io

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

We have already seen how, the conclusion was reached that
cells can arise only from pre-existing cells, and that this occurs
usually by division. Under favorable circumstances, when a
growing cell has reached a certain rather indefinite limit of size,
it proceeds to divide into two cells. But each of the new cells
must have a nucleus and centrosphere ; and we know that these
can only arise from already existing ones, and by division. The
process of nuclear division, as before remarked, is usually a very
elaborate one, commonly known to students of the cell by the
name karyokinesis. Indeed, so fundamentally important does
this process appear, that the simpler method sometimes observed
is believed by many biologists to have a pathological significance.
The first sign of approaching karyokinetic division in a nucleus
is the thickening of the threads of the nuclear network. This
thickening continues, and at the same time the power of the
threads to take up certain staining substances, now much used in
their study, rapidly increases. Gradually the network resolves
itself into a loose skein or coil, and at last this breaks up into a
number, varying much in different species, but pretty constant in
the same one, of separate rods or loops. These individualized
portions of the original nuclear network have received the name
of chromosomes, from their marked capacity for staining. Mean-
while the centrosphere, if previously single, has divided, and one
of the pair has moved to each of the poles of the nucleus. At
least in the higher plants, this division has occurred long before.

y^

Fi2. 1.

Fier. 2.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 1. — A plant cell, with its nucleus showing the chromatic network and nucleoli, and with

a pair of centrospheres.
Fig. 2. — A plant cell whose nucleus is preparing for division.
Fig. 3. — A plant cell in an early stage of division, its twelve chromosomes separated.

The nuclear membrane now disappears and there is formed, per-
haps from the homogeneous protoplasm of the centrospheres, or
from the substance of the nucleoli, or from both, a spindle-shaped
framework of delicate fibers, about whose equator the chromo-
somes become arranged in a circle. Then is completed a process
which may have begun much earlier, and each chromosome is
split longitudinally into two. Of each pair of daughter chromo-

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL.

611

somes thus formed, one now passes toward one pole of the spindle
and one toward the other. In the higher plants, each polar cen-
trosphere divides into a pair at about the time of the splitting of
the chromosomes. Thus finally there are accumulated at each
pole as many daughter chromosomes as there were mother chro-
mosomes formed in the mother nucleus. Each of the latter has
furnished one of the former, as will be seen, to each group. The

Fig. 4.— a plant cell in division, showing the nuclear spindle and the splitting of the chromo-
somes.

Fig. 5. — A plant cell in a late stage of division, the daughter chromosomes collecting at the
poles of the spindle and the new cell wall beginning to appear.

Fig. 6. — Two daughter cells with nuclei which have nearly reached the resting stage, and each
with a pair of centrosomes, the result of division of a mother cell like Fig. 1.

chromosomes of each group now fuse by their ends into a thread,
and this gradually thins out until, by an inverse process to that
observed at the beginning of division, it passes into the condition
of a nuclear network. Meantime new nuclear membranes have
been formed and two daughter nuclei with accompanying centro-
spheres replace the original one. Just what the mechanics of
karyokinesis is has not been determined with certainty; and
students of the cell are not yet agreed whether the centrospheres
exert an attractive influence on the chromosomes, or are mere
passive points of attachment for the fibers of the spindle.

There remains one constituent of the nucleus whose fate dur-
ing nuclear division has not been discussed. This is the substance
which forms the nucleoli. These bodies usually disappear slowly
while the chromosomes are becoming individualized, and very
commonly have quite disappeared before the disappearance of
the nuclear membrane. Nothing more is then seen of them until
after the constitution of the daughter nuclei and the formation of
their membranes. Then nucleoli reappear within these nuclei.
To what parts of the cell their substance is distributed while they
are unrecognizable, and what purpose they serve in the cell econ-
omy, we do not yet know ; but they are probably composed of a
reserve substance which furnishes material for some formative
process, perhaps for the spindle fibers, as Strasburger now thinks.

6i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

After tlie daughter nuclei are formed, the inclosing protoplasm
divides between them, and thus there result two cells from the
original one. In plants, their separation is commonly brought
about by the formation of a distinct cellulose wall connecting
with the original walls of the mother cell, and dividing the origi-
nal compartment into two, and in most plants this wall begins
to appear in the form of thickenings on the spindle fibers.

As we glance over this process of karyokinetic division just
described, the phenomenon which must strike us as most signifi-
cant is the longitudinal splitting of the chromosomes and the dis-
tribution of the resulting halves. Why should this exact halving
of each chromosome and the invariable contribution of one half
to each new nucleus be necessary ? If it were merely important
to divide the substance of a nucleus about equally between the
nuclei derived from it, no such painfully exact method would be
necessary ; and, if unnecessary, we can not believe it would have
been developed. Yet it is common to animals and plants of the
most varying complexity of structure, and therefore doubtless of
profound significance. Let us reflect that the cells of a given plant
or animal possess and perpetuate the characters of that species.
In case of many organisms, all or most of their cells are capable,
under certain conditions, of reproducing the species to which they
belong. And a given cell is always true to its kind. In other
words, any cell possesses the hereditary characters of its species,
which it has received from its mother cell and which it transmits
to its descendants to the last generation. Two cells from two dif-
ferent organisms are, therefore, though indistinguishable in ap-
pearance, really as different as the organisms from which they
were taken. The transmission of hereditary characters from cell
to cell must, then, be definitely provided for. A little considera-
tion will show that the evidence points at present distinctly to the
nucleus as the probable seat of those characters in the cell. And,
of the different constituents of the nucleus, no other has so dis-
tinct an individuality, or is so carefully divided between the
daughter nuclei, as the substance of the chromosomes ; while the
evident need of a complete equipment of each nucleus with all the
qualities of the species is quite met in its receiving an exact half
of each chromosome. It is by no means proved, and it is perhaps
not possible absolutely to prove, that the chromosomes are the
material bearers of the hereditary characters of the species ; but
this view furnishes the best working hypothesis yet suggested as
to the significance of the phenomena of karyokinosis. And it
certainly correlates the concrete fact with the abstract problem in
a most suggestive way.

In conclusion, it may be well to glance at some cell phenomena
connected with reproduction. Allusion has already been made.

SOME MODERN VIEWS OF THE CELL. 613

incidentally, to vegetative or non-sexual reproduction, which pre-
sents no further features of interest, since it differs from ordinary-
growth only in that the product of this form of growth does not
usually remain attached to, and form a part of, the parent indi-
vidual. On the contrary, it becomes separated, in most cases,
from the parent, and sets out as a new individual. But in sexual
reproduction we meet with a new complication. The phenomenon
of sexual union, which occurs, at least occasionally, in an enor-
mous majority of known organisms, and in very many must al-
ways precede reproduction, is essentially a fusion of two cells.
And, since the male cell often consists of little more than a nu-
cleus, it may perhaps be reduced, in its final expression, to a fusion
of two nuclei. Now it is observed that the number of chromo-
somes in a dividing nucleus of a given species of plant or animal
is approximately constant, and in the sexual nuclei quite so.
After a male sexual nucleus containing, for example, twelve
chromosomes has united with a female nucleus containing the
same number, the fertilization nucleus thus produced proceeds to
divide, and is seen to contain twenty-four chromosomes, or as
many as were brought to it by both parent nuclei. And this
number is found to persist without great variation in the nuclei
of the new organism developed from the fertilized cell by success-
ive divisions. It is plain that if the sexual elements produced
from organisms of this generation contained twenty- four chromo-
somes each, those of their sexually produced offspring would have
forty- eight each, and the point would soon be reached by success-
ive doublings at which the capacity of the nucleus would be far
overtaxed by the number of chromosomes. But this difficulty is
avoided, in the plants and animals thus far investigated, by an
abrupt reduction to one half the number usual in the organism, of
the chromosomes of the nuclei of certain cells which are to give
rise to the sexual cells. This reduced number remains constant
in all the descendants of the nuclei in which it first appears, until
the definitive sexual cells are formed. Then the fusion of two
nuclei, each with the half number of chromosomes, restores to the
resulting organism the typical number. This reduction has been
spoken of as abrupt ; and it could not well be more so. A nucleus
in which it occurs receives from its mother nucleus, let us say,
twenty- four chromosomes which fuse together to form its nuclear
network. When, after a period of rest, this nucleus proceeds to
divide, it develops from its network but twelve chromosomes, and
therefore furnishes but twelve to each of its daughter nuclei.
What has become of the other twelve no one can say, because
nothing is known of the exact relations that exist between the in-
dividual chromosome of the dividing nucleus and any part of the
network of the resting stage.

6i4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is probable that this remarkable process of reduction has
some far-reaching significance with reference to the origin and
meaning of sexuality. Already theories concerning it have been
suggested ; but we are yet on the threshold of knowledge of the
facts on which profitable theories must be based, and, until we
have penetrated further within the portal, we can aif ord to sup-
press our propensity for speculation.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION.

By C. F. HODGE, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY.

I.— INTRODUCTORY.

FOR about thirty years the vivisection question has been before
the public in this country. Discussion has often been hot and
bitter, both in the press and in society, and again it is upon us in
exactly its old form. What are we to do with it ? What, so far
as this country is concerned, has the controversy accomplished ?
After careful reading of all the important literature upon both
sides, it appears to me that nothing has been gained either way.
Both sides are practically where they were thirty years ago, and
the failure seems to be due to fundamental misunderstandings of
the real points at issue. In several hundred antivivisection pub-
lications I am unable to find a passage which reveals the least
conception on the part of their writers of the real purpose which
a physiologist has in his work. On the other side, while definite
arguments have been advanced, no generous effort has been made
to give the public a clear notion of what the physiologist in the
study of health and the pathologist in the study of disease are
driving at. Can something be said which shall do this ? Or
must physiologists work on under the distrust and suspicion of
society because their aims and purposes are misunderstood ?

The real question at issue, moreover, has been buried under
personalities and under matters of detail, themselves involved in
bitterest possible medical controversy, and the merits of which
no amount of discussion, but time and experiment alone, can de-
termine. Only by freeing the argument entirely from these
things, and by placing it upon higher grounds, can we hope for
intelligent peace upon this contested field. What, then, is the pur-
pose of biological science ?

Man finds himself in company upon the earth with an infinite
number of living things, and he has found it of inestimable value
to learn something about this maze of life. The science which

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 615

has come to embody this knowledge is now known as biology. It
falls naturally into two great divisions : the study of the form and
structure of organs and organisms — anatomy or morphology — and
the study of the functions, of the actions, which the organs per-
form. This is physiology. Dividing further, physiology falls
into the sciences of healthy action, physiology proper, and dis-
eased action, pathology, from Tra^o?, a suffering. It is evident
that for the study of form alone the dead body is in general suffi-
cient. But for the investigation of the activities of health and
disease it is as evident that the physiologist and pathologist re-
quire vital action as much as the chemist requires chemical action
or the physicist requires motion. It is continually being urged
that the dead body is sufficient for every scientific purpose. As
well say that the dead body is as good as a live man. It would
be precisely as reasonable to agitate against driving live horses,
contending that dead ones will go just as fast, as to oppose the
use of live animals for physiological or pathological research.
And those who make this claim prove conclusively that they have
no conception of what the word physiology means.

Of all physical Nature nothing is of greater importance or
touches man more closely than just this thing, life. The study of
form, anatomy, is little more than a dead stepping-stone to this
science of the processes of life, physiology. Young as it is, no sci-
ence has attained results of greater value and none gives brighter
promise for the future. In a word, the faith, hope, and charity
which inspire this science are to learn enough about the laws and
possibilities of living Nature, to do away with all disease and
premature death, and to make all life as full and perfect as these
laws will permit. This is the inspiration of biology. Is it base
or unworthy ? And it is not Utopian. It is possible. The end
may not be attained for a hundred years or a thousand. That
depends upon how much faith men have in it and upon how much
effort they are willing to devote to it. But it will come as surely
as the world moves.

Take for a moment a broad view of our situation in this re-
spect. Nearly one half of our people are dying before the age
of forty-one, almost all of disease, curable or preventable, did we
but know how. This goes on with our standing army of physi-
cians, over one hundred thousand strong, on duty day and night.
It looks discouraging, and an eminent physician has himself said
that a doctor is like a man blindfolded, striking about with a
club, almost as likely to hit his patient as the disease. Our only
hope, therefore, must lie in more knowledge of the laws which
govern living Nature. Without this, as well attempt to stay the
storm and tides of the ocean with straw as the currents of disease
and the course of Nature with doctors. If we could get before un-

6i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prejudiced, thoughtful people some idea of the magnitude and
scope of medicine and its importance to human and to all animal
life, together with some faint conception of the moral forces im-
pelling to the pursuit of those sciences which underlie medicine,
in the light of these ideas the vivisection question would wholly
disappear.

More than two hundred and fifty years ago, in the town of
Schaffhausen, a German anatomist was engaged in studying the
anatomy of the human body. The people loathed him as one pos-
sessed of the devil. They told him, in the words of an old super-
stition, that the stain of human blood he could never wash from
his hands. His reply was, " I can wash the blood stains from my
hands with a basin of water, but the stain of ignorance of anatomy
can not be washed from the medical profession with all the water
of the Rhine and the ocean." * Wepf er spoke of anatomy. Anat-
omy must precede physiology and pathology, as the structure must
precede the function it is to perform. Thus Anatomy must pre-
pare the way for physiology, and to some extent she has fulfilled her
mission. But were a Wepf er to arise now, he would say, " The
stain of ignorance of physiology can not be washed away with all
the water of five oceans." I doubt, however, whether a modern
Wepfer would lay the burden of blame at the door of the medical
profession. It is everyday talk that physicians must lower their
practice to the ignorance and prejudice of their patients. The
idea of " magic " cures is still too deeply rooted in the average
mind, and a doctor must " dose " a large proportion of his patients
to satisfy this craving. At no time in the history of medicine has
there been such a craze for patent medicines as now, and in no
country is the situation so bad as in our own. We are the laugh-
ingstock of all Europe in this regard. In Germany apothecaries
are prosecuted for advertising and selling American patent medi-
cines. What hope, then, is there for rational medicine in a coun-
try that spends yearly hundreds of millions for worthless or
harmful " patent medicines " and quack doctors, and but a very
few paltry thousands for the advancement of physiology — and
worse still, among a people who are as completely and just as in-
telligently satisfied with quack nostrums as men were in the dark
ages with amulets and signatures, the moss scraped from a human
skull, the powder of dried toads, or the hair of a saint ? f In a na-
tion of popular rule, the only hope seems to lie in scientific educa-
tion of the people. How this is to be attained is a most difiicult
problem. The people will not educate themselves. Against such

* Rudolf Virchow. Archiv fiir pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie, vol. clxxxv,
p. 3*75, Berlin, 1881.

f George F. Fort. History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, London, 1883.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION, 617

education are naturally trained all the resources of quackery,
whose trade would be gone. And where free expression is accorded
to all alike, progress must be made in the teeth of ignorance too
dense to have any conception of its own depth, and in the face of
brawling charlatanry and screaming fanaticism. With nearly
half our people dying before or about the prime of life, this is the
situation. To teach ideas of cause and effect with reference to
matters of health and disease, to inspire at least a willingness to
heartily co-operate in efforts to control the causes of disease, our
public-school system seems well adapted. But even here there is
a serious tendency to hamper and restrict the proper teaching of
physiology.

1I._VIVISECTI0N FROM THE STANDPOINT OF RELIGION AND MORALITY.

If vivisection is impious, immoral, or demoralizing, it must be
abandoned as a method of research, and further discussion on
grounds of utility is precluded. Hence this aspect of the subject
must receive our first attention. Scarcely a paper appears against
the practice of vivisection which does not contain solemn appeals
to the Deity. These are too sincere to be ignored. In fact, the
most active supporter of the agitation in England would confine
the discussion wholly to these grounds, and invites us to " leave,
then, utility alone, and all the weary controversy which hangs
upon it." With the help of God, it (the national conscience) will
yet abolish vivisection.* A recent expression of the American
Society is as follows :

Resolved, That we, the American Antivivisection Society,
believe vivisection to be morally wrong ; to be distinctly opposed
to the intent of a beneficent Creator, who wills the happiness of
all his creatures ; that we should, as Christians, unite in every
effort for its suppression, and, as the best weapon of the Christian
is prayer. Resolved,^ etc.

The argument has been cast by Cardinal Manning into the
following syllogism: Truth of Nature must be sought only by
methods in harmony with the perfection of Nature's God. Mercy
is one of the perfections of God. Vivisection is not in harmony
with perfect mercy. | Therefore truth must not be sought by
vivisection. How the worthy cardinal knows that vivisection is
not in harmony with God's perfect mercy he nowhere explains.
This is the all-important question. If this proposition is true,
vivisection is impious, and must be abandoned immediately, no
matter what its value to science, or utility to mankind.

* Miss F. P. Cobbe. A Charity and a Controversy, London, 1889, p. 4.
f American Antivivisection Society Report, 1892, p. 19.
X Manning. Annual Address, Victoria Street Society, March 29, 1887.
TOL. XLIX. — 49

6i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Clearly the only way to find an answer to this question is to
go to Nature itself and examine the principles upon which God
has deemed it wise to order the living population of the world.

Doing this, we find living upon the world at present at least
272,090 different species of animals, the number of individuals in
each species being beyond computation or expression. We also
know that 39,925 species, with their countless numbers of indi-
viduals, have succumbed in the struggle for life and become
extinct.*

Now, it has been ordained, in the perfect mercy of God, that
each individual of this innumerable population be born, live for a
little time, and die. With many species, birth itself is painful.
With all, life is a continuous struggle and terminates in what is
commonly called *'the agony of death." Few, at least of the
higher animals, struggle out the full measure of their days and
die in peace. The vast majority are starved to death, or famished
and scorched to death by heat and drought, buried in the burning
debris of volcanoes or in snows and frozen to death, or are beaten
to death by hail or drowned in floods. And in and through all
this is the desperate struggle to find a grain of food, a drop of
water, a little shelter, a foothold in the flood, a way out of the
fiery hail or burning forest.

But harsh as is the relation between animal life and the phys-
ical world, still more severe are the relations of animals to one
another. Here we see the weaker preyed on by the stronger
mercilessly, and behold the array of vivisectional instruments —
the teeth and jaws, the beaks and talons, the claws and fangs,
developed for this purpose. Here the animals that escape the
accidents of the physical world perish most miserably, are lacer-
ated, torn limb from limb, are slowly crushed in serpents' coils or
slowly swallowed alive. And again in all this is the last, prob-
ably of many, flight for dear life, the last convulsive effort to tear
loose from the teeth or talons. Certain plants, even, are carnivor-
ous, and entrap and digest living animals. More than all this,
among certain animals, the males tight to the death for possession
of the females of the species.

Still more terrible, many animals and plants become parasitic,
and suck from day to day the life-blood of their hosts. Un-
doubtedly the greatest distress to which the animal kingdom is
subjected occurs under this head. Some of the many diseases
producing microbes become established in the animal. The dis-

* Leunis. Synopsis der Thierkunde, vol. ii, p. 1176, Hanover, 1886. The above is
merely the number of species known to Leunis in 1886, and by no means the entire number
inhabiting the earth. Lord Walsingham estimates that there are upward of two million
species of insects alone. (Entomological News, April, 1890, p. 58.)

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 619

ease ensues — slow, loathsome decay, sharp, conviilsive torture, or
the burning to death of fever.

All this is going on in the sea and on the land and has been
going on for geological ages upon a scale which baffles expression
in number or quantity. And this is God's ordering of Nature in
"perfect mercy." With it man has had nothing to do, since
there is every reason to believe that it existed ages before he
appeared upon the scene. Cardinal Manning goes on to tell us
that he believes in Genesis ; but there we are told, " And God saw
everything that he had made : and behold, it was very good."
According to any estimate of the enormity of physical suffering
which I have been able to find among anti vivisection writers, the
God who ordained such a scheme of Nature must be a monster
of cruelty. What is wrong with the equation ? The Creator ?
Nature ? Or the ideas of antivivisectionists ? Is it not true that
the religion of a hermit's hut, a lady's parlor, or a pope's palace
is apt to fit ill the problems of the wide world, and that we must
go to Nature to study even religion ?

This travail of the animal creation is the " Slough of Despond "
for every philosophy but one. The biologist would agree with the
Creator in pronouncing it " very good." He too has gained in
some degree the divine point of view, and can see that out of the
struggle comes the quickening to nobler form and higher life,
and that, without this, life of any sort is scarce worth the living.

Few who drive thoroughbreds ever pause to think of the flee-
ing for life, through geological epochs, the kicking and biting, the
hardship and training it has cost to give to the horse his beauty
and strength, since the time when the fox-sized Eohippus picked
his way among Eocene bogs. So with man, so with every form of
life that has attained any height of development. The price has
been great, but the gain is priceless ; and we would not give back,
if we could, all the suffering the world has felt and revert to vege-
tation and formless slimes.

Examining a step further, is it not possible to imagine a more
merciful dispensation of Nature ? Suppose all the " cruel " car-
nivora should be exterminated or become vegetarian. Would
we not then have the animal millennium of certain sentimental
people ? No, far from it. The ensuing year would be the most
dreadful in the experience of the animal kingdom upon the earth,
and would end in death by starvation and disease of many more
animals than are now annually appropriated by the carnivora.
But suppose all manner of disease should be done away with — the
millennium of scientific medicine ; the struggle for food would be
only the more terrible, and it is more merciful to kill in a night,
even by pestilence, than in a month by starvation and the kicks
and butts of stronger animals.

620 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

There is wliat is known as the " balance of natural forces." It
is this that keeps the planets balanced in their orbits, and among
animals it holds the species within the bounds which make for the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is the plan of an
all-merciful Creator, and man has never been able to suggest an
improvement upon it, within the limits of physical conditions.

From the above, we see that every animal life is cast into the
world as an experiment, often of the severest and most painful
type. In this lifelong vivisection. Nature provides no ether or
chloroform, nor even chloral or morphine.

By this very dispensation of Nature God clearly gives to man
every sanction to cause any amount of physical pain which he
may find expedient to unravel his laws. Not only this, the situa-
tion places upon man heavy duties, which he is bound to perform.
These we will consider in a moment. As far as biological science
is concerned the whole argument may be summed up as follows :
Biology is not an exact science like mathematics and physics.
These sciences are exact simply because it is possible in them to
obtain as many equations as there are unknown quantities to be
determined. Hence, with the solution of all possible equations,
every unknown quantity in these sciences may be exactly deter-
mined. In biological sciences the case is thus far quite different.
Here the unknown quantities are legion in every equation.
Hence the extreme difficulty of any solid advance ; hence the
many mistakes, the many disagreements. In the best of experi-
ments it is only possible to mass one series of unknown quanti-
ties against another series of unknown quantities so that they
balance as nearly as possible, and then with our one unknown
quantity, about which the experiment turns, make the best tem-
porary solution of our problem possible. Thus the science must
be content to proceed until the vast series of unknown conditions
which influence life have been dealt with one by one. Thus, if
the science is to advance, if we are ever to learn under what con-
ditions life is most favorably placed, we must vary the conditions
in every possible way — i. e., experiment physiologically ; and, as we
have seen, everything in the divine ordering of Nature is in com-
plete harmony with this method, and bids man Godspeed in this
great work.

Thus far we have considered Nature as uninfluenced by the
presence of man. Let man, a moral being, take his place among
the animal creation, and at once there spring up moral relations
between him and every living thing capable of feeling pleasure
and pain. It becomes his duty to do all in his power to increase
the happiness and to diminish the suffering of every sentient
thing. But we do not sympathize with the Hindu who lay down
before the starving tigress in order to save her life and the life of

^THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 621

lier whelps with his own. Man's first duty is to those of his own
species. If wild beasts endanger the life of his wife or child, it
becomes his duty to kill them by any means in his power, let the
suffering be what it must. This is man's first step in the con-
quest of any country. And when he has rid the earth of the
fierce carnivora, it becomes his duty to kill such numbers of the
herbivora as will enable the rest to obtain food and enjoy life.
This surplus man has always utilized for food and clothing. All
this, however, is but his first step. He must tend herds and till
the soil to support as many as possible of his own species. Even
then his work is but just begun. If disease threaten the life of
his child, is his duty any different ? Certainly not. It is as
much his duty to exterminate the disease as to destroy the wild
beast. To subdue the earth, " and have dominion over . . . every
living thing that moveth upon the earth,'' was one of God's first
and highest commands to man ; and it includes microbes as well
as lions and tigers.

At just this point we are met with the argument that there is
no moral proportion between the amount of suffering caused by
vivisection and the advantage gained. " Suppose it is capable of
proof," says Lord Coleridge,* "that by putting to death with
hideous torment three thousand horses you could find out the
real nature of some feverish symptom, I should say, without the
least hesitation, that it would be unlawful to torture the horses."
Accepting the proportion as stated, we will have: Torture of
three thousand horses is to knowledge of real nature of feverish
symptom as power gained by such knowledge is to prevention of
death annually from splenic fever, we will say, of many millions of
cattle, horses, and sheep, and thousands of men in Europe. There
is no very exact " proportion " between end and means, but Na-
ture is too generous to insist on exact " proportions " when men
study her laws aright.

The difficulty with good people who reason out this "propor-

Ition " is that they fail to grasp the stupendous size of the prob-
lems involved, the whole world over and through all time. France
alone is estimated to lose sheep to the value of four million dollars
annually from splenic fever, and in one district, Beauce, one hun-
dred and eighty-seven thousand sheep are killed annually by it.
In Russia, during 1857, it was reported that one hundred thou-
sand horses perished from the disease. In other epidemics, the
losses within small districts reach tens of thousands, and in one a
thousand people caught the disease and perished. f
* Coleridge. The Nineteenth Century Defenders of Vivisection, p. 8.
f R. M. Smith. Therapeutic Gazette, November, 1884 ; and George Fleming. Vivisec-

62 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Or suppose it to be a " knowledge of tlie real nature of some
symptom " of one of the fevers that are yearly causing in this
country the premature death of nearly fifty thousand people,*
and the knowledge gained saved the life of but one, the propor-
tion would still stand approved in the minds of all humane peo-
ple. I am aware that Miss Cobbe has said in effect, Our days are
numbered, and I would not have my own or those of my friends
spared or lengthened by the suffering of animals. This senti-
ment is sanctioned by no code of Christian ethics. For all nor-
mal, rational, and truly humane people the following statement
of Prof. Davis is true beyond danger of cavil. He says : " When
the brute's ordinary right to welfare, yielding exemption from
inflicted pain, confronts man's right to welfare, it (the welfare of
the brute) shrinks to zero and disappears." \

In order to test the popular acceptance of this principle, I
actually put the following question to twenty American women :
" Let the suffering be any amount necessary, how many dogs and
cats do you feel that you would give to save the life of one human
being ? " Without exception, these women have answered, " I
would give all the dogs and cats in the world."

Contrast with this the following sentiments from the pen of a
woman who is perhaps the most active agitatrix of antivivisec-
tion in this country. She answers as follows : " How many hu-
man lives which you ' experimenters ' are so anxious (apparently)
to prolong are really worth the time and trouble ? . . . Would
the world not be benefited were they allowed to pass to another
sphere, where perhaps the conditions would be more favorable to
moral and spiritual advancement ? " Such perversion of human
sentiment is little, if any, short of the pathological, and calls for
no further comment.

Thus is seen the impossibility of separating morality from
utility. If the right of the animal stand in the way of human
use, '^ it shrinks to zero." If one human life can be saved, any
amount of animal suffering necessary is justified. With this
noble sentiment we thus accept the burden of proving that the
sacrifice of animal life has brought us knowledge by which the
human life has been prolonged and the sufferings of humanity
have been ameliorated. With this proved, it is clear that it may
be as much the moral and religious duty of a man to vivisect,
who has faith that he can advance the cause of humanity by so
doing, as it is his duty to preach or teach who has equal faith in
these occupations. We shall treat the argument for utility in

* Compendium of the Tenth Annual Census, pp. 1708, 1709.

f Prof. Noah K. Davis. The Moral Aspects of Vivisection. Xorth American Eeview,
1885, p. 217.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 623

the succeeding chapter. Before passing on to this head, however,
two moral questions, fundamental to the whole discussion, must
be carefully considered.

An assumption found in every, or almost every, antivivisec-
tion argument is that vivisection must be demoralizing to those
who practice or witness it. Neither fact nor proof is adduced.
From beginning to end it is pure tissue of antivivisection im-
agination, like the old assumptions against the first anatomists.
The assumption is not only unfounded but thoroughly irrational.
It would be precisely as sane to assume that a missionary who
goes to preach among the heathen tends to become heathenous ;
or that anything in the practice of surgery or medicine tends to
blunt the sensibilities of men in these professions. Granting that
there are brulal men in the medical profession, as there are in all
others, carries no proof that their work has made them so. It
may have made them decidedly more humane than they ever
would have been without it.

On just this point I have taken the pains to collect the testi-
mony of experienced teachers of physiology in thirteen institu-
tions in this country, where the greater part of our vivisectional
work is done. In every case the moral effect of experimentation
is claimed to be wholesome, and in no case have they any evi-
dence of its being evil. I will quote from but one instance, the
experience of a professor in an institution for the higher educa-
tion of women. He writes : " In numerous cases students have
entered the course with decided objections to the practice of vivi-
section ; and in no case, so far as I know, have they left without
the removal of their objections and the substitution for them
of sound views as to the necessity and value of vivisectional
work."

The other question is one which touches the bed rock of human
life : What is the use of living anyway ? It is Franklin's old
question, " What is the use of a baby, unless it is to become a
man ? " but with the added question. What is the use of the
man ? A good many people every year look their lives in the
face in this way, and, deciding that this life is of no use or worse
than no use, put an end to it.

Furthermore, What is, or what may be, the value of a man's
life work ? And how far have we the moral right to pass judg-
ment as to the value or use of another's life or work ? With the
earth reeking in carnage and with humanity and animate Nature
writhing in pain, how is it possible to say that God has ordered
Nature wisely and mercifully ? And taking Nature as we find
it, what can man do about it ?

One theory has always been that the forces of Nature and life
are far too vast for man's feeble powers to influence for good or

624 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for ill ; that his chief duty lies in resignation to fate. Directly
opposed to this is the spirit of modern science, which considers it
man's duty to go to work and manufacture fate. What right, it
would ask, have we to assume that the forces of Nature are diffi-
cult of control until all the laws which govern them are investi-
gated ? Numberless instances in the history of science prove that
his powerlessness is a mere bugbear of man's own imagining. It
may be so in all cases. If man will only put forth a reasonable
amount of effort, it may not be so difficult to comply with the
command, " Subdue the earth."

Still, the old superstitions cling tenaciously to the best of men.
A child sickens and dies, and we say, " It is the will of God, so let
it be." What right has man to lay this flattering unction to his
lazy soul ? The scientific spirit would say : " It is the ignorance
of man. It is his duty to learn enough about this disease to pre-
vent or cure it." In taking this position science simply accepts
the universal principle that ignorance of law does not exempt
from penalty, and hence would study the law under which
the calamity occurred and, by obedience, escape the penalty in
future.

To conclude in a sentence the result of a chain of reasoning too
long to even outline in detail, all the suffering and physical evil
in living Nature finds ample justification for its existence if, serv-
ing as a spur to man, it arouses him to use his intelligence and
put forth every energy available to alleviate the misery of the
world and improve its condition. In other words. Nature is wisely
ordered to give man plenty to do, and to do this work is one of his
highest duties. How he is to accomplish it, depends upon the
means he finds at hand, which prove themselves useful to his
purposes.

In passing to a consideration of the utility of scientific experi-
mentation, it must be remembered that we are not discussing the
question with infanticides, murderers, or would-be suicides. It
can be considered only with those who believe that, after moral
excellence, human life and happiness and freedom from disease
are the most useful things in the world.

A SPELEOLOGICAL society has been formed in France, at the instance of
M. E. Martel, for the study of everything relating to caves, including arti-
ficial ones. At the end of December, 1895, it had one hundred and seventy-
five members. It publishes a quarterly bulletin, Spelunca, and Memoirs,
of which three numbers have been issued. It has endowment members,
who contribute not less than four hundred francs ; titular members, who
pay fifteen francs a year ; life members, who make a single contribution
of two hundred francs, and corresponding members, who pay five francs
a year. The general secretary is M. Martel, rue Menars 8, Paris.

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME.

625

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME.

By SYDNEY G. FISIIEK.

THE criminal influence of the alien with its steady increase
can be traced back in our history for the last sixty years. So
surely and yet so gradually has it grown upon us that we have now
become thoroughly accustomed to a condition of things which
would have been extremely shocking to our rugged ancestors as
they are sometimes called.

When our system of foreign immigration first began to reach
serious proportions, about the year 1820, its effect on our manners
and morals soon attracted attention. The Native American party,
which arose soon after 1840, based its strongest argument on the
enormous increase of crime which followed the advent of the
foreigners. The belief and confidence in the cheap labor of
the immigrant were very strong in those days, or the people
would never have been willing to go on with the system in
the face of the shocking revelations of pauperism, crime, and
corruption which became more and more apparent from 1830
to 1850.

The newspapers and pamphlets of that time published statis-
tics which showed that, although the foreign population was only
an eighth of the whole, yet it furnished two thousand more pau-
pers and a thousand more criminals than all the remaining seven
eighths of the people. Every thirty-two foreigners produced a
pauper, and every one hundred and fifty-four of them produced a
criminal ; but it required three hundred and seventeen natives to
furnish one pauper and sixteen hundred and nineteen to furnish
a criminal.

The census of 1880 attempted to summarize the relative pro-
portions of the foreign population which were paupers and crimi-
nals as far back as 1850. The statistics on which the calculation
was based were somewhat incomplete, but so far as they go they
show the same result that all other similar investigations have
shown. The foreigner in proportion to his numbers furnishes by
far the greater part of pauperism and crime.

Ratio to 1,000,000 of Population.

1880.

1870.

1860.

1850.

Paupers :
Native

994
8,488

1,064
1,917

1,635
4,096

733
1,568

1,849
7,843

871
2,161

1,766
5,986

207

Foreign

Prisoners :

Native

Foreign

1,074

626

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The Massachusetts census of 1885, which was taken with great
care and completeness, shows the same condition of affairs. The
foreign born of that State were 27' 1 per cent of the whole popula-
tion, and yet they furnished 44*03 per cent of the paupers, 40*60
of the prisoners, and 36 "87 per cent of the convicts.

If we take the statistics of the children of foreigners the result
is almost the same. The people of foreign parentage in Massa-
chusetts are 47*36 per cent of the whole, yet the number of pris-
oners with both parents foreign born was 60*30 per cent, and the
number of convicts with both parents foreign born was 51*14 per
cent.

The statistics of the national census of 1890 reveal the same
condition. The native white element of the population is 54*87
per cent, but it produces only 43*19 per cent of the white
prisoners. The foreign white element, counting foreign born
and the children of foreign born, is only 32*93 per cent of
the population, and yet it produces 56*81 per cent of the white
prisoners.

The statistics may also be stated by ratios per million in each
class so as to include the negroes, which gives a still more strik-
ing result :

Prisoners. Ratio per 1,000,000.

Native white 882

Foreign white 1,747

Negro 3,250

The negro, though born on the soil, is in every sense an alien,
and if we wish to see how much crime is due to our various ex-
periments in importing foreign populations we have only to con-
nect the negro ratio of crime with the foreign white ratio and
compare them with the native ratio. The result can be seen by a
glance at the above table and is rather startling.

We hear a great deal about the crime of murder in the United
States and its great increase, and it may be interesting to know
the source of a large portion of it. Our population is now divided
into native white, foreign white, negro, Chinese, Japanese, and
civilized Indians ; and the census of 1890 shows the percentage of
homicide to be assigned to each in proportion to percentage of
population :

Population.

Native white

Foreign-bom white . .
Negroes

Chinese and Japanese
Civilized Indians . . . . ,

Percentage of

Percentage of

population.

homicides.

73-24

44-00

14-56

16-40

11-92

37-11

0-17

1-28

0-11

1-21

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME, 627

The natives, it will be observed, though almost three fourths
of the population, commit le^^s than half the homicides ; while the
aliens, including in that term the negroes as well as the foreign
born, though only about one fourth of the population, commit
more than half the homicides.

How many of the murders committed by natives are due to
the example and presence of the foreigners can not be estimated,
but it is doubtless no small proportion.

The number of murders committed by the black race is very
large. Out of the 7,386 prisoners indicted for homicide, 4,425
were white and 2,739 were negroes. In point of numbers the
negro population is less than a seventh of the white population,
and yet the negroes commit more than half as many murders as
the whites.

In counting up the cost of the foreigner, in addition to what
he kills, burns, and destroys, it may be well to mention the charge
we are put to in maintaining his paupers, a service which we have
now performed for him for many years with great generosity in
our almshouses. Census Bulletin No. 90 has it in a nutshell:
" The foreign population of this country contributes, directly or
indirectly, in the persons of the foreign born or of their immedi-
ate descendants, very nearly three fifths of all the paupers sup-
ported in almshouses." In other words, although the foreign
element is much less than half of the whole population, it never-
theless furnishes more than half of the paupers. If we leave out'
the pauper descendants of foreigners and count merely the for-
eign-born paupers, we find that they alone outnumber the native
paupers.

The original native population of the United States, which
fought the Revolution and built up the country for the next fifty
years, was remarkably free from the habit of settling every petty
dispute by homicide, and yet a large part of them were people
who may be said to have passed their lives with firearms in their
hands. They were hunters and Indian fighters, and they were all
familiar with war, whether against the French, the Indians, or
their own race in the Revolution ; but in their personal disputes
among themselves they seldom attempted to kill. The frontiers-
man of that period usually settled quarrels with his fists. In the
Whisky Rebellion of 1794, which was long continued and serious
enough to have an army sent to suppress it, the rioters did not
take a single human life. They tarred and feathered some of
their enemies, shaved their heads, and indulged in other rough
treatment. Even after two or three of their number had been
shot by the authorities they showed none of that anxious desire
for killing that now characterizes rioters.

When the dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania for

628 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the possession of the Wyoming Valley had been settled by a legal
decision soon after the Revolution, the Pennsylvania Legislature
passed an act in 1787 organizing the valley as a part of Pennsyl-
vania. A meeting of the Connecticut settlers in the valley was
called to decide whether they should accept the act. There were
two parties among them, one in favor of the act, the other against
it, and in the heated discussion of the meeting they came to blows.
After the first blow was struck each party rushed, not for their
guns, but for sticks, which they cut from the neighboring trees,
and for a time there was a very savage contest ; but not a single
shot was fired nor was there a single blow given with a knife, and
after a while they came together again and passed a resolution
accepting the act. Yet they were all frontiersmen, accustomed to
the almost daily use of rifles and hunting knives.

About the time of the Revolution there were riots in Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia, and much property was destroyed ;
but in only one, the riot in Philadelphia over the depreciation of
the Continental currency, were lives taken. The same character-
istics prevailed in Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts.

The first riots in which an intense desire to use firearms and
kill was shown were the Catholic riots of 1844, which were begun
by foreigners firing into a meeting of native Americans. From
this we have gone steadily on, until we now have more rioting,
bloodshed, and murder in a single year, or even in six months,
than can be found in a hundred years of our previous history,
and in almost every instance it can be traced to the alien element
in our population.

Washington, in writing on the subject of immigration, said :

My opinion with respect to emigration is that, except of useful me-
chanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no
need of encouragement ; while the policy or advantage of its taking place
in a body (I mean the setthng of them in a body) may be much ques-
tioned. (Works, xi, p. 2.)

On another occasion he wrote :

It is not the policy of this country to employ aliens where it can well
be avoided, either in the civil or military walks of life. (Works, xi, pp.
392, 393.)

Jefl:erson, though belonging to the party opposed to Washing-
ton, had very much the same opinion :

They will bring with them the principles of the government they leave,
imbibed in their early youth, or, if able to throw them off, it will be in
exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one
extreme to another. It would be a miracle w^ere they to stop precisely at
the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they
will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers they will

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME. 629

share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp
and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted
mass. T may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verifi-
cation of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event are they
not possible, are they not probable ? Is it not safer to wait with patience
twenty-seven years and three months longer for the attainment of any
degree of population desired or expected? May not our Government be
more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable ? Suppose twenty mil-
lions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what
would be the condition of that kingdom ? If it would be more turbulent,
less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million
of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.
If they come of themselves they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship,
but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encourage-
ments. I mean not that these doubts should be extended to the importa-
tion of useful artificers. The policy of that measure depends on very dif-
ferent considerations. (Works, viii, p. 330.)

The prophesy in the above passage has most certainly come
true ; and the last two sentences are also worth considering. " I
mean not," he says, "that these doubts should be extended to
the importation of useful artificers. The policy of that measure
depends on very different considerations." This will at once be
recognized as agreeing exactly with Washington's words where
he says, "that except of useful mechanics and some particular
descriptions of men or professions there is no need of encour-
agement." Washington, though strongly opposed to the admis-
sion of foreign officers in the army, had made exceptions in the
case of certain artillerists and engineers, who he said were needed
to teach us some of the fine points of gunnery and construction,
and in his objection to immigration in general he made excep-
tions in favor of certain kinds of skilled labor.

In short, these Fathers of the Republic were entirely opposed to
promiscuous, wholesale immigration, and they undoubtedly repre-
sented the opinions of a large number of our people at that time.
The importation of paupers, vagrants, and criminals, together with
hundreds of thousands of men and women capable only of cheap
manual labor, was altogether foreign to their thoughts, or, if they
contemplated it at all, it was only to revolt from it. Even Madi-
son, who favored immigration more than any of the other fathers
of the republic, and who introduced in Congress the first bill in-
tended to encourage it, always insisted that he intended to bring
over only the " worthy part of mankind," and in a letter written
in 1813 he expresses almost the same opinion as Washington and
Jefferson :

I am obliged at the same time to say, as you will doubtless learn from
others, that it is not either the provision of our laws or the practice of the
Government to give any encouragement to emigrants unless it be in cases

630 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

where they may bring with them some special addition to our stock of arts
or articles of culture. (Works, ii, p. 576.)

Neither Madison nor any of the others had any conception
of modern immigration, and apparently never realized that their
moderate and, as they supposed, well-regulated encouragement
would bring it about.

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS.

By Prof. WILLIAM KOMAINE NEWBOLD.

I HAVE already had occasion more than once to speak of the
development of a mental state from the stage which we term
idea to that which we term sensation. Before taking up the mat-
ter in hand it will be necessary to go into this question at some-
what greater length.

We seldom have difficulty in discriminating an idea from a
sensation, but it is not easy to define the difference between them.
This is partly due to the fact that the differences are very com-
plex, and partly to the fact that they vary in the respective fields
of sensation, so that one can scarcely frame a definition for ideas
and sensations of vision that will also prove applicable to those of
sound, touch, and so on. Ideas of sound differ from the corre-
sponding sensations chiefly in intensity, but in the case of vision
a much more important distinction is drawn from the relation
sustained by visual ideas to what the eye actually sees. At the
present moment I am thinking of something I saw yesterday, but
what I see with my eyes is not in the least affected by that.
The two groups remain distinct, and it would seem as if an almost
impassable gulf parted them, so seldom .does a bit of one become
confused with the other. This is not true of ideas of sound. If
they only become intense enough they may seem to blend with
real sounds — indeed, I often mistake an air of which I am think-
ing for the same air faintly heard.

The distinction between sense-impression and idea really rests
upon intrinsic differences of this kind, but as they are so complex
I shall make use of a physiological distinction which for all prac-
tical purposes coincides with it. Sense-impressions are those
mental states which are primarily initiated by a current from the
outlying regions or periphery of the body, especially from the
organs of sense. Since these currents are usually due to the action
of physical forces upon the body, sense-impressions generally give
us information as to the condition of the material world. All
other mental states should be classed as ideas, even though they
simulate sensations so closely as to be scarcely distinguishable
from them.

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS, 631

From this point of view the peculiar characteristics of the im-
pressions of sense are due to some peculiarities in the cortical
processes which are their physical bases — peculiarities which are
usually due to the action of a peripheral current. Thus it may
be that the sensation is more intense because the current acts
upon the stored-up energy of the cortical cells much as a spark
acts upon gunpowder. If precisely the same kind of a cortical
process could be induced in any other way than by the action of
a peripheral current, we would presumably have an imitation sen-
sation. There appears no good reason why there should not be
many other kinds of cortical processes intermediate between those
that underlie ideas and those that underlie sense-impressions, and
to them mental states should correspond which are betwixt and
between — neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.

Now, of the cortical processes we know nothing ; I use them
merely as symbols for mental facts. But the mental states we
directly know, and it is quite certain that many different types of
them exist, roughly corresponding to what we would expect if
the above conception were true. We know that in different indi-
viduals ideas vary much in their clearness and in the degree to
which they approach sensations. In the same individual they
occasionally assume a form which is to him almost like a glimpse
into a new world of experience. My own visual ideas, for exam-
ple, are very vague and dim, and I shall never forget the two or
three occasions in my life when they have for a while been vivid
and brightly colored, somewhat as my visual sensations are.
And occasionally we meet with experiences which are certainly
originated largely or entirely from within and must be classed as
ideas and yet resemble sensations so closely that they can be dis-
criminated from them only upon reflection. These are what we
term illusions and hallucinations ; the other types, which we
never mistake for realities, although they resemble sensations so
closely, are termed pseudo-hallucinations. By the level or grade
of a mental state I mean the degree to which it approximates
that fullest and most perfect form of being which we find in the
sense- impression, and by development I mean the process of be-
coming more like the sense-impression.

What can cause development ? Well, in the first place, it can
be caused in some individuals by concentration of attention.
Most of my readers have heard the story of the painter who said
he could at any time see again a sitter by looking at the chair in
which he had once sat. I have met many such persons. Some-
times the process is slow and its several stages can be traced.

Miss Z , for example, after fixing her thoughts upon the image

of a friend, sees a shadow appear before her which gradually as-
sumes color, consistence, solidity, reality, and finally becomes the

632 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

living image of the friend. But with the least distraction it van-
ishes like a soap bubble. In other cases the process is instantane-
ously completed. Rev. Mr. F can at any time by an act of

will create an image of a friend, and after doing so finds it hard
to lay the ghost which he has himself raised. Images voluntarily
externalized nearly always seem subject to curious limitations.
Often it is possible to externalize persons only, or only certain
persons, or only in definite attitudes. The apparition rarely ap-
pears possessed of independent life, it seldom moves spontaneous-
ly, and its features reflect no play of thought ; it also often disap-
pears upon being touched. All these are common traits of ghosts,
and the identity goes to show their common origin.

In the second place, the development of an idea is sometimes
clearly traceable to a simultaneous but disconnected sensory
stimulus. A striking illustration of this fact fell within my own
experience not long ago. I had had a fatiguing and anxious day,
and consequently could not sleep. As I lay in bed, dim, silhouette-
like forms began to outline themselves in the darkness, as some-
times, although very rarely, happens when I am tired and ex-
cited. I was trying to make one out, when I heard a crackling
sound. Instantly the shadowy image was illumined by a bril-
liant flash of white light, and I saw two dumb-bells lying crossed
with the balls toward me. For a moment my impression was
that some one had brought a light into the room, although my
eyes were closed ; but upon opening them I found that my brother
had entered without a light through a Japanese screen made of
slender wooden rods strung lengthwise. The crackling sound
made by the parted screen had raised my thought-image to sen-
sory intensity. Parish gives another good illustration.* A physi-
cian, while experimenting in this line, thought of a section of
liver and tried to see it, at the same time pressing on the ball
of the eye. " At first he was clearly conscious that his mental
image was quite dim and confused; yet suddenly an image of
a section of liver stood before his eyes as if seen through a
microscope, clearly outlined, and with all its arteries, veins,
and gall ducts beautifully colored in red, blue, and greenish
violet."

In the third place, the degree of vividness which a mental
state attains seems to bear an inverse relation to the number of
ideas which it suggests. I can not go into the proof of this state-
ment here, as it would lead me too far astray into the field of nor-
mal psychology, but those who care to follow it out will find it
set forth by Prof. James in his Psychology, volume ii, page 124.
It is also true that hallucinations are common in states in which

* Ueber die Trugwahrnehinung, p, 134.

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS. 633

there seems to be an arrest of the processes of association. Such
are, for example, all hypnotic states. The analogy to the forms
of transmission of physical energy is striking, and has led Prof.
James to conjecture that the higher development of the few ideas
remaining is in some way a compensation for the arrest of asso-
ciation. " If," he says, " we regard association paths as paths of
drainage, then the shutting off of one after another of them as the
cerebral paralysis advances ought to act like the plugging of a
hole in the bottom of a pail, and make the activity more intense
in those systems of cells which retain any activity at all." Prof.
James then quotes from Taine a vivid description of the rise in
the level of the idea trains as the association paths are closed by
sleep. " All external sensations are gradually effaced, or cease at
any rate to be remarked ; the internal images, on the other hand,
feeble and rapid during the state of complete wakefulness, be-
come intense, distinct, colored, steady, and lasting : there is a sort
of ecstasy, accompanied by a sense of expansion and comfort.
Architecture, landscapes, moving figures, pass slowly by, and
sometimes remain with incomparable clearness of form and full-
ness of being ; sleep comes on, and I know no more of the real
world I am in. Many times, like M. Maury, I have caused myself
to be gently roused at different moments of this state, and have
thus been able to mark its characters. The intense image which
seems an external object is but a more forcible continuation of
the feeble image which an instant before I recognized as internal ;
some scrap of a forest, some house, some person which I vaguely
imagined on closing my eyes has in a minute become present to
me with full bodily details, so as to change into a complete hal-
lucination. Then, waking up on a hand touching me, I feel the
figure decay, lose color, and evaporate ; what had appeared a sub-
stance is reduced to a shadow. In such a case I have often seen,
for a passing moment, the image grow pale, waste away, and evap-
orate; sometimes on opening the eyes a fragment of landscape
or the skirt of a dress appears still to float over the fire-irons
or the black hearth."

In the three types which I have been discussing, the mental
state was present as a thought before being externalized as a hal-
lucination, and for many reasons hallucinations of this type are
the most instructive. But very often the hallucination is not only
not a mere externalization of a thought already present, but has
no apparent connection with anything of which the patient is at
the time thinking. Hence the theory of development needs to be
supplemented by other considerations, and one may draw them
from either of two quite different, although I think not inconsist-
ent, points of view. In the first place, one may suppose that the
hallucination is sometimes initiated from without, through some

VOL. XLIX.— 50

634 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

derangement in the mechanism of perception, and has nothing to
do with what the patient is thinking of. In the second, one may-
have recourse to the theory of subconscious states and assume
that every hallucination had a true mental existence, if not con-
scious, then subconscious, before being brought to the upper con-
sciousness. The first is the old orthodox theory of illusion, and,
to make it intelligible, I must say a little of the normal processes
of perception.

Our sense-impressions are primarily initiated, as I have said,
by currents from the periphery of the body, but their final com-
plexion is only in part determined by the peripheral currents;
it owes much to the condition in which the cortex happens to be
and to the manner in which it is constituted. We may roughly
compare it to a penny-in-the-slot machine. Without the penny
there would be no response, but the precise character of the
response is determined by the constitution of the machine. The
case of the brain is similar, but infinitely more complex. Most
of our sense organs send in very complex currents : from the eye,
for instance, we get currents which, taken alone, would cause sen-
sations of color, touch, and movement — the slightest change in
the number and relative adjustment of these currents, even
though it be so slight that we can not possibly be aware of it as
a change in the simpler sensations, will totally change the char-
acter of the sense-impression. These sensory currents are like
the keys and stops of an organ, and any one who knows just what
stops and keys to manipulate can get any response he pleases.
Thus the technical part of painting consists in so imitating the
ordinary sensory determinants of vision by means of colors on a
flat surface as to produce that cortical process which is usually
produced by a real thing.

It is not often possible to trace the operation of these factors
in our sense-impressions. Each seems an indivisible mental
whole. But sometimes we can distinguish them. In the first and
third of the three types of hallucination which I have already
analyzed, the character of the hallucination is clearly determined
by the first or central factor, and its development also seems to be
due to some central factor or factors. In the second of the three
the character is determined as before by the central factor, while
its development to sensory intensity is due to its accidental coin-
cidence with the arrival of a sensory current, which is a periph-
eral factor. These are all termed hallucinations centrally ini-
tiated, or true hallucinations. In the types which I shall now
take up the character is always chiefly determined by peripheral
currents, and, presumably, they are also responsible for the sen-
sory intensity of the image. These hallucinations are termed
peripherally initiated, or simply illusions.

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS. 635

The following account may be taken as typical of the true
illusion : *

" One evening, at dusk, I went into my bedroom to fetch some-
thing I wanted off the mantelpiece. A street lamp threw a slant-
ing ray of light in at the window, just sufficient to enable me to
discern the dim outline of the chief articles of furniture in the
room. I was cautiously feeling for what I wanted when, par-
tially turning round, I perceived at a short distance behind me
the figure of a little old lady, sitting very sedately with her
hands folded in her lap, holding a white pocket handkerchief. I
was much startled, for I had not before perceived any one in the
room, and called out * Who's that ? ' but received no answer, and,
turning quite round to face my visitor, she immediately vanished
from sight. * Well,' I thought, ' this is strange ! ' I had left all
the rest of the household downstairs ; it was hardly possible that
any one could have followed me into the room without my being
aware of it, and besides, the old lady was different from any one
I had ever seen. Being very near-sighted, I began to think my
eyes had played me a trick ; so I resumed my search in as nearly
as possible the same position as before, and having succeeded,
was turning to come away, when lo ! and behold ! there sat the
little old lady as distinct as ever, with her funny little cap, dark
dress, and hands folded demurely over her white handkerchief.
This time I turned round quickly and marched up to the appari-
tion, which vanished as suddenly as before. And now being con-
vinced that no one was playing me any trick, I determined to find
out, if possible, the why and because of the mystery. Slowly
resuming my former position by the fireplace, and again perceiv-
ing the figure, I moved my head slightly from side to side, and
found that it did the same. I then went slowly backward, keep-
ing my head still until I reached the place, when, deliberately
turning round, the mystery was solved. A small polished ma-
hogany stand near the window, which I used as a cupboard for
various trifles, made the body of the figure, a piece of paper hang-
ing from the partly opened door serving as the handkerchief ; a
vase on the top made the head and headdress, and the slanting
light falling upon it and the white curtain of the window com-
pleted the illusion. I destroyed and remade the figure several
times and was surprised to find how distinct it appeared when
the exact relative positions were maintained."

In this case the form of the illusion seems to have been almost
entirely determined by sensory stimuli, but in many cases the
operation of the central factor can still be traced. For example.
Parish quotes f from Prof. Lazarus an experience of his own.

* Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. x, p. 93. f Op. di.y p. 185.

636 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Prof. Lazarus had been wearying his eyes trying to make out a
certain rock on a distant mountain side ; as he turned away he
saw vividly the corpse of a friend stretched out before him.
Upon reflection he found that this friend had been associated
with the train of ideas that had filled his mind just before he
began to look for the rock. He also found that whenever he
closed his eyes he saw a dull, grayish-green, corpselike color,
which was the complementary after image of the dull reds,
browns, and greens of the mountain side. He also found that
other persons of whom he thought appeared to him of the same
corpselike tint. In this case the main character of the hallucina-
tion— that is, the thought of a friend — was furnished by associa-
tion of ideas, but its special form, the appearance of that friend
as a corpse, as well as its sensory vividness, seems to have been
due to the peripheral factor.

A closely analogous experience is reported by a Mrs. L in

the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, volume x,
page 143: "About September, 1881, aged forty-six, and eighteen
months after the sudden death of my mother, which had shaken my
nerves very much, one night toward morning, being awake to the
best of my belief, I saw a woman come through the door. Her face
was sideways and I distinctly saw her features. She passed
slowly from the door and went out at the window opposite, thus
passing across the foot of my bed. She had on an old-fashioned
bonnet and an old-fashioned caped coat, and she was carrying a
basket in front of her such as country women carry their hus-
bands' dinners in. The whole figure was semi-opaque, neutral-
tinted, like thick smoke or cloud. A great hurricane was blow-
ing. I was dreadfully disturbed and hysterical next day — the
impression so vivid and yet unable to say who it was. About a
week after, the revelation came. I sat down to dinner, became
very hysterical and faint, and went into another room alone in
the dark. All at once I jumped up, saying, ' It is Mrs. Beasant ! '
Mrs. Beasant was the pretty young bride of a farmer with whom,
when about ten years old, we used to go and take tea at a farm
about two or three miles from the vicarage. One day she went
with her husband's dinner as usual, and he was felling a tree. She
passed the wrong way, and the tree fell on her and killed her. I
remember watching her funeral with my nurse, and the anguish
of spirit at her death, but never remember speaking of it or the
circumstance since. The day before the appearance a nurse of
the name of Beasant had disturbed and annoyed me. A few
months before a large elm tree had fallen in our garden and partly
on the house. A hurricane was blowing at the time, and I remem-
ber thinking, ' What a lucky thing that tree can't fall on the roof ! ' "
Clearly the storm, the falling tree, and the annoying nurse were

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS. 637

the cliief factors in determiDing the character of the hallucina-
tion, but as they acted through association it is not so clear to what
its externalization is to be ascribed. Perhaps the hurlyburly of
the storm outside had something to do with it ; probably the
drowsy, disordinated condition of the percipient favored the
formation of the apparition, but of the details of the process one
can not speak with confidence.

In the hallucinations of which the crystal vision is the type
we have a form intermediate between the true hallucination and
the illusion. Prolonged staring into a mirror, a glass of water, a
crystal, a piece of glass, or even fixation of the gaze upon a point
will induce in some persons brilliantly colored hallucinations.
While they are certainly peripherally initiated by the prolonged
staring, their special character is nearly always centrally deter-
mined— usually, indeed, they simply reproduce old memories.
Susceptibility to these hallucinations is by no means uncommon ;
I have tried about a hundred persons myself, and found that
about one in four saw something. Similar hallucinations of hear-
ing can be produced by listening to the " sound of waves " in a
large shell, to the sound of water running from a spigot, etc.
The stories of ghosts seen in mirrors probably all rest upon this
principle. For example : *

" The first hallucination which I was in a position clearly to
recognize as such occurred during the Indian mutiny. Several
members of our family were in danger. One night on which we
had all been talking late of them, after we had parted and gone
upstairs to bed, I stood before my dressing table, plaiting my hair,
when my attention was arrested by a faint spot in the center of
the mirror; this, to my amazement, gradually enlarged (as a
grease spot spreads with heat) till the whole surface was covered,
and then, in the center of this veil, came through the face of
one of the near relatives above mentioned, as plain as might
have been his living reflection. I noted the day and hour,
and ascertained, six weeks later, that the relative seen had in-
curred no sort of danger at that date." This misty discoloration
of the glass is significant, for many of my subjects describe the
glass as becoming milky or cloudy just before the hallucination
appears. Occasionally it is possible by means of an indeter-
minate stimulus of this sort to raise a thought to sensory inten-
sity. Thus Miss X saw in the polished surface of a piano a

scene of which she was thinking, f I have met with one analogous
experience, but it seems to be rare.

Many interesting questions arise as to the relation that exists

* Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. x, p. 407.
t Ibid., vol. V, p. 612.

638 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between the hallucination and the stimulus which has generated
it. It is frequently very close, any change in the stimulus either
destroying the hallucination or making in it a corresponding
change. In the case of crystal gazing, for example, if one looks
at the image through a magnifying glass or prism, it is sometimes
destroyed and sometimes magnified or doubled. Very often
hallucinations originated independently appear to attach them-
selves in much the same way to some contiguous percept and be-
come practically a part of it. The element to which it is attached
is what the French investigators have termed the point de repere,
and M. Binet has endeavored to show that without such a point
de repere no hallucination can exist. The matter is still under
discussion, and must be set aside with this brief allusion.

If we once admit that subconscious states exist, we are tempted
in many cases of hallucination to make use of the conception to
explain the facts. In the case of Mrs. Beasant's ghost, for ex-
ample, it may be that the memory was revived before the ap-
parition was seen, but remained subconscious until externalized
by some obscure agencies which one can not precisely specify.
An analogous experience — in this case a crystal vision — is given
by Miss X :*

" I find in my notebook a memorandum of August 3d as to a
vision of a corner of a room, with a red carpet and walls decorated
in stripes of pink, white, and green, for which for many months I
was unable to account. Only a few days ago (May 10, 1889, is
the date of writing) I called on a friend whom I had not visited
since July, and whose house had, I observed, been newly and
handsomely decorated. A letter which she had written to me be-
fore leaving town in the summer was by chance referred to, and
on returning home I sought it, to settle a disputed point, and found
that it was dated August 2d and contained the information that
her staircase had been painted and 'looked at present like a Nea-
politan ice.' This, I doubt not, supplied the coloring of my
picture.'*

Here the development of the vision was influenced by an
allusion contained in a letter read the preceding day which was
no longer in mind. Now, one must suppose either that that
allusion still existed in some way and was capable of influencing
the vision, or that the vision had been suggested subconsciously^
had existed subconsciously, and had been brought to light by the
crystal, or that it had been suggested by the letter, forgotten, and
then revived. Of these three suppositions the last is the most
plausible, but it is difficult in other cases to resort to it. Take
another case of Miss X 's : " On March 9th I saw in the crystal

* Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v, p, 512.

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS. 639

a rocky coast, a rough sea, an expanse of sand in the foreground.
As I watched, the picture was nearly effaced by that of a mouse,
so large that I could see only a bit of cliff above his tail. Two
days later I was reading a volume of poetry which I remembered
having cut open, talking the while, certainly not consciously
reading, on the day of my vision. As I turned over the leaves, a
couple of lines struck me as somehow familiar, though the book,
a volume by Aldrich, was quite new to me :

Only the sea intoning,
Only the wainscot mouse.

These, I imagine, suggested the images." Doubtless Miss X 's

eye had fallen on these lines ; possibly they aroused some fleeting
images in the upper consciousness which were then forgotten.
But granting the existence of the subconscious, it is more easy
to understand the case upon the supposition that the whole
process took place outside the range of her normal conscious-
ness.

A still more striking case of the same author's has been much
quoted :

"On March 20th I happened to want the date of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, which I could not recall, though feeling sure I
knew it, and that I associated it with an event of some impor-
tance. When looking in the crystal some hours later, I found a
picture of an old man with long, white hair and beard, dressed
like a Lyceum Shylock, and busy writing in a large book with
tarnished, massive clasps. I wondered much who he was and
what he could possibly be doing, and thought it a good oppor-
tunity of carrying out a suggestion which had been made to me
of examining objects in the crystal with a magnifying glass. The
glass revealed to me that my old gentleman was writing in Greek,
though the lines faded away as I looked, all but the characters he
had last traced — the Latin numerals LXX. Then it flashed into
my mind that he was one of the Jewish elders at work on the
Septuagint, and that its date, 277 B. c, would serve equally well
for Ptolemy Philadelphus. It may be worth while to add, though
the fact was not in my conscious memory at the moment, that I
had once learned a chronology on a mnemonic system which sub-
stituted letters for figures, and that the memoria technica for this
date was, * Now Jewish elders indite a Greek copy.' "

If this strange vision had ever been suggested to Miss X

before by her mnemonic line, why did she not recognize it ?
And if it had not been suggested before, either it had been
suggested in her subconsciousness or else it was suggested to
her upper consciousness by a subconscious memory of the mne-
monic line.

640 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Another of Miss X 's visions * is almost precisely similar to

that of the sea and the mouse, save that it is still more difficult to
suppose that she had any conscious knowledge of that which was
revived in the crystal : " It was suggested to me, one day last Sep-
tember, that I should look into the crystal with the intention of
seeing words, which had at that time formed no part of my ex-
perience. I was immediately rewarded by the sight of what was
obviously a newspaper announcement in the type familiar to all
who read the first column of the Times. It reported the death of
a lady, at one time a very frequent visitor in my circle and very
intimate with some of my nearest friends, an announcement,
therefore, which, had I consciously seen it, would have interested
me considerably. I related my vision at breakfast, quoting name,
date, place, and an allusion to 'a long period of suffering' borne
by the deceased lady, and added that I was sure that I had not
heard any report of her illness, or even, for some months, any
mention of her likely to suggest such an hallucination. I was,
however, aware that I had the day before taken up the first sheet
of the Times, but was interrupted before I had consciously read
any announcement of death. Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, with whom
I was staying, immediately sought for the paper, where we dis-
covered the paragraph almost exactly as I had seen it." If Miss
X had consciously seen this notice, how came she to for-
get it ?

Cases of this kind strongly suggest, I think, what Mr. Gurney
calls "an underground psychosis," but they do not demonstrate
its existence ; and, unfortunately, most of the cases which would
seem to require the assumption of subconscious states also require
the still more revolutionary assumption of such powers as telep-
athy and clairvoyance, which lie outside my present scheme of
topics.

All these forms of hallucination are known as sensory autom-
atism, and in my last paper I sketched the conception which un-
derlies the term. I there also alluded to ideal automatism, and
with a few words upon that point I must let the subject go.

Our thought trains usually belong to well-defined types, are
of a certain average grade of development, and behave in pretty
definite ways. For example, they are for the most part sub-
servient to our will, and come and go at our bidding. But some-
times the orderly process of thought is broken up ; new classes
of ideas obtrude themselves, familiar types rise to a higher level
without becoming full-fledged hallucinations, and, last but not
least, the will finds itself unable to control them. Such disorders
of ideation are often termed ideal automatism. As a very large

* Op. cif., p. 508.

SOCIAL INSECTS. 641

part of our thinking is carried on in ideas of spoken words, a very-
common form of ideal automatism is the inner voice. A por-
tion of the patients word ideas rise to a higher level than usual,
resist his will, and often say things which strike him as strange
and foreign to his own acknowledged thoughts. For the sake of
completeness I must refer to this type of automatism, although
space forbids me to discuss it in detail.

SOCIAL INSECTS.

By L. N. BADENOCH.

IT is well known that some bees are social and form nests where
their broods are reared, workers existing who provide daily
for the young. In architectural skill these social kinds do not
always hold a foremost place. The cells composing their nests
vary in shape from the perfectly hexagonal, as in the hive, to those
which are less regularly six-sided, until in the bumblebees' homes
they are not in the least like the delicate, sharply defined struc-
tures of the true honeybee, but are oval and isolated or dis-
tributed almost at random.

Leaving the hive bee out of the question, the bumbles {Bombi)
alone construct social communities in England ; they constitute
the nearest ally, as regards its habits, of the true honeybee in
North America, which is especially rich in species. Their econ-
omy is simple ; their colonies begin, enlarge, and end like wasps.
They live for one season, perishing with the cold of autumn,
except a few queens, which hide themselves away in utter solitude
in sheltered and convenient spots, and, awaking with the warmth
of spring, lay the foundation of a new swarm. In the ordinary
course of things these queens do not survive a second winter.

Parasitic bees (Apathus) so closely resemble the bumbles that
it requires long practice to distinguish them easily. Little is
known of the parasite, other than that it is found in the nests of
its hosts, at whose expense it apparently lives, after the manner
of the cuckoo. It has no pollen basket, showing that it can not
collect food, and its young must feed upon the stores of their
hosts, and its jaws seem unadapted for building. Flies and sev-
eral beetles also prey upon the bees, and the larvae of moths con-
sume their honey and waxen cells.

In the tropics the honeybee is replaced by the Melipon(z and
fc Trigones, which are generally minute and almost stingless, and
^Klive in vast colonies. The former construct a comb for their
^■young, resembling that of the hive, but of one layer of cells,
^Bwhile the honey cells are irregular and occasionally attain a great

^^ft VOL. XLIX. 51

K

642

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

size. They nest in hollow trees or in banks or any suitable
crevice ; the Trigones suspend pear-shaped combs from the ex-
tremities of the branches of trees, without any kind of external

covering. Meliponm
are masons and prone
to block up the gap in
the tree they employ
with clay, leaving a
small orifice for en-
trance and exit ; some
stop theirs with wax,
and they incline to
feed on the sweet sap
that exudes from the
forest trees and on the
excrement of birds
rather than on flowers.
As with the com-
munities of social
bees, so with the so-
cial wasps (VespidcB),
there appears a third
order of beings, the
workers or neuters,
which, like the fe-
males, are provided
with a sting. The in-
terest attached to the economy of the family rivals that of the
wonderful works of the hive ; indeed, many of the structures of
the social wasps constitute the most beautiful examples of in-
sect architecture. Among them there is a variety of form, an
evidence of intelligent choice of the materials used in their con-
struction, a difference of texture produced, and an adaptation of
the nest to the circumstances of the situation to which the build-
ings of the bee can lay no claim. If the hive bee is the more ad-
mirable architect, it is decidedly not the most ingenious. It is the
better mathematician, but the less facile engineer ; it is the more
learned, but the less imaginative. While the bees may be said to
build in wax, the social wasps are chiefly natural paper or card-
board makers— not out of rags, but ligneous materials, tritu-
rated and agglutinated in various ways. Though the nests are
upon many plans, essentially they are all alike. Similar cells,
nearly always hexagonal, are agglomerated, leaving between
them no space to form combs, after the manner of bees, but of
very varying aspects. These are the cradles of the larvae, which,
deposited here as eggs, are reared by the female or workers, and.

Fio. 1. — Nest or Polistes. A wasp's nest without cover.

SOCIAL INSECTS.

643

having attained full growth, they inclose themselves within the
cups, with silky convex caps, until their transformation to per-
fect wasps.

So far as the disposition of the social wasp is concerned, it is a
case of being given a bad name, and — well, maltreated. But a
wasp seldom attacks when unmolested ; yet threaten its citadel, and
you will probably have cause to repent, for, with courage that we
all must admire, it boldly and persistently resents intrusion on
its dwelling and defends against disturbance its helpless young
brood.

It combines the most opposed instincts of diet, and is an om-
nivorous feeder. From the first days of spring till autumn ends,
we may see wasps ( Vespa) intent upon stealing the sweet vegetable
liquor they love ; in spring they profit by the blossoms of fruit
trees. As the fair profusion of summer changes to the soberer
autumn wealth, they are presented with another fertile source of
nutriment, and it is then
their colonies immensely
increase. They fall upon
fruits voraciously, the
choicest and most ripe,
and so have gained for
themselves a worse repu-
tation than insects much
more injurious. Should
the season be warm and
the increase of their col-
onies commensurate with
the warmth, as it often
is, they become a verita-
ble plague, not only in
gardens, but at table they
agitate us while they
nibble at some luscious
dish.

But, hateful maraud-
er though the wasp is in
these respects, it is a pre-
daceous as well as a vege-
table eater, and thus not
devoid of the compensat-
ing quality of usefulness in ridding us of many a fly and other
pests. The audacity with which it seizes and devours insects is
astonishing. The attack is sudden: it will spy a fly on the leaf of
a bush, and in the twinkling of an eye is upon it ; if large, it is
dismembered ; head, wings, and legs are torn off, and the trunk is

Fig. 2.— Home of Mtrapetba soctellabxs.

644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

demolished on the spot or borne away. Wasps often attack but-
terflies of different kinds ; pouncing upon the luckless victims, as
a falcon on a bird, they drag them to the ground and mutilate
them, and subsequently the mangled body seems to be robbed of
all vitality ere the wasp -takes its final departure with it to the
nest. Curiously, if it misses its aim, it does not strike a second
time, but flies on, as if to cover its defeat. Immoderately fond of
honey, it frequents the vicinity of beehives, ready to swoop on the
bees returning home charged with their hard- got spoil.

Social wasps have two principal modes of nidification. Either
the combs are enveloped in a covering of simple leaves of gen-
erally slender paper, analogous to that which serves for the cells ;
or the covering is of cardboard, composed of only one layer of
material, of a consistence at times extraordinarily thick and re-
sisting, at others slight and supple.

The common paper-makers build in the open air, on trees or
bushes, under the roofs of outbuildings, on a beam, or in some
such situation; the construction corresponds with that of the
ground wasps, but the texture of the f oliaceous envelope, which
is fabricated with perfect art, has all the appearance of shell-
work. It incloses an infinity of cells arranged in many tiers. A
nest is invariably built from above downward. The start is made
by accumulating on the determined site a good supply of paper,
forming it into an umbrellalike canopy. To the under side of
this cap — the ceiling, so to speak — the first comb is attached, and
the rest of the work consists in prolonging the canopy more or
less in an egg- shape, and in establishing additional combs, free,
as a rule, only pendent to columns of paper, which pass from the
upper surface of each comb to the comb immediately above ; en-
trance is obtained at the lower end. Toward the summit of the
envelope is a thickened cellular mass, but this portion excepted,
it is made up of a number of separate leaves or layers of paper,
limited in size and imbricated, and in contact together merely at
the points of imbrication, leaving large cellular spaces between
the sheets ; moreover, the points of fusion of two successive sheets
never fall one over the other. Each sheet therefore lies on a
stratum of air, with the result that the exterior layers may be
soaked with rain without soiling in the least the ones beneath.
Tree wasps increase the size of the combs by cutting away the
inner layers of the envelope, taking care to add layers externally
so as to maintain, and even to slightly augment, the thickness of
the walls, in proportion to the greater magnitude now assumed
by the edifice.

Some elegant and graceful pensile nests, although diverse in
form, have this in common, that the combs are always destitute of
any envelope ; and the cell-group is supported by a stalk of paper.

SOCIAL INSECTS. 645

which may be central or wholly lateral. Usually a varnish is
rubbed on the cells to prevent them being wetted by rain (Fig. 1).

The envelope of a typical cardboard-maker (Chartergus char-
tarius) is of a veritable cardboard, white, gray, yellow, or buff in
color, smooth and solid, and impervious to the weather. It may
be conical, cylindrical, almost globe-shaped, straight, but more
often is a little curved. In the interior the platforms of cells
differ from those of the common paper- making wasp in stretch-
ing right across like so many floors, being fastened on all sides to
the walls. A simple hole perforates each, enabling the wasps to
get from story to story. The form arises from the mode of en-
largement of the dwelling. When the number of inhabitants be-
comes great and a fresh series of cells is required, these wasps do
not, as a preliminary proceeding, amplify the envelope so as to
extend the tiers ; they first build cells, and cover them afterward.
Beginning with the bottom of the nest, they set cells upon it, then
lengthen the outer wall so as to include this fresh stage, and close
in the end with a new floor, in its turn to become the ceiling of
the next tier of cells when enlargement is again desired. No
trace of the addition is suffered to remain and mar the covering,
which would seem constructed at one stroke. Probably these
wasps, like Myrapetra scutellaris (see Fig. 2), deviate from the
ordinary habits of wasps in being collectors of honey.

It would be difficult to find a more peculiar nest than that of
Myrapetra scutellaris. It is huge as compared with the insects,
its brown cardboard wonderfully thick, hard, firm, and coarse in
texture, and composed, not of wood fibers, but of the dung of the
capincha, an aquatic cavy. The strange, fairly conical knobs that
beset the surface of the envelope may defend the abode, which
hangs low, against mammalia, such as tigers, jaguars, and cou-
gars, that would plunder it of its honey ; they appear to protect
and conceal the entrance ways — of which, opposed to the custom
of wasps, there are many — but they may be simple freaks of Na-
ture. It seems odd for beings so sensible to put these projections
on the end of the nest, no less than on the sides, necessitating
their gnawing them away each time they add a stage ; but prob-
ably they possess some means of softening the cardboard, and
doubtless the same material, worked up afresh, helps to estab-
lish the new tier and the new cells.

It is represented iu a bulletin of the Department of Agriculture that
about two hundred and fifty thousand cocoanut palm trees of all ages are
growing on the eastern coast of Florida, about twenty -five thousand of
which are bearing. The tree is fruitful near the salt water, but does not
thrive when removed inland. It begins to fruit in from five to seven years
after planting the nut.

646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

THE POTTER'S ART AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS.

By ALICE D. LE PLONGEON.

OF all the arts at whfch man has labored, that of molding clay-
was probably the first, the most primitive. It has been
practiced in all parts of the world, and the thousands of specimens
yet existing are an aid to archaeological studies, particularly when
found intact and unblemished. It is never easy to decide on the
age of any piece, as this is not necessarily indicated by its appear-
ance, least of all in places where, as in Mexico and Peru, cun-
ning artificers manufacture antiquities, making jars a few weeks
old appear like the time-begrimed handiwork of their great —
very great — grandfather or mother; for women have been and
are active in that branch of industry. The Mandan women were
clever potters. The Zuni and the Maya women also do much of
that work. A new-looking, well-preserved vase may be a rare
antique, while a roughly finished primitive one may be modern
or of comparatively recent date. There are scholars who claim
that some of the Central American and Peruvian specimens are
thousands of years old.

In several parts of America it was customary to place vari-
ous receptacles in tombs, close by the human remains, some jars
being usually filled with food and liquid. The pottery found on
the Atlantic coast is poor and not abundant, but there is a great
quantity in the western part of the United States, as well as in
Mexico, Central America, and Peru. Colorado, Missouri, and
Ohio are States which have yielded very large collections, vary-
ing from crude work to some that is admirable, a certain simi-
larity existing in all. The Alaskan productions are considered
of a better quality, in paste and in baking, than any other on the
American continent. Some of the large Alaskan vases were coated
with a grayish-white wash, and polished after the manner of
Phoenician wares. They were decorated with bold devices in
black and dark red.

The North Americans modeled their utensils by hand, without
wheel, and none seem to have understood the art of glazing.
They mixed their clay with pounded shells, with sand, or with
pulverized siliceous rock ; mica was also used. After being
shaped, the clay was hardened in open fires or kilns. Among
the many ornamentations, that imitating basket work was much
used, and may have suggested itself because the modeling was
sometimes done inside of baskets. Similar devices are common
on ancient German pottery. The Greek ornament (FEI) was
very common in America, while Phoenician art is suggested by
some of the life forms seen on the Peruvian and Chiriquian

I

THE POTTER'S ART AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS. 647

»

pottery. In the Peruvian most of the care bestowed on the
decorations was given to the faces of the creatures represented,
the rest of the body being fashioned without any apparent at-
tempt to faithfully imitate Nature. Some pieces found in an-
cient tombs resemble Etrurian or Etruscan work of the same
class. The potters did their best work on jars that were to be
deposited in sepulchres. Articles for domestic service were of
the simplest description. The materials used for the funereal
vessels, called huacas and canopas, were light-colored clay and a
blackish sort of earth mixed and worked in such a way as not
to absorb liquid. The
secret of that method
is lost to us. Some
of the finest produc-
tions appear to have
been submitted to the
action of fire, but the
majority have evi-
dently been hardened
only by the heat of
the sun.

A long, slim neck
is a distinguishing
feature of much of
the Peruvian pot-
tery ; and nearly
every vessel is orna-
mented with a figure
of some sort, having
holes to represent
eyes and other open-
ings. These afford a

passage for the air forced out by the liquid when poured into the
vessel. By an ingenious contrivance the air in escaping produces
a sound similar to the cry of the creature represented. Thus a
utensil decorated with two monkeys embracing each other, on
having water poured into or from it, would give a sound like the
screeching of those animals. One decorated with a bird would
emit birdlike notes ; while a mountain cat on one jar would mew,
snakes coiled around another would hiss. The most curious that
we have seen was the figure of an aged woman. When the jar
was in use her sobs became audible, and tears trickled down her
cheeks. The manufacturers seemed to have known all about
atmospheric pressure. Dr. Le Plongeon had in his own collection
a piece that demonstrated this. It represented a double-headed
bird. The vessel had to be filled through a hole in the bottom.

Fig. 1.

648

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and yet in turning it over not a drop would spill, but the liquid
would readily flow out when the jar was simply inclined. The
Peruvians were good portraitists, and many of the faces repre-
sented might pass for likenesses of people now living on the
coast. The potter of the present day uses a primitive contri-

FiG. 2.

vance, something like two tables fastened together and revolving
on an axis firmly fixed in the ground. The lower table serves as
a treadle by which the workman imparts a rotary motion with
his naked feet to the whole contrivance. On the upper table,
the smaller of the two, is placed the moist clay which the potter
shapes to his fancy.

The pots found in tombs are made of various kinds of clay —
red, yellow, brown, bluish, and black. The latter is generally
only modeled, the red being modeled and painted. None are
glazed. Many of the Peruvian jars are double, quadruple,
sextuple, even octuple. The pottery of the Antis is believed to
be of Quichua (Peruvian) origin. It is coarsely made, painted
and varnished. From the cannibal Conibos they obtain, through
the Chontaquiros, more elegant ware.

The illustrations (Figs. 1, 2, and 3) represent pieces found by
Dr. Le Plongeon on the coast of Peru, all belonging to a period

THE POTTER'S ART AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS. 649

prior to the Inca civilization; they are from six to ten inches
high. The canopa, an upright bottle, in Fig. 3, is very suggestive,
its name calling to mind the canopi, or funeral vases used by an-
cient Egyptians, though the word is of Maya origin, as Dr. Le
Plongeon has fully explained in one of his books. Traveling
south of Peru, we find that in Chile, near Santiago, the capital,
there is a fragrant clay called buccari, of fine quality and light
weight, its color being brown with yellow spots. The inmates of
convents convert this into various utensils which they paint, gild,
and varnish. It is said that water placed in them has an agree-
able perfume and flavor. North of Peru, in Ecuador, near Quito
the capital, a similar clay is found.

Chiriqui is an interesting field for students of the ceramic art.
Politically Chiriqui is a part of South America, while geograph-
ically it belongs to the northern continent. It is between Yeragua
on the east and Costa Rica on the west. Pottery is most abundant
in the lands around the bay of David, though found all along
that part of the coast. The Chiriquian modeling shows more
symmetry of form than any other on the continent. In graves,
from three to twenty pieces are usually found. One explorer ob-
tained ten thousand articles of clay from burial places covering
an area of fifty square miles. The ware is uniform. The matrix
is of fine clay tempered with pulverized sand. Grains of quartz,
feldspar, hornblende, iron oxide, etc., can be detected. Argilla-
ceous matter was sparingly used except in outer coatings, the

Fio. 3.

sand in many instances comprising at least seventy-five per cent
of the mass.

Some of the work is similar to that in Costa Rica and the
Colombian States. The Maypures of Colombia form cylinders
of clay, and shape even the largest vases by hand, without any
wheel. In Nicaragua, too, clay utensils are formed entirely by

650 • POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

hand. After being baked some pieces were partially glazed, or
varnished with a resinous gum, warmed over a bed of coals and
gently rubbed over the vessels. The natives on the Amazon em-
ployed a similar method.

With clay the Chiriquians made a great variety of objects, in-
cluding many shaped vessels, drums, whistles, rattles, stools,
spindle whorls, needle cases, toys, and other small objects. The
baking was effected with a low degree of temperature, and in
a way that produced no discoloration. All the work was skill-
fully done and so neatly finished that the method by which it
was accomplished can not be detected. The eye and the hand of
the manipulator must have been exquisitely trained.

Complex pieces were made in parts that were cleverly put
together, no portion being injured. The heads and other parts of
animals, handles, legs, bases of vessels, were luted on with con-
summate skill, the thinnest walls and most complex delicate
forms not being injured in the process. Before the surface wash
was applied, the whole was carefully smoothed. After the appli-
cation, and when the clay was somewhat indurated, smooth peb-
bles were used to polish the surface. This was sometimes done
so thoroughly that the finish has been mistaken for glaze of a
vitreous nature. Ornamental painting and intaglio devices were
usually done after the polishing. The general colors of the paste
were light yellow, gray, ochery yellow, and pale terra-cotta red.
Dark brown, salmon, and orange hues are occasionally found.
The paints used for decorating were reds, blacks, and purple
grays. The red varied from a light vermilion to a deep maroon.
The colors are indelible, and are believed to be of a mineral char-
acter.

Many jars were manufactured only to be placed with the dead.
Tripods are supposed to have served for religious ceremonies as
braziers. Most of the fine pieces were made expressly for re-
ligious or funeral purposes. The various forms were always
symmetrical. Some jars had as many as four mouths.

Among the various ornamental devices are included fish, crabs,
frogs, crocodiles, pumas, and monkeys, also a conventional ser-
pent. Too much can not be said in praise of the beauty of out-
line of these vases, but in any case where the artist has attempted
a human figure the result is a deplorable failure. There are a
few double-headed vases and an approach to the modeling of jars
in animal forms after the Peruvian style.

There are at least ten varieties of painted ware, apparently the
work of different communities. Generally speaking, the vessels
were not of large dimensions, some elaborately ornamented ones
being only four inches high. Even cooking pots were what we
should call decidedly small. It is evident that the Chiriquians

THE POTTER'S ART AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS. 651

were lovers of music, judging by the instruments fashioned from
clay. It is hardly likely that the musicians confined themselves
to that material in their production of sweet sounds. Terra-cotta
drums, rattles, whistles, and flutes have been found. There are
rattles shaped like the gourd, which vegetable product seems to
have first served man as a rattle. The Mayas of Central America
yet use it in certain religious dances. The handles of Chiriquian
rattles were made as whistles. The bodies of drums were some-
times made of clay, though these specimens are rare. They were
shaped somewhat like an egg-cup, the small part serving as base,
the tissue or skin being stretched over the larger orifice.

The wind instruments are capable of yielding very sweet
though not powerful or far-reaching tones. The note on any one
stop is in some instances susceptible of change by varying the force
of the breath, affording much scope to a skillful performer. With

Tio. 4.

FiQ. 5.

the exception of the drums the clay instruments are not more
than about eight inches long. The whistles were constructed on
the same principle as the modern flageolet. They give eight or
more notes, though not a true scale. The bird was quite appro-
priately a favorite shape for whistles, the finger holes or stops
being in the breast. On them a practiced performer could imitate
the song birds with some accuracy.

In Corozal Island on the east coast of Yucatan, there are vases
with flaring rims supported on three short legs, like some of
Chiriqui. Our illustrations of Chiriqui pottery are : 4. Vase with

I four handles — decorations in black, red, and purple. Ten inches
high. This form is frequently found in Mexico and Central
America. 5. Vase, eight inches high, with hollow base. Elabo-
rate designs in red, white, black, and purple. Equal to Chinese
or Egyptian! work. 6. A tripod nine inches high. Similar ones
have been found in Cozumel Island, having hollow legs, contain-

652

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 6.

ing pellets. Notwithstanding the beauty and symmetry of their
work, the Chiriquians seem to have lacked one faculty that the
people farther north, in Honduras and the Yucatan peninsula,

had fully developed ; for they
failed to portray, even poorly, the
human face, while the latter were
clever portraitists.

In Honduras a wealth of pot-
tery may be dug from the soil ;
but this must be done with care,
otherwise the frail things will in-
evitably be broken, owing to their
moist condition. When exposed
to air and sunlight they become
hardened and may be handled with
less risk.

At Mugeres or Woman's Island
(latitude 21° 18' north and longi-
tude 86° 42' west, Greenwich me-
ridian)— so called by the Spaniards because they found many
statues of women there — an ancient shrine stands on a rocky prom-
ontory at the south end of the island. There the waves perpetu-
ally dash themselves as if in blind fury. Atom by atom the rocks
must yield to the force of perpetual motion ; then this old shrine
of strong masonry will fall into the maw of Neptune. Long ago
thousands of pilgrims used to bring to the spot votive offerings of
all kinds. Fragments of pottery are scattered over the ground in
front of the building. Delving in the sand, we brought to light
a fine incense-burner. Unfortunately, a man, too anxious to help,
thrust a spade in the sand and broke the object before we had
time to say " Hold ! "

Afterward, in one of the fragments, we kindled charcoal to
varnish photographs which we had taken. From the heated
pottery an exquisite odor was wafted on the air. Thus, once again,
and probably for the last time, was the shrine perfumed with the
sweet incense which had permeated the porous clay, and truly it
was delicious enough to delight not only the most fastidious
devotees but the most exacting divinities. The face which had
ornamented the burner escaped injury, as did the feet from the
lower part of the brazier. Able potters of these modern times
have pronounced the face a very fine piece of modeling. It is
now in the museum of the Antiquarian Society of Worcester,
Mass. The woman represented did not belong to any of the races
that followed the customs of deforming their skulls ; but she had
her front teeth filed in points, a fashion which was in vogue
among some Americans as it is among the Fans of equatorial

(

THE POTTER'S ART AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS. 653

Africa. This may indicate that the individual depicted on the
burner was a Maya. The Mayas never deformed their skulls,-
and some of them filed their teeth in just this way, as can be seen
in the statue called Chaacmol, unearthed by Dr. Le Plongeon. A
duplicate of the statue is in the museum at Washington.

About forty miles south of Mugeres Island, and ten from the
east coast of Yucatan, is the abiding place of Spring, the lovely
island of Cozumel, almost uninhabited now. When the Spaniards
arrived there, three hundred and sixty-five years ago, it had a
hundred thousand inhabitants, besides an annual concourse of
fifty thousand pilgrims that worshiped at its temples. This " place
of swallows '' (cuzamil, hence Cozumel) is an interesting spot for
the antiquary. In the dense forests there are curious old build-
ings, and round about them, beneath the surface of the ground,
may be found many a specimen of the ceramic art. Illustration
No. 7 shows a fine incense-burner from there, with scarcely a
blemish, and similar to the one so unfortunately broken at Mu-
geres Island. Its ornamentation represents the goddess of the
bees. Like the other, this forehead shows no artificial deform-
ity. The clay was of fine quality and in color a rich red brown,
while the broken burner was of a light yellowish clay found only
on the mainland. After examining hundreds of specimens we
are inclined to believe that among those
people individuals were given names %^^^|S^.
suggested by some trait in their char-
acter or peculiarity of appearance, and
that the artists ingeniously indicated
such appellations in a headdress or
other ornament. In some instances
such headgear as this was used in
battle.

Pottery from Palenque exhibits en-
tirely different features. The two vases
here given (Fig. 8) are in the Govern-
ment House of Balize, British Hon-
duras. Here we see the Palenque type,
with artificially deformed forehead.
The way in which the hair is curled
and banged suggests a very rakish
Bacchus, appropriate ornamentation Fig. 7.

for an antique punch bowl. The Hon-
duranians seem to have been as ingenious as the Peruvians in
their terra-cotta works. We have before us two jars which ap-
pear to be glazed in imitation of bronze. One is intended to
represent an armadillo, the other a familiar domesticated hen
that cackles melodiously when the water gushes from her open

654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beak. This effect is produced by a small pebble cleverly placed
in her throat.

Among figures of all shapes and sizes several had holes that
did not enhance their appearance and were not in accordance with
Nature. A dog, for instance, may be allowed a mouth and two
eyes, but why an extra pair of orbs on each side of its small body ?
Simply that the impertinent-looking pup was a musical instru-
ment, the six eyes corresponding to six sweet and clear flutelike
tones — C, D, E, F, G, A. On these clay instruments the native
melodies can be played, their compass not exceeding six notes.

In the deep sand at Progreso, port of Yucatan, objects of clay
have frequently been found. One in our possession is interesting

because of what it
represents. The
double mouthpiece
gives the notes C
and D. Blue paint
yet remains on the
clay (blue was em-
blematic of sancti-
ty), indicative of
the veneration

€V ^^^^^^^^^ which was attrib-

.. ^^^m^^^ uted to the creat-

*'^<*- 8- ure, roughly sug-

gested by thd" up-
lifted proboscis. The mastodon, whose visage is depicted every-
where on the walls of Yucatan^s ancient cities, was taken by the
Mayas as one symbol of the Creator. They made it their god
of the ocean, life being first generated in water. Beneath the
upturned proboscis there is a mutilated human face surrounded
by a broad collar or necklace.

The persons who in ages gone by had used the little dog-flute
and the double whistle just described were not unfamiliar with
the seductive weed, for in applying our lips to them the flavor
and odor of tobacco were quite unmistakable. The late General
Bogran, when President of Honduras, personally found the clay
pup and gave it to us, so that the tobacco was not imparted to
it after its discovery.

In the National Museum of Mexico's capital are some orna-
mental vases, three feet high, which might perhaps justly be re-
garded as the culmination, the perfection of the ceramic art — they
are so very handsome, fine and intricate in form and decoration.
But to which of the Mexican tribes the work should be ascribed is
a question. In the State of Oaxaca funeral urns have been found
inscribed with Maya hieroglyphics which have been interpreted

DUST AJ^D SAND STORMS IN THE WEST. 655

by Dr. Le Plongeon. Their meaning is "the extinguished/'
"the snuffed ouf ; a brief but unquestionable allusion to the
deceased.

There is a fascination about antique pottery. In handling a
funeral vase, for instance, one can not help indulging in a little
imagination about the scenes which occurred when the object was
placed in the tomb. Visions of queer figures and fantastic rites
flit before our mind^s eye till we shake off the waking dreams,
breathing a vain wish that the clay might be endowed with the
power to tell, not its own story, but of those events which tran-
spired in connection with it.

DUST AND SAND STORMS IN THE WEST.

Bv J. A. UDDEN,

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY, AUGUSTANA COLLEGE, ROCK ISLAND, ILL.

FOR some years the writer has been gathering data on the
transportation of sand and dust by the atmosphere, with a
view of studying the geological significance of these phenomena.
Among other sources of information the newspapers have been
drawn upon, and it is to the facts gathered from these, and by
personal correspondence that it is at present desired to direct
attention. The newspaper man may not always state facts with
such exactness and precision as would be desirable, but his ubiquity
no less than the very conservatism of the scientist, who seeks the
broadest possible foundation for all generalizations, combine to
give him a function in the investigation of the laws of Nature.
Of course, it can be only a humble function — that of an observer
who is not always to be trusted. For the lack of training or by
reason of other shortcomings his accounts of natural phenomena
must sometimes be taken cum grano salis. Dust storms occur
chiefly over arid lands, and they develop their greatest force
mostly only in regions which are but sparsely inhabited, if at all.
They are not often witnessed by geologists. As a consequence,
they have been but little studied, and it is desirable to collect
information from all sources with regard to their nature and
occurrence.

While dust storms are sometimes to be seen east of the Missis-
sippi River, they are much more frequent in the arid and semi-
arid regions of the western part of the United States, where the
rainfall is small. Of the thirty-eight storms found recorded
during 1894 and 1895, only one occurred east of the Mississippi.
The distribution over the Western States and Territories was as
follows:

656

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

California

Arizona . . .

9

v

Oklahoma

South Dakota

2

2

Washington ; .

Oregon

Colorado

Kansas

5

3

2

2

Nevada

Montana

Nebraska

Iowa

Illinois

North Dakota

2

While the number of reported storms is too small to warrant a
discussion of their geographical distribution in the United States,
the above table so far, no doubt, correctly represents the facts
that it shows an increase from the Western plains to the Pacific
coast, and comes to a maximum in the Southwest. On the plains
most places are reported to experience dust storms two or three
times in a year, while on the Pacific coast estimates and records
for different places range considerably above this number. At
Los Angeles, Cal., one observer says that there are " two or three
in the course of a year, possibly a few more." From Yuma,
Ariz., the statement comes that " any high wind, without rain,
generally blows clouds of dust," and six sand storms were recorded
by observer A. Ashenberger in the Weather Bureau station at that
place during 1893. At Ontario, Cal., it is estimated that there are
from twelve to forty dust storms in a year. It is said that these
storms are " most common and strongest in passes in the mountain
ranges in California," that they are " very severe on the east side
of the Coast Range,", and that " nearly every part of California is
afiO-icted [by them] at times." From the reports which are at
hand an estimate of the minimum frequency of these disturbances
in places in the West, where topographical and climatal condi-
tions do not forbid them, is two in a year for the territory east of
the Rocky Mountains and five in a year for the Great Basin and
the western slope. A maximum estimate would be four annually
for the former region and twenty for the latter.

Data on the areal extent of each separate storm are meager, as
reports of simultaneous observations have been secured in but
few instances. Where such observations have been reported they
represent, as is evident, the minimum extent of the storm in one
direction, since it may have extended beyond the points from
which the reports have come. The few instances of reported
areal extent of dust storms may be tabulated as follows :

Areal Extent of Single Storms.

From Milton, Ore., to Colfax, Wash 80 miles.

" Fresno, Cal., to Santa Maria, Cal 120 "

" Mojave, Cal, to Oceanside, Cal 140 "

" Salem, S. Dak., to Sanborn, N. Dak 216 "

" Santa Anna, Cal., to San Diego, Cal 270 "

" Over the greater part of Nevada " 300 "

Over most of northern Iowa and Illinois 400 "

BUST AND SAND STORMS IN THE WEST. 657

This gives an average diameter of two hundred and sixteen
miles.

Information has also been sought with regard to the length of
time that these storms continue to blow at any one place. In
several instances the reports state this time, and in these cases it
varies from one to forty-two hours, and averages a little over
thirteen hours, as may be seen below :

Duration of Dust Storms.

2 storms lasted for 1 hour.

2 " " " 2 hours.

1 storm " " 4 "

2 storms " " 6 "

2 " " " 8 "

2 " " " 12 "

1 storm " " 16 "

1 " " " 18 "

2 storms " " 24 "

2 " " " 30 "

1 storm " " 42 "

Supplementing these direct observations, estimates have been ob-
tained from a few parties, and these make the time considerably
longer. These estimates are as follows: "Sometimes an hour,
sometimes three days, coming with great violence at intervals."
(One hour, seventy-two hours.) — " We have known one that con-
tinued a week, with one day for a recess.'^ — " The sand storms last
from one day to three days, but sometimes only a few hours."
(Four hours, twenty-four hours, seventy- two hours.) — "The sand
storms last about one day." (Twenty-four hours.)

Leaving out the storm that lasted six days, thirty-two hours
would appear to be a fair average for the other estimates. But
these estimates perhaps apply more particularly to the greatest
storms, while the previous table no doubt includes a rather large
proportion of short, tornadolike winds. A mean of the averages
is not far from twenty- four hours, and this is perhaps a safer esti-
mate of the average time of a single dust storm. These atmos-
pheric disturbances occur on the steeper gradients of areas of
low barometric pressure, and they partake of the progressive
eastward motion of these. Their duration at any particular
point will hence depend upon their areal extent and upon the
velocity of the low area. If the diameter of the dust storm be
divided by the time, we will have this velocity, which in this case
will be less than ten miles an hour. This is less than half the
usual rate of eastward progress of a low area in the eastern part
of the United States, but it corresponds more nearly with the
rate observed in the Great Basin, where most of these storms
occurred.

VOU XLIX. — 52

658 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In nearly every instance where these disturbances have been
described some mention is made of the quantity of the material
transported by the atmosphere. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly
difficult to make any definite estimate in this direction, as no
actual measurements have been made by any of the observers.
But a number of the accounts are such that comparisons can be
made between the phenomena described and some other instances
of dust transportation which have come to the writer's notice,
and which have furnished some quantitative estimates. The
results of such comparisons are here given for what they are
worth. In several cases the effect of the dust on the trans-
parency of the atmosphere is noted. It is thus stated that — " It
gives the sun a sickly color."^ — " It is dense enough to obscure
the mountain ranges from view " (at a distance of from five to
ten miles). — "It is sufficient to allow the sun being viewed with
the naked eye.'^ — " Immense quantities of sand and dust filled the
air, until the sun became so obscure that it could only be seen as
a round ball, at which one could gaze with impunity."

During a high wind on the 25th of March, 1895, following a
dry season, the atmosphere over the northern part of Illinois and
over a part of Iowa had an appearance which corresponded to
the instances here described. The storm lasted about three hours,
and during that time an apparatus for collecting dust from the
atmosphere was suspended at an elevation of about a hundred feet
above the ground back of the bluffs of the Mississippi River at
Rock Island, 111. This apparatus was so arranged that dust could
not be taken from a current of air more than a tenth of a square
foot in cross-section. It is possible that the actual current was
not more than a tenth as large as this. The quantity of dust col-
lected was about two ounces. The wind velocity for the three
hours was thirty miles per hour. This indicates that the atmos-
phere on that day carried a load of one hundred and sixty, or
possibly sixteen hundred, tons of dust to the cubic mile of air.

Some of the notes refer to the accumulation of dust and sand
in dwelling houses and other buildings, viz. : " Merchants closed
their doors to protect their goods" (from the dust). — "The quan-
tity of sand swept from houses (by housekeepers after a storm)
showed the severity of the storm the two previous days. The
sand penetrated every nook and corner." — " The pattern of the
carpet may be obliterated ; drifts have been formed on the floor
from one to two inches in depth." — " The dust filled every resi-
dence completely [!] covering up everything while it lasted." —
"The wind hurled a few quarter sections [!] of rich loam into
the residences and business houses."

Blown dust is a general and familiar nuisance to housekeepers
over the entire West. A minimum estimate, verified by direct

DUST AND SAND STORMS IN THE WEST. 659

observation, for the quantity of dust settling on floors during
such storms is about a fourteenth of an ounce of dust on a sur-
face of a square yard in half a^day. A maximum estimate made
on the basis of the above newspaper accounts would be at least
five pounds to a square yard of surface for a storm lasting twenty-
four hours. If we then suppose that a house that is twenty-four
feet wide and thirty-two feet long has open crevices, which aver-
age a sixteenth of an inch in width and have a running length in
windows and doors of one hundred and fifty feet, the wind may
be supposed to enter half of these crevices with a velocity of five
miles per hour for the time the storm lasts, or for twenty-four
hours. The dust may be supposed to settle on not less than
eighty-five square yards of surface, including floor space and
horizontal surfaces of furniture. The minimum estimate, based
on these figures, gives us two hundred and twenty-five tons of
dust to the cubic mile of air. The maximum estimate would be
one hundred and twenty-six thousand tons.

In the following citations the optical aspects of the dust-laden
air are again characterized in a definite way : " The air was so
full of sand that it resembled a fog.'' — " A wind storm struck us,
bringing a dense cloud of dust." — " The sky assumed a deep,
tawny hue, and fifty yards was the limit of clear vision." — "The
dust was so thick and heavy that a person could not see more
than a block through it." — " The dust was so thick that it was
impossible to see halfway across the street." — ^'^I have seen the
dust so fill the air [in a Western dust storm] as to make it diffi-
cult to see more than a few rods." — " At times it was impossible
to see across the street on account of the flying sand." — " A strong
wind was made thick and yellow by flying real estate." — "The
wind filled the air with dust as far as the eye could see. It im-
mediately became dark, and lamps had to be lighted." — " During
the sand storm it was dark as night, and people ran into each
other in their flight through the streets." — " The wind was ac-
companied by dense clouds of dust that obscured the sky until
all was dark as midnight."

From the phrases used it is evident that the transparency of
the atmosphere must have been considerably less than when the
sun could be viewed through it, or when objects might be seen
dimly at a distance of one or two miles, as in some instances pre-
viously mentioned. This difference in the two cases is, of course,,
due to the increased quantity of dust carried by the air. Such
conditions as are described here may readily be produced experi-
mentally on a small scale by throwing dust into the air on a
windy day. If the quantity of the dust be known, it is necessary
only to estimate the degree of opacity produced and the bulk of
the air in which the material is dispersed. From a number of

66o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

experiments, it appears that two ounces of dust suspended in
about four thousand cubic feet of air render it as thick as it must
have been, at the least, in the storms described. This would
make about two thousand tons to a cubic mile. It should be
added that these experiments were made in a wind moving about
eight miles an hour, and with dust quite fine enough to be sus-
pended in such a wind. A considerably larger quantity would no
doubt be required if the material were to be coarser, such as
would be carried by a strong wind. The estimate is therefore
believed to represent a minimum for such storms as are described
above.

Another perhaps less reliable estimate may be made from ac-
counts which describe the drifting sand, thus : " The sand drifts,
as snow does, and has attained such a depth as to cause a fear
that vegetation in the simoom^s path will be greatly damaged." —
" Drifts of sand one foot high were piled up in thirty minutes
on a railroad track." — " Cuts [along a railroad] were filled with
immense drifts, which averaged about two thirds sand and one
third snow." — "At Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, thirteen cars of
sand were taken from the depot platform" (after a storm). —
" Tracks were obliterated [by drifting sand] and the whole land-
scape was changed."

Under such conditions it may be surmised that a drift of
twenty-five tons of sand might be deposited during six hours
from a current of air forty feet wide from the lowest ten feet, in
the lee of some intercepting obstacle, as in a railroad cut. In
fact, such instances are on record. The velocity so near the
ground would not exceed fifty miles an hour. Twenty- five tons
may therefore be carried by 633,600,000 cubic feet of air, which
makes nearly six thousand tons to a cubic mile. It is by no
means likely that all, or even the greater part, of the sand carried
by the lowest ten feet of the atmosphere can be left in the drift,
and the estimate may again be much too low.

Still another approximation can be made by experimenting on
the effects of dust in the atmosphere on the respiratory mechan-
ism of the human body. Such effects are referred to in the fol-
lowing paragraphs:

" The wind sweeps down from the deserts and brings with it
sand in such quantities as to almost make breathing impossible."
— " The sand was blown in stifling clouds about them." — " During
the sand storm the air is so full of dust that it feels as if it were
impossible to breathe."

By some simple experiments it has been ascertained that less
than two grains of mineral dust suspended in a cubic foot of air
interferes with inhalation in a normal way. This would make
about twenty thousand tons of dust to the cubic mile. It is pos-

DUST AND SAND STORMS IN THE WEST,

66 1

sible that the stifling sensations felt in a dust-laden atmosphere
are the results of a cumulative stimulus on the nervous system,
and a smaller quantity .might produce similar effects. No doubt
there is also a subjective factor which will modify estimates on
this line.

Lastly, an estimate, or rather a measurement, has been made
on the quantity of sand carried in such storms as are recounted
in the following items : " The sand is blown about in such quan-
tities that it is not possible to keep one's eyes open." — " A man
venturing into a whirlwind of sand invariably returned in a few
minutes with his face bleeding with hundreds of cuts." — " Clouds
of sand were driven through the air by a high wind, obscuring
all objects and rendering existence almost impossible {sic) for
man and beast."

In 1886 the writer had the opportunity to be in the midst of
such flying sand on the Western plains, and to make some obser-
vations on the quantity borne by the air. The storm was not as
severe as those described in the above paragraphs, nor did it carry
as much drift, for neither was the author's facial integument
punctured nor did he experience any apprehensions as to the pos-
sibility of continued existence. But there was enough of sand in
the air to deposit one ninth of an ounce during fifteen minutes in
a vial with an aperture measuring one tenth of a square inch
turned to the windward. A velocity of twenty miles per hour
was probably not exceeded where the receptacle was placed, and
this would make the load carried equal to nearly thirty thousand
tons per cubic mile.

To sum up : The estimated loads of sand and dust that may be
carried by the atmosphere range from 150 to 126,000 tons per
cubic mile of air, or from 0*0009 to 077 grammes per cubic foot.

Summary of Estimates.

Estimate on a thick haze

Lowest estimate from accumulation in dwellings

Estimate on opaque dust clouds

E.stimate on forming sand drifts

Estimate from effect of dust in the air on breathing. .
Estimate from a quantity of sand collected in a storm
Highest estimate from a quantity of sand in dwellings

No. of

No. of

tons per

grammes per

cubic mile.

cubic foot.

160

0-0009

225

0-0013

2,000

0-012

6,000

0-037

20,000

0-123

30,000

0-184

126,000

0-77

No. of
grammee per
cubic metre.

0-081
0-048
0-434
1-30
4-34
6-49
27-29

With these figures and the data on the duration and on the
frequency of sand storms in the western part of the United States,
it seems possible to form some idea of the total amount of work
performed by such storms over this territory. It is not believed
that the data presented justify any great claims for exactness

662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for a general estimate, which is made here in the absence of a
better one.

If we say that this western country experiences a dust storm
twice a year, we do not rate this work too high. During two such
days the velocity of the wind for the lowest mile in the atmos-
phere will average, at least, thirty miles an hour, and the total
wind movement will be 1,440 miles. Of course, there are many
sheltered places where such winds will not be felt. The territory
including the west two thirds of the Dakotas, of Nebraska, Kan-
sas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and extending west to the Pacific Ocean,
contains about 1,000,000 square miles of open land, allowing one
third the area for mountains. For the time of the storm the
atmosphere over this area may be regarded as a current of air
1,000 miles long, 1,000 miles wide, and a mile high, containing
1,000,000 cubic miles of air. If the lowest 200 feet in this current
carry a load of 20,000 tons to the cubic mile, and if the remain-
ing 5,080 feet carry 100 tons per cubic mile, there will be 853 tons
of dust to each square mile of the whole area of the current,
making a total of 853,700,000 tons transported a distance of 1,440
miles, or, if the expression be permitted, 1,229,342,400,000 Tfiile-
tons of transportation will be performed.

Comparing this with the quantity of work performed by the
water of the Mississippi drainage system, we find that the latter
is three hundred and thirty times as great. The Mississippi car-
ries annually 406,250,000,000 tons (estimate by Humphrey and
Abbott) of sediments a distance of, say, 1,000 miles, performing
406,250,000,000,000 mile-tons of transportation. The ratio of the
atmospheric transportation in the West and the aqueous trans-
portation in the Mississippi basin is then 1 : 330.

If the above estimates have any significance at all, it is to the
effect that in this country the work of the atmosphere is less than
the work performed by meteoric waters. So far the inference is
in full accord with the well-grounded general consensus among
geologists.

Care has been used to not overrate any of the factors entering
into the estimates. In sandy regions a considerable amount of
transportation is effected by pushing by the wind on the loose
surface material. This part of the work of the wind is here en-
tirely neglected. It is known, too, that even on calm days the at-
mosphere carries an appreciable load of dust, and this has not
been taken into account, though it operates for the remaining
three hundred and sixty-three days of the year. It is, therefore,
possible that the general estimate is too low. But it is not neces-
sary to have recourse to such a supposition alone to show that,
locally, work by the atmosphere may exceed the work performed
by the water. The observed average wind velocities in these

DUST AND SAND STORMS IN THE WEST. 66^

storms appear to be about twenty-five miles an hour. Velocities
two and a l^alf times as bigh as tbis are not unknown, and tbe
efiiciency of sucb a current is two bundred and five times tbat of
one baving a velocity of twenty-five miles an bour. If tbe ve-
locity is doubled it increases tbe transporting power sixty-four
times. Sbould sucb storms tben occur on twenty days of tbe year
instead of on two, tbe total work would be six bundred and forty
times more effective tban in tbe first instance. Still anotber in-
crease would result from tbe greater vertical dispersion of tbe
lower greater load in a wind witb bigb velocity. A predomi-
nance of aerial transportation may, of course, also be due to local
inefficiency of tbe aqueous work. But tbis digression is not
made for tbe purpose of proving tbe possibility of sucb a pre-
dominance in any place. A proof of tbis would be superfluous,
since tbe topograpby of sand-bill regions is conclusive evidence
on tbis point. It is merely desired to emphasize tbe fact tbat
atmospheric work is subject to very great range in its effective-
ness, and tbat as a consequence tbe great range of tbe estimates
made above does not impeach their trustworthiness.

Some other stray items of information, culled from tbe news-
paper accounts, may be briefly stated in closing. Tbe only state-
ment from which tbe distance over which dust has been trans-
ported can be definitely estimated is in a notice coming from the
southern part of California. From tbe notice made it is certain
tbat dust must have been carried twenty miles. Of course, this
does not speak against tbe possibility of a transportation over
twenty times that distance. In one case a slow settling of fine
dust from tbe air is reported as actually observed, and tbis was
also in California. Tbe maximum wind velocities reported in
connection witb dust storms are few, running from 36 to 90 miles
per bour, viz. : 36, 40, 45, 50-60, 90. Some instances of the erosive
effects of blown sand are described. It is stated tbat winds will
raise dust on sparsely covered, not cultivated land ; tbat orange
trees in California are sometimes girdled near the ground by sand
blasts ; tbat tbe glass in the windows of railroad coaches is etched
by impinging sand ; and tbat paint on the coaches is worn off in
tbe same way. The softer wood in telegraph poles is sometimes
worn away by sand so much faster tban tbe harder wood in the
knots tbat tbe latter are left protruding far out. Finally, there
are some accounts of tbe coarseness of the transported material.
It is generally fine enough to be called dust, but sand is often
mingled witb tbe dust, and occasionally there is fine gravel. Two
reports mention pebbles, and in one instance these are said to
have been large enough to " knock a man senseless."

To tbe writer tbe facts here presented appear most interesting
in their incompleteness. While there are tens of thousands of

664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

square miles in the West where the wind has covered the land
with monuments of its undisputed reign, the ever-changing sand
hills, very little is known as to the quantity of the work per-
formed by the wind in such regions, or as to the relation between
this work and prevailing wind velocities. It is evident, also, that
a considerable quantity of fine debris is removed by the wind in
such places, but observations are wanting as to what becomes of
this product of trituration after it is raised from the creeping
sand, how far it is carried, or where it is deposited. The atmos-
phere is known to carry appreciable quantities of dust, as already
stated, even in low winds, but on this work the study of the dust
storms and sand storms has no bearing. The study of the geo-
logical work of the atmosphere evidently requires a wider basis
of facts.

THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS.

Br CLARE de GRAFFENRIED.

WE delight to glorify the " new woman," the advanced woman.
If, however, we study Prof. Otis T. Mason's book. Woman's
Share in Primitive Culture, we find the " new woman " to be only
a revival of a very ancient type. Prof. Mason says that, for the
highest ideals of civilization, in humanitarianism, education, and
government, the way was prepared in savagery by mothers and
the female clan groups. While men were the inventors of every
murderous art, women were the actual inventors of the peaceful
arts, and excelled in weaving, pottery, agriculture, the prepara-
tion of foods, and the substitution of other forces to do the work
of the human muscles. Woman made rough looms. She tamed
the present domestic animals. The first empirical physicians
were not the sorcerers but the herb women, who collected also the
earliest materia medica. Savage woman founded all the modern
crafts. She was the butcher, the cook and server, the skin curer
and dresser, the furrier, tailor, carver, cobbler, the hat and dress
maker. She it was who made possible the great modern textile
industries. In weaving, dyeing, embroidery, molding, modeling,
and painting, in the origination first of geometric patterns and
then of free-hand drawing, primitive women elaborated aesthetic
art. They were also the earliest linguists, the founders of society
as distinguished from savagery, the home-makers, and the patrons
of religion.

Undeniably in those days woman was emancipated. In an-
cient civilizations her industrial skill was astonishing, as among
the Egyptians, where, too, her legal and political rights were care-
fully guarded. But as clan groups made way for larger political

THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS. 665

units, as man was less busy conquering and enslaving enemies, he
began to enslave bis helpmeet, confining her within narrower
social bounds, withdrawing from her all share and voice in pub-
lic affairs, establishing, in short, a social order now known as Ori-
entalism, to some extent characteristic of the Jews through the
Persians, and fastened anew on Christianity by the Oriental St.
Paul, who preached the subjection of woman. With the decad-
ence of Greece and Rome, woman fell from her high estate of
honored equality, and in the dark ages as a social factor she dis-
appeared.

Nevertheless, she was the worker, though receiving no credit
for her work. Under the feudal system, when men were bound
to bear arms and make constant war, women carried on the
trades and arts around the baronial castles, in the wretched
homes of the serfs — but not as free agents, only as chattels of
their husbands. Later, in the middle ages, all the great indus-
tries were controlled by guilds and syndics, which regulated the
manufacture and sale of goods, but in which man only repre-
sented the working classes. He alone had power, he alone drew
wages. Though the exquisite silks, damasks, and embroideries
that were the fruit of his loom embodied a dozen kinds of skilled
labor performed by his wife and daughters — hackling, combing,
carding, dressing, spinning, dyeing, weaving — only the head of
the household counted and handled the pay.

Everywhere in Europe and America, before the era of steam
machinery, women plied the industrial crafts at home, in towns, in
villages, in the country. The conditions under which these domes-
tic industries were carried on were bad, indeed, almost intolerable
— in damp, overcrowded habitations, without air or drainage,
amid squalor, want, filth, and devastating epidemics. But woman,
the most important agent in such productive labor, was econom-
ically and politically ignored. She had no power, no voice, no
pay ; and without money she had no control of her own time or
her own aptitudes. In fact, she was very like a slave ; and Eng-
lish and Irish peasant girls even sold themselves into real volun-
tary slavery in colonial times, coming to America as quasi crimi-
nals or indentured apprentices, to be household servants and work
out their freedom, in order to escape the miserable tyranny of the
then prevailing domestic industries.

About the middle of the last century steam was harnessed.
The spinning jenny was invented — the first blow at Tiome indus-
tries. Factories for steam machinery were opened, and women
and children were drawn from the wretched cottages to tend first
the spinning frames, then the looms, and finally the whole array
of textile appliances which during the past century have revolu-
tionized production and again emancipated woman. Steam ma-

666 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

chinery found her an economic and financial cipher ; it has trans-
formed her into an economic and financial power. The invasion
of women and children into the lower grades of paid industries
has made possible the advance of females into higher pursuits.
Untaught manual workers hewed the way for intellectual and
professional workers.

I referred a while ago to the new woman's debt to primitive
mothers. I would speak now of the new woman's debt to the real
working woman ; to her who first leaped over the home threshold
and broke the fetters of tradition that confined the gentler sex
strictly within the domestic sphere ; to the first female wage-
earners who dared public opinion, suffered odium, and underwent
the hardships inevitable to new and untried conditions in order
to open up all the noble crafts, trades, and professions on which
the girl of to-day enters without strife or penalty. The multitude
of pursuits in which the modern Eve may attain higher useful-
ness and development, the careers that crown her with honor,
fame, and fortune, are a heritage to us of the last decade of the
nineteenth century from women and girls who toiled in factories
in the last decade of the eighteenth century.

These privileges are not of our creation. Let that fact sink
deep and make us humble. Enjoying the fruit of economic lib-
erty, we are apt to forget who won it for us. We are even prone
to persuade ourselves that lue won it, prone to magnify and vaunt
ourselves, shutting our eyes to the struggles and tasks of hun-
dreds of thousands of ignorant, despised mothers and maids and
tiny children whose lives were one long martyrdom in mills and
workshops in Great Britain and on the Continent, in order to ren-
der gainful pursuits and the control of their own earnings possible
for womankind. All the blessings which we accept as a matter
of course — the shortened working day, decent sanitary surround-
ings, frequent payments — are the outcome of a hundred years of
toil and stress, of snail-like legislation following on timid pro-
test, of concessions wrung from careless or hostile public senti-
ment, until, finally, the present factory acts were secured.

Nothing in history is more dramatic than that bitter industrial
revolution by which the factory system displaced the domestic
industries. Machinery came to stay. It had to be fed, fed actually
with human fuel, females and little ones scarcely out of babyhood
being set to tend it in buildings hastily constructed, in barns or
barracks on village outskirts and in temporary sheds near cities.
When in sparsely settled districts there was lack of small hands
to run spindle and loom, the dregs of the population were utilized.
Women, and children down to four and five years old, were
brought in droves from afar, or taken from almshouses or pauper
institutions and even from the prisons. These miserable crea-

THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS. 667

tures, let in gangs to tlie manufacturers, were herded like animals
in the mills and forges, sleeping under the machines, eating there
such poor food as they had to eat. Tasked day and night and
often days at a stretch, they were rudely shaken from brief slum-
ber to renew their work, and were goaded to labor by the whip.

Generation after generation of English factory operatives was
thus martyred, devitalized, degraded, before reaction of public
feeling and tardy legislation gradually combined between 1802 and
1876 to repress these abuses. So, by toiling sixteen and eighteen
hours out of the twenty- four, by living in stables, by being beaten
and starved under employers drunk with avarice and power,
these early mill hands — grandmothers, mothers, maidens, and tiny
children — bought with blood and tears the right for woman to
compete industrially with man. In this sad, this heroic effort, a
million beings were engaged whose lives were needlessly short-
ened or sacrificed to the dreadful treatment and surroundings
they had to endure before the cry of their pain was heeded by the
lawmakers, before a century of suffering, demoralization, and op-
pression forced into existence that great saving and preventive
agency, the British Factory Acts.

The crusade for government interference and protection of the
wage- earner against insane and inhuman greed — alas! even the
greed that makes parents wreck their offspring by early labor —
was carried on for seventy-five years by men alone. I am sorry
to count no feminine helper among the reformers, to blazon no
woman's name alongside Lord Shaftesbury's.

In the United States the first mill employees enjoyed a better
fate. Nevertheless, long working hours, the toil of ignorant chil-
dren, and other abuses of unrestricted industrialism early called
for remedy ; and since 1840 Massachusetts has led the ever- widen-
ing movement for regulating factories and improving the condi-
tion of labor.

The American girl who profits by this hard-won emancipa-
tion, to whom has fallen the precious heritage of economic inde-
pendence, who is able to-day to pursue freely and at ease in
laboratory, studio, office, and workshop all the skilled trades and
professions only because other humbler sisters have trodden a
rougher path and cleared the way by manual effort, this " new
woman" owes to all female breadwinners commensurate grati-
tude and many sacred duties.

First, by virtue of ampler leisure, superior education, and
social importance, we owe protection. Do we give it ? No. It is
a significant fact that while in England the Factory Acts were
secured mainly by men of rank, wealth, and public spirit for the
laborer, in America such statutes usually originate with and are
pushed through by the workers themselves, half educated, un-

668 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aided, handicapped, and sometimes intimidated by nnprogressive
employers. When measures come before our Legislatures to bet-
ter the conditions under which females toil in shops and mills,
and to raise the age limit after which the child may be con-
demned to labor, women, with noble exceptions like Mrs. Jose-
phine Shaw Lowell, are conspicuously absent, while even many
clergymen enroll themselves on the side of laissez faire. True,
our sex is conservative, frightened by prophecies of socialist rule*
inclined to regard factory legislation as anarchistic instead of
remedial and preventive. Another feminine inconsistency is that
women busy themselves and beset the Solons about paupers and
the degraded, about institutions and charities, though refusing to
lift a hand or lend their indorsement to obtain protective legisla-
tion for respectable, self-sustaining working women and helpless
children, who from dependence for employment on the favor of
merchants and manufacturers are unable to speak in their own
behalf. Yet these patient wage-earners, if properly safe-guarded
from insanitary surroundings, dangerous and poisonous pursuits,
long hours, and excessive strain while at work, would so seldom
be found in hospitals, institutions, poorhouses, and prisons that
the occupation of the board of lady managers would be gone.

Throughout the Union child labor is surely diminishing, as a
result of growing public disapproval and of factory laws in half
the States ; but in large cities and in States that have inadequate
factory inspection — practically all except Massachusetts — and no
age limit for employment, the mill child and the "cash" child
alike are victims of the same evils — low vitality, premature
breakdown, dense ignorance, transient employment from shop to
shop, and unthrifty habits. Some callings are positively fatal
to children ; other vocations cause them to be stunted, crooked,
or atrophied — a race apart, haggard, wizened, old. The ignorance
of working children is often appalling. They do not know their
age or birthplace, or the name of the country they live in. They
can read and write no language. To say that these little toilers
are learning trades is the cruelest falsehood. Whether engaged
only in what seem easy and harmless pursuits, standing in stores
till eleven o'clock at night in holiday season, in a candy factory
one week, in a box shop the next ; whether trotting after the
mule spinners thirty miles a day, or running forty miles a day
fetching and carrying for the glass-blowers ; whether tending
cutting presses that chop off their fingers, or gilding frames whose
metal poison paralyzes their hands, or roasting slowly before
cracker ovens, the working children under fourteen years old are
nearly everywhere the same — dwarfed, physically defective, men-
tally benighted, demoralized, unstable, migratory. " Little won-
der," says Mrs. Stevens, Assistant Factory Inspector of Illinois,

THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS. 669

" that each year finds increasing numbers of wage-earners who
can do nothing well, who have no manual skill to command
living wages, who in the best times are on the verge of starva-
tion, and at every economic upheaval topple into the abyss of
pauperism/'

Out of 340,000 children of school age in New York city, 50,000
are untaught for want of school room, because of ragged clothes,
or unwillingness to learn. Twenty-eight thousand more children
of school age are employed in stores and factories.

Who should act for this toiling army of little ones, should
guard the human race from degeneration, should demand the
enforcement of existing laws and the making of better laws in
their behalf, should secure the building of schools, the expendi-
ture of more money for kindergartens and primary and industrial
education, unless it be intelligent women ?

Our mission it is, too, to bring about better housing of the
poor and the artisan, to insist upon their right to decent dwell-
ings, fresh air, pure water and plenty of it, clean alleys and courts
and some privacy in their homes — conditions without which those
engaged in productive industries can with difficulty lead moral
and virtuous lives. It is a mistake to suppose that workers and
honest poor folk are satisfied, with any miserable abode. Many
of them are ambitious. They have the home-making instinct and
turn their pitifully small resources to admirable account, sur-
rounding themselves with dainty neatness and refinements in
spite of wretched quarters and overburdened lives. I know
whereof I speak, having studied the tenements of every large
city and many manufacturing centers in the United States. Not
long ago I spent four months in a house-to-house, room-to-room
investigation of parts of the most congested " slum " districts of
New York and Philadelphia. I visited 1,400 tenements, 1,600
families, and 7,250 individuals.

The woman with liberal training, a competence, and social
power is the natural guardian of the civic rights of her humble
and ignorant sisters, whose civic wrongs she must also have im-
agination enough to discover by putting herself in the needy
fellow- creatures' place, bringing to bear upon their problems her
own broader insight and nobler vision. To put yourself in an-
other's place signifies to empty yourself of self. Use imagination,
project yourself for the time being into the life of another. Be a
poor man, an ignorant man, with limitations and the scars of suf-
fering and want, narrowed by lack of opportunity, perhaps embit-
tered by hard treatment and ill success. Be all this, however,
ylus yourself, your brain, your vitality, 'plus your enlightened
conscience and your big, deep heart. Then indeed we have a
man, not a one-sided mortal, rich and learned hut nothing else.

670 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or poor, ignorant, and callous, and nothing else. The student,
teacher, scholar, reformer, or philanthropist is only half a man.
He knows principles, but not what it means to pinch and starve,
to beg for work without finding it, to see his savings dwindle
while capital recoups itself. Piece the scholar or reformer and
the workingman together, and we get a complete and useful
entity, a being capable of attacking the world's woes without
aggravating them. Put yourself in the place of those you pro-
pose to aid, and then indeed your help becomes not charity, but
brotherhood.

To the least observant it is plain that the manual workers who
to-day represent those factory operatives that led us to economic
freedom are far less skilled in many branches of industry than
were their primitive forbears or their ancestors under the domes-
tic system of trades. Steam-power inventions and appliances
tend to change the wage-earners who watch them into soulless,
almost brainless, machines. Labor is now so specialized that
one repeats endlessly the same process — feeding presses, turning
cranks, guiding seams. Reason is stultified, sensibility is deadened.
All-around perfected craftsmen exist no more. Who conserves
the artistic workmanship, the sesthetic and industrial skill of the
primitive female ? It is not displaj'-ed by our proletariat, cer-
tainly, as Prof. Mason remarks; for when we take the exquisite
sewing of the Eskimo women, done with sinew thread and needle
of bone, or the wonderful basketry and pottery of our American
Indians, or the feather work of Polynesia, or the loom products of
Africa, and compare them with the tasteless, useless decorations
and clumsy needlework of the untrained daughters of our labor-
ers and mechanics, the comparison is all in favor of the wives
and daughters of the degraded savage. Household knowledge
and pursuits are at the lowest ebb among many of our industrial
population. The mothers and girls can neither cook nor sew, nor
wash and iron, nor care in the simplest way for the body. Igno-
rance causes the death of infants and the ill health and poverty
of adults, whom poor food robs of their only capital, the power
to earn.

Not only over the homes of workers, but oyer the shops, found-
ries, mills, and factories, the curse of incompetence hangs. Un-
less the grade of labor improves, the pay of the skilled work-
man will be still further lowered by unskilled competition. Our
wealth, our greatness, depend on the mastery of industrial arts. It
helps us little to be the largest coal-consuming and most invent-
ive nation on earth, if the era of machinery is to be also the era
of blind force; if behind the machine we have not the trained
hand and eye, the taste of the designer, the skill of the architect
and wood carver, the science of the shipbuilder — in short, manual

THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS. 671

dexterity re-enforced by art. However we pride ourselves on
mere material resources, without industrial power and technique
the rest of the world will beat us. Japan and China have de-
veloped their exquisite textiles, bronzes, and faience for four
thousand years. Russia has greater oil fields than America. If
Egypt and India fail to out-acre us in cotton, Africa could be
turned into one vast cotton field where the three economic fac-
tors— food, shelter, and raiment — would be minimized, since the
cultivator would wear no clothes, would sleep under a tree, and,
when he wanted food, would climb the tree and get it.

Clearly, too, we shall continue at an ethical as well as a com-
mercial disadvantage unless we replace the handicrafts of the
primitive woman and build up the industrial arts — the all-impor-
tant, ever-dignified and beautiful pursuits of cooking and sewing,
cleaning and repairing, needlework, embroidery, carving, coloring,
and house decoration. The most unlovely homes in the world
are the bare, untidy homes of our working population. The most
wasteful housewife on earth is the thriftless American housewife.
To reinstate the skilled industries, to weave in beauty with the
life of the people, we must carry manual and technical training
and applied art to the point of action, as it were, down among
the degraded, the belated, the neglected, the submerged. In the
" slums," where ignorance revels, crime festers, and decent pov-
erty hides, we should found cooking, sewing, and housekeeping
schools, with carpentry centers, wood-carving, brass-hammering,
drawing, modeling, and other creative pursuits that will fasci-
nate the roughest street girl and transform the boy "tough"
into an eager, industrious artisan. Belgium and France, whose
products we in vain try to equal, have planted industrial and
domestic science schools in every hamlet, technical schools in all
the manufacturing towns, dairy and farm schools in the agri-
cultural districts. The teaching is adapted to local industries;
on the coast, to shipbuilding and fisheries ; in the quarries, to
stone-cutting ; around textile mills, to weaving and dyeing ; with
drawing everywhere. Hence the industrial supremacy of these
countries, their excellent food, absence of waste, national thrift,
and the love of art that pervades even the humblest classes. To
educate by the same methods the children of America, to im-
prove our homes, to bring order, skill, and beauty into the bar-
renest lives, to carry on the propaganda for universal industrial
and art training, is the privilege and duty of the " new woman."

Two words of warning. Even to dabble in handicrafts and
aesthetics is a sign of the crude and amateurish but noble up-
striving of our times, just as it indicates awakened civic con-
science that club women settle in one hour's discussion the most
far-reaching municipal problems and the gravest financial issues.

672 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

One fault, however, of modern industrialism is that girls rush
hastily, blindly, and sometimes unnecessarily into self-supporting
pursuits for which they are unfitted, and to the neglect of a legion
of home duties. The desire for pin money, for more to spend on
dress than clerks or mechanics can afford their daughters, sweeps
into the ranks of competition a whole army of frivolous work-
ers too young to understand the responsibility of the industrial
career, untrained for it, and determined to end it by marrying
the first bona-fide suitor. Such young women, half maintained
at home, fond of excitement and of the crowd that congregates in
shops and factories, thinking chiefly of self, unidentified with the
interests of persisting labor, enter the economic market not on a
fair business basis, but accepting any pittance that will supply
pocket money and gratify their natural and in some respects com-
mendable desire to make a good appearance. Then, having cut
down pay below the life line for the self-supporting toiler, these
transients join in condemning merchant and manufacturer for
offering no more than starvation wages. Better economic con-
ditions for women will not come until they enter the field less
hastily and on strictly business terms; until they are trained
enough, stable and responsible enough to deserve these ameliora-
tions, and capable of the concerted and unselfish action required
to win them.

Again, the true, the ultimate aim of education is not to pre-
pare for mere self-seeking skill and the acquisition of wealth or
social pre-eminence, but for life and a choice between difi&cult
distinctions of right and wrong. The highest life consists in
constant development of new aptitudes for usefulness and new
faculties for enjoyment; and of this intellectual and moral life
woman is the creator and the guardian. Its stage, if she be but
a mortal, its altar, if she be a divinity, is the home.

The noblest use for the industrial arts and domestic sciences
is to raise our daily living to loftier hygienic and ethical stand-
ards. Whether or not outside vocations offer for the sex, or a
career independent of marriage be chosen, the true apostle of cul-
ture and promoter of industrial skill will strive to lift the popular
ideas of sanitation, nursing, food preparation, ornament, beauty,
education, and physical development. The " new woman " threat-
ens to turn her back on the home which the primitive woman
evolved. But, in reality, all paths revert to it, wherever the ra-
tionale of progress may lead her — whether to become sociologist,
teacher, artist, writer, practical worker, reformer, or even voter.
Only in the restful, well-ordered home does "earth reach its
earthly best.''

THE BANZIRIS OF THE CONGO BASIN. 673

THE BANZIRIS OF THE CONGO BASIN.*

By M. F. J. CLOZEL.

THE territory of the Banziris extends along the northern shore
of the upper Oubanghi between the rivers Ombela and Kou-
ango, Africa. They have also a few villages on the southern
shore that belong to the Congo Free State. The whole number
of Banziris on the north shore may be about four thousand ; we
lack data for estimating the number of those on the south shore.
The tribe is not, therefore, numerically very considerable, and
their territorial extension is still less than might be supposed
from the number of the population. In fact, they occupy only the
edges of the shore. Their cultivated lands are of small extent,
and the water is their real element. They deserve attention in
the first place as navigators — carriers in a part of the river where
steamers penetrate only with great difficulty or do not penetrate
at all. They have transported one after another the various
French expeditions to the country, they help keep up intercourse
between the European advanced posts, and they are a chief re-
source of the commercial houses in the region. When they are
not employed by Europeans they carry on commercial ventures
on their own account on the upper Oubanghi and its affluents, or,
rather, they undertake long fishing trips to secure a provision of
smoked fish for their families. The fishery is furthermore an
affair of so much importance to them as to determine real migra-
tions. In the dry season, when the low water uncovers the sand
bars of the river, three quarters of the population — men, women,
and children — abandon their villages on the land and establish
themselves in the middle of the river, where they can fish more
conveniently. The provisional establishments set up here do not
cost the Banziris much time or material. Their round huts are
made of mats of plaited straw, held by a few stakes, and covered
by a pointed, thatched roof. The houses in the shore villages, a
little larger and more solid, are round like the others and indiffer-
ently kept. The real dwellings of the Banziris are their pirogues,
and these are their refuges when their neighbors of the tribes to
the north press down upon them too closely. These pirogues,
hollowed from the trunk of a tree, are usually from thirty to

* Much of the information in this paper was obtained through Bonga, a ten-year-old son
of chief Bembe, and very intelligent for his age. The father was one of the most influen-
tial men of his tribe, and the first who on the embassy of MM. Crampel and Ponet came to
them and accepted the French protectorate. Bonga, after two years' residence with the
French, learned to speak the language well, and did excellent and conscientious serrice as
an interpreter.

TOL. XLIX.— 68

6/4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

sixty feet long, from two and a half to three feet wide, and fifteen
or eighteen inches deep. Their sides, especially on the bottom,
are left very thick for protection when they run aground or strike
the rocks in passing the rapids. They are full aft and astern.
The prow is surmounted by a small oval platform, cut out of
the log, and carved more or less elaborately; on the poop is
a small round seat, likewise shaped out of the log. The pilot
sits here.

A quarter or third of the whole length, in front, is left free.
The three or four polers who propel the boat work in this space.
They go and come in file, generally with the gymnastic step, strik-
ing the platform, already mentioned, with their feet to give them
spring. The passengers and baggage are amidships, and a half
dozen paddlemen behind, seated on the sides of the boat, assist
the polers in hard places. The crews change places every two
or three hours. The management of the long and heavy poles,
which, in time of high water, have to be from twenty-five to
thirty feet long, is much more laborious than that of the short
paddles.

There are generally one or two women on board to do the
cooking and keep a fire constantly burning on an earthen hearth
in the bottom of the boat. An encampment of Banziris offers a
picturesque scene, with the pirogues beached on the shore, the
crews grouped on the sand, each around their fire, and the long
poles stuck in the ground near them, like so many gigantic
lances. On the route in fine weather their songs, and the races
between landings, with their lusty cries, and all trying to splash
the rival boat, make the hours pass pleasantly. Their boisterous
gayety is as wholesome and fresh as that of the young demigods
of primitive Greece. They have a sculptural beauty, with their
well-developed busts and vigorous limbs, the muscles of which
have been well brought out by their rude sailor's life ; and their
nudity, and even the color of their skin — black, with a coppery
tinge like bronze — complete the picture. They show their qual-
ity in the hard passages, when the pirogues pass the dangerous
rapids, when they throw themselves into the whirling waters to
hold the boat up or push it on, and they ward it off with their
poles from the rocks at the precise moment when it seemed
about to break against them. They are wonderful swimmers
from infancy. As soon as he is four or five years old the little
Banziri is given as his first plaything a pirogue and a paddle
suitable to his size, which he sails alone in the creeks around
the village. Their features are pleasant and rounded in grace-
ful curves, with not excessively broad faces, full cheeks, round
and shortish nose, not flat, the lips not too thick, revealing ad-
mirable teeth, and large black eyes, intelligent and merry. They

THE BANZIRIS OF THE CONGO BASIN. 675

seem very much like the ideal savages of the philosophers of the
eighteenth century. They address strangers as their friends, and
wear the amiable and pleasant smiles of children.

They eat dog-meat with great relish, drowning the animal and
cooking it without skinning or dressing it. This meat is rigor-
ously forbidden to the women, who have no part in preparing the
dish. They believe, or affect to believe, that it would make
women sick. So rigorously is the prohibition kept, that the
Banziris wash themselves carefully after eating dog before touch-
ing a woman, if only with the tips of their fingers. Schweinfurth
maintains that dog- eating is an indication of cannibalism, but the
Banziris strenuously deny every charge of that kind. Besides
the edible dog, their domestic animals are a few goats and hens.
But the basis of their food supply is afforded by the fishery. They
cultivate the banana and manioc, and, as accessories, tobacco, se-
same, a little corn, and millet. This agriculture is carried on in a
commercial way by family or village groups.

We could not learn whether the Banziris have any elements
of religion. They wear no amulets and have no visible fetiches.
We observed only one sign of superstition among them. Before
starting a-fishing they planted some twigs in the ground, put in
the midst of them a handful of cowries, and sprinkled them with
fat. The ceremony was supposed to secure an abundance of fish to
the one who performed it, but I never learned to whom the sacri-
fice was offered. The political organization of the people is not
much more developed than their religious faith. He is chief who
has the most wives, children, slaves, pirogues, and particularly
who has boldness to carry on transactions with the whites in the
best interest of the tribe. On the death of the father the eldest
son inherits the pirogues ; the other goods are divided, while the
lands are the collective property of the village or the hamlet.

Men and women go nearly nude. A little breechcloth of na-
tive goods, made of the bark of a species of jicus described by
Schweinfurth, composes all their dress. The men when they go
sailing put off even this little bit of clothes, to avoid soiling it.
Girls continue totally naked till they are married; three cowries,
a few pearls, or a little bell hanging in front of their bodies and
held by a belt of pearls or a narrow leather strap, emphasize their
nudity. Beads, in necklaces, in armlets, or pins and beads in the
hair, form an important element in the toilets of both sexes.

The young women are very charming. Their type is the same
as that of the men, but their features are more delicate, with
straight nose, small mouth, and slender but not too thin forms.
They are sociable with the whites and make themselves innocently
agreeable to them as they would to young men of their own tribe,
but always with discretion ; and they seemed to excel all the other

(>-](> POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

negroes we met in strict virtue, in behalf of which they appear
capable of resisting the strongest temptations.

Marriage is preceded by a long courtship, with gallantry much
after the European style, and takes place usually when the young
woman is from sixteen to twenty years old. The Banziri who
marries a Banziri girl pays her father with a large number of
guindjas, or the iron picks that are used exclusively for money.
A great feast is then given, during which the women d^nce and
the men drink much palm wine. The bride keeps the house for
two months without going to the fields or taking part in any of
the household work, while the men do the sweeping and till the
garden plot. Polygamy is general, but except with rich and influ-
ential persons, the Banziris rarely have more than one free wife.
The other wives are slaves. The rejoicings and ceremonies ob-
served on the birth of a child are the same, whether it be a boy or
a girl. The parents build a little altar of boughs, on which they
sacrifice a hen. They then anoint the child's shoulders with the
blood of the victim, pronouncing a formula which may be inter-
preted as a prayer that the child may be preserved from sickness
and disaster. Circumcision is not practiced, and the people are
disposed to ridicule the men of the surrounding tribes who use
this rite.

On the death of a Banziri, all the men of the village attend the
funeral banquet, for which many goats are slain, and which lasts
two or three days. If the deceased was a chief, all the women shave
their heads as a sign of mourning ; two slaves are slain and buried
with him, and generally also the one of his wives who is judged
least deserving. The corpse is interred in a squatting position in
a round pit. A blood penalty is exacted for murder. It can be
paid in pearls or by the gift of two slaves. If the parties disagree
concerning the price of commutation, a sort of vendetta arises be-
tween the families. A thief, if a slave, is punished with death ;
if a freeman, he is sold on the third conviction as a slave.

The arms of the Banziris are hand knives and throwing knives,
assegaies, bows and arrows, and oval shields of osier — all similar
to the arms of the neighboring tribes from whom they usually
come; for the Banziris have bat little enterprise in any arts but
those which concern their pirogues and fishing tackle, and would
rather buy than make.

The articles of trade most in demand and current before every-
thing else are the little white glass beads called hay oka on the
Congo. Blue and red ones are accepted, but in small quantities.
Cowries, which were in great esteem before the Europeans came,
have lost most of their value, though they still have a restricted
currency. European picture books, copper armlets, knives, and
mirrors might do for presents, but would not be regarded as cur-

THE BANZIRIS OF THE CONGO BASIN. 6jj

rency. Cotton goods will pass in small quantities ; and firearms
and powder are beginning to be in sharp demand.

The headdresses of the Banziris might by themselves form
the subject of a whole article. They are built up by women — the
mothers, wives, sisters, or friends of the wearer, who weave plaits,
tresses, or cords in the hair of the dandies, and adorn them with
beads. There is nothing grotesque about the structure ; and the
model, chosen with the most accurate taste, is always appropriate
to the physiognomy of the patient — a word we can well use here,
for it takes about eight months to perfect the dressing.

The hair, parted over the back of the head, is brought over to
the sides and made up into a number of small tresses which are
crimped and rolled into a considerable truncated cone above and
a little behind either ear. The top of the section is formed of a
larger tress adorned with beads. A series of braids rolled upon
one another in the circular contour gives this scaffolding a very
curious aspect.

Particular pains is taken with the two bands forming the outline
of a shaven triangle over the foreheads which is very common in
Banziri toilets. They are formed of natural hair plaited with leaves
of herbs. A square of hair and a square of bayaka beads, and
then lozenges, form a very graceful design. Other headdresses are
less complicated, bat in all of them beads are associated with hair
in a variety of braids ; and this accounts for the time it takes the
most skillful hairdressers to perfect their masterpieces. If the
elaboration of the structure calls for it, hair is borrowed from
slaves or from the dead. The false braid is rolled up on top
of the head, or falls gracefully from it. Over the forehead is
the shaven triangle bordered with bands of hair set with beads.
Sometimes cowries are combined with beads; and the details of
the contrivances vary infinitely. Men of war usually wear a tuft
of cock or parrot feathers in their hair. After the death of
a near relative, pearls, cowries, false braids all disappear, and
men and women wear as a sign of mourning their hair as Nature
gave it to them.

The Banziris differ in language, customs, and physical appear-
ance from all the surrounding tribes, except their eastern neigh-
bors, the Sangos, whom they much resemble. Opinions may vary
as to their origin, but the fact about them that makes them an
exception among all the non-Mussulman negroes I met from the
Loangos of the coast to the Mandijas and Saras of the unexplored
regions is that they are pleasant and their women are graceful. —
Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scien-
tifique.

678 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE.

By HELEN ZIMMEEN.

FIRST PAPER.

ENRICO FERRI, the pupil and collaborator of Cesare Lorn-
broso in the science of Criminal Anthropology, which the
latter may almost be said to have cre^-ted, has just published a
truly monumental work consisting of over seven hundred closely
printed pages and an appendix of over three hundred, in which he
subjects to a most searching and minute examination the problem
of homicide from the point of view of Criminal Anthropology. In
it he treats of the murderer by instinct or from madness, reserv-
ing for future treatment the cases due to occasion and passion.
This huge book is the result of nearly thirteen years' work, dur-
ing which it has been often interrupted by Ferri's legal and par-
liamentary labors. These interruptions have not been without
their benefit. As a criminal lawyer he had much opportunity
of coming in contact with criminals and of studying them closelj^
and he is convinced that his work has gained rather than lost
from the circumstance of its having been so long on the stocks.
He has taken as his watchword Michelet's " La science de la
justice et la science de la nature sont une. II faut que la justice
devienne une m^decine s'^clairant des sciences psychologiques et
physiologiques " ; and it is on these calm lines that the whole
work is penned. The author's purpose, in writing this book, was
to demonstrate the me^iods by which we should endeavor to
study the natural genesis of every crime in order to acquire posi-
tive and special knowledge of the causes of criminal phenomena,
to deduce thence certain indications as to the most eflQcacious
remedies, which should be at the same time the most effective
and the most humane, to be applied against these symptoms of
social pathology, to bring into relief more especially those data
which will explain the genesis of murder, serve to delineate its
psychological diagnosis as it affects each individual who commits
it, and hence give the degree in which he is to be feared, ac-
cording to the anthropological category to which he belongs.
Starting from the axiom that the elementary notion of homicide
as a criminal fact — that is to say, that the murder of one man by
another is totally inadequate to satisfy the demands of contem-
porary penal science, which has been fundamentally reconstituted
by the new methods of positive research — he deems that he must
conduct his study to the true origin of these phenomena. Hence
the necessity of a twofold inquiry : first, that bearing on the natu-
ral evolution of homicide, which includes in its vast domain the

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. 679

historical evolution that forms the theme of the last chapter,
and consequently those which bear on the natural causes of homi-
cide. It is necessary, therefore, to commence with animals and
end with man, who is but the last link in the same chain.

Simplifying and generalizing the elementary notions that pre-
vail on the matter of homicide, it may be said that it is the de-
struction of one animal by another of the same species. Homicide
as a criminal fact does not consist in the act of taking life — since
killing in order to live is a natural law, and hence is moral — but
in killing a being of the same species. All beings of a superior
species kill those of an inferior one in order to nourish them-
selves. The deed becomes criminal only when it is unnatural.
This fact of unnaturalness defines it as a crime.

Sociology of late has planted its pioneers in the ranks of zool-
ogy. This was done by Lombroso in his Criminal Anthropology,
and on these lines all scientists work nowadays. These scientific
conclusions, which afiirm the strict relationship, psychological as
well as physical, existing between man and the other animals,
every day demonstrates as more true. Hence the embryology of
murder must be sought in the obscure depths of zoo-psychology,
for it is now certain that the criminal activity of man is only the
reproduction of animal criminality, developed and modified by
means of intelligence. Homicide is a primitive crime like theft,
and can be found in nearly all its forms and variety of motives in
the animal world. As in man so in beasts there are races more
prone than others to the taking of life, beings who transmit the
murderous instinct. The classification of animal criminology
made by Ferri can therefore be extended to man. Utilizing the
studies and researches in animal psychology made up to the
present, the author classifies in convenient grades a goodly num-
ber of the most accredited facts, demonstrating how homicide
manifests itself in the animal kingdom. These facts are more nu-
merous than would be generally imagined, and well adapted for
precise classification. The first group, which relates to the differ-
ent aspects of the struggle for life, nutrition, social supremacy,
and sexual reproduction, deals with the crimes due to the natural
laws of existence. The general character of this group presents a
minor degree of perversion than those of premeditated ones of the
second group, which includes murder determined by an instinct
in the species. Animals destroy each other from sexual instinct,
for love, maternal affection, for defense, for the common weal, for
punishment. With respect to this last motive — punishment —
among animals, which some deny, considering it a mere question
of vendetta, Ferri maintains that among animals, besides this
motive, there exists a more or less exact notion of chastisement.
Our author admits that it is difficult to distinguish the sentiment

68o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of responsibility from the fear of punishment, but still he holds
that animals have a rudimentary sentiment of responsibility. In
dogs this sentiment is far from rudimentary. The theme, how-
ever, deserves a more extended study, which in this place would
have led Ferri too far afield. In any case, as he points out, pun-
ishment is not merely a means adopted by man toward man and
animals, but is not unknown among the latter themselves. It
is above all among animals that punishments are efficacious as
deterrents from crime. If monkeys are so thievish in India it is
because they are not punished, being held sacred. On the other
hand, no punishment can have any effect on certain perverse in-
stincts which have become organic from long heredity. There-
fore, where crime is an inborn organic tendency, the need of
substituting segregation for the usual punitive methods is evi-
dent, in accordance with the conclusions of science which have
confirmed the efficacy of penal substitutes for punishment even in
the animal world.

That crime is a natural phenomenon can be still better seen
when studying the group determined by an antisocial instinct.
Ferri asserts that for man as well as for animals every action is
determined by a movement of passion, which will be stronger in
proportion to the gravity and importance of the act effected, but
it always exists, however imperceptible, whatever be the action,
and therefore, in studying criminal activity, the principle now
dominant in schools and jurisprudence is erroneous, by which
passions in their relation to responsibility are distinguished by
the degree of their violence — for example, that an overmastering
passion can cancel or diminish the responsibility of the individual.
This is an empirical criterion, which in studying criminology in
man as well as in animals it is needful to substitute by the more
scientific distinction of passions which are useful and passions
which are harmful to the species, motives which are social and
motives which are antisocial. For crimes provoked by social
motives have a natural and juridic character of their own and
must be judged apart.

In this group of murders of an antisocial character are in-
cluded those determined by covetousness, ingratitude, war, per-
sonal vendetta, antipathies, anger, and the like, which, whether as
isolated motives or as concomitants of crime, bear the stamp of
individual perversity. The motor impulse must not be con-
founded with that thus designated by the classical school of crim-
inalists who, when they do not find the cause proportionate to the
crime, invent the stock phrase of bloodthirstiness. Thus homi-
cides induced by vendetta, by covetousness, etc., are, according to
them, acts of bloodthirstiness. On the contrary, the experimental
study of delinquency reveals that homicide without apparent or

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. 68 1

proportionate motives is nothing else but the result of abnormal
or diseased organisms. However, this factor of bloodthirstiness
might better be classified by itself. Perhaps (among the animals
who are criminals born), although it has a no less legitimate place
among those crimes induced by antisocial instincts where Ferri
has placed it, it has also no connection with madness. The classical
divorce of crimes from insanity, rejected by positive science, finds
also here in the study of innate or acquired bloodthirstiness a
heavy defeat. Just as there are good and domesticable animals,
so there are perverse ones even among the domesticated, abso-
lutely comparable to the criminal born, as Lombroso and others
have contended.

This group of facts brings still more into relief the funda-
mental analogy between the criminal activity of animals and
of men. A yet more eloquent proof is found by studying the
group of murders induced by mental alienation and by cannibal-
ism. From Vhomme machine of Descartes we have come to in-
sanity among animals, concerning which there is no manner of
doubt, seeing the result of recent studies, and this means that
brutes have in common with man various mental maladies, differ-
ing only in degree.

Ferri divides into five categories the cases of murder among
animals determined by madness, no matter whether transitory or
permanent, innate or acquired : murder by hereditary tendencies,
by mania, by impulse of fear, by senility, by alcoholism (for the
effects of alcohol in all its divers forms on animals are well
known), and subjects them to a brief but deeply interesting ex-
amination. All the murders enumerated have their scope and
limit in the murder of their fellows. In animals, as we also
see among savages and even among civilized peoples, crime is
continued with outrages on the corpse and with cannibalism.
The origin of this unnatural mode of alimentation must cer-
tainly be sought in the need induced by hunger. It is only after
that that cannibalism becomes an organic tendency in animals
and man. However, man has motives for anthropophagy differ-
ent from those of animals. Ferri classifies cannibalism among
animals in two categories, simple cannibalism (wolves, rats, etc. ;
Lombroso also cites the case of a dog), and cannibalism among
relations — that is to say, infanticide and parricide (crocodile, fox,
etc.). To render this exposition of crime in animals yet more
complete, the author hints at another possible class, suicide, which
is certainly not unknown among animals.

Having thus passed in review all the categories of crime in
animals, Ferri devotes a chapter to drawing from the facts he has
accumulated their obvious and special conclusions, pointing out
the striking psychic analogy of motive and of execution existing

682 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between the hiiinan and the animal world, once more insisting on
the nndoubtedly natural character of the crime. He then passes
on to examine homicide in primitive savage humanity, which is
an intermediate form of homicidal evolution between the animal
and civilized society. Concerning the importance of these studies
of savage peoples, as well as concerning the modern reconsider-
ation of the conditions of primitive humanity deduced from the
study of contemporary savages, doubts have been uttered and
objections raised even in the ranks of evolutionists. Ferri, how-
ever, who is convinced that the paleontological data can, for lack
of other evidence, be elicited from these analogies with contem-
porary savage life, accepts the evolution hypothesis that in con-
temporary savages is seen reflected a large portion of the primitive
conditions of humanity.

The purely descriptive style adopted by Ferri in his study of
animals in the second chapter of his book is interspersed with
psychological reflections, for though at the outset his purpose was
to prove the existence of criminal murder among animals, he had
also to study not only the manifest existence of this murder, but
to show that such acts have their moral as well as their juridic
side. To do this he examines and classifies divers forms of homi-
cide in primitive humanity, beginning with the least fierce and
ending with the most repulsive, while leaving aside those common
also to civilized man. Here we find new criminal aspects : for
example, abortion ; infanticide, elevated to a custom and a method
in Malthusianism ; the killing of the old, of women, of the sick,
of those unable to work, of useless mouths (practiced also in his-
torical primitive times), homicide for superstition, race hatred,
vanity, homicide without apparent purpose, for bloodthirstiness,
frequent in savages by reason of the very brutality of their nature
and the small account in which they hold their lives ; finally, can-
nibalism, the most repugnant and ferocious form of homicide,
common to all the peoples of antiquity according to Vogt; born
of hunger, of warlike fury, of need, and transmitted by heredity,
by religious tradition, and lastly, the ultimate grade of human
ferocity, by gluttony. We see this crime reappear in part and
without the stimulus of hunger, for vendetta and simple anger.

This classification of the various forms of homicide presented
by Ferri in a growing scale of ferocity, in order to give contrast
to the two extremes of primitive and civilized man, does not tally,
as he himself points out, with the duplex process of natural
evolution which can be studied in primitive man. In fact, here
we have on one side a continual diminution and disappearance of
the most repulsive forms of crime, and on the other side the ever-
increasing development of moral sentiments and of the juridic
instincts, such as we find afterward in history. Some forms of

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. 683

homicide, such as cannibalism, blood revenges, etc., where they do
not entirely disappear, become less frequent, are less tolerated, and
assume more moral and juridic aspects (juridic homicide and can-
nibalism as a punishment for evil-doers), and this new aspect con-
stitutes the embryo of the succeeding social right of repression.

After this extensive analysis Ferri thinks he is justified in as-
serting that savages do not entirely ignore any notion of crimes
and of punishment, and if some peoples lack the sense of crime,
the majority consider as punishable a certain number of criminal
actions, although no doubt these are few as compared with the
number existing in our actual codexes. After this review of prim-
itive homicide, although the ethnographical study of criminality
and legislation is still incomplete, Ferri believes he may draw
various conclusions, of which the most important are : " As among
animals, so among savages, these more or less atrocious facts are
not alone the effects of specific race tendencies, but also occur
among gentle peoples and those relatively less savage. The moral
and juridic evolutions against homicide exist hardly even in em-
bryo among the most savage tribes, any more than among animals,
and follow, like any other psychological manifestation, the slow
evolution of human society. . . . Justice in the moral and juridic
sense is essentially relative and variable." As a general and
definite conclusion of these preliminary examinations of savage
humanity and animals in the order of their criminal activity, it
follows, contrary to the affirmation of the schools, that neither
punishment nor social innovations will ever succeed in extirpating
homicide. But this ideal may be reached rather by the slow labor
of progressive evolution.

This interesting examination of the natural evolution of homi-
cide is followed by an inquiry into its natural causes. This second
scientific examination needed to be subdivided on the basis of the
classification generally adopted by the others (anthropological,
physical, and social factors) into three special studies. The com-
bination of the factors among themselves, and the respective prev-
alence of one of these, determined a special category of crime.
Thus the prevalence of the anthropological factor gives us the
figure of the murderer born and the murderer by insanity, the
main subject of this large work ; the prevalence of physical and
social factors furnishes us with the figure of the murderer by oc-
casion and by passion, which is to form the theme of the second
volume. The anthropological factor in the criminal divides itself
yet again into its constituent elements of organic and psychic.

Ferri begins with the examination of the organic constitution
of homicide, objecting with great force to the criticisms and meth-
ods of the modern school of anthropology and exposing the cri-
terions by which he himself has been guided. It is not easy or

684 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

possible, however, to deduce even from these precise criterions
anything but an approximate conclusion. Ferri points out
frankly, in the brilliant treatise that precedes his study of com-
parative anthropometry, the difficulties of such classification. He
insists, for example, that, besides craniological characteristics and
the qualities inherent in the individual and the race, due regard
must be had to psychological conditions.

DOGBANE AND MILKWEED.

By maud going (E. M. HAEDINGE).

THE story of the trap- setting and insect- eating plants is a
more than twice-told tale. The pitcher- plant, which beguiles
the hapless fly to his drowning in its vase- shaped leaves, baited
on the outside with nectar-bearing glands, and filled with water;
the Yenus's flytrap, which shuts up on him and crushes him ; the
sundew (Drosera), which chokes him in a sticky secretion, are all
known, at least by pictures and descriptions, to the tyro in bo-
tanic study. And we have learned that they all have good and
sufficient reasons for thus dealing with the hapless flies. For
"the plants grow," says Grant Allen, "in places where the
marshy and water-logged soil is markedly wanting in nitrogen
compounds. Insect-eating leaves are thus a device to supply the
plant with nitrogen by means of the foliage, in circumstances
where the roots prove powerless for the purpose."

The insect slaughter which they carry on has the same excuse
as the animal slaughter of the abattoir. It is killing for food, and
the insects which these plants catch are honestly eaten and di-
gested. But in the infinite analogy of the vegetable world we
find a curious parallel to killing for sport. There are a few
native flowers which entrap insects simply and solely, it appears,
for the deed's own sake. The prisoners serve no apparent use in
the plant's economy, nor do their poor little corpses nourish the
plant's life. A botanist who let his imagination run away with
him might accuse the guileless-looking flowers of that savage joy
in another creature's pain which drew our forefathers in crowds
to the badger-drawings and bear-baitings of bygone times.

One of these flower tormentors is the spreading dogbane {Apo-
cynum androscemifoUum), which is common all summer, along
shady roadsides and around the borders of thickets, in the North-
ern and Eastern States. The plant is about three feet high, erect
and branching. The flowers are nearly as large as single blossoms
of the lily of the valley, " and are very beautiful," says Mrs. Dana,
" if closely examined. The corolla is bell- shaped and cleft, at the

DOGBANE AND MILKWEED, 685

edge, into five slender points. Its deep pink veining suggests nec-
tar," and the insect visitor is not disappointed, for at its base are
five nectar-bearing glands. These stand in a ring around the pistil,
and in a larger circle, outside the ring of honey glands, are the
five stamens. The anthers stand erect, and in shape are like arrow
or spear heads. Corresponding to the two points at the base of a
spear head, there are, at the base of each anther, two little hard
horns, and the stamens ring so closely about the pistil that horn
is pressed against horn all around the circle.

On the inside of the corolla, near its base, are five triangular
callosities, with their points up. These are placed in such a way
as to alternate with the stamens, and stand a little below them, so
that the two hard points at the bases of two neighboring anthers,
and the hard tip of the callosity — three little horns — come to-
gether like the teeth of a trap. There are no fewer than five
places inside the flower's cup where these traps are set, and inside
the circle of traps are the glands which contain nectar. The
flower is visited by bees and flies.

The insect caller must run his proboscis in between the long
anthers, and just above the horny excrescences on the corolla.
When he attempts to withdraw, after drinking his fill, the three
points lock together, like the jaws of a trap, holding the tip of his
proboscis in durance vile. If the winged captive is big and strong,
he gets free, with a long and a vigorous pull. But small flies are
often held prisoners till they die, probably from starvation.
Sometimes one may see three or four of these hapless victims on
one full-blooming plant of spreading dogbane.

Among the prisoners one may often see a little summer fly of
dudish aspect, with body ringed with alternate bands of bronze
and gold, and wings of gauze shot with opaline colors. To what
end is this bright little fellow sacrificed ? Held as he is by the tip
of his proboscis, his body does not come in contact with the plant,
and hence it can not be digested by the vegetable juices, as are the
corpses of the sundew's victims. The dogbane is apparently un-
able to furnish any adequate justification for his taking off.

There is another variety of dogbane, the Indian hemp, or Apo-
cynurn, cannahinum, which bears smaller blossoms than the an-
droscp.mifolium, blooms somewhat later, and is more widely dis-
tributed over the country. This flower has no callosities in its
corolla, sets no snares for insect victims, and is apparently quite
innocent of the crimes which one is inclined to lay to the charge
of its first cousin.

The common milkweed (Asclepias comuti) also imprisons in-
sects, which sometimes die in captivity, and do no apparent good
to the plant by their deaths. They have, however, invited mis-
fortune, for though the milkweed is rich in honey, and is visited

686 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

by a large and miscellaneous company, it can be fertilized appar-
ently only by bees and perhaps by a few large flies.

The milkweed is a peculiarly constructed and very highly
organized flower. The petals, five in number, fold back as soon
as the blossom opens and press their backs against the flower
stalk. Inside them, standing upright in a ring, are five honey
jars, or nectaries, of peculiar form. Each nectary is hooded, and
inside each is an incurved horn. Within the circle of honey jars
are the five stamens, which are fixed to the base of the corolla, and
stand in contact with each other, surrounding and inclosing the
pistil. On top of the ring of stamens is a large five-sided disk,
which keeps the pollen from being blown away, or wet with rain
or dew. The whole stamen system is like a little tub or firkin,
standing in the midst of the flower, upside down. Inside this
firkin are two green pistils, which will be two green pods. The
pollen of each anther is collected into an Indian-club-shaped
mass, which is fastened to a similar mass formed by the pollen
of the next anther. Thus the two connected pollen masses be-
long to two separate stamens. They are united by a tiny black
disk. This disk is set just above an opening between the stamens
which runs " clear through " to the pistil inside the firkin. The
fly or bee stands on the outside of the firkin, and, tramping about
there, gets her foot caught on the black disk — which is glutinous
— and pulls out (if she is strong enough) the whole affair, disk and
attached pollen masses. A bee will gather three or four of these
at once, and I have seen one buzzing away from a head of milk-
weed loaded with no fewer than nine. Thus encumbered, she was
for a moment held prisoner by the flower, unable to pull herself
and her burden loose. Following the custom of bees, she carried
the pollen masses at once to another milkweed plant, and perched
upon one of its flowers in exactly the position in which she had
stood when visiting the first. This brought the pollen masses on
her feet exactly into the slits running through the stamen ring
to the pistil.

The bee seems the favorite guest of the milkweed. The pollen
.masses come out at once at her tread, and are carried directly to
the pistil of another flower.

Wasps visit the milkweed for its honey, but I have never seen
them withdraw the pollen masses. Flies seldom do, though the
flower is visited by flies of many species. Indeed, it is a general
favorite, standing in the midst of a winged throng till dark, for
twilight brings to it a number of small, dark-colored moths with
very long proboscides.

But not all these visitors are permitted to go in peace. A small
fly with his legs stuck to the black disks is frequently unable to
pull himself loose after he has drunk his fill. On a bunch of

DOGBANE AND MILKWEED. 687

twenty-five blossoms I have counted five flies thus held in cap-
tivity— three dead and two dying — and the same bunch had
captured a long-legged, lace-winged caperer, whose struggles to
free himself were as desperate as futile. On any large bunch of
these flowers one can see mementoes of past tribulations. Here
and there a blossom still holds a little black leg, the price of the
liberty of some insect who has gone off free, but a cripple.

A flower so highly organized as the milkweed seldom receives
and nourishes all comers. In one peculiarity of structure the
milkweeds are like the orchids, that royal family of plants, for
the orchids also send their pollen abroad massed into two clusters,
which are united by a disk. But each orchid has its own very
select and small circle of guests, and some among them endeavor
to please one butterfly or moth friend, him and him alone. They
are, in evolutionary language, " highly specialized."

On the other hand, a flower which keeps open house to all
comers is generally primitive in color and structure. Such blos-
soms are apt to be yellow or white, with flat, open corollas, and
without spurs, honey jars, or covering to protect the pollen. So
the milkweed is something of a problem to the evolutionary
botanist. Can he, for example, explain the fate of those hapless
flies which, like Haman of old, come to a feast, but get only im-
prisonment and death ? These unfortunates are but a small pro-
portion of the milkweed's fly visitors. The great majority make
off, after taking their fill of nectar, without carrying off any por-
tion of the pollen which the flower is endeavoring to send to its
neighbors. This waste of nectar is bad for the milkweed, which
would be better off with fewer fly visitors. So the flower would
profit by any device which would discourage these many flies,
without deterring those useful and desired visitors, the bees.
Will flies learn after a while to shun the milkweed's dangerous
sweets, so that they may all be left for worthier and more wel-
come guests ? And how many generations will it take this pro-
verbially foolish insect to lay the lesson to heart ?

A SUBSIDY of one hundred thousand francs has been voted by the Bel-
gian Chambers for the expedition to be led by M. Lieutenant de Gerlache,
co-operating with the Belgian Geographical Society, into the antarctic
regions. Two seasons are to be spent in the expedition. In the first season,
M. de Gerlache will attempt the exploration of the regions around Graham's
Land. Then, after wintering in an Australian port, the Belgica, as the
vessel is to be named, will sail for Victoria Land, and an effort will be made
to determine the southern magnetic pole. While he will reach as high a
latitude as he can, M. de Gerlache's chief aim will be to collect data rela-
tive to meteorology, terrestrial physics, oceanography, and the fauna and
flora of the regions explored.

688 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A CAMBODIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL.

By M. ADHfiMARD LECLJBRE.

THE Vdat, or Buddhist monastery, is in Cambodia very mnc"h
what the Christian monastery was in Europe in the middle
ages — a community of persons devoted to religion, having a chapel,
a place of entertainment for strangers, and a school for boys.
The schools directed by the mendicants are most generally pri-
mary schools, where are taught gratuitously and in a spirit of
charity to voluntary pupils reading and writing in the Cambo-
dian language and characters; prayer in the dead language of
Maghada (or Pali), which has become the sacred language of the
Buddhists of the Southern Church ; reading of the Balery Mokoth,
or Maghada texts, which are written in Cambodian characters on
palm leaves ; arithmetic ; and a little religious morals on " earth
to earth."

The superior of the monastery is the chief professor and exer-
cises a general direction over the other professors and the pupils,
without personally giving much attention to the instruction.
Under him is a monk known as the reading professor, who reads
on festival days, in the temple or in the hall of the monastery,
from the sacred book, the life of Buddha and a few fragments of
his teaching, and in the absence of the superior supervises the
observance of religious discipline. The other monks, generally
spoken of as gentlemen of the clergy, or of the assembly, or of the
church, are addressed by the pupils as the professor or my pro-
fessor.

All the bonzes can read and teach reading, but there are many
who hardly know how to write and are absolutely incapable of
reading aloud in the assembly of the faithful. Only a few of
them are so advanced as to comprehend what they read without
pronouncing the words. In short, although the instruction given
in these institutions is very elementary, and there is absolutely
no discipline, the Buddhist monks are nevertheless the veritable
and only teachers of children, their beloved and respected school-
masters, and their spiritual fathers, to whom it is " good form " to
be submissive, the respected educators of the people.

The pupils are of two kinds — those who are dressed like the
laity and those who are dressed like the bonzes. The former are
designated by terms meaning children who study, who learn, or
pupils ; the others are novices. But those of both classes who are
of the same age pursue the same courses. Those of the second
class, the novices, are incipient bonzes. They accompany the
monks who go out in the morning to beg, and, like them, hold out
the wooden contribution boxes for the alms of boiled rice. Fur-

A CAMBODIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL. 689

tliermore, having been consecrated with a little ceremony which
does not always take place in the temple, they are obliged to have
their heads shaved like the bonzes and to recite with them cer-
tain prayers which they have consequently to learn, and they
live in the monastery. While the ordinary pupils may some-
times reside in the monastery under special conditions or for
special purposes, they usually live with their parents, and resort
every morning to the V^at to take their lesson, go home to
breakfast, then return to study and perform a few household
duties and play with their comrades for a large part of the
day under the eye of their kindly and somewhat too careless
professors.

All children who present themselves at the Vdat for study are
received. It is not even required that their parents bring them
or visit them. The newcomer chooses his professor, and, if ac-
cepted, begins at once to study under his direction, installs him-
self in his cell or in the school hall, and becomes his servant. If
the professor has already too many pupils, he refuses the new
pupil and advises him to choose another teacher ; sometimes he
guides his choice, directing him to a master who has few or no
pupils, or takes him to the superior, who will select a teacher for
him. The choice of a professor is always a grave affair, because
it is held in Cambodia, as in all Buddhist and Brahmanic coun-
tries, that professor and pupil are bound by strong ties of spirit-
ual affinity, and that the pupil ought to respect his master as he
does his father and mother. The law inflicts the same penalty
upon an offense of the pupil against his master and an offense by
a son against his father and mother, and it prescribes that in cer-
tain cases the pupil may be the heir of his professor when he has
cared for him or supported him or served him when studying
under his direction; not only a family bond, but a religious
bond, too, is established between them, for the professor makes it
his business to teach his pupil the course by which he may earn
a more advantageous reincarnation and reach the Nirvana, and
becomes his spiritual guide.

Four implements are used in studying: a tablet about two
feet by one, blackened with black lacquer; a crayon stick; a
bamboo ruler as long as the board, with which to draw the lines
at which the tops of the characters must stop ; and a cloth for
wiping the board when it is full. The pupil generally uses the
corner of his scarf or girdle for the last purpose.

The teacher writes on the tablet the characters the pupil is
to learn, and names them to him ; the pupil learns to write and
name them all at the same time. His professor is near him^
answers him, draws his attention to the often inconspicuous de-
tails that differentiate the characters, and to the accents and

VOL. XLIX. — 54

690 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

marks that modify their value, and shows him, writing on the
tablet, how to draw them.

I have often witnessed these lessons, and have much admired
both the calm patience of the master and the readiness with
which the little Cambodians learn. Their memory is extraordi-
nary, and they keep what they have learned much better than
our children do. I do not mean that they know better what they
know, and that they can draw on a larger part of their knowledge
than our children. No, the little that they acquire thus so rapidly
continues with them nearly always as unemployed means, as
material not put to use, as unproductive elements of knowledge.
Their intellectual development in other respects stops early, be-
tween sixteen and eighteen years, but their memory still remains
surprising. By memory I mean the recollection of sounds, of the
eyes, of figures, of words, and of facts. But they do not know, or
only know imperfectly, and hardly learn after eighteen years, how
to use what they know, to co-ordinate it, to deduce, to draw logical
consequences, to generalize ; to give their whole mind to a thing.
But good sense, delicate discrimination, mingled with some degree
of critical judgment regarding all the affairs of current life, are not
wanting in them, even in early childhood.

The first series of characters traced by the teacher includes
twenty-four vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, and is called the
nomo, from the two characters, no and 7)io, with which it begins,
and which together form a Pali word. These two characters are
followed by four others, jpontj thea, set, and them, which with the
first two form the phrase Nomo Buddhaya siddhan ! or, " Glory
be given to Buddha ! " — a salutation which resembles that of the
Croix de Dieu, or " Cross of God,"*^ with which French pupils in
the a b c's were formerly accustomed to begin their lessons. The
pupil, having learned to read and trace the twenty- four characters
of this series, is given the thirty-five characters of the second
series, which include various consonants and semi-vowels ; then
the vowels are given — eighteen hard and eighteen mollified, al-
though the difference is very slight.

These lessons thoroughly learned, the pupil passes to the six
hundred and fifty combinations of consonants and vowels, which
are very rapidly learned, for the same rule prevails with the com-
binations of each and all the consonants ; so that, when one series
is learned, the rest are like it.

When the pupil, after two or three months at the most, has
learned all the characters and their combinations, a little sutra,
or manual, or treatise on correct morals is put into his hands,
which he reads in the presence of the professor or one of the
better learned pupils, who corrects him and drills him in the good
reading of the work, explaining the meaning if he does not under-

A CAMBODIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL, 691

stand it. The first sutra is the " Custom of Youth/' and is repeated
every day till it is read without hesitation and without mistakes,
and till the pupil knows it by heart and can recite it from
memory. Then a second sutra is given him — the advice of a
grandfather to his grandson, or the "Groups of Customs"—
counsels to be followed every day ; or the " Customs of Wom-
en"— and this book is read till it is as thoroughly learned as
the other.

Nothing can be more curious than to attend one of these read-
ings. The pupils are all seated on mats near the door or the
windows, each with a different sutra in his hand. They read
all at once, as loudly as they can, so that they can hear themselves
better, without any concern for their neighbors, and without stop-
ping to breathe. It is deafening, and we can hardly understand
how the poor little fellows manage to isolate themselves from the
uproar of noisy readers that can be heard a thousand feet from
the monastery.

Between times the pupil copies extracts from the things he
reads ; practices in writing a letter, or drawing up a brief, or in
setting forth some claim in a good, clear style. When so far ad-
vanced that he can give up his wooden slate 'and the tracing of
large characters, he is given some folding books. He polishes the
pages of pasteboard or felt with sand; then holding an iron-
pointed stylus, with his hand resting on a cushion, steadying the
stylus with the thumb of his left hand, he draws it carefully over
the page, so as to cut the fiber without tearing it. When he has
written on both sides of his long sheet — eight or ten perpendicular
lines — in this manner, he takes some ink made of soot scraped
from the bottom of the pot and moistened, rubs it with a cloth
across the leaf, and then wipes it with a clean dry cloth. The
ink remains in the hollows, and the characters come plainly
out, as black as our printed characters. The number of those,
however, who succeed in learning the more delicate art of writ-
ing on palm leaves is comparatively small. After the pupil
has learned to write, he is taught such arithmetic as he is sup-
posed to need, including the multiplication table and the four
rules. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Revue Scientifique.

Mr. Walter B. Harris, in his travels in the region of the Atlas-
Mountains, observed a peculiar native taste or talent for sculpture
among the Berbers. ''At Dads," he says, "I saw children modeling
in clay little figures of men on horseback, . . . which no Arab or Moor
either could or would do. Excellently modeled they were too. I asked
a native, and he laughingly replied, 'We all did that when we were
small.'"

692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA.

SAMUEL LUTHER DANA, t]ie second son of Lucy (Gid-
dings) and Captain Luther Daua, was born July 11, 1795, in
the town of Amherst, not far from Nashua, N. H. He was de-
scended from Richard Dana, who came to this country and set-
tled in Cambridge about 1640. His father was a native of Groton,
Mass., and in the latter part of the Revolutionary War entered
the navy of the United States as a midshipman, he being then
seventeen years of age. Soon after his marriage in 1788 he took
up his residence at Amherst and engaged in mercantile business.
This not proving successful, he took to the sea again, becoming a
shipmaster in the merchant service. He followed the sea until a
few years before his death, in 1832, and made about seventy voy-
ages to ports in Europe, Asia, and America. Captain Dana was
fond of knowledge, and took pleasure in collecting objects of
natural history, many valuable specimens being given by him to
the Marine Museum at Salem, Mass. He had no faith in the
superstitions, with which seafaring men are haunted, and rather
preferred to go out of port on Friday. On one of his most suc-
cessful voyages he left Salem on a Friday, called at two Euro-
pean ports, reaching and leaving both on Fridays, and it was on
a Friday that he finally reached home. His daughter-in-law,
Mrs. James Freeman Dana, has described him as " tall and well
formed, with a sensible, frank, cheerful countenance. He had
clear blue eyes, dark -brown hair, which became silvery white at
an early period of life, and a fair complexion, somewhat em-
browned by exposure." She also speaks of him as ever ready to
assist any who might require aid — one whom the weakest or low-
liest might appeal to with the certainty of receiving a kind re-
sponse. Lucy Giddings was married to him when she was sixteen
years of age. She was very handsome and vivacious, and man-
aged the affairs of her home and family during her husband^s
long absences at sea with rare judgment and tact.

As Captain Dana's residence was not confined by his calling to
any particular place, he changed it twice for the benefit of his boys.
In 1804 he removed to Exeter, N. H., in order to give them the
educational advantages of Phillips Academy, and five years later,
when the two oldest had been prepared to enter Harvard College,
the family removed to Cambridge. Samuel passed through col-
lege in the same class with his older brother, graduating in 1813.
From a pamphlet privately printed, containing memoirs of sev-
eral members of the Dana family, it is learned that the two
brothers were endowed with the same love for natural science,
and entered upon the study of certain branches of it with great

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA. 693

enthusiasm. They often made excursions together on foot through
the country lying within thirty miles around Boston for the pur-
pose of examining its geological structure and collecting mineral-
ogical specimens. The result of these researches was a volume
on the Mineralogy and Geology of Boston and its Vicinity, pub-
lished by the brothers about the time they completed their med-
ical studies. '

The younger brother also employed himself upon these ex-
cursions in searching for entomological specimens, and formed
quite a large collection of beautifully prepared insects. This was
afterward given to the Linnsean Society of New England, of
which the brothers, if not the founders, were among the earliest
members. Another taste which formed a strong bond of union
between them was their love of music. In college they belonged
to the same musical societies.

On graduating from college Samuel began reading law with
his uncle, Judge Samuel Dana, then residing in Charlestown,
Mass. The War of 1812 was in progress, and young Dana caught
the prevailing military spirit. He applied for a cadetship at
West Point, but received instead a commission as first lieutenant
in the First United States Artillery, with which corps he served
in New York and Virginia until the close of the war. In June,
1815, the army was disbanded and Dana resigned his commission.

A younger brother, Nathaniel G. Dana, was a cadet at West
Point during the War of 1812, graduating in 1814. He remained
in military life until his death in 1833.

Samuel did not return to the law, but took up the study of
medicine under Dr. Bancroft, of Groton. Receiving his medical
degree in 1818, he began the practice of his profession in Glouces-
ter, Mass. The next year he married Ann Theodora, daughter
of Rev. Joseph Willard, D. D., who had been President of Har-
vard College from 1781 till his death in 1804.

Dr. Dana now took up his abode in Walthara, Mass., where he
practiced medicine until 1826. Toward the close of this period
he established a laboratory for the production of sulphuric acid
and bleaching salts. This enterprise soon developed into the
Newton Chemical Company, of which he was chemist till 1834.
His friend Dr. A. A. Hayes, in the memorial pamphlet of the
Dana family, has testified to his wide knowledge of the proper-
ties of substances and his great fertility in original devices for
general and technological work. In his manufacture of acids
and other chemicals improved plans and processes were early em-
ployed, and Dr. Hayes mentions especially Dana's device for
deoxidizing manganic oxide by heating it with sulphur in order
to form from it (with pyroligneous acid) a crude manganous ace-
tate, then largely used in dyeing a fast brown.

694 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The second of Dr. Dana's published writings was issued in
1833, while he was on a visit to England. It was a clear exposi-
tion of the chemical charnges occurring in the manufacture of
sulphuric acid.

In the following year Dr. Dana became resident and consult-
ing chemist to the Merrimac Manufacturing Company at Lowell,
Mass., in which position he remained for the rest of his life — a
period of thirty-four years. The improvements which he intro-
duced into the processes carried on in the mills of this company
were many and important. Dr. Hayes gives an outline of these.
He undertook systematic researches on the action of the dung of
beeves — then used for removing the excess of mordant in print-
ing calicoes with madder — which resulted in the discovery that
crude phosphates in a bath with bran are a complete substitute
for the expensive and disgusting material before deemed indispens-
able. Arseniates, which are cheaper than phosphates, were after-
ward substituted for them on the suggestion of Mercer, and are
the world-wide reliance of print manufacturers at the present day.

Of the same systematic character was his study of the chem-
ical changes involved in the process of bleaching cotton fabrics
preparatory to printing them. This inquiry resulted in his in-
venting a method which not only received high commendation as
scientific work but was universally adopted in practice. As most
of Dr. Dana's researches were made for the exclusive benefit of
the company with which he was connected, their results were not
always published promptly, and hence the abilities that might
have won a high meed of fame remained known to only a small
circle. His discoveries with respect to bleaching cotton, however,
were published in the Bulletin de la Societe Industrielle de Mul-
liouse in 1838. The principles therein established have led to the
American method of bleaching, of which Persez, in his Traite de
V Impression des Tissus, says that " it realizes the perfection of
chemical operations."

The Merrimac Mills were at first run by water power alone,
but when the works were extended this was supplemented by the
use of steam. Dr. Dana was now called to the new field of engi-
neering, in addition to his other duties. His development of the
whole subject of the evaporative power of coal and the economical
disposition of the heat in steam and in water of condensation is a
masterly effort, embracing every detail, and was in advance of
any published results of the time.

For several years before he became a resident of Lowell, Dr.
Dana was frequently called to that city as a consulting chemist.
He was also one of the chemists consulted by the water commis-
sioners of both Boston and New York prior to the introduction of
the Cochituate and Croton water respectively.

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA. 695

"While these varied applications of science to most useful
purposes were daily occupations," says Dr. Hayes, " he was pur-
suing in his laboratory the great study of his life— madder, its
products and its application to dyeing — year after year. He
deemed the subject exhaustless, and while following the published
results of other laborers in the same field as test trials, I happen
to know that the most important discoveries, from time to time,
were made by him, and often applied, before their publication by
others.

"The laboratory, in most busy moments, was exceptionally
neat; the deft handling of the apparatus and order of experi-
ments expressed the system of thought."

Soon after removing to Lowell, Dr. Dana became interested
in the action of lead upon water, and made a report to the City
Council of that city on the danger arising from the use of lead
water pipes. His translation and systematic arrangement of the
treatise of Tanquerel on Lead Diseases was considered an impor-
tant contribution to medical knowledge. The discussion of the
lead-pipe question gave rise to several pamphlets from Dr.
Dana's pen.

Another division of chemistry in which Dr. Dana did valuable
work was its application to agriculture. As the outcome of a
comprehensive series of experiments and observations, he pub-
lished, in 1842, The Farmer's Muck Manual of Manures, which
was the sheet anchor of libraries in the rural districts of New
England for many years. The next year an Essay on Manures
submitted by him won the prize offered by the Massachusetts
Agricultural Society. He carried into his agricultural investiga-
tions the same scientific methods that he had found so important
to success in other technical inquiries, and added an overflowing
love for the pursuit in all its varied bearings. The younger Silli-
man wrote of him : " In point of time, originality, and ability. Dr.
Dana stood deservedly first among scientific writers on agricul-
ture in the United States."

The fourth edition of the Muck Manual was published in 1855.
Its preface states that "the author is not an agriculturist; he
does not assume the name even of agricultural chemist," and
mentions his position at the works of the Merrimac Company.
"While pursuing there," it continues, "during the years 1835,
1836, and 1837, researches on the action of cow dung in calico
dyeing, he pushed his inquiries, as a recreation, during his few
leisure hours, into the nature and action of manures and of soil.
Conversation on these matters with the geological surveyor, and
with the agricultural commissioner of Massachusetts, led to a
correspondence between the parties, which partly appeared in the
published reports on the geology and agriculture of Massachu-

696 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

setts. This induced some zealous and active citizens of Lowell to
ask me to deliver a course of lectures on agricultural chemistry."

From the notes of these lectures the Muck Manual was pre-
pared. "The work," Dr. Dana states further, "was favorably-
received at home and abroad, where a considerable portion was
reprinted. It has pass,ed through several editions, each being
enlarged by the addition of new matter, to keep pace with the
times. To the present edition is added an entire new chapter on
bones and superphosphates of lime and alkalies. . . .

" One word respecting the title of my book. It is my own. I
have neither begged, borrowed, nor stolen it. That last has been
done by an English author, who seems to be ashamed, not of the
act, but of the name he has filched from me, and so eases his con-
science by apologizing for his * homely title.' I shall not discredit
my child by being ashamed of his name. It was good at the
christening, and I trust will be thought respectable in manhood."

This edition of the Manual consists of nine chapters. In the
first three the author tells the origin and nature of the inorganic
ingredients of soil, and in the fourth he describes similarly the
organic constituents. Dr. Dana vigorously combats the idea that
the kind of rock underlying a district has anything to do with
the character of the soil in that district, showing that the soil at
any place is a mixture of materials, most of which have been
brought from a distance. His full explanations of the several
topics that he takes up are summarized in brief statements in a
conspicuous type, which he puts forth as the first, second, third,
etc., principles of agricultural chemistry. Among these are,
" Rocks do not affect the vegetation which covers them " ; " Soils
contain enough of all the mineral elements to grow any crop "
(but it is otherwise with organic constituents) ; " One base may
be substituted for another in an equivalent proportion."

After describing the mutual action of these two classes of sub-
stances, he takes up the subject of manure. His chapter opens
characteristically :

" The true farmer, no less a sage than the ancient orator who
gave to action the first, second, and third place in eloquence, will
answer, if it is asked him what is his first requisite. Manure.
What second ? Manure. What third ? Manure. These answers
are to be united. Action and manure are the first and last requi-
sites in agriculture ; and in the attempt to show what is the last,
and how it acts, will be offered every inducement to action."

In the seventy-five pages of this chapter he describes the action
of the manures of all domestic animals, also poudrette and certain
waste materials valuable as fertilizers — wool washings, soot, bones,
and spent lye from soapworks — and gives the chemical composi-
tion of nearly all.

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA. 697

In a chapter on artificial manures and irrigation, he deals with
the use of swamp muck or peat, and tells how to make it a first-
class fertilizer by the addition of soda ash or potash. There are a
few pages on the physical properties of soils, and then the use of
bones as a fertilizer is discussed. An appendix contains the re-
sults obtained by Dr. Andrew Nichols and others with the meth-
ods suggested by Dr. Dana.

Dr. Dana's geological knowledge was kept bright and in-
creased by constant additions from the best and latest authorities.
It aided him greatly in his agricultural researches. One of his
courteous attentions to scientific visitors was an excursion to a
traveling sand, in an outlying part of the city of Lowell, which
was slowly and steadily advancing over arable land, converting it
into a desert place. His long-sustained and minute observations
threw strong light on the formation of sedimentary rock deposits,
where currents of air rather than currents of water were the ac-
tive agent, and made this field his own.

Dr. Dana died at his residence in Lowell, March 11, 1868, in
consequence of a fall upon the ice at his own doorstep. In person
he was tall and slender, with blue eyes, dark-brown liair, and a
fair comj)lexion. The expression of his countenance was intel-
lectual and sympathetic. He was extremely witty, and, in his
hours of relaxation from study, he entered with great zest into
the pleasures of society, contributing his full share to the enjoy-
ment of others. Even in his scientific writings his humor had
some scope, and added a charm and zest to his descriptions that
made them highly enjoyable and utterly inimitable.

Dr. Dana's first wife died in 1828 and he afterward married her
sister. Miss Augusta Willard. James Jackson, the only son of
Dr. Dana who survived childhood, when arrived at a suitable age
received a commission in the United States army, and was after-
ward promoted to the rank of brigadier general. Dr. Dana also
left three daughters.

The question of the Asiatic origin or derivation of the Mexican and
Central American monuments was recently presented to the Anthropo-
logical Institute of Great Britain and Ireland by Mr. Osbert H. Howarth.
The speaker had become strongly of the opinion, after several years' obser-
vations of the works, that they were traceable to an Asiatic source, and
he suggested that no subject in the whole range of antiquity is better
worth careful study than the possible tracing of this splendid decorative
art of Central America through the various countries of Asia with a view
of determining whether or not any features of it could be positively identi-
fied with those which were known to exist in the earliest dynasties of Egypt.
The probabilities that this was the fact were much sti'onger to his mind
than any probability that the work arose from an independent source.

698

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

®xricr^s}X0Mjetxx:^»

OCCUPATIONS, PRIVILEGES, AND
DUTIES OF WOMAN.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :
QilR: In consideration of the great inter-
10 est I felt in an able article in your maga-
zine for May, entitled Political Rights and
Duties of Woman, I venture to express some
of the thoughts which stirred me upon its
perusal.

As I understood them, the writer's objec-
tions to the principle of woman suffrage
can be classed under three general heads :
objections as to the advisability or possibil-
ity of certain occupations for women ; objec-
tions on the plea of the privileges which they
already enjoy ; and objections based on the
idea of any change in the character of woman,
as wife or mother.

It is to me a matter of surprise, as it
must be to many, that the question of occu-
pation should be considered as having any
bearing whatsoever upon the subject. Al-
though irrelevant, in a consideration of it,
we must own the magnitude of the subject,
as viewed not only in regard to woman but
to all human kind. What class can take
upon itself the responsibility of dictating to
any other class what occupation it is or is
not fitted to enter upon ? It is easily seen
that such a course would inevitably clip the
wings of progress, as it is a tenet of its
movement that the fittest survive, and the
unusually gifted of one generation become
in some degree the type of the next. Of
one thing we may be sure, that no one per-
forms tasks for which he is incapable, and
those succeed who possess the faculties ne-
cessary to success. A majority of the walks
of life have already been thrown open
to women, so that the question of a new
occupation opened for them by the right of
ballot, narrows itself down to the one of
officeseeking and officeholding. We on
both sides of the question own, of course,
that not all women will desire to enter upon
this work, or to take advantage of their
political rights, with any more alacrity than
do a large share of men. There is one thing
of which I may be permitted to feel sure,
that if any woman succeeds in wresting office
from a masculine candidate, or even in time
reaches the White House, it will be by means
of abilities which no one can gainsay, for,
rather than that votes will be given her be-
cause she is a woman, the likelihood will be
that she will wrest them from prejudice and
conservatism in spite of that fact.

Every year is further proving that sex
does not extend to intellect, and those who
still hold to that belief will in the course of

time have to blind their eyes to a great
many facts in order to cherish it. The
grande passion stirs men as well as women,
and has power to inspire or weaken in the
same degree.

Women are a privileged class^ the paper
says. It is true that few of us have any
remembrance but of kindness and love from
father, husband, and brother, and that very
many of us have no great wrongs to bring
to light, no troubles for which to claim re-
dress. But it is hardly a privilege we enjoy
to be loved, but rather mere justice, for do
we not love also, and are we not in the
same degree kind ? These privileges, if we
may call them so, which we mutually enjoy,
I hardly think can be weakened by the
ballot or by anything less than a sudden
change and upheaval in the heart of the
universe itself. It is a privilege, we read,
that women enjoy in being " exempted
from the perils, wounds, and deaths incident
to war " ; that the ballot now takes the
place of the more savage conflict of war, and
in this conflict, as in the other, women are
exempt. You can't exempt women from
fighting ; five out of six fight. They fight, as
does man, the forces of Nature, time, flesh,
and the devil. Woman is in the thick of the
world's conflict, whatever and wherever her
arena, as are all human creatures, struggling
with that friction which is progress, with
those forces with which processes of evolu-
tion polish the stone for the workman, the
soul for its soaring. The potter binds her
soul to his wheel, as yours is bound, and
what she desires is the same freedom, the
same room for her wings. •

Certainly, now that the conflict has been
removed from the open field of war to the
more peaceful one of the ballot, the old and
earliest valid reason for dictating to her — her
minimum of physical strength — has been re-
moved. In no way of life, except in those
old, savage, hand-to-hand struggles, is the
race invariably to the physically strongest.
Do the athletes, the prize fighters, bestow a
privilege upon weaker men when they re-
frain from knocking them down? The
necessary requisite, after all, is not brute
strength, but health.

The question of character is a very large
one, and moved by far too mysterious and
wonderful forces to be decided by the ballot.
It may be that many men are mistaken in
their idea that the qualities of gentleness,
amiability, obedience, or a small range of
thought, make women better wives and
mothers than human beings who are capable
of justice, breadth of view, strength of judg-
ment, and wide sympathies and interests.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

699

Though wc please men and men please us,
if we keep pace, it will be rather through
our higher qualities of mind, character, and
heart, than by our lower nature, weaknesses,
and faults; but. Heaven knows, both men
and women will ever have a sufficient amount
of the latter.

One word more. An often-quoted picture
is this: The husband, the wage-earner, from
morning until night busied with cares and
labors, which leave him little time for cul-
ture or the more refining pleasures of life,
while the wife and daughters are kept in
idleness at home, entertaining themselves
with gay or frivolous pastimes, expending the
income which was earned at such cost.
Would it not be better for custom to break
its bonds a little and look about it, and allow
those idle women occupation that would as-
sist the father and develop their own dor-
mant faculties? Would the sympathy in
that home not be of a deeper and more
enduring sort ?

For women to be idle is no better than for
men, and this waste of life and time, which
so many are guilty of, at the cost of some
overworked man, is a condition of things
which cries to Heaven.

Grace A. Luce.

PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF
DISEASE.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir: In the short article on Individual
Communion Cups (Popular Science Monthly,
July, 1896, page 425) it seemed to me that
a good word has been spoken in season on a
subject where, in the opinion of many Chris-
tian people who have been blessed with a
scientific education, a pressing reform seems
necessary.

The subject is one which attracted my
attention some time ago in a seriouB way,
and a knowledge of the danger incurred by
communicants on several occasions made me
realize the urgent nece8i»ity of a change in
the custom prevailing in Protestant churches.
In one of the instances referred to the offi-
ciating clergyman was known to be suffer-
ing from cancer of the mouth in an advanced
stage ; yet this circumstance did not deter
him from partaking of the sacramental wine
before passing the cup to the other commu-
nicants present.

In the Presbyterian and allied churches
where the elements are received by the con-
gregation while seated in the pews, the plan
adopted by the Rev. Dr. Charles Herr ap-
pears to me admirable; but in the Episco-
pal Church, where the communicants advance
to the altar, the best arrangement would be
that each member should bring with him a
flattened cup of silver or aluminum, with
an appropriate design or inscription upon it,
which could be fitted into a leather cover
and carried in the pocket or attached to the
case containing the prayer book, etc.

As the Founder of Christianity declared
that his mission in this world was " not to
destroy men's lives, but to save them," and
as that is the noble aim toward which sci-
ence also is working, I can but hope that
the medical men who are interested in the
welfare of the congregations to which they
personally belong will feel it their duty to
draw the attention of pastors and people
very earnestly to this much-needed reform,
and that the pastors themselves will lose no
time in following the excellent example of
the Rev. Dr. Charles Herr, of the First Pres-
byterian Church, Jersey City.

I am, with regard, faithfully yours,

Julia F. Carvill Lkwis.
HoTBL Lang, Hkidblbkbg, July 10, 1896.

%&iXf:sx^s SaMje*

A BISHOP ON PROFESSOB HUXLEY.

IN many minds it is a settled con-
viction that the attitude of the
Christian clergy toward science must
necessarily be one of antagonism.
There has been much, of course, in
the history of the past to give coun-
tenance to such a view, and possibly
the recent publication of President
Andrew D. White's able and inter-
esting volumes on The Warfare of
Science with Theology may just now

be doing something to strengthen
and extend the impression. Presi-
dent White, however, it should be
remembered, has not failed to make
it clear that, in the general progress
of intelligence, the clergy are more
and more being led to take up a
reasonable position in regard to the
teachings of science ; so that, on the
whole, the antagonism of which he
writes may be looked upon almost
as a thing of the past.

7C0

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is a pleasure to find evidences
of this in contemporary happenings.
Some weeks ago a meeting was called
iu the town of Leeds, in England, to
consider the question of raising sub-
scriptions in aid of the Huxley Me-
morial Fund. Among those present
was the Bishop of Eipon, Dr. Boyd
Carpenter, who spoke strongly in
support of the object of the meeting.
He did not profess to share all Hux-
ley's opinions ; but that did not
seem to him any reason why he
should not bear testimony to the
nobility of Huxley's life and the
value of his services in the cause of
science and of popular enlighten-
ment. He recognized in Huxley a
great man— "great by virtue of his
devotion to science, great by virtue of
that wide appreciativeness he brought
to bear upon it, and great in the
power of expounding it to others."
He acknowledged that there were
those — though, as he said, a dimin-
ishing number— who were disposed
to ''look askance at the progress of
science." Their feeling was that sci-
ence threatened to take away their
faith — a faith that was bound up
with their dearest hopes ; but men
were now " beginning to understand
that it can not be in the nature of
things that facts and truths will con-
tradict those things that are nearest
and dearest and most essential to
their happiness." This perception,
this conviction, the bishop holds to
be faith in its highest form. " Be-
cause we are men," he says, " we
claim it to be our privilege and our
responsibility to follow truth wher-
ever it leads us. It is not our duty
to encourage a timidity which, if it
were encouraged, could only lead to
a fatal obscurantism. The progress
of knowledge can only deepen and
intensify our attachment to the things
which are true, and the things which
are true can not be out of harmony
with the things around us."

These are brave and noble words,
but the bishop was determined to
be yet more precise, so that no one
could misunderstand his meaning.
He therefore continued : " Religious
truth, in one sense, must always wait
on scientific truth ; and religious
truth must often change its form at
the bidding and on the information
given it by scientific truth. I am
not aware that in the history of sci-
entific progress religion has ever lost ;
the precious jewels have always been
restored to her in richer and nobler
settings. Because I believe that the
advancement of knowledge must be
for the benefit of mankind, and could
not in the long run be hostile to any
of the things most precious to us, I
stand here to-day to do honor to one
who labored in the cause of the ad-
vancement of knowledge, and did so
much to make it the heritage of all
people."

Finally, this representative prel-
ate bore testimony to Huxley's
"truthfulness of character," for
which he said he had " the prof ound-
est admiration." As to Huxley's an-
tagonism to Christianity, he said it
was far more called out by the " un-
fortunate attitude of some who made
themselves champions of Christian-
ity, than by anything in the es-
sential nature of the Christian reli-
gion." Huxley was not a man who
would have wished to deprive any
one of convictions that were a source
to him of moral strength and com-
fort.

So far the Bishop of Eipon ; and
if a bishop can say these things, what
is there to hinder that perfect rec-
onciliation of science and religion
which will give to both the best con-
ditions for development ? The fault
to-day — so far as fault there is — is not
wholly on the religious side. On
that side we see the timidity which
the bishop deprecates, and for him-
self repudiates ; but on the other side

EDITOR'S TABLE.

70i

we see at times a disposition to exult
in the scientific view of things as
being fatal to all hopes and aspira-
tions which do not rest on facts as
material as those of physiology or
mechanics. Man, however, has never
yet confined himself to the circle of
his material wants and satisfactions,
nor is there any evidence that he is
going to do so in the future. Indi-
viduals may choose to grovel, but the
race, we may be sure, will, through
all vicissitudes, strive after the high-
est life that is possible for it, and
will not be turned away from its
ideals simply because there are some
who say that they do not know what
an ideal is. The mission of science
is a great and glorious one — far great-
er and more glorious than some who
claim to speak for it have any con-
ception of — but it has no mission,
and no legitimate function, which
would divorce it from the higher life
of man or place it in antagonism to
his deepest instincts and intuitions.

LORD KELVIN'S ''FAILURES

Very needless, in our opinion^
was the confession of failure which
formed so prominent a feature in
the speech delivered by Lord Kelvin
(Sir William Thompson) on the oc-
casion of the jubilee celebration ten-
dered to him at the University of
Glasgow in the month of June last.
The eminent professor's words were
as follows: "I might perhaps rightly
feel pride in knowing that the Uni-
versity and city of Glasgow have con-
ferred on me the great honor of hold-
ing this jubilee. ... I do feel pro-
foundly grateful. But when I think
how infinitely little is all that I have
done I can not feel pride ; I only
see the great kindness of my scien-
tific comrades, and of all my friends,
in crediting me for so much. One
word characterizes the most strenu-
ous of the efforts for the advance-

ment of science that 1 have made
during fifty-five years; that word is
failure. I know no more of electric
and magnetic force, or of the relation
between ether, electricity, and pon-
derable matter, or of chemical affin-
ity, than I knew and tried to teach
to my students of natural philosophy
fifty years ago in my first session as
professor. Something of sadness
must come of failure, but . . . what
splendid compensations for philo-
sophical failures we have had in the
admirable discoveries by observation
and experiment on the properties of
matter, and in the exquisitely benefi-
cent applications of science to the
use of mankind with which these fifty
years have so abounded ! "

Now, with all respect and defer-
ence to one of the very greatest
scientific men of the century, we ven-
ture to affirm that Lord Kelvin here
strikes a false note ; we even go so
far as to say that he indulges in false
sentiment. If the labors of his life
had been specifically devoted to find-
ing out the essential nature of elec-
tric and magnetic force, at divining
some ultimate mystery of Nature, we
could understand his speaking of
" failure " in the way he does ; but
seeing that nothing is more certain
than that no such aim or ambition
was present to his mind, but that his
efforts were devoted to just those
" discoveries by observation and ex-
periment on the properties of mat-
ter " and those " applications of sci-
ence to the use of mankind," in
which he acknowledges the last fifty
years to have been most fruitful ; and
considering that his distinguished
success in that field of labor is recog-
nized by the whole world, and was
the cause and justification of the
gathering held in his honor, we must
say that the woi*d " failure ' in con-
nection with such a career seems to
us singularly out of place. One of
his brother savants, Pi of. A. Gray,

702

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

speaks of this " humble confession "
as "characteristic of the man," but
we do not find this view of the mat-
ter satisfactory. The question is a
simple one. In what does scientific
success or failure consist ? Either
word should have its own distinct
meaning. If Lord Kelvin is to be
counted among those who have
failed, whom shall we put down as
having succeeded ? Sir Isaac New-
ton ? But Sir Isaac Newton did not
" penetrate the mystery of the con-
stitution of matter," to use Prof.
Gray's expression, any more than
Lord Kelvin has done. He provided
a formula which expressed one kind
of action exerted by bodies on one
another, but he gave no clew to the
nature of gravitation. He worked
out a great number of intricate ques-
tions in mathematical astronomy, but
none of his solutions do more than
correlate phenomena. We may ad-
mit him to have been a greater genius
than Lord Kelvin ; but that would not
justify us in saying that the labors of
the latter bore the stamp of failure.
Each was successful in a high de-
gree in what constitutes the true
work of the scientific investigator,
the reduction of phenomena to law :
if either aimed at doing more than
this he failed, but the failure was
not a scientific one; it was the in-
evitable failure of the human mind
in striving to transcend the region
of cause and effect and the relation
of subject and object.

We have only to consider for a
moment in order to see and feel that
so long as any one phenomenon or
condition is recognized as the cause
of any other, the secret of the uni-
verse has not been penetrated — we
are as much in the presence of
" mystery " as if we had a thousand
or a thousand thousand separate
causes to deal with. Our minds are
so constituted that, while our whole
consciousness depends on the recog-

nition of difference, we have a con-
stant craving for unification; we
would fain, as it were, destroy that
by which we live. It is the baffled
desire for unification that gives us
the sense of mystery; and when
Lord Kelvin talks of "failure" he
means no more than that he has not
succeeded in merging effects into
causes and causes into effects, and
making a unity in which thought
itself would disappear.

We think ourselves that the
word is unfortunately used ; for there
are those who are on the watch to
catch every confession or expression
of weakness on the part of science.
"The foremost physicist of the age,"
these will say, "confesses that all
his labors of fifty years may be
summed up in the one word 'fail-
ure ' ; that he knows no more to-day
about the deeper questions of science
than he did fifty years ago. Is it
not plain that the Mosaic account of
creation must be correct in all ito
details, and that men in general can
not do better than submit themselves
to ecclesiastical authority ? " Per-
haps the deductions may not be ex-
pressed in this broad and simple
way; but such at least will be the
drift of the argument. And yet the
truth is that science is all the time '
doing all that it can reasonably be
expected to do — revealing the order
and relations of phenomena, detect-
ing, by means of approved appli-
ances, operations of Nature which
had eluded previous observation and
which must ever have eluded the
unaided senses of man, opening wider
and wider regions to human thought,
and conferring upon mankind an
ever-increasing mastery of the laws
and resources of the physical world.
It does all this by the aid of symbol-
ical language and working hypothe-
ses— in other words, by a kind of
algebra of its own; and the utmost
fault its critics can find with it is

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

703

that it can not in some way express
the absolute reality of things with-
out the use of symbols or formulae.
Well, science must share that re-
proach with the human intellect of
which it is the product and manifes-
tation; but we do not see why the
reproach should be brought against
it by its own most shining represent-
atives. Rather might Lord Kelvin
have said : " Science in my day has
been most prolific of blessing to

mankind; it is proceeding apace
with its appointed task of enabling
men to understand for practical
purposes the world in which they
live, and what shall be the limit to
its achievements in that direction no
one can foretell. As to the 'riddle of
the universe,' of which we sometimes
hear, that lies beyond its ken ; only
when thought ceases, to be condi-
tioned will that riddle — not be read,
but — disappear."

J^ctjetxtifii: %i\tx'^\uxt.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Prop. Giddings's Principles of Sociology * is a very opportune book. A
disposition has been manifesting itself for several years to call almost
everything sociology. Most of the popular journals now have a depart-
ment of sociology, into which they put everything going on in society that
does not clearly belong to party politics. All the " advanced " social ques-
tions are being discussed under the head of sociology. Especially are so
classed the zealous utterances of a large group of well-meaning persons
who believe something ought to be done for the less favored members of
society. In this class are great numbers of warm-hearted clergymen who
think they see in the teachings of the Master a warrant for preaching
wholesale social reforms, and this they call ''Christian sociology." Add
to this the thousand problems of charity, philanthropy, and general social
betterment of the condition of the poor, and we have already in the in-
fancy even of the word sociology a burden of unscientific and half charla-
tanic applications of it that threaten to sink it as deeply into obloquy and
contempt as a similar procedure sunk that etymologically far better word,
phrenology, half a century ago.

Of course, Mr. Herbert Spencer's great work, now happily completed,
on the Principles of Sociology, not to speak of his Descriptive Sociology,
and his other works on that subject, would have sufficed to save it from
such a fate, but as it is in America that the tendencies above pointed out
are most pronounced, so there was needed in America a standard work that
should teach, so far as known, what sociology is, and serve in some degree
to stem the tide of degeneration. Prof. Giddings's book to a considerable
extent supplies this need. Those who, in the main justly, complain that it
ignores all questions of social progress, that it treats wholly of what is, and
not at all of what ought to he, should not forget the peculiar conditions
under which it was written, as briefly described above. Whether Prof.

* The Principles of Sociology. By Franklin Henry Giddings, M. A., Professor of Sociolojjy in
Columbia University. Pp. xvi + 176, 8vo. New York and London : Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.

704 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Giddings believes in the possibility of a dynamic science of society or not,
he was fully justified, in view* of the circumstances, in confining himself
strictly, as he has done, to the statical and historical aspects of sociology.
Moreover, there was the less need of departing from this line, as there is in
this country a school of dynamic sociologists, no more sanguine than he of
immediate reforms, but working along the lines of social mechanics, to
whom that aspect of the question may properly be left.

In view of this v^y youth of the science, and especially of the confusion
of ideas as to what sociology means, it will be profitable at the outset to
examine Prof. Giddings's definitions. The first is given on pages 5 and 6,
where he says: "It is not too much to claim that we have now, at length, a
sociology, which may be defined as the systematic description and explana-
tion of society viewed as a whole. It is the general science of social
phenomena." He recognizes, however, that social phenomena are chiefly
distinguished from all other classes by the psychic element that enters into
them, and on page 25 he rather sententiously remarks that " psychology is
the science of the association of ideas. Sociology is the science of the asso-
ciation of minds." This he qualifies on the next page in the following
form: "Psychology thus is the science of the elements and of the genesis
of mental phenomena, as determined by physical and organic relations.
Sociology is the science of mental phenomena in their higher complica-
tions and reactions, and of the constructive evolution of a social medium,
through which the adaptations of life and its environment become recip-
rocal."

One of the most difficult questions has been to distinguish sociology as a
science from what have been called the " special social sciences" — i. e., the
several groups of phenomena obviously social, which, whatever sociology
may be, must stand in some intimate relation to it. On this Prof. Gid-
dings, pages 80, 31, makes the following observations :

" Clear thinking and a discriminating use of terms will create order
from the confusion and will establish sociology in its rightful place, where
it can no longer encroach on the territory of other sciences or be crowded
out of the field by them. Sociology is a general social science, but a gen-
eral science is not necessarily a group of sciences. No doubt the word will
continue to be used as a short term for the social sciences taken collectively.
. . . By methods of sound logic, and with guidance from the history of
other sciences, sociology can be definitely marked off from the special
social sciences." And on page 33 he adds: '' Therefore, while sociology in
the broadest sense of the word is the comprehensive science of society, coex-
tensive with the entire field of the special social sciences, in a narrower sense
and for purposes of university study and of general exposition it may be
defined as the science of social elements and first principles."

Finally, on page 419, he gives the following definition :

" Sociology is an interpretation of social phenomena in terms of psy-
chical, organic adjustment, natural selection, and the conservation of en-
ergy. ... It is strictly an explanatory science, fortifying induction by
deduction, and referring effects to veritable causes."

Although these various definitions are somewhat bewildering if not in-
consistent, they do nevertheless afford some idea of what sociology is, and
it is clear that they give no countenance to the practice of making it a gen-
eral receptacle for all sorts of reform programmes and theories of social re-

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 705

generation. In fact, with Prof. Giddings, as with Spencer, sociology is the
study of society as it is and as it has been ; also, perhaps, so far as a knowl-
edge of its laws render prediction possible, as it is likely to be in the future ;
but not at all a study of what it ought to be, much less an attempt to lay
down rules for its improvement.

Although Prof. Giddings has followed Spencer very closely in his gen-
eral ideas of sociology, still he thinks he has discovered one very funda-
mental principle that is entirely new, and upon which he attempts to build
the entire science. This principle he calls the " consciousness of kind " —
i. e., the fact that men recognize their like, and that this natural affinity
makes it possible for them to crystallize into social groups. Of course, he
finds the principle running down through the entire animal series, and he
commits the fallacy of regarding this as the highest proof of its sociological
importance. In fact, he has seized upon a well-known and important bio-
logical principle, and, as may be done with so many others, he has success-
fully applied it in various departments of social life. It has doubtless
helped him in dealing with the difficult question of the origin of human
association, to which he has given special attention.

The work is divided into four books, the first of which deals with the
theory, the second with the structure, the third with the evolution, and the
fourth with the causes of society. Space will only permit a brief reference
to Book III, on the Historical Evolution of Society, which is not only the
most important department of the work, but is the most ably treated. The
general subdivision was briefly outlined in an earlier paper on the Theory
of Sociology. It is into zoogenic, anthropogenic, ethnogenic, and demo-
gen ic association, to each of which a chapter is devoted. The treatment of
zoogenic association is too brief, but if properly expanded it would form an
important introduction. To the two chapters on anthropogenic and ethno-
genic association too great praise can not be bestowed. Although some-
what trite subjects after all that has been written by Tylor, Spencer,
Morgan, McLennan, and the rest, Prof. Giddings has succeeded in so or-
ganizing, methodizing, and condensing this immense mass of data as to
render it not merely interesting and instructive, but even fascinating, and
to enable the reader to acquire in small compass practically all of impor-
tance that is contained in so many large volumes.

The chapter on Demogenic Association, which in a work on sociology
should have been the pi^ce de resistance, is less ably written and should
have been expanded and improved. But the reader will see for himself
what its defects are, and will be able to a great extent to supply them.
This department of the work, however, taken as a whole, possesses excep-
tional merit.

It will be charitable to the author to refrain from discussing Book
IV, on Social Process, Law, and Cause. Much of it is an attempt to
apply Spencer's First Principles to social phenomena, in which the author
is generally unsuccessful. There are, however, some very good sug-
gestions under the head of Social Choices, which we can commend to
the reader.

Mr. Schoenhof's latest contribution to the Questions of the Day Series
deals with the economic subject that is uppermost in this country at pres-
ent—namely, how far prices can be raised by an abundance of cheap cur-

TOL. XLIX. — 55

7o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

rency.* There are few important effects that do not flow from mixed
causes, and Mr. Schoenhof makes it plain that the fixing of prices for com-
modities is no exception. Besides the condition of the currency he names
wages, profit rates, expense of distribution, taxation, science and invention*
interest, transportation, and monopolies as affecting prices. His views, as
expressed in former writings, having been criticised severely, he has been
led to examine for this volume the prices of the period anterior to the dis-
covery of the American silver mines and to carry the comparison down to
the present time. He is thereby confirmed in the opinion that the quan-
tity of money in circulation has little influence on prices, but that its
qvxiUty is more important. Further, " that price increase brought about
by the issue of depreciated currency or other inflating causes has always
acted detrimentally to the interests of the working classes.'' In the early
chapters he gives statistics of the output of gold and silver from the mines
of the world from 1492 to 1894, and the value ratios of gold to silver at
various times, showing that the latter were not affected by the relative
quantities of the two metals in existence. He maintains that silver has
become cheapened because it has been left behind as a money metal by
advancing civilization. The main part of the volume consists of a history
of prices in England, France, and Germany from the middle ages to the
present time, combined with which there is considerable history of Euro-
pean currency. Following this are four chapters in which the influence of
what the author regards as the true price-making factors is set forth in
some detail. Mr. Schoenhof is an expert in economic research, and his
positions are all supported by statistics and historical facts.

GENERAL NOTICES.

We venture to say that no writer has
made the Alps more attractive to thoughtful
persons than Prof. Tyndall has. His evident
enjoyment of the physical and mental exhila-
ration afforded by scaling the icy peaks, his
full appreciation of the beauties of the moun-
tains, of which his trained observation enabled
him to see more than the mere tourist, and
the simplicity and vividness of his style of
writing combine to give the accounts of his
climbs the fascination of tales of adventure.
His Glaciers of the Alps \ was first published
in 1860, and for many years past has been
out of print. It is divided into two parts :
the first, chiefly narrative, describes his
ascents and traverses of the mountains in
1856-59, which included two ascents of Mont
Blanc, two of Monte Rosa, one of the Fin-

* A History of Money and Prices. By J.
Schoenhof. Pp. 352, 12mo. New York and Lon-
don; G. P. Putnam's Sons. Price, $1.50.

t The Glaciers of the Alps. By John Tyndall.
Pp. 445, 13mo. London, New Yorlj, and Bombay:
Longmans, Green & Co. Price, lOs. M. ; $2.50.

steraarhom, a winter expedition to the Mer
de Glace, and many minor climbs ; the sec-
ond, chiefly scientific, contains his observa-
tions on the Alpine ice and his discussions
of the glacial theories current when they
were made. In the narrative part the human
element is delightfully conspicuous. Profs.
Huxley and Ramsay were his companions in
some expeditions, and to the reader who
knows both them and the author only as
prominent English scientists it is supremely
comic to read of Tyndall being buried in hay
by his guide for a night's rest in the loft of
a cheese-maker's cowhouse, or of Huxley
lighting and holding wax matches one after
another to furnish light for the others to get
an early breakfast by. These experiences,
too, are not without their spice of danger,
and the author makes it plain that the rocks
and ice are not to be trifled with.

The second part of the book is introduced
by three chapters explaining the nature of
light and heat, after which the phenomena
of ice exhibited in glaciers are discussed at

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

7^7

length. This discussion contains much in.
teresting matter bearing upon the history of
glacial theory, the subject at the time Tyn-
dall wrote being in heated controversy. In
order that the pages now reproduced might
contain nothing touching the views of others
which Prof. Tyndall might have wished at
the present time to alter or omit, his widow
submitted the historical parts to Lord Kelvin,
who assures her that, in his opinion, " the
statements on controversial points in this
beautiful and interesting book of your hus-
band's are all thoroughly courteous and con-
siderate of feelings, and have been felt to be
so by those whose views were contested or
criticised in them." The beginning of Tyn-
dall's study of glaciers proceeded from a dis-
course on slaty cleavage which he delivered
at the Koyal Institution, in June, 1856. This
discourse is appended to the volume. Some
sixty simple illustrations aid in making clear
the text.

Dr. H. Holhrook Curtis's work on Voice
Building and Tone Placing * relates to the
singing voice. The author has invented a
method of tone exercises for overcoming se-
rious affections of the vocal cords which has
been used satisfactorily by the most re-
nowned singers, and he furnishes here an
exposition of the physiological principles,
and the elementary laws of sound and music,
on which it is based. The chapters on anat-
omy and respiration are intended to be of
value to the physician as well as to the stu-
dent of singing; and for that reason also
the subject of the vibration of the vocal
cords has been considered in a way in
which it is not entered into in any other
work. The author's theory that the over-
tones introduced by the proper method of
placing tones in the facial resonators induce
a new plan of vibration of the vocal cords
has recently been verified by the investiga-
tions of Prof. Oertel, of Munich, and several
of his experiments have been introduced to
explain the true plan of vibration of the
cords as seen in the stroboscope. The au-
thor has also tried, with the aid of these ex-
periments, to elucidate his theory as to the
removal of "singers' nodules" by tone ex-

* Voice Building and Tone Placing. By H.
Holbrook Curtis, M. D. Pp. 215, 12mo. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $2.

ercises in a scientific way. The general
scheme of the building of the voice, in ac-
cordance with the author's theory of tone
placing, is appended for the benefit of teach-
ers and students. The book is the result of
a vast experience with singers. The ideas
have been put together in a concise and
simple way, without any attempt at elabo-
ration of style. The closing chapter, on
Voice Figures, in which the vibrations are
translated into pictures of great variety and
beauty, has more than a physiological or
acoustic interest. It is a revelation of the
grace and aesthetic charm with which Na-
ture's processes are found to be invested,
whenever we are able to recognize them.

In his discussion of the Primary Factors
of Organic Evolution* Prof. Cope attempts
to select from the mass of facts accumxilated
by biologists those which, in his opinion,
throw a clear light on the problem of or-
ganic evolution. As the actual lines of de-
scent can be finally demonstrated chiefly
from paleontological research, a large part
of his evidence is drawn from that source.
Another reason for preferring the paleon-
tological evidence is that Darwin and his
school have drawn their evidence from (Ecol-
ogy and Weismarm and writers of his type
from embryology, leaving the paleontologi-
cal field less worked. The mass of facts re-
cently brought to light in the field of pale-
ontology, especially in the United States,
remained to be presented, and the evidence
they contain to be interwoven with that de-
rived from the sources mentioned. The
view is accepted, to which many zoologists
are now inclined, that the factors of evolu-
tion which were first clearly formulated by
Lamarck are really such ; and the research
has proceeded oh the assumption that every
variation in the characteristics of organic
beings, however slight, has a direct eflBcient
cause. Any theory of evolution which omits
the explanation of the causes of variations,
Prof. Cope holds, is faulty at the basis.
Hence the theory of selection can not answer
the question asked, although it embraces an
important factor in evolution. The subject
is considered under the several headings of

• The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution.
By E. D. Cope, Ph. D. Pp. 647, 12mo. Chicago :
Open Court Publishing Company. Price, $2.

7o8

POPULAR sci:ence monthly.

The Nature of Variation, The Causes of Va-
riation (including Natural Selection), and
The Inheritance of Variation, with chapters
on The Energy of Evolution, The Function
of Consciousness, and The Opinions of Neo-
Lamarckians.

In view of the recent successful trial of
Prof. Langley's flying machine and the en-
couraging results obtained by Lilienthal in
Germany, the Aeronautical Annual*' for
1 896 is of especial interest. It consists of
a number of disconnected papers, from men
prominent in aeronautical matters, on the
various aspects of the subject. The first arti-
cle is one by Otto Lilienthal, entitled Prac-
tical Experiments for the Development of
Human Flight, in which he describes his re-
cent experiments and pictures the apparatus.
The editor has an article on Wheeling and
Flying, in which he calls attention to the
analogy between the slow development of
the two methods of locomotion. A long pa-
per by Hiram S. Maxim on Natural and
Artificial Flight, which is said to be made up
of abstracts from an unpublished work, and
to contain the results of Mr. Maxim's latest
thought, comes next. An article by Octave
Chanute, on SaiUng Flight, is prefaced by a
short biographical sketch and portrait of the
author. This is followed by a three-page
contribution on How a Bird Soars, by Prof.
W. H. Pickering, in which a mechanical ex-
planation of this apparent paradox is offered.
There are a number of other interesting pa-
pers, several of which are on Kites and Kite-
flying, and a short bibliography of aeronau-
tics. Good illustrations are quite numerous.

The last of the Technological Handbooks
to reach us is No. 10, Gas Manufacture, by
J. Hornby. It is intended as a student's
manual, and was especially arranged with ref-
erence to the examinations of the city and
guilds of London (England) Institute. The
author opens the book with a brief consid-
eration of the various kinds of coal and
their value for gas-making purposes. The
following chapters and the main portion of
the book treat of the technical processes and
the special apparatus used in manufacturing,

* The Aeronautical Annual, 1896, No. 2. Ed-
ited by James Means. Pp. 158, 800. Boston: W.
B. Clarke & Co. ; London: William Wesley &
Son. Price, $1.

purifying, and testing the gas. The final
chapters are devoted to special topics, such
as the laying of mains and surface pipes,
the construction of gas meters, gas burners,
and the composition of coal gas (London:
George Bell & Sons, 5«. ; New York : Mac-
miUan & Co., $1.50).

Concrete Geometry for beginners, by A.
R. Hornhrook, is an introduction to the study
of geometry by means of object lessons. The
author very truly says that the " universal
demand of the learning mind is for the con-
crete and the particular as stepping stones
to the abstract and the general." He has
found in the course of his teaching that a
student might be able to recite glibly dem-
onstration after demonstration of geometric
principles and still be totally at a loss when
asked to make simple applications of them,
this condition being evidently due to the in-
ability of the student to picture the physical
quantities on which he was working. The
text consists of an apparently carefully se-
lected and graded series of simple problems
for fixing in the beginner's mind the elemen-
tary facts of geometry from lines and angles
to squares and cubes. After each two or
three chapters there is a " cumulative re-
view " for testing the student's grasp of the
new principles and combinations (American
Book Company, 75 cents).

The Home Study Revieto, published by
the Home Study Association at Ann Arbor,
Mich. (15 cents; $1.25 per annum), is de-
signed to offer to those who can not attend
a school or college an opportunity of pursu-
ing studies at home under direction. The
first course is to include the following sub-
jects: History, German, biology, rhetoric,
English literature, and a commercial course.
While it is to be hoped that the publication
may prove useful, the scheme does not seem
promising.

The Transactions of the American Mi-
croscopical Society for 1895, Volume XVII,
contains the usual number of valuable pa-
pers, which are, however, most of them so
technical as to have little interest except for
the biologist or microscopist. Among the
few papers of general interest is one by
Simon Henry Gage, the president, on The
Processes of Life revealed by the Micro-
scope : A Plea for Physiological Histology,

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

709

in which he strongly urges that in studying
an organism or its tissues the investigator
to gain certain knowledge must know the
age, health, state of nervous, muscular, and
digestive activity ; in fact, all that it is pos-
sible to find out about the processes of life
that are going on and have gone on when the
study is made.

The Thirteenth Annual Report of the New
York State Agricultural Experiment Station
contains, as do all these publications, the
results of much valuable experimental work.
Among the papers of especial interest in the
present volume may be mentioned the fol-
lowing : The Individuality of the Cow as in-
fluencing Offspring ; The Relation of Sex in
Thoroughbred Calves; Proximate Constitu-
ents of the Dry Matter of Food ; The Relation
of Fat in Food to Fat in Milk, and Twin Calves ;
Alfalfa Forage for Milch Cows ; and A De-
tailed Comparison of the Different Breeds of
Dairy Cows with reference to the Production
of Cream and Butter.

The second number in the Section of
History and Economics of the Leland Stan-
ford Junior publications consists of a mono-
graph on the Official Relations between the
United States and the Sioux Indians, by Lucy
E. Tenor. The author begins her history
with the formation of the republic, and traces
in detail the various forms of legislation and
" agencies " by which we have attempted to
regulate and protect the Indians. The work
seems carefully done, and, as the editor says,
each special investigation of this sort is im-
portant as an advance toward that " general
ideal history of the United States " which
we still lacl^.

School Interests and Duties, developed
from Page's Mutual Duties of Parents and
Teachers, from various Public Reports and
Documents, and from the Bulletins of the
National Bureau of Education, by Robert M.
King (American Book Company, $1), is con-
nected with Mr. Page's address by the ad-
dress having been a powerful agent in the
advancement of the schools to their present
position, and having partly laid the founda-
tions of that advance. In the meantime new
factors have come into prominence in school
affairs — chiefly the institution of school
boards, directors, trustees, etc., to take the
place of citizens at large in the direct man-

agement of the schools ; and further, the vast
extension of the subjects to be dealt with.
This book has been prepared with a view to
bringing down to date the doctrine of co-
operation in school interests, " with all that
it implies of enlightened, harmonious, and
effective work in the interests of popular
education," and the thoughts of numerous
recent writers are quoted in connection with
the discussion. It deals with such subjects
as the duties of parents, of teachers, and of
school officers, school architecture, hygiene,
libraries, morals, etiquette, celebrations and
observances, the use of the dictionary, the
teachers' institute, reading circles, and the
teacher's relation to pubhc opinion. In con-
clusion, a series of outlines of reading- circle
work is given.

The advantages of vertical penmanship
have been so widely recognized that every
publisher of writing-books now has to have
a vertical series. A vertical style of the
well-known Spencerian penmanship has been
prepared, and in the Shorter Course this
style is presented in seven small square
books. Directions with cuts showing posi-
tions are given on the inside pages of the
cover. (American Book Company, 6 cents
each.)

The distinguishing features of a new ele-
mentary text-book on Algebra, by Lyman
Hall, are stated in the preface as, first, pre-
serving the familiar methods of arithmetic
as far as possible in the fii*st chapters, ia
order to convince the student that algebra is
merely an extension of the mathematical
knowledge he already possesses ; second, re-
view examples and questions throughout the
book which will help him to master follow-
ing chapters and prepare him to pass from
this to a higher treatise without a formal re-
view. (American Book Company, $1.)

In his recent text-book on American Lii-
erature, Prof. Brander 3fatthews makes fif-
teen authors of the United States stand out
prominently by giving each a chapter and
providing them a background of colonial
and other writers whose works are of lesa
general interest Portraits of most of the
authors mentioned are given, together with
pictures of the birthplace, and sometimes of
the later residence, of the more prominent,
and facsimiles of their manuscript Each

710

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chapter is followed by references for reading
and a few suggestive questions, while at the
end of the book is a chronology of American
literature down to 1896. (American Book
Company, $1.)

Under the title The Glory of the Garden,
a collection of odes and sonnets has been
printed by William V. Byars, with an ap-
pended essay on The Horatian Ode and the
Tuscan Sonnet. The recent discovery — or
rather recovery — which Mr. Byars claims to
have made, of the principle of melody gov-
erning the verse of the great classical poets
from Homer to Horace and Virgil was due
to a partial recovery of the accent of the
classical languages, effected through a com-
parison of the sounds of modem Greek and
Italian with ancient Greek and Latin. A
modern Greek, a graduate of the High
School at Athens, was employed to read
Homer aloud, for comparison with the Tus-
can of Dante read aloud by an educated
Italian. The verse of Beranger read aloud
by a Frenchman was also compared with the
lyrics of Horace, but it was to the compari-
son of the melody of Dante with the rhythm
©f Homer, when read by its accents, that the
recovery of classical accent is chiefly due.
When classical verse was read with an
accent rather lower than that of modern
French, and with the downward value of the

grave accent equal to the upward value of
the acute, the surprising discovery was made
that in both Horace and Homer the melody
of the verse depended on the systematic use
of rhyme — not of regular end rhyme as in
modem verse, but of line and staff rhyme,
regulated by a method not unlike that used
by the old Norse poets. The discovery of
Bentley, that the verse of Virgil and Horace
is read by " synaphea," without regard to its
verse endings, is thus shown to be of the
highest importance.

Vol. I, No. 1, of the A. L C. P. Notes,
which interpreted means American Associa-
tion for Improving the Condition of the
Poor, has recently reached us. Its space is
all given to an account of the utilization of
vacant city lots for the purpose of giving
the unemployed an opportunity for eaming
their own living. During recent years sev-
eral attempts of a similar nature have been
made, some of them being attended with
considerable success, notably the Detroit
vacant city lot farms, which were inaugu-
rated by Mayor Pingree. The attempt in
New York is fully described in the above
pamphlet, and, while it has not thus far
been a remarkable success, still its officers
are very enthusiastic and hopeful for the
future. Subscriptions are requested. (105
East Twenty-second Street, New York city.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Cornell
Station : Bulletin 116. Dwarf Apples ; Bulletin
117. Fruit Brevities.— Illinois Station : Insects
Injurious to the Seed and Root of Indian Com. —
Michigan State College Station : Report of Botan-
ical Department of .—New York Station : Silage
and Silos ; Provi^ions of the New Fertilizer Law
of New York.— North Dakota Weather and Crop
Service : Third Annual Report,— Ohio State Uni-
versity : The College of Agriculture and Domestic
Science, 1896-'97.— United States Department :
Bird Day in the Schools ; The Mexican Cotton-
Boll Weevil ; The Principal Insi'ct Enemies of
the Grape ; The Shade-tree Insect Problem in the
Eastern United States.

Aldine, J. S. A Theory of the Structure of
Matter. Passaic, N. J. : (Author), 486 River Drive.
Pp. 47. 50 cents.

American Association for the Advancement of
Science. Proceedings of Springfielfl Meeting, Au-
gust and September, 1895. Pp. 413.

Baginsky, Dr. A., Fruhwald, Dr. F., and Monti,
Dr. A. Archiv fftr Kinderheilkunde (Archives of
Paediatrics), Vol. XX, Nos. 8 and 4. Stuttgart :
Ferdinand Enke. Pp. 160.

Bardeen, C. W. A Manual of Common School
Law. Syracuse : C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 290. $1.

Berger, F. Berger's French Method. New
York : F. Berger. London : D. Scott. Pp. 158.
75 cents.

Bulletins and Transactions. Colgate Univer-
sity : Circular of Information, 1895-"96.— Illinois
State Laboratory of Natural History, Vol. IV.—
Johns Hopkins University Circular : Notes from
the Biological Laboratory.— New York Academy
of Sciences : Annals of June, 1896.— New York
State University : Examination Bulletin, No. 9,
February, 1896, and Extension Bulletin, No. 13,
May, 1896.— Pennsylvania Museum and School of
Industrial Art : The Man and the Machine. An
address by S. N. D. North.- Philadelphia Geo-
graphical Club : Bulletin on Venezuela's Terri-
torial Claims, by J. B. Austin.- Rochester Acad-
emy of Sciences : Proceedings of, Vol. III.— Royal
Institution of Great Britain : Proceedings of ; The
Past, Present, and Future Water Supply of Lon-
don, by E. Frank land ; Immunization against Ser-
pents' Venom, etc., by P*rof. Thomas R. Fraser ;
The Circulation of Organic Matter, by Prof. C. V.
Poore. — Smithsonian Institution : Catalogue of a
Collection of Birds made by Dr. W. L. Abbott,
and an Index of Smithsonian Publications.— Ten-
nessee State Board of Health : Bulletin, Vol. XI,
No. 11.— United States Geological Survey : Table
of Mineral Products (Quantities and Values) of the
United States during the Last Decade ; Bulletin
No. 123. A Dictionary of Geographic Positions ;
No. 124. Revision of the American Fossil Cock-
roaches, with Description of New Forms ; No.
125. The Constitution of the Silicates ; No. 126.
A Mineralogical Lexicon of Franklin, Hampshire,
and Hampden Counties, Massachusetts ; No. 128.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

711

The Bear River Formation and its CharacteriPtic
Fauna ; No. 129. Earthquakes in California in
1894 ; No. 131. Report of Progress of the Division
of Hydrography for the Calendar Years 189.^'94 ;
No. 13i5. The Disseminated Lead Ores of South-
eastern Missouri ; No. 133. Contributions to the
Cretaceous Paleontology of the Pacific Coast;
The Fauna of the Knoxville Beds ; No. 134. The
Cambrian Rocks of Pennsylvania.— United States
National Museum : Proceedings of.— Gill, Theo-
dore : Note on Plectroplites and Hypoplectrodes,
Genera of Serranoid Fishes.— Meams, E. A. : Pre-
liminary Description of a New Subgenus and Six
New Species and Subspecies of Hares from the
Mexican Border of the United States.- Rathbun,
Mary J. : Description of Two New Species of
Fresh-water Crabs from Costa Rica and the Genus
Callinectes.- Ridgway, R. : Characters of a New
American Family of Passerine Birds, and On Birds
collected by W. L; Abbott, etc.

Conger, C. B. Air-Brake Catechism. New
York : (256 Broadway) Locomotive Engineering.
Pp. 95. 25 cents.

Crehore, Dr. Albert C. Experimental Deter-
mination of the Motion of Projectiles inside the
Bore of a Gun with the Polarizing Photo-chrono-
graph. Fort Monroe, Va. : Artillery School Press.
Pp.84.

Eckhoff, William J. Herbart's A B C of Sense-
Perception, (International Education Series.)
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 288. Sl.50.

Famham, Amos W. The Oswego Method of
Teaching Geography. Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen.
Pp. 121. 50 cents.

Frye, Alexander Everett, Home and School
Atlas. New York and London : Ginij & Co.
Pp. 48.

Gattennann, Ludwig. The Practical Methods
of Organic Chemistry. Translated by William B.
Shorber. New York and London : Macmillan &
Co. Pp.329. $1.60.

Hogan, Louise E. How to Feed Children.
Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Co. Pp. 236.

Jackmann. Wilbur S. Nature Study and Re-
lated Subjects for the Common Schools. Chi-
cago : The Author. Pp. (text) 167 ; charts. 23.

Lubbock, Sir John. The Scenery of Switzer-
land and the Causes to which it is Due. New
York and London : MacmDlan & Co. Pp. 371.
$1.50.

Mathews, F. Schuyler, Familiar -Trees and
their Leaves. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp.320. $1.75.

McMurry, Charles A. Special Method in Natu-
ral Science for the First Four Grades of the Com-
mon School. Bloominston, 111. : Public School
Publishing Company. Pp. 210. 50 cents,

McPherson, Logan G. The Monetary and
Banking Problem, New York : D, Appleton &
Co. Pp.135. $1.

Meyers, William J, An Inductive Mannal of
the Straight Line and the Circle, Fort Collins,
Col,: William J. Meyers. Pp.113. 50 cents.

Monrgues, L. La Epidemia de Fiebra Tyf oidea
en los Cerros Alegre i Concepci6n (The Epidemic
of Typhoid Fever in Cerros Alegre and Concep-
cion). Santiago de Chile : Cervantes.

Mus^e Social (Social Museum), Bulletins,
Series A, Circulars 1 to 6. Series B, Circular 1,
Paris, France : Robert Pinot, Director General.

Reprints. Brinton, D, G. : Left-handed ness in
North American Aboriginal Art (American An-
thropologist, May, 1896).— Dolley, C. S. : The
Planktonokrit ; a Centrifugal Apparatus for the
Volumetric Estimation of the Food Supply of Oys-
ters and other Aquatic Animals (Proceedings of
the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
May, 1896).— English, W. T. : Cardiac Instability
due to Acid Auto-intoxication (Journal of the
American Medical Association, June 8, 1895), and
Should the Cardiopath Marry ? (Pittsburgh Med-
ical Review, April, 1895).— Llano, A. : Sforality
the Last of Dogmas (Philosophical Review, vol.
v. No. 4).— Putnam, F. W., and Willoughby,

C. C. : Symbolism in Ancient American Art (Pro-
ceedings of American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, vol. xliv, 1896).— Smith,
H. I. : Notes on the Data of Michigan Archae-
ology (American Antiquarian, May, 1896).— Ward,
Lester F. : Ethical Aspects of Social Science (In-
ternational Journal of Ethics, July, 1896).

Richardson, B. W. Biological Experimenta-
tion. New York : Macmillan & Co. London :
George Bell & Sons. Pp.170. $1.

Russell, Ernest E. The Reason Why. New
York : E. E. Russell (13 Astor Place), Pp, 365.

Russell, E, H. Child Observations. Boston:

D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 267. $1.50.

United States Commissioner of Labor. Tenth
Annual Report, Vol. I, 1894 ; Strikes and Lock-
outs. Pp. 1873.

United States Geological Survey, J. W. Powell,
Director. Fifteenth Annual Report, 1893-'94.
Pp. 755.— Sixteenth Annual Report, Charles D.
Walcott, Director, 1894-'95. Parts n, HI, and IV.
Pp. 598, 645, and 785.

^traflnxjentB xrE ^titnct.

X Rays in Surgery. — Considerable ad-
vance bas been made during the pa«t few
months in the application of the X ray to
surgical diagnosis, and it seems fairly certain
now that the trunk with its contents, as
well as the extremities, may be examined by
the use of this agent. A recent article in
the American Journal of the Medical Sci-
ences, by W. W. Keen, includes some re-
markably clear reproductions of X-ray pic-
tures, one of which shows very beautifully
all the bones of the trunk. Among much
interesting matter the ai-ticle contains a sug-

gestion which deserves at least a trial. The
difficulty with the present pictures is that
an exposure which is long enough to show
the bones blots out all detail in the soft
parts. Dr. Keen suggests the use of a
number of superposed paper films. The X
rays will act almost equally on them all, and
by withdrawing one at a time at short inter-
vals a series of pictures of the object will be
obtained which should show all the required
detail. An important improvement in the
Runtgen apparatus is said to have been
made by the General Electrical Ck>mpan7 of

712

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Berlin, by means of which the interior of the
head and chest may be directly examined by
means of the fluorescent screen, even the
action of the heart and lungs being discern-
ible. A demonstration was recently given
by Dr. Oscar Levy at the Lancet offices, and
was reported as very successful. The vacu-
um tube employed contained two concave
electrodes, midway between which was situ-
ated a platinum disk in a plane of 45°. One
or other of the electrodes, according to which
gives the best results, is connected up, by
means of a wire, to this disk, the wires of
the coil being attached to the concave elec-
trodes, so that the anode is duplicated. The
screen employed measured about ten by
eighteen inches, and consisted of small crys-
tals of platinocyanide of barium.

The Present Business Depression. — An

article in the July Engineering Magazine, by
Edward Atkinson, attributes the present
business depression to the Bland and Sher-
man acts, " under which the demand debt of
the United States was increased by an issue
of notes or promises to pay by nearly five
hundred million dollars for the purchase of
silver bullion, which, when coined into dollars
at 16 to 1, is bad money. We may easily
trace the cause of our present bad condi-
tions to the enforced use of bad money."
He presents the conditions under the free
coinage of silver in a somewhat new light,
and makes it obvious that, instead of giving
the poor man an undue advantage, it will in-
crease the opportunities of the rich, and
instead of benefiting the United States it
will place her at a disadvantage and make her
mints common dumping ground for all the
depreciated silver of the world. He says :
" The advocates of the free coinage of silver
dollars of full legal tender propose to enable
the bankers of Europe to gather in the sil-
ver bullion of the world, of which the mar-
ket value is now sixty-eight cents per ounce,
to send it to our mints to be coined without
charge, and then to force it upon our farm-
ers, wage-earners, and other persons at
$1.29^ an ounce, thus cheating them out of
about half their dues for the benefit of two
privileged classes — the silver miners of the
West and the foreign bankers and their
agents of the East." This tendency on the
part of politicians to attempt by legislation

to counter the result of natural forces is
always eventually quite futile, and, as in the
present case, is usually fruitful of much
suffering and anxiety in the business world.
The secondary place which silver now occu-
pies as a money metal is entirely a natural
growth due to causes over which statesmen
and governments have no control, and the
United States, even if she succeeds in legal-
izing an unlimited coinage of fifty-cent sil-
ver dollars, will simply, by purely artificial
means, be substituting an unnatural, un-
wieldy, and limited silver unit of value for
the compact, convenient, and widely used
gold unit. Not only would the resulting
currency be much less satisfactory than our
present one, but the change from one to
the other would almost surely involve serious
business troubles.

Tlie Expert Witness. — Considerable at-
tention is being given by the more thought-
ful newspapers and some scientific journals
to the disreputable episodes which almost in-
variably occur when experts are called on for
testimony before the courts. The present
custom, which permits each side to call in its
own expert and pay him for his testimony, is
calculated to produce anything but expert
testimony, unless the term expert applies to
manipulation of facts to suit his client's case.
It would be about as conducive to justice if
each side were allowed to retain and pay a
judge and jury of its own. In fact, the
practice is so obviously calculated to defeat
instead of aid the ends of justice that it is
difficult to see how it ever originated. The
mere fact that a witness is employed and
paid by the defendant or plaintiff uncon-
sciously enrolls him on that side, and there
are few experts whose testimony is not
modified by such an arrangement. This cus-
tom has led so often to a flat contradiction
regarding facts between opposing authori-
ties that the general public has lost confi-
dence in such testimony. This is, of course,
very unfortunate, as it is beyond question
that a man who has devoted his life to
a study, for instance, of poisons and their
effects on the body, is in a better position to
judge of the probabilities in a given case
than the ordinary layman or physician.
Under a system where the expert is called
by the court no question of bias could be

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

713

raised, and science would not be disgraced
from time to time by those who are willing
to trade on their scientific reputation.

Tlie Competiton Fetieh in Edncation. —

"The d^'ing out of the distinguished school
of naturalists which this country once pro-
duced, and which culminated in Darwin, is a
fact which scarcely admits of dispute," says
W. T. Thiselton-Dyer in a recent article in
Nature. " English naturalists of the genera-
tion which is now passing away have belonged
to two groups. Some have been bom to
wealth, some to poverty. Class prejudice was
against the one, means of livelihood against
the other. The richer disciples of our art
seem now to have gone irretrievably and to
have no successors. The poorer have changed
their tone. They tend to treat science as a
career like the civil service." Mr. Thiselton-
Dyer quotes a friend who believes the cause
of this degeneration in the ideals of scien-
tific workers to be due to the system of con-
stant competitive trials, which it seems, in
England as well as in the United States, per-
vades everything in the schools from Greek
to athletics, and which completely overshad-
ows the real reason and point for going to
school, "This remarkable system begins,
the masters of this and other schools told
me, at about eight years old. There is no
time to learn, to think, or observe. The
boys must beat some other school in tennis
or football, or must beat some one else in the
history of the Punic wars. . . . The great
object of education appears to be to have
every boy competing for something abso-
lutely useless to him in later life." This
latter, of course, is something of an over-
statement; but the indiscriminate encour-
agement of rivalry and subsidizing of the
winner, without reference to the value of
the knowledge which the success implies,
has been steadily at work in our universities
for some years, and has been one of the
principal factors in bringing the college
graduate into disrepute as an unpractical
and many times really ignorant man. He
quite loses his bearings when launched forth
on the actual sea of life, judges questions
from the limited standpoint of the local
horizon which his alma mater has provided
for him, and, worst of all, being a college
graduate, is rather inclined to be supercilious

at any suggestion that perhaps there are a
few small scraps of knowledge which he is
not yet master of. There have, however,
quite recently been signs of reaction against
the competitive system — at any rate, in ath-
letics— and it ia to be earnestly hoped that
this reaction will extend itself to the whole
curriculum. We may then, perhaps, expect
to see an educational system based on the
requirements of everyday life, and the gi-adu-
ates of our highest educational institutions
taking their full share in the business and
politics of the country.

A Natural BotaDieal Garden.— A some-
what curiously distributed flora is described
as existing in the island of Sakhalin, at the
northernmost end of the Japanese group.
Its geological structure resembles that of
Siberia much more nearly than that of Japan.
Volcanoes, which are such a characteristic
feature of Japan, are entirely wanting here,
and the three parallel chains of mountains
which form the backbone of the island are
composed of Jurassic slate, Cretaceous strata,
and Tertiary limestone, being similar in for-
mation to those of Siberia. The mountains
reach an average elevation of six thousand
to seven thousand feet, and this, combined
with the abnormal climatic conditions of
the island, give rise to a very varied vege-
table life. Although it lies between the lati-
tudes of Trieste and Hamburg, its conditions
of life are almost polar. Bathed by two
cold marine currents, it is exposed without
protection in winter to the cold northwest
winds of the east Siberian anticyclone, and
an abnormally cold winter as well as sum-
mer results. At sea level snow lies in open
sunny spots even in May. Snowfalls occur
to the end of May. Owing to the cold cur-
rents which surround the island, distance
from the coast plays an important part in
determining vegetable growth, and gives rise
to anomalies perhaps observable in no other
portion of the earth's surface. In Siberia
and in central Europe it has many times
been noticed that during the winter cold the
mountain summits are much warmer than
the plains. The same is true in Sakhalin.
The cold and heavy winter's air collects in
the lower regions, while above the mountain
heights enjoy the warmer sea breeze. But
even in summer, owing to the cold ocean

714

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

currents, the mountains display abnormal
temperature conditions ; and while an arctic
vegetation prevails on the seashore, forests
with subtropical Japanese species occur at a
certain elevation, and only on the highest
summits does the forest again give place to
arctic plants. The principal trees of the
forest are pines, firs, and Siberian larches.
The growth is very rapid and the struggle
for existence severe, so that many trees are
killed; the dead trees still standing and
others fallen are so numerous as to make
these forests almost impassable. On the
west side of the island maples, birches, and
large numbers of mountain ashes abound.
At a certain height, especially in the more
interior portions of the island, quite a sud-
den change to subtropical trees occurs.
High bushes of Japanese Flez crenata,
stems of bamboo as high as a man, bush-
like v<iceinium, fine hydrangeas, and the
colossal leaves of Araliacea and Petasite^
make their appearance, and form an almost
Indian jungle beneath the conifers of the
far north. On the highest stmimits the
forest disappears and is replaced by dwarf
firs, Cembra pumila, and evergreen stretches
of Empetrum nigrum. Where the seashore
is flat and exposed to the wind trees are en-
tirely wanting, and an approximation to the
arctic tundras prevails. The true tundra
region, however, is not on the seashore, but
in the great longitudinal valleys, where a
regular polar tundra, with frozen soil, peat
bogs, and arctic vegetation, occurs. The
banks of the streams are, however, clothed
with luxuriant vegetation. At a distance of
a quarter to a half mile from the river
bank the peat bog gives place to a charming
meadow of ealamagrostis grasses, with park-
like groups of birches, poplars, willows, etc.,
and an exuberant bosh vegetaticm.

Do the Poor hate the We h ?— An mter-
esting discussion is going on in the Contem-
porary Review between Mr. Hobson and Mr.
W. H. Mallock, as to whether the poor hate
the rich. Mr. Hobson aflirms it and Mr.
Mallock denies it. An impression that they
do prevails largely among certain classes of
philanthropists and socialists. The London
Spectator, reviewing the discussion, thinks
that, however it may be in the continental
countries of Europe, this is not the case in

England and among Americans of English
descent. The immense majority of these
accept differences in pecuniary conditions a?
part of the order of things, and rather ap-
prove them as affording incentives for am-
bition and grounds for hope. They do not
hate the rich, because they would all like to
be rich, and hope by some means some day
to become so. They rather regard them as
soTirces of benefit to the community, as per-
sons who will keep up the standard of living,
and who increase the general mass of op-
portxmities. They will welcome the settling
of a wealthy man among them, because he
will spend money. Those may hate the rich
who have been disappointed, or who hav:
lost the hope of joining their number, but
few others, " Have the multitude, whether
in England or the United States, ever tried
to limit wealth, or divide wealth, or confis-
cate wealth at death, or in any way what-
ever endeavored to cause wealth to cease to
be? They have examples of such legisla-
tion before them all over the continent, but
they not only do not carry similar measures,
but they never ask for them, and would
treat any candidate who relied upon them in
his progranmae as either a mere faddist or an
advocate of novel and disagreeable social
heresies. . . . The truth is that both here
and in America discontent, when it <
and of course there is plenty of it — stakes]
the self-pitying direction, and not the direc-|
tion of envy. We remember, about fiv«
years ago, being much struck with the for
taken by the discontent of a raging orator
one of the parks. He was boiling over witl
fury against the rich, and at last, rising
the height of his argument, he burst out int
an apostrophe : ' Tou rich fellers, you hat
funds, you have bonds, you have railwj
shares : teU me, you wretches, why
should not have them too ? ' That, not
stripping of the rich, was the Englis
rough's genuine and most hearty aspiration."

The Ways of Sparrows.— The habits

the London sparrow have been studied
much advantage by a writer in the Lone
Spectator, who finds more method in
ways of the bird than we are usually apt
imagine. The site of the sparrows' nests
chosen with much care, and always with
view to avoiding the dangers from

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

715

HoUowB in the perpendicular wall faces of
the building are preferred, but any prox-
imity to the roof, where cats are liable to
abound, is shunned. The nooks furnished
in old houses advertised for sale or demoli-
tion, by the frames which are set upon them
for bill posting, are much resorted to by
the birds. The spaces between the frames
and the walls are commodious nesting places.
The under concavities of corrugated irtm
roofing furnish hundreds of ready-made tun-
nels tmder the cross beams, and when one
of these roofs is built in a neighborhood,
the sparrows will desert their old, now less
attractive quarters "to a bird." "No cat
can climb it or stretch a claw far enough up
to hook out the nest'' The London spar-
row is intensely local " He moves as sel-
dom as he can from his own particular block
of bouses or square or terrace ; and in the
suburbs he keeps not only to his own house,
bat often to the back or front of the house
<mly, not caring to circumnavigate his own
saborban garden. In spring, when pullmg
crocus flowers to pieces becomes a mania
with sparrows for a few days, it has been
noticed that in many instances all the spar-
rows in the front of the house will take a fit
of crocus-spoiling, while the flowers behind
the house are let alone. Or the reverse may
be the case, all those behind the house be-
ing spoiled, while the sparrows haunting the
front of the house and front garden are oc-
cupied in some other sphere of activity. If
an old nesting place is destroyed, the local
birds at once seek another as close as pos-
sible to it,"

CftHpk«r« — Owing to the widespread use
of camphor in the arts and in medicine, its
increasing scarcity and eipensiveness have
raised the problem of artificial cultivation.
Tba« are a number of trees;, many of them
widely separated in genus, order, or species,
from which camphor is obtained. The tree,
however, which produces most of the campbcH*
of commerce is the Cinncanomum eampkora^
a member of the laurel family, belonging to
the same genus as the cinnamon tree. This
tree attains eoormous size. The bulk of the
camphor imported into Europe comes from
Japan and Formosa, and a small amount
from China, although the trees are very
abundant in the latter country, and the wood

is much used. Every part of the tree is said to
be useful, even the fruit being employed in tiie
preparation of tallow. The statemsBt thet
the large use of smokeless powder is respon-
sible for the high price of camphor is denied
by Sir Frederick Abel, who says that, while
camphor was much used in the manufacture
of smokeless powder in the early days, it was
soon shown to have serious practical disad>
vantages, and its use has been to a laige
extent discontinued. It is, however, need
for the conversion of collodion cotton into
celluloid, and, in combination with varioos
ill-smelling compounds, is the basis of most
moth powders. In a recently published ac-
count of the commercial and scic
value of this tree Dr. E. Grassmann
the importance of increasing the plantations
to the greatest possible extent, and the plac-
ing of some restriction on the wanton de-
struction of the trees.

EreMieB ef the Sterafe Batteir.— A

recent article in the Journal of the Franklin
Institute, by Maurice Bamett, on the Evolu-
tion of the Storage Battery, gives many in-
teresting historical data. It seons that in
1801 Gautotjt, while decompoang salt water
electrolytically, noticed that on breaking the
circuit he could obtain a current of short
duraticm from the electrodes. A few years
later Ritter constructed a pile ocMisisting of
disks of copper, separated by {MU
with saline solution ; after pasang a
current through this pile he was able to ob-
tain a current of considerable intensity from
the pile itself. This was practically the first
storage battery. In 18fi9 Gaston Plants be-
gan a series of researches which led him
finally to the elaboration of a practical
age battery. He electrolyred diluted
phuric add with rods of the n
used successively as electrodes. Lead gave
the moet promising results, not only on ac-
count of its capacity, bat also because of the
intensity of the discharge. Plants came to
the conclusion, in 1859, that lead was the
only asefal metal, and then proceeded to
constmct his spiral accumulator, which 000-
sisted of two plates pbeed eoneentrie with
each other in dilute enlplmrie ndd, one
plate being lead, the surfaoe of which was
peroxidized, the other, metaUic lead. He
got tnasi this deotric couple an E. M. F. of

7i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

about two volts. Having constructed his
accumulator, Plants experimented with vari-
ous methods of "forming" the plates that
they might yield effects extending over a
considerable interval of time. His method
was to pass a current through the accumu-
lator first in one direction, then in the other,
and repeat this reversal many times with
intervals of rest in between. The only cur-
rent available for this work was that ob-
tainable from a primary battery ; this made
the process a long and expensive one, but by
its means currents of considerable density,
lasting for a length of time depending on
the extent to which the plates had been
affected by the electrolytic process, were ob-
tained. Between 1859 (when Plante began
his experiments) and 1880, when Faure in-
vented the pasted battery, great changes had
taken place in the condition of the elec-
trical arts and manufactures. The dynamo
had been perfected, and offered means for
the cheap production of currents of great
density and high E. M. F., and hence gave a
new stimulus to the production of a practi-
cal storage battery. Faure made pastes of
red lead and litharge, which he applied to
the surfaces of the positive and negative
plates. When these were subjected to the
forming process, the red lead was oxidized
to peroxide and the litharge reduced to
spongy lead, with a material saving in time
and cost over the Plante process. Almost
immediately accumulators were put to a
variety of industrial uses, among which may
be mentioned their application to carry the
day load in lighting stations and to pre-
vent the necessity for running dynamos at
night in private residences. Even for trac-
tion purposes, where accumulators are sub-
jected to the severest demands, their use
was proposed as far back as 1880, and in
1883 a car went into service at Kew Bridge,
London, equipped with a Siemens dynamo,
set to run as a motor, and about four thousand
pounds of batteries. The first storage bat-
tery put upon the market was, of course,
crude, and the result was that in nearly all
of its various applications it was a failure.
The modem storage battery dates from the
invention of Faure in 1880, and up to within
a few years the pasted lead battery was the
only form used to any extent. Recently the
Plante type has again come into favor, to-

gether with an improved form of battery
known as the chloride accumulator. The
characteristics of the Plante type of battery
are capability of giving heavy discharges
without sustaining injury, minimum local
action, and general freedom from the irregu-
larities due to local action. The chloride
battery takes its name from the fact that
the active material of the plates is made
from lead chloride rather than from metallic
lead, as in the Plant6, or lead oxide as in the
pasted batteries. These cells show a high
efficiency in practice, small deterioration,
capability of holding a charge over consider-
able intervals of time, and freedom from
short-circuiting, buckling, sulphating, or any
of the troubles to which the old lead bat-
teries were subject. They are thus seen to
possess none of the defects of pasted bat-
teries, while they embody all the merits of
the Plante cells, without their faults of
structural weakness and tedious formation.
To-day the extension and use of the storage
battery are looked on with growing favor.

Relations of Moistnre and Vegetation. —

M. Edmond Gain has found, in special re-
searches on the subject, that the influence of
moisture on vegetation varies at different
periods of growth of the plant, and that al-
ternations of moisture and comparative dry-
ness are more advantageous to it than con-
stant moisture. The plants that require
constant moisture as a factor of their most
vigorous growth are relatively few. Nearly
all plants need water in order to secure vigor
of growth, but require it at different inter-
vals in certain precise stages of their vegeta-
tion ; and plants which at one time take up
water with advantage may suffer much from
an equal supply at another time. As a rule,
the need of water is urgent when the first
leaves are appearing. It then diminishes till
just before blossoming, when a large supply
is called for. This should be suspended
after the flowering season is over, for the
fruit is best perfected in a relatively dry
medium. If the plants blossom more than
once, they need a new supply of water pre-
vious to the second flowering. In all the
author's experiments those plants which were
watered at the two critical seasons of first
growth and the beginning of blossoming did
as well as those which were constantly wa-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

7^7

tered. M. Gain further found that moisture
in the soil favors and increases the number
of fruits and seeds, while a dry soil promotes
larger and heavier seeds. Plants in dry soil
have more roots than those in wet soil.
While the tenure of moisture has little influ-
ence on the number of tubers, they are larger
and heavier in a moist soil ; yet they are less
perfect than tubers grown under relatively
dry conditions. Thus, while greater moist-
ure is favorable to a larger immediate re-
turn, it is less promotive of perfection in the
reproductive parts, and «o favors the indi-
vidual rather than the vigor of the species.

Geography In the Middle Ages.— The
first number of Herr M. Konrad Miller's work
on the Oldest Maps of the World is devoted
to the map of the universe of St. Beatus, a
Spanish theologian, who died a. d. 798. It
was made in connection with the author's
Commentary on the Apocalypse, to point out
the regions assigned to the several apostles,
and exists in many copies of different ages,
the maps in which differ but little from
one another. One of the most famous of
these copies is the one called the Manuscript
of St. Sever, in the Biblioth^que Nationale,
Paris, of about a. d. 1050. The map includes
the whole world in an oval inclosed by a blue
sea border containing large and fierce-look-
ing fishes and red objects which might be
taken for red slugs, but which are really ves-
sels. At the extreme east (north and south
being at the ends of the axis of the oval)
Temptation is represented in a naturalistic
style. At the point where the earthly para-
dise was supposed to exist, Adam is bash-
fully making symbolical gestures, and Eve,
bold and full of initiative, is picking the ap-
ple, both entirely naked. It appears clear as
the light of the sun that all the wrong is on
Eve's side. In the extreme west are Tangier
and Cordova at the entrance of a sea that
washes Majorca and Minorca, then Sardinia,
Corsica, Cyprus, and Crete, and turns to the
north in the Adriatic Gulf and the Helles-
pont. The Fortunate Islands, in the midst
of numerous fishes, are Madeira and the Ca-
naries, and, together with the British Isles
and perhaps Iceland, mark the western limit
of the world. In the south the Red Sea,
bright scarlet, is separated from the Medi-
terranean by the whole of Egypt and Pales-

tine in a way to defy the most enterprising
isthmus-borers. No pains are taken to give
the contours of the coasts, the bays, or the
gulfs. Spain is reduced to a triangle, one
side of which, curved, is formed by the
Pyrenees, as if they were a fringe, while the
other two sides are the shore, straight. The
details of the geography of the several coun-
tries are curious, but can not be described
here. Many strange things appear in Africa,
too, while the origin of the Nile in a great
lake is indicated in the clearest manner.

Origin of Honeydew.— M. Gaston Bon-
nier's studies of the formation of honeydew
have led him to the conclusion that not only
is it elaborated through the agency of aphi-
des, but it is also exuded directly, under prop-
er conditions, by the leaves of the trees. He
has observed that under conditions of a con-
siderable difference between the tempera-
tures of the day and the night, when no in-
sects can be found, a sugary liquid falls after
sunset in drops from certain tre^ ; and after
wiping the leaf with absorbent paper, he
found the minute droplets issuing from the
stomata. This was observed on the epiceas,
silver firs, Scotch pines, Austrian pines, oaks,
maples, aspens, poplars, alders, birches,
vines, and various herbaceous plants. Yet
the aphides are the more frequent cause of
the production of honeydew. Their work
is done mostly in the daytime and is sus-
pended during the night, while the direct
production of honeydew takes place at night
and ceases in the daytime. It is promoted
by the interposition of cool nights between
hot and dry days, and is favored by increase
in hygrometric conditions and darkness. The
exudation can be provoked artificially by
dipping the branches into water and then
placing them in the dark in a saturated at-
mosphere. Under these conditions the leaves
may be caused to produce honeydew when
those on the trees from which they were
taken do not Although bees will go to col-
lect any sweet substance when they can get
no better, they always prefer the best they
can find. When mellifluous plants are bloom-
ing abundantly, they pass the honeydew by ;
but when mellifluous flowers are scarce, they
gather honeydew. The chemical composi-
tion of honeydew is various; but that nat-
urally exuded approaches that of the honey

718

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the nectaries more closely than does that
elaborated by aphides.

Horse Racing in Bosnia. — The Bosnians
are very fond of horse racing. Their meet-
ings were kept up for five hundred years
under the native laws, and are supported
with still more splendor by the Austrian
Government. The horse is the favorite com-
panion of the native, who celebrates it in his
songs, and cares for it as he would for a
child, guarding it against the evil eye and
malice. The Bosnian mountain horse pos-
sesses fine qualities, and is sober, agile, and
hardy. Previous to being put in a race he
is subjected to a very curious special train-
ing. For three or four weeks he is en-
veloped in thick coverings, and is bled re-
peatedly and thoroughly. He is walked all
day, and especially in the evening and the
morning, in the open air. No hay is given
him, and as little as possible of barley and
water. His legs are massaged time and
again, and rubbed with a mixture of water,
salt, and two yolks of eggs. He is given
only a few hours of rest, and the treat-
ment is kept up till the very moment of the
race.

M, Daubree. — By the death of M. Dau-
br^e French geology has lost one of its
most brilliant workers. Born at Metz on
June 25, 1814, he soon developed a special
interest in minerals. He passed in 1834
from the Ecole Polytechnique into the Corps
des mines. He already, while a student, be-
gan to display that breadth of view and
width of sympathy which distinguished his
later career. Gradually his attention was
more and more directed to the experimental
side of his favorite science. He studied the
artificial production of various minerals, and
entered upon a course of profound investiga-
tion in which he became the great leader,
and did more than any other observer to ad-
vance that department of the science. The
difficult problems of metamorphism had a
peculiar fascination for him, and he devoted
himself with admirable patience to the task
of trying to solve some of them by actual
experiment. The various researches col-
lected in his fitudes synthetiques de Geo-
logic experimentale have taken their place
among the classics of modern science. He

also devoted much time to the study of
meteorites. His last important volumes dis-
cussed in detail the phenomena of under-
ground water, and traced the various solu-
tions and changes which water is now
producing and has formerly effected within
the crust of the earth. M. Daubree spent
the greater part of his scientific life in Paris,
where he occupied official posts in the Ecole
des Mines and Museum d'Histoire naturelle.
He retired from office two or three years ago,
but still continued to interest himself ac-
tively in scientific research. He was one of
the most regular attendants of the Academic
des Sciences, and one of the most influential
members of that distinguished body, serviug
on many committees and taking an active
part in all its concerns. He began to be
somewhat ailing before last Easter, and,
though for a time he appeared to rally and
hopes were entertained that his life might
still be prolonged, he died peacefully at his
house in the Boulevard Saint-Germain on
May 29th.

Caeao CnltiTation in Mexico. — The ca-
cao tree is a native of Mexico, and long be-
fore the conquest the Aztecs used the cacao
bean in making a beverage which they called
chocolatl. " All nations subjugated under
the Aztec eagle had to bring, among other
valuables, a certain number of bags of cacao
to the palace in the great Tenochtitla as an
annual tribute to the emperor. It was so
highly prized among the ancient natives that
in trade it was utilized as currency among
the lower classes. The varieties cultivated
were quauhcahuatl, mecacahuatl, zochicuca-
huatl, and tlacacahuatl." The tree grows
wild and in cultivation in the States of Co-
lima, Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas,
Tabasco, and centi-al and southern Vera
Cruz, where the elevation is from a hundred
to twelve hundred feet above sea level.
Chiapas and Tabasco, however, contain the
most favorable climate and soil for the ca-
cao tree, and the finest cacao in the world is
grown in these two States. The species most
cultivated in Mexico are cacao or Theohroma
ovalifolia, T. bicolor, and T. angitstifolia.
A warm, moist climate, having a mean tem-
perature between 76° and 77° F., is neces-
sary for its most successful cultivation. The
best elevation is from three to five hundred

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

719

feet, but the tree will not thrive if exnosed
to the direct influence of the sea breeze.
The plants are propagated by means of the
seed, which is simply covered with loam
and some sort of fertilizer, and then the
whole covered with banana leaves. The bed
is sprinkled every day for twelve or fifteen
days, when the seedlings appear. Then the
banana leaves are removed, and sheds are
erected over the bed, which serve as shade
and shelter. A year after sowing, seedlings
are about twenty inches high and ready for
transplanting. The plants begin to yield
remuneratively in about five years. The
average annual yield of dry cacao from each
tree varies greatly, but is somewhere be-

tween a pound and a half and eight poundd.
The pods having been gathered are placed in
heaps under the trees, to be subsequently
taken to the guelradero where they are
broken. The kernels or nibs are then taken
out of the pods, which are either opened
with a machete or a knife made from a wood
called jahuate. The seeds are thrown into
wooden troughs called tollas half filled with
water to wash them, and the beans are then
carried away to the cacao house for the
sweating or fei-mentation process. After
being properly sweated they are dried ready
for shipment. It is stated that seven hun-
dred and fifty trees will give the planter a
net annual profit of more than $1,226.

MINOR PAEAGRAPHS.

Prof. Dewar, in the first of a series of
lectures on Chemical Progress at the Royal
Institution, paid a well-deserved tribute to
the pioneer work of M. Moissan, in his re-
searches on the combination of carbon and
the various metals in the electric furnace.
Prof. Dewar also called attention to the fact
that many years ago Mendeleef put forth the
view that the immense localization of petro-
leum at Baku and other centers could only
be accounted for on the theory that it was
being continuously generated by the action of
water on carbides. Benzene, which is the nu-
cleus of all the colors hitherto obtained from
coal tar products, is reached by the acetylene
process in three stages : first, the combina-
tion of lime and coal in the electric furnace ;
second, the decomposition of the resulting
carbide by water ; and, . thirdly, the trans-
formation into benzene of acetylene gas by
means of heat.

The catalogue of earthquakes in Russia,
to which are added those in China, Persia,
and other countries bordering on that empire,
begun by A. Orlofif, in 1869, and just com-
pleted and revised by Prof. Mushketoff, con-
tains a list of abont 2,400 separate earth,
quakes which occurred in 560 places, be-
tween 596 B. c. and a. d. 1887. Of them,
710 took place in China, 549 in East Siberia,
36 in West Siberia, 202 in Central Asia, 590
in Caucasia, 121 in Asia Minor and North
Persia, and 188 in European Russia. Con-
sidering only the periods during which the

observations went on without interruption,
the frequency of earthquakes may be repre-
sented as having been 640 in each hundred
years in Caucasia, 310 in China, 290 in East
Siberia and Turkistan, 138 in Middle and
South Russia, and only 19 in North Russia,
Finland, and the Baltic provinces. The date
of the catalogue shows that while in Siberia
and Central Asia earthquakes are more fre-
quent during the autumn and winter than
during spring and summer, the proportion ia
reversed for China and Caucasia.

The interdependence of the most unlike
things in Nature is well shown by the follow-
ing: It seems that in certain districts the
growing of water cresses is quite an impor-
tant industiy. The caddis worm is very fond
of water cresses, but is usually kept from do-
ing them any serious damage by the trout,
which it seems are very fond of the caddis.
But during last season a large number of
herons appeared, who have a special predi-
lection for trout, which they thinned out to
such a degree that the caddis worms were
given a free course, and soon destroyed the
water-cress crop. The loss of the water-cresa
grower was primarily due to ravages of the
caddis worm ; which ravages were due to the
lack of trout ; the lack of trout being due to
the unusual number of herons present in the
neighborhood, and the unusual number of
herons was due to the men who encouraged
their breeding and multiplication for other
reasons. Thus we have a state of things

720

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

which at first sight seems to have arisen
through purely natural causes, but which,
upon closer inspection, is clearly traceable to
man's interference with the " balance of Na-
ture."

NOTES.

Some recent experiments, says Industries
and Iron, seem to indicate that iron is much
weakened after being pickled and galvan-
ized. A dozen eyebolts, all precisely alike,
so far as could be perceived by external in-
spection, were carefully selected ; six of these
were laid to one side and the others sent
away to be galvanized. When the galvan-
ized bolts were returned the whole twelve
were put together and tested, when it was
found that the galvanized bolts were the ones
to break ; not in any instance did the ungal-
vanized ones give way.

Although Spitzbergen has been frequent-
ly visited, its coasts have been well surveyed,
and it has even been a place of industrial
and commercial importance, no attempt has
been made to explore the interior of the
main island. Mr. W. M. Conway purposes to
supply the omission, and to lead a scientific
party during the summer, who will make a
thorough study of the land. The west island
is penetrated by many fiords, and no part of
it is more than twenty-five miles from the
sea. The party will cross from fiord to fiord,
and will be supplied from a steamer which
will meet them at appointed places.

As, in the rush of waves, the billows
travel onward, the energy, Mr. Vaughan
Cornish observes in Knowledge, is passed
from point to point, silently and smoothly,
till the leeward shore is reached. Here all is
changed. On the one side is the swinging
water, ever handing on the energy of its
motion. On the other side is the dead
resistance of the beach, to which each
breaker as it falls yields up its store of
energy. There is no finer display of natural
forces than the rush of the waves on a rock-
bound coast, when each billow as it nears
the shore raises a steeper crest, and, dashing
down in thunder on the rocks, throws up-
ward and abroad a cloud of gUttering spray,
which falls in salt showers.

After the bicycle comes the celereffe, a
modified revival of the old draisienne. It is
a machine without pedals, and can be made
very cheaply, with a wooden frame and even
with wooden wheels, to which India-rubber
tires may be added if desired. It is propelled
by kicking with the feet upon the ground,
and the activity and vigor required to keep
it agoing depend on the character of the
road. On a smooth, level road the work is
light, and down hill the machine goes of
itself. The advantage it offers is that of
getting over the ground more rapidly and
with less fatigue than by walking ; but it is

not likely to compete seriously with the bi
cycle.

The smoke of a common wood fire has
been found by M. G. Palozzi to be a very
efficacious disinfectant, capable of destroy-
ing pathogenic germs suspended in the air
or attached to walls and furniture, or hidden
in drapery or clothing. The author recom-
mends it as a convenient and very econom-
ical means of disinfecting sick-rooms or any
other contaminated places.

The Portuguese Government has decided
to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary
of the discovery of the route to the East
Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope,
which was made by Vasco da Garaa, July 8,
1497. It is understood that exhibitions and
scientific congresses at Lisbon will form part
of the proceedings.

At last Darwin's suggestion that the bor-
ing of a coral reef is the wise way to settle
its mode of formation is to be carried out.
Prof. Soil as is in charge of an expedition
which started last May from Sydney, fully
equipped for boring one thousand feet if
necessary, for the island of Funafuti, one of
the Fiji group. This island is a typical
atoll ; it is about fifteen miles in circumfer-
ence. The lagoon has a good entrance, and
provides firm anchorage. The results of the
expedition should be of great importance.

The committee on public baths appointed
by Mayor Strong recently submitted plans
which provide for a bath house in Tompkins
Square, and two smaller and subterranean
lavatories — one under Main Street, and the
other under Greeley Square, at the junction
of Broadway and Sixth Avenue. These
baths will be important agents in promoting
public health, and have been sorely needed
in New York city for years.

The preparations for the British Associa-
tion meeting in Liverpool next September
are now going on rapidly. The meeting
promises to be a very interesting one. A
number of the owners of works of manufac-
turing and engineering interest have offered
to open their buildings for inspection during
the week, and numerous enjoyable social
events are promised.

Cavaliere Cristoforo Negri, whose
death was recently announced, was a distin-
guished Italian scientist, and for many years
a most enthusiastic promoter of geographical
research. Born at Padua in 1809, he first
devoted himself to the study of law ; he held
the post of Professor of Constitutional Law
at Padua, but was after 1848 compelled to
leave the city for political reasons. He was
the founder, in 1866, and the first President
of the Italian Geographical Society. He
was for many years an honorary correspond-
ing member of the English Eoyal Geograph-
ical Society.

ROBERT EMPIE ROGERS.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

OGTOBEE, 1896.

THE METRIC SYSTEM.

By Pbof. T. C. MENBENHALL,
president w0bce8teb polytbchnio instituti.

IN the June number of this Journal there appeared a paper on
the Metric System, by Herbert Spencer. It was originally
published as a series of anonymous letters in the London Times,
in the course of a discussion growing out of prop(3sed legklation
by the English Parliament. They aroused little interest among
metrologists, except as examples of "curious and interesting
reading," until their authorship was acknowledged by Spencer.
No little astonishment was created by this announcement, and as
a matter of fact, owing to the extraordinary character of the
letters and the great fame and reputation of Mr. Spencer, the
statement was not at first credited by many. Indeed, messages
were sent to London, inquiring, " Who is this Herbert Spencer
who is writing about the metric system ? '* These things are
worth mentioning, to show the surprise everywhere manifested,
not on account of the fact that Mr. Spencer was opposed to the
adoption of the suggested reform in weights and measures, but
rather at the singular arguments which he advanced in defense
of his position. Without a single exception they had all been
traversed more than a quarter of a century ago ; their inherent
weakness and entire lack of philosophic consistency had long ago
been pointed out ; and it is perfectly safe to say that, with possibly
one exception, they are such as no one familiar with the progress
of metrology during the past quarter of a century would think
of offering at the present time, however strongly opposed to the
metre and its derivatives he might be. The great influence which
everywhere and always goes with the name of the distinguished

VOL. ILIX, — 66

722 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

autlior of these letters, and this alone, compels those who are
advocates of metrological reform to offer some reply to the propo-
sitions which he has advanced, and a brief analysis of them will
now be undertaken, with the hope of showing that they are either
fallacious or utterly inapplicable to the question under consid-
eration.

As Mr. Spencer begins by declaring that the " advocates of the
metric system allege that all opposition to it results from igno-
rant prejudice,'' which he very properly declares is far from true,
it may be well to say that, in the opinion of the writer, there is
relatively little of that sort of thing to contend with in the United
States. What is far more dangerous as an obstacle to human
progress, and often far more common, is what may be called " in-
telligent prejudice," meaning thereby an obstinate conservatism
which makes people cling to what is or has been, merely because
it is or has been, not being willing to take the trouble to do
better, because already doing well, all the while knowing that do-
ing better is not only the easier, but is more in harmony with ex-
isting conditions. Such conservatism is highly developed among
English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic, and is
likely to turn up in the most unexpected places. It is often a
phase of ancestral or national pride, and finds its expression in
the feeling that whatever pertains to one's own race or country
is, on the whole, better than anything else of its kind. Those
who are under its influence are adepts in finding ingenious
reasons and excuses in defense of an attitude toward reform
which they must know to be founded on neither logic nor fact.
These people are numerous among opponents of reform in coinage,
weights, and measures, and, as already noted, it is with this class
that the most serious difficulty is encountered. " Ignorant preju-
dice " generally disappears when ignorance disappears, and fortu-
nately in the present instance the system which it is proposed to
substitute for that already in use is so extremely simple that it
can be learned and understood in a few minutes, while certainly
no one man has ever, in an entire lifetime, completely mastered
the " customary weights and measures " in use in England and
America.

It will be convenient to consider the objections offered by Mr.
Spencer in the order in which he has presented them in the four
separate letters which go to make up his article.

In the first he has reproduced in quotation a considerable part
of the well-known argument of Sir John Herschel, written and
widely published over thirty years ago. The inconsistency and
utter worthlessness of this have been so long recognized that one
has a curious feeling of fighting a straw man in attacking it at
this time.

THE METRIC SYSTEM, 723

Sir John Herschel claimed, first, that the metre was not ex-
actly the ten-millionth of the terrestrial meridian passing through
France, which was entirely correct, and that, therefore, it was not
a good nnit for international use, which does not at all follow.
He further attempted to show that the polar radius of the earth,
which could never be known except indirectly, was a better unit
than the quadrant, a large part of which could be measured
directly, and that this radius differed by only eighty-two yards
from 500,500,000 English inches. He then proposed to increase
the English standard by its one-thousandth part, so as to furnish
what he declared would then be " a system of linear measurement
the purest and most ideally perfect imaginable." It has always
been a surprise that so able a mathematician and astronomer
could have overlooked the inherent weakness in such an argu-
ment. To those who have followed the history of this subject it
is unnecessary to say that for many years no metrologist has
thought for a moment of relating the standard of length accu-
rately to any terrestrial dimension. The precision of our knowl-
edge of the figure and dimensions of the earth, now and for many
years to come, is such as to forbid this, even if there were no
other arguments against it. In the light of current geodesy Sir
John's calculations themselves furnish a curiously interesting
proof of this. The argument with which he opposed the metre
may to-day be turned with equal force against his proposed
" ideally perfect " inch. According to the latest determination of
the polar radius of the earth, his eighty-four yards become
more than one thousand yards, and if his scheme had been
adopted when proposed it would have been as badly *'out of
joint " with Nature as is the metre.

The simple facts are that while in the beginning the metre was
made to be as nearly as possible one ten-millionth of the meridian,
no one imagined that it could be exactly so, or rather that we could
ever know that it was exactly so. It is sufiBciently near that value
to be very convenient in calculations relating to terrestrial dis-
tances and areas, but it must always be considered as defined by
a material standard, and no metrologist ever thinks of it in any
other sense. Within a few years Michelson has devised a method
of measuring light waves with an accuracy hitherto unthought
of, and has measured the length of several such waves in terms
of the international prototype metre at Paris, so that we have
the metre related to what we may assume to be an invariable
dimension in Nature, with a degree of accuracy extremely satis-
factory at the present time. But this does not alter the fact that
it is and must be regarded as an arbitrary unit represented by a
material prototype. Keeping this fact in mind, it will not be
necessary to point out the total irrelevancy of HerscheVs argument.

724 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Something must be said, however, of the sentence which Mr.
Spencer has quoted in which, referring to his proposed plan for
relating units of length to units of weight and capacity, Herschel
says, " And thus the change which would place our system of
linear measure on a perfectly faultless basis would at the same
time rescue our weights and measures of capacity from their
present utter confusion/'

It is usually considered to be hardly fair to pick a single sen-
tence out of a group and quote it as representing the views of
another ; and cutting a sentence in tivo in the middle, when the last
half is against you, is a practice so generally condemned that we
are compelled to believe that Mr. Spencer must have accidentally
fallen into it in this instance. Indeed, if full quotation had been
made of what preceded this sentence and upon which it is founded,
the one, rather meaningless, argument against us would have been
changed to two very good points in our favor. Sir John suggested
that the inch be increased by its one-thousandth part, so that it
might be one five-hundred-millionth of the polar radius of the
earth. He then undertook to show that by increasing the grain
(by legislative enactment) by its one- eighteenth part, a cubic foot
of water would weigh one thousand ounces, thus furnishing a deci-
mal connection between the unit of weight and that of volume.
This interesting scheme affords another illustration of the danger
of patching up old and unsatisfactory systems, for a recent deter-
mination of the weight of a cubic inch of water by Mr. Chaney,
in charge of the imperial standards in London, reveals the fact
that the quantities on which Herschel based his calculations and
suggestions were in error many times greater than was the metre,
against which his arguments were directed. The complete sen-
tence, of which Mr. Spencer quoted one half, as above, is as fol-
lows: "And thus the change which would place our system of
linear measure on a perfectly faultless basis would at the same
time rescue our weights and measures of capacity from their
present utter confusion, and secure that other advantage, second
only in importance to the former, of connecting them decimally with
that system on a regular, intelligible, and easily remembered prin-
ciple ; and that by an alteration practically imperceptible in both
cases, and interfering with no one of our usages or denomina-
tions." The words following " confusion " were omitted by Mr.
Spencer, and they have been italicized to invite attention to their
great significance as showing that the decimalization of the new
system of weights and measures was earnestly sought for by
Herschel. That Mr. Spencer is violently opposed to this can only
with great reluctance be accepted as a reason for the abrupt ter-
mination of his quotation.

Before beginning the exposition of his own views he ventures

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 725

to quote another objector to the metric system in the person
of Prof. H. A. Hazen, of the United States Weather Bureau,
who some time ago argued that its adoption would necessarily
include that of the centigrade thermometer scale, and that as, in
his opinion, this was very bad, the metric system must be very
bad. Among meteorologists and physicists this reference will be
thought to be singularly unfortunate, and it furnishes a striking
illustration, among the many to be found in the article under
review, of Mr. Spencer's inability to recognize or properly esti-
mate " values " in regions of thought to which, it must be admit-
ted, he is comparatively a stranger. However much one might
doubt the conclusions reached by Sir John Herschel, his splendid
career as an astronomer and exponent of exact science commands
the respect of all lovers of real learning. When we consider that,
first, the centigrade thermometer scale has no more to do with
the metric of weights and measures than with the coinage of the
United States, and, second, its advantages over the unscientific
and awkward scale of Fahrenheit are so many and so great that it
is already well-nigh universally used, and almost absolutely so
among scientific men of all races and nations, it is apparent that
no time need be wasted in commenting upon a statement which,
by its juxtaposition with that of Herschel, has already achieved
a notoriety to which it has no claim either by reason of character
or ancestry.

In his second letter Mr. Spencer's own arguments begin to be
developed. He first objects to the metric system because, although
it is a century old, it has not yet, even in France, entirely driven
out some of the old denominations and units. In reply to this it
may be said that little research is required to reveal innumerable
examples of persistence in the use of words and things for more
than a hundred years after their betters were available. On this
point I will imitate Mr. Spencer by quoting from a letter re-
cently received from a well-known man of science and admirer
of our distinguished opponent. He writes : " This is amazing
when coming from Spencer. He says on page 189, * But one
might have thought that after three generations daily use of
the new system would have entailed entire disappearance of
the old, had it been in all respects better.' Now Spencer knows
better than any one else the persistency of habit in all people.
A volume a foot thick might be written on the persistence of
habit."

The next objection is worthy of more serious consideration,
and it has been given (for it has long been discussed) a good deal
of weight by many thoughtful people. It refers to the alleged
universal tendency to continual bisection, thus leading to the use
of halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty- seconds, sixty-

726

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

fourths, and, sometimes in subdividing the inch, one-hundred-and-
twenty-eighths. To begin with, the existence of any such inherent
tendency is quite open to discussion, but, without going into that,
it is at least plain that it has never shown itself in the evolution
of systems of weight and measure. In evidence of this the fol-
lowing tables of English measures of length and weight may be
cited, and, that there may be no mistake, they are drawn from a
text-book on arithmetic written by one of the most distinguished
of England's nineteenth-century mathematicians :

Length.

3 barleycorns are 1 inch.

12 inches are 1 foot,

3 feet are 1 yard.

5^ yards are 1 pole.

40 poles, or 220 yards, are. ... 1 furlong.

8 furlongs, or IjTGO yards, are. 1 mile.

Weight.

grains are 1 dram.

16 drams are 1 ounce.

16 ounces are 1 pound.

28 pounds are 1 quarter.

4 quarters are 1 hundredweight.

20 hundredweights are . 1 ton.

These are far from being complete, for two or three additional
tables are necessary to fully exhibit the units and ratios for both
length and weight, and they are even more irregular in construc-
tion than those shown above. In all, as well as in the English
money units and denominations, there is no indication whatever
of this "natural tendency" toward continual halving. It is a
common practice, possibly growing out of a tendency in some
degree natural, to continually bisect a single unit, and this is
likely to be the case under any system of weights and measures,
and to it there can be no sort of objection. It is important, how-
ever, to note that this is in no way related to the question of desir-
able or convenient ratios of units, and that it has practically no
weight whatever as a criticism of the metric system.

But even if this were not true, it would weigh vastly more
against the systems in customary use in England and America
than against the metric system. What possible objection can
there be to speaking of a half or a quarter or an eighth of a mile
or rod or yard or inch, if one wishes to do so ? And no more can
there be to a half, quarter, eighth, or sixteenth of a kilometre,
kilogramme, metre, gramme, centimetre, millimetre, etc., nor,
again, to the use of such fractional parts as thirds, fifths, or sev-
enths, if they seem to be desirable. But to compare the two sys-
tems in this respect one should undertake such a problem as finding
the value of a third, quarter, fifth, or eighth of a mile or a ton in
rods, yards, feet, and inches, or hundredweight, pounds, ounces,
drams, and grains, and then do the same thing in the metric sys-
tem. The enormous superiority of the latter will at once be re-
vealed.

On the other hand, it can not be denied that there is, and has
been for many years, a strong tendency toward the decimal sub-

TEE METRIC SYSTEM. 727

division of single units, even among users of our own clumsy sys-
tem of weights and measures.

In weight, for instance, we in the United States have long ago
decided that a hundredweight shall be a hundred pounds, as its
name implies, and not a hundred and twelve as in England, and
our ton is almost universally two thousand pounds, although
we still retain the traditional ton of twenty-two hundred and
forty pounds in certain transactions ; and as if to emphasize the
utter absurdity of the thing, in some parts of New England a
"long" or "gross'' ton of coal weighs twenty-two hundred
pounds. In many extensive calculations the avoirdupois pound
is adopted as the only unit of weight, and fractional parts are
expressed in tenths, hundredths, etc. ; and this is found to reduce
the labor of such calculations enormously. In length measure
the tendency toward decimalization is still more marked. In land
surveying and in engineering operations it is now the all but uni-
versal practice to use the foot as the unit and multiply and divide
decimally. Even in the traditional " surveyor's chain," with its
one hundred links, each being 7"92 inches in length, there was a
serious attempt to secure some of the advantages of decimaliza-
tion, but it is quite superseded now by the one-hundred-foot tape,
with its divisions of ten feet each, and each foot divided into
tenths, etc. In reference to the chain, a quotation from the book
from which the tables given above are extracted, will not be with-
out interest. After explaining that by a rather laborious process
the following measures of surface may be derived :

144 square inches are 1 square foot,

9 " feet " 1 " yard,

30i " yards " 1 " pole,

40 " poles " 1 rood,

4 roods are 1 acre,

the author remarks : " Thus the acre contains forty-eight hun-
dred and forty square yards, which is ten times a square of twenty-
two yards in length and breadth. This twenty-two yards is the
length which land-surveyors' chains are made to have, and the
chain is divided into one hundred links, each 0'22 of a yard or 7*93
inches. An acre is, then, ten square chains. It may also be no-
ticed that a square whose side is sixty-nine yards and four sev-
enths is nearly an acre, not exceeding it by a fifth of a square
foot." This is a fair example of the beautiful simplicity of a
system which all English-speaking people are assumed to under-
stand and which many of them are reluctant to give up.

Again, in accurate machine-shop practice the use of decimal
divisions is becoming almost universal. The unit is generally the
inch, and it is subdivided into tenths, hundredths, thousandths,
etc. " True to one hundredth, or one thousandth, or one ten-thou-

728 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

sandtli of an inch " is heard a hundred times of tener in every shop
than "correct within a sixty-fonrth or a hundred and twenty-
eighth, etc./' and it means not only greater convenience of expres-
sion and measurement, but an actually higher standard in pre-
cision of workmanship. To the objection, then, that the tendency
of mankind is toward a binary rather than a decimal division of
units, which is almost the only one offered by Mr. Spencer worthy
of serious consideration, we may briefly reply by saying that even
granting it to be a fact, it has no bearing whatever on the ques-
tions of ratios and relations of units, which is what distinguishes
one system from another ; that such a tendency may find ex-
pression in one system as well as another, and certainly with in-
finitely greater facility in the metric system than that now in use
among English-speaking people ; and, furthermore, that the esti-
mation of fractional parts by tenths or hundredths is believed
by many who habitually work that way to be both easier and
more accurate than by halves, quarters, eighths, etc., and as a mat-
ter of fact the prevailing tendency is away from the latter and
toward the former.

Mr. Spencer seems to have a painful satisfaction in the fact
that in California the "bit" is still used, or was about twenty
years ago — painful, because he feels obliged to characterize it as a
** retrogression." As already said, it ought not to be necessary to
remind him of the slow changes in human customs. Even in the
time of John Quincy Adams the word " dime " (which began life
as disme) was almost unknown and the coin itself very nearly so,
for the shilling in all its multiplicity of forms and values still
held place. Even now the shilling, bit, sixpence, " levy," etc., are
not unknown in parts of the United States, but their presence
serves only to emphasize the enormous superiority of our decimal
system of coinage over that which, happily, our forefathers had
the courage to throw off. He also expresses surprise that we have
a quarter of a dollar, and that he does not see things advertised to
sell for one dollar and three dimes or four dimes, etc.

He has here unconsciously called attention to one of the most
important features of a decimal system — that, in fact, upon which
its great superiority depends — namely, the ease with which
changes from one denomination to another are made, and the con-
sequent almost universal reference to a single unit. Some com-
ment on the English money system in respect to this feature will
be made later, but in illustration of this remark it may be said
that nobody who understands the money system of the United
States ever thinks of expressing any given amount in eagles, dol-
lars, dimes, cents, and mills, but in dollars only. Everybody,
however, can instantly convert any expressed amount into any one
or all of these. Compare, for instance, $432*873 and £85 7s. 8fd,

THE METRIC SYSTEM.

729

and consider the memory and labor demanded to convert the
former to eagles, cents, or mills, or the latter to pounds, shillings,
pence, or farthings. Our eagles, half eagles, quarter eagles, half
dollars, quarters, dimes, five- cent, three- cent, two- cent, and one-
cent pieces come and go as public convenience demands, and they
do not give us the slightest inconvenience in calculation or ac-
count ; for their units are decimally related to each other and
they are invariably mentally referred to the one money unit, the
dollar.

Among the several irrelevant and long- exploded arguments
urged by Mr. Spencer, none is " more so " than his Socratic at-
tempt to " array Nature " against the metric system, and it might
well be passed over on account of its suicidal character. It may
be worth while to remark, however, that the use of the decimal
system in dividing the arc of a circle is not in the slightest degree
" against Nature," that it is even now being strongly advocated
by many eminent European geodesists and astronomers, and that
it would be a very decided advance, if brought about, as, in the
opinion of many, it some time will be. But it has nothing what-
ever to do with the metric system of weights and measures. Also,
that whenever the English Parliament or the American Congress
shall have under consideration an act providing that the year
shall consist of ten months, the week of ten days, etc., it is likely
that Mr. Spencer will have little difficulty in finding people ready
to discuss the merits of such a measure. But these things have
no place in the metrological reform under consideration, and their
being brought into the discussion occasions no little surprise
among those who are accustomed to expect from so eminent a
scientific man as Mr. Spencer something like a fair and logical
presentation of at least one side of a question.

There appears, however, one inference in reference to the
division of a compass dial that is worthy of attention; it is
that so inherent is the habit of halving and rehalving that the
thirty-two-point division is fixed beyond all hope of change. On
the contrary, the practice of ignoring this division is constantly
growing, and to such an extent that now a large number of sail-
ing charts and many compasses show circles divided into degrees
instead, and many a man at the wheel has told me that he prefers
to have the course laid in that way.

But the most astonishing part of Mr. Spencer's argument is
yet to come. As he proceeds with his entertaining but somewhat
one-sided dialogue, hints of something mysterious begin to appear.
The objections to universal decimalization (which nobody has
proposed) are put in evidence one by one until the man on the
wrong side is led to exclaim in dismay : " You astonish me ! What
else is possible ? " In answer he is asked to join in the contem-

VOL. XLIX.— 67

730 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

plation of the fact that decimal notation grew out of the posses-
sion of a bundle of ten fingers, and the distinguished author might
have declared, in harmony with what he has said before concerning
time and circular measure, that it was in a very large degree
"dictated by Nature." But while affirming that time and the
compass have been so riveted upon us as to defy any attempt to
change, he leads gradually up to the conclusion that counting by
tens is not the only way of counting, and that Nature's group of
ten units doesn't mean anything in particular after all. Attention
is then called to the greater divisibility of the number twelve,
furnishing aliquot parts " which in sundry cases Nature insists
upon"; to the fact that we have twelve ounces in a pound
(we have also sixteen), twelve lines to the inch, twelve sacks to
the last (whatever that may be, De Morgan fails me here),
twelve things in a dozen, and that our multiplication table goes
up to twelve times twelve! While admitting that "these par-
ticular twelve divisions are undesirable, as being most of them
arbitrary and unrelated to one another," he maintains that they
" make it clear that a general system of twelfths is called for by
trading needs and industrial needs." No time for breath- draw-
ing is allowed after this astounding bit of logic before one is
confronted with the following : " It needs only a small alteration
in our method of numbering to make calculation by groups of
twelve exactly similar to calculation by groups of ten ; yielding
just the same facilities as those now supposed to belong only to
decimals. This seems a surprising statement, but I leave you to
think about it, and if you can not make out how it will be I will
explain presently."

In the original chronology of these letters as they were pub-
lished in the Times it appears that Mr. Spencer's readers were
allowed two days in which to think over this " surprising state-
ment," and to recover from any condition into which they might
have been thrown by its announcement. I can not refrain from
saying just at this point that thousands of American schoolboys
would have needed only two minutes in which to explain how
it might be done, for it has been common knowledge among
arithmeticians from the earliest days of the study of the prop-
erties of numbers. In the third letter, however, the thing is gone
into at great length, and Mr. Spencer generously shares with the
reader the knowledge that it is only needed to invent two char-
acters to stand for ten and eleven, and then we should have a
system suited to a twelve-fingered race and greatly superior to
the decimal system now in use. It is useless to repeat that all
this is old, very old, and it is but justice to Mr. Spencer to repeat
that he prepared it from memoranda of his own made more than
fifty years ago. No one denies that much advantage might come-

THE METRIC SYSTEM. 731

from a change in the radix of our numerical system, and some
advantages of the present might be lost. An increase in the
radix has been recommended for the greater power in computa-
tion it would afford, and its decrease has been advocated, even to
the extent of suggesting the use of the binary system in which
there is but one significant figure, on account of the consequent
great simplicity of all calculations. It seems almost certain,
however, that, "dictated by Nature," as it is, it will never be
changed, as the advantages on either side are small when com-
pared with the magnitude of the problem of a new radix. There
are some people who would defer any improvement in our system
of weights and measures until the decimal system of notation can
be wiped out and one with sixteen as radix substituted, so that if
Mr. Spencer was able to bring about such a change as he suggests
he would find that his favorite number, twelve, was not alone in
the field of candidates for adoption as the foundation of the new
notation. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that in the evolution of
number systems those not decimal have had their day, but none
have survived competition with the many advantages pertaining
to that growing out of the " bundle of ten fingers."

In his fourth paper Mr. Spencer again resorts to quotation, and
brief reference should be made to the arguments set up by some
of his authorities. The letter of Sir Frederick Bramwell con-
tains some remarkable statements. His assertion that the new
system will require " more figures to perform ordinary sums than
on our present system, when rightly applied," is so grossly incor-
rect, as may be easily proved by a few examples, that no time
need be spent in controverting it. The same might be said of his
further assertion that it is more likely to lead to error, and, above
all, to the common error in placing the decimal point. This last
statement is frequently made, and it is worth while, therefore, to
call attention to the fact that in all ordinary business transac-
tions in which the decimal system is used, and in all calculations,
for that matter, the error of a misplaced decimal point is one of
the rarest of all errors. This is because of the generally quick
and certain detection of such a mistake. To misplace the deci-
mal point by the smallest possible amount is to change the result
tenfold, and usually so great an error is instantly detected by
means of approximate knowledge or other checks. Take our
own money system, for example : it is perfectly safe to say that
other mistakes are a million times more frequent than a persist-
ent, undetected misplacing of the decimal point. Yet, curiously
enough, considerable weight has been given to this objection to
the metric system of weights and measures, which is, on the con-
trary, vastly less liable to errors of computation than that now
in use.

732 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Sir Frederick also furnishes an extensive extract, giving the
views of the first Napoleon on the subject of reform in weights
and measures. Many of the stock arguments are repeated, and if
they had not been thrashed over long ago it would be perfectly
easy to take them up one by one and show their absurdity. An
entire lack of any really accurate knowledge of the subject and
an absence of any sort of conception of the simplest metrological
principles are shown in a single quotation : " A toise, a foot, an
inch, a line, a point, are fixed portions of extension, which the
imagination conceives independent of their relations to one an-
other ; if, then, we ask for the third of an inch, the mind goes into
instant operation. The length called an inch is divided into three
parts. By the new system, on the contrary, the mind has not to
divide an inch into thirds, but a metre into a hundred and eleven
parts." It is difficult to properly characterize such utter non-
sense; but, fortunately, the French people, who are to-day the
leaders in the world^s metrology, were not obliged to take their
science, as they were most other things, from the first consul.
A group of the most distinguished Frenchmen of any period had
perfected this system, even in the very midst of the bloody revo-
lution which closed the last century, and when their final report
was made in an address to the legislative chambers by the cele-
brated La Place, the event was described by Adams as a " specta-
cle at once so rare and so sublime . . . that not to pause for a
moment, were it even from occupations not essentially connected
with it ; to enjoy the contemplation of a scene so honorable to
the character and capacities of our species, would argue a want of
sensibility to appreciate its worth. This scene formed an epoch
in the history of man. It was an example and an admonition to
the legislators of every nation and of all after times."

Mr. Spencer also quotes from an auditor who had to go over
£20,000 of accounts, and who was *' very thankful that it was not
in francs." At first blush it seems entirely natural and credit-
able to him as an Englishman to rejoice that his twenty thousand
is in pounds sterling rather than francs ; but, after all, his remark
is only a reflection of that not uncommon English sentiment that
the imperial monetary system is more perfect than any other in
all the wide world. This sentiment is doubtless the outgrowth of
national pride and intellectual inactivity ; it is not entertained by
the majority of the more thoughtful and scholarly Englishmen,
and, furthermore, it is in every respect false. It is unnecessary
to consume time in quoting the opinion of Eogland^s most distin-
guished scholars, to show that this is not simply an example of
American boasting, but I will venture to illustrate by one or two
additional extracts from De Morgan. In his arithmetical appen-
dix on Decimal Money he says: "Of all the simplifications of

THE METRIC SYSTEM, 733

commercial arithmetic none is comparable to that of expressing
shillings, pence, and farthings as decimals of a pound. The rules
are thereby put almost upon as good a footing as if the country-
possessed the advantage of a real decimal coinage." He then
proceeds to develop rules by means of which any sum of English
money may be expressed in pounds and decimals exactly as our
money is always expressed in dollars and decimals, so that any re-
quired operation may be easily performed by the common rules of
arithmetic. After this the decimals of a pound must be reduced
back again to shillings, pence, and farthings. To show how the Eng-
lish system lends itself to easy calculation, I quote his rule, which
is only approximately correct, for making the latter reduction :
" A pair of shillings for every unit, in the first place ; an odd
shilling for fifty (if there be fifty), in the second and third places ;
and a farthing for every thousandth left, after abating one if
the number of thousandths left exceed twenty four." Can any-
thing be more charmingly simple and easily carried in one's
head than this ?

I must be content to stop without reference to a few other
points raised by Mr. Spencer, for they are essentially all of a
kind. There is a sentiment underlying much of his argument, to
which I must briefly refer, however, because it has shown itself
in other recent discussions of this subject. I refer to an anxiety
lest the "poor man'' be in some way injured by the proposed
reform. It has come to be the fashion in all political or eco-
nomical controversies to exhibit a consuming interest in the
poor man's welfare ; indeed, one marvels that there should con-
tinue to be any poor, so universal and so intense appears to be
this anxiety to shield them from all harm. Fortunately, the
so-called " poor man " is not so blind to his own interests as some
would have it appear, and he is quite alive to the fact that the
proposed metrological reform is fully as important to him as to
anybody.

Finally, it ought to be understood that the advocates of the
metric system do not assume that it can come into use immedi-
ately or without considerable hardship. It took nearly a century
to fairly establish our decimal money system, which no one would
now think of giving up. During all this time old units and
denominations continued to be used in a lessening degree, al-
though not authorized by law. Something of the kind must
occur in the transfer from our illogical, brain-destroying, time-
consuming system of weights and measures for the more perfect
system for which it is sure to make way. Furthermore, they
heartily welcome and desire the presentation of all arguments
against or objections to the metric system, believing that the
more widely it is known and discussed the more supporters it

734

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will have. They expect to meet occasionally such *' intelligent
prejudice " as is exhibited by Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose contri-
bution to the discussion of the subject is sure to be considered in
the years to come as altogether the most remarkable to be found
in any time or tongue.

NEVADA SILVER.

By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN.

A THIRD of a century ago the surface bonanzas of the Com-
stock began to yield their treasures. Californians long
skilled in gold mining were rushing by thousands into the newly
discovered silver districts, and prospecting the mountains and
deserts east of the Sierras. In fact, the whole Pacific coast was
ringing with shouts of " On to Washoe I " In a few years this
obscure, long-neglected corner of western Utah became the State
of Nevada. It developed a multitude of mining camps besides the
Comstock ; it created new forms of mining skill, maintained vast
dependent industries, contributed revenues to distant cities, sent
forth new groups of millionaires, gave to the world new types of
frontier character, and added a dramatic chapter to the story of
American commonwealths.

The land itself is worth a moment^s attention. It is a high
plateau, gridironed by short, parallel mountain chains, the most
noted of which is the Washoe Range, separated from the Sierras
by a line of small Alpine valleys, and rising, in Mount Davidson,
to a height of 7,827 feet. East, south, north, extend weary miles
of desert, relieved by a few oases. The scanty rivers of Nevada
soon lose themselves in alkaline basins. According to an old
frontiersman, reported by Dan De Quille, "the Almighty once
started out leadin' a number of small rivers along, meanin' to
unite them into one large one, and take it to the Pacific. But
before he had more than started it grew late Saturday night, so
he tucked the ends down into the sand, where they have remained
ever since."

Stephen T. Gage, of the Southern Pacific Railroad, tells an
interesting story of Horace Greeley^s journey across the conti-
nent. The distinguished editor had reached Placerville, Califor-
nia, and had been met by a few ardent followers on horseback.
The boisterous mountain town was politically opposed to Greeley,
but when the group of young men, of whom Gage was one,
brought him out on the plaza for a speech, a great crowd as-
sembled.

"I believe," said Greeley, "that God never made anything
without a purpose. But the wilderness that I have crossed is

NEVADA SILVEB.

7ZS

certainly worthless for agriculture. Unless there shall prove to
be great mineral wealth there, it has been created in vain. But
if, in the workings of Divine Providence, vast treasure houses are
revealed, as I believe there will be, then, my friends, it will take
the labor of a hundred thousand California miners a hundred
thousand years even to prospect it ! "

Even while Greeley spoke a small group of ignorant pros-
pectors, climbing the canons that slope south from Mount David-

Carson River CaSon.

son, were approaching the Comstock ledge. They were, in fact,
already filling their rude sluice-boxes with decomposed rock from
the giant lode, and were washing out a little gold, while they
threw many a lump of nearly pure silver down the gulches with
loud imprecations because the " blue stuff " clogged the machines.
These miners were the remnants of several larger camps that had
grown, flourished, and fallen into ruins in western Utah during
eight or ten years, but they were not the first settlers of the
Nevada region. The Oregon trail had three thousand emigrants

736 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the road in 1846, and as soon as the shout, " California gold ! "
was heard, the deep- trampled highways across the desert began
to be strewed with wrecks of wagons and bodies of horses and
oxen. Thousands of men made camp after camp in western Utah
without washing out a panful of dust or breaking off a specimen
of quartz. Meanwhile Mormon traders, anxious to sell supplies
to wagon trains, established small stations along the trail. These
traders were often colonists sent out from Salt Lake, under strict
orders not to cross the mountains and not to mine for gold. Ac-
cording to a letter in the Sacramento Transcript of October 14,
1850, the hungry emigrants were often forced to sell " a horse, an
ox, or a mule for twelve, ten, or even two pounds of flour," and in
1849 matters must have been even worse.

Placer gold was found in the winter of 1849 in a small gulch
near Carson Valley, and one or two men worked the deposit, with
poor results. The wandering Mormons abandoned their trading
posts, but in 1851 Colonel Reese, from Salt Lake, made a perma-
nent settlement. With him came, as teamster, bibulous, feather-
brained James Fennimore, afterward known on the Comstock as
" Old Virginia," who soon began placer mining in " Gold Canon."
By November the Carson region contained about twenty settlers ;
miners, herdsmen, and nomads of every description increased the
whole population of western Utah to nearly one hundred. Squat-
ter government began, and Congress, with unconscious humor,
was petitioned to create a separate Territory for this handful of
settlers. The Utah Legislature, with equally unconscious humor,
endeavored to hold the region by dividing it into seven huge
parallelograms of counties, only one of which appears to have
contained any people. The judge sent to Carson County was
referred by the Gold Canon miners to their local " rules, usages,
and customs," adopted in the main from California camps.

Local traditions contain much that is worth passing notice.
Israel Mott, for instance, "built his house out of the beds of
abandoned emigrant wagons." " Ragtown," on the Carson, re-
ceived its name because of vast heaps of rubbish that marked the
camp where the incoming host " ran into the water waist deep to
drink like animals," and threw their desert-worn garments in
heaps on the cacti and sagebrush. The last night of 1853 there
was a dance " in the log house over Spaff ord Hall's store " at the
mouth of Gold Canon. Eight women were present, and this
number constituted " two thirds of all the white women in west-
ern Utah." Of white men there were about a hundred — from
Lucky Biirs, Fort Churchill, Twenty-six-Mile Desert, Eagle
Ranch, and other settlements, as well as from the placer mines.

In 1857 the Mormon settlers were called back to Salt Lake by
a messenger from the Prophet. Some fifty families left claims.

NIJVADA SILVER. 737

cabins, water ditches, and other property, loaded one hundred and
fifty-three wagons, and were on the road in three weeks. A few
years later one of them, the noted Orson Hyde, wrote to the pos-
sessors of a sawmill he had built, demanding its return, and add-
ing : " This demand of ours remaining uncanceled shall be to the
people of Carson and Wassau as was the ark of God among the
Philistines. You shall be visited of the Lord of hosts with thun-
der and with earthquakes and with floods, with pestilence and
with famine, until your names are not known among men." The
letter was printed, and the camps of 1860 rang with loud laughter.
But in 1857 no one could see anything amusing in the departure
of the Mormons. Emigrant travel had ceased, traders had gone,
villages were deserted, plows left in the furrows, cabin doors
flung open. Even Gold Canon placers were nearly exhausted.
Everything seemed " played out."

The early miners of Nevada knew nothing of prospecting as a
business. They were so thoughtless and ignorant that it never
occurred to them to look for the source of the metal they were
obtaining in Gold Canon and other ravines that headed in Mount
Davidson. The little gold they found became more and more
alloyed with silver, so that its value decreased from nineteen
dollars an ounce to twelve dollars. The camp of Johnstown in
Gold Canon, where they wintered, dwindled in size, and discour-
aged miners went to other districts. Meanwhile two prospectors
of education and ability, the Grosh brothers, were secretly ex-
ploring the Washoe Mountains for silver. Their letters home
prove that they found " a monster vein " and other good pros-
pects, and they began to organize companies in the Atlantic
States and in California to work these claims. But one brother
died from an accident early in 1857 ; the other lost his life in the
Sierra the following winter. The first knowledge of the Corn-
stock perished with these two brave, thoughtful, reticent young
prospectors.

All the men who aided in the discovery of the famous mines
wintered in Johnstown in December, 1858. Among them was one
Henry Thomas Paige Comstock, a curiously ignorant, credulous,
and speculative miner, familiarly known as " Old Pancake." " My
first recollection," he wrote, " is packing beaver traps ; trapped
all over Canada, Michigan, Indiana, and the Rocky Mountains."
Comstock, "Old Virginia," Peter O'Riley, Pat McLaughlin,
" Kentuck " Osbornef " Long John " Bishop, Manny Penrod,
Sandy Bowers, and a few others had been more or less together.
Sometimes they were in Gold Caiion, sometimes in Six Mile Canon,
sometimes crossing from the head of one to the head of the other,
along the side of Mount Davidson, over the top of the Comstock
ledge. In January, 1859, a streak of warm weather tempting

738 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some of them out, Comstock, " Old Virginia," and several others
found " surface diggings " near " Slippery Gulch." They named
the place " Gold Hill," and, staking out claims, proceeded to work
the decomposed outcroppings over Crown Point, Yellow Jacket,
Belcher, Kentuck, and other great mines as yet undiscovered.
From the time they started the rockers, using water from a spring
close by. Gold Hill averaged twenty dollars a day to the man.
June 1st, O'Riley and McLaughlin, whose claim in Six Mile Canon
paid only two or three dollars a day, suddenly cut into the rock
on the surface of Ophir, at the north end of the Comstock, and
began to take out gold at the rate of a thousand dollars a day.
They had only been working a few hours when Comstock hap-
pened along, saw the value of the discovery, laid a general float-
ing claim to a mythical stock ranch in the region, and fairly
bluffed the good-natured discoverers into taking himself and
Manny Penrod as equal partners. "Kentuck" Osborne after-
ward came in, and the five took up the original Ophir claim.

The miners in the region soon staked out claims around Gold
Hill and Ophir. " Dutch Nick " started a saloon and restaurant
in a tent. " Old Virginia " went on a spree one night and chris-
tened the north-end camp "Virginia City." Comstock bubbled
with happiness, and flung his money broadcast. But a rancher
from Truckee Meadows, visiting the camp, picked up some of the
despised " blue stuff " from the waste heap of Ophir, and after-
ward gave it to Judge Walsh, of Grass Valley, California, with
the remark that "over in Washoe the miners were throwing it
away." An assayer reported it to be nearly pure silver. This
happened about midnight, and before dawn Judge Walsh was
miles on the road to Virginia City, while hundreds of other men
were making ready to follow. The Truckee Meadows rancher
paid no attention to the excitement he had caused, but went
quietly back to his farm. When Judge Walsh reached the camp
Comstock sold for $11,000, only $10 of which was paid down.
McLaughlin soon sold for $3,500, Osborne for $7,000, Penrod for
$3,000. Careless, ignorant, the first Comstockers were blown
aside like leaves in a whirlwind. They spent their money and
drifted off here and there, pursued by ill-fortune. McLaughlin
was soon cooking for a gang of men at $40 a month ; " Old Vir-
ginia," while on a spree in 1861, was thrown from a horse and
killed ; Comstock, who had parted with his interests exactly two
months after the ledge was struck, branched out into financial
and matrimonial ventures, spent every dollar, wandered over
Idaho and Montana vainly looking for another fortune, and in
1870 committed suicide. Sandy Bowers, who was considered a
millionaire, went to Europe with his wife " to see the queen," and
" had money to throw at the birds." He built a costly stone man-

740 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sion in Washoe Valley before birds of prey obtained all his
money. His widow, the "Washoe Seeress/' made a living for
years by curiously futile predictions regarding the stock market,
and still reads the future for those who care to listen. One after
another all the placer-mining Comstockers went down before the
rush of silver seekers.

That rush was in many respects the most remarkable one that
California ever had known. Decidedly the best account was
written by J. Ross Browne, who made his Peep at Washoe a
classic of early Nevada. Stirred, he says, by the shout of " Sil-
ver ! silver ! Acres of it ! Miles of it ! " he left San Francisco in
March, 1860, and made his way to Placerville. Beyond this point
there were no stages. The town was full of men anxious to cross
the mountains, and "practicing for Washoe" in the saloons.
Every sign bore Washoe in large letters. Pack trains were start-
ing daily for the mines. No animal could be had for love or
money. " Lodging accommodations " consisted of enough floor
space on which to lie in one^s blanket.

The next morning Browne started on foot. The muddy trail
was literally lined with broken-down vehicles and goods of every
description. He stopped at nightfall in " Dirty Mike's " shanty,
in which the bar and the public bedroom were the chief features.
The second day hundreds of persons were in sight along the trail —
men with wheelbarrows, handcarts, donkeys, mules ; gamblers on
fancy mustangs, whisky peddlers, organ grinders, drovers, Mexi-
cans. Rain, snow, and slush prevailed for miles before he reached
the log cabins of Strawberry. There he slept on the floor with
about forty other pilgrims, and had his stockings stolen, which
" were above gold or silver in this foot- weary land." Three feet
of snow in the morning, four hundred men in the camp, and pro-
visions low ; eight hard miles to the summit, nine more to Wood-
ford's. Browne and several others tried the trail, but were forced
to return to Strawberry. The next day he tried it alone. The
trail was over old snow, honeycombed with holes hidden by the
new snowfall; pack trains were floundering through and occa-
sionally falling into the canons. Wind and sleet all day ; mud
knee deep in Hope Valley ; all in all a terrible day's experience.
The fifth day Browne's course was along the Carson. He was so
worn out that he could only cover about eighteen miles between
sunrise and nine o'clock at night. The sixth day he arrived at
Carson City, and took the stage for the mines.

Virginia City, as Ross Browne saw it in the spring of 1860,
lay outspread on a slope of mountains, speckled with snow and
sagebrush and mounds of upturned earth. The dwellings were
rude board shanties ; tents of blankets, sacks, old shirts, and can-
vas ; huts of mud and rock, caves in the hillside, and hollow heaps

NEVADA SILVER. 741

of brush. Piles of goods were scattered about in the rain and
snow. A scathing wind, the "Washoe zephyr," tore the huts
apart and filled the air with gravel. Crowd3 were gathered in
open places, trading claims or fighting over them. Other crowds
were drinking and gambling in the numerous saloons. Rough,
unkempt, unwashed miners, speculators, bummers, thieves, cut-
throats filled the raw, unsightly mining camp with horrible con-
fusion. " In truth," says our artless adventurer, " there was much
to confirm the foreboding with which I had entered the Devil's
Gate."

In a short time the demands of the Washoe country developed
a complete system of transportation over three great toll roads,
the finest on the Pacific coast. Massive freight wagons, marking
in every detail the utmost skill of California workers in wood
and iron, carried all the supplies for Nevada. Bearded and
weather-beaten freighters, who were also owners of their outfits,
walked beside the great mule teams. Each freighter carried his
rod of empire, a short hickory handle to which was attached a
long, close-plaited whiplash as big as one's wrist at the swelling
part. At first receiving twenty-five cents a pound for whatever
was carried between Sacramento and Virginia City, and hauling
a thousand pounds to the animal, the freighter in a year or so
was able to move twenty-four tons besides the wagons, with a
sixteen-mule team, at a cost of four cents a pound for the entire
distance. It is said that there is not on record in courts or news-
papers a single instance of the loss of goods in transit either by
fraud, force, or carelessness during all the years of the Nevada
freighter's glory.

One stage line carried twelve thousand passengers to Nevada in
1863. Schedule time in 18G1 had been three days for the one hun-
dred and sixty-two miles, but it was soon reduced to eighteen
hours. Three wealthy mining operators were once taken from
Virginia City to the steamboat wharf in Sacramento in twelve
hours and twenty-three minutes. Old travelers still recall with
pleasure the ride across the mountains on the Placerville route.
Its most striking moment was when one first saw from the summit
of the pass the hyacinthine waters of sealike Tahoe and the level
desert. "The eastward-gazing grizzly bear," to quote from one
of the stories written by an old Elko silver miner, the late Dr.
Gaily, " lifts his flexible nostril to sniff the odor of the arid waste,
then slowly turns and prowls westward. There is a visible line
eastward where two worlds appear to meet. Beyond is the great
'empire of Artemisia,' where gold and silver were married in
the volcanic chambers of the awful past. One sees the land of
Washoe outstretched from the mountain tops, with its browns
and grays, its arid junipers and dull nut pines, its crags of lime-

742 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stone, basalt, porphyry, granite, in naked barrenness. There,
underfoot," writes Dr. Gaily, "the world is dry, gray, silent.
Overhead, during the long cloudless day, it is pale blue, dry,
silent. All abroad it is gray or dark with mountain distance, and
it is silent. Silence is everywhere. No roar of far-off torrents
tumbling down the hills to jar the night air underneath the stars
— the stars still are, but all the torrents have departed. At some
lost period backward of all dates, the Great High Sheriff of the
universe in open court has cried Silence and has been obeyed."

Into such a land the silver seekers came, and it claimed them
for its own. Soil, climate, topography, environment, began to
create the Nevada type, with its large freedom, its quick com-
prehension, its broadly humorous buoyancy, and similar charac-
teristics that one finds abundantly illustrated in such books as
Mark Twain's Roughing It and in the writings of a great group
of younger newspaper men. " Desperate climatic humor " is what
Dr. Gaily calls it. Occasionally an old copy of. an early Nevada
newspaper turns up, fairly scintillating with wit and sarcasm,
but for the most part the files have been destroyed in the great
fires. Said brave old De Quille, companion reporter with Mark
Twain on the Territorial Enterprise :

" I used to make the newspaper my notebook for years, and I
thought what a book I could write some day out of that note-
book ; but now I don't know of a single file in existence."

Still there are gleams of the past in stray copies that have
escaped the fires. Senator Stewart was the most prominent man
on the Comstock in the days before Sharon, and the Gold Hill
News, amazed at his audacity, once likened him to the Colossus
of Rhodes — he was as large and contained as much brass. Mark
Twain, in his forgotten Proceedings of the Third House, once
burlesqued nearly every member of the Constitutional Conven-
tion of 1863. Larrowe, of Landor, for instance, was made to
glorify the " nine sceptered and anointed quartz mills " of his dis-
trict until the president ordered him to "hold his clatter" and
drop Reese River quartz-mill statistics. Mr. Stewart, after a long
speech on miners' taxes, was told : " Take your seat. Bill Stewart.
I have been reporting and reporting that same infernal speech of
yours for thirty days. . . . You and your bed-rock tunnels and
your blighted miners' blasted hopes have gotten to be a sort of
nightmare to me and I won't put up with it any longer." The
wealth of material in this field would fill volumes instead of
paragraphs.

Hardly had the first rich ore been taken from the Comstock
when an age of litigation commenced. The early claims overlapped
and were badly defined, some being taken up under placer rules,
others as quartz claims, and all without accurate surveys. Mat-

NEVADA SILVER. 743

ters went from bad to worse, as every one had access to the record
book in the pioneer camp, and most of the prospectors changed
their stakes and boundaries as often as seemed best. The most
casual study of the Comstock region in 1860 reveals the wildest
Walpurgis-night revels of conflicting claims of every size, shape,
and age tumbling over each other three and four deep. Besides,
the Virginia lode was parallel to the Comstock, and many lesser
veins crossed it or ran near, thus giving rise to the great legal
problem of the day. Was the Comstock one ledge or two ledges ?

Then followed the famous mining cases that fill volume after
volume of the Nevada reports — Savage against the Bowers Com-
pany, Chollar against Potosi (pronounced Potosed by all old
" Comstockers "), Burning Moscow against Ophir, and others of

Flash-light of Drills in Nevada Mine.

equal interest. The total number of lawsuits for twelve mines
during this period is 245, and 168 of these were " actions brought*'
to dispossess the claimants of ground that, under the single-
ledge theory, belonged to the first locators. The direct cost of
this litigation was $10,000,000, or one fifth of the entire product
of the lode during the fighting period. Pitched battles occurred
underground ; mines were flooded with water or filled with smoke.
Forts were built, armed men employed, and battles fought on dis-
puted claims. Some of the best mining lawyers of America were
trained in this age of litigation. Stewart, known as " Old Invin-
cible," tireless in devotion to his clients, received $100,000 from
Belcher and $30,000 as a single fee from Yellow Jacket. The
reputation of the Territorial courts suffered, and some of the
judges resigned under stress of public wrath. Lord, in his His-
tory of the Comstock, sums up the period from 1860 to 1865 with

744 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the terse remark that " the Washoe bar at that time was hardly a
nursery for tender consciences."

The first problem that troubled the miners in the midst of
their lawsuits was how to handle the immense bodies of ore. To
develop the various claims by means of the usual shafts, tunnels,
drifts, cross-cuts, and other underground workings was unusually
difficult. The vein matter of the great fissure varies from 100
feet to 1,500 feet in width. The whole body was once a seething
mass of fire and steam. It still remains in many places so hot
that the appliances of modern science hardly enable the miners to
accomplish any work. The ledge first sloped west, became ver-
tical at about 200 feet down, and then bent toward the east, thus
necessitating a second and finally a third line of shafts. Machin-
ery for pumping, for hoisting, for ventilating and lighting the
depths of the mines, had to be constructed upon a larger scale
than ever before attempted. As the ore bodies were opened they
were found to be so wide that the timbering system failed entire-
ly. A new method, known as the " Deidesheimer square sets,"
was invented, which is still in use in all large mines. It consists
of short timbers mortised together in frames that can be built up
to any height or width, like the adding of cells to a honeycomb.
A few years later the mines siphoned water from the Sierras
under a pressure of 1,720 feet. Incidentally the miners invented
the Y flume to carry lumber down the Sierra slopes. The annual
supply of timber for the mines amounted by 1866 to 25,000,000
feet of lumber and 170,000 cords of fuel. The consumption of
both increased steadily until in bonanza days 80,000,000 feet of
lumber annually disappeared into the drifts and chambers and
250,000 cords of wood went up in smoke and flame.

Metallurgists, too, found endless study in the methods of re-
ducing Comstock ore. Beginning with slow Mexican arastras
and patio yards, adopting in 1860 California stamp mills, and
modifying the amalgamating apparatus to save the silver, the
modern " Washoe process " was finally adopted, though only after
years of costly experiments. For a time every one went rainbow-
chasing for something to perform impossible chemical feats. One
pioneer mill man used to put strong decoctions of cedar and juni-
per bark into his amalgamation pans ; others actually used sage-
brush tea, it being argued that Nature had created the otherwise
worthless shrub for the express purpose of getting the metal out
of Nevada's mountains ! Persons with secret processes overran
the mining districts, each one with the whole trick contained in a
little bottle in his vest pocket, ready for a consideration to pour a
few drops into the amalgamating pan. San Francisco was ran-
sacked for drugs to put into the batteries with the pulverized ore.
Alum, saltpeter, borax, potash, all the acids obtainable, tobacco

]SrE\^ADA SILVER.

745

enough, for a " sheep- dip," a multitude of articles never before
used by miners, such were some of the contents of the Nevada
mill men's witch caldrons in the early sixties. "The object ap-
peared to be," says an amused . •
observer, "to physic the silver
out of the rock/'

Slowly, after immeasurable
waste, crude methods gave way
to better ones. Mills were built
in Washoe Valley, in the canons,
and on the Comstock, but the
greater number were along the
Carson River, so as to be run by
water power. No less than 76
mills, costing over $0,000,000 and
carrying 1,200 stamps, were in
operation before the end of 1861.
Some of the mills of the period
are still remembered for their ex-
travagant construction. Gould
and Curry built one on a ter-
raced hill where the mine owners
spent about $1,000,000 in pic-
turesque and useless magnifi-
cence. After a few years, when
their bonanza began to fail, it
was found that the reduction of
their ore was costing fifty dol-
lars a ton. The machinery was
thrown aside, and it required
$600,000 to put the mill in work-
ing order again. Everywhere,
through years of readjustment,
mills were torii to pieces, rebuilt,
enlarged, made to do better and
better work, until the results
produced when the great bonan-
za mines were running at full speed attracted the attention of
mill men all over the world.

What is known on the Comstock as the old group of bonanzas
began comparatively near the surface. The yield of the diggings
of 1859 had been about $100,000 for the entire lode. In 1860 it
yielded in round numbers 82,000,000. After that the mines were
developed so fast that by 1865 the output of Storey County, most
of it from the Comstock, was $0,500,000. During twelve years
after 1859 the product of all the Comstock mines was $145,000,000.

VOL. XLIX. — 58

KuiNs OF Old Mill near the Comstock.

746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Work went on with increasing zeal. Mines that were in "hor-
rasca" or barren rock, were kept going by immense assessments.
If the present business methods that prevail in mining had been
adopted on the Comstock, half of this enormous yield of $145,000,-
000 would have been clear profit, but the greater part of every
bonanza went into running and extraordinary expenses. Reck-
less waste and superb enterprise seemed to go hand in hand. The
numbers of relatives and friends that the owners of the mines
managed to support by making positions for them can hardly be
reckoned. Everybody, from servant girls to bankers, speculated
in Comstocks and other mining shares.

In 1860 more than five thousand claims within thirty miles of
Virginia City were " on the market." Frenzied prospectors were
marking out thousands more, until the most remote corners of
the desert were "pegged down with claim stakes" set on indi-
cations which were seldom attractive to a mineralogist. Iron
pyrites and all sorts of worthless combinations seemed as good as
gold or silver to the enterprising adventurers. Before long men
were claiming to have found huge ledges of iridium, platinum,
and plumbago. One Washoe speculator being told by a gentle-
man that an ambergris mine would be valuable, replied that he
had just staked out one ! A company tunneled for weeks into
the granite of Mount Davidson in order to tap an alleged lake of
coal oil.

No one can reckon up the number of prospect holes that dot
Nevada. Millions of them, mere ragged cuts or pits in the tawny
hillsides, make wind-blown heaps on every hand between the
clumps of dark sagebrush and the dull yellow of an occasional
sunflower. Only one prospect hole in a hundred ever material-
ized into a recorded claim ; only one claim in a thousand ever
became a mine. Up to 1880 Virginia City and Gold Hill alone
had 16,000 registered claims, and less than a dozen really great
mines. To sum it up, the amount of dead work and wasted capi-
tal in every mining region almost surpasses belief. Ruins of
mills and dwellings, nameless graves in the canons, fragments of
old trails washed by the storms of thirty winters, are all that
mark the sites of many once- aspiring districts. In Esmeralda
and White Pine, which the late Dr. DeGroot used to call "those
Golgothas of Nevada speculators," what millions were fruitlessly
scattered !

The entire history of the Comstock lode is revealed by the as-
sessments, dividends, and fluctuations of the stocks of separate
mines. Before the close of 1861 eighty-six companies were work-
ing on or near the great lode. Gould and Curry, a marvelously
rich mine, declared $2,908,800 in dividends in 1863 and 1864. This
was upon an actual investment of less than $200,000. But the ex-

NEVADA SILVER,

IM

penses of the mine, which worked 110,000 tons of ore during those
two years, were nearly $6,000,000. It is believed that twice as
much could easily have been paid in dividends, but, as the presi-
dent of the company said, "every shareholder was crazy and
wanted it snaked out at once at any cost." Gould and Curry,
July 1, 1863, was selling at $6,300 per foot (the old way of meas-
uring values) ; in July, 1864, it was worth only $900. Belcher
was one of the dividend mines of the Comstock, having paid
$16,000,000 up to 1880. It had 104,000 shares after 1869. In that
year prices ranged from $12 to $35 ; in 1870, sank from $36 to 81 ;
in January, 1871, rose to $6, and in December to $450 ; in Janu-

Alta Mine, Mill, and Dump, Gold Hill.

ary, 1872, sank to $6, and in April rose to $1,525, fluctuating all
that summer down to $1.50, up to $95, and back and forth after
this fashion for years. Once it rose in a month from 25 cents to
$113 a share. Out of 103 Washoe mines listed, only six ever paid
more money in dividends than they levied in assessments. These
six were Consolidated Virginia, California, Belcher, Crown Point,
Gould and Curry, and Kentuck. Some of the assessments levied
upon mines that never paid a cent to the stockholders remain un-
paralleled in mining history. Ten mines sank nearly $17,000,000
before 1880. Assessments on Bullion were $3,352,000; on Over-
man, $3,162,800. Alta, Baltimore, Caledonia, Mexico, Imperial —
these and other non-producers are still remembered with sorrow
by thousands of investors.

748 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Nevertheless, viewed as a whole, the Comstock was immense-
ly profitable. In twenty-one years from the summer of 1859,
according to Government reports, the mines levied in assess-
ments $62,000,000. The dividends paid during the same period
aggregated $118,000,000. Striking a cash balance, the Comstock
ledger shows an actual profit of $56,000,000. The total bullion
yield for the same period was $306,000,000. Subtracting divi-
dends and adding assessments, we find that the cost of purchasing,
maintaining, defending, and developing the great lode for twenty-
one years was $250,000,000. Three fourths of this sum came from
the mines themselves, the other fourth was gathered from direct
assessments. The prospectors and original locators had received
less than $100,000. The various owners paid less than a million
dollars out of their own pockets, as working capital, before as-
sessments and the stock-gambling period began. Since 1880
the yield of the Comstock has been decreasing, and many of
the mines have been shut down. The ledger account of the Com-
stock with the public remains practically unchanged.

The most dramatic events in the story of the Comstock clus-
ter about a series of struggles for its control during the ebb and
flow of alternate borrasca and bonanza. Nothing was lacking to
make the period impressive. The financial leaders of the Pacific
coast were conquering Nevada, while another group of men were
winning victories that shortly led to the culminating treasure of
the lode, and while the indomitable Sutro was toiling in his great
tunnel. So vast and ruthless was the battle that its far-reaching
results still influence politics and social life of California and
Nevada ; men still divide upon issues which began in the depths
of the Comstock a quarter of a century ago.

In 1864 the ore deposits were worked out, and rayless gloom
settled over the Comstock. The Bank of California, through its
resident agent, William Sharon, had been making advances on
mills and allowing the mine owners to overdraw their accounts.
The security in both cases was only undiscovered ore, and if the
lode were really exhausted the whole camp was ruined. Ralston,
the head of the bank, visited Virginia City in 1865, and agreed
with Sharon that the time had arrived to gain control of the dis-
trict. Loans, instead of being lessened, were increased, to what
. extent is not known, but it was afterward said by Sharon that at
one time before 1870 $3,000,000 of the $5,000,000 capital of the
bank was on the Comstock. In June, 1867, the famous mill and
mining company was formed by W. C. Ralston, William Sharon,
Alvinza Hayward, D. O. Mills, Thomas Bell, Charles Bonner,
William E. Barron, and Thomas Sunderland. It was the strongest
possible combination of capitalists and mining men ; its business
was to manage the mills and mines that had now fallen into the

NEVADA SILVER. 749

hands of the Bank of California through foreclosure and through
manipulations of stock. It also aimed at securing control of
others, and ultimately at directing the output of the entire lode.

There are, let me explain, two systems of handling ores. A
mine can own its mills, or it can send to a custom mill. On the
Comstock the mine-owners^ experiments in building mills had
proved disastrous. The independent millman was a more efficient
ore-worker than a salaried superintendent. But the Comstock
system did not secure the permanent welfare of the outsiders.
What Prof. Raymond calls " the piratical policy of gutting the
mines " was carried on in bonanza times at such a shocking rate
of speed that it unduly stimulated the building of more mills,
and then left the mines totally unable to sustain any of them. It
is not surprising that the Union Mill and Mining syndicate were
soon able to gather in seventeen of the leading mills and to keep
them running on ore, while outside mills could not make a living.
It became evident that the substitution of Sharon for Stewart as
the leading personal force on the Comstock was in reality the
most complete revolution the sagebrush land had yet known.

Nevada had long " talked railroad." Legislatures, Territorial
and State, had granted many charters, but after a few abortive
efforts the last of these haphazard schemes was dead. Sharon,
the man of affairs, sent for James, of the Sierra Nevada Mine.
The following conversation is said to have occurred :

" Can you run a railroad from Virginia City to the Carson
River?"

"Yes."

" Do it at once."

Within thirty days the winding course, twenty-one miles long,
was surveyed ; graders were at work ; rails were on the way ;
men were hewing ties in the Sierras ; an obedient Legislature had
passed a new charter and had authorized 8500,000 in bonds as a
bonus to the road ; lastly, the mines had subscribed $700,000. It
was a busy month, even on the Comstock. Extended to a junc-
tion of the Southern Pacific at Reno, the Virginia and Truckee
Railroad cost about $3,500,000. The maximum grade is 116 feet to
the mile ; the curves of the track in the thirteen miles and a half
of mountain distance make seventeen full circles, and the rise is
1,000 feet.

Sharon had put Chinese graders at work, but the miners'
unions of Gold Hill and Virginia City marched out a thousand
strong. The sheriff halted them, and they sat down on the rocks
to hear him read the riot act. That ended, they rose with shouts
of Homeric laughter, gave three cheers for the sheriff, and moved
resistlessly on the graders' camps. The Chinese " ran like rab-
bits " up the gulches. The miners told the boss to quit work, and.

750 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

marching back, sent word to Sharon that no Chinamen would be
allowed in the district under penalty of a strike that would shut
down every mine on the lode. In twenty-four hours the Chinese
were dismissed and white graders took their places. Defeated
here, Sharon silently made ready for the real labor conflict that
he foresaw. It began when the first trains entered Virginia
City. The fine old silver freighter, in Nevada slang the " mule
skinner " ; the bull-puncher walking sedately beside his oxen ;
even that aristocrat of the fraternity, the lordly " silk-popper,^'
flicking his playful whiplash at the leaders as he drove his stage-
coach down Geiger's grade — these, all these, after fierce, useless
struggles, disappeared into the unrailroaded distance. " Sharon^s
iron mules," as they said, " had crowded them off."'

Meanwhile the total bullion yield of the lode, which was $16,-
000,000 in 1865, continued to decrease till in 1869 it was only
$7,500,000. None knew better than Sharon and his associates that
although borrasca had put them into possession, a few more
years of borrasca would utterly smash their fortunes. There had
been in all eleven bonanzas up to 1869, but now all were
" worked out," and the ordinary ore in the mines not only grew
poorer and scantier on the lower levels, but was harder to work.
Everything was in eclipse. The miners were following a mere
stringer of ore on the nine-hundred foot level of Yellow Jacket
that gave Sharon a little hope, but troubles with the miners and
disastrous fires intensified the situation. By 1870 some of the
members of the syndicate began to weaken ; it was openly said
that the Comstock had paid its last dividend ; the cities of the
lode were trembling on the verge of panic.

The famous John P. Jones, since United States Senator, was
superintendent at Crown Point, and, like all the rest, was vainly
looking for ore. The stock fell to two dollars a share, making the
total value of the mine, with its costly plant, only $24,000, and
assessments went unpaid. Late in 1870 Jones found an ore body,
and, joining forces with a discontented member of the bank syn-
dicate, wrested control of the mine from Sharon before he knew
of the bonanza, which in eighteen months more raised the stock-
market value of Crown Point to $22,000,000. They also organized
the Nevada Mill and Mining Company in direct opposition to
their old associates. Nevertheless, Sharon's lesser defeat only
emphasized a greater victory. His interests in other mines
doubled and quadrupled in value, empty treasuries were filled
by outside investors, and search for new ore bodies was prose-
cuted with renewed energy.

The story of the rise of Mackay and Fair reads like a leaf from
the Arabian Nights. Like Jones, they had been poor and un-
known, working for daily wages. Associated with Flood and

NEVADA SILVEB. 751

O'Brien, they discovered the Big Bonanza, the richest treasure of
the Comstock. Mackay outranks the rest of the group, because
his rise was more remarkable and his grasp of circumstances
more firm. From toiling in the lower levels he rose to be super-
intendent of one of the smaller Gold Hill mines. Like Fair, he
saved every dollar and put it into stocks under his own control.
Before long he was interested in " Kentuck," a rich little mine,
and it began to pay dividends again. His own statement is that
for years he had labored with all the powers of mind and body
to make himself " master and manager of the greatest mines in
the world." Kentuck gave him the start. Mackay and Fair,
now associated in every enterprise, ventured to make a fight for
the control of Hale and Norcross, which they acquired in March,
1869, its stock, like everything else on the lode, being greatly de-
pressed. Fair, leaving Ophir, of which he had long been super-
intendent, soon put Hale and Norcross on the dividend list. Old
Comstockers still praise " Uncle Jimmy's fine nose for ore." The
mining skill of Fair, as well as of Mackay, rose at times into the
domains of genius. Before the close of 1869 they controlled Sav-
age and Bullion. This proved a bad affair, and nearly ruined
them. The Bank of California millionaires began to feel relieved
in mind. In a year or two, they said, Mackay will be back in the
face of a drift, at four dollars a day, and Fair can be made useful
somewhere on a superintendent's salary. But the Mackay firm,
still convinced of the reasonableness of their system of explora-
tion, concentrated their last resources upon a long-neglected por-
tion of the lode.

The Comstock mines begin at the north with Sierra Nevada,
3,300 feet on the lode ; coming south. Union Consolidated follows,
600 feet ; then Mexican, the same size ; then Ophir, 675 feet. All
these were being worked on a large scale. Next came a group of
small neglected claims whose titles were in dispute, 1,310 feet in
all, followed by Best and Belcher, Gould and Curry, Savage, and
Hale and Norcross, which completed the famous north-end, or
Virginia City, group of mines. The neglected section, 600 feet of
which was afterward known as California, and 710 feet as Con-
solidated Virginia, was worth only $40,000 on the stock market.
As Mackay and his associates bought, the stock rose ; the three-
fourths interest they desired cost $100,000. They took control in
January, 1871, and began mining operations, sinking a new and
large shaft and pushing a drift north from Gould and Curry,
nearly 1,200 feet below the surface, by a special contract with the
owners of the mines crossed.

One day Fair discovered a slight change in the barren rock
and determined to follow a narrow seam hardly thicker than a
knife blade. Sometimes it was only a film of clay, but occasion-

752

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ally a pin point of ore was seen. For hundreds of feet the miners
drifted beside this slender clew. Fair became ill, and the work-
men lost it, but on his return he picked up the ore thread. They
were now a hundred feet in Consolidated Virginia ground, and
the price of the stock began to break, when suddenly the stringer
widened to a vein of sixty-dollar ore. In October, on the 1,167-
foot level, the top of the "Big Bonanza" was uncovered; the
drift went 148 feet through solid ore 54 feet wide. The great
kidney-shaped mass extended downward below the 1,500-foot
level, and widened to 150 feet and even to 300 feet. The ore grew

Go OLD AND Curry Miners ready for Work.

richer and richer as the men advanced. Nothing like it had ever
been known in the history of mining.

Here, in the heart of the Comstock, hundreds of naked miners
were soon hewing down the ore. On all sides of a pyramidal
mass of timber which grew larger every minute were twinkling
stars of lamps. Everything in the bonanza was sent to the mill
as fast as it was quarried out, and some of it was so rich that
waste rock was added to aid amalgamation. An average block
of ore three feet square contained from two hundred to five hun-
dred dollars in silver and gold. The richest spot was near the
California line, where clusters of malleable silver in coiled wires
occurred beside shining stephanite, pale- green and steel-gray
chlorides, and lustrous black silver glance, besides masses of the
most exquisite crystals of every color known to the mineralogist.

In six years Consolidated Virginia milled 682,355 tons of ore,
producing $60,732,882 ; California, in four years, milled 486,043
tons, producing $43,727,837. The total yield of the Big Bonanza
had been nearly $105,000,000, and more than $73,000,000 had been

NEVADA SILVER.

■53

paid in dividends. Extreme haste was necessary in extracting
the ore, so great was the danger of a disaster. Mackay and Fair
hardly rested day or night till the bonanza was exhausted. Out-
side, all the exchanges of the world were fighting over Corn-
stocks. The two mines, rated in 1871 at $40,000, were rated in
1875 at $160,000,000. Thirty mines on the lode were now valued
at about $400,000,000. So much money was withdrawn from
legitimate business and flung into the stock market that when
the inevitable crash came and the Bank of California failed,
every industry of the Pacific coast was checked for years.

In the midst of the bonanza excitement Virginia City was
swept by a great fire, the culmination of a long series of mining
disasters, and in a few hours a territory half a mile square was a
mass of ruins. The mining companies lost acres of supplies and
lumber; Ophir, Consolidated Virginia, and California had all
their buildings burned; two thousand stores, hotels, lodging
houses, and dwellings were destroyed. The very next day men
were at work in the ruins, on the rugged hillsides, in the ravines,
by the monstrous waste dumps, clearing away, rebuilding on a
still more massive scale the giant machine shops, hoisting works,
and mills. The two bonanza
mines lost $1,500,000, and
yet they managed to keep
up regular dividends at the
rate of $1,080,000 a month !

All these years one in-
domitable mill owner and
engineer, Adolph Sutro,had
been fighting single-handed
the men who controlled the
Comstock. Away back in
1860 he had advised a deep
adit, and in 1865 he obtained
a franchise for the Sutro
Tunnel Company, with Sen-
ator Stewart as president.
The mining companies
bound themselves to pay
perpetual royalties after the
completion of the tunnel.
Congress, assuming the reg-
ulation of the immense
mining interests involved,
passed an act which, still further protecting the enterprise, made
the very titles of the mining companies dependent upon the ful-
fillment of their obligations. Large subscriptions were made, and

Adolph Sutro.

754 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it was expected that the bonds would sell readily. But early in
1867 the Bank of California syndicate began to perceive that the
Sutro Tunnel, delivering ore at the Carson River mills and mining
supplies nearly two thousand feet below the surface, might very
easily destroy their control of the Comstock and its dependent
industries. Therefore they declared war, and opened hostilities.
Stewart resigned ; subscriptions were all withdrawn ; shrewd law-
yers and politicians were employed to obtain the repeal of the
franchise and of the act of Congress ; financiers in New York and
Europe were warned not to touch Sutro bonds.

Years after Sutro said in conversation : " Ah, it was a hard
thing to have so many old friends in San Francisco and Virginia
City actually afraid to be seen talking to me after the fiat had
gone forth that I must be crushed at any cost. But I kept
on fighting. There was one time, I remember, when I had to
go to Washington to save my interests from destruction. I
had no money. All the profits of my mill had been swallowed
up. But I had a lot in a little California town, and I sold it
for two hundred dollars, and with that I managed to get to
Washington. I stayed there somehow that winter, poor as I
was, and fought my enemies, and came out ahead. But their
newspapers said I had bribed Congress— out of my two hundred
dollars ! "

After making the most strenuous efforts Sutro failed to place
his bonds. In 1869, turning for help to the working miners, he
delivered a remarkable address in Virginia City. Large cartoons
illustrated his bitter eloquence. One showed Bill Sharon's Big
Woodpile, another Bill Sharon's Crooked Railroad, a third the
then recent fire in Yellow Jacket, where forty-two lives had been
lost that might have been saved had the Sutro Tunnel existed. He
appealed to the miners' unions for stock subscriptions with which
to begin work. " Will the people of Nevada see me crushed out
now ? . . . Come in together. Let two thousand laboring men
pay in ten dollars apiece a month, and insure the construction of
the tunnel, carrying with it the control of the mines. . . . From
dependents you will be masters." With such sentences he ad-
dressed the working miners of the Comstock, who actually raised
fifty thousand dollars in a few weeks, and on October 19th reso-
lute Sutro broke ground in his great undertaking. Nevertheless
the tunnel was steadily opposed by the California and Nevada
Senators and by nearly all the mining men on the Comstock.
The history of the long struggle is embalmed in the pages of the
Congressional Record and innumerable public documents. Sutro
bonds were finally sold, but the difficulties of the undertaking
proved greater than had been expected, and the period of the
bonanzas passed before the lode was reached.

NEVADA SILVER.

755

The progress of the work was dramatic. The face of the rock
"showed a temperature of 114°." Two or three hours was all that
the strongest men could work. Endurance was strained to its
utmost capacity. Man after man dropped down on the rocky
floor and was carried to the surface babbling and incoherent.
This strenuous toil continued till July 8, 1878, when Sutro him-
self, half naked like one of his miners, labored at the front, and
finally crawled through a jagged hole into the Savage drift,
" overcome with excitement," as one of the newspaper accounts

, 'SV.WDX.

said. What had been contemptuously called "Sutro's coyote
hole " thus became an accomplished fact.

Through such passionate conflicts as those described the
heroes of the Comstock continued making workshops, mills,
machinery; building two marvelously picturesque towns along
the lode, and hiding underneath the greater creation — the real
City of the Comstock. Here, in deeps below deeps, are three-
mile streets, mysterious labyrinths, water torrents, burning
heats, perils numberless, legends that might serve to fill a vol-
ume. Time was when twelve thousand miners toiled in these
vast galleries, swinging picks, hammering drills, raising timbers
to place, climbing to the stopes, breaking down the ore, pushing
lines of loaded cars to stations on the hoisting shafts. They were
superb athletes, with muscles evenly developed by their labor.
A few of them remain, scraping out the ore left in older work-
ings and maintaining to the fullest degree the fine old-time pride
of their craft. For sixteen years, however, the mines have been

756 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in borrasca, and they may never again pay a profit to their
owners. Still, with faith and endurance that are sublime, the
heroes of the Comstock cling to its fallen fortunes, and continue
the search for new bonanzas.

[Editorial Note. — The full story of the mines, as illustrated by the great Comstock
lode, prepared by Mr. Shinu, will constitute the next volume of the Story of the West Series,
edited by Mr. Ripley Hitchcock, to be published by D. Appleton & Co. in October. Our
readers need hardly be told that Mr Shinn has special qualifications in his familiar acquaint-
ance with the subject and his rare literary skill, which will impart special interest and value
to this work ]

A MEASURE OF MENTAL CAPACITY.

By Dk. EMIL KEAEPELIN,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AT HEIDELBERG.

{From an Address delivered in behalf of the Heidelheryer Frauenverein.)

WE are able to calculate almost precisely the amount of work
any given machine — as a steam engine or an electric-light-
ing plant — is capable of performing, and the amount of fuel that
will be required to develop the calculated power. When we
come to man we are much less certain, although a skillful army
surgeon can tell almost at a glance whether the recruit standing
before him is strong enough to meet the requirements of the
service, and there are machines in the market that will inform
us in what time we can pull a given weight to a given height.
But we have no measure that we can apply to the capacity for
mental work, and no units of mental valuation. The most we
can do is to compare the intellectual capacity of one man with
that of another by the mental results they have severally achieved
in practice. When we wish to test the fitness of a candidate for
a position of trust or responsibility, we subject him to an exami-
nation, which relates, however, mostly to what he has learned,
and from which we guess in a rather indirect way what he may
be capable of doing in the future, and with relation to other
matters than those on which we examine him ; and the test is very
often deceptive : for those who have made the most brilliant
displays in the examination frequently fail in capacity to make
practical application of what they have learned only theoretic-
ally ; or they fail by irregularity, frequent and marked changes
in their disposition to work, want of endurance, or too great de-
pendence on external conditions, of which the examination gives
no prediction. Such efforts as have been made to obviate this
difficulty have hitherto failed to meet their object.

It has, however, recently become possible to reach fairly ap-
proximate conclusions concerning mental capacity, such as other-

A MEASURE OF MENTAL CAPACITY, -j^-j

wise even a long personal acquaintance with the candidate could
not afford, and to determine with considerable exactness the
working power of individuals in simple mental tasks. The meas-
ure is afforded by determining the number of small, similar prob-
lems resolved by the subject in a given time — such, for example,
as numbering letters, reading, the learning by heart of series of
numbers or syllables, and the continuous addition of columns of
numbers. In the last-mentioned method the person under trial
is set to adding figures ranged one under another in a book
printed expressly for that purpose, for a considerable time, with-
out stopping — under some circumstances, for several hours.
When the sum reaches a hundred, the hundred is simply car-
ried on and added to the excess in units. A bell sounds every
five minutes, when the candidate draws a line after the last-added
number. At the end of the trial it is easy to determine how many
numbers the person can add every five minutes.

The candidates — all of nearly equal degrees of advancement,
and of about the same age — varied greatly in the speed of their
execution, the more rapid ones adding two and a half times as
many numbers in five minutes as the slower ones. This proves
that facility in reckoning is largely peculiar to the individual.
Accuracy, however, was not considered. If that had been
brought in, some of the results might have been materially dif-
ferent.

It further appeared that the speed of the additions increased
regularly with each effort, but not equally with the different
subjects, so that it was possible sometimes for a slower calculator
eventually to pass ahead of the next quicker one. This improve-
ment in .facility was, however, subject to limitation, and is less in
each repetition — as, for example, twenty-five per cent from the
first trial to the second ; fifteen per cent from the second to the
third ; and about six per cent from the third to the fourth — till a
point is finally reached when there is no further increase. This
capacity for improvement through practice appears also to be an
individual quality. The permanence of the acquisitions obtained
through it has not been sufficiently investigated ; but they seem
in the end gradually to wear out, and the rapidity of the wearing-
out process to vary with the persons.

Of an opposite character to this is the far more rapidly in-
creasing effect of fatigue, which always causes a diminution of
efficiency, however much it may at first be temporarily balanced
by the improvement through exercise. When it has once gained
the upper hand, a speedy and unintermitted decline of efficiency
ensues. The time when this shall take place depends on the
degree of capacity already reached, the personal peculiarity, and
casual influences.

758 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The differences in the susceptibility of different persons to
fatigue are very interesting. Every person, as a rule, jjossesses a
course of efficiency peculiar to him, which works itself out in the
same manner during any particular period of labor. Some dis-
play in single efforts first an increase and then after some time a
decrease of efficiency; they are least readily fatigued. Others,
registering a depression of efficiency after the first quarter of an
hour, betray a very great susceptibility to fatigue. All the tran-
sitions are observable between these two forms, but each individ-
ual generally follows the same course according to his personal
peculiarity.

The susceptibility to fatigue is observed in all possible exami-
nation tasks, and may therefore be considered to represent a bot-
tom principle of the individual personality, which, while it may
be influenced within certain limits, as a general rule measurably
determines the capacity of men for work.

Other means of measuring the capacity of a subject are af-
forded by the ease with which he is diverted from his task, or his
susceptibility to disturbing influences from without and from
within; his elasticity, or the readiness with which he recovers
from the effects of fatigue or diversion ; and the way he is affected
by taking food, physical exercise, and the time he has for sleep.
In each and all of these fields of inquiry the result obtained
has to be complemented finally by the estimation of the quali-
tative value of the work accomplished.

We may infer from this passing review that it is actually pos-
sible to express important properties of mental personality in
measurable, generally comparable, determinations. But we are
still far from being able to apply such measurements to the pur-
poses of daily life. Yet, while we fail if we attempt to draw cer-
tain lessons from the matured, complicated organization of the
grown-up man, the simpler, still growing mental equipment of the
child affords a more fruitful field for study and is more subject to
our influence.

The question then presents itself for investigation of the men-
tal endurance of our school children. The school requires its
pupils to perform daily a specified amount of mental work, while
it is really not clearly known whether the childish brain is actu-
ally able to fulfill the demand without suffering lasting damage.
The young men I experimented upon, whose facility in addition
fell off at the beginning of the second hour, had already had their
working powers exercised and tested by responding to the demand
of the school and of the university. Against them was a child
two years old, who gave plain evidences of weariness after only a
few minutes of fixed attention. Valuable researches on this sub-
ject have been made by Prof. Burgerstein, of Vienna, who com-

A MEASURE OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 759

posed four series of problems in addition and multiplication, the
written solution of each of which would require at least ten min-
utes. He gave them, mostly during the earlier school hours, to
pupils of different classes, between eleven and thirteen years of
age, so that the pupils would have to make four calculations ten
minutes long. Five minutes^ pause was given between each prob-
lem and the next. The whole experiment thus lasted fifty-five
minutes, or about the usual length of a school hour. One hun-
dred and sixty-two pupils took part in the exercises, and the re-
sults were so nearly uniform that their trustworthiness can not
be doubted. The first result was a notable increase of facility in
the several sections of the experiment. The number of numbers
counted up was about forty per cent larger in the last section
than in the first. It was found, however, that not all the pupils
shared equally in this advance, but that about forty-three per
cent of them showed an evident sinking of efi&ciency at the end
of the hour. The differences in personal susceptibility to fatigue
previously observed among adults was also expressed here. This,
however, is only a small part of the real results of the experiment.
Prof. Burgerstein took pains to determine the number of mistakes
committed by the pupils and the corrections they made, in order to
estimate the value of the work accomplished in the several sec-
tions. Both appeared to increase from the very first, and much
more rapidly than the speed of the work. It follows hence in-
contestably that the evidences of fatigue in the children under
examination make themselves evident with increasing force from
the second section of the experiment, and that in the majority of
the children it is only outwardly concealed by the likewise in-
creasing skill. The quantity of work rose, but its value under-
went a constant depreciation. Similar results were obtained by
the Russian Sikorski from dictation exercises, and by Hopfner in
Berlin from dictations to boys nine years old.

The general result of these still too limited investigations of
the susceptibility of school children to fatigue is the incontestable
fact that the demands which the schools make upon the mental
capacity of their pupils are far in excess of what they should be.

Yet this work is never continuous, but is interrupted by numer-
ous pauses for rest, which doubtless have considerable influence
on the progress of fatigue. The results of Burgerstein and Hopf-
ner's experiments would have been much more unsatisfactory if
brief pauses had not been interpolated between the different work-
ing spells. The remarkable fact was brought out in my experi-
ments with adults in addition, in which pauses of ten minutes
were interposed between the half -hour tasks, that the efficiency
immediately after each pause was much higher than at any time
before. This result is explained simply by the different velocities-

760

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with which the influence of practice and that of fatigue are lost.
Fatigue passes away, comparatively very quickly, while the gain
from practice, as already mentioned, is plainly demonstrable after
weeks and even months. Thus it happens that with intervals of
days or weeks each succeeding series of experiments begins with
a quickness in calculation which is much greater than the highest
achievement of the former experiment. The same takes place
likewise after the short breathing pauses, as long as these pauses
are sufficient to overcome in a measure the fatigue that has
begun.

Since through the interpolation of pauses from work the other-
wise inevitably sinking efficiency is kept at a nearly even height,
the length of the periods of rest ought to be so adjusted that the
injurious effects of fatigue should never acquire a predominance
over the facility acquired by practice. If the experiment, how-
ever, is carried too far, the short pauses will no longer counter-
balance the effect of fatigue, and the capacity to work will become
null. For this reason the resting spells, if they are really to ac-
complish their purpose, should not only be much larger than they
are now in our schools, but should succeed one another at shorter
intervals and should be increased as the teaching is protracted.

The picture which we have to compose on the basis of the ex-
periments under consideration is a gloomy one. While a quarter
of an hour of simple work is enough to develop the first signs of
fatigue in a twelve-year-old pupil, lessons of several hours' dura-
tion, interrupted only by a few short pauses, should soon lead to
complete mental exhaustion. The demand on attention is much
too long, the breathing spells are much too short, for healthy effi-
ciency to be maintained only remotely.

The picture is, however, too darkly drawn. What I have
sketched could take place only if the schools attained what they
are striving for with all their means. Kind Nature has provided
a safety valve for the salvation of our growing youth, the value
of which can not be too highly estimated — inattention. Only by
effort, and only for a short time, can we force a measurable con-
centration of the full force of attention upon the solution of the
problem; care is therefore always taken in the school that the
time of the session shall not be regarded wholly as a time of
work. Burgerstein, indeed, thought that through the pauses he
introduced the relation between effort and relaxation might be
imitated in a regulated school hour. But these experiments seem
to me to show to a certainty that our children would necessarily
fall into mental disorder if they were really forced to work with
full attention for forty minutes in each school hour. That, in
fact, only a few are seriously injured by overwork in school is
due to those interruptions to study and those incidents in teach-

A MEASURE OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 761

ing that give the pupils happy opportunities to loosen the reins of
their tired attention and forget the hard present. " One can com-
pel children to sit and be still," says Burgerstein, " but he must
not mistake ; they will still in many cases take mental rest, or
make a change for themselves, and not follow the course of the
teaching if they are tired." Hence arises the unexpected conse-
quence that, under the present extension of instruction, tedious
teachers are a necessity.

To a certain extent the dangers of mental overwork have been
recognized for a long time. All those efforts to introduce phys-
ical exercises into the school hours have in view, to a greater or
less extent, the defense of the childish brain against the imminent
dangers of a one-sided tension by alternating mental and muscu-
lar exertion. Gymnastic and movement exercises, manual train-
ing, and singing and drawing, to a certain extent, are intended to
furnish rest-pauses for recovery from mental weariness and the
gradual restoration of the previous efficiency. For this purpose
such have been interposed at intervals to relieve the strictly men-
tal work.

The physical exercises are doubtless of considerable value
toward the complete building up of the personality, but they
must be regarded as relaxations only within certain limits. It is,
at any rate, fundamentally false to regard physical effort as in
any way a suitable preparation for mental labor. Protracted ex-
periments, pursued under my direction, have given the result that
a simple walk of from one to two hours diminishes the mental
efficiency in adults at least as much as about an hour^s work in
addition. The same is the case to a more limited extent with
much less important bodily efforts. It is well known to pupils
and teachers that the greater the interval of active play, the
longer time is required for collecting the faculties before return-
ing to mental work. From these experiments has arisen the de-
mand that physical exercises should not be regarded in the plan
of teaching as relaxations ; and the demand for hard mental work
should not be imposed on the pupil till after a rest from them.

By far the most important compensation for all effects of
fatigue is sleep. Everybody, even the man mentally most inert,
develops when awake a mass of mental effort which he can not
afford continuously without suffering. We need, therefore, regu-
larly recurring periods in which the consumption of mental force
shall be slower than the continuous replacement. The lower the
degree to which the activity of the brain sinks, then, the more
rapid and more complete the recovery.

The mental vigor of most men is usually maintained at a cer-
tain height for the longest time in the forenoon. The evidences
of fatigue come on later at this time of day than in the evening,

VOL. XLIX. — 69

762 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

when the store of force in our brain has been already considera-
bly drawn upon by the whole day's work. If no recovery by
sleep is enjoyed, or it is imperfect, the consequences will invaria-
bly make themselves evident the next day in a depression of men-
tal vigor as well as in a rise in the personal susceptibility to
fatigue. The rapidity with which one of the persons I experi-
mented upon could perform his tasks in addition sank about a
third after a night journey by railway with insufficient sleep.
Another experimenter could detect the effects of keeping himself
awake all night in a gradual decrease of vigor lasting through
four days. This observation was all the more surprising, because
the subject was not conscious of the long duration of the disturb-
ance, and was first made aware of it incidentally by the results
of continued measurements on the causes of the manifestations
of fatigue.

These experiments admonish us to give special attention to
the question of sleep with men who work with their minds.
This is of more especial importance for the growing generation,
because the susceptibility to fatigue, and consequently the need
of sleep, are much greater in the youthful brain than in that of
adults. The average duration of sleep has been studied by Axel
Key in Swedish pupils of different ages. He found that it ranges
from nine hours in children ten years old down to seven hours in
pupils of eighteen years. Children ten years old were found who
slept only six, and some of seventeen or eighteen years who had
to satisfy themselves with four hours ! — a result which is really
astonishing. Axel Key is certainly right when he assumes that
the mass of Swedish school children of all ages are daily deprived
of one or two hours of their needed sleep, to say nothing of those
unfortunate ones who can sleep only half the time or less which
is required for their healthy mental and bodily development.

The amounts of sleep required by different men are very va-
rious, for they are dependent on the deepness of the slumber.
There are persons who sleep so soundly that a surprisingly short
time spent in sleeping is enough for them. On the other hand,
we know that for many idiosyncrasies a length of sleep which is
quite enough for the average of men is much too short.

Besides sleep, which limits the waste for a certain time and
favors the restoration of what has been consumed, we need for
the maintenance of our working strength the assimilation of food.
By means of food the substances are introduced to the tissues
which they require for their constant renewal. Sleep alone can
indeed retard for a long time the continued destruction of the
organs by the processes of life, as it does in the hibernation of
animals ; but there comes a point at last when only the introduc-
tion of fresh restorative matter can assure the continued main-

SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE. 763

tenance of the body. This necessity comes more speedily upon
workingmen than on men of leisure, earlier upon children than
upon mature persons. An infant at the breast could be entirely
deprived of food for only a short time without serious harm,
.while a sound man, with other conditions favorable, can bear a
privation of several days.

A time of several hours passes between the taking of food and
its complete utilization in the body. During this time, especially
after hearty meals, the mental vigor is diminished in a marked
degree. Later it gradually rises, and the susceptibility to fatigue
diminishes.

When now we look back at the conditions we have discovered
that control mental vigor, we conclude that our children are ex-
posed by the extent and arrangement of study -work in the schools
to great perils for their mental and physical development. The
questions that press upon us on this matter are of such impor-
tance that we all have reason to give them our full, undivided
attention. We are only at the beginning of a real hygiene of
mental labor, but the results we have obtained in this research,
fully indicating the nature and operation of the dangers, point
with equal clearness to the character of the preventive and reme-
dial measures which should be sought and applied.

SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE.

By Prof. COLLIER COBB.

LONG before the sciences were pressing their claim to equal
rank with ancient learning at Harvard, before Jefferson had
seen the establishment of the University of Virginia working
under the system of elective studies which he had planned, or
before the magnificently endowed institutions of technology were
giving what Herbert Spencer regards as knowledge of most
worth, we find the beginnings of these things in the newly estab-
lished university of a State that could boast of only two schools
which taught more than the three R's and the very rudiments of
the English language.

This modern plan of instruction offered by the University of
North Carolina more than one hundred years ago was the work
of a committee of six. Two of this committee were graduates of
Princeton, one a graduate and ex-professor of the University of
Pennsylvania, two had been students of Harvard, but their edu-
cation at Cambridge had been interrupted by the Revolutionary
War, and the sixth was an eminent lawyer. The names of these
men were Samuel McCorkle, David Stone, Alfred Moore, Samuel

764

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Ashe, Hugh Williamson, and John Hay. The course planned by
this committee in 1792 gave great prominence to the scientific
studies, especially those which could be applied to the arts. The

report further recommended the
purchase of apparatus for experi-
mental philosophy and astronomy,
in which must be included a set of
globes, barometer, thermometer, mi-
croscope, telescope, quadrant, pris-
matic glass, electrical machine, and
an air-pump. The ancient classics
were made elective, the degree of
Bachelor of Arts being obtainable
without the study of either Latin or
Greek. In 1800, however, Latin was
made a required study, and an elec-
tion allowed between French and
Greek ; and in 1804 Greek was added
to the required studies. It is re-
markable that this scheme, adopted
in 1792, is almost identical with that
adopted by Congress for the col-
leges to be formed under what is
known as the Agricultural and Me-
chanical College Land Act of 1862.
But its interest for us to-day lies in
the fact that it led to the establish-
ment of the first astronomical observatory in the United States,
to the first geological survey by public authority in America, and
to the first equipment for the teaching of electricity.

The men chosen by the trustees to begin this work were David
Ker, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin ; Charles W. Harriss,
a Princeton man of the class of 1789, Professor of Mathematics ;
and Samuel A. Holmes, also an alumnus of Princeton. Mr. Har-
riss was succeeded in his professorship by Joseph Caldwell,
Princeton, 1791, who was a tutor at Princeton at the time of his
appointment to the professorship in North Carolina.

To Dr. Caldwell we owe the realization of the hopes of the
original committee, the ultimate establishment of the observatory,
the geological survey, and the electrical laboratory. A letter
written by Prof. Harriss from Chapel Hill, April 10, 1795, shows
something of the spirit which Dr. Caldwell was to find in the
young university. In it this Princeton man says : " The constitu-
tion of this college is on a more liberal plan than that of any
other in America, and by the amendments which I think it will
receive at the next meeting of the trustees its usefulness will

Joseph Caldwell.

From the collection of Hon. Kemp

P. Battle.

SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE.

765

probably be much promoted. The notion that true learning con-
sists rather in exercising the reasoning faculties and laying up a
store of useful knowledge, than in overloading the memory with
words of dead languages, is becoming daily more prevalent. It
is hard to deny a young gentleman the honor of a college,
after he has with much labor and painful attention acquired a
competent knowledge of the sciences, of composing and speak-

The Old Telescopes as they are To-day in the Mitchell Obsebvatoby.
Drawn by E. L. Harris.

ing with propriety in his own language, and has conned the first
principles of whatever might render him useful or creditable
in the world, merely because he could not read a language two
thousand years old." This letter might well be dated from
Boston a century later, for it was nearly a century before such
ideas of the essentials of an education were gaining ground with
our foremost educators. The literary societies established in
1795 took mottoes in keeping with the spirit of the day, that of
the Dialectic Society being '* Love of Virtue and Science," and

766

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the motto of the Philanthropic Society, "Virtue, Liberty, and
Science."

The first gift to the university, other than lands and money,
came from the ladies of Raleigh and Newbern, who contributed a

pair of globes, a compass,
and a quadrant. The first
student, HintonJames,chose
as the subjects of his senior
f orensics, " The Uses of the
Sun," "The Commerce of
Britain," and " The Motions
of the Earth."

The young Professor of
Mathematics was made pres-
ident of the university in
1804. His prosperity cul-
minated in 1824, when the
financial condition of the
university was so good as to
allow the trustees to send
him to Europe for the pur-
chase of scientific apparatus
and books, appropriating
six thousand dollars for the
purpose.

Soon after his return
from Europe President Cald-
well planned an observa-
tory, which he built with his own money. The building was
finished in 1827, and in the observatory he placed the instruments
which he had brought from Europe. These were a meridian
transit telescope, made by Simms, of London; an altitude and
azimuth telescope, also made by Simms ; a telescope for observa-
tions on the earth and sky, made by Dolland, of London ; and an
astronomical clock with a mercurial pendulum, made by Moli-
neux, of London. To these stationary instruments were added a
sextant, made by Wilkinson, of London; a portable reflecting
circle, made by Harris, of London ; and a Hadley's quadrant.

Before the completion of the observatory building, the clock
and meridian transit were set up and used in the library of the
university, which was also Prof. Caldwell's lecture room. Here
began, in 1825, the first systematic observations upon the heavens
made in the United States. Dr. Caldwell was assisted by Profs.
Mitchell and Phillips, and their first work was to find the approxi-
mate values of the longitude and the latitude of the building in
which they worked. Mitchell was a Yale man of the class of

Elisha Mitchell.
After portrait by Jocelyn.

SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE.

767

1813, a native of Connecticut, and a descendant of John Eliot, the
apostle to the Indians. Phillips was an Englishman, and a son of
a clergyman of the Church of England.

Upon its completion in 1827 the instruments were moved into
ihe observatory, where observations were made by Dr. Caldwell
and his colleagues. The materials used in the building were very
poor ; the bricks in the wall soon crumbled, and it became neces-
sary, soon after the death of Dr. Caldwell, in January, 1835, to
remove the instruments. The building then went rapidly to
decay, and fell a victim to fire in 1838.

Observations were, however, continued by Dr. Elisha Mitchell
in the attic of the large wooden building which he used as a
chemical and metallurgical laboratory. In each end of the attic
were two large windows, and in the roof eight others, four on
either side. These observations were continued until the summer
of 1857, when Prof. Mitchell lost his life upon the highest peak
east of the Mississippi River, the mountain which bears his name.
By his observations in 1835, 1838, 1844, and 185G he had estab-
lished the fact that the
peaks of the Black Moun-
tains in North Carolina
are the highest east of
the Mississippi.

Prof. Phillips has told
us that in order " to study
the constellations and to
show them to his pupils.
Dr. Caldwell built on the
top of his own residence
a platform surrounded
by a railing. Here he
would sit night after
night, pointing out to
the seniors, taken in
squads of three or four,
the outlines of the con-
stellations and their
principal stars, and the
highway of the planets
and the moon. Dr. Cald-
well also built in his gar-
den, where they still stand, two pillars of brick, that their eastern
and western faces, carefully ground into the same plane, might
mark the true meridian. Near these pillars stood a stone pillar,
some five feet high, bearing upon its top a sundial for marking
the hours of the day."

James Phillips.
After portrait by W. G. Brown.

768

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Before the coming of Mitchell, Princeton thought and Prince-
ton methods had prevailed in the University of North Carolina

to the exclusion of all oth-
ers. But in 1817, Denison
Olmsted, a classmate of Mit-
cheirs at Yale, was elected
Professor of Chemistry and
Geology. Messrs. Mitchell
and Olmsted were recom-
mended to Judge William
Gaston, then a member of
Congress, by the Rev. Sereno
Dwight, chaplain of the
United States Senate, as
young men who were likely
to become prominent scien-
tists ; and the trustees, upon
this recommendation, and
upon that of Hon. George E.
Badger, who had been their
classmate at Yale, offered
them chairs in the univer-
sity.

In 1821 Olmsted laid be-
fore the Board of Internal
Improvements of North Carolina a proposition to undertake a
geological and mineralogical survey of the State. This letter is
preserved in the executive
office at Raleigh. The
board approved, and pre-
sented the matter to the
Legislature. But the Leg-
islature took no notice of
the matter until two years
later, when the proposi-
tion was renewed. The sur-
vey was authorized by act
of the General Assembly,
ratified December 31, 1823.
Prof. Olmsted was appoint-
ed to begin the survey un-
der direction of the State
Board of Agriculture, pros-
ecuting the work during
the vacations of the university. Thus was established the first
geological survey by public authority in America. It was sus-

Denison Olmsted.
After a daguerreotype by Moulthrop.

i\SiiW^"^

FiKST Observatory.
Drawn from description furnished by John H. Wat-
son, Esq., Mayor of Chapel Hill, N. C.

SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE.

769

tained by an annual appropriation of two hundred and fifty dol-
lars, continued for five years. When Mr. Olmsted resigned in
1825 to accept a professorship at Yale, Dr. Mitchell took up the
work of the survey in addition to the duties of his professorship
in the university. Olmsted's report was published in two parts,
in 1824 and 1825, and filled in all about one hundred and twenty

The Astronomical Clock.

This clock still keeps the time for the university.

Drawn by E. L. Harris.

octavo pages. The American Journal of Science observes of this
survey that, regarded especially as the gratuitous vacation work
of a single individual, and in view of the state of geological sci-
ence in this country at the time, it "must certainly be looked
upon as creditable in the highest degree both to the enter-
prise and to the scientific ability of its projector, and it has un-
doubtedly been of great benefit not only to the State which
authorized it, but to the country and to science generally, by

770

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the stimulus which it afforded to similar enterprises in other
States/'

A few years later, in 1829, we find Dr. Caldwell purchasing of
W. and S. Jones, mathematical instrument makers, London, the
equipment for an electrical laboratory at the University of North
Carolina. The first item on the bill, which lies before me as I
write, is " a three-feet plate electrical machine with large branch
conductor, supported by two glass pillars, double collectors,
mounted in strong mahogany, varnished frame, with six brass
legs fitted into brass sockets and screw nuts, negative brass con-
ductor on claw- feet stand from the ground, with connecting slid-

Pbof. Mitchell's Laboratory and OBSERVATORy.
After photograph by Collier Cobb.

ing tubes, brass bells and wires, etc., £45.'' The total amount of
this first bill for electrical apparatus was £153 4s. 6d

Dr. Caldwell published a Compendious System of Elementary
Geometry, in seven books, to which an eighth is added, containing
such other propositions as are elementary ; subjoined is a Trea-
tise on Plane Trigonometry. He was one of the earliest advocates
in the South of popular education by the State.

Dr. Mitchell was the author of a Manual of Chemistry, a second
edition of which was passing through the press at the time of his
death ; a Manual of Geology, illustrated by a geological map of
North Carolina ; a Manual of Natural History, and a Geography

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION, 771

of the Holy Land. Between 1830 and 1840 he contributed many
valuable articles to Silliman's Journal.

Denison Olmsted became more widely known than either of
the other pioneers in science. In the course of his work at Chapel
Hill he gave the first geological description of the Deep River
coal beds, and of the accompanying New Red sandstone, and re-
ferred the strata correctly to the same age with the Richmond
coal beds and the Connecticut River sandstones. He began re-
searches to determine the practicability of obtaining illuminating
gas from cotton seed, but removed to New Haven before he had
secured definite results. His Natural Philosophy, which is still a
standard work, appeared in 1831, and his Astronomy, another
important work, in 1839.

One wonders why such good beginnings should have borne so
little fruit ; but when we bear in mind that the institution which
thus early fostered science had the greater part of its endowment
fund swept away by the civil war, that the spirit of the South
since that great event has been largely commercial and industrial,
and that the income of the old university, from legislative appro-
priations, tuition fees, and endowment funds, is only forty-five
thousand dollars, the wonder ceases.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION.

By C. F. HODGE, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY.

III.— THE UTILITY OF VIVISECTION.

ASIDE from the highest " use of science," its satisfaction of
- man's intellectual wants and its influence upon his char-
acter, science has many " practical " values connected with its de-
velopment. And it is to these " uses " of physiological research
that we will confine attention, bearing in mind that we are ad-
dressing those who believe that, after duty, human health and
happiness are the highest values in the world, and that the
greatest evils in the world, after moral evil, are human suffering
caused by disease and premature death.

How much "use" humanity has for help in these regards may
be seen from a glance at vital statistics. "Of 1,000,000 people
starting out in life, 497,000 will die, almost all from disease, before
reaching the age of forty- one." * We are losing yearly in this
country over 302,806 children under five years of age.f There
certainly is no " use " in this.

* Albert Buck. A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health, vol. ii, pp. 328, 329.
t Tenth Census Compendium, p. lYOY.

772 POPULAR SCIEJSCE MONTHLY.

A recent writer* has actually cited mortality statistics to
prove the futility of vivisection. The figures do show that in
England since 1850 certain organic diseases have been on the in-
crease, despite the slight advance in our knowledge of them. At
first blush this table given by Leffingwell strikes one as a serious
argument against the utility of research. On closer inspection,
however, it only reveals the astute cunning of this author in the
selection of his diseases. Almost without exception these maladies
lie very deep in the hereditary tendencies of the race, and we
could not expect them to be checked and reversed in so short a
time. With increase of wealth and advance in civilization the
chance that defectives may leave enfeebled progeny is greatly in-
creased, and that there has not been an even greater increase in
these diseases is cause for congratulation. But even if the statis-
tics would support the significance Leffingwell attaches to them,
what are we to do about it ? The only courageous course would
seem to be to acknowledge the extreme difficulty of the problems
involved and attack them with redoubled energy. Over two
thousand years of clinical observation and empiricism have prob-
ably about exhausted possibilities in these directions, so that our
only hope would seem to lie in experiment ; and the less prelimi-
nary experimenting on men, the better. If Leffingwell had been
able to prove from statistics that there is no curable disease in the
world, he would have had a strong argument. As it stands, how-
ever, it must be acknowledged to be the strongest possible argu-
ment for the side of research.

The chief point of unfairness of the table lies in LeffingwelFs
selection of diseases. Why confine attention to statistics of or-
ganic disease ? In acute diseases, where we would naturally look
for the first fruits of scientific work, the gain has been considerable.

In support of this, we may quote a few passages from News-
holme's Vital Statistics. On page 273 he says: "If these chil-
dren " (the 858,878 born annually in England) " be traced through
life, the changes in the death-rates occurring 1871-1880, as com-
pared with 1838-1854, would result in an addition of 1,800,047
years of life shared among them ; and since this number of births
occurs annually, it may be reasonably inferred that there is an
annual addition of nearly 2,000,000 years of life to the community,
the greater share in which musu be ascribed to sanitary meas-
ures. ... In the decennium 1871-1880, the death-rate from fever
fell from an annual average of 885 per million to 484, a decline of
forty-five per cent" (page 183). For scarlet fever the decline be-
tween 1875 and 1885 was forty-nine per cent (page 185).

From tables, page 101, we see that the death-rate per 1,000 in

* Albert Leffingwell. Vivisection, p. 75, Boston, Mass., 1889 (date of introduction).

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION.

m

1838-'40 was, for males, 23'3 ; in 1887, only 19*8 ; for females, in
1838-'40, 22*5 ; in 1887, only 17*8.

From comparing death-rates for the ten years before and
after 1872, the year of the passage of the Public Health Act, we
find that " no less than 392,749 persons who, under the old regime^
would have died, were, as a matter of fact, still living at the
close of 1881. . . . Add to these saved lives the avoidance of at
least four times as many attacks of non-fatal illness, and we have
the total profits as yet received from our sanitary expenditure "
(p. 127). " We may add that if the death-rates between 1881-1888
are included, the improvement becomes even more striking." Thus :

Mean annual death-
Recoi-d of years. rate per I, COO.

Public Health Act, 1872. Ten years, 1862-"71 22-6

Four '' 1872-"75 21-8

Five " 1875-'80 20*79

" " 1881-'85 19-30

1886 19-38

1887 18-79

1888 17-83*

ForBoston, 1892 23-3

" London, 1887 19-t>

" Lowell, Mass., 1892 26*6

" Massachusetts, 1892 20-6f

We are frequently met here by the statement that improved
sanitary measures have nothing to do with vivisection. But, in
order to gain the passage of costly sanitary measures, sound rea-
sons must be given ; these are drawn almost wholly from the pure
sciences of physiology and hygiene, and in just those poiats which
bear on public sanitation science owes much to experiment as an
essential part. The truth of this we shall see more and more
clearly as we proceed.

The most encouraging feature in the comparison of the new
with the old tables of vital statistics is the decrease in child mor-
tality. Newsholme, page 101, gives tables of annual death-rates
by age-groups from 1838 to 1887. From this we see that whereas
in 1838-'40, in every thousand infants born, 72'6 died uader five
years of age, in 1887 only 57*8 were lost — a gain of over twenty
per cent. Abbreviating the table, we have, per thousand births :

Age—

0 to 5 years.

5 to 10 years.

10 to 16 years.

1838-'40, died

72-6

57-8

9-7
4-9

5-3

1887, died

2-9

A gain of

20-6

49-5

45-2

* Arthur Newsholme. The Elements of Vital Statistics. London, 1889.
\ A Summary of the Vital Statistics of the New England States for the Year 1892.
Boston and London.

774 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

These things give us ground for courage and hope, but not for
rest — not as long as diphtheria is annually taking from the homes
of this country its 49,677 children ; not while fevers are yearly
" baking to death " 126,332 of our people ; and while consumption
is causing years of suffering and the loss annually to this country
of 102,199 valuable lives.

Were this wholesale slaughter the work of a national enemy
or of visible wild beasts, the public would not be slow in its ap-
preciation of any attempt to meet the common foe. But the
struggle is none the less real, and the intelligence and often the
courage and self-sacrifice required to carry it on are no whit less
than in the struggles of a race to subdue a savage continent or a
human enemy. With the conquest of all the continental areas
assured to man, if war, according to the hopes and theories of
some, were a thing of the past, the next great step in the develop-
ment of the race must be this conquest of the forces of disease.
A comparatively small branch of the human race has come to
face the issue squarely on experimental lines, and to realize the
fact that success can be achieved in no other way. The fate of
the Hindus stands as a warning that even an Aryan strain may
lapse into the abject imbecility of zoolatry and mysticism. The
race that meets this stupendous issue, that succeeds in giving to
men the laws by observance of which can be attained, not only
freedom from disease, but also the development of the highest
type of man, that race alone can carry out to its full perfection
the evolution of mankind. In course of its development this
race will be able to bestow incalculable benefits upon other races
and upon even 'the animal species which it finds useful to pre-
serve.

IV.— THE ARGUMENT AS TO THE UTILITY OF VIVISECTION IN SPECIAL

CASES.

Attempts to prove or disprove the utility of vivisection by
special cases have needlessly complicated and embittered the dis-
cussion. Matters involved in the warmest medical controversy
have been freely introduced, and naturally an abundance of strong
language has been at the disposal of either side. It must there-
fore be distinctly understood as we proceed that this is not the
place to settle medical controversies nor to write a complete his-
tory of useful medicine. We are to deal not with medical con-
troversy nor with medical history, but with pure argument — argu-
ment to prove from special instances the use to humanity of
vivisectional methods of investigating the processes of living
Nature. This being our purpose, we must leave to experts all
discussions of such things as antitoxine, hydrophobia inoculation,
etc., and confine our attention to cases about which there is the

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 775

least medical controversy and about which people generally agree.
We will thus select classical cases, the older the better, and only
so many as will serve to render the argument clear and to illus-
trate best the methods of vivisectional work.

The special cases of Harvey, Charles Bell, Magendie, and
Claude Bernard have come to be an established feature in every
discussion of this subject, and so many wrong impressions re-
garding them remain uncorrected that we must consider their
work at some length.

A knowledge of the circulation of the blood, no intelligent per-
son can deny, has been of great practical value to men. It affords
a foundation for all laws of hygiene and for the practice of sur-
gery and medicine.

The first great step in the line of this discovery was made by
Galen. " By ligating in a living animal an artery in two places,
and opening the vessel between the ligatures, Galen demon-
strated that the vessel contained blood. Thus by an experiment
upon a living animal, a vivisection, the first great source of error,
the supposition that the arteries contained air, was removed, the
true nature of an artery demonstrated, and the modern theory of
the circulation made possible." *

Whatever may be the claims of Servetus and Csesalpinus,
there can be no doubt that the one man to unite the observations
of his predecessors into an intelligible whole, to found his own
observations upon experiment, in short, to discover the circulation
of the blood as we now understand it, was William Harvey, f

The claim is often made that Harvey discovered the circula-
tion by " thinking," by " inductive reasoning," and not by vivi-
sectional experiment. As well say that Columbus discovered
America by thinking and not by experiment. Harvey not only
thought out the circulation, which is a very small matter, but he
demonstrated it to be a fact by innumerable experiments upon
living animals, which is a very great matter. Here, again, we
must emphasize the fact that Harvey did not study, and could

* H. C. Chapman. History of the (discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, p. 12.
Philadelphia, 1884.

f Read J. H. Baas. Outlines of the History of Medicine. New York, 1889, pp. 527-530.
Also Sprengel, in his Geschichte der Arzneykunde, gives Harvey the frontispiece in vol. iv,
and devotes forty pages (50-89) to his work of discovering the circulation of the blood.
Also Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. ii, pp. 252-262, devotes eleven
pages to " Discovery of the Circulation, Harvey." And when a man comes forward and says,
" It is only our insular pride which has claimed for him the merit of the discovery," he
brands himself as a person with w'hom it is impossible to reason (as does Lawson Tait,
Uselessness of Vivisection upon Animals, p. 6). Any one desirous of investigating the
trustworthiness of Tait in such matters can find him fully discussed, in a way he has not
been able to answer, in the book Physiological Cruelty, by " Philanthropos," Appendix E,
and also in Heidenhein, Vivisection, Leipsic, 1884, pp. 86 ff.

776 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

not possibly have studied, in dead animals "the motion of the
heart and blood in animals." To found his great thesis on a
broad basis of experiment, Harvey vivisected a great many kinds
of animals, from his own person to " shrimps, snails, and shell-
fish."

Chapter I of Harvey's great work, De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis
in Animalibus,* begins, " Cum multis vivorum dissectionibus (uti
ad manum dabantur) animum ad observandum primum appuli
quo cordis motus usum," etc.

Chapter II is entitled Ex vivorum dissectione, qualis sit cordis
motus.

Chapter III is entitled Arteriarum motus qualis ex vivorum
dissectione.

Chapter IV is entitled Motus cordis et auricularum qualis ex
vivorum dissectione.

The argument that Harvey was led to his discovery by " rea-
soning upon the valves in the veins," as stated by Boyle, is well
answered by his translator, Willis, f who points out at some
length that " when we turn to Harvey himself, in his works we
nowhere find that he approaches his subject from the quarter now
particularly indicated " (i. e., from the purpose of the valves in
the veins).

Even Harvey was attacked during his life on the ground that
the discovery of the circulation was of "no use" (Willis, p. 258),
" because men still continued to die."

For Harvey the blood passed through the flesh (per partium
porositates), and not until the microscope was available was it
possible for Malpighi to discover the capillary circulation in
1661. This he did in the exposed lung of a living frog.

In recent years Claude Bernard I greatly advanced our knowl-
edge of the circulation by demonstrating, wholly by vivisectional
methods, that the flow of the blood is regulated by a nervous
mechanism continuously acting to contract or dilate the vessels
according to the requirements of each organ or part of the body.
Thus it is seen that every important step in the advance of our
knowledge of the circulation of the blood has been made by vivi-
section and could not possibly have been made in any other way.

Similarly, the testimony of Sir Charles Bell is constantly ad-
duced to prove the futility of vivisection. Bell is the anatomist
to whom, with Magendie and Johannes Miiller, we owe the first

* Harvei Opera, 1737, or The Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. Sydenham
edition, London, 1847.

f Willis. William Harvey, a History of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.
London, 1878, pp. 301 fP.

X CI. Bernard. Le9ons sur le Diabete. Paris, 1877, p. 43.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION, J77

great advance in the experimental study of the nervous system.
He first demonstrated, though in no thoroughly satisfactory
manner, the twofold function of the spinal roots. It is true that
Bell did say some things derogatory of physiological experiment
about the beginning of this century. But it is also true that his
actions speak louder than his words. By reference to his works,
we find that Bell made this great discovery in the only way pos-
sible— viz., by means of vivisectional experiments. He actually
vivisected asses, kittens, rabbits, fowls, monkeys, and dogs, per-
forming the same experiments for which Magendie has been so
severely criticised.* Charles Bell was exceedingly sensitive upon
the point of causing pain to animals, as is shown by several pas-
sages in his works; and it is certainly a strong argument for the
necessity of vivisection that a man of his sensitive nature should
be compelled to resort to this method in order to demonstrate the
truth of his theories. It must be remembered that he had no
anaesthetics, and therefore his position can not apply to the
present discussion of the subject. Were he operating to-day,
with chloroform, ether, morphine, chloral, paraldehyde, cocaine,
and other ansesthetics at his disposal, he need have had no
twinges of conscience about the pain his experiments occasioned.

Magendie completed Bel?s work, placing it upon a firm basis
by means of experiments for which he has been accused of most
atrocious cruelty. It is sufficient to reply that Magendie, too,
worked before anaesthetics were discovered, and when people's
ideas about physical pain were very different from our ideas at
present. And Magendie was, to say the least, as oblivious to his
own suffering as he was to that of the animals he experimented
upon. When cholera broke out in France, in 1832, he went as a
volunteer into the center of the afflicted district, and afterward
served in the great cholera hospital, the Hotel Dieu, during the
epidemic in Paris, and for his heroism received the cross of the
Legion of Honor \ — " The fiend Magendie."

Take, for example, another great line of physiological work
than which few discoveries have been of more practical value to
human life. Upon a knowledge of the phj^siology of respiration
we build and ventilate, or ought to, at least, dwelling and school
houses, audience rooms, and hospitals.

The first important discovery in this line was made by Sir

* Charles Bell. Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain. London, 1811. Transcribed
by H. tJ. D., 1813. Also, Nervous System of the Human Body. London, 1830.

f J. C. Palton. Magendie as a Physiologist. International Review, February, 1880,
p. 120. The story of Magendie's repentance and distrust of vivisection, shortly before his
death, has often been adduced against this method of research. After careful search
through all the accounts of Magendie's life (thirteen in number), Dalton is able to say that
there is no intimation of any ground for this idea.
VOL. XLIX. — 60

yyS POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Robert Boyle (1670), who found, by the use of his air pump, that
if he deprived animals of air they died. He vivisected in this
way kittens, birds, frogs, fish, snakes, and insects.* Boyle also
discovered that by keeping animals in a closed reservoir the air
became unfit to sustain life.

Priestley, a century later (1772), continued Boyle's experiments
by keeping mice in air-tight receivers until the air was vitiated
and would no longer support life. He then tried to restore the
air to its former condition : he rarefied and condensed it, heated
it, exposed it to water and earth, and treated it in many other
ways, each time testing it with living mice to ascertain whether
it would again support life. All this was to no effect. In every
case the mice died. Finally, he found that after plants grew for
a while in the vitiated air, mice could again live in it. Thus was
discovered the important relation between animal and vegetable
respiration, and we now plant trees and lay out parks, and call
them the " lungs of our cities." Two points must be emphasized
here : first, that Priestley could not have done this with dead
mice; and, second, that no one except Lawson Tait and Miss
Cobbe would have the hardihood to claim that he ought to have
used live men instead of live mice, on grounds of moral rights,
and from the fact that the physiology of man is " so different "
from the physiology of the mouse.

Turning to still another important line of scientific work,
diseases of microbic origin are said to cause four fifths of the
sickness in the world. As an example of researches in this field,
we may cite the classical work of Edward Jenner.f

Jenner began to study in earnest the disease cowpox, and its
relation to smallpox, in 1775. For twenty-one years he patiently
investigated the subject, and found that no one who had once
suffered an attack of cowpox was taken with smallpox, although
frequently exposed. " Legends of the dairymaids " had told for
generations that an attack of cowpox conferred exemption from
smallpox forever after. Jenner might have told the same
story ; but, if he had not proved the truth of his assertion by
experiment, we might still have nothing but "legends of dairy-
maids " and no vaccination.

In May of 1796 Jenner began his experiments. He says
(page 29) : " The more accurately to observe the progress of the
infection, I selected a healthy boy, about eight years of age, for
the purpose of inoculation for the cowpox." This inoculation
was followed by an attack of the disease. But Jenner does not

* Boyle. Philosophical Transactions, vol. v, pp. 2011-2055.

f Edward Jenner. An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolas Vaccinae,
December 20, 1799. London, 1801.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 779

stop here. Again, he says : " In order to ascertain whether the
boy was secure from the contagion of the smallpox, he was inocu-
lated the 1st of July following with variolous matter immediately
taken from a pustule. Several punctures were made in both
arms, and the matter was carefully inserted, but no disease
followed."

Some might have called the discovery complete at this point,
but Jenner realized that one case is not every case, and that he
must repeat the experiment, which he did scores of times, even
going so far as to endanger human life in order to establish the
truth of his discovery. For he goes on to say (page 41) : " To con-
vince myself that the variolous matter made use of was in a perfect
state, I [at the same time that he inoculated a patient previously
inoculated with cowpox] inoculated a patient with some of it
who had never gone through the cowpox, and it produced the
smallpox in the usual regular manner."

Previous to the •introduction of vaccination in London the
average annual death-rate per million from smallpox was (News-
holme, table, page 192) :

l'728-'5'7 4,260

IVYI-'SO 6,020

1801-10 2,040 beginning of Jennet's work.

18'72-'82 262

1885 1,419

1886 24

1887 9

Germany now has the most ef&cient laws of probably any
country for making not only vaccination but repetition at stated
intervals obligatory. As a result smallpox is rapidly disappear-
ing. In 1888 the deaths from smallpox in the entire empire
amounted to one hundred and ten, less than 2*5 per million, and
the majority of these occurred on or near the boundaries of other
countries. We can easily appreciate the usefulness of this. Still,
during this work Jenner was persecuted and abused.

Jenner's experiments belong to the class of investigations
which since 1850 Thiersch has made for cholera. Lister for in-
flammation of wounds, Pasteur for rabies, Koch and Pasteur for
splenic fever, M. Freire for yellow fever, Koch later for cholera,
and has now begun to make for consumption.

Thiersch's experiments on cholera, which caused the death of
fourteen mice and proved that cholera is communicated by swal-
lowing particles of cholera discharge, have been an important
factor in the sanitary legislation of every civilized country.

Two of the London water companies experimented with
cholera-polluted water upon 500,000 people, causing the death of
3,476 human beings in 1853-'54. This is the popular accidental

78o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

experiment wliicli antivivisection writers tell us to wait for, and
which they say is sent by Providence to teach men physiology.
Thiersch made the same experiment upon fifty-six mice, the con-
ditions being accurately determined and scientifically controlled,
and with the death of fourteen mice gave the world more exact
information about the contagion of cholera than all the cholera
epidemics recorded in history. This is the scientific experiment
which we are told should not be made.*

The antiseptic method, which we owe in so great a measure to
the vivisectional experiments of Joseph Lister, is past all reason-
able controversy and we may refer to it here. It has come to be
used in hospitals generally, and has reduced mortality from sur-
gical operations to one tenth of what it was before. Any one
who has seen even a few cases of antiseptic surgery will readily
agree with Dr. Keen when he says : " Sir Joseph Lister has done
more to save human life and diminish human suffering than any
other man of the last fifty years." \ Still, Lister was obliged to
leave England to continue experiment in his merciful work after
the passage of the restrictive law in 1876.

In the Tubingen Hospital died from amputation before intro-
duction of Lister's method and after :

Per cent. Per cent.

Of lower limb 43-5 3-2

Of upper limb 30*6 2-9:}:

We might extend much further the list of useful discoveries
which have depended for some essential part of their develop-
ment upon vivisectional experiment ; but such is not our present
purpose. The reader can find these amply discussed elsewhere.
We would, however, at this point call special attention to the way
in which a discovery of this kind is received. Jenner's smallpox
inoculation was obliged to run the same gantlet of popular and
professional favor and disfavor as Lister's discovery, as Koch's
and Pasteur's are running now. Such discoveries are in even
greater danger from ignorant and enthusiastic supporters than
from learned opponents. The problems involved are very com-
plicated. Exceptions of every kind occur — e. g., a person may
have smallpox twice, and so, although vaccination protects in
most cases, it does not in all; and, further, as Jenner himself
says, " inoculation sometimes under the best management proves
fatal."*

In the case of one of these complications in London, Jenner

* John Simon. Experiments on Life. London, 1881.

f W. W. Keen. Our Debts to Vivisection. Reprint from Popular Science Monthly, May,
1885, p. 15.

% Heidenhaia. Die YiTisection, p. 34. * Jenper, loc. cii., p. 57.

TEE VIVISECTION QUESTION, 781

has himself left a record in strong English of the way he felt.
Writing to Moore in 1811 he says : " The town is a fool, an idiot,
and will continue in this red-hot, hissing-hot state about this af-
fair until something else starts up to draw aside its attention. I
am determined to lock up my brains and think no more 'pro bono
publico, and I advise you, my friend, to do the same, for we are
sure to get nothing but abuse for it." *

We are, however, discussing the utility of a method, and while
we will not introduce Koch's treatment as an argument for the
utility of vivisection until it has been perfected and the medical
profession has reached a decision as to its value, we can hardly
find a better example of the vivisectional method. Koch's method
is that of Jenner perfected by using animals instead of men. His
discovery in 1882 of the tubercle bacillus has already become of
inestimable value in directing sanitary measures and in recog-
nizing the earlier stages of consumption while cure is possible.
This, we are told by an antivivisection writer, " was discovered
by the microscope, not by vivisection." f How did Koch make
this discovery ?

It is true the microscope assisted as spectacles help to read.
But Koch, in the examination of tuberculous matter, discovered
a number of germs with the microscope. Which one of these
caused consumption no number of microscopes could tell him.
This had to be settled by most careful experiments. There are
several steps in the process. The first is to identify all the differ-
ent kinds of microbes found constantly in tuberculous bodies.
For convenience we will call these microbes a, b, c, d. These are
mingled together. The second step is to cultivate these germs in
one test tube after another until perfectly "pure cultures" are
obtained — i. e., nothing but a's in one, nothing but b's in another,
and so on. Up to this stage he has not the least idea which of
these is the germ of consumption. The only way he can deter-
mine this point is by experimenting upon living animals. He
must then inoculate a number of healthy animals, one with germ
a, another with germ b, another with germ c, another with germ d.
The four animals are now watched carefully. The animal inocu-
lated with germ a, we will say, sickens and dies with unmistak-
able symptoms of tuberculosis. Those inoculated with germs b,
c, and d are not affected. He repeats the experiment several
times, and if each time with the same result is justified in con-
cluding that germ a is the cause of tuberculosis, while the other
germs are harmless.

This is but the first stage in the investigation. After the dis-

* Crookshank, op. cit, fol. i, p. 139.

f Ernest Bell, M. A. Weighed and Found Wanting, Victoria St Society publication.

782 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

covery of the cause comes the question, How can this cause be
controlled ? How can its action be prevented ? Here, as Koch
says, men have begun at the wrong end of the problem. Since
the beginning of medicine the doctors have been experimenting
upon men to find a cure for consumption. The problem here is
too complicated, and in consequence little has been learned. Ex-
periment must begin, he says, with the bacillus itself. We must
grow it first in pure cultures in test tubes, in all manner of differ-
ent culture media and under all conditions of temperature and
light, in order to ascertain under what conditions it grows best
and under what conditions it can not grow. We must next sub-
ject it in the test tube to the influence of different chemical sub-
stances, and when some compound is discovered to kill or hinder
the growth of the bacillus in the culture, then the substance must
be tried upon tuberculous animals to ascertain whether in their
bodies as in the test tube it will act to kill the bacilli without in-
juring the animal. When a substance fatal to the bacillus and
harmless to the animal is found, with all due allowance for differ-
ences between the animal and man, it may be tested on man.

This, in brief, is but one important line of research, and clearly
it should be carried out thoroughly for every infectious disease.
A single link in the chain of procedure requires absolutely to be
welded by experiments upon living animals. With millions on
millions of human beings and animals suffering and dying yearly
for lack of this knowledge, no truly humane person can for a mo-
ment deny to an investigator the right to complete his work by
introducing this link.

In view of the stupendous values involved it is clear that any
amount necessary of animal or human sacrifice and suffering is
wholly justified. Whether unnecessary suffering is inflicted is a
question which only the highest experts can adequately decide.
Prof. Bowditch * has so thoroughly discussed the subject of pain
caused by vivisection that we would pass it by without mention,
were it not for the fact that the public mind has been of late so
much abused by misstatement and exaggeration on this head.
Prof. Yeo's estimate, the most reliable we have, is that in every
one hundred experiments seventy-five are " absolutely painless,''
twenty are as " painful as vaccination,'' four, as " painful as the
healing of a wound," one, as " painful as a surgical operation."
The pain of vaccination is altogether trifling, and that of the
healing of a wound after antiseptic treatment is also practically
nil. This leaves but one per cent of all experiments as painful to
any serious degree. During over ten years' active experience in

* H, p. Bowditch. The Advancement of Medicine by Research. Science, July 24,
1896.

TBE VIVISECTION QUESTION,

7^i

three laboratories in this country and a number of the leading
laboratories abroad, I have never had occasion to perform or wit-
ness an experiment of this painful class. Discovery of new anaes-
thetics and more recent methods of operation have doubtless re-
duced the pain of experimentation even below Yeo's estimate. In
all laboratories in this country, and equally abroad, I have always
found anaesthetics adequately and uniformly employed.

In the recent discussions before the House Judiciary Com-
mittee of Massachusetts upon the bill relating to inspection of
vivisectional experiments in the medical schools and universities
of the State, none of the petitioners for the bill were able to cite
a single case, or the reasonable suspicion of a case, of abuse of
vivisection, as having occurred within the State of Massachusetts.
In order to obtain as reliable data as possible upon this point, I
sent blank tables, arranged according to the table below, to all
the laboratories in Massachusetts where vivisectional experiments
were likely to be made. Returns were kindly sent in from all the
laboratories, and may safely be taken to represent the experi-
mental work in the State during the year 1894r-'95.

Number
used.

Painless.

PAINFUL AS

Animal.

Vaccina-
tion.

Healing of
wound.

Effect of
poison.

Disease.

Frogs

866

23

25

146

465

22

95

30

3

845
19
26
61

18

91

10

3

4

50
150

4
'2

17

'5

4
2

Pigeons

Rats

...

Rabbits

Guinea-pigs

Cats

30
315

Doses

Mice

20

Squirrels

Totals

1,675

1,072

204
(12-2^)

6
(0-4^)

28
(1-6^)

365
(21-8^)

Contrast with this the 34,419 human beings who die di disease
annually in Massachusetts.

A general principle underlying vivisectional work is also re-
vealed in the table, viz., that the lowest animal adequate for the
purposes of the research be employed in preference to one more
highly organized. This entirely negatives an assumption often
advanced that animal vivisection tends toward human vivisec-
tion. The whole tendency of modern physiology has been exactly
the reverse. Animals have come to be used in order to save
human beings from abuse.* In the very beginning of medicine

* The recent action of Dr. J, S. Pyle (A Plea for the Appropriation of Criminals con-
demned to Capital Punishment to the Experimental Physiologist, Canton, Ohio, 1893), so

784 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

every attempt to cure disease or alleviate suffering must have
been, in the nature of the case, an act of human vivisection. A
large proportion of modern medicine at present is equally in
essence nothing more nor less than human vivisection, and it is
only gradually, as elements of experiment and uncertainty are
eliminated from remedial measures by more exact knowledge,
that the practice of medicine becomes anything more than human
vivisection.*

A further argument against the utility of animal experimen-
tation is based on differences between animals and men, which
make it unsafe to apply results directly from the animal to man.
A logical error is here involved; for, while there are physio-
logical differences between different animals, to one point of dif-
ference there are many points of close similarity. A difference in
physiological function is technically known as an idiosyncrasy.
These differences exist between individual men as well as be-
tween different species of animals. A man who has had small-
pox or measles acquires an idiosyncrasy which protects him from
having them again. In some cases this difference exists from
birth ; in others it is impossible to acquire it. Man himself be-
gins life as a microscopical speck of living matter, and in his
physical development passes through and beyond the lower stages
of organic life. Hence the fundamental physiological processes
and functions he has in common with the great body of living
things beneath him. On this wider view physiological idiosyn-
crasy becomes the strongest possible incentive to experiment.
How is it that certain species have become wholly immune from
certain diseases ? With the secret of this immunity discovered,
it may be easy to induce a similar immunity in another species or
in man.

The conclusion which follo«ws from the foregoing chapters
bears directly upon a topic of considerable present importance,
viz., that of legislative interference with scientific work.f With
due appreciation of scientific achievements in the past, we must
keep ever before us the fact that the hardest labors and richest
harvests in science are still in. the future. And every considera-
tion of religion, morality, altruism, humanity, and utility urge to

far as I have been able to ascertain, is an individual matter, and can not be taken to repre-
sent in the slightest degree the tendency of experimental medicine or the attitude of ex-
perimental physiologists in this country.

* The Zend-Avesta permitted a doctor to practice his art upon three heretics. If these
all died or were made worse by his treatment, he was forbidden, on penalty of death, to fol-
low his profession further. If they recovered, he might begin practice upon the faithful. —
SprengeL Geschichte der Arzneykunde, vol. i, p. 126. (Refers to Zend-Avesta, Part III,
p. 336.)

f For fuller discussion of this topic see Bowditch, he. cit, pp. 8-16, and appendix.

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 785

the prosecution of physiological education and research with una-
bated energy. Hence no legislative action should be taken which
could possibly offer hindrance or annoyance to either teachers or
investigators.

In accordance with the pernicious principle that a law can do
no harm except to offenders, the English Parliament, in 1876,
passed an act severely restricting vivisectional work. This action
of England was promptly reversed by every other European na-
tion where the subject was agitated, and by every State Legisla-
ture in this country to which the matter has been referred.
Within the past year this reversal has been reaffirmed in Switzer-
land and in Massachusetts. The restrictive act in England served
not in the least to abate the agitation and protect physiologists in
their work, as was intended ; but, as an eminent English physi-
ologist puts it, has " only tended to encourage the opponents of
science in their vexatious interference." English antivivisec-
tionists under this encouragement have shifted position from
restriction to total abolition, and have increased the agitation.
We have in this country at least three societies organized on the
platform of total abolition of physiological experiments. The
legislative measures advanced thus far by these organizations
have been mild in the main ; but while they emphasize before the
public the fact that their laws do not aim to " prohibit " experi-
ments, they are also unguarded enough to speak of them as " the
entering wedge for more radical measures in the future." * Clear-
ly, for medical and scientific faculties, for medical societies, and
for all who have at heart the advancement of humanity and sci-
ence, the strategic point at which to meet the enemy is the point
of " the entering wedge."

After conscientiously reading their literature for the past five
years I feel warranted in saying that science has little to fear
from the efforts of the antivivisection societies. Their methods
of agitation would sink even a worthy cause. The real danger
lies with scientific men themselves who entertain ideas of con-
ciliation and compromise which will admit the point of the " en-
tering wedge." Prof. Michael Foster has had the benefit of twenty
years' experience in conducting a laboratory under restrictive
legislation, and his advice should certainly carry great weight.
He writes as follows : " My earnest advice " (to us in America)
" is to straighten your backs, and, knowing that no legislation is
necessary on grounds of humanity, and that all legislation is bad
for science, strain every effort to defeat the agitation." \

* Antivivisection, June, 1896, pp. 9 and 13. Aurora, 111.

f Private letter from Prof. Foster to the writer, under date of February 1, 1896.
VOL. XLIX. — 61

786 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ACETYLENE, THE NEW ILLUMINANT.

By V. J. YOUMANS.

THE advent of the electric light, the Siemens-Lungren regen-
erative burner, and the Welsbach incandescent mantle, all
within a comparatively short period, threw the lighting industry
into a very unsettled condition. There had begun, however, to
appear some order out of the chaos. As the special advantages of
the different systems were recognized, the purposes to which each
was best adapted were noted. The development of the industries
was going on very satisfactorily, when a new competitor appeared
in the shape of acetylene. It is now stated that Mr. Edison and
Nikola Tesla are independently working out still another system,
based on the vacuum-tube phenomena ; a subject in which Mr. D.
McFarlan Moore claims also to have made a great step in advance
by the invention of his vacuum vibrator. Vacuum-tube lighting,
however, is still in the laboratory, and, while surprising tales are
told of its great beauty and high efficiency, it is too soon to even
prophesy intelligently regarding it. Acetylene has, however,,
during the last few years been much discussed, and considerable
data are available regarding it ; so that an inquiry into its history
and value as a practical illuminant is of interest.

Acetylene (C3HJ was first described by Edmund Davy, who
obtained it accidentally by the action of water on a mass of car-
bonized tartar and charcoal powder, with which he had attempted
to prepare potassium. He called the new gas Mumene. Some
years later it was rediscovered by Berthelot, who obtained it by
passing ethylene through a red-hot tube ; he noted its occurrence
in coal gas, and later succeeded in making it by passing a power-
ful electric current between two carbon poles in an atmosphere of
hydrogen.

The resulting mixture of acetylene and hydrogen was passed
into an ammoniacal solution of cuprous chloride, and the insol-
uble copper compound thus obtained, which is extremely explo-
sive and has recently caused several serious accidents, was then
treated with hydrochloric acid, which liberated acetylene.

Acetylene is a colorless gas, having a rather disagreeable odor,
somewhat resembling garlic and phosphorus. The peculiar odor
noticed when the burners of a gas stove strike back is due to the
formation of acetylene. Its specific gravity when compared with
air is 0'91 (ordinary coal gas has a specific gravity of about 0'607).
At 0°, and under a pressure of 21*5 atmospheres (322"5 pounds per
square inch), it becomes a mobile, highly refractive liquid. Water
at 18° dissolves its own volume of the gas. When ignited at an
ordinary burner it gives a smoky, dull flame, and with oxygen

ACETYLENE. 787

forms an explosive mixture, as it does also when mixed in certain
proportions with air ; but when burned through a very small tip
and under slight pressure, or when mixed with coal gas or air in
proper proportions, an exceedingly brilliant and highly luminous
flame is produced. Acetylene is poisonous, combining with the
haemoglobin of the blood, to the exclusion of oxygen, to form a
compound similar to that yielded by carbon monoxide. Moissan,
however, reports that when prepared from pure calcium carbide,
and after being purified by liquefaction, it has an ethereal odor,
and can be breathed in small quantities without evil effects. Re-
garding its explosiveness Mr. J. M. Crafts says : " Experiments,
using a two-inch gas pipe as a cannon, show that from five to six
per cent of acetylene mixed with air forms an explosive mixture.
. . . About ten per cent of water gas is necessary before an explo-
sive mixture with air is formed." Explosive mixtures in the air
of a room would be produced by much smaller percentages than
these. Lechattelier gives 2*8 per cent acetylene mixed with air
as an explosive compound. So far as its poisonous qualities are
concerned, acetylene seems to have a little the advantage of water
gas; the poisonous principle of the latter is carbon monoxide,
whose combination with the blood is somewhat more energetic
than that of acetylene, and which has no odor to serve as a warn-
ing in case of a leak, as has acetylene. Acetylene is, however,
more prone to form explosive mixtures. This is due to the fact
that in the combination of carbon and hydrogen to form acety-
lene 61*100 units of heat are absorbed. Thus the heating power
of a cubic foot of acetylene is sufficient to raise 407 kilogrammes
(a kilogramme = 2*2 pounds) of water 1° C. The combustion of
the same amounts of uncombined carbon and hydrogen as are
present in a cubic foot of acetylene will raise only 336*5 kilo-
grammes of water to 1° C, leaving a difference in favor of acety-
lene of 70*5 heat units — the unit being the amount of heat required
to raise the temperature of- one kilogramme of water 1° C.

Acetylene is one of the important bodies, much used by the
chemist in the synthesis of organic compounds. It is also reported
to be of value in polariscope work, permitting the reading of solu-
tions so highly colored as to be opaque to the ordinary sources
of light. Some interesting experiments with the gas in abnormal
physical states were recently performed by J. J. Suckert, during
a lecture before the Franklin Institute. A tube of liquefied acety-
lene was cooled to —28° F., and then the pressure removed.
Rapid evaporation took place, and a portion of the liquid gas was
solidified into a snowlike mass whose temperature was found
to be —118° F. A part of this snow placed on some mercury
in a saucer soon froze the latter, and another portion, on being
dropped into water, upon which it floated, gave off acetylene

788 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gas, which, was readily ignited and burned with its characteristic
sooty flame.

Regarding the illuminating power of acetylene, a proper burner
using five cubic feet per hour will give from two hundred to two
hundred and forty candle power. Five cubic feet of ordinary gas
give from fifteen to thirty candle power ; that is, a cubic foot of
acetylene will give about eight times as much light as the same
amount of coal or water gas. Indeed, it is claimed by Prof. Lewes
and others that the formation of acetylene in the ordinary gas
flame accounts for the latter's luminosity, and it has been pro-
posed to enrich water gas by the addition of a small amount of
acetylene ; but so much of the latter was found necessary to pro-
duce any appreciable result as to render the process impracticable.
Acetylene requires a much larger amount* of air for complete com-
bustion than does ordinary gas. This is a distinct disadvantage,
as the large amount of air cools the flame, and thus diminishes
its luminosity. The temperature of the acetylene flame is about
1000° C, that of an ordinary flat coal-gas flame being 1360° C.

The present rise into prominence of acetylene, which up to
1888 was simply a laboratory product, is due to the discovery of
the formation of calcium carbide in the electric furnace. There
is some controversy as to who first made this discovery, but the
honors seem to belong to Mr. T. L. Wilson, of the Wilson Alumi-
num Works. In 1888 Mr. Wilson began a series of experiments
with the electric furnace for reducing refractory ores; during
one of these a curious, dark -brown, dense mass was formed, whose
immersion in water produced a violent evolution of gas, which
upon investigation proved to be acetylene. A French chemist,
Moissan, independently discovered the process, and reported it
at the meeting of the French Academy, in December, 1892. But
as Mr. Wilson sent samples of the carbide to Lord Kelvin in
the summer of 1892, for examination, he seems to have pre-
ceded Moissan, at any rate in announcing his discovery. All the
alkaline earths form carbides in a similar way, which, when
treated with water, give off acetylene. It may be interesting to
note, in passing, that by means of the electric furnace, a carbide
of silicon has recently been obtained, which under the name of
carborundum is coming to be used extensively as a polishing and
grinding material. It is extremely hard (scratching rubies) and
is said to wear well. Another interesting product is the carbide
of titanium, the hardness of which is sufficient to scratch the
diamond. This discovery of the ready formation of carbides
under the great heat of the electric furnace is of special interest
to the geologist, as bearing on the theory that these carbides are
present in large quantities in the interior regions, to which water
must occasionally penetrate ; the resulting generation of gases

ACETYLENE. 789

and production of high pressures and heat accounting for the
various volcanic disturbances and the large natural deposits of
petroleum and other carbonaceous material, which occur so abun-
dantly in some districts.

Pure calcium carbide has a specific gravity of 2*262 ; in a dry
atmosphere it is odorless, but upon exposure to moisture evolves
the peculiar odor of acetylene. When exposed in lumps to the
action of ordinary air it becomes coated with a layer of hydrate
of lime, which protects the interior of the mass from further oxi-
dation. It is not inflammable, and can be exposed to the heat of
the ordinary blast furnace without decomposition. It is, in fact,
a very stable compound, its ready decomposition under the action
of water being quite at variance with its other chemical proper-
ties. It was first prepared by Woehler, in 1862, by fusing an alloy
of zinc and calcium with carbon. He called it acetylene carbide.
It forms a dark grayish or red dense mass, which upon fracture
shows a crystalline metallic surface. The whole process of manu-
facturing acetylene, from the preparation of the lime and coke
onward, is very simple, and the only reason why it is new as a
commercial product is the difficulty of causing a combination be-
tween the calcium of the lime and the carbon of the coke. Noth-
ing short of the temperature of the electric furnace (3500° to
4000° C.) will bring this about, and the comparative modernness
of this apparatus accounts for the lateness of the calcium carbide.
The chemistry of the process is as follows : Quicklime (CaO) and
coke, or any other substance whose main content is carbon (C),
are mixed and fused together in the electric furnace. The cal-
cium (Ca) of the lime combines with part of the carbon (C) of
the coke to form calcium carbide (CaCs) ; the oxygen (O) of the
quicklime combining with another portion of the carbon to form
carbonic oxide :

CaO + 3C = CaCs + CO

Quicklime. Coke. Calcium Carbonic

carbide. * oxide.

Carbonic oxide is a gas and is driven off, leaving calcium car-
bide and the various impurities in the furnace. The further re-
action to form acetylene occurs when calcium carbide is subjected
to the action of water :

CaCs -f 2(H20) = Ca(OH)o + C^H^

Calcium Water. Slaked lime. Acetylene,

carbide.

The following description of the commercial manufacture of
calcium carbide as conducted at Spray is based on a paper by G.
de Chalmot, who for some time had personal supervision of the
works of the Wilson Aluminum Company at Spray, N. C, and

790 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an address by W. R. Addicks, of Boston, Mass., delivered before
the New England Association of Gas Engineers at tlieir twenty-
sixth annual meeting :

The electric furnace is of ordinary brick, two and a half by
three feet (inside measurements) at the bottom. The front side
consists of four iron doors. The electric current enters at the
bottom and top ; the lower electrode is an iron plate covered with
eight inches of carbon (pieces of carbon pencils or a mixture of
coke and coal tar). Sixteen copper cables 075 inch in diameter
convey the electricity from the dynamos to the bottom electrode ;
sixteen other cables are connected with the top electrode, which
is composed of six carbon pencils each four inches square and
thirty-six inches long ; these are bound together by a sheet of
iron, so as to really form only one pencil. The upper electrode
is so arranged that it can be raised or lowered by means of a
screw. Dynamos giving a current of from fifty to one hundred
volts and seventeen hundred to two thousand amperes are used,
actuated by a water wheel of thre© hundred horse-power capacity.
To start the furnace a little carefully ground and mixed lime
and coke (this being done by special grinding and mixing ma-
chinery, which forms an essential part of the plant) is thrown on
the bottom of the furnace, the current turned on, and the upper
electrode lowered until an arc is formed between it and the mix-
ture. The carbide soon begins to form, and new material is
sho-veled in as the ingot is built up. The end of the pencil is kept
covered with about a foot of the mixture, and is gradually raised
by the attendant until the capacity of the furnace is reached;
then the current is turned off and the furnace left to cool. This
constitutes the whole process, and is extremely simple and inex-
pensive, requiring no skilled labor and little machinery. Much
time has been lost at Spray in waiting for the furnace to cool,
which requires from four to eight hours. In the new plant of the
Philadelphia company at Niagara the lower electrode and the bot-
tom of the furnace consist of a car, which, as soon as the run is
finished, can be drawn out and a fresh car substituted, thus ob-
viating the loss of time and heat in waiting for the furnace to
cool. Many other improvements, including an arrangement by
which the mixed lime and coke are automatically fed into the
furnace, are expected to materially reduce the cost of manufac-
ture at the Niagara works.

The proportions of lime and coke are roughly calculated by
means of the atomic weights involved in the reaction, but in prac-
tice it is found that, owing to impurities and loss in the process,
these amounts have to be exceeded somewhat. After the mass in
the furnace has cooled sufl&ciently, it is dumped on a grate which
holds the carbide and permits the unreduced material, amount-

ACETYLENE, 791

ing to from fifty to seventy-five per cent of the original mass,
to fall through into a bin, from which it is collected to be used
again. The lime requires to be fairly pure, over five per cent of
impurities interfering seriously with the production of carbide.
Magnesia is very undesirable, and it is stated that if over three
per cent is present a good quality of carbide can not be made.
This matter of impurities and the care of the carbon pencils,
which when properly looked after wear away only about 0'09 of
an inch per hour, but which may make a great deal of trouble if
carelessly tended, are the points requiring special attention. Un-
slaked lime is said to give the best results. The alternating cur-
rent is used at Spray, but a direct current can be employed. Be-
sides coke, soft coal, anthracite, charcoal, pitch, tar, resin, and
asphalt have been tried in combination with lime. Indeed, the
first mixture used by Mr. Wilson was lime and tar, which had
been boiled together in a caldron and then thoroughly dried.
With the exception of charcoal, however, none of these substances
were found of any value as (^mpared with coke, although they
all produced some carbide. As regards the amount and quality
of the light obtained from acetylene properly burned, there seems
no question as to its great superiority over either ordinary coal
or water gas. It stands about even with water gas in poisonous
qualities, but is more liable to explosion. Greater care would be
required in handling it, especially if the proposition, which was
at first well received, to use it in a liquefied state from cylinders
under great pressure, should prove practicable.

Its success as an illuminant, however, depends almost entirely
on the cost of manufacture, and regarding this point it is some-
what difficult at present to get reliable data, chiefly, perhaps, be-
cause of the experimental stage in which much of the apparatus
still is.

The Progressive Age, a New York publication devoted to the
interests of electricity, gas, and water, recently formed a commis-
sion which it sent down to Spray for the purpose of determining
the actual cost of manufacturing calcium carbide. The commis-
sioners were Prof. Houston and Drs. Kennelly and Kinnicutt, and
their conclusions, after careful examination of the works and a
testing of two full runs, were published in the Progressive Age
for April 15th, and are as follows :

" Our estimate, therefore, of the cost of producing calcium car-
bide at Spray, by working the furnaces three hundred and sixty-
five days a year and twenty-four hours a day, yielding on the
average one ton of two thousand pounds gross carbide a day, is
$32.76 per ton. Of this amount $14.39 is for material. The
freight charges on lime and coke are heavy at Spray, and add
materially to the cost."

792 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

They found an average net yield of acetylene of 4'926 cubic
feet of moist gas per pound of net carbide, or 4*696 cubic feet per
pound of gross carbide. A gross ton of carbide, then, will yield
about 9,400 cubic feet of acetylene at a cost very slightly above
$32.76, as the final formation of acetylene is practically without
expense. Nine thousand four hundred cubic feet of coal or water
gas costs the consumer somewhere between fourteen and sixteen
dollars, roughly about one half as much as the same amount of
acetylene. But as acetylene gives over eight times as much light
per cubic foot, a large margin seems to be left for decreased gas
bills to the consumer and increased profit for the producer. On
the whole, then, it may be said that acetylene promises to be an
important rival of the present methods of illumination, and de-
serves the careful examination of both the consumer and manu-
facturer of light-givers.

It has been proposed to use calcium carbide as a concentrated
fuel on war vessels and in places where space is of more impor-
tance than cost. Dr. Frank has made the following calculation
of the gain in space over coal : To provide power for a one-thou-
sand-horse marine engine for twenty-five days would require four
hundred and thirteen tons of coal, occupying a space of about
fifteen hundred cubic feet. In this space could be stored enough
of the carbide to propel the ship at the same rate for seventy-five
days. In other words, as a fuel one ton of carbide is equal to
three tons of coal. There are works engaged in the manufacture
of calcium carbide at Spray, N. C, at Niagara Falls and at Lock-
port, N. Y. ; in Europe, at Betterfeld, Prussia, at Neuhausen,
Switzerland, at Baden, in Germany, and at Troyes and Val-
lorbes, in France.

The native Micronesian population of the Marshall Islands is repre-
sented by Dr. Steinbach to be rather increasing than decreasing- — a census
on one of the islands showing an increase of about fifteen per thousand a
year. The density is about sixty -eight to the mile. The people are divided
into four sharply defined classes : the common people, or Kayur ; the next
higher class, the Leataketak, comparable with the village magistrates in
Germany, who see that the orders of the chief are carried out ; the ordi-
nary chiefs, Burak ; and the Iroj, or head chiefs. Neither of the two lower
classes own land, but they are allowed to grow as much produce or catch
as much fish as is necessary for their sustenance ; and they have to per-
form certain services for the chiefs. The ordinary chiefs often possess
larger holdings than the Iroj, or head chiefs. All the members of the four
classes acquire their rank through the mother only. The son of a woman
of the Iroj class is always an Iroj, even though the father be a common
Kayur. The chiefs have still considerable dignity and power, including
that of life and death.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES.

793

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES.

By F. SCHDYLEE MATHEWS.

WHILE we admire and enjoy the greenness and the general
effect of foliage, and regard the forms of single trees if
they are particularly graceful or otherwise peculiar in shape, we
seldom give special attention to individual leaves, but are rather
inclined to neglect them as common and trivial. Yet, as Mr. F.
Schuyler Mathews * well says, while they may be common, " they
are far from commonplace. If we doubt this, let us try to draw
or paint a single leaf. Only a great artist can depict all of some
one of its manifold truths ; one may draw ever so carefully and

Fig. 1.— White Pine, Leaf at A.

well, yet he cq-n not tell with the pencil or the brush all the truth
and beauty of one leaf. Its color is too waxen and pure to be
imitated by earthy pigments; its outline is too subtile, its teeth'
are too finely and vigorously formed, and its veins are too infi-
nitely complex for one to copy with absolute, lifelike accuracy.
No, it is not possible to portray all the beauty of a leaf with the
pencil. Yet this work of Nature's wonderful art is common : the

* Familiar Trees and their Leaves. By F. Schuyler Mathews. With
by Prof. L. H. Bailey. Published by D. Appleton & Co.

Introduction

794

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

world is filled with untold billions of leaves, no two of which are
exactly alike. " It is undoubtedly the fact that we do not fully
appreciate either the beauty or the usefulness of trees ; but after

Fig. 2. — Catalpa Leaf.

we have become really familiar with them, and have learned
readily to distinguish the diflCerent species, we find ourselves in a
new world of absorbing interest, in which beauty and use have
expanded to proportions far beyond our previous conceptions."

Many pleasant and profitable lessons can be learned from Mr.
Mathews's two hundred and odd sketches of leaves taken from
Nature, with their accompanying brief descriptions. The single
lesson to which we would here call attention is the variety in the
forms of leaves. The purpose and condition of the life of the
tree are revealed in no small measure by its leaves.

The needle of the pine enables the tree to withstand a hurri-
cane on a mountain top, yet its slender figure is perfectly adapted
to the task of gathering light and air for the tree's life.

Not less plainly does the diversity of character in a leaf reveal
the diversity of tree life itself. No two leaves are exactly alike ;

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES.

795

no two trees are exactly alike. There are specific as well as ge-
neric differences which are strongly marked. One tree leads a
rugged, wild, and struggling life ; another an easy, luxurious life.
The rough and fuzzy leaf of the slippery elm, the silky leaf of
'the beech, the shiny leaf of the gray birch, these are all widely
different; but there are also distinct differences between the
leaves of the several kinds of birches, elms, and maples.

Still, there are puzzling similarities, and one is often compelled
to study minute details in order to make sure of a particular
species. The catalpa leaf is mentioned as that having the simplest
form. It is without divisions, and has an entire and unbroken
edge. The magnolia leaf, which is oval, might as well have been

— White Oak.

taken as the type ; and there are others equally simple. The
most complex form of leaf is exemplified in that of the horse-
chestnut.

A very interesting exercise may he had in tracing the differ-
ences in the shapes of the leaves of trees of the same family.

796

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as of the oaks, where we have the rounded lobed leaf of the
white oak, the pointed lobed red- oak leaf, and the obovate, ever-
green leaf of the red oak, with numerous transitional and deriva-
tive shapes. In the maples, too, the typical three-lobed, deeply
indented leaf branches out into a great diversity of forms, all
easily referable, however, to the primitive one, the peculiarities
of which are dependent upon the depth, the number, and the mi-
nuteness of the notchings. Another series of sports is shown in

Fi0. 5. — ^LivE Oak.

the birch leaves, where the pointed, serrated leaves of the black
and yellow birch are quite different in shape and general appear-
ance from the pointed, much-notched, glossy, isosceles-triangled
leaves of the white birch. This tree has other marked character-
istics. "Notice the bough where it joins the white trunk; this
triangular brown patch below the branch is always present in
any tree of any age. The leaf stem is slender, rather long, and
not downy ; the leaf (often growing, as in my sketch, in pairs) is
very smooth and shiny on both sides ; also, the stem being slen-
der the leaf shakes with the slightest breeze, and its varnished
surface, reflecting the sunlight, breaks it into shifting, sparkling
green fire."

Another series of sports may be studied in the leaves of the
same tree, as the sassafras, of which three plainly marked shapes
may be found on the same twig, and the mulberry similarly char-

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES.

797

acterized. A peculiarity of opposite style is presented in the leaf
of the tulip tree, which is unique in shape, being cut off at the
end and having a marked hol-
low or notch where nearly
every other leaf is angular or
convex.

Our space is filled, and we
have said nothing of the pin-
nate leaves, or the spiny leaves,
or the leaves of the spruces and
firs, of all of which as interest-
ing studies might be made.

The greatest sphere of use-
fulness which a tree occupies,
Mr. Mathews says, is connected
with its life. It is a great air
purifier; it absorbs from the
atmosphere the carbonic- acid
gas which is poisonous to us ;
it holds and slowly dispenses
moisture which the parched air
needs ; it gives out the ozone
(or oxygen in an active electro-
negative condition) which is
peculiarly conducive to our
health; and it modifies heat
which would otherwise be over-
powering. Each leaf is a build-
er up and an air regulator of a
nature which is beneficial to
us. " Its capacity for heat and
sunshine is something astonish-
ing. I have estimated that a
certain sugar maple of large
proportions, which grows near
my cottage, puts forth in one
season about four hundred and

thirty- two thousand leaves ; these leaves combined present a sur-
face to sunlight of about twenty-one thousand six hundred square
feet, or an area equal to pretty nearly half an acre. Every inch
of this expanse breathes in life for the tree, and out health for
man, while it absorbs in the aggregate an enormous amount of
heat and sunlight. In time of rain it also holds the moisture,
and allows it to evaporate by slow degrees when hot days re-
turn. The forests are vast sponges, which, through the agency
of leaves, soak up the beneficent raindrops and compel them

Red Mulbkbry.

798 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to pass slowly through shaded channels to the parched lands
beyond. It is indeed quite impossible to overestimate the value

Fig. 7.— Tulip Tree.

of the billions and billions of leaves which work and build for
the benefit of humanity."

M. Berthelot reports to the French Academy of Sciences that the sub-
scriptions for the proposed monument to Lavoisier, taken in France and
other countries, amount to 47,353 francs, or $9,410. Of this sum, $100 are
credited to the United States. The subscription is still open, and consider-
able sums are expected from particular sources, as the French Department
of Public Instruction and the city of Paris; and the Emperor of Russia has
headed a subscription list to be opened in his dominions.

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 799

THE EDUCATIVE VALUE OF CHILDREN'S
QUESTIONING.

By henry L. CLAPP.

I KNOW intimately a little boy, now six and a half years old,
who has been a persistent questioner since he was four.
Thirteen months ago he began to read, and now reads The
Youth's Companion, Alice in Wonderland, Lang's and Andersen's
Fairy Tales, Kingsley's Water Babies, and Greek Heroes, school
readers, and many other books with good understanding and
excellent expression. As he has never been to school, and never
has received a day's instruction in reading — that is, direct in-
struction, such as characterizes school work — his progress must
be accounted for in some other way. Since it is not my purpose
to describe in detail how he learned to read, I will simply say
that it may be attributed wholly to persistent questioning on his
part, being answered by his hearers, and having ample oppor-
tunities to practice what he found out. To this indirect instruc-
tion, excessively fragmentary and depending wholly upon his
choice, there has been practically no limit.

When he was about four years old he would follow up his
questions immediately with "Tell me. Why?" When he was
five he introduced every subject he wished to talk about with
" What do you think ? " At six he dropped that, and substituted
" Do you know what ? " But, after two years and a half, he seems
to entertain no thought of giving up " Tell me."

His favorite times for asking questions are when he is being
dressed in the morning and at his meals. At other times during
the day his questions occur at very irregular intervals, and only
a* few or one at a time. Sometimes he will read for an hour
without saying a word, and then, when at play, will ask a ques-
tion pertaining to what he has read. Often he will skip forward
and back for fifteen minutes without speaking, and then ask a
question about something tipon which he has apparently been
meditating. Frequently he sits at the table in silence for ten
minutes, apparently taking no notice of conversation, meditating
on some word or idea obtained from something he has read. It
becomes evident, later, that he can carry on his own train of
thought and at the same time hear and understand conversation,
because he questions about both.

His mother used the word "disposed" at the breakfast table,
but he seemed to take no notice of the conversation going on.
At night, when jumping about the room for the mere pleasure of
movement, he turned suddenly to me and asked, " What does
' disposed ' mean ? " One morning I heard him ask his mother

8oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

'^Is there any key of C flat ?" Not getting an answer, he con-
tinued: "I have asked you a good many times if there is a key
of C flat. Tell me/^ The same morning, at the breakfast table,
he suddenly introduced a very inappropriate subject with the
question : " Do cannibals ever eat their friends ? Tell me."
" What made you think of that ? " "I have heard people say that
cannibals eat other people, and so I asked."

Most frequently his questions refer to some idea obtained
from what he has read some time previously. For example:
" What does prudent mean ? " " Where did you see that word ? "
"In the story about the Prudent Farmer in Harper^s Third
Reader." " What does verh active mean ? " " Where did you see
that ? " " In the story about Squeer's school, written by Charles
Dickens, you know." " Is a merry heart better than wealth ? "
" Where did you read that ? " " In Harper's Third Reader."
" What does effort mean ? " " Trying to do something. Where
did you see that word ? " " In the fable of the stork and the fox."
" What is wisdom ? " " Knowing many things. When a man has
many wise thoughts he has wisdom." " Yes," he said, " wiseness."
" Where did you see wisdom ? " " I saw it in the picture of a
door. Over the door was a card, and on the card it said, ' Wisdom
is strength.' I saw a picture of somebody whispering in an owl's
ear, and it said, 'A word to the wise.' Is the owl the wisest bird ? "
" What is honest milk ? " This last question was suggested by
his reading a milkman's circular.

On the other hand, many of his questions can not be connected
with his reading, but appear to result from reasoning or a recog-
nized analogy. " How do plants make themselves bigger when
they grow ? " he asked when we were talking about planting his
garden. I heard him saying to himself, " Wildless, wildless." I
asked him what he was talking about, and he replied : " About
plants that are not wild. What are they called ? " " Garden or
cultivated plants," I answered. " What made you say wildless ? "
" Why," said he, " I knew that harmless meant something that
wouldn't do any harm, and so wildless means plants that are not
wild." He mentioned the fall, and I asked him what he meant
by fall. He replied : " The winter at first, the first of it. Do they
call it fall because everything is falling ? " There was some talk
about dressing him or putting on his dress, and, reasoning from
analogy, he asked, " When God puts the skin on people, is that
skinning them ? " I once read of the people in the moon being
like grasshoppers, and told him about it. When I had finished
the story, he said : " When we look up in the sky we see the moon
rolling on above us, and when the people in the moon look up in
the sky they see the earth rolling along above them. What is
the strange puzzle about that ? " I told him that his specimen of

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING, 801

mica was silicate of potash, and he asked, "Why is mica silicate
of potash ? Because they put ashes in a pot ?"

These questions have been recorded to represent an innumer-
able number unrecorded, and to show the wide range of thought
and the variety of reasonings that a child under six years of age
may have. They show his natural method of acquiring knowl-
edge, but they can only suggest the ceaseless activity of his mind
during all his waking hours.

His habit, to a greater or less degree, is the habit of all chil-
dren. Very early, even before they begin to talk, they manifest
a desire to know the causes of things ; and they continue to show
natural curiosity until they go to school, which they seem to
recognize as a place where curiosity is very much out of place,
since so little opportunity is given for its exercise. In that case
curiosity is apt to be replaced by laziness and apparent dullness.

Out of school they are, with rare exceptions, very thoughtful
and exceedingly busy about something. They question much for
the satisfaction which they experience in finding reasons or ex-
planations of various acts. Each questions from his own point of
view, and thereby increases his understanding and develops his
own mind. These voluntary questions engage his whole atten-
tion ; they are for the time of the highest interest to him, and, on
that account, of the greatest importance to his proper mental de-
velopment. As he leaps about for the mere pleasure of physical
movement, his thoughts also dart about among scenes past and
present, and imagination carries him on to the future and back
again like a flash. What pleasure he takes in these mental and
physical movements when he is at full liberty to do as ho pleases !
He is happy because he is fulfilling the laws of his being, devel-
oping his mind and body by his own self-activities. He can not
help questioning any more than he can help jumping or thinking.
In a proper home there is only moderate restriction on any of
these means of development, and accordingly he develops there
very fast. In the fields and woods also there are no restrictions
on natural development. Running in the fields, climbing trees,
and playing games of all sorts are powerful developing processes.
Queries are rapidly formed and as rapidly answered, probabilities
are balanced, decisions are made, and bodily movements follow in
exact conformity to the judgment and will.

The moment children step into the ordinary schoolroom oppor-
tunities for questioning and spontaneous judging and willing are
cut off. They are now going to be trained and developed by a
logical, systematic, step-by-step method, frequently called nor-
mal. All physical movements with any vigor in them must be
regulated by a minutely detailed system of gymnastics, which
frequently comes to be so dominant that all natural play at recess

VOL. XLIX. — 62

8o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

must give way to marching and countermarching. In the school-
room questioning, judging, willing, and spontaneity in general
seem to be vested in the teacher alone, to be incompatible with
his idea of pupils' right thinking. The educational code there is,
" Sit still, ask no questions, learn and recite your lessons, and do
what I tell you." This ancient code makes the conditions favor-
able for the application of questions assumed to be asked after the
Socratic method, in which as practiced the pupils' self-activities
appear to be very much overlooked.

The universal method of teaching is catechetical, the teacher
asking all the questions and the pupils attempting to answer
them. The teacher sets the conditions and makes all the attacks
on ignorance, negligence, and incompetence, and may be said
truly to be on the offensive always ; while the pupils constantly
attempt to comply with conditions, repel attacks, and conceal
their shortcomings, and may be said as truly to be always on the
defensive. The mutual relations of teacher and pupils may be
quite accurately determined by averaging the conditions which
the graduates of various schools remember to have existed when
they went to school. How they outwitted the teacher forms a
bright spot in the memory. It is long remembered and easily
recalled. Like a good joke, it is delightfully piquant and suggest-
ive of similar jokes.

The customary one-sidedness of teaching makes school work
more or less disagreeable and progress comparatively slow. It is
difficult to excite and sustain interest. Repression, coercion, and
machinery become necessary to make the government respected
and respectable. Strong disciplinarians rather than good teachers
are required when children's activities, either of body or mind,
are directed into hard, unnatural channels or are kept down by
forcible means. The teacher questions, struggles against the con-
stitution of her pupils' minds, and really dominates them at last.
Her hart says, " Tediousness is the greatest sin of instruction." The
pupils often feel that their work is uninteresting and difficult
without knowing why or how to help themselves ; and they learn,
often by bitter experience, that it is discreet to obey and learn
and recite their lessons, however distasteful they may be. That
is the traditional way — the way passed over by their parents, in
which they are expected to go, and by which the torrent of their
impulsive questions must needs be dammed up for many a long
year in the future as it has been for centuries in the past. Re-
pression is the word naturally and correctly applied to such a
system.

Children's natural, constant, and almost irrepressible desire
to question freely about everything that comes within the range
of their experience has not been considered of any special value

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 803

in educating them. Even Froebel seems to have overlooked its
great value as a means of developing reason, judgment, the rela-
tion of things, and everything that makes for real knowledge.
Out of school it has room. A man may question everything,
past, present, and future, but a child's inalienable right to say
" Why ? " out loud in a schoolroom is hardly recognized. He is
to take instruction without question. Traditions in education
are almost unchangeable.

Children, as a rule, do not like to be held to a definite line of
questioning by a teacher, unless the subject is very interesting by
nature. The impressive, commanding, magnetic teacher may have
no apparent difi&culty in holding the pupils to her questions ; but
pride in that feat partakes strongly of vainglory. What will
they do when left to themselves ? What can they do without
her ? How far can they go alone ? To what degree are they
self- controlled. Fine instruction has value, but teaching pupils
to teach themselves, and simply and skillfully directing their self-
activities to that end, is a great deal better. Herbert Spencer
says, " Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your
discipline should be to produce a self- governing loeing, not to
produce a being to be governed by others."

President Eliot says : " All teachers who deserve the name now
recognize that self-control is the ultimate moral object of train-
ing in youth — a self-control independent of temporary artificial
restraints, exclusions, or pressures, as also of the physical presence
of a dominating person. To cultivate in the young this self-
control should be the steady object of parents and teachers all the
way from babyhood to full maturity."

There are a few schools in which the pupils feel free to ask
questions, when it is necessary, in school time. In many schools
there is a standing invitation to ask and answer questions before
and after school. Such an invitation amounts to a prohibition
of questioning. In many schools the pupils are trained to talk ;
but the substance of the talk is along the old line, reproduction,
or a new form of recitation, better than the old, because in the
pupils' own language. Nevertheless, training children to ques-
tion in school time as a means of developing reason, power of
comprehension, and self-control is scarcely appreciated anywhere.
Even suggestions of children's questioning are exceedingly few
in literature on education ; but records of its actual practice are
unknown. Two lines in Tate's Philosophy of Education and a
few lines concerning the Jesuits' methods of teaching in Quick's
Educational Reformers are all the suggestions that have come to
my notice. The Jesuits divided their boys into two camps and
had them question each other, to stimulate rivalry and emulation.

It will be readily conceded that teachers like to question

8o4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

pupils and to show tlieir skill in questioning. A good many so-
called experts consider the ability of the teacher to question logic-
ally as the measure of his value. This is a very superficial view
of the matter. It has resulted in positive injury to many teach-
ers, and greater injury to more pupils.

Some teachers confess that they are disinclined to allow their
pupils to question as a practice, since the questions may be point-
less, illogical, and inadequate. That is precisely the kind of work
which the school should undertake to remedy. The pupil's ques-
tions reveal the condition of his mind quite as much as his an-
swers to the teacher's questions. His anxiety to avoid errors
moves him to say what he thinks the teacher desires. When he
questions he is thrown off his guard, and his misconceptions, and
feebleness or acuteness of mind are revealed inadvertently and
the teacher can help just when and where help is needed without
undue interference, which is so common in school.

Moreover, these teachers claim that such freedom as this work
necessitates might lead to disorder, or what passes for disorder in
the opinion of those who judge the order by the degree of still-
ness and lack of movement prevailing. So they keep the reins
taut in their own hands and set up a despotism of varying degrees
of severity.

Many an inexperienced teacher, who has learned this method
at some training school for teachers, may charge her failure in
maintaining order to her persistence in trying to hold a large
class of pupils to her questions. Her logical plans and orderly
questions are commonly inelastic, unsuitable, monotonous, and
sometimes irritating. She bends the wills of her pupils to her
own ; but there is too much elasticity in their mental habitudes
to endure the strain long. In a few days the monotony of a
single voice, hardly still during the day, and the vain attempt to
" follow my leader " in her set and searching questions result in
restlessness, inattention, and disorder. Her pupils can not readily
get used to the one-sided game.

The aims which the average teacher finds the most difficult in
reaching are, to secure attention, arouse interest, induce sponta-
neity, elicit independent thought, give enjoyment, and prevent
ordinary school work from becoming or appearing a task. This
difficulty also may very largely be charged to the traditional
mode of questioning. There is seldom any enjoyment in it.
Herbert Spencer says : " Experience is daily showing with greater
clearness that there is always a method to be found productive of
interest — even of delight ; and it ever turns out that this is the
method proved by all other tests to be the right one.''

All teachers unite in extolling spontaneity in the abstract, but
almost universally ignore it in their teaching by reason of alleged

, CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 805

difficulties in reducing it to practice. They are always talking
about attention, interest, and independent thought, even to their
pupils, while they are continually heading off the development of
those desirable attributes by restricting their pupils to answering
questions referring to tasks which they have set. Certainly their
pupils seldom find " delight " in their questions, but, on the con-
trary, find comfort in evasion, as they very frequently say they
understand the subject under question when they do not, in order
to get rid of the galling questions which seem especially designed
to reveal their deficiencies and bring about their disgrace.

Supervisor Martin, one of the keenest and wisest observers on
the Board of Supervisors of Public Schools in Boston, says in his
report recently issued : " If there be a general weakness, it lies in
the failure to develop in the pupils the ambition and the power
of self-help. The skill of the teachers is more fully exhibited in
their presentation of subjects than in stimulating pupils to inde-
pendent effort. Much of the work is simple giving and taking
and giving back." Independent effort being generally wanting,
spontaneity of necessity must be wanting, because there can be
no independent effort where there is no desire or will to make it.
In this regard probably the schools of Boston are no more deficient
than schools at large.

But, in view of all the talk made at educational conventions
during many decades, it is remarkable how little progress in spon-
taneity has been made in school, even since FroebeVs time.

Froebel said : " I must not neutralize and deaden that spon-
taneity which is the mainspring of all the machinery ; I must
rather encourage it, while ever opening new fields for its exercise,
and giving it new directions. Can I not then even now gradually
transform their play into work, but work which shall look like
play, work which shall originate in the same or similar impulses,
and exercise the same energies as I see employed in their own
amusements and occupations ? " Pestalozzi also claimed that
" spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under
which the mind educates itself, and gains power and independ-
ence."

A careful distinction should be made between children's activ-
ities and self- activities, the one often being confounded with the
other by teachers. Generally their activities in school result from
a compelling force of will, of laws, of penalties, all of whicn are
kept well out of sight in some schools, but in the immediate fore-
ground in most schools. This compelling force is often necessary
under present conditions, but not so often as practice would make
it appear.

Generally teachers' traditions and scholastic training are no
safe guides in dealing with self-activities educationally. Self-

8o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

activity is spontaneous, the result of an inside motive. How to
teach children to desire to undertake and stick to school work,
whether the teacher be present or absent, tradition does not state.
To be sure, children's questioning in school as a real educative
force and a rule of practice is, it may be, startlingly new ; but
any means, precedented or unprecedented, that will certainly re-
sult in spontaneous activity should be earnestly sought for and
fairly used.

The idea of educating children through their activities has of
late years found expression in giving them something to do with
their hands, as seen in the various forms of manual training.
The advocates and teachers of this work indulge the thought and
give the impression that it brings out children's self-activities re-
markably well. Many fondly believe that by means of it the
" whole boy " is sent to school. Nevertheless, his self-activities
seem to have but little more opportunity for development than
before the doing era, advantageous as that really is. Children
in all departments of manual training are taught, instructed,
crammed, compelled, it may be, as of old, and then they work out
the instruction with head and hand, whereas formerly the head
only attempted to follow instructions, more often unsuccessfully.
Certainly a great advance was made by the introduction of manual
training ; but spontaneous self-activity is not a leading motive in
the work, if any at all. The work is prescribed.

The child's curiosity or investigating spirit does not receive its
satisfaction in any form of manual training now in use. Indi-
vidual experimentation and investigation have small place in it,
so that the need of other educational forces is felt. The spirit of
inquiry is much less apparent in school than out. Whose fault
is it ? Surely not the children's. Nature studies are doing the
most to foster the spirit of inquiry, manual training hardly any-
thing. Constructiveness is important, but no more important
in education than investigation. Investigation and voluntary
work are the expressions of self-activities, while prescribed work
is the expression of activities governed by a temporary, outside,
dominating influence.

In connection with manual training H. Courthope Bowen says
in his work on Froebel and Self- activities : " Broadly speaking,
Pestalozzi's plan is one of observing and imitating ; Froebel's, one
of observing and inventing. To exercise the creative^ originating
powers of the child is Froebel's main object ; to teach the child to
speak and to do work already prescribed is largely the aim of Pes-
talozzi. Froebel's plan, therefore, more directly tends to develop
independence and originality of character." To carry out Froebel's
plan children must have far more true liberty^n thought and ac-
tion in school than they now have. Their spirit and temper must

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 807

be reached if they are to be educated properly. Education must
become less Pestalozzian and more Froebelian. So it does beconae
when children question.

The idea of educating children through play, where self- activi-
ties are at their best, is not new, having been not only clearly set
forth in theory but reduced to practice by Froebel. The only
application of the play element as a means of development in our
systems of education is found in the kindergarten. No one has
shown how it can be made useful in schools beyond the kinder-
garten. To most teachers it seems utterly incompatible with the
work of such schools. They are not willing to admit in any de-
gree that " play is the work of the child." If the play element is
of so high educational value in the kindergarten, why is it not of
much higher value all along up through the elementary school,
where the pupils play much more vigorously, intelligently, and
skillfully ? Even young men and women who give up so much
for baseball, polo, tennis, and golf, prove that the play element
abides long ; and, although it now results in healthful exercise,
and a development of body and mind that is too frequently and
unwarrantably claimed as the result of school work, it might be
turned to the account of school education if half the time and
attention given to prescribed studies were given to it.

Full opportunity to ash questions in the schoolroom in school
time gives the play impulse in children an excellent outlet. Their
unique expressions and inadequate conceptions result in questions
and answers that are not only instructive but decidedly entertain-
ing to all concerned. They are often irresistibly funny without
intending to be. On the other hand, there being ample room for
the play of thought, the zest of play frequently runs through their
exercises. When the teacher sees the need of comment or expla-
nation, the attitude of their minds is exactly appropriate, and their
attention spontaneous and perfect ; never so willing and complete
when the teacher talks, questions, reasons, prescribes, and com-
pels. This judgment is not the result of a single, ephemeral ex-
periment, but of demonstrations repeated through years.

Under the system of spontaneous questions and self-conducted
exercises " blue Monday," so called on account of the apparent
dullness of pupils on Monday forenoon, disappears with the ap-
parent exhaustion on Friday afternoon. The opportunity to stand
up, turn about, and use muscles and wills in a way that does not
savor of militarism and gymnastics conduces to great activity and
excellent temper. Appropriate conditions determine the spirit of
all life and action.

The habit of asking questions puts the questioner in the atti-
tude of an investigator and develops an active habit of mind.
Always to be questioned induces waiting passivity, and the dif-

8o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ference is radical and momentous for true education. In ques-
tioning lies the germ of original research ; all inventions, dis-
coveries, and progress have come out of it. Only the questioner
becomes a discoverer. And since it is obvious — often disagreea-
bly so out of school — that the questioning, investigating habit is
the child's most marked characteristic, and the most direct mani-
festation of a constitutional current of mental action that can not
be repressed long any V7ay, and seldom without danger, it seems
inexcusable that any educational agency worthy of the name
should fail to develop so important a habit by every means pos-
sible. Its careful cultivation would be sure to result in such a
success in original research as schools have never yet won.

Prof. C. S. Minot says, " To train men to originality in every
field of production is the proper function of a true university."
Prof. N. S. Shaler made essentially the same statement in the
Atlantic Monthly. It is not likely that originality will be called
out easily in the university when all through the primary, sec-
ondary, and collegiate education, fifteen years or more, it has
been permitted to lie dormant. Men do not begin to train trees
and vines of mature growth. If originality is to be brought to
full fruition in life, its obvious beginnings as seen in children's
questions and curiosity must be cherished most carefully, not
only in the university, but in every school that leads to the uni-
versity. Originality, like playing the violin, must be encouraged
early, if proper development is to be attained.

Children like better to work or play in company with one an-
other than with adults ; and when so working or playing they do
not lack for questions and answers. At their parties they play
various mental games with much zest. There is no satisfactory
reason why this play faculty should not be brought into the
schoolroom everywhere as it has been in a few places, by means
of pupils' questioning guided by the teacher.

Their questioning has been found especially valuable in all
review work, in history, geography, language work, civil govern-
ment, physics, mineralogy, botany, and mental arithmetic. In
the last four studies the questions are nearly always new and
impromptu.

In this work they find the required variety in questions and
voices, they measure their strength with one another, their wit and
fancy find expression in amusing and unexpected turns, and their
diligent attention and mental alertness are constant. The free-
dom, pleasure, and exhilaration that are essential elements of the
work lead pupils to do their best. Their exuberant spirits, energy,
individuality, and originality find proper outlets, and, in conse-
quence, their tempers are improved. They have time to frame
and answer questions based on their own data, and a place for

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 809

"applying theory, or putting acquisitions into practice, and for
personally using for productive ends their disciplined powers."
So they learn to stand up unembarrassed, to lose self-conscious-
ness, to think on their feet, to set conditions as well as comply
with them, to lead thought as well as follow it, and get that real
practice in adapting themselves to constantly changing condi-
tions that will serve them so well when school life has ended.
All this work tends directly to that most important acquisition,
self-control in body and mind.

Perhaps the greatest benefit derived from mutual questioning
is of an ethical nature, since it affords the best opportunity in
school for the cultivation of the most refined human relations.
The pupils become habituated to deference, self-restraint, polite-
ness, kindness, unconsciousness of self, and equality of rights as
regards time, attention, instruction, and opportunity to work
without interference. Egotism, selfishness, plagiarism, the desire
for display, and the struggle for personal rewards have little room
for growth on account of persistent practice in ways that make
for qualities of an opposite character. The teacher's illustrations
from the workings of society and the administration of govern-
ment find their appropriate places and are immediately put into
practice in this genuine, embryo part of the body politic. The
pupil's judgment is constantly appealed to. As teachers have
said many times, the pupils seem like one great family, each mem-
ber working for the common good. The educational value of the
boy teaching the boy by simple language and blackboard illustra-
tions is recognized. The reflex action of teaching is seen to be as
valuable to the boy as to the teacher.

The ethical value of mutual questioning is especially notice-
able in the pupil's graduating exercises, which are the legitimate
results of their regular work. Each pupil has an opportunity to
do according to his ability. There are no picked scholars, no
exhaustively trained precocities, no survival of the fittest, no false
show, no tragic or comic declamations or mere mouthings of the
misty words of statesmen and poets ; but each reveals his own
thoughts in his own way, pruned and strengthened by his train-
ing. The ease, interest, energy, self-reliance, and politeness with
which they carry on their impromptu exercises in the presence of
five hundred people can not be understood by even distinguished
educators, versed in traditional methods only, who may be present.

The doctrine of opportunity has not been preached enough,
and the wonderful constitution of the mind and its power to de-
velop itself by its own energies when fully aroused have been so
often and so unjustly claimed as the direct results of systematic
or dogmatic instruction that the truth, when held up to view,
may not be recognized and acknowledged.

8io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A fitting conclusion to this presentation of the educative value
of children's questioning may be found in a brief mention of the
children's own thoughts concerning the subject.

There having been no conversation or suggestions concerning
the matter, the pupils who averaged fifteen years of age were
asked to give their ideas of the advantages of questioning each
other, and they expressed themselves thus : " "We don't waste time,
because if our teacher is out of the room we can go on with our
recitation. Having to decide on the answers to our questions
makes us think. We have to know more about our lessons if we
ask questions than if we only answered them. We have more
questions than if ou.r teacher made them all. We are all of about
the same age, and understand and misunderstand things in about
the same way, and can help each other out. Questioning helps us
to talk and obliges us to depend on ourselves. When thirty-eight
children are making questions, some one of them may think of
a question that the teacher may not think of. We look forward
to conducting our graduating exercises without help from our
teacher, and this work trains us for that."

THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS.

By Peof. WILLIAM KOMAINE NEWBOLD.

IN this and my succeeding paper I intend to take up a group of
phenomena which involve some of the most perplexing of
psychological and metaphysical questions. There is no problem
that can be of greater interest to us as human beings than that
which concerns the nature of my self, my origin, and my destiny.
Of my origin and my destiny exact Science is not yet in a position
to say much, and of my nature and constitution she knows little
more. The greater interest therefore attaches to those cases in
which the consciousness of self seems to be disordered, and,
although we are far from a complete comprehension of them, we
can go far enough to show that they present phenomena which
are closely akin to those which we have been examining.

We may set aside at the outset the notion that the real self is
an immaterial, invisible, indestructible something called mind or
soul in which my mental states inhere. Whether anything of
the kind exists or not I do not know ; if it does, we know nothing
of it, and it is not of the least significance except as a symbol for
the indestructibility of the conscious self. The only self in which
I have interest is the self that feels, endures, hopes, and the only
self I can know is the self that is manifested in consciousness.

Setting aside, then, this notion of the self as mind or soul

THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS, 81 1

apart from consciousness, there remains as the object of inquiry-
consciousness as we know it. In my first three papers (Decem-
ber, 1895, January and February, 1896) I have given my reasons
for thinking that we may conceive of it as a web containing mani-
fold and constantly shifting strands. Sensations of all kinds, some
vivid and some obscure, memories, anticipations, emotions, and
deliberate volitions succeed one another in bewildering confusion.
Yet at any given moment this apparent confusion is in reality a
system the form and constitution of which is determined by laws
as inflexible as any that rule in the physical world.

What, then, is my self ? Is it merely another name for the
whole ? Or are there parts of this ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic
phantasmagoria which are parts of my self in a more special
sense than the others ?

I think there are. In the first place, and in the broadest sense
of the word self, all those sensations which go to make up my con-
sciousness of my body as distinguished from the sensations which
I regard as springing from the outer world are peculiarly mine.
The appearance of my body from without, the double sensations
that arise from contact of part with part, but especially the vague
sensations that are always pouring in from every muscle and
joint, from the heart, lungs, stomach, and intestines, these all
blend into a confused mass which forms the background or stage
upon which the more distinct elements that are supplied by the
special senses play their parts. Any changes in this mass I feel
as changes in my self. Emotions and moods, and the indefinable
difference between the feeling of health and the feeling of disease
spring from obscure changes in it, but I feel them as changes in
my self.

But with reflection comes a tendency to narrow the meaning
of the word self. Who has not gazed in the mirror at what
others call his self until the sense of opposition between the real
self and that at which he was looking became so intense that he
turned away almost frightened and glad to sink again into the
old familiar sense of unity with his body ? The more I reflect
the less does my body seem important to me, I am the inner life
of thought. Most of my thoughts I acknowledge as truly mine,
and most of the deeds that spring out of them I recognize as be-
longing to me. But occasionally a thought appears toward which
a sense of strangeness arises — it seems none of mine. Possibly
because it is so much better than my usual thoughts that it seems
like a breath from a higher world, possibly because it is so wicked
that I am almost tempted to believe it comes from a devil, pos-
sibly merely because it is insistent and does not go when I bid it.
So of the impulses and desires that control me. Most of them are
mine, but now and then I do something toward which I feel, when

812 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I look back upon it, a curious sense of irresponsibility, as if it
were not of my doing after all. Such deeds are always those
which I seldom do ; my everyday virtues and my everyday vices
I must admit are mine.

But there is just one thing which I always acknowledge as
mine. It is the sense of effort. It matters not whether I employ
it in contracting my muscles to the utmost, in fixing attention
upon some uninteresting object, in following some distant end in
spite of the solicitations of the present, or in overcoming for some
moral reason the claims of the greater pleasure — this sense of
effort I always acknowledge and always must acknowledge as
mine.

The word self, then, seems to stand for the most frequently re-
current elements of my inner life, with the consciousness of effort
as its very essence and core. But it is evident that we can not,
whenever we speak of it, think all these things. To evade that
necessity most men probably make use of some vague thought
symbol which the word self suggests. Symbols of this sort are
known as concepts. They play a great part in our mental life ;
without them the marvelous achievements of the human mind
would never have been. Yet they are so shadowy and evanescent
that it is almost impossible to determine their precise constitu-
tion, and the more complex and diverse the phenomena they stand
for, the greater the difficulty of fixing and describing them. The
task is almost as fruitless from the practical point of view as it is
vain from the speculative, yet an immense amount of labor and
ingenuity has been expended upon it. Most of the work com-
monly termed metaphysical is based upon the conviction that
these shadows are or represent realities apart from the concrete
things for which they stand ; sundry attributes are ascribed to
them, and out of these imaginary attributes the metaphysician
tries to construct a science. Most of the difficulties that attach to
the notion of a self or ego spring out of this confusion be-
tween the symbol and the things symbolized, and I shall there-
fore say no more of the symbol, but confine myself to the concrete
states of consciousness which constitute my thinking self and
which alone possess interest for me.

If this analysis of the self be true, it will follow that the con-
. sciousness of self can be modified by the addition to or subtrac-
tion from my inner life of large masses of stable elements, and this
appears to be borne out by the facts.

Extensive changes in the mass of bodily sensation are fre-
quently accompanied by modifications in the sense of self. I can
not go into this in detail, but those who care to follow the subject
out will find it treated at length by Prof. Ribot in his little mono-
graph. The Diseases of Personality.

THE, SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS, 813

Great changes in one's circumstances and surroundings are
often connected with similar changes in the self-consciousness.
A journey to a foreign land, the sudden death of a relative or
friend, a great disappointment in love or in business, or an equally-
great and unexpected success— all these necessarily involve the
demolition of many of one's most permanent habits, plans, and
expectations. There may follow a period of confusion in which
the self of the present moment looks back upon the self of the
past as a very different being.

Analogous changes take place normally in the course of life
with the constant addition of new experiences and development
of new instincts. The sense of self usually changes impercepti-
bly to keep pace with these new growths, but sometimes the
change can be felt. The young man or young girl sometimes
notices it during or at the close of the period of adolescence, and
we frequently become conscious of it at other times, when some-
thing brings very clearly to mind the events of years ago. Not
long since I ran across a book over which I used to pore as a
child, but had not seen for years ; when I opened it, my present
self for just one moment fell away, and I was again a child of
eight. It was a strange experience, and the childish self that then
for a second or two lived again was much more unlike the present
I than I commonly think of it as being.

If our memories are constituent parts of our self-conscious-
ness, it follows that any extensive abolition of memories will im-
pair or destroy a man's sense of self. This is so common a phe-
nomenon that I need not quote illustrations. More interesting
are those cases in which certain portions of a person's memory
are abolished and restored at varying intervals, especially when
illusory memories and other delusions are commingled with the
memories that remain. In such cases we get true modifications of
the patient's personality. One of the best known of these cases is
that of Ansel Bourne.*

Mr. Bourne lived in a village near Providence, R. I. On Janu-
ary 17, 1887, he went to Providence, drew five hundred and fifty-
one dollars with which to pay for a farm he intended to buy, and
then disappeared. About two weeks later he appeared in Norris-
town. Pa., styling himself A. J. Brown, rented a room, divided it
in two by curtains, lived and slept in the rear room, and opened a
little shop in the front for the sale of toys, confectionery, notions,
etc. During the six weeks he lived there no one noted anything
unusual in his demeanor.

"On the morning of Monday, March l-lth, about five o'clock, he

* This account is abridged from Dr. Richard Hodgson's paper, A Case of Double Per-
sonality, in The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii, pp. 221-257.

8i4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

heard, he says, an explosion like the report of a gun or a pistol,
and, waking, he noticed that there was a ridge in his bed not like
the bed he had been accustomed to sleep in. He noticed the elec-
tric light opposite his windows. He rose and pulled away the
curtains and looked out on the street. He felt very weak, and
thought he had been drugged. His next sensation was that of
fear, knowing that he was in a place where he had no business
to be. He feared arrest as a burglar, or possibly injury. He
says this is the only time in his life he ever feared a policeman.

" The last thing he could remember before waking was seeing
the Adams express wagons at the corner of Dorrance and Broad
Streets, in Providence, on his way from the store of his nephew in
Broad Street to his sister's residence in Westminster Street, on
January 17th. He waited to hear some one move, and for two
hours he suffered great mental distress. Finally, he tried the
door, and, finding it fastened on the inside, opened it. Hearing
some one moving in another room, he rapped at the door.'' His
landlord opened it, and from him he learned where he was, how
he came there, and what day of the month it was. The landlord
thought he was insane and sent for a doctor, and the doctor tele-
graphed for his relatives and had him taken home.

Prof. James, of Harvard, and Dr. Hodgson heard of this case
about three years later, and got Mr. Bourne's consent to their in-
vestigating it. Prof. James hypnotized Mr. Bourne, with the hope
of reviving the Brown state, and was surprisingly successful. He
told the story of his wanderings correctly, giving clews to his
doings during the two weeks that elapsed after he left Providence
and before he appeared in Norristown. Of his own history he
could tell very little. Said he : " Seems as if I was sot right
down there in Dorrance Street without knowing where I came
from. Got into a spot, don't know how I came there, both ends
are blank." His name, he said, was Albert John Brown. He was
"born in Newton, N. H., July 8, 1826 [he was born in New York
city, July 8, 1826], had passed through a great deal of trouble,
losses of friends and property ; loss of his wife was one trouble —
she died in 1881 ; three children living, but everything was con-
fused prior to his finding himself in the horse car on the way to
Pawtucket ; he wanted to get away somewhere — he didn't know
where — and have rest. . . . He had heard of the singular experi-
ence of Ansel Bourne, but did not know whether he had ever met
Ansel Bourne or not. He had been a professor of religion him-
self for many years, belonged to the ' Christian ' denomination,
but back there everything was mixed up. He used to keep a
store in Newton, N. H., and was engaged in lumber and trading
business; had never previously dealt in the business which he
took up in Norristown. He kept the Norristown store for six or

THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS. 815

eight weeks — how lie got away from there was all confused ; since
then it had been a blank. The last thing he remembered about
the store was going to bed on Sunday night, March 13, 1887."

Some of these statements are true and others are not. He was
never in Newton, N. H., in his life, and never engaged in any kind
of trade. He had been a carpenter, farmer, and itinerant evan-
gelist. His first wife did die in 1881, but he had married again ;
of his second wife the Brown personality never had any knowl-
edge.

The nature of this change of personality is now fairly clear.
The greater part of Ansel Bourne's memories were obliterated ;
the few that remained had lost all organic connection with one
another, and gave rise to illusions of memory. Probably his new
name and his notion that he had engaged in the lumber and trad-
ing business sprang from confused recollections of his own name
and of his trade as a carpenter. But there was no material change
in the active side of his nature. His character and instincts re-
mained pretty much what they had been before. Further inquiry
showed that he had had several epileptiform " fainting fits " with-
in the last few years, and had been early in life the subject of a
sudden loss of sight, hearing, and speech, followed by a " miracu-
lous " cure.

Another typical case is that of Fdlida X . This girl was first

seen by Dr. Azam, of Bordeaux, in June of 1858. She was then
about fifteen years old. About two years before hysterical symp-
toms had appeared ; between her fourteenth and fifteenth years, at
intervals of four or five days, and especially after some emotional
excitement, she would feel a pain in the temples, followed by over-
powering drowsiness. After an apparent sleep of ten minutes or
so she would awake in a secondary state. It would last an hour or
two, and then she would pass into her ordinary condition through
a period of unconsciousness, as before.

In the primary state she was perfectly sane, was intelligent,
resolute, and diligent, but taciturn, gloomy, even morose. She was
not affectionate, was inclined to dwell upon her condition, and
suffered much from pains of obscure origin. In the second state
she was gay, hummed a tune over her sewing, was quick of move-
ment, vivacious, fond of visiting, was emotionally sensitive and
generally flighty. Her pains were much better. In her first state
she remembered all her childhood and what had happened during
other occurrences of the same state, but nothing of the second.
In the second, however, her memory was complete, embracing
the first as well as the second. She then spoke of her primary
condition as her "attacks" (crises) or as that "stupid state"
{cet etat bete). Occasionally a third state made its appearance.
The transition was as above described, but in it she seemed

8i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mentally confused, was the prey to intense terror, saw horrible
visions, etc.

She married when between sixteen and seventeen years of age,
and Dr. Azam lost sight of her for sixteen years. In 1876 he
hunted her up again, and had kept her in sight until the ajjpear-
ance of his book in 1887. Considerable changes have taken place
in her condition. The transition states are much shorter, being
scarcely noticeable. Her second state has continuously gained
ground upon her first, so that in 1865, ten years after its first ap-
pearance, her life was about equally divided between them. In
1875 the first only recurred at long and irregular intervals and
lasted only a few hours. In 1887 its recurrences were rarer and
shorter still. Throughout her life she has been a hysteric of the
worst kind. She had had her sensations of touch, taste, and smell
impaired, she had had frequent haemorrhages from the nose, lungs,
and stomach, and when excited had convulsive attacks. On one
occasion she had a haemorrhage from the scalp. Red spots often
appear on the left side of the body and are accompanied by pain
and heat, frequently by swelling. One such swelling on her hand
burst her glove. The third state, that of panic terror and mental
confusion, has become much more frequent and lasts longer. With
advancing years and troubles her second state has become less gay
and careless, so that the contrast of character is not so marked, but
the gulf in her memories remains as wide as ever. She went to a
friend's funeral in the second state ; on her way home she passed
into the first and could not imagine what brought her into a car-
riage full of mourners. Her sister-in-law died after a long ill-
ness ; Fdlida passed into her first state and knew nothing of her
death, but, remembering her illness, inferred that she had died
from the mourning garb in which she found herself clad. Once
in her second state she grew jealous of another woman and tried
to hang herself, but was cut down in time by her neighbors.
When she recovered she expressed the wish to go into her first
state, for then, she said, she would forget her misery. And she
did, for the next time she passed into it she showed herself most
affectionate to the former object of her jealousy.

The changes that take place in F^lida's case are more far-
reaching than those of Ansel Bourne. Not only are large blocks
of memories erased, but the active side of her mind is profoundly
affected. Yet one would scarcely say that the two F^lidas were
different people. Rather does it seem that the real F^lida is the
second, the one which first came to light amid the changes of
adolescence. It is like Ansel Bourne's case reversed, for A. J.
Brown is Ansel Bourne shorn of nearly all that was his ; the sec-
ond F^lida is the first Fdlida completed by the addition of much
that was her birthright.

THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS. 817

I have already alluded to the fact that Ansel Bourne early in
life suffered a sudden loss of sight, hearing, and speech, and as
suddenly regained them ; and in the case of F^lida I also alluded
to her hysterical condition and to her third state. Now, all these
phenomena from the purely psychological point of view belong
under the same category. The sudden splitting off from the true
Ansel Bourne of a mass of states and tendencies which took a new
name and called themselves a new person is precisely analogous
to the equally sudden splitting off from Ansel Bourne's conscious-
ness of his powers of sight, hearing, and speech. In my first three
papers I have developed at length the conception of consciousness
as a co-ordinated system capable of greater or less dissolution or
disordination without the destruction of its component elements.
These two cases are illustrations in point. In both the period of
complete disordination or " unconsciousness " was very brief and
was followed by a recombination of the elements which had
formerly constituted a personality into a dist nctly new system,
which in one case assumed a new name. In F^lida's third statt3
we have a third recombination of some of these elements, but it is
apparently very imperfect, for it is accompanied by hallucinations,
and hallucinations depend in large measure upon defective co-
ordination. In the case of A. J. Brown the new system seemed
relatively quite stable, for it was evoked three years afterward by
simply disordinating Mr. Bourne's consciousness. Yet in its later
occurrences it appeared to be disintegrating.

I have spent a good deal of time upon these three cases be-
cause their relative simplicity, their similarity, and the care with
which they have been observed make it easy to form a concep-
tion of the way in which the successive states were related to one
another. The next which I shall take up does not differ from
these in kind, but is much more complex. In it we see the pa-
tient's memory-store split into at least five groups, among which
the use of his sense organs and muscles is repartitioned in a most
carious manner, while his character presents in each state certain
distinctive traits.

Louis V was born in Paris, February 12, 1863, of a dissolute

and hysterical mother and an unknown father. Even in his early
childhood he was hysterical, had hsemorrhages from the stomach
and transient paralyses. His mother maltreated him, and he be-
came a vagabond. At eight years and a half he was committed
to the house of correction at Saint-Urbain. His health was fairly
good until March 23, 1877, when he was frightened by a viper,
which wound itself around his arm while he was gathering wood.
That night he had a violent attack of convulsions ; when they
passed away, his lower limbs seemed permanently paralyzed.
His character was gentle and timid. Three years later he was

TOL. XLIX.-— 63

8i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

transferred to an asylum at Bonneval, where he was taught the
trade of a tailor. After two months he had a convulsive attack
which lasted fifty hours; at its close the paralysis had disap-
peared and with it all recollection of the past three years, includ-
ing all that he had learned in the tailor shop. His character and
tastes had also changed. He had become quarrelsome, greedy,
and rude. Formerly he did not like wine, and used to give his
allowance to his comrades ; now he stole theirs whenever he could.
He robbed a fellow- patient and escaped ; when recaptured he
fought savagely with his captors. In June, 1881, he was released
as cured. For the next three years and a half he spent the greater
portion of his time in insane asylums in various parts of France.
In January of 1885 he escaped from the Bicetre in Paris, where
he was then confined, made his way to Rochefort, and enlisted in
the marines. He was soon arrested and convicted of theft, but
was thought to be insane and was sent to the asylum. There
he fell into the hands of Professors Bourru and Burot, of the
medical school at Rochefort. With infinite pains they recorded
his condition, traced out his past history, and in their little book.
Variations de la Personnalit^ (Paris, 1888), have given us a very
careful analysis of the phenomena which he presented. After his
release from Rochefort, Louis V was studied by other alien-
ists, especially by Dr. Mabille, of La Rochelle, and Prof. M. J.
Voisin, of the Salpetri^re. Of late years his health has improved
and many of his strange symptoms have disappeared.

The case is too complex to be given at length ; a brief outline
must suffice. MM. Bourru and Burot found that his conscious
existence seemed split into at least five major states, in some of
which several minor ones might be distinguished. In each state
he remembered certain portions of his life, possessed certain sen-
sations, had control of certain groups of muscles, and manifested
certain traits of character. Each state could be induced in two
ways : (1) By applying an electric current, magnet, or some sub-
stance— such as a bar of soft iron or a piece of gold — to a definite
portion of his body ; (2) by suggestion. Later Dr. Mabille dis-
covered a third method of induction : by pressing upon certain
groups of muscles he could cause them to become rigid, and then
the patient passed into that state in which those muscles were
regularly rigid.

Of these five states, the most important — that is, the one in
which he approached most nearly to the normal — could be pro-
duced by applying a bar of soft iron to the right thigh. In it he
was free from paralysis, and the strength of his arms was nearly
equal, but his left side was abnormally sensitive. His character
was that of an agreeable but commonplace young man ; his lan-
guage was correct ; he could read and write fairly well. He re-

THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS. 819

membered the greater part of his life, but forgot the periods
during which he had been in other states.

Of the four other states of which I shall speak, the first three
are marked by paralysis, sometimes accompanied by contracture,
of the left side, right side, and lower half of the body, respective-
ly ; in the fourth he is free from all paralysis. With the paraly-
sis the sensations of the paralyzed portions, including those of the
special senses, are diminished or abolished.

When paralyzed on the right side he is excitable, violent, and
impertinent ; smokes all the time, and bothers every one with de-
mands for money or tobacco. His speech is thick and almost
unintelligible. He fawns upon those who are kind to him, but if
crossed in the least flies into a rage. He professes himself an
atheist and ultra- radical, and desires to kill those who exact of
him tokens of respect. He either boasts of his thefts and justifies
them or denies them altogether. He remembers very little of his
past life, but, so far as it goes, his memory is excellent. He lives
chiefly on milk.

Applying a magnet to the right arm causes difficulty in breath-
ing, anxiety, mental confusion, slight movements on the right
side ; then the paralysis, anaesthesia, etc., all pass to the left side.
His character is absolutely reversed. His speech is correct ; he is
gentle and polite ; he thinks himself too ignorant to have opin-
ions on questions of politics or religion. He no longer drinks
milk at all. Of his former life he remembers only those frag-
ments in which he was paralyzed in the same way.

Upon applying a magnet to the nape of the neck, the paralysis
and anaesthesia pass to the lower half of the body. He is de-
pressed ; his speech is childish ; he can barely spell the simplest
syllables. He is stupid, and can not give his age correctly, but he
can sew quite well. His memory covers those three years only
during which his legs were paralyzed and in which he was taught
the trade of a tailor.

Upon passing an electric current through his body, or apply-
ing a magnet to the top of his head, a fifth state is produced. He
is free from all paralysis, and finds himself transported to the day
when he was frightened by the viper. His muscular strength is
about two thirds what it was in his first state ; his character is
that of an amiable little boy of fourteen. While in this state he
fell asleep and dreamed aloud of his days at the reform school,
telling a lazy companion that he ought to be grateful to the kind
superintendent, and try his best to escape the vagabond's life
which was otherwise in store for him. For his own part, he said,
he was grateful to the judge who sent him there ; he was sick
and ignorant then and would have been lost, but now he proposes
to lead an honest life of labor. The doctors tried to keep him iu

820 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

this state and bring Ijim gently to a consciousness of his true
situation, but he soon fell into a convulsive attack and passed
out of it.

I have no comments to make upon the reported efficacy of
magnets and other physical agents in producing these phenomena.
Most neurologists maintain, I believe, that they act only through
suggestion, but a few claim that they have in some cases a specific
effect. I have never seen any such phenomena myself, but the evi-
dence is strong and the field seems to me one of the most promis-
ing for psycho-physiological investigation.

Quite apart from that, there can be no doubt that this constant
shifting and redistribution of the elements of Louis V 's per-
sonality rest at bottom upon a physiological foundation. Espe-
cially significant is the impairment of speech, when the paralysis
was transferred from the left to the right side. The right side of
the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, and
vice versa. Now, it is known that in right-handed people the
organ of speech is situated upon the left side of the brain. If
these phenomena were wholly dependent upon suggestion, the
patient's mental symptoms would correspond to what he thought
they ought to be. But he would scarcely know that a right-sided
paralysis ought to be accompanied by disorders of speech. It
seems to me quite certain that in one of these states the right
hemisphere was chiefly active and in the other the left ; it is fair
to infer that his other states depended also upon the functioning
of definite portions of his brain, although one can not specify what
those portions were.

Mr. F. W. H. Myers, in commenting upon this case,* con-
jectures that possibly in all of us the right hemisphere is less
highly evolved than the left, and that, "just as certain of our
visceral arrangements retain the traces of our prehuman ances-
try, and just as our dextro-cerebral speech centers are often stam-
mering, childish, or wholly inefficient, so also our dextro-cerebral
* character- forming ' centers — the centers which on that side of
the brain sum up or represent oiir highest activities — may retain,
in their inferior evolution, traces of that savage ancestry which
forms the somber background of the refinements and felicities of
civilized men."

Louis Y 's states, although more complex than those of

F^lida X and Ansel Bourne, do not differ from them in kind.

In all we have an apparent dissolution of the conscious self and
the reconstruction of its elements into a new form. But one of
these forms calls for special comment. In his last state Louis
seemed to have fallen back into the condition in which he was

* Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, p. 23.

EXAGGERATION AS AJST JSSTEETIC FACTOR. 821

eight years before. This is more than a reconstruction of ele-
ments ; it involves the revival of much that we usually suppose
to be irretrievably lost. If such a recrudescence of the old child-
ish self is possible, we must suppose that the growth of the brain
is carried on like that of an onion, layer upon layer. Of course,
I do not mean this literally. I merely mean that those portions
of the brain which were active in childhood, the activity of which
constituted my self of that period, may exist years after they
have been disused, and then suddenly be brought into action
again. Many such cases have been reported. The patient is de-
scribed as literally relapsing into childhood ; her thoughts, memo-
ries, desires, acts, even her writing, are those of her former childish
self. It is claimed by others that there is no true relapse into
childhood ; the patient merely acts the part of a child according
to her present notion of what she used to be. I have no doubt
myself that it is possible. If A. J. Brown could lie dormant for
three years under Mr. Bourne's skull only to revive the moment
Mr. Bourne was hypnotized, I see no reason why our childish
selves may not also survive, and in some cases there is good rea-
son to think they have done so. But most of the cases reported
are susceptible to the other interpretation, and, as it is the most
simple and natural, I would resort to it whenever possible.

In my next paper I shall take up those derangements of per-
sonality in which there seems reason to believe that the second-
ary system does not wholly perish upon the reconstruction of the
first.

EXAGGERATION AS AN ESTHETIC FACTOR.

By M. F. EEGNAULT.

EXAGGERATION'S a natural tendency of our minds, and
the fact is recognized by every psychologist. Yet, when we
study human thought and action, we forget the propensity to
exaggeration and exercise our ingenuity in accounting for seem-
ingly odd social facts which could be readily explained by apply-
ing this principle. There are not, perhaps, any branches of hu-
man activity in which the tendency to exaggerate is not marked.
We might observe its effects in all branches of science if we should
bring them up one by one. In history, persecutions and revolu-
tionary disturbances have resulted from the exaggeration of an
idea which may have been just in itself, but, taking possession
of the mind, it assumes an absolute character, while nothiug in-
tervenes to counterbalance it ; and, acting under the domination
of an exclusive preoccupation, men commit deeds of a most aston-
ishing character. In linguistics, the influence of the same priu-

822 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ciple may be seen in the transformation of languages, throngli the
prevalence in certain classes of society of the affectation of pe-
culiar pronunciations. So the investigator, having discovered
and proved a fact, tries to generalize it and magnify its impor-
tance ; and sometimes he is able to make his contemporaries par-
ticipate in the error. Yet the exaggeration is occasionally justi-
fied, and then occurs one of those great discoveries that mark
new eras.

I shall not go into all these questions, but shall examine sim-
ply the part played by exaggeration in our idea of the beautiful ;
nor shall I consider whether, as some philosophers believe, there
is an ideal of beauty — a beau ideal — outside of and above us, but
shall confine myself to the illustration of the conceptions of
beauty exhibited in the customs of the various races of men.

When we look at the ornamentation of costumes, for instance,
and at devices for enhancing personal appearance, we find that
they have been carried so far as to provoke mutilations. The
negroes of Africa, strongly differentiated as they are from other
races, are prone to exaggerate the peculiarities of their physi-
ognomy. With lips already thick, some tribes stick thorns into
them to provoke irritation and cause them to swell out still far-
ther. The Wolowe women of the Senegal have learned to in-
crease the prognathism or projection forward of the upper jaw.
According to Faidherbe^s description of the process, "as soon
as the girl child^s first incisors have appeared, they are extracted
with a pair of pincers, and when the second begin to come out
they are forced by a continual action of the lower incisors and
the tongue into a forward direction.^' The negro women of the
shores of Lake Tanganyika, to make their breasts larger, cause
them to be stung by ants. The women of the Assinians of Guinea
are, according to Mondi^re, still more ingenious. It is a sign of
beauty among them, he says, to have the largest possible nipples ;
and " children of five years, as well as larger ones, may be seen
hunting the nymphae of the Myrmidus fornarius and pulling at
their breasts while the insects bite them, to make them swell more
quickly."

The negroes are also proud of their woolly hair, and some of
them go so far as to build an enormous structure on their heads.
Travelers say that the plaited headdress of the young women
at Jenna, in the valley of the Niger, looks like a dragon^s crest.
The same custom prevails in Oceania among the Fijians, who
have woolly hair too, and wear coiffures measuring as much as
about five feet in circumference.

Many peoples— Malays, Kirghis, Hottentots, Namaquas, Bush-
men, Brazilian Indians, and Society Islanders — are addicted to the
practice of flattening their noses, and sometimes, as in the case of

EXAGGERATION AS AN ^ESTHETIC FACTOR. 823

the Hottentot Venus, they break the hone. On the other hand,
peoples who have thin noses can never get them aquiline enough.
Persians cultivate this shape by pressing the sides of the nose,
and the custom existed in France in the sixteenth century.

Paint, by which the appearance of the features may be modi-
fied at the least cost, is much used by all peoples. Sometimes it
is employed to extend the beard. Aino women think it a fine
thing to have a mustache, and by this means give themselves a
full one. Opposed to them are the American Indians, who, being
almost beardless, pull out the few beard hairs they have.

Black eyes and thick eyebrows are highly esteemed in the
East, and the women use kohl for the production of the desired
effect. The ancient Egyptians were fond of large, almond-shaped
eyes, and produced the appearance of them by painting a pro-
longation of the outer commissure of the eye. The custom pre-
vailed widely, and is represented in all the sculptures. The
Japanese, too, like almond eyes, but want them oblique, and se-
cure that appearance in the same way, only giving a different di-
rection to the stroke. This particular custom has disappeared
from among other peoples, but the use of paints still continues,
and we paint our lips rosy and blacken our eyebrows.

The origin of these practices is evident. There are others the
motives of which are more debatable, but are elucidated on com-
parison with these. We mention especially the atrophy of the
feet among the Chinese. Some have attributed it to the jealousy
of husbands, or to regard for a queen who lived many centuries
ago and was lame ; but Malte-Brun and Ploss say that the Chi-
nese naturally have small feet. Their women have sought to ex-
aggerate this ethnic characteristic.

The object, in the examples we have cited, has been to ac-
centuate a characteristic of the race. In other cases man exag-
gerates the weight or the volume of an ornament assumed origi-
nally for another purpose. According to Herbert Spencer, the
ornament was primarily a sign of distinction. It was worn in a
conspicuous place as a testimonial of a successful hunt or of a
victory over the enemy. Savages still hang human teeth or the
claws of wild beasts from their noses, lips, and ears. The Chib-
chas wear in this way chains formed of as many golden feathers
as they have slain enemies.

The next step is to increase the volume and weight of the orna-
ments. Under the spur of emulation the ear lobe, for example,
is loaded down with trinkets till it is stretched so as to touch
the shoulder. The enlargement of the ear lobe then becomes the
desirable thing to the savage, and his chief effort is to bring it
about. Under a like perversion of taste, similar effects are pro-
duced with the stick inserted into the thick of the lips. In this

824 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

way some peculiar features of mutilation hitherto obscure to eth-
nologists are reasonably explained — deformations practiced in all
the quarters of the world by diverse peoples in no way related to
one another, but urged by the same thought arising spontane-
ously in their minds. The value of the object inserted in the ear,
lips, or nose varies according to the wealth of the wearer. The
rich use something that is considered precious, as alabaster, rock
crystal, or ivory among different African tribes ; while a poor
man contents himself with a disk of horn or metal, or even a sim-
ple rolled leaf. The more wealthy he is, the heavier is the orna-
ment and the more accentuated the deformation. While atten-
tion has not been particularly directed to this point, some travel-
ers have noticed that the degree of mutilation varies in the same
people according to the coquetry, wealth, or rank of the person.
Sometimes the fancy runs to enormous bracelets and rings, the
Bongo women wearing such ornaments weighing twenty-five
kilogrammes. These shackles of enormous weight have been in-
terpreted by some sociologists as reminiscences of slavery ; Park
Harrison supposed that the enlargement of the ear lobe was an
offspring of sun worship ; and other authors have invented a de-
sire to resemble venerated animals as the prompting motive for
mutilations.

Of kindred character with the deformations already described
are those due to a desire to show that the subject is not obliged
to work for his living. The mandarins and literati in Annam
and China let their finger nails grow long and inclose them in
sheaths. A similar custom exists in Polynesia and some parts of
Africa. Fatness is a mark of woman^s beauty and signifies ease
and wealth in Uganda and among the Tuaregs. In contrast to
these, the Javanese are proud of extreme thinness, and eat clay to
produce it. This is an exaggeration of a characteristic of their
race, for they are naturally slender.

Whatever is the fashion comes from the principle of exaggera-
tion, and our clothes are shaped according to the same law. It is
not more ridiculous to stretch the ear lobe till it lies on the shoul-
ders than, as was done at the end of the fourteenth century, to
wear shoes with toes so long that the ends of them were tied to
the knee ; or to wear the enormous ruffs of the reign of Henry III
of France, and those structures which nearly doubled the height ;
or the headdresses of the time of Louis XIV, or the extravagant
crinolines of thirty years ago.

We look upon the ways of our ancestors as ridiculous and
incomprehensible, without considering that we are acting very
much like them. We often meet at parties and balls persons who
go beyond the present fashion, some exposing more of the shoul-
ders, and some wearing more pointed shoes. A fashion modest in

EXAGGERATION AS AN AESTHETIC FACTOR. 825

the beginning is made absurd by a continued course of exaggera-
tion. We never reach the most extravagant form in the begin-
ning, but it is the culmination of a series of modifications becoming
progressively more accentuated. Thus, the long-toed shoes were
the growth of more than a century. The point began about the
middle of the thirteenth century, reached its longest at the end of
the fourteenth century, and disappeared all at once in 1420, when
it gave way to the square-toed shoe.

The influence of exaggeration in forming the ideal of beauty
is illustrated, too, in the art of different peoples. One of the
elements of a Siamese woman's beauty is, according to M. L^on
Rosny, an arched shape of the eyebrows, causing them to resem-
ble crescents ; and if we examine photographs of these women we
shall find that the curvature of the eyebrows is indeed more
marked in them than in their neighbors, the Annamites and
Burmese. This feature is much exaggerated in their statues, and
is most strongly indicated in the Buddhas in the Musee Guimets,
The Hindus are even more slender and tall than Europeans, and
admire a full pelvic development in women. While we have
tightened our corsets to increase the appearance of slenderness
and heighten the contrast between the waist and the hips, our
admiration for classic art has prevented our carrying these exag-
gerations into statuary ; but the Hindus have not refrained, and
their works therefore have a very peculiar character.

The Siamese and Hindus, however, are not highly esteemed as
artists. We will now, therefore, take some examples from a peo-
ple in whom the high excellence of this faculty is undisputed —
the Japanese. While their designs are usually very various,
when they come to depict feminine beauty they exhibit a single
type, which we find identical on all the " Kakemono." It is a
strange kind of beauty, with the face greatly elongated, the nose
continuing the profile of the forehead, and the eyes excessively
oblique ; a beauty rare enough in Japan, where the plebeian
woman's face is short and round, but which may be found in the
patricians and in the courtesans of high rank. We can prove the
exaggeration here by figures. In the Japanese photographs the
line of the eyes forms an angle of from two to seven degrees with
the horizontal. This is said by some authors to be only in appear-
ance, but M. Regalia has proved its reality by measurements of the
cranial orbits. In the Japanese drawings the line makes an angle
of from thirty-five to forty- four degrees. A comparison of these
with old drawings of the eighteenth century will show that the
exaggeration has become much more marked in the present cen-
tury.

The Grecian portrait seems the perfection of the human type
to us, and artists copy it, although it is actually rare. In it the

826 POPXjLAR science MONTHLY,

line of the nose is more or less perfectly the prolongation of the
line of the forehead. The hollow at the root of the nose is almost
effaced, and the prominence of the nose is softened. The absolute
Grecian profile would therefore be represented in a drawing by a
single continuous line for the forehead and nose. Yet another
condition is essential for obtaining the fine Grecian profile. The
forehead should not be receding. This marks the distinction be-
tween the Grecian and the Egyptian profile. The artists who
lived under the Theban dynasties represented the human profile
by a single line for the forehead and nose ; but the line was oblique,
making the nose prominent and the forehead retreating. They
simply exaggerated a race characteristic — as may be shown by
examining the mummies or the fellahs of the present time.

Several theories have been offered to account for the Grecian
type of profile. Its existence in the Hellenic race has been denied.
The few Grecian skulls in our possession present it very rarely, but
some of them incontestably approach it. It may have been more
common in the aristocratic caste. We must certainly acknowl-
edge that it was not common, but it does not follow that it did
not exist. It may still be found, though not very often, at Aries
and Marseilles ; and I have perceived it in some profile photo-
graphs of Greeks of Asia Minor in the collection of the Socieie
de Geographie of Paris. It has been suggested that the Grecian
profile was hieratic, borrowed from the Egyptians, improved upon
and transformed. It is true that the archaic Grecian sculptures,
as at Mycense, display a profile with salient nose and retreating
forehead, and that the type was persistent on many funeral
vases. Grecian art may have imitated Egyptian in its begin-
nings, although it is believed now that the imitation did not play
a very preponderant part in the matter. But when, at a later
period, the artists created the special profile of their statues, they
could not have been guided by reasoning alone. This would be
opposed to all the observations on the subject made by other peo-
ple. They may have designed it, but to do so they had to start
from visual perceptions. A third supposition is that the artists
exaggerated a type which they had opportunities of observing
among their countrymen, especially in the aristocratic and liter-
ary classes. An examination of the ancient statues will throw
light on this point. In studying the pictures of the great men of
Greece reproduced in the Iconographie Grecque of Visconti, it
will be remarked that a large number of them resemble the ideal
type copied in the statues of the gods. In order to proceed with
mathematical exactness we have measured the angle, the apex of
which is the root of the nose and the sides a line drawn from that
point tangent to the forehead (disregarding the projection of the
sinus) and the prolongation of the line of the nose. We have ap-

EXAGGERATION AS AN ESTHETIC FACTOR, 827

plied this measurement to twenty- seven profiles of statues of cele-
brated men, passing by all that could not be certainly identified,
and taking only those on which the name was engraved, and
which bore evident resemblance to the figures on their medals.
We likewise passed over mythological personages like Homer,
Sappho, and others, whose existence is not fully proved, and
kings whose features might have been idealized for the sake of
flattery. The angle thus determined measures from seven to
fifteen degrees on the master- works of ancient statuary, statues of
divinities and heroes. Of the twenty- seven human statues meas-
ured, five had angles of fifteen degrees or less, seven of between
fifteen and twenty degrees, eight of between twenty and thirty
degrees, and seven of thirty degrees and more. A small number
of these profiles, it will be observed, present angles not departing
greatly from those of the statues of the gods. We do not estab-
lish a mean from these, for we recognize that the sculptor may
have exaggerated in the case of subjects who presented marked
profiles. It can not be objected that the artist sought to idealize
these men of genius ; for the purest profiles are not those of the
most celebrated characters. Solon, Plato, and Socrates, who en-
joyed so great fame, appear to less advantage than Hermarchus,
Bias, and Epaphroditas, who were much less well known.

We can obtain a more exact conception of the special charac-
teristic of these statues by comparing them with the figures in
Visconti's Iconographie Romaine. The Romans all had a very
convex nose with the root usually depressed ; and a tangent could
not be drawn from that point to the forehead, even if the projec-
tion of the sinus were neglected. Of fourteen persons examined,
only four had that line tangent to the forehead, while it was secant
on all the others. The Grecian bust, on the other hand, had it
tangent, with only two exceptions. Furthermore, the angle is
very open in the Roman busts, ranging from twenty-four to
forty-eight degrees. It appears, then, that the Greeks, like other
peoples, established their ideal type by starting with the real and
exaggerating certain qualities.

In this study of exaggeration as an element of aesthetic art, I
make no criticism, but rather place myself in the position of those
artists who see in the ideal something beyond and above the real.
This conception has been assailed. In the eyes of many, the
artist should confine himself strictly to copying the real, and be
nothing but the inferior rival of the photograph — or rather, per-
haps, of the composite photograph, which gives the mean of the
features of several persons by fixing them upon a single sensitive
plate. When anthropologists recognize the merits of artists'
canons, they regard them as the expression of the truth, because
they represent the mean proportions of a large number of in-

828 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

dividuals. The camera is doubtless useful to beginners, and
helps them to avoid great errors ; but the artist has nothing to do
with it ; he takes his inspiration from Nature, and his canon will
vary according to the subject he treats. A slender and nimble
runner will not have the proportions of an athlete. Further-
more, the artist will put something of his own into his subject,
exaggerating, usually without thinking of it, some features that
have impressed him, and ignoring others.

Such departure from truth is not necessarily wrong. Exag-
geration, like all our tendencies, may have a good or a bad result,
according to the use that is made of it. We reprehend it when it
develops unpleasant traits into undue prominence, or when it im-
prisons us in inconvenient and unseemly garments. But when
it emphasizes among tha traits of our countenance those which
are associated with intelligence, bringing out the forehead which
thinks, augmenting the facial reliefs upon which emotion is ex-
pressed, and retiring the merely physical features, it offers an
attractive ideal and one that should not be despised.

We are not wrong when we admire the beauty of those among
us in whom the characteristics of our race are exaggerated. They
possess in the highest degree those features which are in course
of development, they represent the generations of the future, and
are worthy, by this title, to be perpetuated. — Translated for the
Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE.

By HELEN ZIMMEEN.

SECOND PAPER.

FERRI passes in review 1,711 individuals, of whom 711 are
soldiers, 699 criminals, and 301 madmen. In this minute
examination of anthropometric data he discusses almost every
case, pointing out its specific characteristics by means of ample
comparisons, which justify his methods of research and his con-
clusions, as well as throw light on the difficult and not yet firmly
established study of criminal anthropology. To close this section
of his learned work, he devotes a portion to the reaffirmation of
the inferiority of criminal as compared with normal man, and to
the analogy that certain anomalies and delinquent characteristics
present, deducing thence criminal degeneracy. Very remarkable
are the differences of cephalometric characteristics between a cer-
tain number of soldiers examined, among whom, were some stu-
dents. The superiority of the latter was incontestably proved by
the great anterior semicircumference of the head, by the greater

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE, 829

cranial capacity, by the larger frontal diameter, and the minor
development of the upper jaw. Worthy of note, too, in regard to
this last point is the result of the examination of homicidal mur-
derers as respects recidivistry. The former showed less cranial
capacity and a minor frontal diameter, while their upper jaws
were more developed.

Having examined these chronic anomalies in criminals in re-
affirming the conclusions arrived at by the modern school of crim-
inal anthropology, Ferri gives us the physiognomy of murderers
in their characteristic traits, calling to aid the help of photogra-
phy. It is an interesting series of pictures that he has thus
grouped together. Here is the apish type; there the half -mad;
there one with large jaws, the most characteristic and frequent
feature ; the type with receding forehead, etc. The study of tem-
perament and of race in the order of delinquency, which repre-
sents the bio-psychic personality of an individual and of a people,
is not yet well matured, as opinions with regard to their influ-
ences are many and varied. Still, some progress has been made.
Thus it is popularly held that full-blooded, passionate, energetic
temperaments are more prone to homicide, while the truth really
lies in the opposite direction ; the physiological character of this
determination is rather a general denutrition of the organism and
of the nervous system which originates that irritability and that
lack of inhibition by which men react with more difficulty against
the murderous impulse.

Race, whose marked influence in biological and social mani-
festations is, however, denied by many eminent scientists, is
nevertheless one of the concurrent factors in the determination
of a crime and one which can not be overlooked. Race is not the
only factor in the distribution of homicide in Europe, for side by
side with this run the social economical conditions induced in
their turn by this very race. In this distribution there are mani-
fest three distinct ethnographical groups — the Graeco-Latin, the
Germanic with the Anglo-Saxon, and the Slav — which stand for
the three large zones of homicide. In the first place for the
greater frequency of homicide stand the Latin peoples — Italy,
Spain, Roumania, Portugal, France, and Belgium ; in the medium
zone the Slav people of Russia and Austria ; for the minor fre-
quency of this crime, the peoples of Germanic origin of Germany,
Holland, and England. The sad supremacy pertains not to Italy
but to Spain.

With this extended survey of the organic constitution of homi-
cidal delinquents Ferri terminates the first section of his book.
The second part is devoted to the study of the psychic constitu-
tion of the murderers. He first wisely clears the ground with
regard to the interpretation of psychic data and the relations be-

830 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tween ideas and sentiments in the genesis of homicide. In this
place Ferri recapitulates his famous classification of homicides
into madmen born ; homicides habitual, by occasion, and by pas-
sion ; and finds that among these types the most characteristic and
marked are the homicides born and the insane homicides, with
whom alone he is occupied in this volume.*

He then exposes with a large array of facts the most marked
psychological characteristics of the born homicide which consti-
tute his psychic condition before committing his crime. These
characteristics are moral insensibility; insensibility toward the
victim, toward the sufferings of others, a cold ferocity in the
execution of crime, which is sometimes pushed to cannibalism ;
an apathetic impassibility after committing the crime and even
in sight of the corpse of the victim ; quiet sleep after the com-
mittal of the deed. These characteristics — indifference at sight
of the sufferings and death of others — are extended to the person-
ality of the murderer himself. Such persons are noted for their
moral and physical insensibility with regard to themselves, which
is sometimes pushed to the point of analgesia, to impassibility to
their own punishment, to indifference to death, and which also
manifests itself in the frequency of suicides among delinquents.
They are also cruel and insensible toward their own accomplices,
whom they will betray and even kill. This ferocity, this indif-
ference, this insensibility, of born homicides, serve as a psycho-
logical explanation of other characteristics which are conjoined
to these and which help to support these views. Indifference is
chronic, manifesting itself also in a preoccupation with most tri-
fling things quite outside of the crime committed or of a diverse
character, and which certainly can not by any means be attributed
to a supposed corruption during confinement. They feel no repug-
nance to the idea or to the act of homicide before the crime. They
have no moral sense, they use expressions which pertain to honest
work or expressions which ridicule their crime, which they regard
as a simple transgression. They do not hesitate to boast before-
hand of the crime they intend to commit, as though it would do
them credit; and even admit that they are disposed to commit
many more ; they have not, in short, any remorse concerning their
offense. To this absence of remorse, of which Ferri traces the
differential characteristics, must be added the obstinate denial,
the disinclination to repair the injury done or to repent, the indif-
ference to escape punishment, the easy adaptation to prison life.

* The invention of this gradation and variety of types among criminals, certainly the
most fecund and fundamental, so cleveriy carried into the camp of criminal anthropology,
has already been put forward by Ferri before the publication of this his latest work, and
he has every right to be proud of it.

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE, 831

the indifference to the number of their condemnations, and, in
more direct mode, satisfaction in the crime consummated or re-
morse at not having achieved their aim; and, finally, in many-
cases the explicit confession that they feel no remorse or repent-
ance. However, the lack of repugnance to crime and of remorse
can not be said to be universal and to manifest itself in every
direction of criminal activity, because, excepting in those crimi-
nals who have never had either the one or the other sentiment
for any species of offense, there is often verified a kind of moral
Daltonism which, though lacking in criminals who, having a very
obtuse moral sense of certain crimes, on the other hand have a
most delicate perception. One among many salient examples is
that of a thief who has a horror of homicide, and of the homicide
to whom the thought of theft is repellent. This moral Daltonism
extends also to the impelling causes, and to the execution of the
crime, that is committed for one reason and rejected for another.
It extends itself to the very instruments used to commit the homi-
cide. It may also arise from caste prejudices, as, for example,
in the man who killed his brother because they were both in love
with their housemaid, and who cried out in the court, " You had
every right to kill me, but none to dishonor me ! "

It is thus in cold blood, so to speak, that Ferri studies the
psychological constitution of born homicides and the manifes-
tation of their moral sense. He also examines their sentiments.
Religious sentiment is extraneous to the genesis of crime, and
hence moral and immoral men are found indifferently among
atheists and believers, though the number of atheists is rare
among homicides, who, as a rule, have the religious sentiment
highly developed, a proof of which is found, among other things,
in being tattooed with religious symbols, their superstitious piety,
and lastly their true and real religious cultus, even to seeking a
comfort in crime and to finding a convenient faith in pardon. As
a general rule, indeed, nearly all delinquents are deeply pious.
The egotistic sentiment of homicide may be resolved into the
forms of amour propre and the sense of enjoyment, including
under the latter heading pride, vanity, love of display, vendetta,
covetousness, and prodigality. Homicidal thieves have also other
characteristics of the true homicide, such as a reckless squander-
ing of money acquired by murder, a passion for play, for women,
and for alcohol. The ego-altruistic sentiments or those purely
altruistic, such as love, family affection, etc., are not lacking in
homicides when they are not in conflict with the egotistic. Mur-
derers are even not incapable of noble actions, but their immoral
temperament renders these unstable and contradictory, and thus
it may occur that the same altruistic sentiment finds expression
in their very crime.

832 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

And this brings us to the last portion of this study concerning
the psychic constitution of murderers— that is to say, to the intel-
lectual element. We already know the cerebral inferiority of
delinquents as compared with healthy subjects. This inferiority
in the class of born homicides can not be better characterized
than as a weak and incomplete association of ideas. The intel-
lectual characteristic of mental weakness in delinquents does not
exclude in some of them a certain degree of intelligence in other
branches of mental activity — so much so that, according to Lom-
broso, there are found murderers who have talent, not to say
genius. These, like all born homicides, have in common the lack
of a moral sentiment ; as regards intelligence, they may be classed
under these two headings : The sanguinary homicide, la Mte
Immaine, who kills more often for vendetta or for covetousness,
and the calculating homicide, who kills for covetousness and for
ambition, and is often endowed with brilliant intellectual quali-
ties. Generally speaking, however, in all criminals, as a result
of their defective association of repellent ideas, there is very
marked improvidence. This improvidence is shown in many
criminals by the carelessness with which they themselves reveal
their misdeeds, the imprudent manifestations they are the first to
give during and after the consummation of the crime, the careless
manner in which they leave traces of it, the way in which they
return to the site of their deed, as well as in not foreseeing the
punishment. In others, instead, the art they adopt to render dif-
ficult the discovery of their deeds is very marked, and the per-
centage of the authors of crimes who have remained undiscovered
is remarkable — twenty-five per cent in Italy on crimes that have
been denounced, without counting the contingent of those where
even the crimes have not been discovered.

As a conclusion of this positive examination of the born homi-
cide, Ferri thus defines the fundamental psychological characters
of these persons : " Abnormal impulsiveness of action for lack of
or owing to weak power of resistance to criminal desires." In
general, normal man, although subject to temptations and to
momentary criminal impulses, fights against them. A case in
point is that of the celebrated alienist doctor Morel, who, feeling
himself suddenly impelled to the idea of throwing a w^orkman
who happened to stand near him into the river, fled from the
spot. The born homicide can not thus defend himself. These
facts, in which is delineated the embryo of that pathological
homicidal obsession which our author now goes on to examine,
can be explained by congenital weakness of development, the
nerve centers having been arrested, and hence not apt nor edu-
cated to resist.

It may also happen that the delinquent does not complete his

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE, 833

crime ; but this is nsiially due not so much to internal resistance
(active inhibition) as would occur in normal man, as to an exter-
nal and present force (passive inhibition), which hinders its exe-
cution, such as an unexpected incident which takes the place at
times of this defect of inhibition, giving to the delinquent the
resisting force which he lacks. And this brings us by a natural
transition to insane homicide. The author arrives at the conclu-
sion that there does not exist a special form of homicidal " mono-
mania," but that all the forms of madness may be accompanied by
homicidal excess. Hence the criterion that he has adopted in his
symptomatology of homicidal mania. He differs from the classifi-
cation that is purely clinical and descriptive, and frequently insuf-
ficient for the scientist as for the magistrate. His favorite genetic
criterion of the initial idea and the action of tomicide in the in-
sane delinquent is very useful in achieving a good result from the
important and very distinct comparisons between the delinquent
and the criminal madman, and the delinquent and common or
non-criminal madman. As a basis for this comparison it is neces-
sary to distinguish the insane delinquent from the non-insane, a
matter of deep importance not only for science but also for juris-
prudence, because from this distinction arise the various degrees
of imputability and the divers means of social defense to be
adopted. It is further needful to distinguish in these madmen
the insane conduct exclusively due to their intellectual degen-
eracy from that criminal one which is also due to the lack of the
moral sense. In point of fact, in non-delinquent madmen the
greater abnormities are to be found in the intellectual func-
tions, while in the delinquent abnormities of the moral sense are
most marked. Of course, this is a mere academic discussion, for
a real and sharp natural distinction between the forms discussed
can not exist, and the non-insane delinquent and the insane are
fundamentally equal when it comes to be a question of criminal
manifestations.

Let us now consider the psycho-pathological symptoms of
homicide. Ferri, with his rich array of facts, of opportune eluci-
dations and examples, undertakes this examination, dividing this
last section of his book into two groups which deal with the mo-
ment of the homicidal act and the attitude of the insane murderer
before, during, and after its execution and during his trial ; and
finally, as a last chapter, he adds the conclusions to be drawn
from the antecedents of the criminal's life and the recidivity of
the insane homicide.

The deliberation in this unhappy person is due either to the
slow invasion of the homicidal idea (homicidal obsession) or to
momentary impulse. Hence two distinct generic types of psycho-
pathological characteristics. The first type, in which the decision

TOL. ILIX. — 64

834 POPULAR SCIENGE MONTHLY,

to commit the crime springs from a slow and reflective process
whicli increases from the weak or static (obsession) state until it
becomes an irresistible impulse and takes a violent and dynamic
form, finding vent in the criminal act, is very frequent under the
influence of the delusion of persecution, in chronic alcoholics, in
hysterical subjects, etc., and is also seen in other non- violent forms
of mental alienation. Sometimes the madman has a perfect cog-
nizance of his own madness, so that he will often warn others as
to the crime he intends to commit and knows the punishment due
to it, and yet nevertheless this will not deter him unless fortuitous
external causes intervene. In fact, it often happens that madmen
aifected by homicidal obsession, incapable of restraining them-
selves, afraid of themselves, in order not to yield to the homicidal
impulse, take the precaution of wounding or mutilating them-
selves, in order thus to divert their ungovernable impulse, and
render it impossible to execute their purpose. A case in point is
that of a man who, unable to dominate the violent force impelling
him to murder his wife and children, consigned himself to the
police and had himself shut up in an asylum.

The second type, in which the determination to homicide pro-
ceeds from a spontaneous impulse (the transitory mania of the
old school of psychiatry), from a species of impulsive vertigo,
without a real impulse or motive, is found generally in epileptic
subjects. This tyrannous impulse toward crime is also due very
frequently to hallucination and illusion, often ignored by those
who have to do with madmen. Homicide from hallucination pre-
sents three subtypes : first, that in which the madman acts under
the terror of a fearful hallucination (epileptics, alcoholics, etc.) ;
secondly, in consequence of delirium from delirious homicidal
premises (persecution mania) ; thirdly, in obedience to the im-
perious commands of an inward voice. Nevertheless, this does
not exclude the criminal motive (vendetta, jealousy, etc.) which
sometimes determines the insane to commit homicide (especially
the epileptics), motives which they readily, however, confess.

To complete the psycho-pathological characteristics as to the
deliberate moment of homicide in the insane, Ferri treats of homi-
cide as an end in itself or as a means toward a legitimate end,
observing that if in mad homicides murder is an end in itself
(killing to kill, impulse without motive) or as a means to an .end,
more often social and juridic (defense from imaginary perils,
withdrawal of their victim from misery, etc.), in common mad-
men it is always a means to reach an antisocial end. This re-
mark is all the more important because, besides refuting the
ancient affirmation which is still repeated, that delinquents have
always a motive for their deed, while madmen have none, it
also refutes the other no less erroneous affirmation of Esquirol

ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE, 835

that "in delinquents murder is a means, in madmen it is an
end/' adopted until now by most scientists, and only lately dis-
missed as inadequate by the most eminent anthropologists and
criminalists in consequence of Ferri's criticisms published in
1886.

In the present book the author adds two other characteristic
motive factors found in mad delinquents— that is to say, homi-
cide for purpose of suicide (for example, a man kills another in
order to expiate his crime on the scaffold) ; and sacrificial homi-
cide induced by the desire to kill, to sacrifice a victim for his own
good or for the good of both murderer and victim. This, accord-
ing to Ferri, is the attitude of the insane homicide before, during,
and after his criminal excitement. First, and less common, there
is the premeditation which approximates the insane homicide to
the homicide born. The concomitants of this type may be the
killing of his victim openly in the face of witnesses, the lack of
accomplices, the latter an important feature and one that the mad
homicide has almost always in common with the murderer by
passionate impulse. It is not, however, unknown that madmen
associate to commit crimes, from the sociability that is a charac-
teristic of the epileptic, and forms indeed yet another proof of
the fundamental identity of epilepsy and congenital delinquency
with so-called moral insanity, so wonderfully demonstrated by
Lombroso.

While committing the crime the manner of the mad homicide
is generally agitated. He is also of a violent ferocity, which dif-
fers from that of the born homicide, which may lead him to the
point of cannibalism, just as it does the latter. Another symp-
tom, which is, however, exclusively seen in the insane (imbeciles,
idiots, epileptics), is that of the monstrous sexual passion that
finds its vent on the corpse of their victim (necro-philomania), to
which must be added the murder of persons beloved or of persons
unknown, as well as indiscriminate massacre.

The symptoms and the attitude of the mad homicide after his
crime are in part common to those of the born homicide, although
the psychological genesis of these symptoms is different. These
are: calmness after committing the act, which often continues
when arrested and during the trial, impassibility at sight of the
corpse, etc. A true characteristic symptom distinguishing the
mad homicide from the born homicide is great prostration and
abnormal sleep into which he often falls after his murderous
assault, very different from the calmness and the placid sleep of
the born homicide. Notable, too, is the impulse toward suicide
that seizes him immediately after the consummation of the deed,
an instantaneous reaction of his moral sense, the feeling of relief,
as though a heavy weight were removed, the moral Daltonism

836 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the moral valuation of the crime which may rise to the point
of true remorse.

The characteristics of the attitude of the mad homicides dur-
ing their trials are the frequent energetic protests that they are
not mad, the dissimulation of their insanity or even the simula-
tion of another form of madness different from that from which
they suffer, the nonresistance when arrested, the instinctive at-
tempt at flight, and the alibi they prepare for themselves in cases
of premeditation ; their frequently detailed confession, often made
in phrases such as " It was not I. It was my head. I was blinded
by my illness. I felt a blow on my head," and so forth. Or when,
like other delinquents, they are not anxious to invent excuses for
themselves, they either do not excuse themselves at all, or even
accuse themselves of imaginary crimes, as though they wished
to make themselves out worse than they are.

Ferri finally proceeds to analyze very carefully the groups of
symptoms regarding the life of the criminal before and after the
committal of his crime as well as his hereditary antecedents.
The previous conduct of the born homicide is often very regular ;
and then suddenly, a little before the murder, a change of life and
character will take place. Another characteristic sometimes is
the perpetration of other crimes after the first homicide.

Following this last research Ferri gives us in conclusion the
most important deductions which result from this portion of his
great work, as to the psychical constitution of the born homicide
and the mad homicide. He sums them up into twelve axioms,
which should prove of invaluable use to the judicial authorities.
These it is not easy to condense, and for their precise formula we
must refer our readers to Ferries book.

Crime is always a decided condition. This is the final and
lucid outcome of his learned work, a conclusion at which Yirgil
and Lombroso respectively arrived, and a conclusion that honors
these thinkers. In his future volume he promises to treat of the
two other typical figures of homicides from passionate impetus
and homicides from occasion, to which we look forward. One
important point Ferri touches but slightly, and that is. Is crime
nowadays the exception or is it not rather the rule ? It must
unfortunately be concluded that it is the rule in the actual epoch
Europe is traversing ; this does not mean, however, that crime is
a normal phenomenon, but only helps to confirm the innate rela-
tions that exist between economic conditions and criminal facts,
or rather, in Ferri's own words, " that the present social crisis has
reached such a point as to render even criminal symptoms acute
and profound, which does not exclude that in a more advanced
phase of social order, such as scientific socialists look forward to,
crime, like every other symptom of social pathology, will be re-

SKETCH OF ROBERT EMPIE ROGERS. 837

duced to the smallest proportions, such as occurs to common ill-
nesses on the cessation of a more or less prolonged epidemic."

This book Ferri has dedicated to his little three-year-old son
Dante, expressing the hope, as he saj^s in his dedication, that
when he is old enough to understand it, Italy may show fewer
signs of moral pathology. It is certainly a remarkable work,
and reflects great credit on its writer by its minute and impartial
research.

SKETCH OF ROBERT EMPIE ROGERS.

FOR the facts in the life of Robert Empie Rogers, as well as
of the other members of this family famous in science, the
memorial paper of the late Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenberger is almost
our only authority. Robert Empie Rogers was the youngest of
the four brothers, sons of Patrick Kerr Rogers and Hannah
Blythe, whose researches, several and joint, have conferred so
much honor on the name. He was born in Baltimore, Md., March
29, 1813, and died in Philadelphia, September 6, 1884. His father
having been called to be Professor of Natural Philosophy and
Mathematics in William and Mary College, removed to Williams-
burg, Va., in 1819. There his mother died in the next year, when
Robert was seven years old, and the boys. Dr. Ruschenberger
says, " became almost foster children in the families of the pro-
fessors." Robert seems to have received special care at the hands
of the Rev. Adam P. Empie, D. D., and his wife, and in recog-
nition of that care assumed the name of Empie. He was taught
by his father, and after his death by his brothers James and
William. The profession intended for him was that of engineer,
and he began the exercise of it as an assistant in the survey of
the Boston and Providence Railroad. Nothing is known about
the engagement or the work done by young Rogers, except that
the results of it were not satisfactory. In a letter written to his
brother William in 1833, Robert expresses doubt of his prospect
of success if he should try engineering again, and confesses that
his favorite desire had always been to become an instructor.
Civil engineering was given up, and Robert, having determined
to study medicine, became a pupil of Dr. Robert Hare, Professor
of Chemistry, " and worked zealously in his laboratory till the
close of his undergraduate course." He was graduated from the
Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in March,
1836, offering as his thesis a paper on " Experiments on the Blood,
together with some New Facts in regard to Animal and Vegetable
Structures, illustrative of many of the most Important Features
of Organic Life." This thesis was published, with illustrations, in

838 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. He, however,
preferred chemistry to medicine, and served from 1876 as chemist
of the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, under his brother
Henry, who was chief of the survey. In this position he was
associated with James Curtis Booth and John F. Frazer as the
other assistants.

In the fall of 1841 he was invited to the University of Virginia
to take the place in teaching the chemistry classes of Prof. John
P. Emmet, who was ill. Prof. Emmet not recovering from his
illness, Mr. Rogers was in March, 1842, elected in his place Pro-
fessor of General and Applied Chemistry and Materia Medica, a
position which he held with credit till 1852. In August of the
latter year he was elected Professor of Chemistry, in the place of
his brother, James B. Rogers, deceased, in the University of Penn-
sylvania. In 1856 he became Dean of the Medical Faculty of that
institution. In July, 1862, during the civil war, he was appointed
acting assistant surgeon in the Army of the United States, and
assigned to duty in the Military Hospital at West Philadelphia,
where he served not quite one year. At his suggestion a steam
mangle was set up under his supervision in the neighborhood of
the hospital. On the day it was completed he was showing a
woman how to feed it safely, when his right hand was caught in
the machinery and crushed. He was able with his other hand to
throw the machine out of gear and stop it, but while a workman
was lifting the cylinder, weighing eight hundred pounds, from off
the disabled hand, the great piece slipped from the crowbar and
fell upon it, aggravating the injury it had received. He was
anxious lest his wife should be seriously shocked by too quickly
realizing the severity of the mutilation he had suffered, and, to
prevent this as far as possible, he left the carriage in which he
was conveyed a short distance from his house and walked home.
The hand was amputated by Prof. Smith, of the university, and
its place was supplied for a time by an artificial hand. " Almost
ambidextrous prior to the accident," says Dr. Ruschenberger,
" he speedily learned to write with his left hand and to use the
right arm, beneath the shoulder, in prehension with notable skill
in his experiments while lecturing."

About this time the United States was swept by the ''oil
fever," and visions of wealth to be suddenly acquired by the pos-
session of a well turned many an otherwise well-balanced head.
Prof. Rogers did not escape the epidemic ; and the fact that a
man so well informed in scientific matters as he was associated
in the enterprise contributed no little to the success of the scheme
for organizing the Humboldt Oil Company in February, 1864, to
which a capital of a quarter of a million dollars was contributed.
Organization was all the success the company had. Land was

SKETCH OF ROBERT EMPIE ROGERS, 839

bought, wells were dug, and the work was carried on for some
time without profit ; and finally, in 1873, the whole concern was
sold out, a nearly total loss to the shareholders. Prof. Rogers
was the largest holder, having one fifth of the shares, and lost
more than any of the others.

In 1872 Prof. Rogers was appointed, with Dr. H. R. Linder-
man, by the Secretary of the Treasury, a committee to make ex-
aminations in the mint at Philadelphia for the purpose of ascer-
taining the extent and sources of a waste of silver that was
alleged to be taking place there " in excess of the amount tolerated
by law.'' The processes of assaying and refining the bullion and
converting it into coin were carefully tested by numerous experi-
ments at the mint and at the Assay Office in New York. About
two months were spent in the examination. The result of it was
presented July 25, 1873, in a well-considered and elaborate Report
on the Wastage of Silver Bullion at the Melter and Refiner's De-
partment of the Mint. This investigation, valuable in itself, was
also valuable in its consequences, because it suggested modifica-
tions in the method of refining the precious metals which were
afterward adopted. The Director of the Mint said in his annual
report that the results obtained were conclusive of several points,
and would be valuable in future minting operations. Prof. Rogers
next made an examination of the working of the mint at San
Francisco, concerning which he reported to the Director of the
Mint. In 1874 he experimented at the Assay Office in New York
concerning means of ridding the establishment of inconveniences
suffered from acid vapors. " Prior to that time nitrous-acid fumes,
arising from the nitric acid used in refining silver, were allowed
to escape through the chimney into the open air, seriously annoy-
ing neighbors. To correct the evil. Dr. Rogers had constructed
in the attic of the building a furnace for burning coke, into which
the fumes were conveyed and burned." Instead of extinguishing,
these fumes promoted the combustion of the fuel. He afterward
conferred with the Treasury authorities in Washington concern-
ing plans which he had proposed for the equipment of a refinery
in the mint at San Francisco. The plans, which included a sul-
phuric-acid process recommended by him, and the erection of ad-
ditional buildings, were carried out under his supervision, and
the completed work was put in charge of the superintendent in
August, 1875. "At the suggestion of Dr. Rogers during the
progress of the work, an artesian well was sunk within the hol-
low square of the mint, which supplies one hundred thousand
gallons of water daily for all the uses of the establishment.'*
The succeeding report of the Director of the Mint mentions the
advantage to the public interests which attended the operation
of the refinery. In connection with this work in the mint Prof.

840 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Rogers also made a careful investigation and estimation of tlie
probable total production of the Consolidated Virginia and Cali-
fornia Mine in Nevada. He was further, from 1874 to 1879, or for
about six years, a member every year of the Annual Assay Com-
mission. He was for twelve years one of the chemists to make
an analysis and daily photometric test of the illuminating gas
supplied to Philadelphia.

In 1877 Prof. Rogers was elected Professor of Medical Chemis-
try and Toxicology in Jefferson Medical College ; and, to accept
the offer, resigned the position which he had for a quarter of a
century held in the university. His entrance into this institution
was the occasion of a flattering demonstration at the time of the
opening of the course of 1877-78 with an introductory lecture.
" It was estimated that not less than twelve hundred physicians,
students, and others were crowded into the hall. At the conclu-
sion of the lecture a silver vase was presented to him as a token
of the respect felt for him by the great class of medical students."

Prof. Rogers became a member of the Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia in 1837 ; was interested in its proceedings
through most of his life ; attended its meetings at irregular inter-
vals for many years in succession ; participated in its discussions,
and delivered lectures to promote its interests. Many of his
verbal communications are noted in its proceedings from 1859 to
1862. He was a member of the Franklin Institute from April,
1838, except when living away from Philadelphia ; became a life
member in 1855 ; one of the Board of Managers in 1857 ; was one
of the vice-presidents for seventeen years from 1858 ; was chosen
president in 1875 ; and on retiring from that office in 1879 was
returned to the Board of Managers for the rest of his life. " He
was particularly active in the work of the institute, delivered
courses of lectures on chemistry before its classes, assisted in the
management of its public exhibitions, served on several of its
standing and on many of its special committees, the most notable
of which were one on tests of the efficiency of dynamo- electric
machines, and another on the dangers of electric lighting." At
the celebration of the semi-centennial anniversary of the founda-
tion of the society, February 5, 1874, he delivered an address on
the history of scientific discoveries and their practical applica-
tions in the half century, in which he pointed out how the work
of the institute had contributed to the progress of science and
the diffusion of knowledge.

He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Soci-
ety in 1855 and a member of its Council in 1859. He was a fre-
quent attendant at its meetings, served on several of its commit-
tees, and often took part in its discussions. He was less often
present at the meetings of the College of Physicians, of which he

SKETCH OF ROBERT EMPIE ROGERS, 841

was elected a Fellow in 1857. At one of these meetings, according
to Dr. Ruschenberger, lie related an incident in the case of a trial
for poisoning He, as an expert witness, contributed to the estab-
lishment of the fact that the subnitrate of bismuth sold in the
drug stores was contaminated with arsenic, which had not previ-
ously been suspected. He became a permanent member of the
American Medical Association in 1852, when he attended the meet-
ing at Richmond as the representative of the University of Vir-
ginia. He represented the University of Pennsylvania in the
meetings of 1853 and 1872, representing also at the latter meeting
the medical profession of Philadelphia, and delivering the address
of welcome to the delegates. He took an active part in the forma-
tion of the Society of the Alumni of the Medical Department of
the University of Pennsylvania, and was its treasurer for several
years. With his brothers Henry and William he took part, in
1840, in the organization of the Association of American Geol-
ogists and Naturalists, which afterward became the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. The catalogue of
his writings includes four papers under his own name alone in
physiology, chemistry, and metallurgy ; twelve papers by him
and William B. Rogers in chemistry ; a paper on the analysis of
magnesian limestone by him and Martin H. Boy^ ; three papers
by Dr. H. R. Linderman and him in metallurgy and electricity ; a
paper by James B. Rogers and him on the alleged insolubility of
copper in hydrochloric acid; and seven papers by William B.
Rogers and him on subjects in chemistry and meteorology. He
also edited the American edition of Lehmann's Physiological
Chemistry, which was published in 1855 ; and he was joint author,
with James Blythe Rogers, of a text-book of inorganic and organic
chemistry, compiled from the works of Dr. Edward Turner and
Dr. William Gregory, which was published in 1840. Besides his
regular occupations. Prof. Rogers was sometimes engaged as an
expert in criminal trials; frequently delivered lectures, illus-
trated by experiments, for the benefit of institutions ; and often
did works of kindness and benevolence. Three instances are men-
tioned in which he heroically saved persons from drowning. He
had a remarkable faculty. Dr. Ruschenberger says, in the use of
tools of all kinds, and a respectable talent for mechanical con-
trivance. He was author of many inventions — notable among
them the Rogers and Black steam boiler — and of several modifi-
cations and improvements of electrical apparatus. This ability
was early manifested, in 1835-36, in his original experiments on
osmosis, in which he demonstrated how changes in the blood are
produced by respiration.

842

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

(£;OXXtsxfOViiitutt.

WOMAN'S CLAIMS TO THE BALLOT.

Ediiw Popvlar Science Monthly :

SiE : The " antagonism of the sexes" sug-
gested in your criticism of my paper on
Woman and the Ballot, in the June number
of the Monthly, must have been read between
the lines, as I have not the least feeling of
that nature to betray.

I confess, however, that I have a passion-
ate love of justice which is apt to be aroused
by any attempt to forestall judgment such
as was made by Mrs. Linton and Mr. Talbot
in announcing the raison d'etre for woman.
Believing, as I do, that neither they nor any
one else can give one iota of proof in regard
to " causes of existence," whether of an
amoeba or woman, a little irony is pardonable.

No attempt whatever was made to give the
important arguments in favor of woman suf-
frage, as these were ignored in Mr. Talbot's
article, his efforts being mainly directed to
the testimony of " Nature " against a femi-
nine share of government.

One of the best reasons I can urge for
the gift of the franchise to woman is its edu-
cative effect upon herself. I hold strongly
to the doctrine of personal responsibility, and
think enough evil has been accomplished by
" trusteeship," however generously and con-
scientiously it may be exercised in particular
instances.

The special laws referred to as resultants
of woman's effort were: The bill granting
property rights to women in the State of
Vermont, October, 184*7 ; the removal of dis-
abilities from the women of Kansas in 1859 ;
and the granting of property rights to the
women of Connecticut in 1877. The testi-
mony in regard to these is as follows : " From
1843 to 1853, inclusive, I edited The Wind-
ham County Democrat, published by my hus-
band, George W. Nichols, at Brattleboro.
Early in 1847 I addressed to the voters of
the State a series of editorials setting forth
the injustice and miserable economy of the
property disabilities of married women. In
October of the same year Hon. Larkin Mead,
of Brattleboro, ' moved,' as he said, by Mrs.
Nichols's presentation of the subject in the
Democrat, introduced in the Vermont Sen-
ate a bill securing to the wife real and per-
sonal property with its use and power to de-
fend, convey, and devise, as if sole. The bill
as passed secured to the wife real estate
owned by her at marriage," etc.*

* Reminiscences of Clarinda I. Howard Nich-
ols, History of Woman Sufirage, vol. 1, p. 175.

In 1859 Mrs. Nichols addressed the Con-
stitutional Convention in Kansas upon equal
legal and political rights for women. Three
of the four petitions presented by her were
granted, the report being adopted by a solid
vote of the Democrats and enough Republi-
cans to make a majority.*

The Connecticut law of 1877 giving prop-
erty rights to women was passed upon Gov-
ernor Hubbard's recommendation, who, in a
personal letter to Mrs. Isabella Hooker, ac-
knowledged her influence. " Thank your-
self and such as you for what there is
of progress in respect to woman's rights
among us," f

If these women did not supply the mo-
tive power that stimulated the sluggish mas-
culine " sense of equity and right," then we
are wrong in ascribing causative value to any
pleading. It is not a case of post hoc, prop-
ter hoc, merely ; it has the connection of the
match and the flash.

As for all generalizations concerning the
mental characteristics of women, I think we
have as yet no adequate data, and therefore
that all books founded on such premises are
entirely valueless from a scientific point of
view. Alice B. Tweedy.

New York, August 25, 1896.

A CORRECTION.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Dear Sir : On page 569 of the August
number of the Monthly E. W. Moir makes the
statement that he treated certain cases " ho-
moeopathically." The cases were patients
suffering with what has been called " caisson
disease." The cause of this disease is the
too sudden removal of supernormal atmos-
pheric pressure, or the too rapid removal of
one from a chamber of compressed air.

To relieve the paralysis thus caused we
are told that the patients were again put
into a heavy atmosphere. As it was the re-
moval from a heavy atmosphere that caused
the disease, certainly reintroducing a patient
into a heavy atmosphere can not be called
homoeopathic treatment. There are many
others who misuse medical terms quite as
recklessly as the word " homoeopathically "
is in the instance mentioned above.

Respectfully, J. M. G. Carter, M. D.

Waukegan, Iix., August 1, 1896.

* History of Woman Suffrage, vol. i, pp. 192,
193.

t History cf Woman Suffrage, vol. iii, p. 326.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

84J

%&itox's %xibU,

ANOTHER BIS nop ON SCIENCE
TEA CHINO IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

"W

E were not a little surprised to
read in Nature some time ago
an article from which it appeared that
Bishop Temple, of London, had, in
an address delivered before the Dio-
cesan Conference, expressed his en-
tire opposition to the teaching of sci-
ence in elementary schools. So far
as these schools were concerned he
would be glad, he said, ''if all these
scientific subjects were got rid of en-
tirely." Now Dr. Temple, as Nature
observes, is an experienced educator.
He was Head Master of Rugby at
the time when he wrote his celebrat-
ed paper on The Education of the
World in Essays and Reviews ; and
he has also been an inspector of
schools and principal of a training
college. He may therefore be sup-
posed to know a good deal about
education; and we can only regret
that we are not in possession of a
fuller statement of his views than
we find in the columns of our con-
temporary, as it is difficult to believe
that he could have expressed such
opinions as those quoted without
qualification. Nature, replying to
the bishop, proceeds to show how
important technical knowledge is to
the commercial prosperity of nations.
This does not fully meet the case,
however : technical knowledge may
be, and is doubtless, of the highest
importance to a nation's commercial
prosperity; and yet from an educa-
tional point of view it might (con-
ceivably) not be advisable to intro-
duce science into elementary schools.
The question is not as to teaching sci-
ence, but as to when to begin to teach
it and how to teach it in the earliest
stxiges.

If Bishop Temple, who has al-
ways been regarded as a very en-
lightened man, means no more than
that science should not be so taught
to young children as to tyrannize
over their thoughts and cramp their
imaginations, we could agree with
him. If, on the other hand, he means
that there is no way of introducing the
teaching of science with advantage
into the education of the young, we
can only consider him seriously mis-
taken, and regret that he should have
given the weight of his authority to
a very hurtful idea. Many of our
readers are doubtless aware that
some eminent scientific authorities
have been profoundly dissatisfied
with the methods and results of sci-
ence teaching in the elementary
schools both of this country and of
England. In spite of their predilec-
tion for scientific studies they have
been forced to acknowledge that,
somehow or other, science as actual-
ly taught seemed in a great many
cases to possess little or no educative
value. The late Prof. Huxley was
very strong on this point, maintain-
ing that the fault lay in the excess-
ive use made of text-books and the
overloading of the mind with facts
which it could not properly assimi-
late. Bishop Temple may have wit-
nessed a similar phenomenon; but,
if so, the inference to draw is not
that there is no place for science in
elementary education, but that its
true place has not always been un-
derstood, or that those who haye as-
sumed to teach it have not possessed
the skill and insight necessary to
bring it into vital relation with the
minds under their charge.

As we take it, the business of sci-
ence in early education is not to go

844

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rudely counter to all the natural
ideas of a child in regard to the uni-
verse, nor to impose upon him at
once the somewhat oppressive con-
ception of unvarying law, hut to
cause the idea of law to steal gradu-
ally into the mind, and to reveal and
assert itself more and more through
the successive observations which a
judicious teacher will lead the child
to make. Childhood, it should he
needless to remark, is a period of
great outward activity — a period
when impressions from the world
around are crowding in on the mind ;
it is not to any great extent a period
of reflection ; and any studies, there-
fore, which make a premature or
excessive demand on the reflecting
powers can not fail to do harm.
The youngest child will generalize
to some extent — that is to say, will
do it fitfully and in regard to famil-
iar matters ; but wide generalizations
in regard to unfamiliar matters lie
outside of its natural sphere; and,
if forced on its attention, will not
only fail to interest, but will, in di-
rect proportion to the insistence of
the teacher, depress the whole play
of the mental faculties and injuri-
ously affect the development of the
physical system. This is a point
■where many teachers go astray.
Generalizations are so interesting to
the adult mind, they seem to help it
forward so powerfully, and to be
as it were so self-luminous, that a
teacher requires to possess more than
the usual amount of comprehension
of and sympathy with the child mind
in order to recognize that they are,
in the main, unsuited to the latter,
and therefore only to be applied
sparingly in its education. This,
we conceive, explains why "clever"
people, so called, often make but in-
ferior teachers of the young. In
spite of all the psychology and peda-
gogics they may have absorbed —
perhaps occluded — they can not suflBi-

ciently and permanently, day in
and day out, distinguish between
the mature and the immature in-
tellect.

Science, like everything else, to
be taught successfully needs to be
taught with sympathy. There should
be sympathy with the subject as well
as sympathy with the pupil. The
reason why, in the hands of certain
teachers, language and literature
prove so stimulating as studies, is
that the teachers feel them to be re-
lated to the higher operations and
finer perceptions of the mind, and
succeed in conveying this idea to
those whom they instruct. The
teacher of science should not be con-
tent to occupy any lower ground.
The laws and facts which he ex-
pounds have their own correlation
with the past history and future des-
tinies of mankind, and with the
whole compass of human thought.
In dealing with the young we should
endeavor to humanize science as
much as possible, and to present it
as having its origin in the everyday
impressions of sense, and as being in
its essence merely an improved and
beneficent interpretation of the world
in which we live.

Unless the Bishop of London is a
far more reactionary person than we
take him to be, what he would ban-
ish from elementary schools is just
what we would ourselves banish,
had we the power, namely, that for-
mal, didactic, authoritative instruc-
tion in the facts and theories of sci-
ence which is more adapted to wither
than to nourish the youthful mind,
not such teaching as takes the form
of a gradual and sympathetic intro-
duction to the true order of Nature.
Science is just as good for the young
as for the old, on the one condition
that those who teach it are them-
selves scientific enough to under-
stand the minds they are dealing
with. And the advantage of begin-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

84s

ning betimes is that the mind early
accustomed to view the universe as
an infinite field of knowledge, and
science simply as a method tested
and proved by experience for ac-
quiring knowledge, is placed once
for all in the right relation and atti-
tude to all questions demanding the
exercise of thought. Many men of
eminence in letters have expressed
regret that they did not enjoy this
advantage in early life ; and on every
hand we see proofs that the lack
which they have deplored is precise-
ly the lack under which others are
laboring, without, however, a saving
consciousness of their deficiency.
We want more science, not less, in
education, but the science must itself
be scientific.

TEE FOURTH BUFFALO MEETING OF
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.

The meeting of the American
Association in Buffalo — its fourth
meeting in that city — was eminently
satisfactory from a scientific point
of view, and was marked by many
features of interest. About four
hundred members were present.
Among them were two of the six
founders of the association still liv-
ing—Dr. James Hall, and Prof.
Charles West, of Brooklyn— whose
presence was fittingly mentioned by
President Morley in opening the
meeting. Later in the sessions a
kind of jubilee meeting was held in
the Geological Section in commemo-
ration of the sixtieth anniversary of
Prof. Hall's work in connection with
the New York Geological Survey,
when addresses were made by Prof.
Joseph Le Conte, W J McGee, and
others, in which special features of
the survey were presented. The ad-
dress of welcome by the mayor of the
city was supplemented by a greeting
from Dr. Roswell Park, of the Buffalo
Academy of Natural Sciences, on be-
half of the scientific life of the place.

Buffalo — a commercial city— has no
great scientific institutions, but sev-
eral of modest pretensions, including
its university of five professional
schools, which has just celebrated its
serai-centennial; a second medical
school; several libraries; the acad-
emy, which boasts of its special col-
lection relating to the American
bison; and a number of smaller
affiliated clubs, each devoted to some
particular form of the study of Na-
ture.

President E. D. Cope, replying to
these addresses, spoke of the insig-
nificance of our knowledge as com-
pared with what we do not know, of
the value of original research, the
nature of scientific investigation, and
the objects of the association. The
address of retiring President Morley
was on the subject of A Completed
Chapter in the History of the Atomic
Theory. The addresses of the sec-
tional vice-presidents were mostly
technical discussions of special top-
ics in their several fields, but some,
which we shall mention in another
place, offered points of considerable
general interest. A similar remark
may be applied to the papers in the
sections, which offered great variety
in character. The proceedings of
the Economic Section were marked
by the discussion of monetary ques-
tions in papers by Mr. William H.
Hale and Edward Atkinson; Mr.
Stillman Kneeland's paper on Citi-
zenship, its Privileges and Duties;
and papers bearing on the " woman
question." Studies of Indian life
were presented in the Anthropo-
logical Section, and an air of realism
was imparted to the matter by the
opening of an Indian burial chest,
found in Michigan, and the exhibi-
tion of other specimens. The Geo-
logical Section paid much attention
to caves. The results of cave explo-
ration in the United States and their
bearing on the antiquity of man

846

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were presented in an illustrated lec-
ture by Prof. Cope and Mr. H. C.
Mercer; and the making of the
Mammoth Cave was explained, and
a colossal cave discovered a year ago
in Kentucky was described by Prof.
Hovey. The last gentleman urged
the formation of an American cave
club. The section resolved to place
a tablet on the spot where the Asso-
ciation of American Geologists was
founded. In the Section of Mechan-
ical Science Mr. W. S. Aldrich advo-
cated a national endowment for en-
gineering research, and the subject

of irrigation for the eastern United
States was brought to attention.
The practical side of chemistry was
presented in such subjects as The
Chemical Problems of the Pottery
Industry, Sugar-making at the Pres-
ent Day, and The Use of Coal-Tar
Products in Food.

In choosing Prof. Wolcott Gibbs
as the president of its next meeting,
the association has honored itself in
honoring a veteran chemist who was
famous when the majority of its
present most active members were
still schoolboys.

^jctjeutific %iUxviXuxz.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

We have here a popular view of one division of the fruitful field that
is being worked by the physiological psychologists of the present genera-
tion in Italy.* The author lays a broad foundation for his treatment of
his subject by describing the general functions of each part of the brain
and those of the spinal cord. He then takes up the circulation of the
blood in the brain during emotion, on which he has made extended re-
searches. He has had opportunities to take tracings from the pulsations of
the brain in patients whose skulls had been fractured, and shows that any
sound or sight that stimulates mental action increases the quantity of blood
sent to the brain. He has tested the same thing also with a balance de-
vised by him which has a beam large enough for a person to lie at length
upon. Any mental excitement of the subject on the balance inducing a
rush of blood to the brain would cause the head end of the delicately poised
beam to sink. When the normal condition of the subject was restored the
balance would regain its equilibrium. Dr. Mosso has also taken many
tracings from the respiration, the beating of the heart, and the circulation
of blood in the hands, each class of records showing the perturbations pro-
duced by excitement. The variation in the quantity of blood sent to the
hands and other outlying parts of the body underlies the phenomenon of
pallor, which with oppression of the chest and quickened beating of the
heart are among symptoms of fear. Trembling is another one of these
symptoms which Dr. Mosso examines. Taking up facial expression, he
describes the nervous and muscular actions by which expression is pro-
duced, and follows this with a chapter on the physiognomy of pain, in
which he gives a series of photographs of a hospital patient undergoing a

* Fear. By Angelo Mosso.
Green «fc Co. Price, Sl,75.

Pp. 278, 12mo. London, New York, and Bombay: Longmans,

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 847

painful raanipulation of the arm. He also considers the expression of
pain in the faces of certain classic pieces of statuary. Pain is not fear, and
this interesting chapter seems to have been introduced as a substitute for
material that it was not practicable to obtain. Opportunities for observ-
ing fear in children, both in their waking and sleeping hours, are not so
rare as in the case of adults. Our author discusses both hereditary or in-
stinctive and induced fears of little folk and gives some suggestions as to
education for courage. Other aspects of his subjects treated in the closing
chapters are the influence of fear on the skin and excretions, the paralyz-
ing influence of terror on man and animals, and the maladies and even
cases of death which great fright has produced. The treatment is popular
throughout, and some of the author's descriptions— for instance, those of
stage fright and delirium tremens— rise to the picturesque. It contains
many things that a reader would want to refer to after a first reading, but
its translators do not seem to think so, for they have left it without an
index.

Mr. Conant has added to the literature of the banking business a not-
ably convenient and instructive book.* His record begins with banking in
Italy, in which country the bank that is considered to have been the oldest,
that of Venice, was founded. This is followed by accounts of banking
operations in the other countries of Europe. Coming to America, he gives
a chapter each to the Bank of the United States, the State banking systems,
and the national banking system now in operation. The banks of Canada,
Latin America, Africa, and the East also receive attention. "While the
author has not departed from his historical plan so far as to write a treatise
on banking, yet he does not refrain from characterizing the good and the
bad features of the systems that he describes. He rates the Scotch system
of banks of issue as coming " nearer to the ideal of successful free banking
than that of any other country," and shows that the Canadian banks were
founded on Scotch models, and the first one of them largely by Scotchmen.
He also gives in his first chapter a brief statement of the theory of a
banking currency, and concludes the volume by setting forth the chief ad-
vantages of such a medium. Many persons who are most firmly resisting
the present agitation for a change in the coinage system of the United
States are convinced that a modification of our method of issuing paper
money is urgently needed. Mr. Conant shares this conviction, and in the
chapters just mentioned, as well as in the one especially devoted to our
national banking system, he vigorously affirms the superior elasticity of
bank currency over issues of Treasury notes, and condemns many of the
existing restrictions on the circulation of banks as unduly burdensome.

Another historical division of the volume relates to crises — the earlier
and later ones of the present century, including that of 1893 — with a dis-
cussion of the causes of these catastrophes. The tendency of the work is
to reveal the operation of natural laws in monetary affairs, and to show
that legislation that conflicts with these laws always works mischief.

♦ A History of Modem Banks of Issne, with an Aoconnt of the Economic Cri«e« of the Prveent
Centary. By Charles A. Conant. Pp. 595, 8vo. New York and London : O. P. Pntaam^s Sons.
Price, $3.

848

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

GENEEAL NOTICES.

In her recent volume, the fourth of the
Memoirs of the American Folklore Society,
Mrs. Bergen* has brought together and
classified fourteen hundred and seventy five
different superstitions, thus giving us the
most complete collection in English. When
it is known that this arduous task was ac-
complished during years of invalidism, and
is, moreover, but the first installment of the
matter in hand, we marvel at the industry of
the author. The items are arranged in nine-
teen chapters, covering the range of current
belief under the headings Babyhood, Child-
hood, Physical Characteristics, Projects, Hal-
loween and. other Festivals, Love and Mar-
riage, Wishes, Dreams, Luck, Money, Visit-
ors, Cures, Warts, Weather, Moon, Sun,
Death Omens, Mortuary Customs, and Mis-
cellaneous. What memories of childhood
are aroused at the forms of asseveration, such
as "Honor bright," "Hope I'll die," etc.,
used to bolster up some unsteady tale, or the
terrible imprecation against disloyalty :

Tell tale tit,

Your tongue shall be slit,
And every dog in our town
It shall have a bit I

A deeper interest is added when we think
that these childish formulae are but parallels
of the more serious rites of savages, and link
the play of the one to the horrible incanta-
tions of the other. Of the augury of the
daisy petals —

He loves me, he loves me not—

nine variants are given. Other interesting
kinds of "projects," or "trying fortunes,"
are connected with apple seeds, bed, buttons,
four-leaved clovers, stars, water, etc. The
fifty or more signs and charms for the causes
and cures of warts will be welcome to suf-
ferers from that affliction. To the student
of comparative mythology the solar and lunar
beliefs will offer many links to the Aryan
stock. In fact, it is the study of relation-
ships which gives most value to this or any
work of folklore. The introduction and

* Current Superstitions. Edited by Fanny D.
Bergen. With Notes, and an Introduction by
William Wells Newell. Pp. 161, 8vo. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Price, $3.25.

notes by Mr. Newell are written with the
usual care and clearness of this investigator,
and add an invaluable guide to the interpre-
tation of the superstitions. Mr. Newell says :
" In commending this collection to the atten-
tion of psychologists, and to the continuing
industry of students of folklore, I need only
express my hope that it may be sufficient to
make clear how far-reaching are the studies
for which folklore supplies material. The
history of religion, the theory of mythologies,
can not afford to overlook modem popular
beliefs, in which ancient conceptions appear
as still effective."

Dr. and Mrs. Le Plongeon spent twelve
years among the ruined cities of the Mayas
in Yucatan, living with the people, and are
confident that they have mastered the Maya
language, and learned to read the inscrip-
tions traced in it. They have made the
study of the subject the chief occupation of
their lives. One who talks with Dr. Le
Plongeon will hardly doubt that his asser-
tions are sincere. From his studies of the
Maya records, and his comparative studies
of Eastern archseology and mythology, he
draws most startling conclusions. Among
those developed in this book * are the his-
toric reality of the story of the Atlantis, and
the ascription of an extreme antiquity and
an extensive and potent influence to Maya
civilization. When Egypt and Accad were
young, or even before, he believes, the Mayas
were living in Yucatan, a civilized people,
with arts and architecture as we see them
illustrated in the ruins at Chichen and other
mysterious cities, while their colonists
swarmed in Egypt and Babylonia and all
the East, and left imperishable marks on the
civilization and the languages of all those
countries. This intercourse ceased with the
catastrophe of Atlantis, which made the
ocean unnavigable for thousands of years,
and the story of the Mayas was forgotten.
Much space is given in the book to the de-

* Queen M60 and the Egyptian Sphinx. By
Augustus Le Plongeon. New York : The au-
thor, and the Metaphysical Publishing Company,
503 Fifth Avenue. London : Kegan Paul, Trench
& Co. Pp. 2r7, 4to, with two portraits and 73
photographic plates.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

849

velopment of arguments in support of these
views from verbal analogies — the most delu-
sive of all bases for the foundation of a
theory. What the author claims to derive
from the study of Maya documents is enti-
tled to more serious consideration. This is
the story of the ancient Maya queen Moo,
whose brother and husband, Prince Coh,
was treacherously murdered by his brother
Aac. Queen Moo built a magnificent mau-
soleum to her consort at Chichen, the ruins
of which still exist and have been explored
and studied by Dr. Le Plongeon, who has re-
covered and possesses the charred heart of
the prince, and the stone spear heads with
which he was killed. Queen Moo, having
refused to marry her husband's murderer,
was obliged to flee from her country, and
sought refuge on one of the islands of the
sunken Atlantis. Here the Maya record
stops ; but Dr. Le Plongeon infers, from his
Egyptian studies, that not finding the refuge
she sought, she went on to Egypt, where she
was warmly welcomed by Maya colonists and
became influential. Her name, the author
affirms, is preserved in that of the Egyptian
Queen Mau ; her story, with that of her mur-
dei'ed husband, became the myth of Isis and
Osiris ; and she caused the Sphinx to be
carved as a memorial to her husband. Dr. Le
Plongeon finds the story of Atlantis fully
recorded on a stone which is preserved in
Chichen, " as intact to-day as when it came
from the hands of the sculptor," and also in
the manuscript Troano and the Codex Cor-
tesianus ; and he further affirms that it was
embodied by a Maya living in Greece in the
Greek alphabet, the names of the letters of
which, as recited by students, each represent
one of the lines of the poem. Dr. Le Plon-
geon's theories are utterly at variance with
those of the recognized Americanists ; but if
he errs, it is not from ignorance, for if he can
read ancient Maya, he knows more than all
of them, and his other reading has been
amazingly wide. There is, however, the
possibility that he has been carried away by
an unbounded enthusiasm.

In his work on Wages and Capital*
Prof. Taussig inverts the usual order of pro-

♦ Wages and Capital: An Examination of the
Wages-Fund Doctrine. By F. W. Taussig. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 325. Price, $1.50.
VOL. ILIX. — 66

ceedings by presenting his own views first,
in five chapters, and reviewing the history of
the wages-fund discussion from its begin-
ning to the present, in the chapters that fol-
low. This he does because criticism and
comment proceed inevitably from the think-
er's own point of view, and the proper esti-
mation of their value depends largely on the
reader's knowing what that is. In the first
five chapters (author's view) it appears that
all wages are paid from the products of past
labor, and that the supply of products of
past labor exists mainly in the form of real
capital ; that the class of hired laborers de-
rive their wages from capital in this sense,
and are dependent for their share of the real
income, into which capital steadily ripens, on
the funds which the employing riass find it
advantageous to turn over to them. The
inquiry is then made whether the capital
from which wages come is rigid or elas-
tic, with a conclusion against rigidity. The
inquiry results in the conclusion that the old
doctrine of the wages fund had a solid basis
in its conception, incomplete yet in essen-
tials just, of the payment of present labor
from past product. The theory thus ar-
rived at shows the steps by which the wages
get into the laborer's hands, describes the
machinery of production and distribution,
and so points to the nearest and most obvi-
ous caases which affect them ; but it does
not tell the whole story. In the critical re-
view forming the latter part of the book,
which begins with the writers before Adam
Smith and includes contemporary discussion,
the vogue of Mr. George's Progress and
Poverty is declared not due to any solid or
consistent reasoning, or to any novelty in
principle, and to have excited no great in-
fluence on trained students. The author r©-
views Prof. Francis A. Walker's contribu-
tions to the discussion at considerable
length, and maintains that they have never
touched the essentials of the matter. Final-
ly, while the controversy over the wages
fund is acknowledged to be a barren one
so far as it is an effort to define the
causes which finally distribute wages and
settle distribution at large, the author
holds that something may still be gained
from it as a mode of describing the meth-
ods and sequence of production and related
points.

850

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Hadley describes his book on
Economics* as an attempt to apply the
methods of modern science to the problems
of modern business. As among the impor-
tant changes in economic theory that have
taken place within the last thirty years, he
mentions the application, by different schools
of investigators, of the principle of natural
selection and of the results of psychological
study to account for the aspects of the sub-
ject to which they may severally apply. But
these things have combined to make the
economic science of the present day very dif-
ferent from that which formed the basis of
John Stuart Mill's presentation: "Mean-
while, new problems have been developing
in modern business life ; most conspicuously^
perhaps, in connection with large invest-
ments of capital in factories and railroads.
The time which elapses between the render-
ing of labor and the utilization of the prod,
ucts of labor is now so long that the work
of the speculator has far greater importance
than it had a generation ago. The size of
the units of capital is so large that free com-
petition often becomes an impossibility, and
theories of economics which are based upon
the existence of such competition prove
blind guides in dealing with modem price
movements. We have to study, far more
closely than we once did, the effect of
combinations upon the interests of the con-
sumers on the one hand and the laborers on
the other ; to examine the results of meet-
ing organizations of capital with organi-
zations of labor, and of controlling them
by special legislation, or by direct govern-
ment ownership. We have to deal with so-
cialism, not as the theory of a few vision-
aries who try to destroy property rights, but
as a series of practical measures, urged by
a large and influential body of men who are
engaged in extending the functions of gov-
ernment." The endeavor is made to supply
the lack of any general work in the English
language dealing comprehensively with these
problems of modern economics. The book
is written for students who are thinkers and
for men who are engaged in doing the world's
work, and is hardly likely to be found

* Economics : An Account of the Kelations be-
tween Private Property and Public Welfare. By
Arthur Twining Hadley. New York and Lon-
don: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 496. Price, $2.50.

adapted to superficial readers. The special
subjects treated are Public and Private
Wealth, Economic Responsibility, Competi-
tion, Speculation, Investment of Capital,
combination of Capital, Money, Credit, Prof-
its, Wages, Machinery and Labor, Co-opera-
tion, Protective Legislation, and Government
Revenue.

Mr. Thomas S. Blair, taking up the
question embodied in the second title of his
book on Human Progress,'^ and finding the
present state of knowledge inadequate to
furnish an answer, reasons that the complex-
ity of the facts of human experience ha8
been too much for the philosophers, seeks
for an instance of better results elsewhere,
and finds it in the case of the successful man
of affairs. In this book he undertakes to
present the conclusions he has reached
through the application of business methods
to his subject. He supposes man himself to
have become the chief agency in the further-
ance of the Creator's scheme for his evolu-
tion, his efficiency as such being brought
through the operation of his experience of
the natural laws controlling his evolution,
whereby he becomes acquainted with them
and learns to assist in giving them free play.
According to the author's philosophy, human
knowledge is limited to the form of working
hypotheses as guides of action, but is capa-
ble of indefinite expansion within its limita-
tions, and includes a large scope of knowl-
edge of objective realities ; the knowledge of
the actual existence of the basis of religious
sentiment is as unequivocal, direct, and con-
clusive as the knowledge of our own exist-
ence, and thus religion is established on a
rigidly scientific foundation ; and the active
principle in the scheme of human progrees
is the impulse to satisfy wants, operating
under a law of man's being, according to
which the satisfaction of a want is followed
by the emergence of a new want, which is
normally of a higher order than the want
which it succeeds. Confirmation of these
conclusions is looked for in the provision
which Nature has made for the satisfying of
wants of various kinds and the awakening of
higher ones. The statements of principles

* Human Progress: What can Man do to
Further it ? By Thomas S. Blair. New York :
William R. Jenkins. Pp. 573. Price, §1.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

85.

and the arguments are overlaid with much
verbiage, and this makes the book very
hard reading.

The Dictionary of Chemical Solubilities
of Prof. Arthur M. Comey (Macmillan, $5)
was an undertaking German in laboriousness
and American in enterprise, and the finished
volume is a monument of able and persever-
ing effort. Although this work is nominally
limited to the inorganic substances, excep-
tions have been made by including in it
CO2, CO, CSa, the carbonates, cyanides, fer-
rocyanides, etc. Prof. Comey acknowledges
receiving much aid from the earlier diction-
ary of Prof. Storer, but he found the material
that has accumulated since 1860, the limit
of that work, to be far greater than that
previously extant. Different results given
by different observers have been set down
in many cases, with the authority for each,
as it would have been manifestly impossible to
verify all such conflicting statements experi-
mentally. Under each title the solubility of
the substance in water is first given, the date
being arranged chronologically in the longer
articles. Then follow the specific gi-avities of
the aqueous solutions, and also any data ob-
tainable regarding their boiling points. Fol-
lowing this is the solubility of the substance
in other solvents — first the inorganic acids,
then alkali and salt solutions, and finally
organic substances. While many of the
rarer substances are disposed of in a couple
of lines, some of the more important occupy
several pages : thus ammonia has five and a
fourth pages, glass over three and a half,
potassium nitrate nearly as much, and sul-
phuric acid over four. In putting the ma-
terial together many puzzling problems of
nomenclature and arrangement had to be
solved, but Dr. Comey's own practical sense
has been supplemented by wise counsel, and
when the user of the volume reflects that the
dictionary plan can give the maximum of
convenience only by sometimes disregarding
logic and relationship he will agree that these
questions have been well decided.

The University of the State of New York
has issued Museum Bulletin 14 on the Geol-
ogy of Moriah and Westport Toiomhips^ Es-
sex County. Besides describing the general
geology of these townships, this pamphlet
gives the latest information on the important

iron ore deposits of that region, and reviews
the probable hypotheses as to their origin.
It contains a geologic map of the two town-
ships, a map of Mineville iron region^ and
half-tone views of the mining district and
sections of the ore bodies. The bulletin is
mailed by the State Library on receipt of ten

The Natural Science Association of Staten
Island has performed a commendable service
to local geography and history by publishing
the collection of Staten Island Names, com-
piled by William T. Davis, and the accom-
panying map prepared by Charles W. Leng.
Names for natural features of the island and
the waters surrounding it, and for ferries,
roads, and villages are included in the collec-
tion. With each name is given the location
of the place to which it was applied, and
in many cases a quotation from some old
advertisement, deed, or map is added as au-
thority. With some a legend connected with
the place is inserted. The list makes a pam-
phlet of fifty-seven pages, which may be had
for 50 cents from Arthur HoUick, secretary
of the association, at New Brighton, N. Y.

A new and enlarged edition of Hypnotism,
Mesmerisyn, and the New Witchcraft, by
Ernest Hart, M. D., has been issued recently
(Appletons, $1.50). The original edition was
noticed fully in our number for October,
1893. Dr. Hart's general conclusions in re-
gard to hypnotism are that it is very rarely
useful for curative purposes, and is danger-
ous for platform performances and private
amusement. In a new chapter entitled The
Eternal Gullible, Dr. Hart gives the confes-
sions of a professional " subject " who had
appeared in performances with a number of
well-known "professors" in London. An
appendix contains some lively controTersial
letters contributed to the British press by
Dr. Hart, Dr. Luys, and Prof. Sidgwick.

With this may be mentioned A Studjf m
Hypnotism, by Sydney Floiecr, which is a
story of a hypnotizer's courtship with one of
his subjects (Psychic Publishing Co., Chi-
cago).

Hypnotism and its Relation to Witchcrafty
Ghostohgy, and Mind-cure is the subject of
a lecture by J. H Fisher, which is published
as a pamphlet (Seymour & Muir Printing Ca,
Grand Rapids). Mr. Fisher expresses him-

852

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

self in a vigorous and humorous style, and
brushes away the nonsense from the popular
idea of hypnotism with an unsparing hand,
exposing as he goes along many of the tricks
of platform "professors." He maintains
that good subjects, when not confederates,
are hypnotized by their own faith in the
power of the operator, that the healing by
saintly relics and Christian science is due to
just such faith, and that ghosts and witches
have had their only existence in a similarly
strong belief.

Hypiotism is treated more respectfully in
a little pamphlet by Prof. G. A. Keene (the
author. Masonic Temple, Chicago, 16 cents),
who gives a general exposition of the subject,
and firmly maintains its value in medicine
and surgery. All of these publications ex-
cept the second are illustrated.

The Examination of Weismannism, by Dr.
G. J. Roynanes (Open Court Publishing Co.,
35 cents), consists of a series of essays dis-
cussing the phases of Weismann's theory of
evolution as they have appeared in that in-
vestigator's successive publications. The
first chapter is a statement of Weismann's
system up to the year 1886, and the second
supplies additions bringing it up to 1892.
Then follow examinations of Weismann's
theories of heredity and evolution as they
stood in 1891, and a final chapter brings the
subject up to 1893. From this discussion
Dr. Romanes excludes the doctrine of non-
inheritance of acquired characters, and deals
only with " the elaborate system of theories
which Weismann has reared upon his funda-
mental postulate." He represents these
theories as being in a continual flux and
change, and he had intended to add supple-
mentary chapters to future editions of this
book in order to keep pace with further de-
velopments which he expected to appear.
In his opposition to Weismann, Romanes was
largely on common ground with Spencer, but
there were points upon which he took issue
with the latter, some of which are set forth
in an appendix. Another appendix contains
certain supplementary suggestions on Weis-
mann's theory of germ-plasm.

One important way in which the fingers
of primitive man assisted his wits is im-
pressed upon our attention by Dr. Levi L.
(JonanCs study of The Numher Concept (Mac-

millan, $2). The number systems of nearly
all existing peoples evidently arose from
counting on the fingers — some using one,
some both hands, and others supplementing
the fingers by the toes. Dr. Conant men-
tions, however, a few tribes who have nu-
meral words only for one, two, and many,
and some even whose only numeral seems
to be one. He shows from a large number
of numeral vocabularies that number words
have been suggested in very many languages
by the act of telling off the fingers in count-
ing. Examples are words meaning " the
end is bent " for 1, '' the notched ofE " or
" one hand " for 8, " one on the foot " for
11, and "one man" (all the fingers and toes)
for 20. While most peoples have five or ten
as their number base, a few have two, going
on with words meaning two-one, two-two,
etc. Four is also used as a base, but Dr.
Conant has found no recorded instance of a
number system formed on 6, 7, 8, or 9. It
has been announced recently that the Aphos,
an African tribe, have the best of all sys-
tems, the duodecimal, but the report has yet
to be verified. The vigesimal system, either
alone or combined with the quinary, appears
in many places and persists even in the
French quatre-vinffts. The author believes
that he has brought together for this discus-
sion the largest existing collection of numeral
systems.

Among the publications issued by the
Sound Money League of Pennsylvania is No.
13, A Dmatisfied Farmer, which shows that
most of the depression under which agricul-
ture in the United States now labors is due
to competition, and especially to the compe-
tition of the wholesale operations carried on
in the West. The little pamphlet is illus-
trated with excellent photo-engravings show-
ing old and new methods of agriculture,
stock-raising, and transportation. (Room
248, The Bourse, Philadelphia.)

Under the title The Union College Prac-
tical Lectures there have been collected in a
volume thirteen lectures delivered at Union
College in a course instituted by General
Daniel Butterfield. The plan of the course
has been evidently to get men prominent in
affairs to t^alk about their respective special-
ties to the students of the college. Thus the
first lecture on the list is an account of the

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

f53

Military Academy at West Point hj General
P. S. Michie, dean of the faculty of the
academy, and the late A. H. Rice, ex- Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts, gave Some Inside
Views of the Gubernatorial Office. Six of
the addresses were on public affairs ; Henry
W. Cannon spoke on Banking and Currency,
Montgomery Schuyler on Architecture, An-
drew Carnegie on Wealth and its Uses, while
pure and applied science were represented by
the lecture of Albon Man on Electricity, of
General William A. Hammond on Brains and
Muscles, of ex- Governor Alonzo B. Cornell
on The Electro-magnetic Telegraph, and of
Colonel F. V. Greene on Roads. The vol-
ume contains the portrait and a short bio-
graphical sketch of each lecturer. (F. T.
Neely.)

The summary and index of Leghlaiion
by States in 1895, issued by the New York
State Library (University of the State of New
York, 35 cents), contains 4,847 entries. This
bulletin, which has now been published for
six years, is of great service in putting State
legislators in possession of the recent work
done in other States, and thereby promoting
progress and uniformity. A new feature
this year is a separate table of constitutional
amendments arranged by States, showing the
result of the vote on all amendments in 1894
and 1895, and giving also those to be sub-
mitted to future vote.

Having made a thorough lexicographic
study of mineral names for the new dictionary
of the Philological Society, Prof. Albert H.
Chester has recently issued the results of his
labors separately as A Dictionary of the
Names of Minerals (New York : Wiley, |3.60 ;
London : Chapman & Hall). He has aimed to
give with each name its correct spelling, its
author, a reference to its first publication,
its original spelling, its derivation, the reason
for choosing this particular name, and a
short description of the mineral to which it
belongs. In a few cases he was unable to
determine one or more of these points, and
he sends out with the volume a circular ask-
ing aid in securing the lacking information.
Nearly five thousand names are included in
the dictionary, and many of the facta con-
cerning them are now given in a vocabulary
for the first time, having been gathered from
little known books or from private communi-

cations. A considerable number of imagi-
nary derivations and other errors are cor-
rected in this work. An introduction contains
an interesting history of attempts to system-
atize mineralogical names, accounts of the
introduction of some errors, and other simi-
lar matter. A list of works cited fills nine-
teen pages, and an index to the authors of
mineral names occupies twenty-four more.

77ie Annual Literary Index, edited by
W. I. Fletclier and R. R. Bowker (The Pub-
lishers' Weekly, $3.50), is an annual supple-
ment to Poole's valuable index to periodicals
and, by the addition of one feature after an-
other, has become much more than that. The
volume for 1895 contains besides the Index
to Periodicals an Index to General Litera-
ture, which rather ambitious title denotes an
index to the contents of one hundred and
thirty or forty volumes of essays, biographi-
cal sketches, etc., published in 1895. There
is an Author-index covering these two lists,
which is followed by a list of the American
and English bibliographies that have ap-
peared (in treatises or separately) in the
course of the year, a Necrology of Writers,
and an Index to Dates of Principal Events.
This last is a new feature, and besides its in-
dependent historical value it is practically an
index to the files of any newspaper.

• The second annual volume of MM. H.
Beaunis and A. Binet's Annee Psychologique
(Psychological Annual) for 1895 is much
larger than the first, and forms a book of
1010 pages. The volume, which is pub-
lished from the Laboratory of Physiological
Psychology of the Sorbonne, contain?, under
the heading of Memoirs of Collaborators,
papers on Abnormal and Morbid Characters,
by Prof. Ribot ; A Glance at Comparative
Psychology, by M. Fosel ; An Experiment in
Reading in which Certain Categories of
Words are omitted, by M. Floumey; On
Intellectual Phenomena, by M. Bererdon; A
Note on the Conditions favoring Hypnotism,
by M. Gley ; and Illusions of Weight, by M.
Bidml^et. Other papers are given luider the
headings Works from the Laboratory and
General Reviews. The second part of the
volume contains analyses of publications and
papers that tills fourteen chapter?, each cov-
ering its separate department, with subdi-
visions : four £nde9 d'enstmhle. or Genenl

854

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Studies, by Charlin, Maudsley, Morselli, and
Wernicke ; Necrological Notices ; and a bib-
liography embracing 1,394 titles, with an in-
dex of authors — these credited to the Psy-
chological Review. (Published in Paris by
Felix Alcan. Price, 15 francs.)

Home Study is a new illustrated monthly
intended for elementary students of the vari-
ous engineering and architectural branches.
Vol. I, No. 3, contains several interesting
and instructive articles, among which may
be mentioned Stability of Vessels, Electric
Currents, Chokage of Drains, Foul Air of
Rooms, The Modern Theory of Heat, and
Circulating Decimals. (Scranton, Pa. $1.50 ;
15 cents.)

The Bamboo Garden, by A. B. Freeman-
Mitford (Macmillan, $3), is an attempt to
give a descriptive list of the hardy bamboos
in cultivation in England, and to focus such
information in regard to them as could be
obtained from Japanese as well as from

European sources. The methods of propa-
gation, and choice of position and soil, are
considered in the early chapters. Chapter
IV deals with the manifold uses to which the
bamboo is put, and the curious customs and
superstitions connected with the plant in
Eastern countries. The remainder of the
book consists of a classification and descrip-
tion of species. A few illustrations accom-
pany the text.

Fres8 Workmg of Metah^hj Oherlin Smith
(New York: Wiley; London: Chapman &
Hall), is a treatise upon the principles of
shaping metals in dies, and a description of
these dies, both those in present use and of
past stages in the art of metal-working.
The body of the work is prefaced by a short
historical sketch on the probable origin of
the art, and the crude methods which were
at first employed. The book is essentially
technical and of interest to only a special
class. Good illustrations are quite numerous.

PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Connecti-
cut : Cost of Nitrogen, Phosphoric Acid, and
Potash in Connecticut ; iixaminalion of Food
Products sold in Connecticut. — Michigan State
College : Tuberculosis and A Preliminary Bulletin
on Pasteurization of Milk.— New Hampshire Col-
lege : 35. The Codling Moth and the Apple Mag-
fot ; 86. Analysis of Three Common Insecticides;
7. Crimson Clover.— New York : Notes on th^
Recent Invasion of the Army Worm.— Ohio :
Peach Yellows ; Black Knot and San Jose Scale,
and Fertilizers on Wheat.— Purdue University
(Indiana) : Field Experiments with Wheat.—
United States Department : Climate and Crop
Service for July ; Fodder and Forage Plants ex-
clusive of the Grasses.

Alabama Geological Survey. Iron-making in
Alabama. Pp. 164. Bulletin No. 5 : A Prelimi-
nary Report of the Resources of the Upper Gold
Belt. Pp.202.

Baker, Marcus. The Alaskan Boundary. Pp.
16.

Bell, Alexander M. English Visible Speech
in Twelve Lessons. Washington: (The Author.)
Pp. 80. 50 cents.

Davis, Gualterie C, Director. Anales de la
Oficina metereol6gica Argentina. Vol. X. Cli-
matology of Salta, Tucuman, Carcarafta, and
Villa Maria. Buenos Aires: Pablo E. Coni &
Sons. Pp. 556.

F.scher, P. D. Betrachtungen eines inDeutsch-
land reisenden Deutschen (Reflections of a Ger-
man traveling in Germany). Berlin : Julius
Springer. Pp. 247. 3 marks.

Francke, Kuno. Social Forces in German Lit-
erature. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp.
577.

Hay, O. P. On Some Collections of Fishes
and on The Skeleton of Soxochelys Latiremis.
Field Columbian Museum Publications. Zoologi-
cal Series. Vol. I. Noe, 4 and 5.

Harvard University Publications. Memoirs of
the Peabody Museum. Vol. I. No. 1. Prehis-
toric Ruins of Copan, Honduras.

Hill, D. J. An Honest Dollar the Basis of
Prosperity, New York: The National Republi-
can Executive Committee.

Hypnotic Magazine, The (monthly). Chicago:
The Psychic Piiblishing Co. 25 cents, $2.50 per
annum.

Kansas Academy of Science. Transactions of
the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Annual
Meetings. Pp. 370.

Labor, Bulletin of Department of. No. 5.
July, 1896. Convict Labor. Pp. 120.

Magpie, The (monthly). 10 cents, $1 per
annum.

Munroe, John. The Story of Electricity (The
Library of Useful Stories). New York: D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 187. 40 cents.

New York State Reformatory (Elmira) Year-
book for 1895.

Reprints. Call, R. E.: A Revision and Syn-
onymy of the Parvus Group of Unionidse, etc.
(Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science for
1895).— Peterson, F., M. D.: The Stigmata of De-
generation (State Hospital Bulletin, July, 1896)
— Schnabel, K. D., M. D. : Hereditary Syphilis of
the Nervous System (Lehigh Valley Medical
Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 7).— Sparre, Henric:
Treatment by Remedial Gymnastics (Medical Cur-
rent, Julj; and August, 1893).— Ward, Lester F.
The Principles of Sociology (Proceedings of Ameri-
can Academy of Political and Social Science).
—Walker, S. T. : Clinical Examination of Deaf-
Mutes (Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic, July 4, 1896).

Revista da Sociedade de Geographia do Rio de
Janeiro (Review of the Geographical Society of
Rio de Janeiro). Vol. XI, 1895. Rio de Janeiro:
Leuzinger. Pp. 110.

Smithsonian Publications : 1083. Catalogue of
a Collection of Birds of Eastern Turkestan,
Central Asia, etc.— 1084. Description of Three
Species of Sand Fleas at Newport, R. I.— 1085.
Remarks on the Svnonymy of some North Ameri-
can Scolytid Beetles.- 1086. Fossil Jelly Fishes
from the Middle Cambrian Terrane.— 1087. Pre-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

85!

liminary Description of a New Genus and Three
New Species of Crustaceans from an Artesian
Well at San Marcos, Texas.— 108S. Description of
a New Genus and Species of Blind Tailed Batra-
chian from the Subterranean Waters of Texas.
—1089. D.^scriptlcm of a New Stickleback from
the Coast of Maine.— 1090. Descrintion of a New
Species of Ant Thrush from Nicaragua.— 1091
Partial List of Birds collected at Altamira, Mexico,
by F. B. Armstrong.- 109-J. On Some Prepared
Parasitic Hymenopterous Insects from Ceylon.—
1093. An Annotated List of Birds observed on
Margarita Island and at Guanta and Laguayra,
Venezuela.— 1094. List of Coleoptera collected on

the Tana River and on the Jombonl Ranee, East
Africa.

Taber, C. A. M. The Coming Ice Age. Bo*-
ton: George H, Ellia. Pp. 94.

Tilden, J. H. Cursed before Birth. Denver.
Col.: (Author). Pp.314.

White, E. E. A School Algebra. New York:
American Book Company. Pp. 894. f 1.

Wilson, Dr. Erastus. La Enseftanza Modemo
(Modem Education). Article 24. Summary of the
Papers in the Annals of the Institute of Secondary
Instruction of Havana. Havana: Military Print-
ing Office. Pp. 14. Distributed.

^raomjeuts xrE ^ctjetxtje.

ASfew Classification of Eleyation Areas. —

Prof. Hermann Wagner, of Gottingen, one of
the best-known geographers and statisticians
of Germany, has recently published a new
altitude classification of .the
earth's surface, which he di-
vides into five regions, as fol-
lows : The culminating area of
the earth's crust, occupying
six per cent of the surface and
lying altogether above 1,000
metres, with a mean height of
2,200 metres (or 7,200 feet)

Jlfetrei
.SSoo

yooo
fk>Oo

4f000
.^000

sooo
^ooo

o
frooa
',9000
3000

ffOOO

yooo
•6000
^000
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Sooo

surface, and has a mean depth of 1,300
metres (4,300 feet). The oceanic plateau, be-
tween the depths of 2,300 and 5,000 metres,
occupies no less than 57"3 per cent of the
surface, and has a mean depth of 4,100
metres (13,500 feet). Finally, the depressed
area, deeper than 5,000 metres, is assumed
to occupy three per cent of the surface, with
a mean depth of 6,000 metres (say 20,000
feet). The mean level of the surface of the
earth's crust is placed by these calculations
at a depth of 2,300 metres, or 7,500 feet, be-
low actual sea level. The total area of land

Wagner's IlrpsoaKAPiiio Chrvk.

above the sea. The continental plafeau, oc-
cupying all the surface from the 1,000 metre
contour line of elevation to the 200 metre
contour line of depth — i. e., to the margin of
the shallow sea border or continental shelf ;
it comprises 28-3 per cent of the surface,
and has a mean elevation of 250 metres (800
feet) above the sea. The continental slope,
from a depth of 200 metres to 2,300 below
sea level, covers nine per cent of the earth's

is worked out at 28*8 per cent and that of
sea at 71*7 per cent of the earth's surface ;
the ratio of land to water surface is thus
1 : 2-54. The accompanying chart is repro-
duced from Nature of June 4 th.

Silk from Wood. — According to the Lon-
don Times, there is growing up in France a
considerable industry, based on the manu-
facture of a so-called silk from wood pulp.

856

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The works are at Besan9on, and utilize a
process devised by M. de Chardonnet, which
is as follows : The pulp, thoroughly cleansed
and looking very much like thick gum, is
put into cylinders, from which it is forced
through pipes into the spinning department.
Here the machinery is very similar to that
of the ordinary spinning shed, except that
one of these pipes passes to each machine.
The pipes are supplied with small taps, fixed
close together, and each tap has a glass tube
about the size of a gas burner, at the ex-
treme point of which is a minute aperture,
and through this the pulp is forced. These
glass tubes are called the silkworms, and
some twelve thousand of them are in use in
the factory at Besanyon. The pulp appears
as a minute globule. This a girl touches
with her thumb, to which it adheres, and
she draws out an almost invisible filament,
which she passes through the guides and
onto the bobbin. Then, one by one, she
takes eight, ten, or twelve other such fila-
ments, according to the thickness of the
thread to be made, and passes them through
the same guides and onto the same bobbin.
The subsequent details are practically those
of ordinary natural silk spinning. The chief
difference in appearance between the natural
and the artificial silk is in the greater luster
of the latter. The new product is said to
take dye much more readily than the natural
silk, but not to be quite so strong. It is
stated that a factory for the manufacture of
this material is to be erected near Manches-
ter, England, which will cost $150,000.

Old Madagascar War Customs. — Descrip-
tions of curious war customs that prevailed
in Madagascar are quoted by M. A. Gran-
didier from Mayeur, who visited that country
in 1785, or more than a hundred years ago.
The hostile bands usually agreed on the day
and place of the battle, and at the appointed
time the opposing parties marched to the
designated spot. When all was ready, some
of the soldiers of one host advanced, fired
their guns, and ran back to the protection of
their army. While these were reloading, the
soldiers on the opposite side went through
the same manoeuvre ; and this was continued
till one of the hosts got so much the worse
of the fight that it retired. Both armies
would then go home and return to the occu-

pations of peace, to resume their odd hostili-
ties at some future time. The first battle
that Mayeur witnessed lasted from ten o'clock
in the morning till four o'clock in the after-
noon, with twelve thousand soldiers in line,
without victory to either side, while there
were twenty -two killed and wounded. Ten
days afterward, one of the chiefs having ob-
tained re-enforcements, the fight was resumed
and hotly contested till, in the very thickest
of it, a cloud of locusts suddenly darkened
the sky and alighted on the neighboring rice
fields. Firing was stopped at once, and all
the combatants went pell-mell to picking
the destructive insects, of which they were
very fond as food. Women, children, and
old men hurried out of the villages, where
they had hidden themselves, and mingled
with the soldiers ; and in less than a quarter
of an hour the plain was covered with more
than twenty thousand people, squatting on
all fours and capturing t'ne insects. It was
the custom, M. Grandidier observes, to sus-
pend hostilities in the presence of a plague,
which, as the king said to Mayeur, threatens
a whole people, while war generally interests
only the chief who makes it.

The Year's Polar Expeditions. — Dr.

Frithiof Nansen, who started from Christiania,
Norway, in June, 1893, in the little vessel
Fram, to reach the north pole if possible, has
returned, after having attained latitude 86"
14' north, within about two hundred and
fifty miles of the pole, the highest point yet
reached. (An excursion twelve miles farther
on ski is also mentioned.) Dr. Nansen started
with the expectation of meeting a current in
which his vessel would be borne along with
the ice to the pole and past it, basing the
expectation on information which has since
been found to be false. The Fram was con-
structed in a peculiar manner, so that when
it met the heavy ice it should be lifted up and
borne upon it instead of being crushed by it.
In latitude 78° 50' north, longitude 138° 37'
east, and in the latter part of September,
1893, the ship was allowed to be closed in
by the ice, and was then drifted north and
northwestward during the fall and winter
months. A sudden increase in the depth of
the water at latitude 70° to from sixteen
hundred to nineteen hundred fathoms seems,
according to Dr. Nansen, to upset the theories

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

857

that are based upon a shallow polar basin.
The sea bottom was remarkably devoid of
orgauic matter. Under the surface of cold
ice water covering the polar basin warmer
and more saline water was found, probably
from the Gulf Stream. No land and no
open water, except narrow creeks, were seen.
A few days after Christmas, 1894, the Fram
was at latitude 83° 24', the farthest north that
had been reached. Dr. Nansen here left the
ship, taking Lieutenant Johansen with him,
to explore the sea farther north. He reached
his highest point on April 7, 1895, and, find-
ing the prospect of a further advance dis-
couraging, started on his return journey the
next day. He reached Franz-Josef Land
June '7th of this year; was embarrassed to
find Payer's map all wrong ; and, after sailing
and paddling around for several weeks in the
supposed direction of Spitzbergen, met the
steamer Windward. Leaving Franz-Josef
Land in this vessel, August Yth, he and his
companion were brought by a short and very
pleasant passage to Vardoe, Norway. The
Fram, which Dr. Nansen left in charge of its
master, Captain Sverdrup, returned safely to
Norway only a few days after Dr. Nansen's
arrival. Persons best informed in arctic
research affirm that the expedition has made
many and valuable discoveries.

An expedition of eminent explorers,
among whom are Sir W. Martin Conway and
Mr. Trevor Battye, which started out to
cross Spitzbergen and explore its interior,
has successfully accomplished its purpose.
M. Andree, who went to the polar regions for
the purpose of attempting to reach the pole by
balloon, found himself constantly baffled by
opposing winds, and has returned, having
been obliged to give up the attempt for this
year.

Poisonous Spider Bites. — It has always
been questioned whether the bites of the
spiders of the temperate zone were ever
fatal. Popular belief has it that they some-
times are, but spider students generally scout
the notion. A few cases have recently been
cited, however, on testimony which can
hardly be doubted, that point to an aflSrma-
tive answer. An account is given in Dr.
Riley's Insect Life of a man in excellent
health who died fourteen hours after having
been bitten hi the neck by the species Latro-

dectus madam. He instantly felt an intense
pain, and picked off from the wound a spider
of the species named. Four hours afterward
the spot was marked by a circle of little
white pimples about as large as a silver half
dollar, but the wound itself was not seen;
and, while there was no swelling, the neck
and left arm were rigidly hard. Violent
pains ensued, reaching the intestines, but
the sufferer was able to go to the village for
whisky and back, after which spasms set
in. Six cases of spider bites, observed by
M. Corson de Savannat, were followed by
serious but not mortal effect. The identity
of the conditions under which the bites were
received and the similarity of the observed
syi^Sptoms give the cases resemblance to real
laboratory experiments. All suffered great
pains in the abdomen and back and tetanic
contractions lasting several hours, with dysp-
noic respiration and rapid, strong pulse.
The patients' condition appeared desperate
without its being possible to define any par-
ticular local pain. The cases were treated
with injections of chlorhydrate of morphine
and internal stimulants. Similar nervous
troubles and contractions were marked in
1833 by M. Graells, of Barcelona, as follow-
ing bites by the Zatrodectus mamigniatta.
In some cases a rash is mentioned as break-
ing out in a few hours either in the region
around the bite or over the whole body. A
spider whose bite is regarded as fatal is
found on the seashore of New Zealand. The
symptoms following the bites of these spiders
are described by the New Zealand doctors as
like those consequent upon the action of nar-
cotics, while those produced by our northern
spiders are rather convulsive.

Alaska. — Mr. W. H. Dall, in his paper on
Alaska as it Was and Is (1865-1896), de-
scribes the region which includes the Aleu-
tian chain and other islands west of Kadiak
as presenting a striking contrast " to the
densely wooded mountains and shining gla-
ciers of the Sitkan region to the east and
the rolling tundra, cut by myriad rivers, in
the north. Approached by sea, the Aleu-
tian Islands seem gloomy and inhospitable.
Omnipresent fog wreaths hang about steep
cliffs of dark .volcanic rock. An angry surf
vibrates to and fro amid outstanding pin-
nacles, whore innumerable sea birds wheel

858

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and cry. The angular hills and long slopes
of talus are not softened by any arborescent
veil. The infrequent villages nestle behind
sheltering bluffs, and are rarely visible from
without the harbors. In winter all the
heights are wrapped in snow, and storms of
terrific violence drive commerce from the
sea about them. Once pass within the har-
bors during summer and the repellent fea-
tures of the landscape seem to vanish. The
mountain sides are clothed with soft yet
vivid green, and brilliant with many flowers.
The perfume of the spring blossoms is often
heavy on the air. The lowlands are shoul-
der high with herbage, and the total absence
of trees gives to the landscape an individu-
ality all its own. No more fascinating pros-
pect do I know than a view of the harbor of
Unalashka from a hill top on a sunny day,
with the curiously irregular, verdant islands
set in a sea of celestial blue, the shore lines
marked by creamy surf, the ravines by
brooks and waterfalls, the occasional depres-
sions by small lakes shining in the sun. The
sea abounds with fish; the offshore rocks
are the resort of sea lions, and formerly of
sea otters ; the streams afford the trout-
fisher abundant sport, and about their
mouths the red salmon leap and play. In
October the hillsides offer store of berries,
and in all this land there is not a poisonous
reptile or dangerous wild animal of any sort.
The inhabitants of this land are an interest-
ing and pecuhar race."

The Underground Houses of Techin, Tn-
nisia. — The curious underground houses of
Techin, and other places near Gabes, in
Tunisia, are described by M. Albert Tissan-
dier, in La Nature^ as being easily cut out of
the clay-limestone rock. A square pit, twenty
or twenty-five feet deep, is generally dug
first to form a central court, from the lower
part of which are made the grottoes that
serve as sleeping and store rooms. A gently
sloping gallery rising from the level of the
bottom to the level outside, and closed by a
modern door, is the means of communication
with the country without, or forms a path to
other houses. Niches are cut in the walls
of the entrance court for storage of the agri-
cultural implements and things of minor
value, and silos are provided for the grain
crops and oil jars. The rooms are lighted

only through the doorway from the entrance
court. They are furnished with mats and
carpets. A bed and a wooden pedestal for
the lamp, rudely carved and whitewashed
like the walls of the cavern, form the princi-
pal ornaments, and a few primitive utensils
of enameled earthenware are the principal
articles of furniture. The size of the house
and the number of rooms, etc., vary accord-
ing to the wealth and station of the pro-
prietor.

A Measure for Odors.— Very interesting
studies have been made by M. Eugene Mes-
nard of the perfumes of flowers, valuable to
science and to the perfumer's art. This art
is still in a rather crude state because it has
never found a practicable way of measuring
an odor or of determining the strength of the
several odors which it may seek to combine.
M. Mesnard has observed, however, that
though the absolute intensity of an odor can
not be measured, its comparative strength
can be estimated. A perfumer who has five
or six hundred kinds of fragrance in his
shop can readily distinguish the differences
between them, although he can not tell how
strong any of them are. So it is possible to
detect by the smell the existence of a large
number of chemical substances, although it
is impossible to guess how much, if any, of
them may be present in the air. Suppose,
now, the author says, we pass in a given re-
ceiver air charged with a known perfume and
air which has passed over a special essence —
spirits of turpentine, for example. It is
possible to obtain in this way a mixture of
neutral odor, or such that a very slight vari-
ation of its constituents on either side will
cause the special odor of the perfume or the
smell of the turpentine to prevail. We can in
such case regard the two odors as equivalent,
and have only to seek a means of determining
the intensity of the turpentine odor to have
a measure of that of the perfume. A meas-
ure for the turpentine is obtained by means
of the property which it has of extinguish-
ing the phosphorescence of phosphorus. For
that purpose a bit of common starch is em-
ployed which has been dipped in a sulphide-
of-carbon solution of phosphorus. The sul-
phide evaporates and the starch remains, a
homogeneous substance impregnated with
phosphorus which shines in the air. The

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

859

shining may be extinguished, as M. Mesnard
has shown, by the introduction of a quantity
of air inversely proportioned to the strength
with which it is charged with turpentine.
Spirit of turpentine may thus be made a
common standard for the different essences,
and we may regard as the measure of the
intensity of the perfume disengaged by a
given weight of an essential oil the ratio be-
tween the weight of the turpentine which
will neutralize the perfume and the weight
of the same substance which under corre-
sponding conditions will act upon phosphor-
escence with corresponding energy. M. Mes-
nard has devised an ingenious apparatus for
performmg practical measurements by the
application of this principle.

Cordite. — According to the Industrial
World, the manufacture of cordite is very
simple. Nitroglycerin and dried gun cotton
are mixed together in accurately weighed
portions, the liquid nitroglycerin being
poured over the gun cotton and mixed by
hand until it is all taken up by the cotton,
producing a dirty-white mass which looks
much like sugar. This mass is then placed
in kneading machines, which mix in the
proper proportion of acetone. After several
hours' kneading some vaseline is added and
mixed in by further kneading. The mass
finally becomes a stiff dough, which can be
readily molded into any desired shape. The
combination of nitroglycerin and gim cotton
with acetone produces a compound quite
different in appearance and properties from
either of its components. Cordite is a heavy
substance which bums only on the surface,
the violence of whose explosion can hence
be readily regulated by varying the relation
between surface area and volume. Both
nitroglycerin and gun cotton are very un-
stable. Cordite, on the other hand, is quite
the reverse. Thus, a bonfire made around
eight cases piled up against each other sim-
ply burned up the boxes and then the cor-
dite, no explosion occurring.

Death of Prof. Ernst Cortlns.— Dr. Ernst
Curtius, Professor of History and the Fine
Arts in the University of Berlin, who died
July 12th, aged eighty-one years, was one
of the most distinguished and most learned
historians and arcbceologists of the century.

He was bom at Lubeck in 1814, of a family
distinguished by love for hterature and art ;
studied at Bonn, Gottingen, and Berlin ; went
with Prof. Brandeis in 1837 to Greece on an
errand for the furtherance of archaeological
research; afterward, with Ottfried Mviller,
spent four years in Greece in historical and
archaeological studies, and began in 1864,
but carried on with great activity after 1876,
the excavations at Olympia which have been
rewarded with the richest and most abundant
treasures of classic art. From 1844 to 1849
he was extraordinary professor at the Uni-
versity of Berlin and tutor to the crown
prince. In 1856 he was elected professor
at Gottingen, but returned to Berlin as pro-
fessor in 1868. His History of Greece is
rivaled in merit only by Grote's, and is its
fitting complement, supplying what Grote's
lacks as Grote's supplies what it lacks, and
is distinguished by the life it gives to the old
legends and its appreciation of the artistic
genius of the Greeks. He also published —
works of equal merit in their respective
fields — a book on the Acropolis of Athens
(1844) and an account of the Discovery of
Olympia (1882), besides many smaller works
and monographs.

Plant Breeding. — In a recent copy of
Nature M. T. Masters has an interesting arti-
cle on Plant Breeding, from which the fol-
lowing extracts are taken : The natural pro-
cesses of variation in the plant world as con-
trolled by the art of the gardener are well
typified in the garden rose of to-day — quite
a different flower from those roses of oui
forefathers, which have, with a few excep-
tions, totally disappeared. It is the same with
peas and potatoes and with most other plants
that are grown on a large scale. The two
methods made use of by gardeners for the
improvement of plants are selection and
cross-breeding, the latter, as far as results
are concerned, only a moditication of selec-
tion. The natural capacity for variation of
the plant furnishes the basis on which the
breeder has to work, and this capacity varies
greatly in degree in different plants, so that
some are much more amenable and pliant
than others. The trial grounds of our great
seedsmen furnish object lessons of this kind
on a vast scale. The two processes are an-
tagonistic. On the one hand, every care ia

86o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

taken to preserve the breed and to neutralize
Tariation as far as possible, so that the seed
may " come true " ; on the other hand, when
the variation does occur, the observation of
the grower marks the change, and he either
rejects the plant, manifesting it as a " rogue,"
if the change is undesirable, or takes care of
it for further trial if the variation holds out
promise of novelty or improvement. Where
the flowers lend themselves readily to cross-
fertilization by means of insects, it is essen-
tial, in order to maintain the purity of the
offspring to, grow the several varieties at a
very wide distance apart. Some apparently
slight variations, which even to the trained
botanist are hardly noticeable, may be of
great value commercially; as, for instance,
of two apparently almost identical varieties
of wheat one may be much better able to
resist mildew and diseases generally than
another. Some, again, prove to be better
adapted to certain soils or for some climates
than others. Some are less liable to injury
from predatory birds, and so on. So far we
have been alluding to variations in the plant
as grown from seed, but similar changes are
observable in the ordinary buds, and garden-
ers are not slow to take advantage of these
variations. The field is one of great scien-
tific as well as commercial interest, and a
thoroughly equipped biologist would probably
soon distance the ordinary gardener, who
works by rule of hand, in producing and
perpetuating valuable variations.

Some A^ican War Cnstonis. — When war
comes to the Bondei people in Africa, the
Rev G. Dale, missionary, says, the first who
hears it climbs up to the top of the house
and beats the drum with one hand, calling
the people to assemble there. A drum is
beaten in every village as soon as another
drum is heard. Everybody goes where the
first drum was sounded, and the people cry
war all over the country. All the women
and children go into the forest with their
property, taking especial pains to carry the
basket containing the money and beads.
The warriors take their weapons, put their
amulets on their arms and neck and face,
and adjust their ostrich plumes. Each one
supposes that the charms will keep him safe,
and have power, even if he is struck with a
bullet, to prevent its entering him. Another

charm consists in scarifying the man all
down his arms and breast and back, after
which, it is believed, no sword will cut
into his body. The great doctors have a
powder which they put into water, which
the warriors drink. On approaching the
seat of war the warriors assemble, when
every one is smeared on the face with a cer-
tain preparation and given medicine, and is
licked by the fundi. Then they separate ;
each band goes in its special direction, and
the battle takes place. If they conquer they
return together singing songs signifying,
"As the kishundu is a great bird and is
accustomed to the mountains, so we are ac-
customed to war " ; or, " Come and live in our
land. That yonder is glowing with the fire
of burned villages. We are like the Masai " ;
and entering the village they shout, "The
land is at rest, till and eat ! " If a man has
been killed, they return singing, " My millet
has a limit, who has eaten it ? " — go to the
house of the dead man, fire their guns, and
take away the grass that slopes over the
door — and so the wife knows that she is a
widow. Then they go and tell the old folks.
The man who has killed an enemy in battle
performs a ceremony for seven days which
includes climbing to the top of the house
every morning, boasting, and naming the
man he has killed. If the warriors are de-
feated, they come back one by one, having
hidden themselves. In case of victory the
women greet the warriors with great joy, and
shave, for the first time since their husbands
went to war.

Paints for Iron, — A new study of paints
for iron has led Herr Spennrath to the con-
clusion that none of the metallic oxides en-
tering into the composition of paints com-
bines chemically with the oil. The drying
of the paint is caused solely by the absorp-
tion of oxygen by the oil, which is facilitated
in a purely mechanical way by the presence
of the oxide. The relative value of the oxides
is very variable. Oxide of zinc, when used
in outside work, swells rapidly to twice the
original volume, in consequence of the ab-
sorption of carbonic acid and the vapor of
water. The red and white oxides of lead
absorb sulphureted hydrogen and increase
in volume. These substances are, however,
good driers when they are pure. Carbon

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE,

86t

paints are very stable, but their protecting
power is not great. Herr Spennrath has at-
tempted to explain the duration of different
paints by means of comparative experiments
on sheets of zinc. The painted zinc was dis-
solved in an acid, and films of paint were
obtained and subjected to various tests. All
were rapidly destroyed by the action of dilute
hydrochloric or nitric acid, and of the va-
pors of sulphuric and acetic acids. Alka-
line vapors likewise destroyed them rapidly.
Pure water acts more rapidly than salt water,
which goes to prove that corrosion by sea
water is rather an effect of mechanical wash-
ing than of chemical action. Temperature,
too, has a considerable influence on the re-
sistance of paints. The films became brittle
at a temperature of 95° C, and a percep-
tible contraction of the layer took place.
Similar effects were produced on paints ex-
posed for a long time to a low temperature.

Angast Rekale.— August Kekul6, Pro-
fessor of Chemistry in the University of
Bonn, who died July 13th, sixty-six years
old, left his mark on the science of chem-
isti'y in a distinct advance to which he gave
the impulse. He was bom at Darmstadt, in
1829, went to school there, and was then
sent to Giessen, under the expectation that
he would be educated to become an archi-
tect But Liebig was at Giessen, and
Kekul6's attention was turned to chemistry.
Returning to Darmstadt, he studied chem-
istry under Moldenhauer, and then entered
again as a student at Giessen under Liebig
and Will He afterward studied in Paris;
sojourned for a short time in Switzerland as
assistant to Von Plantu, at Reichenau ; was
engaged at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in
London ; established a laboratory, where he
received pupils, at Heidelberg; and became
professor, successively, at Ghent and Bonn.
Kekulo's services to chemistry were chiefly
in the theoretical field. The twenty-fifth
anniversary of his promulgation of the ben
zene theory was celebrated at Berlin, in
1890, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of
his professorship at Bonn, in that city, two
years later. He took up Frankland's theory
of valency and elaborated it ; laid the
foundation of the study of constitutional
chemistry ; gave the start to the fruitful
investigation of the carbon compounds ; and

pointed the way to thousands of important
experiments and was the inspiration of hun-
dreds of valuable discoveries.

Drawing Upside Down.— Observations
of children drawing upside down have been
collected by Mr. Rina Scott, who says, in
Nature, that a great many children draw in
this way, while many from the first draw the
right way up. He relates that a boy of four,
when asked to draw a rook on a haystack,
began at the bottom of the paper with the
rook's back, and gradually worked his way
up to the haystack ; then turned the drawing
round and asked his observer to look at it —
evidently realizing that it was inverted. Mr.
Scott does not find the explanation of the
peculiarity in any inversion of the retinal
image; for, if a child who draws upside
down when drawing on a horizontal table, is
asked to draw on a blackboard placed verti-
cally, he will draw everything the right way
upward. He supposes that when the object
seen on a vertical plane is to be represented
on paper placed in a horizontal plane — in
which there is already a considerable diver?
gence from the real appearance — it is simply
a matter of convenience to him at which end
he begins — both being equally wrong from
his point of view. So children sometimes
look at picture books upside down, and small
children are more ready to draw objects
which they have been accustomed to see in
a horizontal plane, than erect objects. Mr.
Alfred W. Bennett relates that he has been
able all his life to read easily a book upside
down, so that it makes no difference to him
which way the book is presented. This is
because, as he has been told, he first learned
to read, upside down, by standing in front
of a brother and looking over the top of the
book from which he was being taught to
read. The facility curiously extends to
books in foreign languages, oven those in
which other alphabets — as Greek and He-
brew— than the Roman are used, and to
nearly the same extent to handwriting. In
a similar connection Mr. Hiram M. Stanley
speaks of a strong native tendency in some
children — and he might have added adults,
for we have seen sign-painting in which that
style was present — to reverse right and left
in drawing such letters as J and L. He
compares this confusion, and probably is

862

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

right, with the confusion of right and left
which one first feels on using a mirror for
toilet purposes.

School Conditions and Eyesight. — Dr.

Brudenell Carter has taken up the question
of the effect of school conditions on the eye-
sight, particularly as to whether they develop
and aggravate short-sightedness and the
other defects of vision which have been
charged to them. He examined 8,125 chil-
dren in twenty-five elementary schools of
London. In forty per cent of them the eyes
were right. The others were subjected to
further special examinations. The author
reports, as the general result of his investiga-
tion, that the proportion of cases of myopia
was small, and that it bore no relation what-
ever to the lighting of the school ; the two
schools in which the greatest proportions of
defective visions were found being respect-
ively the best lighted and the worst lighted
of the whole number. No evidence was
found of progressive myopia. Some of the
worst cases were found among children who
had recently joined school, and there was

nothing to show that it increased with the
length of time the children had been at
school. The proportion of cases of astigma-
tism was less than the proportion discovered
in Dr. Carter's private practice among
patients examined for every kind of optical
weakness. The vast majority of optical de-
fects were due to hypermetropia. The most
unexpected result of the investigation was
the discovery that a very large proportion of
the cases of defective vision were due, not to
structural defects in the refractive combina-
tions of the eye, but to imperfect practice in
seeing. Comparing the vision of children at
a country school with the cases in the town
schools, the author found the country vision
much better. It is inferred that vision is
strengthened by the habit of looking at ob-
jects at a distance, which are presented far
more frequently in the expanses of rural
landscapes than in the street-bounded sights
of the town. Dr. Carter recommends that
the vision be tested and trained systemat-
ically ; that it be included among the phys-
ical faculties that are tested by competition
and for proficiency in which prizes are given.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The recent death of Lord Lilford, Thomas
Lyttleton Powys, at the age of sixty-three,
has removed one of the most devoted and
conscientious of English ornithologists. He
was interested in natural history from his
earliest years, and was President for many
years of the British Ornithologists' Union.
His collection of live animals at Lilford Hall
was widely celebrated. At the time of his
death — which occurred at Lilford Hall on
the I'Zth of June — he was engaged on a
large work on the Birds of the British Is-
lands.

Geology has sustained a severe loss in
the death of Sir Joseph Prestwich, which
occurred on June 23d. He was born at Clap-
ham on March 12, 1812. He was engaged
in business in London until sixty years of
age, but during this time was able to gain
such a reputation among geologists that upon
the death of Prof. Phillips he was elected to
the chair of Geology in the University of Ox-
ford. His work as a pioneer in establishing
the geological antiquity of man was recog-

nized by the Royal Society in awarding to
him a Royal medal in 1865. He continued
to be a prolific writer up to the time of his
death. Although he belonged to the old
school of " catastrophists " which Sir Charles
Lyell opened war on in 1830, and which to-
day is a rapidly decreasing minority, he did
much valuable and lasting work.

An ingenious method of destroying cattle
ticks is described by Dr. M. Francis, a veter-
inarian of the Texas experiment station.
After several unsuccessful attempts to de-
stroy the ticks by various other means, the
dipping process was adopted, and after try-
ing several carbolic and arsenical solutions
with unsatisfactory results, the cattle were
forced to swim through a large vat of five
thousand gallons capacity, on the surface of
the water in which was a layer of cotton-seed
oil, from three quarters to one inch in thick-
ness, so that when they emerged they were
perfectly covered with oil. It is well known
that grease or oil of almost any kind is fatal
to insects, lice, etc., and the above treat-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

863

ment was found to be exceedingly fatal to
the cattle tick, while in no way injuring the
cattle.

It is reported that Dr. William W.
Jacques, of Boston, an electrician and chem-
ist, has succeeded in devising a practical
commercial process for converting the en-
ergy contained in coal directly into elec-
tricity. His battery is constructed as fol-
lows : In an iron pot is placed caustic soda
and heat applied up to 300°, when fusion
occurs ; into this fused mass is plunged a
stick of carbon, and then air is forced through
the solution. By the contact of the air with
the carbon stick, in presence of the fused
soda, oxidation is produced with no deterio-
ration of the electrolyte, and upon connecting
the carbon stick and the iron pot by means
of a wire, an electric current is generated.

Electric tanning is thus described in the
Journal of the Franklin Institute : The tan-
ning pit has a capacity of fifteen thousand
litres and is about eighty inches broad and
ten feet long. Electrodes of nickeled copper
are fixed to the longer walls of the pit, and
in the latter the hides are so suspended that
the current has to pass right through them.
A current of twelve amperes with an E. M. F.
of twelve volts is used. The tanning matter
consists of oak extract, with a little hem-
lock extract added, both of which are cleared
and decolorized by a special electrolytic
process. By these means Folsing states that
he has succeeded in obtaining good leather
in seventy-two hours from light cowhides, in
five days from heavy cowhides, and in six
days from heavy oxhides.

A BOOK by M. Georges Viret, on Legisla-
tion and Jurisprudence concerning useful
and injurious insects and insectivorous birds,
suggests some curious questions. In it are
found the conditions under which bees are
personal property, and others under which
they are real. When bees are sent by mail,
should they be classified as specimens or as
letters ? The French law says as letters, and
our own postal laws have special provisions
for packages of this sort. We learn from
the book that when bees go astray on an-
other man's land they are not trespassers,
unless they are peculiarly malicious, and go
about stinging or do some harm to men and
animals. A question is suggested by the

provision in French law which makes steal-
ing bees in the daytime a smaller offense
than etealmg them in the night, the penalty
being considerably more severe in the latter
case than in the former. Possibly the law
depends on the bees to do part of the pun-
ishing of the daytime thief. The table of
contents of M. Viret's book shows that the
law takes notice of nineteen kinds of insects,
among which are bees, caterpillars, Colorado
beetles, ants, wasps, beetles, cattle flies, olive
flies, botflies, phylloxera, the woolly aphis,
vine pyralis, grasshoppers, grubworms, and
silkworms. Most attention is given to the
phylloxera.

Mr. F. W. True, in the Proceedings of
the National Museum, describes an armadillo
of the genus Xennrns received from Hondu-
ras. He says : " This is the first instance, so
far as I am aware, in which any representa-
tive of this genus has been found in Central
America. . . . The head is short and blunt,
and the extremity of the snout entirely naked
for a distance of sixteen millimetres. The
cephalic shield consists of about thirty-eight
comparatively large plates. The ears are
margined with a row of small, rounded
scales, but otherwise entirely naked. The
feet and outer side of the legs are covered
with somewhat scattered flat, orbicular scales.
The tail has similar flat scales about a milli-
metre and a half in diameter, imbedded in
the skin at regular intervals ; from the pos-
terior margin of each scale one hair is ex-
sected. Total length, one foot five inches ;
tail, six and a half inches. I have little
hesitancy in referring this Honduras speci-
men to the Dasypu* {Xenurxts) hispidtta of
Burmeister."

The International Conference organized by
the Royal Society to consider the preparation
and publication of an International Catalogue
of Scientific Literature was opened in London,
July 14th. The efforts of the Royal Society
to form a record and index of scientific lit-
erature date from the middle of the century,
when the great authors' index was b^un. A
subject index to follow the authors' index was
decided upon about thirty years ago, but waa
not started till 1898. As it soon became eri-
dent that the Royal Society alone was not
competent to accomplish so large a work,
the movement to secure international co-

864

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

operation was begun about two years ago.
It has happily secured the support of gov-
ernments and scientific societies in all parts
of the world, and the meeting is very widely
representative. The United States is repre-
sented by Dr. John S. Billings and Prof.
Simon Newcomb; Canada by the Hon. Sir
Donald A. Smith ; and Great Britain by a
large number of its most distinguished sci-
entific men. Sir John A. Gorst, the British
Government representative, was chosen presi-
dent. Prof. Newcomb is one of the vice-
presidents. The proceedings of the confer-
ence will be in English, French, and German,
as the official languages.

NOTES.

It is stated that in Como, Italy, arrange-
ments are being made for the holding in
1899 of an electrical exhibition and congress,
to commemorate the centenary of the inven-
tion of the voltaic battery. Alessandro Volta
was born in Como in 1745, but it was while
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Pavia that he made the discoveries
that have immortalized his name.

This result of an inquiry made by the di-
rectors of the German telegraphs into the
effect of the network of telephone wires in
the large cities has been, according to Das
Wetter^ to show that the presence of the
wires tends to reduce the violence of thun-
der and to diminish the dangers from light-
ning.

Probably the earliest known example
of piece-molding among European bronze
foundries is a mold for a spear head which
was found at Thonon, France, among the
relics of the lake dwellers. It is described
by Mr. George Simonds as having been com-
posed of two slabs of stone, on each of which
a spear head was cut out to a proper depth.
The two stones, being placed face to face and
bound together, would form a very simple but
close mold from which many casts could be
taken without injury to the mold itseli

It is stated by Mr. F. T. R. CaruUa (Eng-
land) that no effective remedy has yet been
found for preventing the rusting of outdoor
iron and steel work, and that in new railway
lines iron and steel bridges are excluded wher-
ever practicable. He stated, for instance,
that over twenty tons of i-ust were taken
from the Britannia Bridge during the first
sixteen years after its completion.

A TRIAL for larceny is mentioned in the
Green Bag as having recently taken place
in Ohio, in which the detective work of a
dog was put in evidence. Some of the stolen
property was found near the scene of the

theft and was shown to the dog ; he was then
shown footprints close to it. Then, being
put on the trail, he followed it unhesitat-
ingly about two hundred feet to a gate,
then inside the gate up to two front outside
doors, of which he chose the left-hand one,
and inside to the prisoner's door. He had
been trained to this business, and could trail
a culprit thus even along a track twenty or
forty hours' old. The evidence was ad-
mitted.

The special commission appointed by the
International Meteorological Congress in Mu-
nich in 1891 for the organization of obs-er-
vations on the direction of movement and
the height of clouds having completed its
work, observations were to be begun in all
parts of the world on the 1st of May last,
and are to be continued one year. The
classification of clouds proposed by Hilde-
brandsson and Abercromby will be nsed as far
as possible.

The death is announced, June lYth, of
Lord Lilford (Thomas Lyttleton Powys), an
eminent English ornithologist, in "the^ sixty-
fourth year of his age. He had a famous
collection of wild animals, particularly full
in the group of cranes, at his estate of Lil-
ford Hall, and in knowledge of the habits of
wild creatures, especially of birds, " had
few equals." He was President of the Brit-
ish Ornithologists' Union, was a frequent
contributor to The Zoo logist and The Ibis, wag
author of the Birds of Northamptonshire,
and had nearly completed a book of Colored
Figures of the Birds of the British Islands.

Dr. Heinrioh Ernst Beyrich, Professor
of Geology in the University and Director
of the Natural History Museum in Berlin,
recently died there, in his eighty-first year.
He was a younger brother of the famous
chemist, Ferdinand Beyrich, who died in
1869, and " was a most inspiring academical
teacher, and gave a lively impulse to geologi-
cal research." He published many papers
on geology and paleontology, and was chief
in making the geological map of Prussia and
the Thuringian states.

Sir William Grovb, an eminent lawyer,
but most eminent as a man of science, died in
London, August 1st. He was born at Swan-
sea in 1811 ; was graduated from Oxford in
1830; was called to the bar in 1835, but,
being in ill health, devoted himself to elec-
trical researches, and in 1839 contrived the
powerful battery that bears his name. By
this and his researches on the conservation
and transformation of energy he was best
known. He was one of the original mem-
bers of the Chemical Society, and was Presi-
dent of the British Association at the Not-
tingham meeting in 1866. A sketch of him,
with portrait, was given in the Popular Sci-
ence Monthly for July, IS'ZS (vol. iii, p. S6S).

I jsr D E X

ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAOB

Acetylene, Storing of. (Frag.) 140

" The New Illuminant. V. J. Youmans 786

African Village Scene. (Frag.) 139

Agriculture, Science as a Help to. (Frag.) 426

Air, Compressed, Working in. (Frag.) 569

" Solid. (Frag.) 285

Alaska. (Frag.) 857

Aluminum, Electro-Metallurgy of. (Frag.) ; 570

American Association, Early Years of the.* W. H. Hale 501

The Fourth Buffalo Meeting of the. (Table). . 845

Americans, Native, The Potter's Art among.* A. D. Le Plongeon ... 646

Animal Intelligence. (Frag.) 424

Antarctic Continent, Unapproachable. (Frag.) 141

Antitoxine, Short Method for Producing. (Frag.) 425

Appalachians, Northern. (Frag.) 281

Badenoch, L. N. Social Insects * 641

Baldwin, J. Mark. The Genius and his Environment 312, 522

Banking System, On Our. L. G. McPherson 327

Banziris, The, of the Congo Basin. F. J. Clozel 673

Birds, The, at Dinner.* H. E. Richards 337

Blake, I. W. Our Southern Mocker 258

Books noticed 129, 272, 413, 560, 703, 846

A. I. C. P. Notes. Vol. I, No. 1, 710. Blair, Thomas 8. Human ProgreM,

Addickee, Erich. Kant-Studien, t3«. 850.

Aeronautical Annual. James Means, editor, Bonney, T. G. Charles Lyell and Modem

708. Geology, 413.

Aikman, C. M. Milk : its Nature and Com- Brittain, John. Teachers' Manual of Na-

position, 277. ture Leswms, 419.

Allman, Alphonse. StatCHman and Dema- Bryan, John. Fables and Essays, 566.

gog, 420. Burnet, Margaretta. ZoOlogy for High

American Microscopical Society. Transac- Schools and Academies, 183.

tions. Vol. XVII, 708. Byars, William V. The Glory of the Gar-

Anstin, L. W., and C. B. Thwing. Phys- den, 710.

ical Measurements, 586. California Academy of Sciences. Proceed-

Bailey, L. H. Plant-breeding, 274. ings. Vol. V, Part I. 278.

Beannis, H., and A. Binet. Ann^e Psycho- Chamberlain. A. F. The Child and Child-

logique for 1895, 853. hood in Folk-thou>rht. 129.

Bergen, Mrs. Fanny D. Current Super- Chambers, George F. The Story of the

stitions, 848. Solar System, 568.
VOL. ILIX.— 66

866

INDEX,

Books noticed :

Chester, Albert H. A Dictionary of the
Names of Minerals, 853.

Chittendon, H. M. The Yellowstone Na-
tional Park, 419.

Comey, Arthur M. Dictionary of Chemical
Solubilities, 851,

Conant, Charles A. A History of Modern
Banks of Issue, 847.

Conant, Levi L. The Number Concept, 852.

Cook, Lady Tennessee C. Essays, third
series, 135.

Cooke, M. C. Introduction to the Study of
Fungi, 416.

Cope, E. D. The Primary Factors of Or
ganic Evolution, 707.

Corrigan, Severinus J. The Constitution
and Functions of Gases, etc., 279.

Curtis, H. Holbrook. Voice Building and
Tone Placing, 707.

Davis, William M. The Physical Geog-
raphy of Southern New England, 278.

Davis, William T. Staten Island Names,
851.

Eggleston, Edward. Stories of American
Life and Adventure, 419.

— Stories of Gieat Americans for Little
Americans. 419.

Eldridge, George H. A Geological Recon-
noissance in Northwest Wyoming, 279.

Ethnologisches Notizblatt, 135.

Evans, Arthur J. Cretan Pictographs and
Prae-Phoenician Script, 277.

Ferri, Enrico. Criminal Sociology, 272.

Fisher, J. H. Hypnotism and its Relation
to Witchcraft, Ghostology, and Mind-
cure, 851.

Fletcher, W. I., and R. R. Bowker. The

' Annual Literary Index for 1895, 853.

Flower, Sydney. A Study in Hypnotism,
851.

Foster, G. C, and E. Atkinson. Elemen-
tary Treatise on Electricity and Magnet-
ism, 565.

Geology of Moriah and Westport Town-
ships, 851.

Giddings, Franklin Henry. The Principles
of Sociology, 703.

Glazebrook, R. T. James Clerk Maxwell
and Modern Physics, 413.

— Mechanics, 566.

Green, M. E. Food Products of the World,

134.
Griswold, W. M. A Descriptive List of

Books for the Young, 279.
Hadley, Arthur T. Economics, 850.
Hall, Lyman. Algebra, 709.
Hammel, William C. A. Observation Blanks

in Physics, 278.
Hart, Ernest. Hypnotism, Mesmerism, and

the New Witchcraft, 851.
Harvard College Observatory, Annals. Vol.

XXXIV, Vol. XL, Part IV, Vol. XLI,

Part III, 418.
Hayes, C. W. The Southern Appalachians,

278.

Heffley, Norman P. Manual of Phonog-
raphy. 417.

Hiorns, Arthur H. Principles of Metal-
lurgy, .565.

Holman, S. W. Computation Rules and
Logarithms, 419.

Home Study, 854.

Home Study Review, 708.

Hornbrook, A. R. Concrete Geometry, 708.

Hornby, J. Gas Manufacture, 708.

Hudson, W. H. British Birds. 131.

Illinois Board of Commissioners of Labor.
Report on Coal in Illinois, 420.

— Bureau of Labor Statistics. Eighth Bien-
nial Report, 420.

Incorporated Society for Psychical Re-
search. Proceedings. Part XXIX, 417.

Jameson, Charles D. Portland Cement, 4l9.

Keene, G. A. Hypnotism, 852.

Keiser, Edward H. Laboratory Work in
Chemistry, 565.

Keller, I. Bilder aus der deutschen Littera-
tur, 420.

King, Robert M. School Interests and Du-
ties, 709.

Kinsley, William W. Old Faiths and New
Facts, 566.

Knauff, Theodore C. A Dissatisfied Farm-
er, 852.

Knobel, Edward. The Night Moths of New
England, 278.

Legislation by States in 1895, 853.

Le Plongeon, Augustus. Queen M6o and _
the Egyptian Sphinx, 848.

Light on Current Topics, 420.

Lodeman, E. G. The Spraying of Plants,
275.

Marcou, Jules. Life, Letters, and Works
of Louis Agassiz, 273.

Marey, E. J. Movement, 130.

Maryland State Weather Service. The Cli-
matology and Physical Features of Mary-
land, 278

Matthews, Brander. American Literature,
709.

Mercer, Henry C. The Hill Caves of Yuca-
tan, 277.

Michigan State Agricultural College. Farm-
ers' Institutes, 418.

Mitford, A. B. Freeman. The Bamboo
Garden, 854.

Mosso, Angelo. Fear, 846.

Needham, James G. Elementary Lessons
in Zoology, 133.

New Jersey. Report of the State Geologi-
cal Survey for 1894, 135.

New York Academy of Sciences. Transac-
tions. 1894-'95, 279.

State Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion. Thirteenth Annual Report, 709.

Ostwald, Wilhelm. The Scientific Founda-
tions of Analytical Chemistry, 1.32.

Pensiero Modemo, II. No. 1, 135.

Remsen, Ira, and Wyatt W. Randall. Chem-
ical Experiments, 136.

INDEX. 867

Books noticed :

PAGE

Revista deila Beneflcenza Pnblica deUe leti- Textor, Lucy E. Official Relationf. between

tuziom di Providenza e di Igiene Soclale. the United States and the Sioux Indianu

No. 1, ia5. 709.

Risteen, A. D. The Molecular Theory of Thompson, C. J. S. The Chemist's Corn-
Matter, 419. pendium,418.

Robb, Russell. Electric Wiring, 564. Turpin. G. S. Practical Inorganic Chemis-

Romanes, Mrs. Ethel. The Life and Let- try, 417.

ters of George John Romanes, 415. Tyler, John M. The Whence and the

Romanes, G. J. Examination of Weis- Whither of Man, 564.

mannism, 852. Tyndall, John. The Glaciers of the Alps,

Roth, Filibert. Timber, 417. 706.

Rusby, Henry H., and Smith E. Jelliffe. Union College Practical Lectures, 852.

Essentials of Vegetable Pharmacognosy, United States Commission to the Colum-

^^^- bian Historical Exposition at Madrid, 421.

Schoenhof, J. A History of Money and Commissioner of Education. Report

Price , 705. for l892-'93. 418.

Schultz, Frederick W. Politics and Pa- Bulletin of the Department of Labor,

triotiem, 566. No. 1, 1,35.

Schiitzenberger, P. Les Fermentations, 416. Interstate Commerce Commission.

Secret of Mankind, The, 420. Statistics of Railways in the United States,

Sedgwick. The Cambridge Natural His- 430.

tory. Vol. V, 133. University of Tokyo. The Journal of the

— and Wilson. Introduction to General College of Science. Vol. VIII, Part n.
Biology, 134. Vol. IX, Part I, 278.

Seeley, H. G. The Story of the Earth in Vulte, H. T., and George M. S. Neustadt.

Past Ages, 132. Laboratory Manual of Inorganic Prepara-

Simson, James. Discussions on the Gyp- tions, 278.

sies, 135. Welch, Deshler. The Bachelor and the

— Social Emancipation of the Gypsies, 135. Chafing Dish, 418.

Sizer, Nelson. How to Study Strangers, White, Andrew D. History of the Warfare

280. of Science with Theology in Christendom,

Smith, George H. The Theory of the State, 560.

565. Whiteley, R. Lloyd. Organic Chemistry:

Smith, Oberlin. Press Working of Metals, the Fatty Compounds, \Z\.

854. Williams, H. Slater. Geological Biology,

Spencerian Penmanship. Shorter Course in 276.

Vertical Writing, 709. Williams, R. P. Chemical Experiments,

Stanley, William Ford. Notes on the Nebu- 416.

lar Theory, 133. Wright, G. Frederick, and Warren Upham.

Stoddard, Charles A. Cruising among the Greenland Icefields and Life in the North

Caribbees, 279. Atlantic, 275.

Sully, James. Studies of Childhood, 563. Wurtz, Adolphe. Elements of Modern

Taussig, F. W. Wages and Capital, 849. Chemistry, 279.

Terrestrial Magnetism. Vol. I, No. 1, 418. Zahm, J. A. Evolution and Dogma, 414.

Bostedo, L. G. Character-BuildiDg and the Environment. (Corr.).. 407

Botanical Garden, Natural. (Frag.) 713

Business Depression. Present. (Frag. ) 712

Cacao Cultivation in Mexico. (Frag.) 718

Cambodian Primary School, A. A. Lecldre 688

Camphor. (Frag.) 715

Carter, J. M. G. A Correction. (Corr.) 842

Cell, Some Modern Views of the.* J. E. Humphrey 603

Chamacocos. (Frag.) ; 430

Character-Building and the Environment. (Corr.) L. G. Bostedo. . . 407

Clapp, Henry L. The Educative Vahie of Children's Questioning 799

Clozel, F. J. The Banziris of the Congo Basin 673

Cobb, Collier. Some Beginnings in Science.* 763

Communion Cups, Individual. (Frag.) 424

868 INDEX.

PAGE

Conspiracy of Silence, An Alleged. (Table) 411

Cordite. (Frag.) 859

Correction, A. (Corr.) J. M. G. Carter 842

Crime, Immigration and. S. G. Fisher 625

Criminal, Professional. (Frag.) 429

Cuba, Physical Characteristics of. (Frag.) 573

Curtius, Prof. Ernst, Death of. (Frag.) 859

Customs, Marriage, of the Shans. (Frag.) 426

" War, Old Madagascar. (Frag.) 856

" " Some African. (Frag.) 860

Dana, Samuel Luther, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 692

Daubree. (Frag.) 718

De GrafiPenried, Clare. The '' New Woman " and her Debts 664

Decimal Computation. (Table) 267

Disease, Preventing the Spread of. (Corr.) J. F. C. Lewis 699

" Serum Treatment of. (Frag.) 282

Dogbane and Milkweed. Maud Going 684

Dragon-flies, Convention of. (Frag.) 570

Drawing Upside Down. (Frag.) 861

Drought, Commerce and. (Frag.) 137

Education, a Literary, Natural Science in. A. H. Tolman 98

'' Competition Fetich in. (Frag.) 713

Modern, The Aim of. C. H. Henderson 485

Educational Institutions, Co-ordination of Our. E. H. Magill 176

Educative Value, The, of Children's Questioning. H. L. Clapp 799

Elevation Areas, New Classification of.* (Frag.) 855

Ethical Education, Sociology in. B. C. Mathews 373

Ethics, Scientific, Regeneration and. (Table) 127

Evans, E. P. Sketch of Jacob Moleschott. (With Portrait) 399

Evolution, Horticulture an Object Lesson in. (Frag.) 573

Exaggeration as an Esthetic Factor. F. Regnault 821

Expert Witness. (Frag.) 712

Ferri, Enrico, on Homicide. H. Zimmern 678, 828

Fisher, Sydney G. Immigration and Crime 625

Fly, Tsetse. (Frag.) 423

Flying, Eecent Experiments in. (Frag.) 142

Food, Bamboo as a. (Frag.) 138

Frogs and their Uses.* R. W. Schufeldt, M. D 179

Geography in the Middle Ages. (Frag.) 717

Genius, The, and his Environment. J. M. Baldwin 312, 522

Glass Construction, New. (Frag.) 139'

Gout and Genius. (Frag.) 140

Graham, Douglas, M. D. Massage in Sprains, Bruises, and Disloca-
tions 381

Hale, William Henry. Early Years of the American Association*. . 501

Hardinge, Miss E. M. Dogbane and Milkweed ..." 684

INDEX. 869

PAOK

Harley, Lewis R. Science at the University of Pennsylvania* 440

Heilprin, Angelo. The Stone Forest of Florissant* 479

Henderson, C. Hanford. The Aim of Modern Education 485

Hirsch, William. Epidemics of Hysteria 544

Hodge, C. F. The Vivisection Question 614, 771

Holidays, Summer. (Table) 408

Homicide, Enrico Ferri on. H. Zimmern 678, 828

Honeydew, Origin of. (Frag.) 717

Horse Racing in Bosnia. (Frag.) 718

Humphrey, James Ellis. Some Modern Views of the Cell * 603

Huxley, Professor, A Bishop on. (Table) 699

Hysteria, Epidemics of. W. Hirsch 544

Ice Age, Causes, Stages, and Time of the .* W. Upham 354

Identification, Finger-print Method of. (Frag.) 284

lies, George. Why Progress is by Leaps 216

Illusions and Hallucinations. W. R. Newbold 630

Insects, Social.* L. N. Badenoch 641

Jordan, David Starr. The Sympsychograph : a Study in Impressionist

Physics * 597

Kekule, August. (Frag.) 861

Kelvin's, Lord, '' Failure." (Table) 701

Kraepelin, Emil. A Measure of Mental Capacity 756

Lake, Toba. (Frag.) 429

Lakes, the Great, How they were Built.* J. W. Spencer 157

Leaves, The Significance of.* F. S. Mathews 793

Leclere, Adhemard. A Cambodian Primary School 688

Le Plongeon, Alice D. The Potter's Art among Native Americans*. 646

Lewis, Mrs. Julia F. Carvill. Preventing the Spread of Disease 699

Light-bearing Cephalopods. (Frag.) 572

Lightning, Sheet, Theory of. (Frag.) 572

Llano, Antonio. Professor Ostwald on the Mechanical Theory.

(Corr.) 121

Lloyd, Charles Edward. Sketch of Henry Augustus Rowland.*

(With Portrait) 110

Luce, Grace A. Occupations, Privileges, and Duties of Women.

(Corr.) 698

Macbride, Thomas H. County Parks 369

Macdougal, D. T. The Physiology of Color in Plants * 71

McPherson, Logan G. On Our Banking System 327

" '' The Development of the Monetary Problen\ . . 20

" " The Monetary Problem 208

Madagascar, Curious Verbal Customs in. (Frag.) 285

Magill, Edward H. Co-ordination of our Educational Institutions. . . 176

Mankind, The Proposed Dual Organization of. W. G. Sumner 4:i3

Massage in Sprains, Bruises, and Dislocations.* D. Graham. M. D. . . 381

Mather, Fred. The Scallop* 534

8/0 INDEX.

PAGE

Mather, William Williams, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 550

Mathews, Byron C. Sociology in Ethical Education 373

Mathews, F. Schuyler. The Significance of Leaves* 793

Meats, Nutritive Value of. (Frag.) 568

Mechanical Theory, Professor Ostwald on the. (Corr.) A. Llano. . . 121

Mendenhall, T. C. The Metric System 721

Mental Capacity, A Measure of. E. Kraepelin 756

Metric System, Mr. Spencer and the, again. (Table) 410

" The. H.Spencer 186

T. C. Mendenhall 721

Micronesia. (Frag.) 286

Mocker, Our Southern.* I. W. Blake 258

Moleschott, Jacob, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) E. P. Evans 399

Monetary Problem, The. L. G. McPherson 202

" " The Development of the. L. G. McPherson 20

Murdoch, John. Dr. Nansen's " Throwing Stick." 173

Hansen's, Dr., " Throwing Stick." J. Murdoch 173

Nevada Silver.* C. H. Shinn 734

Newbold, William Romaine. Illusions and Hallucinations 630

" " '' Posthypnotic and Criminal Suggestion 230
" Spirit " Writing and " Speaking with

Tongues " 508

" " '* Suggestion in Therapeutics 342

" " " The Self and its Derangements 810

Niagara as a Timepiece.* J. W. Spencer 1

Obituary Notes. Ludwig Riitimeyer 144

John Russel Hind, Adalbert Krueger 432

Daubree 576

Cristof oro Negri 720

Lord Lilford, Sir Joseph Prestwich 862

Lord Lilford, Heinrich Ernst Beyrich, Sir William Grove 864

Odors, Measure for. (Frag.) 858

Old Skull, New. (Frag.) 424

Opium is prepared, How. (Frag.) 284

Outerbridge, A. E., Jr. Pending Problems for Wage-Earners 57

Paints for Iron. (Frag.) 860

Parks, County. T. H. Macbride 369

Patriotism and Militarism. (Table.) 122

Pearls and Mother-of-Pearl. C.S.Pratt 390

Peary Expedition, Scientific Acquisitions from the. (Frag.) 286

Petroleum-lamp Accidents. (Frag.) 282

Photographing Electrical Discharges.* W. E. Woodbury 305

Plant Breeding. (Frag.) •. 859

Plants, Alpine, Characteristics of. (Frag.) 570

" The Physiology of Color in.* D. T. Macdougal 71

Polar Expeditions, The Year's. (Frag.) 856

" Exploration, Continuous, Proposed System of. (With Map.)

R. Stein 321

INDEX. 871

PAOK

Poor, Do the, hate the Rich? (Frag.) ' 714

Pratt, Charles Stuart. Pearls and Mother-of-Pearl 390

Progress is by Leaps, Why. G. lies 216

Psychology of Puppies. (Frag.) 427

Public Service, Intelligence in the. (Table) 266

Pygmy, The, in the United States.* J. Weir, Jr., M. D 47

Raymond, Paul. The Subterranean River Midroi * 253

Regnault, F. Exaggeration as an Esthetic Factor 821

Rice, Japanese. (Frag.) 426

Richards, Harriet E. The Birds at Dinner* 337

River Midroi, The Subterranean. P. Raymond 253

Robinson Crusoe, Discoverer of. (Frag.) 427

Rogers, James Blythe, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 261

Rogers, Robert Em pie, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 837

Rontgen Ray, The. (Table) 125

Rowland, Henry Augustus, Sketch of.* (With Portrait) C. E.

Lloyd 110

Scallop, The.* F.Mather 534

School Conditions and Eyesight. (Frag.) 862

Schools, Elementary, Another Bishop on Science Teaching in. (Table) 843

Public, The Devil in the. (Table) 559

Science at the University of Pennsylvania.* L. R. Harley 440

'' Some Beginnings in.* C. Cobb 763

The Province of. (Table) 268

Self, The, and its Derangements. W. R. Newbold 810

Serum Therapy and Blood Brotherhood. (Frag.) 423

Shinn, Charles Howard. Nevada Silver* 734

Shufeldt, R. W., M. D. Frogs and their Uses * 179

Silk from Wood. (Frag.) 855

Sisal in the Bahamas. (Frag.) 428

Sounding, Deepest, yet made. (Frag.) 285

Sparrows, Ways of. (Frag.) 714

Spencer, Herbert. The Metric System 186

Spencer, J. W. How the Great Lakes were Built * 157

'* " Niagara as a Timepiece * 1

Spider Bites, Poisonous. (Frag.) 857

" Spirit " Writing and " Speaking with Tongues." W. R. Newbold . . 508

Steel, Mysterious Fractures in. (Frag.) 422

Stein, Robert. Proposed System of Continuous Polar Exploration.

(With Map.). 321

Stone Forest, The, of Florissant.* A. Heilprin 479

Storage Battery, Evolution of the. (Frag.) 715

Storms, Dust and Sand, in the West. J. A. Udden 655

Suggestion in Therapeutics. W. R. Newbold 342

Posthypnotic and Criminal. W. R. Newbold 230

Sumner, William G. The Proposed Dual Organization of Mankind . . 433
Sympsychograph, The: a Study in Impressionist Physics.* D. S.

Jordan 597

872 INDEX,

PAGB

Talbot, George F. The Political Eights and Duties of Women 80

Taxation, Principles of. D. A. Wells 29, 145, 289, 464, 577

Temperature, Low, Apparatus, New. (Frag.) 283

Temperatures, Underground, Some New Observations on. (Frag.). . . 281

Tolman, Albert H. Natural Science in a Literary Education 98

Tuberculosis and Meat Inspection. (Frag.) 138

Tweedy, Miss Alice B. Woman and the Ballot 241

" " Woman's Claims to the Ballot. (Corr.) 842

Udden, J. A. Dust and Sand Storms in the West 655

Underground Houses of Techin, Tunisia. (Frag.) 858

Upham, Warren. Causes, Stages, and Time of the Ice Age * 354

Uranium. (Frag.) 569

Vegetation, Relations of Moisture and. (Frag.) 716

Vivisection Question, The. C. F. Hodge. 614, 771

Wage-Earners, Pending Problems for. A. E. Outerbridge, Jr 57

Water, Infected Drinking. (Frag.) 283

" Purification, Metallic Iron in. (Frag.) 141

Weir, James, Jr., M. D. The Pygmy in the United States * 47

Wells, David A. Principles of Taxation. II. The Place of Taxation

in Literature and History , 29, 145, 289, 464, 577

Wells, Holy. (Frag.) 571

Woman and the Ballot. A. B. Tweedy 241

'' Occupations, Privileges, and Duties of. (Corr.) Gr. A. Luce. 698

The New, and her Debts. C. de Graffenried 664

Woman's Claims to the Ballot. (Corr.) A. B. Tweedy 842

Women and Politics. (Table) 556

The Political Rights and Duties of. G. F. Talbot 80

" Tibetan. (Frag.) 139

Woodbury, Walter E. Photographing Electrical Discharges * 305

Woodpeckers, A Word in Favor of. (Frag.) 573

X Rays in Surgery. (Frag.) 711

" Recent Work on the 103

Those Blessed. (Table) 271

Youmans, V. J. Acetylene, the New lUuminant 786

Zimmern, Helen. Enrico Ferri on Homicide 678, 828

THE END.

L

Vol. XLIX.] Established by Es^wj^d l. Youmans. [No. 2.

APPlclrfoNS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1896.
EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMAJfS.

CONTENTS. p^,

I. Principles of Taxation. II. Part V. By Hon. David A. Wells. . 146

XL How the Great Lakes were Built. By J. W. Spencek, Ph. D.,

F. G. S. (Illustrated.) , . . . . 157

III. Dr. Nansen's " Throwing Stick." By John Murdoch 173

IV. Co-ordination of our Educational Institutions. By Dr. E. H. Magill. 176
V. Frogs and their Uses. By R. W. Shufeldt, M. D. (Illustrated.) . 179

VI. The Metric System. By Herbebt Spenceb 186

VTT. The Monetary Problem. By Logan G. McPheeson 202

Vin. Why Progress is by Leaps. By Geoege Iles 216

IX. Posthypnotic and Criminal Suggestion. By Prof. W. R. Newbold. 230

X. Woman and the Ballot. By Alice B. Tweedy 241

XL The Subterranean River Midrol By Dr. Paul Raymond. (Illns.) 253

XII. Our Southern Mocker. By I. W. Blake 258

XIIL Sketch of James Bly the Rogers. (With Portrait.) 261

XIV. Editor's Table : Intelligence in the Public Service. — Decimal Computation. —

The Province of Science.— Those Blessed X Rays 266

XV. Scientific Literature 272

XVI. Fragments of Science 281

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